Fortress of Dragons

  He felt cold in all his limbs, the chill of earth and darkness. His gloved fingers maintained their grip on the reins. His eyes maintained a hold on the sky and the horizon: he would not slip into that dark, would not go over the Edge, where the Wind alone held sway.

  Lord of Shadows, Lord of the Sun: without shadow and light, there was only the gray space, forever and ever, changeless change, never settling.

  “Speak to me,” he begged those with him.

  “M’lord?” Uwen answered, that potent, commanding voice that brought the land and the day and the war back to him. And Uwen, experienced of such demands, heaved a great sigh and remarked how fair a day it was: “As there’s a good breeze, ain’t there? Which wi’ the sun beatin’ down on armor is a good thing, ain’t it?”

  “A good thing,” he said desperately. His heart was hammering against his ribs. He breathed as if he had run a race. He had met the enemy. Crissand and Cevulirn gazed at him with alarm.

  But he looked to the horizon, where trees met meadow…where still more stragglers, peasants and battered men-at-arms, survivors of lost battles and defeated lords, came to join their march. They had flowed to him since last night with the currents moving in the world, and after what he had seen, he knew that all things opposed to what sat in Ilefínian must flow to his banner…all that was Elwynim, all that was the south, whoever would, he could not deny them now. Auld Syes was the voice that spoke for them, but the summoning magic ran through the land and the woods and hour by hour the rocks gave up fugitives such as Aeself and his men…he felt presences far and wide; he felt their moving through the land, though to the east he was blind…a veil he himself drew over that one force his heart yearned to see, with all that was wrong in it.

  “The Sihhë ruled for hundreds of years,” he said, thinking of Cefwyn and Ryssand. “They never fought each other.”

  “It’s not recorded that they did,” Cevulirn said to him, and, perhaps thinking of the same conflict: “Wiser than we, it seems.”

  Restraint ran between the lines of all that Barrakkêth had written in his Book…he remembered. Line after Line Unfolded to him, not alone the nature of magic, but the Shape of the world, the restraint that let the world Unfold in its own time.

  He had burned that Book to keep it from other hands, and now it seemed to him that he might have possessed and destroyed that for which the junior archivist had murdered his senior: that not only Men had yearned to find among those mundane letters and requests for potions the very thing he had had…and destroyed.

  Knowledge of the enemy was there.

  The fount of those words was in himself, but now that he inquired of it, he found of all the words that Barrakkëth had ever poured onto parchment, the two true ones were written on opposite sides of his sword: Truth, and Illusion.

  “They never fought each other,” he said aloud.

  And the truest thing of all was the Edge between the two, the dividing line, the line of creation and destruction, dream and disillusion. There had to be both, for there to be movement at all in the world.

  In his heart he could all but hear Mauryl’s voice saying, Boy! Boy, listen to me! Pay attention, now! This is the crux of the lesson!

  “Ye’re woolgatherin’,” Uwen observed. “Lad, are ye with us?”

  He drew a deep breath. He smiled at Uwen, who alone of them could wake him to the ordinary world.

  “You still have that power,” he said to Uwen.

  “What power, m’lord?”

  “To call my name.” He glanced solemnly aside at Crissand and Cevulirn on the other side. “I obey Uwen’s voice as no other,” he said, “and I gave him the calling of me. It’s a magic he can do. Wherever I wander, Uwen can always find me.”

  “As I’d follow ye to hell, m’lord,” Uwen said. “Ye know that.”

  “I’d rather you called me out of it,” he said. He had no true knowledge what the Quinalt meant by it, but he knew where he had fared when he faced Hasufin Heltain.

  He knew where he would go now when he faced the enemy.

  “Guard Uwen,” he said to Crissand and Cevulirn. “Make sure he’s safe.”

  “That’s the wrong way about, m’lord, them guardin’ me.”

  “Yet that’s His Grace’s word,” Crissand said.

  “A Man,” Tristen said. “And my friend, and wise as wizards.”

  “Oh, that I ain’t!” Uwen cried.

