“It never rained that day.”
“You didn’t ask me when we met at supper.”
“I forgot it,” Emuin said, and that was itself a disturbing statement…natural though that was in the confusion of guests and a festive evening.
“So did I forget to tell you. And you were asleep. And I had forgotten it.”
“It never rained that day,” Emuin’s voice was flat as if it was no surprise “Yet you saw weather. So you say. And did it see you? ”
“I think not, sir. I took care not.” Now he could not remember the sky that day. The chill seemed deep for a moment, and it was very difficult to confess. “Yet I confess I took care that you failed to see me, too.”
“Was it the first time?”
“No. The first time in a while, sir, but not the first time. You never—” He began to say you never advise me, but that was no excuse. There were no excuses in wizardry or, though only he knew the laws of it, in magic. He strongly suspected that magic was even less forgiving and he knew his folly, that he had thought back, and back, and it had felt so safe…at first.
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“I still can catch you out,” Emuin said, not unkindly.
“It was not a long moment that I stood there. I offer no excuse, sir. I can’t even promise not to do it again. It seemed—safe at that moment.” He struggled to remember all the sequence of things, but that was one of the mazes on which wizardry could lead: that they would not assume an order, or a right sense of importance against what seemed far more urgent. Around the tower things seemed to change by the moment, both things that had been and things that might be. “I felt afraid and I ran.”
“Did you?”
“I was afraid. Afraid I might be there in the next moment.”
Emuin drew a long slow breath and leaned back. “Is it so, now?”
He had no words to say what had happened to him. The words Men used hardly compassed it. “It felt—” Still there were no words. He had words. But they were not in the common tongue and they stuck in his throat. And he had never, strictly speaking, told Emuin all that had happened at Lewenbrook. “I felt in danger. I felt myself in danger. If I thought it came near anyone else, I would have said so at supper that night.”
“Your goodwill is our shield, my young lord; it was Cefwyn’s shield in battle and it stands so, now, with all of us. I trust your looking west and I trust your going to the Quinaltine, little I can do about it.” Emuin had shut away all mention of that disturbing hour as firmly as he had shut the window. No, he wished to say. No, I have more to say.
Yet he could find none of it to say. And despaired, then, that he never would. Emuin had ceased to listen.
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“—Would a game of draughts suit you on this noisy, rattly, windy night?” Emuin asked him lightly. “I fear the Quinalt and their bonfire are drowned by now, half-burned sins and all.
Quinalt sins, to boot. Gods send they make no omen of it.”
“There. You said it again.”
“Said what?”
“Gods send.”
“Plague and pest. A manner of speaking. Men do have them.”
“Gods, sir?”
“Manners of speaking!”
“Yes, sir,” he said. Emuin had closed off the subject. Emuin tried to joke with him, he tried to joke with Emuin and now he had gotten a rise of Emuin’s eye-brow. And a spark of humor in his eye. He fanned it. “Dare I have them, too, then?”
Emuin rose from the table, sighed, walked toward the shuttered window. And stood there. “The winter stars are rising and the rain and the foolish fire blinds all my observations.
—But all they do down there changes nothing.” Emuin looked at him, and that spark was back, defiant, when a moment before he had seen a weary old man. “You and I are here. And chance is abroad tonight. So are a paltry few shadows. They gathered by the fire down there, too. They danced. Poor fools. For a few hours they were not enemies.”
“Who, sir? The shadows are not our enemies.”
“Nor are we our own, for a few hours at least.” Emuin came back, filled the teakettle. “Best we two sit together, drink tea, and play draughts till dawn. Bid kiss my hand to the Quinalt, and their gods. I don’t advise you, understand! I inform you the course that I would take; that I have taken, gods know, simply to live in
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Guelessar. Do all that Cefwyn recommends regarding the Quinalt—since you don’t consult me in such things I gladly provide no advice. I do not object to your wearing the silly medal, nor talking to His Highness, but finish going to the shrine as soon as you can. That is not advice, either, young lord, only good sense.”
