Fortress of Owls

  “You don’t dream as men dream, no,” Emuin said, “yet all the same you do find curious notions, young lord, and keep me in continual suspense what understandings you may come by. You ask advice. In this I’ll give it. Don’t encourage Ryssand to greater adventures. That’s considerable advice, young lord.

  Kings could profit by it. I pray ours does.”

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  “That’s what I must not do,” he said. “But what shall we do, sir?”

  “Why, you both shall do wisely, I hope, as each event demands.”

  “Wisely.”

  “But tell you what to do or what to purpose, that I will not, young lord, storm as you will. You say I don’t listen to you; I assure you to the contrary. I have been listening.”

  “I do not storm, sir!”

  Emuin held up a palm to heaven. “I think I felt a raindrop.”

  “I assure you, sir, I am not demanding.”

  “Ah,” said Emuin, and reached for his cup, from which he took a slow sip of wine in a deep silence at the table. “Then let me be less humorous, at your pleasure. Cefwyn will ride among the first troops across the river. Not prophecy: he’s Marhanen, and that sort of folly is his notion of kingship. If all else went well and if Cefwyn fell, it would very likely prevent any crossing at all, and it would make Ninévrisë a widow without a king to enforce her rights. There is your danger. Against all prudence, Cefwyn will afford Tasmôrden that chance at his life…if he ever comes to the river. Yes, Tasmôrden’s made one try here in the south, not a great one, with no expenditure of men. But I do agree: it shows the inclination of the man to proceed by indirection and tricks. He’s more subtle than his predecessor, Aséyneddin. He doesn’t go straight to his objective, but in a slow and curving path. In many regards, he’s more dangerous than Aséyneddin.”

  “The south will not rebel, thanks to His Grace,” Cevulirn said. “That’s failed, let us hope, and now our enemy has to take Ilefínian and subdue it before he can turn his attention to other objectives. But he has

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  shown the ability to pursue two courses at once.”

  Cevulirn said that, and said something more, but the candlelight had gone to brass and the sound had dimmed.

  Tristen sat still, saw Emuin looking at him, and yet was not in that gray space. It was as if the ordinary world had slid from under him. He felt his senses slipping from him, and fought to have them back again…he was not the youth who had slipped away in sleep when too great things had Unfolded and startled his senses, but it was like that. He clenched his hand on the arm of the chair and drew a deep breath as darkness closed in.

  He saw a dim cell that he had known himself, first of all places in the fortress of Henas’amef, save the gatehouse. He did not know what the gatehouse of the stable-court and the west stairs should have to do with Tasmôrden and sieges and intentions, but it did.

  And he saw the lower hallway, that in front of the great hall, with light of day broken in where no light should be in the middle of the night, a dusty great light coming from a boarded end.

  He heard a sound like the sound of his own heart beating in his ears, as if he had been climbing a high, high stairs, into dark, and into the gray space, where someone waited for him.

  He would not go.

  There was that Place.

  And there was the cell beneath the west stairs. It was a different thing. It was related, but only discernible because the lower hall had disturbed him. Things tottered, chances poised that might go amiss tonight, and he felt flaws in his own safety.

  He had a lump on his head and had just waked, in fear, and in pain.

  “M’lord?”

  Uwen’s voice, Uwen, whom he had given the gift to FORTRESS OF OWLS / 119

  Call him, Uwen, whose hand seized with gentle strength on his shoulder, so that he became aware first of Emuin’s presence, bright and glowing, and Cevulirn’s, dimmer, and Uwen’s, common as stone, and as inert, and as solid. Of them all, Uwen was plain, unequivocal earth, strong and constant.

  “It’s one of his takin’s,” Uwen said. “He ain’t had one o’

  these in a while. M’lord, do ye hear me?”

  He did, perfectly well, but he could only press Uwen’s hand for the moment. Then he found a breath. “I’m going to the west stairs cell.”

  “The west stairs cell?” Emuin asked sharply.

  Uwen’s face, close to his, showed deep concern, but no refusal. “Aye, m’lord, if ye will, and shall we do something in particular while we’re there?”