  “Trust Uwen,” Tristen said to his friends, and in his mind’s eye he saw Barrakkêth’s Book, its pages curling as it burned.

  When he had cast the Book into the fire he had been armed as now, ready to ride against Hasufin: so he was now, astride Dys and armed and with Uwen beside him.

  He used great care when he let anything in that Book well up out of the dark: its answers informed him there was much of illusion in what he loved.

  Past and present and time to come mingled in the old mews, and in Ynefel, and in those other places: had been and might yet be were interchangeable in those places: they were the easiest path for magic, and his enemy had found a toehold in each and every one.

  He found the meadows and woods gone dim around him, and the light gone to brass.

  He saw a child dancing across the dry gold grass before them. A wind blew the grass and followed that child, and that wind suddenly smelled of storm.

  “That’s odd,” Uwen said. “Smells like rain an’ the sun’s shinin’ and the sky is blue. An’ I swear that’s a cloud just come above the ridge.”

  “I wish it mayn’t rain,” Tristen said, but spent little strength to wish it. He still saw the child, but no one else did, not even Crissand or Cevulirn.

  Troops of Shadows seemed now to follow the child, Auld Syes’ daughter, who had lived once, he was sure, and danced in the meadows, a long, long time ago: as there had been nothing ordinary about Emwy village, where Auld Syes had seemed to be in authority. Men had died, and thereafter Emwy village, where Auld Syes had seemed to be in authority. Men had died, and thereafter Emwy village had perished, lost, perhaps not for the first time.

  In magic, time itself came unhinged, and Emuin’s Great Year governed the progress of the world only so far as to say that strange appearances were easier than at other times.

  Mauryl had brought the Sihhë from the north. But who had Summoned them? And out of what?

  He looked at the sky, looked at the bare trees and at the sun on Dys’ black mane. The world was so beautiful, and there was so much of it: he could gaze forever at the wonder of leaves and not see them all: could inhale the wind and not smell all its scents, hear the sounds of men and horses and not hear all the sounds of the woods, and taste the thousand flavors in stale water and still find it wonderful…because it was not darkness.

  The darkest night in the darkest room in the world was not that darkness which was behind his first memory of Mauryl’s fireside. And that was not the worst that might befall.

  He would fight to live. He knew that now. He would fight to keep these things, aside from all reasons Mauryl had Summoned him. He had gathered his own reasons, and was not, now, Mauryl’s creature.

  Barrakkêth, some said, even his dearest friends.

  But he said Tristen, and he said it with every breath he drew.

  The dagger rested concealed in Cefwyn’s boot, for if Idrys had come by stealth, Cefwyn thought it wise to keep the secret, and hid that weapon which some eyes might recognize. He rode Danvy at the head of the Dragon Guard. Anwyll’s contingent being newly joined to the main body, Anwyll was close by him; and he ordered the Guelens to bring up the rear and the Prince’s Guard to hold a place at the middle of their line of march, lest any surprise attack should try to split the column of less experienced provincials.

  The land was roughest here, so the maps had indicated and so it was. Rocks encroached from the left and the trees spilled down off the heights and across the road. Weeds had grown here during more than one summer, legacy of Elwynor’s civil conflicts.

  It was t
he third day, and from Ryssand and his allies as yet he had had no dissent, possibly the longest period of peace with Ryssand he had known since he had come to his capital. Knowing that Ryssand was about to be a traitor was a distinct relief from wondering what Ryssand was about.

  But now there was more worry, which had arrived with the dagger and the message.

  A traitor near him. A traitor to whom he might have confided all his plans, when plans were hard come by, and hard to change.

  Unfair, he said to Idrys, scanning the trees and the rocks and wondering whether Idrys watched the column from that rough outcrop or from the depths of the woods. He was vexed with Idrys, not an uncommon thing in dealing with the Lord Commander, but no signal he could give would order Idrys in.

  He needed advice on a matter far more important than Ryssand’s treason and Ryssand’s conspiring with someone he trusted.

