Fortress of Dragons

  In Amefel. That was where Ninévrisë was, that was where Tristen was, that was where Emuin was.

  It was where Cevulirn was, and Sovrag, and Pelumer, and gods, even that poker of a man, Umanon of Imor. They were the same company as had stood against the Shadow at Lewenbrook. There was supply at Anwyll’s former camp, and that he did not doubt.

  There was the solid support he could trust.

  As for the wagons and the carts and the pack train he had…he sat his horse at Anwyll’s side and watched that line of men and carts across the river, hastening about its business of gathering up the camp and following the army.

  “You said Ryssand was at the north road,” he remarked to Captain Anwyll. “Approaching this road, or already on it?”

  “Approaching, Your Majesty. I saw his banner at a distance.”

  “His and no others?”

  “That was all I saw, but there were very many men, Your Majesty.”

  That Ryssand had been still in the distance when Anwyll passed, that was good news.

  He sat his horse watching and watching as group after group crossed the bridge, and in good time Lord Maudyn rode up to find him, from his camp where they might well have been expecting for some time to receive him and to pay him some courtesy of welcome.

  Instead Lord Maudyn, good-hearted man, had ridden to him.

  “Your Majesty,” Maudyn said, and Cefwyn was glad to see him, and offered his hand across the gap between their horses.

  “Well done,” he said to Maudyn Lord of Panys. “Very well done. Did you hear that Ryssand is coming?”

  Maudyn’s countenance assumed a bleak quiet, and then Maudyn cast a curious look toward the bridge, where the first of the baggage carts waited to cross, behind Osanan.

  “The baggage train will cross, one by one,” Cefwyn said. “Which may be hours, to move all that. And Ryssand can wait. My baggage has to stay close with the army. If he’s late, so be it. We’ll be moving on to the next camp; there’ll be no settling here.”

  He was satisfied now that the carts were beginning to roll. Ryssand would arrive too late to join the crossing of the provincial contingents. He would have to wait, he and those with him, until the last of the baggage train had rolled across the bridge, and that could be very slow, where it involved ox teams, and axles heavy-laden with canvas and iron.

  It was time for the scouts to move out and be sure of their night’s camp, that much closer to Ilefínian.

  Ryssand could cross today and spend his next hours getting his baggage train across. Ryssand might overtake him today. He might not.

  It was time to give the orders to the scouts, and to look to where they would stay this night, in weather fair enough to enable a camp without the tents. It was graven in stone that Guelenmen camped under canvas and made a solid camp at night, that Guelenmen moved at a deliberate pace dictated by the slowest oxcart in the baggage train: Ryssand would not expect this.

  He might simply unhitch the teams and let the carts stand on the road, such as it was, completely filling it, so that the forces trying to pass them must struggle through the brush and limbs that fringed it. Perhaps amid the trees and thorn vines, Ryssand might gather he was being slighted.

  More to the point, so might the lords with Ryssand see where Ryssand’s leading had gotten them, and then weigh how angry they were willing to make their king, in enemy territory, when Ryssand was being outmaneuvered by oxcarts.

  Let them ask themselves then in a second moment of sober reflection how far they could trust Tasmôrden to do what he had promised and to refrain from attacking them: Tasmôrden’s promises and representations might ring somewhat hollow in their ears once they found themselves chasing their king deeper and deeper into Tasmôrden’s reach.

  One outraged, angry man might be a fool far quicker and far longer than his contentious allies.

  That was what Cefwyn hoped, at least, as he turned Danvy to ride between Maudyn and Anwyll.

  “We’ll go on,” he said, “gain as much ground as we can.”

  “Prudence, Your Majesty,” Maudyn said.

  “Do you trust your scouts?”

  “To report what they believe, without question. But—”

  “Do they believe the way is clear?”

  “Yet to push ahead, against a walled town, Your Majesty, so precipitately, and without the preparation—”

  “You’ve made the preparation. We have a camp, do we not, on this side of the Lenúalim?”

  “Absolutely so, Your Majesty.”

  “Dug in, canvassed, well set, and provided with a rampart.”

