Fortress of Dragons

  He was determined it would not.

  They sat with Drusenan’s lady, for a moment paused in her work, and heard a brisk, fair account of every company that had passed, its numbers, its condition, and the time the women had wished them on their way.

  “A tall, dark man, among the rest,” Tristen said, for that aspect of the Lord Commander there was no hiding.

  “That one, yes,” the lady said, “and no lingering. Took a pack of bread and cheese and filled their water flasks, and on they went, being in some great hurry…we didn’t mistake ’em, did we? Your Grace isn’t after ’em.”

  “Honest men,” Tristen said, “without any question, on honest business.”

  “It’s comin’, is it?”

  “It won’t come here,” Tristen said. “Not if we can prevent it, and if the wall can.”

  “Gods save us,” the good woman said, and was afraid, it was no difficulty to know it…afraid not so much for this place, but for Drusenan and the rest. “Gods save Amefel.”

  “Gods save us all,” Uwen echoed her.

  “And you and yours,” Crissand said quietly.

  “We should move,” Tristen said, for by her account Idrys’ band was early on its way and Cevulirn would have his request to cross and camp. “They won’t linger and we shouldn’t.”

  There was not a man of them but would have wished to linger the rest of the hour, but it was down with the remnant left in bowls, and here and there a piece of bread tucked into a jacket, a half cup of ale downed in a gulp, against a hard ride to come, and no sleep but a nap along the way.

  Drusenan’s lady brought them outside into the dark, she and all the women and the girls, some of them down from the guard post, with their bows. The women saw them onto their horses, with only the light from the open door.

  It was muddy going, for the dark and all, and now they had the banners put away and their cloaks close about them. The horses were reluctant, having been given the prospect of a warm stable and that now taken from them: Dys was surly for half an hour, and Cass farther than that, while Crissand’s horse and the guards’ were entirely out of their high spirits and the horses at lead, those who had carried them all day, plodded.

  “Now’s the time we look sharp around us,” Uwen said to the guards, “on account of if any man’s movin’ we’re the noisiest.”

  “The Lord Commander will have told them we’re coming,” Crissand said, meaning the guard at the wall.

  “Beyond any doubt,” Tristen said, and now in the dark he did resort ever so gingerly to the gray space, listening to the land around them. He heard a hare in a thicket, a fox on its nightbound hunt, both aware of the passage of horses on the road.

  And Owl was back, with a sudden swoop out of the dark that startled the foremost horses out of their sulking.

  “Damn,” said Crissand’s captain.

  “Men are ahead of us,” Tristen said, for he gathered that out of the insubstantial wind: indeed men were moving in the same direction, toward the wall. “Don’t venture,” he said quietly to Crissand, for Crissand had wondered, and fallen right into the wizard-sight, easy as his next breath. “Someone might hear.”

  “My lord,” Crissand said, and ceased.

  It was a fair ride farther to the old wall, where Aeself’s archers might be, and a dangerous prospect, to come up on archers at night, and with their badges invisible.

  Idrys would have come there ahead of them, at least while the light lasted, and indeed forewarned them. But now there were two groups on the road, and Tristen set a moderately quicker pace, chasing that presence of many men in the dark, one a presence he knew.

  It was right near the wall he knew that the other presence in the dark was indeed Drumman; and in that sure knowledge he let the gap close. The men ahead had heard them, and slowed, and stopped; and waited warily.

  “Owl,” Tristen said, and, rarely obedient, Owl obliged him by a close pass, and by flapping heavily about his shoulder. He lifted a hand to brush Owl’s talons off his cloak, and drew a little of the light of the gray space to his hand, and to Owl, who flew off, faintly shining, here and there at once.

  A murmur arose in the ranks behind, and even the Amefin blessed themselves; but Owl vanished among the trees and came back again, and all the while Tristen had never ceased to ride at the same steady pace.

  Drumman knew, now, who commanded Owl, and waited, a line of riders in the dark beyond a small woods, as Owl came back to him, and then found a perch above.

  “Lord Drumman,” Tristen said.

