Fortress of Dragons
Now the remnant of Tasmôrden’s center was caught in a tightening noose, for surely in desperation, Ryssand’s peasant muster had held its line better than the cavalry that had deliberately started the rout, and now the Dragons and the men of Panys, coming uphill, had the Elwynim in a bottle from which there was no escape.
And gods knew whether Maudyn was alive, or Gwywyn, or who of all of them was giving orders up there. Gods forfend it was Ryssand…who might just have assumed the crown was within his grasp.
On that thought, Cefwyn staggered away from the rocks that had upheld him, began to climb the hill to reach his troops, picking his way past the dead and wounded at the edge of the brush and the rocks and finding this part of the hill woefully steeper on the climb up than it had ever seemed going down it.
CHAPTER 7
The clouds of the gray space flickered with lightning the same as the clouds of the world, but it was not only the sight of the clouds that chilled Tristen’s heart: it was the sight of the Edge, over which a cataract of cloud roared and vanished, endlessly.
—Come inside, the Wind said, a mere thickening in that stream…a curl amidst the cloud.
And in the blink of an eye and half without his will Tristen found himself indeed inside Ilefínian, inside its fortress, within that room where the banner had hung.
More, Crissand was at his back, and four archers confronted them with bows bent.
He stepped back to escape. Then he realized a trap indeed, for the escape at his back instantly seemed to be the old mews. That former retreat was the path his thoughts most easily held and that was the path that his own will by mischance opened, not only to them, but to the enemy.
“Get to safety!” he wished Crissand, for they both stood within the mews. He felt Emuin’s startled presence, and Ninévrisë’s, almost within hail of his voice.He turned to remake the wards, as a vast Shadow poured after them.
The wards held against it, but a lesser Shadow slipped past to find its master a way in, through wards it well knew: Shadows waked within the Zeide’s walls as the ragged remnant that was Hasufin breached the new defenses: a shriek ran through its stones as if iron bent, and a rumbling resounded through its vaults as if stones moved. A crack raced up the several chimneys of the tower.
Tristen knew his ground and held it against all distraction: he had Crissand beside him, and the mews for the moment sealed itself fast, walling out the attack that came from Ilefínian’s heart.
But their enemy’s servant raged on in his own search. It was still the child Hasufin sought, and as Tristen reached to prevent him, he realized the child was not with Tarien: Ninévrisë had Elfwyn, had seized him in her arms at the first alarm from the mews and held him fast.
The Shadow in the burned cell clawed at the stones, flowed between them into every crevice of her prison, frantic in her search for a way out of the wards, trying to find the least small crack that might open. In the shriek of iron and the echoes of the deep vaults she called to Tarien Aswydd as the smell of fire tainted the gray space…Sister, sister, my twin, my other self…call me out! Call me out of this prison…aetheling, aetheling as we are, queens of this land, sister…is that not the dream? Can you forget?
It was a bond more magical than wizardous that extended through the stones, cords of a sister’s anger and a mother’s yearning that plunged Tarien’s head into her hands, knotted her fingers into her hair, and sent a silent cry of anguish through the stones, for in the moment of choice, it was Ninévrisë she upheld, not her sister. It was Ninévrisë who had taken her child and Orien who had governed all her life…and the moment she denied Orien’s voice the shock went through the gray space, a wail resounding through the stones.
—Stand fast! Tristen urged Ninévrisë.
Allies embraced, rooms apart. Two women held close, Tarien’s eyes shut tight, heart clenched tight about the child she ached to have in her arms again, the infant that Ninévrisë promised, protected, warded for her with all her strength.
Above, in the tower, the crack in the chimney jolted wider and Emuin’s shutters flew open: a draft howled from the lower hall to the tower height, and Paisi, his arms full of parchments, dived beneath a table at Emuin’s feet, striving to keep the wind from tearing the charts all away.
All of this happened in a heartbeat…all the fortress leapt in one instant into clarity, as blindingly swift as the Shadow seeking that reciprocal crack within the wards.