  “So we have, Your Majesty.”

  “Then the gods for Ylesuin and devil take all traitors! These are horses, are they not?”

  “Indubitably, so, Your Majesty.”

  “And capable of setting us closer to the enemy faster than the oxen could.”

  “But without preparation, and wearing down their strength—”

  “We’ll rest in time. I’ve had a letter from my brother and one from Amefel, and I’ll not wager our lives there’s not wizardry in the stew—wizardry helping Tasmôrden deceive our scouts, make foul seem fair, right seem wrong…no disparagement of your scouts, none! Lewenbrook showed us all what wizardry can do on the field, and gods send we don’t see the like of that again.”

  “Gods save us from that, Your Majesty.”

  “But it’s a possibility. Something went on at Lewen field, something beyond Aséyneddin’s wizardry, that Emuin never has told me…Tristen, gods save us, tried to explain, but he doesn’t seem to know either, and that worries me.”

  He had never been so frank in council, not with the good Quinalt lords pricking up their ears and ready to bolt. But to Maudyn and to Anwyll, who had served with Tristen, he delivered the truth that, before, only the inmost circle of his advisors had dealt with. And Lord Maudyn heard it in attentive silence.

  “Mauryl died,” Cefwyn said, “and sent Tristen in his place. Tristen was there at Lewenbrook, but neither he nor Emuin seems to know what was in the cloud that rolled down the field. Tristen said he went to Ynefel during that battle—I don’t know the truth of that. Emuin was lying abed in Henas’amef, and has no idea. And all along, everyone’s assumed because we came off that field alive that Aséyneddin was the center of it all: that he’s in hell and that’s the end of it. I wonder.”

  “Lightning struck the Quinaltine,” Maudyn said.

  “That it did.”

  “A Sihhë coin turned up in the offering,” Maudyn said further.

  “That was a damnable piece of trickery! And it obscured the real fact.”

  “Which was, Your Majesty?”

  “That lightning struck the roof of the Quinaltine!…and robbed me of Tristen, of Emuin, of Cevulirn, ultimately, all of Ryssand’s connivance.”

  “The lightning surely wasn’t Ryssand’s doing,” Maudyn said.

  “That’s the point, isn’t it? The lightning was something Ryssand couldn’t manage. But it happened, and damned inconvenient of it to hit there and not the Bryalt shrine, wasn’t it?”

  It was too far remote from the lives of ordinary men. Lord Maudyn regarded him as if willing to agree with his king, but unsure to which proposition he should agree.

  “I suppose so,” Maudyn said.

  “It stole Tristen from me. Emuin would warn me that was no accident. Do you think Tasmôrden can move the lightning?”

  “I have no knowledge of Tasmôrden himself, except as an earl of Elwynor, a traitor to his lord…”

  “Exactly! Exactly so. No knowledge of the man except as an earl among other earls, a traitor among other traitors, no special gifts, no repute, no great allegiance among the Elwynim, would you say?”

  “He pays his troops. He hires brigands.”

  “The Saendal. And pays them with the goods they loot from Elwynim they’ve attacked. Is this a man to inspire loyalty? Is this a king?”

  “I would say not, Your Majesty.” “I would say not, as well. N
o king, no great man, no man loved by the people…would you not say a wizard, if he devoted himself to lead his own people to war, might not…” Cefwyn waggled the fingers of his off hand, Danvy’s reins lying in the other. “…conjure better?”

  “Master Emuin hardly fits the model.”

  “Ah. Master Emuin. Mauryl. Leave aside Tristen. He’s his own creature. But wizards, now!”

  “I don’t follow Your Majesty.”

  “The Sihhë-lords ruled. Ruled, with an iron hand. But do you see ambition in Emuin? Did you see it in Mauryl Gestaurien?”

  “Kingmaker, they called Mauryl. And Kingsbane.”

  “But did you see him rule?”

  “I saw the man not at all, Your Majesty.”

  “You see?”

  “I don’t see, Your Majesty.”

  “He didn’t rule. Nor would Emuin. Gods, you couldn’t persuade him to be king if you tossed in a shelf of books and a wagonload of parchment…when would a wizard practice his craft, if he ruled?”

