Fortress of Ice

  “Like wards.”

  “Like that,” the old man agreed.

  “But she escaped, you said. She and Orien Aswydd. If she had a twin, why didn’t I know?”

  “Because that name doesn’t enter pleasant conversation in Amefel. I’m surprised your mother didn’t mention it. Though— we should have been surprised she did not. Now it seems indeed we should have taken note.”

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  “Riddles! It’s my life! It cost Gran’s! My mother killed her!”

  “Contain your anger. Anger will be your particular struggle.” He nodded to something behind him, toward, he saw with a glance, no more than Aewyn, sound asleep, deaf to all they said. “You love him. That was Tristen’s wish, and Ninévrisë’s, and your father’s. He is your chance for redemption and your inclination toward utter fall. Do you understand me?”

  “If I betray him,” Elfwyn said.

  “If you betray him,” the old man concluded, “or if you fail in the promises Ninévrisë laid upon you. If you betray him, it will be fatal to us all.”

  “I never would.”

  “You ought to know: Orien Aswydd wished you born. The only spark of motherhood in that house was in the woman that bore you. Tarien would do anything in those days to preserve your life, which she thought threatened.”

  “She never loved me!”

  “As near as she can come to love, she loves you— loves you as her possession, as much as she hates your father for casting her aside. She wanted you. We took you from her, Tristen, I, the queen, and your father: we took you from her, and promised her she might see you once a year, or when you wished. I’ll warrant you generally saw her better side.”

  He didn’t want to hear any good about his mother. He shook his head.

  “She gave me sweets. She gave me things she’d made. Gran said they were charms, and wouldn’t let them in the house.”

  “I’ve no doubt,” the old man said. “But she tried, poor creature. You’re certainly the best thing she ever created. And there is her other side. She and Orien both slept with your father. Orien saw to it that Tarien was the one who got with child, I strongly suspect. There was a woman ill suited to motherhood.”

  He blushed at hearing such details about his begetting. He couldn’t look the old man in the eyes. But the old man reached out, startling him, and lifted his face with a hand beneath his chin.

  “Orien wanted you born, I say. She was Tristen’s enemy. And she’s loose.”

  He drew back and still stared at the old man. “I never met her.”

  “No. But I have a notion just how she left her prison, and where she resides tonight. What was sundered is rejoined. They were always half of one.

  Now, I fear, they are one.”

  “Orien’s haunting my mother?”

  “Possession,” the old man said. “Possessing is much different, and much more serious. I doubt your mother has much to say about it. Your mother 3 5 6

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  is a skilled sorceress. Orien, now, Orien is something else. And Orien has, in the past, had an ally. He’s the one to fear. He is very much to fear. He wants that book. He failed, in the past, to get it. But try as I might and try as Tristen might, neither of us could find it. I know where it is now: I have no trouble knowing, which argues that someone warded it into that place for the long years we failed to find it, and we assumed it burned along with other manuscripts, since we didn’t recover it with the others. So it never left the library at all. Where did you find it? Which wall of the library?”

  His mind rebounded from one mad proposal to the other, from a horrid fate for his mother, which he never would wish on her— to some third person he didn’t understand, and back to his own theft.

  “The south wall,” he admitted.

  “We searched there,” Emuin said. “We should have taken the whole damned wall down. But again— the one who warded it didn’t want Tristen’s hands on it. That could be two wizards: one would be Mauryl himself. The other would be Hasufi n Heltain.”

  “Is he that other person?”

  “Orien’s ally? Yes. He’s Tristen’s enemy. And Mauryl’s.”

  “And mine?”

  Emuin turned his face away and poked into the fire with another stick.

  “That is a question, isn’t it?”

  “Well, I don’t forgive my mother. I’m sure I don’t love her sister, and I never heard of Hasufin Heltain. I don’t intend any of them should have the book. I want to go and live at Ynefel, and study there.”

  “So did he.”

  “Who? This Hasufi n Heltain?”

  “He lived there. He studied there. He ripped the place apart and killed his teacher, ultimately.”