  “My lord duke!” Drumman said. “Well met. I’d feared you were intruders.”

  “None have crossed that I know,” Tristen said, and took Drumman’s offered hand. “But Aeself and his men are along the river, and Cevulirn should have crossed to the Elwynim side. I need you and your men to hold the camp on this side.”

  “And not cross!” Drumman protested. “We’re light horse, well drilled, and well set.”

  “Then come with us,” Tristen said. He had withheld from the lady of Modeyneth their greatest concerns, but to Drumman he told all the truth of Ryssand’s action and Idrys’ fears as they rode, and by the time the wall darkened the night sky, Drumman understood the worst.

  “Beset by his own,” Drumman said, as harshly as if he and Crissand’s house had never courted rebels or conspired against Cefwyn at all. It was honest indignation…so thoroughly the sentiments of the Amefin had shifted toward the Marhanen and the Lady of Elwynor.

  “By his own, and planning to divide Elwynor between Tasmôrden and themselves,” Crissand said. “Which is no good for Amefel. We know where Tasmôrden’s ambitions would turn next.”

  “Fine neighbors,” Drumman said, above the moving of the horses. “Fine neighbors they’d be, Ryssand or Tasmôrden. What are we to do?”

  “Come at the enemy in Ilefínian and reach them before Cefwyn does,” Tristen said, but in his heart was Idrys’ fear, a traitor nearer Cefwyn than the ones they and Cefwyn already knew. Distance mattered in wizardry and Cefwyn being the point on which the whole eastern assault turned, he had no doubt all the wizardry of their enemy was bent on his overthrow.

  They reached the wall, that reared dark and absolute across the road, with gates shut and the will of Lord Drusenan to defend it. It made him think of the maps, and how there was, along the riverside, the village of Anas Mallorn, and other small holdings scattered along the wedge of land before the rock, and all that way Idrys had to go, if he had not found a boat ready and able to take him on the water.

  Yet Drusenan’s men had long carried on a secret commerce with Elwynor.

  A challenge came down to them as they reached the gates, a sharp, “Who goes there?”

  “His Grace of Amefel!” Crissand shouted up. “Meiden and Lord Drumman! Open up!”

  “Open the gates!” came down from above them.

  Then a second voice, Drusenan’s: “Welcome, my lord, to our wall! Welcome to the defense of Amefel!”

  There was a brisk rub for the horses, and a welcome cup and pallets for a nap for the men, but for the lords, no rest—it was straight to a close council in the restored gatehouse of the wall, warm and lit with a small, double-wicked oil lamp.

  In that place they took their cups of ale, declined food, for that they had already had, and spread out the map they brought from Henas’amef.

  “The men you sent went through, never stopping but to say you were coming,” Drusenan said, “which is as much as we know, my lord.”

  “Was a tall man with them?”

  “A grim fellow, yes, my lord.”

  “And left with them.”

  “Went with them, my lord, and all of them pressing hard. And they had the bands, every man of them.”

  There was no more, then, that he could do, and they nursed their cups of ale over small matters of supply and intent until the bottom of the cup, and then a brief, a desperate attempt at sleep and rest.

  But Owl was abroad, still, and when Tristen s
hut his eyes he found himself in dizzying flight, wheeling above the darkened river, where a bridge stood completed, and men crossed by night.

  Owl flew farther, and skimmed almost to the water, and up again, where the rocks rose sheer above the river.

  Then back again, where a boat traveled under sail, and a dark man looked out from the prow, restless and worried. He traveled alone, that man, having left the guard behind. He was bidden rest on deck,but he could not sleep, and scanned the dark and rugged shore as the face of an enemy.

  It was very far for Idrys to travel, even yet.

  Owl flew on, and on, and swept his vision past hills to east and north, and Cefwyn’s camp was there, hundreds of tents, all set in orderly rows. He wished Owl to turn and show him Cefwyn, Owl veered off across the land, far, far, far, toward the east, Tristen thought, where the Quinaltine stood, where Efanor kept watch.

  Of a sudden Owl turned, veered back again in a course so rapid the stars blurred and the world became dark, became the river, dark water, and cold.