With another jolt the crack in the wall raced downward, opened across the ceilings of the lower floor and let a winter-cold gale blow into the old mews.
Beneath a horn-paned window, beneath a rough sill in Ynefel’s upper tier, ruin had begun from a single crack. The stones had fallen, beginning from there, until Ynefel stood in ruins, overthrown.
So Althalen had gone down in blackened timbers, stones fallen, the Lines sleeping and broken.
Until, until, Tristen thought fiercely, Lord Uleman had held it for his court. Next Auld Syes’ sparrows had spread their tents there, reclaiming it for the living. Aeself’s battered folk, lasting through the bitter snows, had raised a wooden tower that creaked and swayed in the winds. The scattered sparrows had built themselves a shelter that, though it leaked in the rains and admitted every draft—yet was home.
So Althalen had risen from the ashes. Wind there scoured the stones, flattening the grass that grew where the palace once had stood; above it all the wooden tower stood, Aeself’s work, where lightning threatened and wind tore at the sheltering canvas…the women who held that post cried out in terror of the storm, and the tower quaked and swayed, but Tristen willed Aeself’s tower to stand against the wind. With a sweep of his arm he willed the lightning away: it was his land, his lordship, and if he gave it to Crissand, still, he warded it against the enemy. He willed all who were in the place safe, and bade that tower stand.
Owl flew past, a brown streak, and wheeled away on a gust, a skirl of dust that, out of the grass of the ruins of Althalen, became the shape of a man…bits of grass and dust formed all the substance that Hasufin Heltain could command now. He had failed his master, failed his bid for the child. The man of dust had reached after Owl, but fell asunder, no more at last than dust and chaff.
Tristen lifted his hand to recover Owl, who lighted on his arm as lightning chained across the heavens.
He stood in Ynefel, amid shattered timbers, the ruin of all the wonderful stairways that had run like spiderwebs up and up to the loft.
He stood in the courtyard, where Hasufin had been the haunt.
But not the only one.
Dust and leaves blew across the pavings, encountered the cracked wall…and fell, a mere scattering of pieces. Hasufin could not return, not now. His strength was spent.
But the Wind came stealing softly through the open gate. Or had done. Time was always uncertain here, and the Wind came and went unpredictably, like Ynefel’s other visitors.
—Well, well, well, said the Wind, here, too, brave prince of Shadows.
—Still here, Tristen said in the foreboding hush.
—But not there, are you? Not in that land where your allies need you…are you, Lord of Ghosts?
Fear touched his heart, fear for Crissand, and for the army he had left to others’ leading—but he was not, as Emuin called him, a fool, to glance aside and distract himself with his enemy’s chatter. He kept one thing in mind, and the threats and the gusts could not shake him.
—Can I not? Can you not fear me? Others do.
He suddenly had that feeling he had had of nights when Orien’s dragons loomed above his bed: and at once he was flung into the gray space in a swirl of cloud. The Wind wrapped about him like a cloak and spun about and about and down.
It left him facing the Edge, where cloud poured like rain down a roof.
—Look in, it said. Do you dare?
And without his bending at all the Edge seemed to open before him. He stared into a dark that reflected shadows and light, and was the image in a rain bar
rel, no more than that.
It was his own image it cast back, all dark hair and shadow, with the sun at his back, as he had seen himself when first he tried to know his own face.
He drew back in the instant the Wind sought to push him over the Edge. He turned, sword in hand, and faced it with the question he himself had wished to answer:
—Who are you? Do you know? Do you dare look at your own reflection?
—I dare. A Shape formed itself out of cloud, a young man, mist for a cloak, storm for raiment, and shifting haze for armor. It was a mirror of himself, of Crissand, but neither shadow nor sun: a nameless Shaping of grays and magic, out of its seething clouds of the gray space.
And the challenge it posed was magic, a power breaking free of all law that had ever constrained it, all the wizard-work, all the Lines on the earth, all the bindings ever bound. It breathed in, and on its next breath it might carry all the world away.