  “I think so,” he said, and knew that Uwen would keep the rest of them from thinking him mad, but he had acquired something he had been looking for, and he refused to let go.

  He was acutely aware of Emuin weaving a tight net about them all, a safety within this dreadful room; and aware of Cevulirn, whose attention was wary and sure as a sword blade…no wizard, but no easy venture for a wizard, either, edged with a gift he had never himself brought forth into use.

  “I’ve seen a shadow of sorts before this,” he said to Cevulirn and to the two he trusted readily with such information. He tried to look at them as he spoke, and yet could not look away from the brazen dragon that loomed across the entry to the next room; it drew his attention, and his heart beat in his fingertips. He could scarcely muster his voice, and had half lost command of his limbs. The dragon meant something. It had something of its own to tell him, one more clamor for his attention.

  “M’lord,” said Uwen, and almost pried him from that wide awareness, but not quite. It was not that he 120 / C. J. CHERRYH

  was bound: it was that it was important, that matter in the cell, inside the wards that defended them.

  “We should, perhaps, go,” said Cevulirn, “and let His Grace rest. We were the second encounter of the day, so I understand.”

  “No!” Tristen said, then realized that utterance had been too fierce. He moderated it, with the vision of the dragon in his eyes: “No. Hear this. Hear it and remember it for me, for I shall forget once this is past. It’s not the same as the Shadow at Lewenbrook, but all the same it troubles me. I see it to the east, at times…mostly east, sometimes to the west, like the storm today. Emuin says if it’s a storm, it must come from the west, because storms do, and that’s only sensible: I believe him. But I’m not sure that’s the only reason or that it’s always the same shadow. Shadows exist within the wards, in the hall below, too…I saw them in the first days I came to Henas’amef. Emuin knows what I mean. Emuin has seen them. There’s something there. And there’s another thing in the cell beneath the stairs, by the stable-court.”

  “The guardroom.”

  “The cell. We should go there.”

  “Of course,” Emuin said with a fey desperation. “Of course we must, and gods save us all, young lord, what are we looking for?”

  “A thief,” he said, not knowing why he thought so, for it did not regard Mauryl’s letters, and that search. He was sure of that. He rose from an unfinished supper, still gazing at the dragon, but able to look away now, from moment to moment, aware that he had in Lord Cevulirn a man who had been many days on the road and who could well do with that supper that to him had turned cold and unimportant. “I beg you stay, sir, enjoy your meal. This regards a very small thing I must attend, no present danger, nothing that will keep FORTRESS OF OWLS / 121

  me long, I think. I’ll come back when I’m done, and we’ll share a cup before bed.”

  Social graces, social words, such as he had heard others make. But he had told the truth. He knew, at least, that the summons was brief, and that someone essential, someone looked-for, waited for him in that cell.

  C H A P T E R 5

  Yes, m’lord,” was the word from the Amefin guard…Ness, the man’s name was. Ness had followed them unbidden from his post, his comrade left to stand guard above. “M’lord, Selmwy and I found ’im, only on account o’ the Guelenmen we lost ’im…so’s by Your Grace’s order I got
the keys back.”

  What Ness said made no particular sense to Tristen, and echoed off the walls of the small area outside the few cells the same way Ness’s voice had echoed to him a certain night this early summer, that night when he himself, a prisoner, had sat in the endmost cell battered and bruised and sadly bewildered.

  Then he had been afraid of Ness, and of this place. Now the tables were altogether turned, and Ness, fearing him, protested something done or not done by the Guelen Guard, and hoped his lord would forgive the confusion.

  Forgiveness was easy. Forgiveness meant simply putting from his thoughts all anger toward Ness, who had never been a bad man, only a hasty one, and who had thought on that day last summer he was protecting the prince from thieves and assassins.

  Now Ness had brought down the keys, which he had fought over with the Guelens in the hall above, and in trembling haste opened the door to show him the object of contention between the two guard companies.

