“My lord.” There was fervent intent in Drusenan’s voice. “I swear it. And your wall you shall have, my lord.”
“With a gate in it, and two towers for archers.” He had in mind exactly how he wished it would look, smooth white stone, with great towers; but he knew sensibly that in haste and with unskilled labor, it would be rough stone and wood.
“There is the ruin there,” said Drusenan. “There, shall we build? Of the old stone?”
He was confounded for a moment, and then Cevulirn said,
“Whatever serves to raise that wall faster, I think His Grace will approve.”
They went inside, and back up to their chilled blankets, he and Cevulirn, while the men settled in the lower hall, with understanding, now, of the village secrets and the loyalty of Bryn, alike.
“A wall has stood there,” Cevulirn said, “where you direct the wall to be. It’s on the oldest maps. Did you know?”
“A Sihhë one?” He had not known. He was troubled to think so, but not altogether so.
“Barrakkêth raised it, and at other…”
… points in the hills, Cevulirn said, but he already FORTRESS OF OWLS / 239
knew what Cevulirn would say. He could see his wall as he had seen it in planning, a string of small outposts which in some degree corresponded with the villages that stood there now, linking a series of steep-faced hills.
These villages had once been a source of supply to powerful garrisons. That had been the importance of Bryn, their ancient duty to the Sihhë kings. That was the source of their prominence in Amefel. The system of defenses Unfolded to him, with unwalled Althalen in the heart of such a bristle of defenses no enemy could prevail…
Instead Althalen had rotted at the heart, and the interest of the halfling kings in the people that toiled in uninteresting peace in the countryside had failed: long peace, and stability, and long, long dearth of ambition or purpose in existence.
Had it been good…or otherwise…for the villages under their rule?
Crissand spoke for the villages, and understood the farmers, and pleaded for attention to them. Crissand…aetheling, by the same blood Cuthan shared, that might even run in Drusenan of Bryn.
He said nothing after that, only felt a chill through the blankets and his clothing and despite the body lying next to him.
What had he done, in ordering these things? One moment he had been sure; and now he lay close to shivering at the thought of what he had commanded to exist, and at a title he had all but promised to bestow.
He, who had read the Book that Mauryl had given him…or that Mauryl had returned to him, whichever was the case: Barrakkêth’s book, outlining the principles of magic, the fluid character of time and place, on which wizards so profoundly depended and which they attempted to nail in place.
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False, Barrakkêth would say: nothing is so certain. The patterns were what mattered. The patterns and not the substance.
A village is the realm, the realm a village, and the kingdom fares as well as any of its parts.
Might he then heal Althalen?
In a morning aglow with clouds, they brought out their horses, disturbing the sleep of the exiles from Elwynor. The village wives had made a great pot of porridge in the open air, and every man and every villager and the fugitives as well had hot porridge steaming in the wintry breeze. Faces stung red with cold all bore smiles this morning.
“Fare well,” everyone called after them when they set out, and “Gods keep Your Lordship and Your Grace!” wafted after them as they rode out. “Gods save Amefel and gods save Ivanor! And gods save the lord of Bryn!”
The new lord of Bryn rode with them a short way to the two hills in the distance. It was a stream-riven cut through a wall of similar hills, and a shallow ford near two graceful, winter-bare beeches.
And there, too, icicled and snow-bedight, stood the ruin of two towers, one on either side, rock cut from the two hills. The quarry, too, was picked out in snow on the nearer hill.
“My wall,” Tristen said, amazed at how exactly it answered to his vision. He could imagine the fallen blocks in place, and the gates of bronze, figured with forbidding faces.
“Gates to let honest comers through,” he said to Drusenan.
“And men to stand guard.”
“With the old stone already cut,” the new earl said, “by spring your towers will stand.” Then Drusenan
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added, “As a boy I played among these hills, in and out these towers. So with every boy in Modeyneth. We made troops and fought battles.”
“Against whom?” Having never been a boy, he could scarcely imagine what boys knew or did.
“Oh, the sheep. Scores of enemies.”
“Guelens,” Cevulirn supplied wryly, not a Guelen himself, and drew a chagrined look from the young lord of Bryn.
“I think so we imagined,” Drusenan said.
“This time, against Tasmôrden,” Tristen said quietly, uncertain of the currents that flowed here. “But not against the like of those folk you shelter. I’ll give orders to Captain Anwyll at the river to watch out for others. He’s a good man, and if he comes here, as he and his messengers must, trust him. His reports will do you no harm.”
“I take your word, my lord, with all goodwill. As I give you mine. What more can words do?”
In such small exchanges of politeness Tristen found himself lost more than not, but in this saying, in this moment between himself and the new lord of Bryn, he felt the currents in the gray space moving and roiled, and the very stones so tinged with power he could draw it into his nostrils along with the scent of snow and cold rock.
He looked up the snowy rock face, and at the towers, and at the skeletal beeches, which were not part of his vision.
Green things had come here and grown in peace; and a barren place looming with threat had existed only for the games of children and the pasturage of sheep for decades.