  We have a war to fight, have you noticed, perchance, master crow?

  Should I care that one more of my barons would put a dagger in my back? I am not destined to be a well-loved king, but thus far and somewhat by my own wits I am a live one. Come in! Stop this skulking in the bushes…it ill behooves a commander of the king’s armies.

  Damn, he said to himself as birds flew up, startled from a thicket.

  He found he was anticipating attack, not attack from one of his barons, but attack out of the woods that were no more than a thin screen between them and the ridge…not enough to prevent archery lofted over and down, if Tasmôrden were so enterprising. He had sent his scouts ahead to investigate the heights he had sent a squad to occupy, indeed, but the essential trouble with scouts was that they had to come back to report what they saw. A man with critical information might not be able to come back, might be lying dead with a dozen arrows in him.

  So might Idrys, if he went poking and prying into the woods ahead, if he had his attention all for the barons and none spared for the enemy.

  And which of the barons, or which of the officers, was a traitor to him?

  He refused to suspect Maudyn or Maudyn’s sons: Sulriggan’s turning on him would be no news and no loss. He had never been sure of Osanan.

  He led the rest, not reckoning any one of them a potent threat, not reckoning Murandys would dare cross him: that alliance of Murandys with Ryssand was lately frayed; and Murandys was not a man to take rash and independent action.

  Anwyll was never suspect, either. Complicity could not possibly lie in that face, in those forthright blue eyes. There was never a man less given to conspiracy: Anwyll always expected honesty of the world, was indignant when he found otherwise; and for the rest of the officers, they had served Ylesuin in his father’s reign and served with honor, no marks against any of them.

  An owl called by daylight, and drew alarm from the men nearest. Maudyn laid a hand on his sword. But then a true owl took to the air and flew off across their path, so Maudyn laughed, and no few of the men did.

  Then a horseman came from around the bend of the road and toward them at breakneck speed.

  Attack came: there was no question—and they had not reached the chosen battlefield. Cefwyn’s heart leapt and plummeted, seeing the guardsman rode perilous in balance, the dark stain of blood on his red surcoat, an arrow jutting from his back.

  “Form the line!” Cefwyn shouted, and already the banner-bearers halted and spread out across the meadow: they wanted all the open land they could take, the devil and Tasmôrden take the woods where heavy horse could not have effect.

  They might have met the ambush attack of some bandit, some startled peasant farmer; or it might herald the presence of an enemy whose surprise was spoiled.

  The scout came riding up, scarcely staying in the saddle, and managed his report:

  “Enemies in the valley next, a line, a camp…” The man had used all the wind he had, and sank across his horse’s neck.

  “Tend this man!” Cefwyn ordered, and shouted orders next for the banners to advance and compact the army again into a marching line spearheaded by heavy cavalry. “Panys!” he shouted at Lord Maudyn. “Take the left as we come through.” They had a barrier of woods yet to pass to reach that place the scout described, which by the condition of the scout might mean hidden archers on either side of the road. “Shields! Lances!”

  Here was the battle he had come for. Tasmôrden had come out of his walled town, fearing, perhaps, that its surviving population was too hostile, its secrets were too well reported; and so they were: Ninévrisë had told them to him in great detail, and swore, too, that such townsmen as still lived could never love this lord, of all others.

  The sun was shining, the hour toward noon: there was no impediment to the fight they had come for…and Tasmôrden came out to fight, relying most on traitors to do their work.

  So Cefwyn instructed his Guard: “Watch my back!” They knew from whom to guard it; and there was no more time for musing. A page brought his shield and another his lance, young men themselves armed and well mounted, young men whose duty now was to ride with messages, and so he dispatched them down the line to advise the hindmost to arm and prepare, and the baggage train to draw up and bar the road with the carts, save only a gap through which they might retreat if they had to ride back through the woods: an untidy battle if it came to that, but the saving of some if the encounter went badly, the saving of part of an army that might come home to Ylesuin, to Efanor’s command…if it came to that.

