Fortress of Dragons
“And her son?”
That drew a look up, so direct and so open it held nothing back.
“’E’s a babby, is all.”
“No,” she said, “not all. Never all.”
“Then what’e is…’e ain’t, yet.”
“All the same, he has a friend,” she said in the deep silence, for that was how she judged Paisi. “He has one friend; and that friend is a wizard, or will be. And when my son sees the light…will you love him, too?”
Paisi’s eyes darted hither and thither, as if he sought to see some answer just past her; but then he looked at her, and again she could see all the way to the depth of him. “I ain’t sighted,” Paisi said. “I don’t know, lady.”
“Yet will you wish him harm?” She asked for half, since she could not immediately have the whole. And seeing every certainty of her own life overturned and changed, she fought for her son’s certainties. “Or do you wish him well?”
“I ain’t ever wishin’ anybody harm,” Paisi said with a fierce shake of his head. “Master Emuin says a fool’d wish harm to anybody, on account of it’s apt to fly back in a body’s face an’ do gods know what, so, far as I can wish, I wish your babby’s happy.”
“So do I,” Ninévrisë said, and the bands about her heart seemed to loose. This boy, something said to her, this boy is worth winning. “I wish peace, and good, and all such things.”
Most of all she wished Cefwyn might see both his sons, and might come alive out of the war. She wished that more than she wished herself to rule; but for Elwynor itself she never gave up her wishes to see it become again what it had been.
She had lost confidence herself…had lost it the morning Tristen left, and did not know where to find it again in Henas’amef. She was out of place here, and regretted with all her heart that she had not ridden with Tristen, but she felt the presence of life within her and knew what dire thing their enemy had tried to do with Tarien’s babe. She would not chance that for her own son, Cefwyn’s son, the heir of two kingdoms.
“Do you think Lady Tarien will see me?” she asked.
“I don’t know she won’t,” Paisi said.
What Emuin thought of it was another matter: caution flowed from that quarter, for down in the depths, not so far away, was a tightly warded fear, one so closely bound to Tarien it gave Emuin constant worry.
But all the same she gathered the boy by the arm and went to the door and out, where she swept up half her Amefin bodyguard and walked up the stairs to the hall above.
There was a guard of state at Tarien’s door, too, and now Tarien Aswydd knew she had a visitor, and met that notion warily. They were not friends. They had never been. But she came with Paisi, and Paisi knew the old woman who stayed with Tarien, knew her as if she were kin of his, as for all Ninévrisë knew the old woman might be.
Only now she and Emuin and the elderly earl whom Tristen had left in charge of the town were the only authority; and she used hers to pass the doors of that apartment.
The place smelled of baby, and the gray space there was close with protections and wards that tingled along her skin and over Paisi’s. She could see them for a moment, a flare of blue in the foyer, and at the sunlit window beyond, and about the door that let them in.
They were not against her, but against any wizard who came here; against anyone who might wish to invade this small fortified and enchanted space. And at the very heart of it sat Tarien, tucked up with quilts in a chair by the fire, and in her arms her baby, and her attention was all for the child, nothing for her visitor.
So Tarien defended herself, and wove her little spells around and around her, like a lady spider in her den.
Ninévrisë found herself not even angry, the spells were so small and so many and so desperate…made of fear, every one.
“Good day,” she said, “Lady Tarien.”
Tarien did not look up, only hugged her child against her, her prize out of all that had happened. Tarien knew who visited her, and inasmuch as Tarien was aware of anything but her own child, knew there was another son, the son of two birthrights, when her son had no claim or right of even one.
They had no need to speak. She had no need to have come here, except to enter the center of Tarien’s attention instead of wandering its peripheries. She had nothing to gain: it was Tarien’s child who entered the world a beggar and hers who owned it all.
She felt an unexpected compassion for the two of them. And perhaps Tarien knew it, for she did look up, on the sudden and with an angry countenance.
