Fortress of Owls

  “No, my lord.”

  He caught Crissand’s eye by accident and the gray space gaped around them, not of his own will.

  He was amazed. To assail him in the gray space was temerity on Crissand’s part, a rash venture at meeting him in wizardry, on his own ground.

  The gray place exposed hearts without mercy, and that exposure Crissand might not have realized until it was too late…for Crissand whipped away from him, angry and ashamed, and the gray winds swirled and darkened steadily.

  — That he has sworn to me? Tristen wondered, and would not let Crissand go or break back into the world of Men. Are

  you jealous? Why?

  Crissand was snared, and could not escape. And shame burned deep in Crissand’s heart.

  In the world, he bowed his head. “My lord,” Crissand said, red-faced, and all the while Durell sipped his wine. So with Azant.

  But he looked straight at Crissand, in whom, more than any other, of all the earls, he saw a love, not of what he was, but of him.

  But what Crissand wanted he wanted with a great, a heart-bending passion, exclusive of others. It had FORTRESS OF OWLS / 391

  become a stronger and stronger one, his rebellion just now an assault of love and need, desperate, and now confounding both of them in its sudden, disastrous misdirection.

  — Have I offended you? Tristen asked.

  There was a stilling of the clouds then, a great heartbroken calm.

  — The wrong isn’t in you, but in me. I’m Aswydd,

  doesn’t that say it? The flaw is in the blood. I was not

  with you. For all of this, I haven’t been with you, and now

  you have an army without us…

  — You’ve found this place. Who told you?

  — I followed you, my lord.

  Followed him, indeed. Friendship, love, jealousy, all had broken down the walls. And Crissand had perhaps done it before, but at distance, and learned what could set him in danger.

  — Being here is easy once you find the way, Tristen said.

  Isn’t it? That’s the very easiest thing. You believed me

  when you swore. Believe me now. Jealousy moved you.

  — Truth, Crissand said, downcast, then, fiercely: But we are

  your people, my lord. We were first.

  He weighed that, and a sudden sureness made him shake his head.

  — For now. But there’ll be a day I’ll only have you for

  my friend. You’ll sit where I do. You’ll be the aetheling.

  So Auld Syes said. Have you forgotten that? Or didn’t

  you hear?

  — Never in your place, my lord!

  — Never separate from me, Tristen said, oddly assured and at peace in his own heart. But not lord of Amefel. Lord of

  Althalen and Ynefel. Cefwyn was right, was he not?

  “My lord,” Crissand said aloud, shaken, and pale of face.

  392 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “Go home,” Tristen said, then, to all the company, and Crissand, too, bowed and went his way, downcast and ashamed.

  He went with Uwen and his guard.

  But he was with Crissand while Crissand walked the hall, and while he gathered up his guard near the doors.

  He was aware when Crissand walked out and down the stable-court steps, in fearful thought.

  He was aware and while he himself walked upstairs and Crissand walked, farther and farther away, across the muddy cobbles of the stable-court, seeking the West Gate, and his own house.

  He left Crissand standing confused on the damp cobbles outside the gate. “My lord?” Crissand’s guard asked him, finding his young earl lost in thought.

  But Tristen did not approach him further, only left him to think his thoughts, and to reach his conclusions, inevitable as they must be.

  Aetheling. Ruler of Amefel.

  He went into his apartments, into the care of his staff. He suspected that, in the stir the two of them had made in the gray space with their quarrel, Emuin had been aware, and that Emuin at least did not disapprove his action—or his warning to Crissand.

  He gave his cloak to Tassand, his gloves to another servant, let a third remove his belt, and set his sword in its accustomed place, by the fireside.

  Illusion was the writing on one side of his sword, and Truth was written on the other.

  And he had learned the edge was the answer.

  Finding Crissand’s edge was no simple matter. Crissand he feared would cause him pain, as he had caused Cefwyn pain.

  They were models, one of the other. Cefwyn had doggedly followed Emuin’s advice, regarding him; now FORTRESS OF OWLS / 393

  he must do the same for Cefwyn—and for Crissand.