His orders changed it back. It would stand and threaten again, and children would not play here: soldiers would stand guard; and a forbidden wall would
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stand here as it had stood before. He rode along it, eyes at times shut to the wall as it was, but old Lines answered him, old Lines leapt up at his touch, and would grow stronger with the work of Men’s hands.
Cefwyn would forgive him. Cefwyn forgave him and would forgive, no matter the mind of his northern barons.
“I had not thought,” Tristen said to Cevulirn as they rode away to the north, leaving the lord of Bryn to his task, “I had not even known stones had stood there when I ordered it. What brought it down? Do you know?”
“Oh, easily. Selwyn Marhanen ordered the Amefin fortresses cast down…and the northern defenses went with them. Folly,”
Cevulirn said to the brisk rhythm of the horses at a walk, “folly to have dismantled the defenses with Elwynor continually at war, but the prospect of having the wall held from the other side doubtless entered into the king’s decision.”
If that were so, the Elwynim would have seized territory far into Amefel…and by the Red Chronicle, there had been Amefin who hoped for that, many of them.
“You’ve given leave for the raising of walls,” Cevulirn said.
“But Cefwyn will agree, I think, and best the word of it reach him quietly. The northern barons certainly won’t like it. And His Majesty should know beforehand and not be surprised by your breaches of law.”
“Yes,” he said, determined to send a messenger on the heels of the last, as soon as he reached home and the most direct route.
But his wall, he was resolved, should stand, and even in its early stages, would check any advance by FORTRESS OF OWLS / 243
way of the main road toward Henas’amef.
And with small intrusions stopped, and only the sheepwalks and the meadows and stony hillsides for a route into the land, no large force could move with any speed, certainly none with the great en
gines Cefwyn feared. Henas’amef’s old walls were not fit for modern war, so Cefwyn had said; and unhappily, neither was Ilefínian across the river, so Ninévrisë had said.
Walls built for magic, Cefwyn had also said. In those days, in their pride, the halfling Sihhë had had even Althalen as an unwalled city, and trusted to their magic.
So he had done, and whether Cevulirn had guessed what he did, he had no knowledge. All wishes aided the wards, and he thought he had had wishes from that quarter, such as they were.
Oh, he longed for leave to be riding this road with a troop of light cavalry, more than followed them now…as he would, if Cefwyn had simply failed to forbid him.
And all along the way his eyes swept the snow-bleached hills for likely routes and lookouts.
Cevulirn, too, saw more than spoke.
They paused to change about horses in due course, and by noon, at a place where signs said Anwyll had camped even last night, they shared the bread and cheese the village had sent with them, Cevulirn’s men grown easier, and more inclined to laughter in the evident success of their venture in this snowy land.
By afternoon the road had passed through that ridge of hills that contained the Lenúalim’s broad stream; their riding began to be generally downhill, easier on the horses. From one last rise they could see
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far and wide across the land, to the sunset and white hills and the small woods, and the smoke of village fires somewhat to the darkening east.
Here, too, was a sight that Unfolded names and places: Asfiad, and Edlinnadd, but when he asked Cevulirn whether the names were thus, Cevulirn said Aswyth and Ellinan were the names.
So it was like reading the Book, written in a hand he had not recognized until the words themselves came back, and then it seemed he had known not alone the hand, but every flaw in the pages, every place where the hand had compromised a letter to avoid a roughness.
So when he thought of Asfiad, he thought of a well and a dark-eyed woman, as if it were yesterday, and he shivered in the cold wind the evening sent, under a gray and fading sky.
All the colors of the sunset had faded.
Yet he knew this land, and so the river shore Unfolded to him, never seen, but there in his heart of hearts…indeed he had pored over maps before this, and had sure knowledge of some of the places; but now it spread out, winterbound, and white, dulled with evening, and full of names not in the maps, memories of springtime and summer and autumn so vivid they took his breath.
“We may not reach the camp,” Cevulirn said, “but Anwyll must have gotten there. He’s had good luck with the carts.”
The oxcarts carried a great deal, but moved excruciatingly slowly: would move slowly on their way to Guelessar, too, and the weather was a question. Tristen considered the matter of Cefwyn’s carts, gazing out above red Gery’s ears. Sometimes he thought he rode black Dys, which was foolish: Dys was at home. Sometimes, too, he heard the rumble of armor, which FORTRESS OF OWLS / 245
was surely the recollection of Lewenbrook: the noise of the muster of the south and the heavy horse at full charge, armor a-rattle and hooves beating on late-summer sod. Had this place ever seen a battle?
But underfoot this evening was the soft, crisp fracture of unblemished snow under Gery’s feet, a walking pace beside Cevulirn’s gray, the banners all furled now that they were in desolate territory, with no eye to see.
He shivered despite the thick cloak. Perhaps it was like the wall, like the Book, and Mauryl’s spell that had Called him into the world was written everywhere across the land, ready to Unfold to him with frightening immediacy.
There was little time, something kept saying to him: there was so little time to seize this Pattern and make it move as he wished.