  “I’m not him!” Elfwyn said. “I’m King Cefwyn’s son, I’m Gran’s, I’m Paisi’s, and I’m Aewyn’s brother, all these things! And I don’t want to be my mother’s! Help us get to Ynefel!”

  “And would that lead, I wonder, in the direction you truly want? You have an enemy. You have more than one, I suspect. He will come at you when you are most desperate, and his ways may look like escape.”

  “Or like friendly old men who come offering help in the middle of the night?”

  That rash outburst won a sidelong look, a terrible look. The old man dropped the stick he was using, lifting his hand, and that hand glowed with blue fire. Elfwyn scrambled backward, came up against his sleeping brother, 3 5 7

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  and shook at him, holding him in his arms; but Aewyn hung entirely limp in his embrace, like the dead.

  “You might be in a predicament,” the old man said, “if I weren’t who I say I am. But I am. And you and your brother are as safe as I can make you.”

  The blue fire died. “He oughtn’t to hear certain things. He’ll sleep. He’s quite safe. Let him lie.”

  “Emuin.” He had to try to believe it. They both might have been dead, and the book taken, if he were not who he claimed. “Master Emuin, then.”

  “Good.” The old man nodded, placid again.

  He still trembled. “You taught my father.”

  “Indeed I did.”

  “You might—” He knew he had just been reprimanded, might be tested again, and that the circumstance was dire. He hardly dared voice his ambition again: ambition did not become him, in his circumstances, but his father had encouraged him. “You might teach me. If all the things you say could happen could come to be, you could show me how to avoid them. If I’ve made mistakes, then you could teach me how to protect myself, and my brother, and the little princess.”

  “Teach you wizardry? Useless. Teach you magic? I cannot. No more can I teach any Sihhë what resides in his blood and bone.”

  “Sihhë!” He laughed bitterly, refused this time with nonsense.

  “Sihhë, I say. A spirit the like of which I could never conjure, nor could Tarien. Such a conjuring weakened Mauryl Gestaurien to his death, and he was ten times the wizard I am, not to mention a hundredweight the worth of Tarien Aswydd. Born or called— you are half his brother, at least have trust that that side of the blanket is not in doubt. Doubt your mother’s half of the proposition instead. Neither she nor your aunt could have done this unaided.”

  “Riddles, again! Don’t trust her, you mean? I never trusted her, and I never knew I had an aunt.”

  “Riddles I hardly know how to say— except you are the living Gift. Otter.

  Elfwyn. Elfwyn. Elfwyn. Say a thing three times and it binds. I suspect you were bound to that name long, long ago, and your mother had no choice in naming you.”

  “Tell me what you mean!”

  “I mean,” Emuin said, “that you have already gone to the proper source to learn certain things, and left it, one supposes, uninformed. Perhaps even he failed to know you.”

  “Lord Tristen? I asked him to teach me, and he wouldn’t. He told me I was Elfwyn, not Otter.”

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&
nbsp; “He wouldn’t teach you, or he couldn’t,” Emuin said, and frowned darkly.

  “And he named you. Then I suspect he did see what I see.”

  “What? Give me the truth, Master Emuin! What did he see? What do you?”

  “A conjuring,” Emuin said. “A Summoning that opens a door.”

  “What door? Make sense, please, sir!”

  “You govern what door, if you have the will. Do you have the will, Spider Prince?”

  He drew a deep breath and balked, growing angry, angrier than he had been since the day Gran died. “I have the will for anything, sir, if I’m informed. I’m Otter, if you like. Lord Tristen said I should be Mouse, not Owl.

  And he said nothing at all about spiders.”

  “Good,” Emuin said, looking squarely into his eyes. “Very good, Spider Prince. Otter. Mouse. And Elfwyn. But never Owl? Probably a good idea.”

  “Damn you!”

  “Oh, that would not be easy,” Emuin said, laying a hand on the emblem at his breast. “And many have tried. But gratitude . . . that, I would think, I am due, at least a little, for coming out here in the cold.”