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  Uwen, practical man, had brought the lantern down from upstairs, a shielded light reliable in the gusts that swept these stairs. Meanwhile, still indignant, robbed of keys and charge, a Guelen guard had followed Uwen down the steps to watch the proceedings.

  It was a jealous battle of authorities, and within it all, Lusin and Syllan had posted themselves upstairs, household officers, deliberately standing between the Guelen Guard, king’s men, and the Amefin gate-guard, duke’s men, who had claimed the royal prisoner and written him down as theirs. Emuin had stayed above with the opposed guardsmen, too, declaring it too much of a crowd on the narrow stairs.

  In fact the squabble of guards and authorities like pigeons over a morsel of bread, and all of them so earnest, began to be a comedy…or would have been so, except for the wizard-feeling trembling in the air, and the fact that, jests and foolishness aside, the young man in this cell was in peril of his life.

  The door opened into dark and showed them the morsel in question…a small lump of knees and elbows in the light of the lantern Uwen held high. The lump moved…a boy who hid his face and squinted at the light, then, vision obtained between knee and elbows, let out a startlingly pitiful sound and attempted to be completely invisible. Terror lanced through the gray space, and Tristen drew in a sharp breath and forbade the boy that invisibility, on all levels.

  “Be still!” he said, and now he knew why he had bidden his guard gather this boy along with all the missing staff. Wizard-gift was in him.

  “M’lord!” the waif cried and flung himself on his face in the dirty straw, and there all things stopped, in the gray space and in this place that stank with a remembered stench, and that held all the terror he himself had felt here.

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  “Paisi,” Tristen said more gently. “Paisi is your name.”

  “No, no, m’lord, ’at’s somebody else.”

  “Look up. Look at me.”

  Emuin should have come down, Tristen thought now, because the wizard-feeling rattled off the walls. But then, Emuin hardly needed to, for he was there, having an ear to the gray place, reserving himself from the gusts of fear and alarm that blew wildly about the cell.

  In Amefin blood, the Guelenfolk said, was no little amount of the Sihhë. And he would not be surprised, in better light, and if the lad would look up at all at the lantern, if Paisi’s eyes were gray as old glass.

  “Paisi,” he said again. “Never hide from me.” Had not Mauryl said something of the sort to him, once?

  And indeed the boy did venture half a look, furtive and fearful.

  “See, you’re not harmed. You’re not to be harmed.”

  Terror still flooded forth, and defense, angry defense, but not denial.

  “Boy,” Uwen said, at his shoulder, a slow and tolerant voice,

  “your new lord’s been huntin’ ye high and low for a fortnight, an’ set some great store by findin’ ye, so’s ye might as well bring your head up an’ face ’im as near like a good, respectable lad as ye can manage. Get up, an’ make a proper respect to His Grace. Ye’re half a man…be all o’ one.”

  The youth, stung, did get to his feet, but kept his back against his corner, as if the wall was safety, or needful support.

  “What’s the charge again’ ’im, exactly?” Uwen asked with a glance over his shoulder at Ness. They had heard a confused account of theft, above, but Uwen asked particulars.

  “Pilferage from m’lord’s wagons,” Ness said.

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  “A thief,” Tristen said, recalling his impression above.

  “A hungry boy, m’lord,” Ness said, bravely. “Bein’ afraid to come to the gate where he usually got a bit o’ bread an’ a meal or two off the kitchen leavin’s, an’ carry messages for the guard.

  We ain’t seen ’im since the order went out to find ’im.”

  “And he guides strangers, do you, Paisi?”

  “M’lord,” was all the boy was willing to say, and the fear in the gray space was overwhelming.

  “They been chasin’ ’im all the day. An’ was in the way o’

  hangin’ ’im,” Ness said. “For theft o’ personal goods.”

  “They will not hang him,” Tristen said. He had seen men hang, and had no desire to see this boy meet such a fate. “Not this boy, and no one else, will they hang. If there are thieves or hungry folk, send them to me.”

  “M’lord,” Ness said faintly and fearfully, acknowledging the order.