  He took up his pen, dipped it in ink, wrote on clean paper what he dared not say openly, but what he hoped Cefwyn would understand obliquely…truth, and illusion, trusting Cefwyn again to find the useful edge.

  “Ye should rest,” Uwen said, straying bleary-eyed from his bedroom. The candles had burned far down. Some had gone out. It was the dead part of the night, and nothing was stirring but the wind outside and the steady battering of wind against the windows. “Ye don’t sleep near enough, lad. Now what in hell are ye doin’ at this hour?”

  Now that Uwen said it Tristen felt the weariness of actions taken, decisions made, the small hope of things accomplished.

  Before him, he saw a stack of matters dealt with in a night that for many reasons, Emuin’s answer and the Elwynim and the confrontation with Crissand included, had afforded him no prospect of sleep.

  It was the second such night in a row…yet weary as he was, he had no inclination to sleep.

  Uwen had gone sensibly to bed at midnight, but his face too, candlelit, stubbled with gray beard, seemed weary and fretted with responsibility and his lord’s sleepless nights.

  How much had Uwen watched, he asked himself.

  “I nap,” he said to Uwen. “Go back to your bed. Don’t worry for me.”

  “I don’t know where ye find the strength to stay awake,”

  Uwen said with a frown, “or again, maybe I guess, an’ I’d ask ye take to your bed like an ordinary lad an’ rest your head if I thought ye’d regard me. I don’t know whether witchery’s a fair trade for hours

  394 / C. J. CHERRYH

  again’ a pillow, but honest sleep is afore all a good thing, m’lord, and makes the wits work better, an’ I’d willingly see ye have more of it.”

  “I’ll try. Go to bed.”

  He thought that Uwen would go away then. But Uwen lingered, came closer, until the same circle of two remaining candles held them both, the other sconce having failed.

  “Ye recall,” Uwen said quietly, “when ye was first wi’ us, how ye’d learn a new thing and ye’d sleep an’ sleep till the physicians was all confounded. D’ ye recall that?”

  “I do recall.”

  “And now it don’t happen, m’lord, ’cept down there in hall, wi’ you an’ young Crissand staring back an’ forth an’ not a sensible word. Ye don’t sleep. Ye’re not helpin’ yourself.”

  “No,” he agreed. “I suppose I’m not.”

  “An’ by me, my lord, I’d far rather the sleepin’ than the not sleepin’, if ye take my meanin’. So I ask ye, please. Go to bed.

  Take some wine if ye will. But try.”

  He had been all but set on a more forceful dismissal, but of all others, Uwen did not deserve a dismissal or a curt answer.

  Indeed, differences. A change had happened in the way he met the world of new things, and the way he ordered Men here and there. What new things he encountered did not so much Unfold to him these days as turn up in the shadows of his intentions, warning him only a scant step before he must wield the knowledge. His life had acquired a sense of haste, and feeling of being a step removed from calamity. He was engaged now in battle with paper and clerks and carpenters, with Elwynim companies and grain from Olmern, with the adoration of desperate men and the jealously of his friends.

/>   FORTRESS OF OWLS / 395

  He resented sleep.

  But…Flesh and blood as well as spirit, Mauryl had indeed warned him, with the sharp rap of his staff on the steps. Crack!

  Crack-crack! The echoes still lived in his memory, still made him wince. Pay attention! Mauryl would tell him. Uwen had told him. Should he not heed?

  “See here,” Uwen said with a sidelong glance at the brazen dragons. “Will ye take my bed? I don’t have any of them things leaning above my rest. I don’t wonder ye don’t sleep un’erneath them damn things, but rest ye must.”

  “I promise. I promise, Uwen. Go off to bed. I’ll put myself to bed in a very little time.”

  Uwen looked doubtful, and began to leave, then turned back, feet set.

  “Swear,” Uwen said.

  “By the gods?” he asked wryly, knowing Uwen knew where that study sat with him, in Efanor’s little book.

  Uwen said not a thing. But neither, now, would Uwen leave.

