Fortress of Ice

by C. J. Cherryh

  It had not tingled since all this last mad course began. It had not warned him against Emuin. It had lain inert during their precipitate rush from Marna to Lewen Field to the river. It had not warned him of Sir Wisp or his mother. Perhaps his captors had killed the virtue in it. He wished he had given the ring to his brother when they were at the beginning of all this. Perhaps then Lord Crissand would have been able to fi nd Aewyn, at least, and saved his father pain.

  He wished . . . like the spider. He chained one wish to the other, starting not with what was impossible, but what was possible. He sat down before the fire, and wished one spark to fly out, and to land on his hand.

  It flew. It landed. Without hesitation he seized it, and patiently wished the next thing. He wished the chill away, wished himself warm. One thing after another, one thing after another.

  He wished Aewyn safe.

  The fog appeared again— not around him— but where the door had been.

  He saw just the least glimmer of light.

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  iv

  snow still fell in the dark, and they rode through the remnant of walls . . . walls lit by ghostly blue lines, which Cefwyn himself could see tonight. He rode by Tristen’s side, Uwen just behind, and all around them, like a ghostly city, old Althalen rose, not just its foundations, but the outlines of its long - fallen towers, and the soaring height of domes greater than any in the realm. It was a glimpse of the Sihhë capital, as it had been, and a Marhanen king knew what his grandfather had brought low.

  But things changed. There were bonds made. And the heart of that maze of blue light led to a simple place, a corner of what had been the palace, and a wall, where a tomb was set— they had not been near it a moment ago, but then they were, and Cefwyn had the heart - deep conviction Tristen had magicked them a bit, just a little, over a hill and down it.

  He saw then a gathering of haunts, in a little low place, at that corner, ghosts that, at their coming, turned and stared at them with gray and troubled eyes, before they shredded away on the winds. Layer after layer of haunts fled their passage, wisps that left an uneasiness in the air.

  But a young lad sat against that wall— no, he rested against the knees of a bearded old man, whose ghostly hand stroked his blond, curly head, and by that man stood, gowned in cobweb, Auld Syes, the gray lady— her, he knew for long dead; and on the other side, behind the old man he now recognized for the old Regent, his father- in - law, stood a woman in a shawl, who was his other son’s gran, likewise perished. These three had his son in their keeping, and his heart froze in him. He swung down before his horse stopped moving, and ran to his son, heedless of haunts or spirits or whatever magic might be here. He was an ordinary man. He brushed it all aside, and seized his son up in his arms, and hugged him as hard as he could.

  “Ow,” Aewyn cried. “Papa!”

  “He’s alive,” he called to Tristen and Uwen, who, likewise dismounted, were right behind him, and he looked around to thank the dead, at least—old friends, old allies.

  But there was nothing there but a crumbling stone wall, and the stone they had set there for Uleman Syrillas.

  “It was Grandfather,” Aewyn murmured against his collar. “And Paisi’s gran. And a lady I don’t know.”

  The boy was half - frozen. He might lose fingers or toes. Cefwyn brought his fur- lined cloak about them both, and looked desperately at Tristen, who simply said, “Give him to me.”

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  He did that. He had not a qualm, having Tristen take the boy from his arms and pass his hands over him. Aewyn’s eyes shut, as Tristen let him down to the snow, then opened again, with a curious tranquillity, a wonder in them.

  “You must be Lord Tristen,” Aewyn said faintly, catching Tristen’s hand.

  “My brother is lost. Find him. You can fi nd him.”

  “I have never given him up,” Tristen said, pulling him up by that hand, so that a father who had been very sure he had lost both sons, could touch one of them and be sure that he was real.

  “We were by the river. And then here,” Aewyn said to him, “and I tried to hold us down, and he slipped away. I don’t know where he is.”

  Tristen, however, had looked away into the dark.

  “I know,” Tristen said. “I know. He has a trinket of mine.”

  v

  aewyn was the first thing elfwyn imagined when he built his web, Aewyn in the snow, as he had left him, and he imagined where he had left him, but he could not make that image stay— it broke apart, in fat fl akes of snow, and drifted on the wind, threads taken apart.