  Paisi, too, stared at him with the same wide-eyed look the young villagers in Guelessar had had, burning curiosity and stark fear commingled. It was a summer and a fall since they had looked at one another, and Tristen was not sure he would have recognized Paisi by the look alone…a boy, of what years Tristen had no idea how to reckon by looking at him. But this was indeed the boy who had found him wandering in the streets of the town and guided him to Cefwyn, and now he knew it was no happenstance that had drawn Paisi to him, though neither of them had known it then. Ness had been there. And surely Ness remembered.

  “How old might you be?” he asked Paisi: nearly, but not quite a man, was the reckoning his eye made, and Paisi himself only shrugged as if that, like other things, escaped him.

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  “Little as fourteen, much as sixteen winters,” Uwen said in the subject’s silence. “An’ he don’t have proper manners for ye to bring ’im into a fine house, m’lord. ‘E might do well in the guard if he learnt to stand an’ look at a man.”

  What should he do with the boy now he had found him?

  He had never yet reckoned that part of his search. It had only mattered to him to know where Paisi was, and to know that he was close to him and could not fall into the hands of anyone else. He had added Paisi to his list of those souls he wanted found, and found for the same reasons as he would secure wards and latch windows, gathering the power of the household close in one place, not scattering it abroad, available to any ill intention that wandered in from Elwynor.

  But he had never, when he had first met Paisi, been aware of the gift in him. He had been very marginally aware of the gift in himself, on that confused evening. But he had no doubt at all now why Paisi of all boys in Henas’amef had happened across him, and guided him to Cefwyn’s gate. No chance, but wizardry had brought him to Cefwyn. He had wondered was there somewhere else he was supposed to have gone, perhaps to Elwynor or to the Lord Regent…but meeting Paisi now, he knew it was no chance, and that Cefwyn’s court was where Mauryl had intended him to go.

  That was a profound realization, one that led him astray to Ynefel and back, so that he needed Uwen’s touch on the arm to remember what was essential, to find the boy someplace other than a straw-lined cell.

  He did not want the boy loose and unwatched, no more than Mauryl’s letters or Mauryl’s books or a staff that Mauryl had leaned on. The wizardry that had sent him into the world had brushed past this boy

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  and
made of the boy a pivot-point on which so much else turned.

  “He might help Tassand with Emuin’s tower, if he were of a mind. I think I would prefer him in the house and not out of it.”

  “He’ll steal the silver, m’lord. He wouldn’t want to, but I fear temptation’d be too much for the lad. He can’t rightly reckon his prospects. What ye hold up to ’im is so far beyond his ken as the sun and the stars is, and he just don’t know how to think of silver an’ hungry folk an’ what he wants all at the same time.”

  “Nor do I,” Tristen said, bringing silence all around him.

  “Yet I try.” It was firmer and firmer in his mind that with all else unhinged in the world, any piece of his own left unclaimed could become an adit for sorcery, a danger as great as a broken ward. He had not been prepared to find Paisi so urgently claiming his attention. He had certainly not been prepared to find him in trouble with the king’s guard and arrested for theft.

  But he was not utterly surprised, either. Uwen was right. Paisi was not a boy easy to love.

  In fact he wondered if anyone but Ness had ever cared for him. And he wondered for what reason outside the common goodness of Ness’s heart anyone had seen him fed and clothed.

  He had had Mauryl when he was foolish and helpless. But who had cared for Paisi’s needs? And why?

  “Is he yours?” he asked Ness. “Is he kin of yours?”

  “M’lord,” Ness said faintly, unsure, it was likely, what claiming Paisi might entail, or wherein he might be deemed at fault. “No, he ain’t kin. He ain’t no one’s kin, that I know. But we an’ the lads at the gate, we took care of ‘im, an’ he kind of slipped about the streets an’ told us if there was somethin’

  amiss.”

  “Then he has had a use.”

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  “Aye, m’lord, sort of a use. An’ ’e ain’t stole except once. Or twice.”

  “Has he lied to you?”

  “Not so’s ever mattered. ’E tells tales. ’E’s a boy. Boys do.”