And the weapon to counter it was not alone the sword and its spells: it was even more than the Lines of Ynefel’s wards, or the Zeide’s, or Althalen’s, or any barrier of stone laid down in the world: it was all the work of all the wizards and all the Men that had lived their lives in constraint of power and the habit of order.
The Wind gathered force, and gathered force, all for one great effort…it Summoned all who had ever fallen to its lure, all who had ever gone deep within its embrace and lost themselves, not alone Hasufin Heltain, not alone Orien, or Heryn Aswydd or the hundreds of others without name. It lacked Shape, so it cloaked itself in his likeness, all grays, living magic, the third force, balanced between Shadow and Sun.
—Barrakkêth, it whispered, but he would not own that name.
—I know you, it said, as Hasufin had said, but he would not be limited by what it knew.
Instead he recalled an age of watching the suns above the ice, raising the stones of a great, solid fortress to hold the Lines of the World against the ceaseless change of magic.
He recalled the gathering of those who could answer a wizard’s call when it came, for a barrier was breached. The unthinkable had happened. Time itself circled around and around that moment, around those few who could keep the gray space in check.
—Five who failed, the Wind taunted him: it was a willful creature, and destroyed without a thought: it changed and made change: that was what magic did. It slid, and shifted, like a step on ice.
—You can only reflect me, he answered it, the untaught truth, for it had Shaped itself in the image of all it knew, all it saw outside the gray void where it ex isted…it was the changing mirror of all it met: the Book had said these things. That was the dark secret, the one that would not Unfold to him. He saw the gray force, the middle one, the force in the breach.
—Hasufin wanted that knowledge so, mused the Wind. He wanted that Book to know what he had done. He thought there was a way to bind me. He was mistaken. The Sihhë failed. He was doomed.
—No, Tristen said, for in a leap of fear he saw the danger it posed in its accommodation to his Shape: it reasoned in his own voice and he had begun to listen to it. In its gray reflection of himself he saw the chance to learn more and more and more of what he was, and to find what the Shape withheld from him.
But it would gather him in if he listened to it. Yes, it would answer the questions. It would mirror all the world, and bring all his desires within his reach, all encompassed, all answered, all perfect, and complete.
But the world he loved was less orderly, less perfect.
The world he loved defied him and caused him grief, and contained the warmth of the Sun and the voices of friends. It held the smell of rain, the taste of honey, and the softness of feathers.
A throng of foolish birds, a scramble after bread crumbs.
Owl’s nip at his finger.
Emuin’s frown. Crissand’s smile. Cefwyn’s wry laughter.
—No, he said a second time, shaking his head. And, No, a third time, and with a sweep of the sword he drew a burning Line between Truth and Illusion.
He stood in the pouring rain on the parapets of Ynefel in the next beat of his heart. The Wind rushed over the walls at him, edged with bitter cold, and tried to hurl him down.
He Called the wards of Ynefel and they sprang up in light…the Lines not only of the fortress, but Lines alight all through Marna Wood, all along the old Road, all along the river shore: Galasien’s Lines rose to life, and Lines spun out and out through the woods, the shape in light of the ancient city, recalling what had been, what could not now be.
“Crissand!” Tristen cried, realizing the danger of that slide backward. He hurled himself into the gray space, to go back to all that he had left at risk…but his attempt careened off into the winds. He Called further: now Althalen’s wards leapt up, and the blue of the Lines rose up and raced on and on across the land.
At Henas’amef, the Zeide flared bright as a winter moon, and all the Lines of the town and its walls leapt to life. The light of Lines raced along outward roads like dew on a spiderweb, touched villages, touched Modeyneth. Light ran along the foundations of the Wall that Drusenan had raised. Blue fire touched Anwyll’s camp, and raced along the bridge, and across the river to the camp, and on to the trail of the army, through woods and meadows.
He had no Place, and had every Place. The lightning chained about him, and the light of the gray place ran along his hand and into the tracery of silver on his sword. He had no wish to do harm. He had no wish to end his existence.
—Pride, pride, pride, the Wind mocked him. It was certainly Mauryl’s undoing. So do you inherit his mantle, Shaping? You think you can keep me out?