  The anger fell away from him. Embarrassment took its place, for ever asking what was beyond his station in life and for ever cursing this man, no matter how desperate. “A great deal, Master Emuin, a very great deal, only—”

  “Guard yourself from such words and such thoughts as damning folk.

  When you were a child you could let words fly. Now, when a man’s mind stirs in you, such things become dangerous. As for the Gift, you could easily make that recalcitrant candle burst in fl ame.”

  “If I could have done it, sir, I certainly would have. I tried. I did try.”

  “While you believe you cannot, you will not. Will is all of it. You have decided to be King Cefwyn’s son. You wish to become his acknowledged son, with all the people changing their minds about you. While that wish governs you, so you will become— with all the good or ill for your father or brother that that one choice may bring. But to become the other thing that you are, you must stop wishing to be Cefwyn’s son or Aewyn’s brother.”

  “I never can!”

  “So you say now,” Emuin said gently. “But the years roll on, and time changes us. You may need to renounce Aewyn to protect him from your enemies. Think of that, Elfwyn Prince.”

  A bitter laugh rose up in him. “I’m no prince. And I’ll never renounce my brother or my father.”

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  “Every person has will, and while wizards have more force than most, the collective populace can be gathered, and swayed, without magic— indeed they, being blind to it, can be swayed that much more easily. They are deaf to magic, but their will, my boy, can be as potent as a wizard’s conjuring— more so than some. So know what you defy, when you send your wishes toward the people. Passion can do a great deal to awaken that giant. Beware of stirring it. And beware, too, of ordinary men: thwart our wishes, that they can, and open doors, or simply leave them unlatched— that they will do with amazing fecklessness, or spite. They can be the hands and feet of a wizard’s wish, individually. They can open any door at all. Never, never discount them. Never trifle with them. And beware of using them. They have their own interests.

  They fear magic greatly, and will hate you for it if they detect it. They will often turn contrary, when they know they’re meddled with.”

  “They already hate me.”

  “They scarcely know you exist,” Emuin said. “And they have not decided what you are. That is why I counsel you, beware of waking that giant. Be the spider. Or be Mouse. Use the edges of the walls. Find crevices from which to watch and live quietly, if you can manage it, while you learn.”

  “If anyone harms Aewyn,” he began.

  “Let no enemy find out how much that would move you, or I assure you that will be their first recourse. Let no enemy know your weaknesses. Strive to be your own master. That is my advice. Know whence come the motions of your heart, Spider Prince, whether they are light or dark, fair or foul, whether they be what you will or what you would not: know them for what they are, and shape yourself as you would wish to become. That will be magic enough, for a start at it. Go to sleep. I shall watch.”

  He didn’t want to. But his eyes grew heavy on the instant. He snapped them right open.

  “Strong - willed,” Emuin said. “But if you can’t trust me in this, you can trust me in nothing. Trust me, I say!”

  Something thumped, outside, in the wind. A good many things had flapped and bumped in the wind, but this came at the door. And Emuin looked that way, sharply, and set his staff against the fl oor to rise, not with the alacrity of a young man.

  “Master Emuin?” Elfwyn asked, and leapt up and took his arm.

  “Hold your brother,” Emuin snapped. “Hold on to him!”

  The door burst open. Bitter wind rushed inside, scattering coals, bringing dark as the fire blew up the chimney. Elfwyn flung himself to Aewyn’s side, seized up his brother in his arms as Emuin reached them.

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  “Hold on!” Emuin shouted at them. “Hold my hand! We are going to your father!”

  He reached. He grasped Emuin’s fingers, and the wind caught them, whirled them away through gray mist, a spinning confusion of themselves, and the horses, and their gear, and all the straps loose and confused.

  “Otter!” Aewyn cried, and began to slip out of his encircling arm, and to slide away from him, as if they were sliding on ice. He held tight to Aewyn’s coat, and that grip began to fail, as if the wind that moved them excluded Aewyn. He had his choice, hold Emuin, or hold his brother, and he wrapped both arms about Aewyn and held on.