  The wind, however, was a constant presence out there. He constructed that, stirring the trees, raising the snow in little plumes.

  Fire was another presence. He constructed Aewyn’s voice, telling him about maps, and a laughing fish, one evening by the coals.

  He constructed Paisi, sitting by the fireside, and Gran, busy over her bread - baking. He recalled Uwen’s wife, and her fireside with the lump in the stones.

  And then, very carefully, he began to spin the strands that tied him to Lord Tristen.

  He remembered the table by the fireside in Ynefel, while the whole fortress creaked and groaned with the wind, where the stairs sneaked furtively into new places, and faces in the stone seemed to watch someone walking by. Curiously enough, he could not recall Lord Tristen’s face, nor his voice, but he could clearly recall Mouse, taking his single crumb— taking his little success, and immediately running for cover.

  He recalled Mouse’s enemy, Owl, on the newel post, and could see the mad glint of his huge eyes. He felt a sting, and looked down at his hand, where a mostly healed nick reminded him never to trifle with Owl.

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  Be Mouse, Tristen had told him.

  He immediately recalled another fireside, and an old man who had asked him if he could be a spider.

  Spider he was, tonight. He wove his web. He had made his mistake right after that warning. He hadn’t trusted the old man: he’d held fast to Aewyn, but he hadn’t trusted the old man enough when he tried to take them with him.

  He would, if he met him again.

  He thought about his charm of old Sihhë coins, and saw a bowl of oil on water. If he had been a real wizard, he could have made it show him something. He would have seen the truth in it, and told the truth to his father, and nothing of what had happened would have happened . . .

  He kept staring at it, patient, patient as he could be, waiting to see what he would see now that he had it back. He stared and stared at the water, and saw a fog come over the surface.

  It was the best he could hope for, that fog. It had carried him here. He wished it larger, and larger, and larger.

  Elfwyn fell into it, and kept falling, but he was patient. He knew there would be a bottom sooner or later and that he would fi nd it.

  When he did, it was white, a long stretch of white, but when his feet hit it and skidded, and when he started walking, it was just another snowy patch of ground. It looked like a road. In the dim snowlight he could see walls on either side, and a little wish, a very little wish, made the ring tingle on his fi nger. He knew what way he ought to go. It was strongest in one particular direction.

  So he kept walking. He pressed the book that rode inside his shirt, to be sure it was safe. He had made one mistake with a message, and was not prepared to make another. It was still there. It felt warm against his skin, and he kept his hand pressed there for a long time— growing colder as he walked, over snow that made a sound convincingly like snow.

  He could endure the cold. He had endured worse, and would have endured worse, where he had been. He was determined, if another fog showed itself and tried to take him back, that he would sit down, hold to the rocks around him, and simply refuse to budge until bright daylight.

  But none did.

  He might have walked in that way for the better part of an hour, bef
ore he heard a strange sound behind him that was neither the wind nor the occasional cracking of ice crust under his feet. It was that sort of regular sound, but many feet— like horses.

  He stopped, turned, straining his senses against the night, and saw three riders slowly overtaking him. There was nowhere for him to hide. It hardly 3 9 7

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  seemed likely his mother would be riding here— but then it was not terribly likely that he would be here, either. He wondered, with a little shiver of fear, should he try wizardry again, and attempt the fog that had betrayed him.

  He tried to bring it. He meant to bring it. But:

  “Elfwyn!” someone called, a ragged, youngish voice.

  “Aewyn?” he called back, all efforts stopped for a heartbeat. “Is it you?”

  His mother was full of lies, and he suspected it and was ready to run, but he stood his ground when he heard:

  “Son?” That was his father. He never mistook that voice. He planted both feet in the snow and stood fast, waiting, as the three, no, four riders reached him.

  One was Lord Tristen himself. Another was Uwen, who reached down a hand to lift him up. But before he could take it, Aewyn slid down from behind his father and seized him in his arms, pounding him about the back.