  Something was abroad in the night. Owl fled it, and that was never Owl’s inclination. For a long time Tristen had nothing in his sight but the ragged, raw cliffs and stony upthrusts of the hills, and then the gentler land of shepherds and orchards, laid bare of snow. The enemy hunted, hunted, pursued.

  Fly, he wished Owl, for whart stirred northward was aware of him, now, and turned attention toward him.

  Well and good. Best it come to him. He wished it to turn to him, see him, assess what he was, with all the dangers inherent in the encounter. He abandoned stealth. He challenged the Shadow to the north, taunted it, all the while with fear in his heart…for in that way he had learned there were things older than himself, this was, indeed, older.

  This was Hasufin, but it was more.

  It was the Wind, and a dark Wind, and it had carried Hasufin and carried his soul still, but it was more than that: it had always lurked behind the veil, and now stood naked to the dark, the very heart of menace.

  For a long, long while, his heart beating hard, he stared into that dark, having lost all reckoning of Owl.

  But then something flew very near, and Owl called him urgently, reft him away as the thin sound broke the threads of the dream.

  He plummeted to earth, aware of his own body again, and Drumman and Uwen sleeping beside him.

  But on his other side Crissand was awake, at the very threshold of the gray space. Crissand had felt the danger, and tried to oppose it.

  —My lord? Crissand whispered.

  —Be still, he said. Be very quiet. Something’s looking this way.

  —What? Crissand wanted to know, and then turned his face toward the danger.

  —Back! Tristen ordered him, and snatched them both from the gray winds before it could come near.

  “A wizard,” Crissand said in a low and tremulous voice.

  “I’m not sure,” Tristen said, knowing in his heart it was nothing so ordinary, that long ago something had entangled itself with Hasufin Heltain, as Hasufin had attempted to ensnare Orien Aswydd, and Aséyneddin in Elwynor.

  Then it Unfolded to him with shattering force that this was indeed so, and that Mauryl himself had feared it.

  This…this was in Hasufin’s heart.

  It was not dispelled at Lewenbrook. It had not been dispelled in hundreds of years. It had only retreated. It was in the depths of the Quinaltine. It was in every deep, dark place the Galasieni themselves had warded, and Hasufin had bargained with it, listened to it, welcomed it in his folly.

  He had no choice but draw its attention to himself, now, for Cefwyn’s only defense was his blindness to magic and wizardry alike…and blindness was not enough, not against something with such ready purchase in Ryssand’s heart.

  “I wish Idrys may hurry,” Tristen whispered into the dark, hearing Owl call again, and a third time, magical three. “I wish the winds behind him, and I wish he may come in time.”

  “So all of us wish,” Crissand said, and fear touched his voice. “I saw a Shadow. Does it threaten the king?”

  “It threatens everything,” Tristen said, and could not bid Crissand avoid it: could not bid any one of his friends avoid it. It was why they had come, why they pressed forward, why they had gone to war at all, and everything was at risk. “But sleep. Sleep now, while we dare sleep at all.”

  BOOK THREE

  INTERLUDE

  Morning came gray and pale across hills not so different than Elwynor. Maids stirred about the fireplace, made tea, presented a breakfast of which Ninévrisë only wished a little bread, no honey in the tea. Afterward she sat in the warm middle of the room gazing at the pale light of the window, asking herself whether the bread had been wise at all.

  Perhaps, instead, it was fear that churned inside her—fear and the wish never to have left her husband…not a wise wish, to be back with him, but the wish of her heart, all the same.

  She was aware, on that level far beyond awareness of the hills and the tea and unwanted breakfast, of Emuin, half-asleep in his tower bed, an old man and increasingly frail; and of the boy Paisi, who made Emuin’s breakfast.

  Paisi was worried, too, worried for the old man: loved him, an unaccustomed thing for Paisi, and more than a little surprising to the boy, who had loved few things and fewer people. He was not sure what to call those feelings, but Paisi was a fiercely protective soul, and set all his gifts to caring for the old man who had roused them in him.