“I offer you no spite,” Ninévrisë said. “No threat to your son. May I stay?”
Tarien turned her face away, but without the anger, only seeking escape.
“Then I shan’t,” Ninévrisë said. “But may I see him?”
Tarien unfolded the cloth about the baby’s face and shoulders; and it was a tiny, wizened face like any newborn, harmless to see him, but oh, such possibility of calamity, or of fellowship for her son.
She let go a sigh, and would have offered her finger to the baby’s tiny fist, but Tarien turned him away and hugged him close.
Cefwyn’s son. Elfwyn, he was named, like the last High King, and half brother to her own babe, when he was born.
She might summon her guards, exert her power, seize the baby, bring him into her own care, for good or for ill, and Tarien’s history made her think that might be a wiser course…wiser for them all, Tarien’s welfare discounted.
But her father had dinned into her the principles of wizardry, if not the practice of it, that action brought action, that an element out of Place strove until it found that Place. Striving was not what she wished from this child, only peace, and in peace she was willing to leave him, with only a parting word to his mother.
“He has one hope besides his mother’s love,” Ninévrisë said with all deliberation, “and that will be his father’s grace.”
“Cefwyn will die in Elwynor,” Tarien said fiercely. “Lord Tristen will be my son’s protector. They hail Tristen High King. High King! And he favors my son.”
She had not intended to be nettled by the lady, or to take omens from anything the lady said or threatened; but that claim struck too near the mark, far too near.
Paisi quietly tugged at her sleeve. “Master Emuin’ll have me hide for bringin’ ye here. Come, lady. Come away.”
“The lady deceives herself,” Ninévrisë said, both in anger and in utter, steadfast conviction, and it occurred to her to say more than that, that Cefwyn would come alive out of the war, and that Tristen would keep his word, and that nothing the Aswydds had ever done had helped them: all this generation of Aswydds had done brought one long tumble of fortunes toward Tarien’s solitude and imprisonment.
But her father had taught her to say less than she knew, so she gathered up her dignity and her freedom and left with them.
It was not a movement of her own child she felt in the doorway of that place, but his presence at least, an awareness of a life within her, and a life bound to all the events on the river and northward.
“Lady!” Paisi cried. Emuin himself had roused at the malice Tarien flung, wizardous malice, and he struck it down, with the firm intent to take Tarien’s babe from her care.
—No, Ninévrisë said, steady in her place.
But guards clearly had their orders. At that outcry they had moved. Ninévrisë pressed herself against the wall as armed men rushed the room and from then matters went from bad to worse, wards flaring, wizardry striking, wizardry countering wizardry, Emuin’s, hers, Tarien’s, even Paisi’s, and the guards oblivious to all. Tarien’s shrieks pierced the very walls, stirred the shadows in the depths, rang through the very stones—a mother’s cries, a mother’s curses, that lanced through to the bones of another woman with child.
“Have a care!” Ninévrisë cried, as in her witness a guard wrested the child from Tarien’s hands, and another pulled Tarien away toward the window. Ninévrisë reached for the child herself, as Paisi did,
and to her arms the guard yielded the infant.
The baby moved and cried, upset amid all the anger. She held the small bundle, and looked at Tarien’s white face, pitying, finally, after her fright and her anger: pity, against Tarien’s grieving rage.
“No one will harm him,” Ninévrisë assured her. “Be still. Be still! You may yet have him back. Only wish no harm, yourself. Hush.”
With great breaths Tarien grew calmer, and reached for the child, which she would have given, but Emuin would not, and the guards would not, and Tarien struck at them with curses Emuin turned.
“I’ll call Gran,” Paisi said. “She ain’t far.”
Indeed there was an old woman aware of the child, and already on her way, out of breath and distressed. Ninévrisë turned away, hugged the unwanted and crying child close against her, trying to stop the strife within the room and within the gray space, with Tarien’s cries still in her ears.
An old woman arrived, the nurse, to whom Ninévrisë willingly ceded the child, and that alone seemed to quiet Tarien.