  “Elfwyn!” Aewyn cried. “I thought we’d lost you.”

  “I came home,” was all he could think to say. He hugged his brother, and now his father had dismounted, and put arms about him, and pressed the breath out of him.

  The ring all but stung him. He looked up sharply, at Lord Tristen’s shadowy form, at a Sihhë - lord in armor, with the white Star blazoned on him, the sight that belonged in Paisi’s stories and not in the world as it was now.

  “My lord,” he said, though his own father, the king of Ylesuin, had a hand on his shoulder at the time.

  “Get up behind Uwen,” Tristen told him, and Uwen rode near, offering his hand a second time. He took it, hand to wrist, hauled up aboard a powerful, broad - rumped horse to settle behind Uwen Lewen’s - son, while his father and his brother climbed back to the saddle of his father’s horse, and Lord Tristen waited in silence. Owl showed up, and fl ew a curve half about him, then sped ahead.

  There were a thousand questions. Aewyn answered a few of them when he said, in a voice hoarse with cold, “I never gave you up.”

  “Nor I, you,” he answered, from behind Uwen’s saddle.

  He hoped that was the truth. With all his heart, he meant it to be.

  My lord, he had called Tristen Sihhë. And he wished he had known how to say that to his father instead, when his father had put his arms about him; but what he had said, he had said, and meant it, as best he could.

  He should have offered up the book. He should have surrendered the ring immediately. But he had given himself, instead. He supposed that counted for honesty.

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  e p i l o g u e

  snow fell, as it had fallen for days. snow lay thick on rooftops of the town, with only this noon a promise of blue sky, a lazy slit above, as if the heavens watched, only pretending to sleep.

  It was the courtyard of the Zeide, and the window from which King Cefwyn had looked out on the world as Prince Cefwyn. From this diamond -

  paned window he had watched, oh, so many grim things in his tenure here.

  Two boys were at arms practice in the yard below, next to the armory, boys only weeks ago, but now—

  Now a father saw changes. Elfwyn, the one had called himself, now and forever, but— Spider, Emuin called him, while Tristen called him Mouse.

  No longer Otter, to Cefwyn’s sorrow. Nevermore Otter. The boy had gone places even Emuin did not guess and Tristen only hinted at. Even Elfwyn’s eyes had changed, gray and seeming at times lately to look into distances, or to spark fire. The face had grown somber, the stare more direct, at times so very direct that the servants looked away.

  His father would not look away from him. Cefwyn would not give him up to the enemy that had tried to take him. He had fought for his kingdom.

  He would fight for his sons and his daughter.

  Take both boys back to Guelemara? No. Elfwyn was home, now, at least as at home as Elfwyn was ever apt to be. His was still a wild heart, but he had ceased to run. He was furtive, but that furtiveness had turned full about: it had become a hunter’s stealth— the look of pursuit, not fl ight— that displayed itself in his sword - play.

  Elfwyn got past his brother’s guard. Aewyn had to jump back. Twice.

  And when had that manner taken hold? Was it something gained at Ynefel? Or— elsewhere?

  Bump and thump from great distance, from beyond the diamond panes and a floor below. Aewyn recovered, and pressed back, both boys with padded swords. Now Elfwyn retreated, and circled.

  c. j. cherryh

  No one here in Amefel questioned a bastard’s right to bear arms, no one questioned the boy’s royal paternity— a few, perhaps, shuddered at the taint of sorcery on the Aswydd side, and oh, yes, the good Quinalt father— the lone Quinalt authority in this Bryalt town— had come puffing into the audience hall to express his opinion, and gone out from his king’s presence much more meekly than he had arrived . . .

  A hit. Aewyn, pursuing too rashly, landed on his backside in the snow, and scrambled up again, shield and sword flailing. Then swords hit the snow, shields did, and brothers tumbled, locked in each other’s arms.