  They plummeted, he had no idea how far, or how long a fall. He only held on, eyes tight shut.

  “Otter,” Aewyn said against his ear. “Otter, what’s happening?”

  But he had no answer.

  In the next moment they landed, hard, side by side, in thick snow.

  iv

  it was a bittersweet gathering of old friends in calamity, in the little hall. Past the worry and the fear that gnawed at him, Cefwyn saw the weariness that marked Tristen and Uwen, both, and Crissand ordered mulled wine and a platter of food— food Tristen neglected, though he had two sips of the wine.

  What can you see? Cefwyn longed to ask, seeing Tristen’s head bowed and his hands clasped before his lips, his elbows braced on the arms of the massive chair. Tristen had not divested himself of his armor, nor had Uwen, though that was the first thing a man just off a long, cold road would long to do. He simply sat, and stared into nothing, but not in futility, Cefwyn was sure. He was earnestly trying to find pieces— scattered pieces. Emuin. Orien.

  Tarien. And two lost boys.

  And he had said nothing for the last candle measure, nor stirred, nothing more than a wisp of his dark hair blowing a bit in the draft from an opened door.

  They had been up to the tower room, wherein a whirlwind had wrought utmost havoc, and left the shutters hanging askew. They had been into the cell below, and in front of the blank wall into which Master Emuin had vanished.

  They waited in this small room, and the candles in the sconces dripped 3 6 1

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  drop by drop into their pans. Outside, servants removed bits of stone that littered the hall, where the force of the stones blowing out had shredded the tapestry and landed clear against the opposing wall, scarring the stone there.

  Others, surely with trepidation, had climbed up those stairs into the tower, to clear away the debris of Tarien’s life there. Comrades had taken the bodies of the guards for burial, two decent men with widows and children: Crissand had passed word he would talk with the women as soon as he could.

  The deaths sat on the king’s conscience: it was the king’s prisoner they had guarded, two brave men, completely defenseless against sorcery, all amulets and protections inadequate to save their lives.

/>   Hate had killed them, spite directed against him. He determined, sitting there, waiting for some breath of an answer, that he would take the women and children under his own protection, the men having died in defense of him and his.

  But justice for it— justice was very much in doubt.

  Tristen drew a visible breath. The hands didn’t move. The eyes didn’t blink. Everyone hung on that slight motion.

  Then Tristen lowered his hands down onto the arm of the chair and leapt up, turning for the door. Uwen jumped to his feet, and Cefwyn, hardly slower, followed, with Crissand right at his heels, and all the bodyguards caught completely off their guard, broke aside from the door, getting out of their path.

  The haunt came alive down the hall, beyond the stairs. Servants ran in terror, and the thunder of wings raised a wind that blew down from the tower’s ruined windows and up from the depths of the cell. Tristen reached the midst of it, the rest of them right with him, and the wind blasted them with cold and a spate of snow. Uwen drew his sword, and Cefwyn reached for the dagger he wore, as the sound of swords drawn echoed behind them all.

  It was a disheveled figure that came out, a figure all swirling white hair and gray robes, turning back, his hand held out to someone invisible still within, and the winds screaming about them all.

  The haunt stopped, stopped cold, leaving the area dark, and snow melting on the floor, and Master Emuin standing baffled and distraught in the middle of it.

  “I couldn’t hold them!” Emuin cried in dismay, and Cefwyn’s heart sank.

  Tristen was there with him, and if anything magical was going on between the two of them, if they had said anything to each other down those corridors wizards used, Cefwyn was deaf to it, and cursed his deafness. It was Crissand to whom Tristen turned next, and said, “A cloak. He is chilled to 3 6 2

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  the bone. A cloak, and the warm wine— Master Emuin.” Tristen seized the old man by the arms and held him upright, the staff trailing from Emuin’s hand and his eyes all but shut. “Stand. Stand fast, Master Emuin. Help is here.”