  He took the precautions, but he had no intention of losing. His grooms brought Kanwy up, his heavy horse, and with the groom’s help he dismounted from Danvy and mounted up on a destrier’s solid force, settled his shield, looked on the descent of a low hill and the strand of woods that ran from the road to the left slope, screening all the land in that direction, away from the ridge: they had climbed gradually for two days. Beyond this, his maps told him there was one great long slope before they reached the end of the ridge, a long ride down to the valley where he most expected Tasmôrden to meet him, beside what his best map, Ninévrisë’s map, warned him was wooded land.

  He had fought in worse land, on the borders. They had come downhill out of the brush into a Chomaggari picket barrier, and had had to climb over it. Such hours came back to him, and with the high beating of his heart, the confidence that the Elwynim, aside from their bandit allies, were not disposed to such ambushes: it was heavy horse they were bound to meet ahead, lines that mirrored their lines: the shock of encounter and the skill of riders to carry through.

  The king of Ylesuin, however, did not carry the center of the charge, not today.

  Leave that to Ryssand and Murandys.

  CHAPTER 6

  One moment Tristen’s company crossed a wide meadowland in the bright sunlight; and in the next, slate gray ribbons of cloud raced across the heavens, broader, and broader, until, rapid as the drawing of a canopy, the sun gave up a last few shafts.

  “Gods!” Crissand said, for it was not only the gray space which changed so easily, but the world itself which had shifted, and Men and horses faltered in their march, dismayed. From the confidence of a world that could change but slowly, they had entered a territory where magic met magic and the sun itself was overwhelmed.

  A sudden gale buffeted the foremost ranks, and lightning cracked and sheeted across the hills. From ranks behind them came wails of dismay: seasoned veterans and country lads who had run to the banners of the High King met hostile magic and wavered in their courage as the lightnings gathered alarmingly above their heads.

  Tristen flung up his hand and willed the lightning elsewhere. It took a tree on the wooded ridge to their left: splinters flew in a burst of fire.

  Owl came winging to him, and swung a broad, self satisfied circle, on a light breeze.

  —Well, well, said the Wind. We are quick to seize the advantage, are we not? And confident?

  —Owl! Tristen would not distract himself in debate with his enemy. He let Owl settle on his fist, and sent out one burning message through the gray spa
ce to all he loved and trusted, nothing reserved now: Ward yourselves! Let nothing in or out!

  “Damn!” Uwen said on the heels of the lightning strike. “That were close!”

  “Do you hear it?” Tristen asked him, and then thought, foolishly, no, of course not. Crissand and Cevulirn might have heard the Wind speak. But Uwen did not. The army stood in ignorance, blind to its real danger, its confidence shaken by the lightning.

  One rider came up from the ranks in haste: Aeself drew his frantic horse to a halt and pointed to the horizon ahead.

  “Ilefínian!” Aeself said. “Just beyond the hill, my lord! The end of the ridge!”

  “Then move ahead!” Tristen said, for when he ventured to know what Aeself said was there, he felt the truth of the threat in the gray space, a tightly warded opposition, so wrapped about with magic it was hard to see at all as that near him. He set Dys in motion, and reached out in the gray space for Crissand and Cevulirn both, settling his own protection on the likeliest targets of hostile magic. Such as they knew how, they warded him, and Uwen, too, while Owl lofted himself again and flew outward and back, a long gliding passage that ended on Tristen’s outreaching hand as they crested the hill.

  Here the stony ridge ended in a long, forest-girt plain, and a last outrider of that ridge, a hill rose within the valley. On that hill, towers and town walls rose from skirts of winter-bare pasturage and fields.

  Lightning sheeted across the sky, a wall of brilliant light, west to east, and against it that distant fortress stood clearly to be seen, above its strong town walls. It was a Place as Ynefel was a Place, ancient and deep-rooted, and in the fire across the heavens it unveiled itself in all its power. Tristen felt it and shivered in the crash of thunder.

  Far to the south, the Lady Regent herself knew they had come to her capital.

  To the west, Efanor, at his prayers, knew.