  “The Sihhë ruled.”

  “But that’s just the point. The Sihhë don’t have to study. Tristen doesn’t have to study.” The conclusions poured in on him like a fall of stars from the heavens—or levin bolts on a priestly roof. “Wizards spend their whole lives at it. So if Tasmôrden’s sotted in Ilefínian and has to hire his soldiers, because the peasantry’s run to Amefel and the other lords are in hiding, such as survive—is this wizardry? If I were a wizard, I’d do better than hire my troops. I’d bespell them to adore me.”

  “Yet does Emuin, Your Majesty, improve Ryssand?”

  “I don’t think it occurs to him to improve Ryssand.”

  “I think he would do what he could.”

  “Yet what he can do is limited by what he will do, and what he will do is bounded in the stars, and books, and charts, and seas of ink. He’s the greatest wizard left alive, and I’d have him improve Ryssand, yes, if Emuin would, or could. On that score I know something, and the answer is that he can’t, not really, not directly, not so a man couldn’t rise up and march contrary to wizardry, else what chance would we have stood at Lewenbrook? Can you riddle me that?”

  “I daresay,” Maudyn said in a quiet voice, and by now they were coming among the tents of Maudyn’s settled camp. “I daresay Your Majesty understands more of that than I do.”

  “Take it for the truth! There was no going into that shadow if a man didn’t believe he could, and did, and those that went under it, died; but those that faced it never could have faced it except that cold iron and shed blood do avail something, sir, I swear they do. And I know by all the signs I see in the sky there’s more than cold iron at work against me. I’m not mad. I see the trouble among us, and I see the lords who served my father acting like fools, and believing a man who can’t charm his own peasantry into taking the field for him.”

  “I don’t understand,” Maudyn said.

  “Wizard-work doesn’t rule. Mauryl was Kingmaker, not a king. Emuin doesn’t rule. Wizards don’t. What they want is something more than earldoms.”

  “And what is that, Your Majesty?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? What do they want? What does Emuin want?” What did Mauryl want when he sent me Tristen? That was the silent question, the one he failed to pose for Maudyn and Anwyll, the one he posed himself alone: Tristen himself was that puzzle, Tristen who could scarcely fend for himself, now at the head of the southern army.

  Tristen armored in black, on a black horse, his gift, and attended by that damned bird and a flock of pigeons…what did he want? That was one thing. What Mauryl might have wanted was another matter: Mauryl was an ally of convenience and a wizard’s evident frustration with his Sihhë allies…or that thin blood to which the line had dwindled.

  To prevent this Hasufin Heltain having any success: that was the evidence of Lewenbrook. He had no illusions it was any love of the Marhanen or fear for his continuance.

  And what had happened, but this damned bolt of lightning that had sent Tristen from him, by his own order.

  Cevulirn had gone.

  Then Nevris…and Idrys. And now he was alone, between these two, Maudyn and Anwyll, good men, both; alone, with his guards. Alone, with the lords of the north…and Ryssand.

  Mauryl had sent Tristen, Emuin had received him.

  And what did this conspiracy of wizards want? What had it ever wanted? Something with which Tristen would agree?

  If it was the calamity of the house of Marhanen, he much doubted Tristen would consent to it.

  He was aware of silence around him, silence of his companions as well as his guards.

  “You wonder what I do think?”

  “If it please Your Majesty to say.”

  “Tasmôrden’s no wizard, but I’ll lay odds someone is, within his court, someone who doesn’t care a fig for Tasmôrden, whether he lives or dies.” Tristen’s fortified the Quinaltine, he thought to himself, with a little chill. He expects something: bloody hell, half a year ago he said there was something wrong about the place.

  Aloud he said, to Maudyn and Anwyll: “And if wizards are in it, we’ve wizardry on our side. Amefel and all the company of the south is at our left hand, if only we both ride past that wedge of rock that divides us one from the other.”

  “To join with Tristen, then,” Lord Maudyn said.