  “I’ll go to bed,” Tristen said, conceding. “Go on. I’ll not need Tassand.”

  “Tassand’ll have my head if I don’t call ’im,” Uwen said, and went off to do that.

  So difficult things now became. And now Uwen had set his teeth in the matter of his master’s difficulties and would no more let go than a dog a bone.

  “M’lord?”

  Uwen was merciless, and insistent.

  So he took himself to bed, attended by two sleepy servants, loomed over by Aswydd dragons.

  Then, lying still in the dark, he found himself at the edge of exhaustion, and afraid, wanting just the little assurance things in the place were in order…he

  396 / C. J. CHERRYH

  stretched out his awareness as thin and subtle as a waft of air to the rooms around him, touched Uwen’s sleeping thoughts, and his guards’ drowsy watching at the door. Gathering sleep was like pitching a tent for protection, stretching thin ropes this way and that to ground he knew was stable.

  And when he extended his curiosity farther still, he was able to reach Emuin, who was distracted, and a boy, whose feet were cramped in new boots, and who kept Emuin’s night hours.

  He had not alarmed them or even attracted notice in his tenuous wandering. The boy poured tea and served in fear, his concentration all for the gray-haired untidy man in the tower with him, while Emuin chased the mysteries of the stars through his charts. The boy thought mostly of food and whether he dared reach for the last small cake.

  It was enough: he had succeeded once at subtle approach, assured himself his household was safe and folded around him like a blanket.

  He spread himself thinner and thinner on the insubstantial winds…was aware of all the servants and the guards throughout the Zeide, all about their own business when they were not about his; he was aware of the town, asleep but for a few who watched or worked, and one man of ill intent whose hand shook under his attention and faltered of the lock he had meant to open.

  The man ran, and did not elude him, but hid shivering in the shadows, in fear of justice that might last him for days.

  But fear was enough, unless he found the man twice.

  He sailed away, longed to reach Crissand, but in this fey mood sent his thoughts past that house, down the street, to the gates.

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 397

  He was aware even further, of men and horses outside the walls, and villages drowsing under a sifting of snow north and south of Henas’amef.

  He felt the lonely camp at Althalen, and the soldiers’ camp on the Lenúalim’s cold and windy shores; he dreamed of wings shadowing the road, broad, blunt wings, peaceful in the night.

  Snow began, and fat flakes whirled and spun beneath those wings.

  He had found Owl, so his dream told him. At last he had found the source of his fey restlessness, and rode Owl’s thoughts, as Owl showed him all the land from high, high above.

  Owl flew right across the village of Modeyneth, the guard posts, the bridges, and the river, and soared on above the land of Elwynor, to a city afflicted by siege and ravaged by fire.

  There was Tasmôrden. There was the enemy that threatened Ninévrisë’s people and Cefwyn’s peace, and Owl circled above that place, finding the insubstantial Lines of the fallen town also broken and faltering in their strength.

  Now he was well awake in this dream, and angry, and violating every sense of caution he had urged in Crissand.

  He saw, yes, the faint glow of wizardry about Tasmôrden, not that Tasmôrden himself wielded it well, but that it was in the air of the place, and that somehow it moved there, raw and reddened and white with struggle.

  There was wizardry about the town as well, ragged blue of guard and ward, Uleman’s making, Tristen thought: that clear light, however fragmentary, was like Uleman’s work, Ninévrisë’s father. His care, his courage, all, all defended Ilefínian, but had not prevailed to hold it. The ragged red had come in on the 398 / C. J. CHERRYH

  edge of sword and axe, leapt up in the burning and smoldered in the glow of embers.

  Bodies, untended and unburied, lay frozen in doorways and at shrines, under a dusting of snow that began to bring innocence back to the night.

  A banner flew above the high fortress of Elwynor, and he knew that banner…not the black-and-white Checker and Tower of the Regent of Elwynor, no, but a black banner, a single star that was very like the black banner of Althalen.

  With a crown above the star.

  Was it a vision of things now, this very night, and was that the banner Tasmôrden claimed? If so, dared this man appropriate to himself the land and honor Cefwyn had given, and then set a crown on it, the emblem of a king?