—You invited me in, he reminded the Wind. I hold you to that.
It disliked that. It strengthened its wards against him. And for the second time the Wind gathered Shape, reflecting him, as if a young man wrapped himself in a cloak of shifting shadow, and glanced mockingly over his shoulder.
—Do you like what you see, Mauryl’s creature? Question, question, question everyone, but never the best question…what are you? Mauryl’s creature? Mauryl’s maker? Come, be brave, ask yourself that question. I’ll give you this: we aren’t that different, you and I.
He could never resist questions. Questions led him, distracted him, carried him through the world forgetful of his own substance and fearful of what he might find.
But among those questions he remembered the fabric of that cloak…a roiling of shadow and smoke beyond a railing. Then he asked a different, unasked question: why now? Why not Lewenbrook? Why come through Hasufin, until now?
Then he knew what had changed since Lewenbrook. Then he was sure whence it had come…not out of Ilefínian, where it had now taken hold: but it was never lord there in the Lord Regent’s domain. The breach had come elsewhere, magic breaking forth from a tangled maze of shadows, repeated attempts to ward it in.
Lines built upon and rebuilt, until its ally sent the lightning down…confounding the Lines that Men had built, breaking a small gap wider. Ilefínian was the second step.
And he had redrawn that Line…there! Tristen said to himself, and with a thought carried himself to the ward he had traced on the stones of the Quinaltine shrine.
Here he engaged his enemy, and here he brought the new Line up in brilliant light, in a place of chanting and incense, and sudden consternation.
“Gods!” Efanor cried, armed and armored, amid guards and priests as he faced the intrusion on his long watch. “Amefel!”
“Stand fast!” Tristen said, for the gray space broke forward, rushed at the Line: and when it could not cross that barrier on the new stones, spilled upward like smoke, spiraling up to the rafters. The Wind tugged at the heraldic banners between the columns, rising up and up toward the gap that had once been there, a mended gap that suddenly and with a rending of timbers opened to the sky.
“Amefel!” Efanor cried as timbers crashed like thunder among the benches, splintering wood, resounding on stone. “What’s happened? Are we lost?” br />
“Not yet!” Tristen wheeled the sword about, struck a clanging blow to the Line on the stones, and called the Shadows up and up, until blue fire leapt from the blade to the rafters. Shadows rushed into that breach in the roof, a rift in the wards that had let the gray space rip wide, a Line straight to Ilefínian’s unprotected heart.
Owl made a swift passage behind the columns about the shrine, routing a last few Shadows, and rose up, up on the draft.
“Stand fast!” Tristen asked of Efanor, and hurled himself through the gray space, seeking to breach the wards the enemy had made.
But the mews began to remake itself about him, glowing with blue light, row on row of perches, Shadows that raised ominous wings and battered the air, defying him, defying the Lines that now existed, ready to rend and destroy.
But Emuin, besieged in his tower, wind-battered, waved a bony arm and wished him on his way north, as Men measured the heavens.
“The Year of Years, young lord! This age is yours! You, young lord, you claim it! Do as you must! Go!”
A flock of birds started up at his passage, wings brushing the gray space: his frail, silly companions of lost hours…he was startled by their rise into the mews, and seeing them so frail and foolish against the Shadows, he spread his magic wide to protect them on the wing: he wished them up, and through all hazard—for a way out was what they sought.
The winged ghosts of the mews rushed up as well, but his flock turned in a wide sweep, wings flashing against the roiling dark, by his wish evading the killers. Owl rushed by like a mad thing, losing feathers, himself nearly prey.
—Fly, he wished Owl. And Crissand. And Cefwyn, and all the wizards of Men who had ever drawn a Line against this thing. He followed Owl, tried to thread the needle through the wards of Ilefínian…and found himself instead flung to the Edge with his back to the brink.
The mirror-youth faced him, the gray space flashing with storm.
Tristen stood fast, going neither forward nor back, calling the light of the gray space into his sword until the silver on the blade burned blinding bright. Truth, one side said, and Illusion, the other, and the line between the two he aimed at the heart of his enemy.