  “To join with the south if we can. If our enemy stands back that long.” It came to him while he said it that the moment advantage shifted to one strategy or the other, wizardry would incline itself to use that advantage: if he tried to meet Tristen, then opposing wizardry would attempt to prevent him…and where it worked, men might bleed for it, in great numbers.

  “And if not, Your Majesty?”

  “If not…” Cefwyn looked at Anwyll, who as an undercaptain had offered not a word during all of this. “What do you think, Captain? You’ve dealt with the lord of Amefel, latest. What do you expect of him?”

  “That he will not desert Your Majesty,” Anwyll said, and seemed to hold thoughts back, in diffidence or perhaps in knowledge of Tristen. What he held back seemed likely to exceed what he said.

  “And does he remain true to us?” he asked Anwyll.

  Anwyll’s gaze flashed to him, wary as a hunted creature’s.

  “Does he?” He did not doubt. He refused to doubt. “I think so. I think so.” He set Danvy to a quicker pace. They passed beyond the camp, and he relayed orders to Maudyn. “Your men to hold this ground, come what may.”

  “Shall we let Ryssand pass?”

  There was the question, the question whether one province of Ylesuin should fight another. And that was, indeed, one answer to the challenge: set Maudyn as his rear guard, against his own troops.

  “Let him pass,” Cefwyn said. “Let him have his way for now. There’ll be the day, not so long from now.”

  They had passed the camp and led on, so that all the men and vehicles behind them would follow.

  They were on the march and would proceed a day’s march north and west, with the blind hills to their left and a traitor at their backs.

  “Ryssand can stew and fret,” he added, “but it won’t get him past the ox teams in the woods.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Wind tore the morning’s white clouds to ragged gray rags by noon, rain threatening but never falling. Wizardry? Crissand asked silently, with a worried look, knowing Tristen wished them fair weather, and Tristen refused to agree or disagree: whatever power willed storms to oppose his wishes seemed less mindful opposition than a negligent contrariness, a surly, preoccupied opposition in the north not even caring that it spilled into the heavens for all to see.

  Worse thought, that power husbanded its self-restraint, not its strength, as if to hold back and shape its force was a greater effort than to loose it.

  Emuin struggled with times and seasons and nudged, rather than commanded, his designs into the grand flow of nature. Emuin moved by knowledge and plan.

  Hasufin had learned of Maury
l, before he turned to self-will and attempted to overthrow nature. Mauryl was a wizard. What he could teach was wizardry: all Mauryl’s charts, all Emuin’s, all those notes, calculations and records…that was wizardry.

  This, he began to fear…this negligent, careless force…was not.

  They moved through a last descent of hills toward the river, wending down a last terrace of that gray stone so frequent in the district, and then the road tended generally down a pitch that, around a hill, would bring them to the site of what they had used to call Anwyll’s camp, on the river.

  They were in the district of Anas Mallorn. And of that village and of all the villages of the district, they saw occasional traces as they rode, the droppings of sheep, the stray bit of wool at the edge of a thicket, but they never caught sight of flocks or shepherds: Tristen had noticed that fact and had pondered it even before Uwen remarked on the vacancy of the land.

  “Not a sheep from here to the river,” Uwen said. “So’s the shepherds has the smell o’ war, an’ ain’t havin’ their flocks for soldiers’ suppers, no. They’ve seen too much comin’ an’ goin’ of armies hereabouts in recent years.”

  And Crissand, whose own lands depended primarily on the herding of sheep, nodded. “They’ll be high in the hills,” he said, lifting his eyes toward the rugged land to the east, that obdurate rock that had no easy passage except the river…and how even the Lenúalim had won its passage down to the sea was a distracting wonder.

  Had the mountain split for it?

  Had ancient magic made a way…or Efanor’s hitherto silent gods commanded it?

  His mind even at this time of urgency hared off onto such tracks, and followed then a forbidden course, wondering how Idrys fared.

  That, he would not wonder, not when he had been thinking of their enemy.

  The gray space risked too much. What came and went there flitted, skipped, was there and gone again. The gray clouds that had appeared tore to wisps in the heavens and went to nothing with disquieting swiftness. The men noticed, and pointed aloft.