  Away, he wished Owl, on a thought, and Owl soared away south, bending a long, long turn, and crossed the river again far to the west, where Marna Wood shadowed the snow, and glimmered with far more potent wards.

  Up, up, up and aside from the barrier, Owl’s wings tilted sharply, and Owl took a dizzying plunge through buffeting winds as Owl met something and flinched.

  Suddenly Tristen found the wind rushing past him and the earth rushing up.

  Air turned to substance, became the bedclothes, and the frantic pounding of his heart became a leaden rhythm of recent threat.

  He was still in midair, even lying on his bed. That was the way it felt. And Emuin had stopped his pen, having blotted his page. His agitated next reach overset the inkpot. He righted the pot without a second thought and held his breath at the feeling that shivered through the night.

  — Tristen? Emuin asked.

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 399

  — Safe, he said within the gray space.

  Yet the west in the gray space shadowed dark as his dream, and the winds blew cold to the bone.

  — It was a dream, sir, no more than a dream.

  — Was it? Emuin asked. Hovering there within Emuin’s heart was a question and a fear directed toward that shadow, for that was a deep and dark one.

  But in the east, now, a second shadow grew, a niggling small one, and a faint glow of light that had no explanation.

  And a third, in the north, where the black banner flew.

  — There is a wizard, Tristen said, and sat up in bed, catching the covers about him against the chill. There is

  someone, here, and here, and here. Do you see the glows,

  sir? It is more than one. One’s come close…one’s followed

  me…

  — Be careful! Emuin chided him.

  But Tristen flung himself out of bed, caught the bed covering around him and trailed it to the room next, losing it as he reached the hearth and his sword that stood against the stones.

  He snatched up the hilt and slung the sheath off.

  The silver inscribed on the blade, Illusion, flashed in the dim light, and the sheath clattered across the floor. Naked, sword in hand, he faced the window into the shadowed night, and saw all the town of Henas’amef flared up in Lines beyond the glowing Lines of the Zeide’s walls. There were all the ward
s, all the magic of craftsmen and householders warding their own doors and walls: the common magic of parents and homekeepers and the pure trust of children…all these things Unfolded to him in that unworldly glow, block by block, house by house, outward toward the great defensive wall of Henas’amef itself, a blue bright Line often retraced and constantly tended.

  400 / C. J. CHERRYH

  Something had challenged them.

  But they held. They held.

  Uwen’s reflection arrived in the glass, Uwen’s pale skin ghostlike across that angular maze of Lines before his vision.

  Uwen’s silver hair was loose and at odds about his balding temples; he had his sword in hand and a cloak caught about him, nothing more, nor asked the nature of the alarm…he had simply come, armed, to his lord’s side, the two of them naked to the cold of the threatening night and the glory of the town.

  “The Lines,” Tristen said, “all have leapt up. Stand, stand still.”

  “What does ’e mean?” Other reflections arrived, night guards coming in from the doorway, servants from their quarters and the back hall.

  “Nothing’s gotten in,” Tristen said. He was aware of all the Lines before and below and behind and above him, even with his eyes open, a net in which he stood; and then of the stairs that ran to Emuin’s tower.

  At that, he was aware of Emuin, who with stealth and subtlety he was only learning had been there for the last few moments. Emuin stood with him, there in the gray space, and the blue lines glowed softly, running along the edge of the steps of Emuin’s tower and down and down again and along the lower hall on the opposite side, and up again, quick and live as the spark of the sun on winter ice.

  “M’lord?” Uwen asked.

  “Nothing has come in,” Tristen said. “The place is safe.”

  “Aye, m’lord,” Uwen said, and the guards with him said nothing at all, only looked about them uneasily.

  Then, only then, Tristen set his hand on the stone of the sill and wished the whole town safe.

  Only one place resisted him, and it was that discontinuity of stones in the lower hall, that change from old to FORTRESS OF OWLS / 401

  new that marked the join of the old fortress to the new: from the first time he had confronted it he had known it was a weakness in the building.