“Yes, sir.” He accepted the chastisement, and the advice.
“Plague and pest, I say. Deliberately you did not ask me.”
Emuin found his cheerfulness unexpectedly. Mauryl had used to swear at him, sometimes in despair, sometimes in laughter.
And Emuin was very like him, in important ways. “Bother the tea,” the old man said. “Steal us two cups of the ale from the guards out there. To be sure of its safety, understand.”
C H A P T E R 8
Wine flowed, along with the traditional ale and beer.
The drums and the harps and pipes played through the rumble and crack of thunder, and the lords of Ylesuin and their ladies, their sons and their daughters, all moved in their sprightly, graceful patterns through the dance, safe and dry, immune to the storm that reports said had drowned the bonfire and dispersed the wilder celebration in the square for good and all this time.
The king had been wont to be down in the square at harvesttide, dancing the bawdy peasant dances in his misspent youth, oh, two long years ago, committing new sins while burning old ones. If one were lucky, one could burn them all by morning, new and old, and wake with a light conscience, an empty purse, and a well-earned headache.
This year, crowned, having spent last winter in Amefel, Cefwyn sat a thinly cushioned chair of state on a stone workmen had brought in a great effort, to raise that chair of state a handbreadth above the chair of the woman he could not make queen of Ylesuin, a handbreadth of difference which the king had to remember every time he and his bride-to-be stepped down to dance, a handbreadth of a separation and a symbol of his good fortune not to be in Ninévrisë’s position, a 166
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beggar at a foreign, a hostile court. He would not, by his own will, have accepted the damned stone; but he had accepted it all the same, marking down the lord of Ryssand, Corswyndam, in his personal disfavor—for some future time.
The Quinalt had begun to yield until, today, with Ninévrisë
casting in her own penny with her own hand, acknowledging Quinalt authority, doing as other lords did with the Quinalt countenancing it, there had been a tacit agreement on the conservative side that she was indeed a head of state and a lord among lords—Ninévrisë wore her circlet crown of office tonight, another point of debate, so he wore the heavy state crown of Ylesuin, and their respective peoples’ honors were preserved by a hand-span stone block.
His grandfather had set himself on the Dragon Throne by murder, baldly put, —had turned on his sworn lord, Elfwyn, the halfling Sihhë, and burned the palace at Althalen, enriching those who followed him. His father, too, had been notoriously jealous of his power, bewilderingly blind to lords fattening their purses by any means they could devise. His courtiers were sure the new-crowned king meant to do something clever, and betray his word to Elwynor, and enrich his faithful barons with new lands beyond any dream of acquisition they had had under his father.
On the other hand—could the new king be a fool? Perhaps he might be weak, and allow his barons to demand far more of him than a stone step. And they still might conquer Elwynor.
Thirteen days were left before the wedding, and then he would have the woman beside him irrefutably, immutably, and legally his ally, his wife, and the love of his heart, a giddy, frivol
ous, undutiful pleasure he had
168 / C. J. CHERRYH
never looked for. He bought the priests with that block of stone—as well as with the arrangement that kept the lord of Althalen in his rooms and his old tutor Emuin tucked away in his tower. He congratulated himself that they had carried off the ceremony this morning without a disaster, and in truth the court was abuzz with the presence of the Lord Warden in the shrine, wearing a holy relic of the Quinalt, no less. There was hot and heavy converse at this very moment around Efanor and his priest, who swore to all inquirers as to the authenticity of that medal, dashing hope that it might be a lie. True, some skeptics looked askance at the foul and, and their claims, ominous weather tonight, but it was autumn, good lack! when rains were ordinary. What did they expect?
The whole court did know that their new king had been engaged in very chancy business across Assurnbrook, in Amefel.