But the gray space quivered with wrong and with grief, and if a mother’s just grief alone could rend the wards of the fortress apart, Tarien attempted it.
“The nurse may have him here to be fed, while the guards wait in the foyer,” Ninévrisë said; it was the only mending of the situation she could think of. “And the nurse may care for him next door. If you mend your wishes, Lady Tarien, perhaps you can win more. But make your peace with Emuin, not with me. Ask Tristen when he comes. Don’t cast away all your chances, only to spite me and Cefwyn.”
“He will die,” Tarien said.
“No,” she said, more than determined, “he will not.”
They both wished, each roused the winds in the gray space and, parting company, did not part. There was battle joined, harm with help, and Ninévrisë walked away with her child still her own.
Tarien, however, could not say so…and warred against them now. The wizard-threat from the north had turned away from her, and she might have won compassion. But jealousy would not let her accept charity from a rival: nothing had ever prepared Tarien Aswydd for kindness, and she resented it as she resented all things exterior to her own will.
By that she set a course and nothing would divert her.
CHAPTER 1
From the height of Danvy’s back Cefwyn cast a long look on the Lenúalim, a view that included Lord Maudyn’s long-defended bridge and water running higher than he had ever seen it, dark, laden with mud and debris from the unseasonable thaw.
But thank the all-patient gods and whatever friendly wizardry intermittently supported his own plans, the rains had stopped, the debris had not damaged the pylons and the high water had not delayed the installation of the bridge decking. His fast-moving couriers had bidden Lord Maudyn start that process early, well before his arrival.
The last section was in place as of yesterday. Lord Maudyn had immediately enlarged his camp on the far side of the river—a camp he had had in place for months, placed and supplied by small boats and rafts, to be sure of that far bridgehead.
And as late as this morning when the main army had arrived, the far bank had still produced no hostile action against that camp, which now was due to enlarge.
To Cefwyn that far shore remained a mystery of ancient maps and his wife’s best recollections, a land veiled in brush and scattered woods—Ninévrisë had assured him the land was much the same as the land this side, rolling hills, a north shore rugged with cliffs which were the same as the high banks on the south.
That was the troublesome spot, those cliffs to the west of this bridge. There the Lenúalim ran deep and turbulent, and bent sharply around in its course through the stony hills as it turned toward Amefel. What tantrum of the all-wise gods had split that great ridge of rock and sent a river through it he was not certain, but on the hither side of that ridge two moderate-sized rivers flowed into the Lenúalim’s current…one from the Elwynim side of the river, and the other here, their own tame Assurn. The northern river entered as clear water. The Lenúalim was usually murky green and the southern Assurn a pale brown stream. The colors habitually stayed distinct for a time until they merged into the Lenúalim’s flood…so Lord Maudyn informed him, Lord Maudyn sharing a scholar’s curiosity about such things.
And on any other venture, even his skirmishes in the south, he would have been curious to see whether the melt and flood had left any vestige of that three-colored joining…but he had grown grimly single-minded since he had kissed his wife good-bye.
That he now fought a war against his own side as well as the enemy had not so much divided his attention as sharpened his wits and made him scour up the good advice he had had from counselors now absent…advice which, ironically, he might have been less zealous to follow if they were with him. He became responsible for himself, alone in a host that took his orders and offered him protection. But Ryssand’s influence went into unexpected places.
Mindful of that fact, wary of Ryssand’s spies, he kept his ordinary guards close to him…men in the scarlet of the Dragon Guard, men sworn to protect his back from any assault. If he was horsed and watching the river, so they were. If he dismounted to go among the troops, they dismounted and went close to him, in case some man of another lord’s guard had some unguessed connection to Ryssand and his allies.
But they had come this far without incident or assault, and with remarkably few delays. This morning he watched the collapse of the last tents, and the movement of carts within the lines of last night’s camp gathering up the bundled canvas in neat order.