C H A P T E R 3
To the royal desk came all the accustomed trivia and the daily urgencies that faced the Crown: the proposed fishing weirs across Lissenbrook, among the accounting of fletchers requesting goose quills, which Cefwyn saw no reason should rise above the level of concern of the Commander of the Guard, except he had asked to be informed of any deficiency in the preparations or the movement of carts.
Besides that small crisis of goose feathers, he had a report from the royal forester regarding the condition and take of deer from the royal preserve, in a winter not as bitter as feared, the condition of the forest and the abundance of hare.
And from a tenant the usual complaint of foxes making depredations into domestic stores, and a request to hunt them.
Besides there was a wall wanting mending in Imor, on royal lands he had not seen since taking the throne and which he despaired of seeing in the future: he loved that hunting lodge and its command of the southern hills.
He thought of the woods near Wys, saw in his mind’s eye the afternoon light coming through winter branches. He smelled the moist, sweet air after a snowfall…and envied the life of the foresters who had the care of it for their sole duty, hunting deer, when his own task was, endlessly, fruitlessly, hunting Elwynim rebels.
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What would it be, to know on rising for the day, that one’s duty was to walk in the woods, take account of deer and hare and badger, watch the flight of the birds and understand the weather? He was sure the office was somewhat more troublesome than that: no life was as simple as it seemed. But what did the forester think? Did he think how splendid it would be to be the king, and rise leisured to the worship of countless courtiers, dine from a golden service, and be fawned upon continually?
The golden service was true, but golden cups made hot tea go cold. He preferred humble pottery, thought it luxurious for a king otherwise damned to cold tea, and maintained a set of the cheapest by the fireside. As for the fawning…ask Ryssand.
A morning where the letters abounded with nothing more grievous than fishing rights or requests for petty permissions was itself luxury, compared to the convolute dealings of his lords, and gods save him, his almoner, who he knew was only waiting his chance for complaint.
He did not hold audiences often enough. Men had no choice but to approach him with letters, and Emuin reproached him for it. But it was far quicker to read about the foxes than to hear about them from some dyspeptic squire who’d had to wait his turn in a cold audience hall. The Sihhë-lords themselves had insisted on written petition, and had had an immense archive of records…which had flamed up mightily in the fall of Althalen, so he supposed: all that efficiency and good order sent up in smoke in an hour by his grandfather, who came of a sturdy people whose farmers felt entitled to complain to the king and send him gifts. Denied, they sent him letters, and more letters, paying a clerk, or worse, a priest, to write them up fair if they had no skill to do so.
And if the High King of Althalen had heard his 248 / C. J. CHERRYH
common farmers and paid attention, Emuin had said peevishly, he might have heard what would have saved him and his realm from your grandfather, who at least listened to his farmers, for all his other faults. Paper and parchment are no substitute for faces and the sight of fields.
They were not a substitute. And when he thought of it, he had rather look at turnip fields than the face of Lord Murandys.
But common farmers did not easily get past the guards of the Guelesfort these days. The great barons had ceased to rub sleeves with such common fellows, during his father’s reign, except on feast days.
“Your Majesty.” A page flitted near. “The Lord Commander is here.”
A page had kept the Lord Commander standing in the foyer.
His staff had taken his admonition to preserve the king’s privacy for his slugabed bride a shade too literally.
The page proffered a sealed letter, with Ryssand’s colors.
All the ease went out of him. “I’ll see the Lord Commander,”
he said, and in the same moment his bride came through the door from the inner chambers, a second dawn in his day. He had read, waiting for her; and now…
“Idrys is
on his way in,” he said. “Forgive me.”
“Ilefínian,” she surmised in immediate concern.
“No. I don’t think so. But Ryssand is no good news. Sit by me.”
Idrys arrived in the room before she had quite seated herself, Idrys, Lord Commander of the household, the black harbinger of disaster.
“Ryssand dares send to me,” Cefwyn said, taking up his knife to loose the seal. “Do you know what the matter is?”
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The seal proved breached. Idrys regularly did so. It was his duty to know.
“I confess so,” Idrys said. “But Your Majesty should read it.”
A moderately bland missive, until his eye struck the line: seeking Your Majesty’s understanding regarding the actions of Your Majesty’s obedient subject in Amefel, in the protection of Your Majesty’s interests…
and then:
I seek an early audience for a man Your Majesty once favored with his trust on matters of utmost urgency …
He looked up at Idrys, already angry…not at the news, which was not news to him, but at the brazenness of it. “He’s speaking for Parsynan…I sent him from court on that account. How dare he?”
“Oh, read to the end.”
He read further, finding a formal complaint of Tristen’s theft of Parsynan’s property and charges of threats against a Crown officer’s life.
“Am I surprised? Recount to me the causes whereby I am surprised at this sweet union of purpose, master crow. Parsynan and Ryssand! I’m only astonished at my credulity, taking this man’s recommendations to put that damned thief in office in the first place! Good loving gods!”
“The gods are allied with His Holiness, one would suppose…and that devotion is still firmly bought. I do keep an ear to it.”
“Gods hope.” He scanned the letter. “Abuse of his person.