  He was suddenly aware of her eavesdropping on him—gifted in that way to an amazing extent, and not knowing anything he could properly do with that ability, either—and stopped and looked her direction in the gray space like any boy caught at anything. He truly disliked to be stared at or made conspicuous in any way, met such stares with hostility—but he regarded her differently, not with the unthought respect of a commoner for a lady, but a far more personal sense of connection.

  He hurried about his last morning duties for Emuin, waked the old man, saw him safely seated at his breakfast, and then slipped out of the tower room and down the stairs from the tower to the lower hall.

  Up, then, the central stairs.

  She knew when he would arrive, knew that he suffered a sudden blush of awkwardness just outside her doors, his brash, common effrontery brought to an adamant halt by her guards.

  Why had he come? He pursued his own curiosity, his own sense of duty. He had come to find her and to learn what she meant to that other concern of his, who slept with his mother in yet another room, with a baby’s untaught awareness.

  She rose, went to her door, and opened it to find a gangling boy with wide dark eyes, face flushed with the vehemence of his argument with her guards.

  “Lady,” he said, never once abashed, but with a quick bow.

  “This is my ally,” she said to the guards. “He doesn’t know it yet, but he is.” She swept the boy inside, and the guards shut the door. All her attention was for a boy her heart told her defended a sleeping baby, for reasons unclear to the boy himself, and defended him even against the babe’s own Aswydd mother. It seemed to his loyal heart that the baby had had no defenders; and he had grown up with none but an old woman, and so he took it as his duty, himself, when no one else cared, to care for Tarien’s baby. All of that passion was in him, all at once, and for the babe’s sake.

  In Tristen’s absence, he was here at her door—no accident.

  And no boyish curiosity had brought him to her, but a wizard’s lively attachment to all the world around him: she felt it as she had felt her father’s curiosity about the world and never known it was uncommon: Paisi had the same tone of mind and heart, as if she were in the heart of her family again. They faced one another, and at the far remove of his tower, Emuin had stopped his breakfast, and had stopped it for a full several breaths, now, slowly grown present enough that they both knew.

  “’E ain’t sayin’ anything,” Paisi said faintly. “’E ain’t upset wi’ me, but’e knows. The old man knows ever’thin’ ’at
goes on.”

  “A very great wizard,” Ninévrisë said, “as I never shall be.” All her little wizardry had been bent to the north, in earnest hope of a whisper in the gray space, and now this boy distracted her from her watch and made her aware how constant it had been. It both gave her second thoughts, this potent distraction the boy posed, and made her question her own wisdom and her own fate in this war of powers.

  It was a small fate, it might be; or a greater one. She had always thought of it as her fate—but seemingly now her fate had become wrapped about the child, her child, Cefwyn’s child. She had been proud, had commanded in the field, come close to power, and seen all her power over her fate unexpectedly involved in this union with Cefwyn. Now she saw it devolving upon their child, changed in direction and inevitable as the stoop of a hawk—to that extent she knew she had failed of all she purposed, and had failed in it even if she should rule in Elwynor. Neither Cefwyn’s rule nor hers, she foresaw, would suffice to settle the border or make a lasting peace. They became forerunners of one who might.

  And this boy…this all-elbows, tousle-haired boy…this self-appointed warden of Cefwyn’s other son…he came to her to know what she was, and found himself too abashed to look her in the eye.

  “Were you always with Emuin?” she asked, a more answerable question.

  “No,” Paisi said. “’Is Grace sent me to ’im.”

  “And do you like Emuin?”

  Paisi blushed and looked abashed. “May be.”

  “And how do you regard Tristen?”

  “It ain’t for me to say about ’Is Grace,” Paisi said in a breath. “’E just is, is all.”

  “Yet you do like him.”

  “Aye,” Paisi admitted, with all his soul in that answer.

  “And Lady Tarien?”

  Silence was that answer.

  “Do you love the Aswydds?” Ninévrisë asked. “Or not?”

  A shake of Paisi’s head, a downward look, and a half glance. “Lady Tarien ain’t as bad.”