Even yet there was no motion from the enemy, but he kept a wary eye toward the far bank. The last information Lord Maudyn relayed to him had Tasmôrden still enjoying his victory at hapless Ilefínian, and taking no action toward the steady enlargement of Lord Maudyn’s forces…but Tasmôrden could not be ignorant of all that was happening here: Ryssand would not permit Tasmôrden to remain ignorant, by what he suspected.
So was this Elwynim earl an utter fool, lazing in Ilefínian, or was he a man trying to make his enemy commit himself too far, too fast?
He sat Danvy’s restless back, with his guards around him. He watched, wishing above all else that Ninévrisë were here to see this morning, the fulfillment of the hotly argued marriage treaty and most especially of his personal and far more tender oath to her. He wondered, since wizardry accounted for so much that mere Men called coincidence, whether by some remote stretch of the imagination she might know where he was at this moment.
And if she did know, he hoped she knew he thought of her.
Finally, he said to her in his imagination. Finally, and in spite of all their objections, your banner is here. Your people will see it.
A sudden redirection of his guards’ attention alerted him to a rider coming from the road beyond the camp, a courier, as it appeared: the red coat was faintly visible even in the dawn, even at this range.
But as the rider came closer it was the red of the Dragon Guard, and the horse well muddied, as if it had been hours under way, this early in the dawn.
“From the capital, perhaps.” It might be a courier from Efanor. Gods save them from disasters…or some move of Ryssand there.
As he came closer still, the rider’s fair hair blew from under the edges of his silver helm in a very familiar way.
“Anwyll!” he exclaimed to his guards, who were moving their horses into his path to prevent this precipitate approach. “No, let him come. This is a man I trust.”
The guards all the same arrayed themselves a little to the fore, but Anwyll it indeed was, and the junior captain he had sent with Tristen reined his weary horse to a slow and respectful pace as he approached and moved in among the guards’ horses.
“Your Majesty,” Anwyll said, out of breath as he drew rein. Dust and weariness made him look shockingly twice his years, or perhaps service under Tristen had aged him in a single winter, but the eyes were still bright and undaunted. “I went to Guelemara
first, Your Majesty, thinking you’d be there, but His Highness said you’d gone on. And he sent this message.” Anwyll pulled a flattened, hard-used scroll from within his coat, and leaned in the saddle to offer it, but one of the guards intercepted it and passed it on instead, a document heavy with a prince’s red wax seal…and a white Quinaltine ribbon. That was odd. Was Efanor lacking red ones?
“Lord Tristen sent, too,” Anwyll said. “But would commit nothing to writing. He bade me say…” Anwyll caught his breath: he was sweating under the spattering of mud. “He bade me march quickly from the river…with the carts…which I did, and they are coming, Your Majesty, but behind me. My company…” He pointed to the south, the road by which they also had come. “A day behind. To save the horses and the axles.”
“What did my brother say? What did Tristen say?” Cefwyn asked sharply. Everything Anwyll had done he was sure was well done, but Anwyll had a way of telling a superior everything but what he wanted most to know, getting all the small details in order.
“His Highness wishes Your Majesty the gods’ favor. His Grace of Amefel says that Tasmôrden has claimed the High Kingship, that he holds court in Ilefínian.” For two things Anwyll found breath, then a third. “And says beware Ryssand. —Your Majesty, I saw his banners an hour back.”
“Ryssand’s? Where? The north road?” About an hour back was where the north road came in to join this one, at least an hour back as hard riding might set it; and that was indeed the road by which Ryssand and Murandys might both arrive, inland but more direct than the winding riverside track from the fishing villages.
“A road comes in…” Anwyll began to describe it with his hands.
“I know the road! The rest of Tristen’s news, man. Spit it out, never mind the niceties. Is it his wishes for good weather—or is it possibly news I need?”
“His Grace did also wish you good health, and said he hoped for good weather—” Gods save him, he saw how Anwyll had always to remember things in order, a damnable fault in a messenger.