  They rolled, they wrestled. Cefwyn afforded himself a smile, a hope of a moment’s duration, that the brothers might find their innocence again— that they might somehow get back what they had left behind in this dire winter.

  He hoped they laughed, but the window cut him off from sound: from his vantage, he simply saw boys struggling for advantage, pounding snow down each other’s necks. Surely there would by now be laughter. He hoped there was. He looked for signs of it.

  Oh, there went Elfwyn free of the clinch, quick and wily, leaping onto his feet, crouched low. Elfwyn gathered up a double handful of snow and fl ung it, a spray of white.

  Aewyn charged right through, but Elfwyn was suddenly back a good half his length, and retreating fi rst.

  My sons, my sons, Cefwyn said to himself. Both my sons. A man could do much worse. The clergy called Elfwyn a calamity. And Cefwyn had feared. He still feared, if he let worry have sway over him. But he shut out the dark thoughts, as hard, as persistently as he could. He insisted to believe in this boy, in both of them. Belief, so Emuin had taught him, was its own magic— so long as it was carefully placed, often examined, like a bridge kept in careful repair.

  Brave boys. Aewyn’s charge carried through Elfwyn’s mists of snow, and Aewyn almost laid hands on him, but Elfwyn skipped back and back, full circle, now.

  No matter to Aewyn. He kept coming, suddenly swinging fi sts.

  Oh, be careful of temper, son of mine. That damnable Marhanen temper . . .

  Aewyn struck. And Elfwyn spun half-about and stopped still, not hurt, but amazed. Indignant.

  Aewyn stopped dead. The two stood looking at each other. It was Aewyn who held out his hand, held it out, pressed a step farther.

  Then Elfwyn took the offering, and Aewyn clapped him on the shoulder, 4 0 0

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  hugged him in comradely fashion, hugged him close, the two walking side by side away, heads down.

  Cefwyn breathed. He had not known he had held his breath, but he had.

  He watched the two walk aside to the armorer’s shed, and sit down on the bottom step together, and remain so, shoulder to shoulder, fi nding something mutually interesting in the snow at their feet, weapons forgotten in the snow. It was a breath of discipline, that abandonment of weapons, a fault, but Cefwyn ignored it, wishing, hoping, that he would see the two get up together, friends, brothers— children, again.

  They might be talking— or might still hold a sullen peace. He saw Elfwyn take off his glove in the cold. What Elfwyn did then, bending lower, reaching into the snow, he could not t
ell. But he watched Aewyn staring at that hand, and saw— saw a cold gleam, bright as a mote of moonlight.

  Elfwyn closed that bare hand, and opened it, and it was gone. Just gone.

  Magic? The chance spark of a jewel in the winter light? Cefwyn prayed for it to be the latter, but the gray sky and the sifting snow afforded no sun at all to strike a spark off metal. The day was leaden, the snow standing on the boys’ arms and backs and heads the moment they sat still. There was no natural source of light now from the heavens. Elfwyn had done it . . .

  whatever it was.

  And what had that spark meant? What thought proceeded in that dark head, when, after his brother attacked him, he let a cold fire sit in his hand?

  There was sorcery, and there was wizardry, and there was magic. Which one had his bastard son learned to practice, and where had he learned it?

  The boys still sat together on the step. What words passed between them, there was no hint at all, except the bodies were quiet, the heads bowed.

  Two things had sparked out there— the cold fire and the hot, the fi re in the hand, and the fire in Aewyn’s heart, the ungovernable temper that had damned the Marhanen house through three generations . . . that had done murder, and earned damnation. . .

  Gods, let one quench the other. Let them be brothers.

  A step intruded. A servant, he thought at first: very few dared come and go without at least a cough.

  It came just that degree closer than a servant at work and he turned his head, his hand already moving; but it was Tristen who had come in— doubtless an open door, the servants coming and going about their business— but not necessarily, Tristen being what he was. Cefwyn’s hand went back to the window sill, his attention back to the view below. He welcomed the presence 4 0 1

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  by him, the other overseer of the witch’s son— and the queen’s. His friend.