There were far too many eyewitnesses to sorcery. No man who had stood on Lewen field had a precise recollection of all the events there, but every man who had stood there knew that he had seen something terrible, and that Elwynim and the king’s odd friend the Lord Warden of Ynefel all had something essential to do with the victory there. In some versions it was the gods themselves who had rescued the Dragon Banner and carried it blazing against the enemy. In others the light that had dawned across that field was spectral and sorcerous, and the Lord Warden of Ynefel had carried the lightning in his hand. Tristen could not, gossip said, even stand in the presence of a priest. He would perish as a lump of cinder if he laid a hand on a Quinalt emblem. He would fail to put in the harvest penny. He would melt at the threshold, and the holy images would avert their faces.
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Clack, clack, clack of gossip, all done to death today as Tristen paid his penny like a good Quinalt man, wearing a medal of holy martyr’s blood—attested by the most incorruptible, tiresome priest alive, one so holy even His Holiness avoided his company, Efanor’s priest, Jormys, him in the rope belt and rough-spun yonder.
Now perhaps they were saying, over there in that knot of gossipers, the wonder of it! the holy Jormys had converted a Sihhë-lord…when he knew damned well Jormys had been afraid to go into that room and only Efanor had gone.
He owed his brother a great favor for that act of courage.
“Cevulirn dances very well,” Ninévrisë said, plucking at his sleeve. “Do you see? And with Murandys’ niece.”
He did see. He had just caught sight of the couple. The thought of the gray, grim lord of Ivanor in the midst of an intricate paselle was astonishing in itself, but the duke of Ivanor had unexpected graces, back-to-back and then face-to-face with the duke of Murandys’ fair-haired younger niece in the quick-moving courtly patterns on the floor.
Now “there” was a match. The lords did not favor one another.
The niece—Cleisynde was the name—was a stiffly Quinalt little piece. And looked far less graceful than did Cevulirn, as if she had never danced before. But her eyes, ah, her eyes worshiped. Cevulirn was a distinguished—and wifeless—lord.
“Cleisynde,” he said. “One of your ladies, is it not?”
“One of the more agreeable,” Ninévrisë said. Some 170 / C. J. CHERRYH
were not. He knew, for instance, that Ryssand’s daughter Artisane was a particular thorn in Ninévrisë’s side, a bearer of tales straight from Ninévrisë’s small circle to her father. And Artisane, also in view, cast a predictable frown at Cevulirn every time the dance turned her from her own partner, Isin’s son.
“Ryssand’s daughter has eaten sour fruit,” he remarked. “Do you see? Is it Cevulirn’s partner she disapproves so publicly?”
“Artisane’s brother is dancing with Odrinian,” Ninévrisë said.
Oho. Sour grapes and bitter leaves for supper. He saw the couple in question: a pretty pair: Odrinian of Murandys, a child, youngest sister to his discarded mistress Luriel—a far kinder and less wise heart, Odrinian; and a merry bit of hell’s best work there was in that young whelp, the heir of Ryssand.
Brugan was his name, vain ox.
“Don’t frown so,” Ninévrisë said.
“My former mistress. That is her sister.”
“Ah.” Ninévrisë’s hand, fine and strong, was locked on his between their thrones. “And now you repent?”
“In ashes,” he said, and at that instant a peal of thunder racketed through the hall, making both of them jump.
“I have kept no secrets,” he said, looking not at her, but straight ahead, at Odrinian and Brugan. Then he did glance aside. “And have given up all of them, I swear. Hence Murandys is not pleased, any more than Ryssand. I shall bring Luriel to court only by your leave.”
“I give it,” Ninévrisë said, and her chin tilted in that way she had, the pretty girl of the miniature, the FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 171
entrancing woman who had his heart. “I trust if I needed fear comparisons my lord would never have proposed she come,”
“Gracious lady. None. It would be a rescue for the lady. A kindness.”
“The lady is in distress?”
“Her father blames her now. She languishes; in immodest, imprudent letters, protests she loved me, were not Amefel’s heretic ways so oppressive she could not stay with me there…”
“Oh?” A sidelong look. “And do you answer these letters?”
“I forgive them. They have accumulated to the number of three, in two months. I don’t think Lord Prichwarrin knows about the letters. I know they come through Odrinian. Luriel is despondent. Hates her father. Misses the festivities. Has no hope. And so on.”
“She would not be—” Ninévrisë left a delicate silence, beneath the sparkling music.
“I do think she would plead it; or manage it, if she dared.
She wishes a recall to court, over her father’s wishes, declares she will drink poison else…”
“Good gods,”
“she will make someone as unfaithful wife. I have in mind Ursamin’s nephew.”
“He is notorious!”
“A matched set, I assured you.”
Ninévrisë looked at him. “And how many such? Orien Aswydd. Tarien, her sister…”
“Both safe in a Teranthine nunnery. And beyond that, women of ambitions more easily satisfied. I have confessed them all, already, every one.”
There was silence. A hand listless in his. His heart 172 / C. J. CHERRYH
told him a conversation had skewed wide of its target, broached matters indelicate to have brought to light in this hall, before witnesses.
“If you wish to fling something,” he said quietly, “pray wait.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Ninévrisë said, and fingers twitched to life and pressed his. “I only mark them down with the rest.”
Disturbing. “What ’rest’?”
“Oh, the rest.” Ninévrisës eyes sparkled, just a little.
“The rest of what, pray? I have no faults!”
“So far their names are Luriel, Orien, Tarien…”
“Fisylle, Cressen, Trallynde, and Alwy.”
“Fisylle, Cressen, Trallynde, and Alwy. —Alwy? My maid?”
“I said that there were minor indiscretions.”
“Good gods.”
“And you said you would forgive me.”
“I had no notion they outnumbered the royal Guard. Should we march them across the river? Or dare we give them arms?”
“Nevris, sweet love…”
“Dare I say I had suitors in Elwynor?”
Now his heart beat faster. “Less numerous than mine, I hope.”
“Oh…” The silence went on, beneath the music. Then cheerfully: “A list.”
“My lady Regent,…”
“No more ’sweet love’?”
They were in front of tenscore witnesses. He dared not leap up, stare at her from a slightly superior height, in his own hall.
There was only that damnable, undignified block of stone, and only her hand
within reach.
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“To the last breath,” he swore. “Dance with me. You have me bothered. You have done it, fair.”
“The lady may come to court,” she adjudged quietly, and pressed his hand as he rose and drew her to her feet, careful of the damned step. The music and the dancers drifted to a stop.
“A country round,” he said to the musicians.
There was a murmur in the hall.
“I trust Your Grace can follow me,” he said, as the musicians wandered erratically into the sort of jouncing tune they played in the square. The thunder rumbled above the roof, and the drum rattled out a rhythm to the pipes. The lutenist confessed a peasant knowledge of the tune, “The Merry Lass from Elder-may.”
No simple touching of hands, a linking of arms, a whirl, a sweep, a series of chaining steps, and he partnered a lightly moving wisp, a sprite, a whisper of satins and velvet, alone on the floor until Cevulirn partnered Cleisynde out. Then the young men persuaded young ladies, one after another, some quick to learn, some not, and some already knowing the measures. Old Lord Drusallyn brought his lady out, and then Mordam of Osenan and his portly wife dared the measure.
There were sour faces on some, laughter among the rest, most of whom watched in safety. “This is far more like Elwynor,” Ninévrisë said, on two breaths, back-to-back for a moment, then facing him, palms touching. Her eyes were gray, not violet: the miniature-painter of a year ago had tricked the eye with violets in her hair. They were gray as the rumored sea, gray as a cloudy day…
Gray as Tristen’s. Her dark hair and gray eyes were alike conspicuous in a land where the rule was fair hair and blue as his own. Her blue-and-white gown, the col 174 / C. J. CHERRYH
ors of Elwynor, swirled across the red and gold of his own kingdom, heraldry bright as battle flags. All eyes might watch as the old blood of Elwynor and the new of Ylesuin trod an autumn dance that might be old, itself. The Quinalt countenanced it, but deplored its license, slowed the music, discouraged the torch race around the bonfire and did not at all approve the offering of straw men; so the countryfolk threw in mere straw bundles, but it meant the same. Everyone knew.
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