Fortress of Owls

  He wished, of course, not to be seen gawping about, as Uwen called it: the duke of Amefel had to rule with dignity and become like other lords, immune to wonder, attentive to serious matters, never easily distracted from the solemn business of his rank.

  Oh, but so many things were new in this, his first winter in the world. The eaves of the gatehouse and its roof slates shone so bright in a moment of clear sunlight that they hurt the eyes.

  Never in the world was light so powerful, and yet the air itself was cold.

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  Meanwhile the lad with the standards had delivered them to Sergeant Gedd, foremost of the standard-bearers riding with him today, and was about to pursue his own business. But Tristen, seeing those tow young, strong legs, pounced on the messenger he needed and nipped the lad’s sleeve before he could quite escape.

  “My lord!” Eyes were round and cheeks were cold-stung to a wondrously fiery blush. “May I serve m’lord?”

  “Go inside, go upstairs to my apartments, and tell whoever comes to the door that I’ve spoken to master Emuin, do you have that? Say that Tassand is to go up to the tower as soon as possible and set it in order. Do you have all that?”

  “Yes, m’lord! Tassand’s to go to the tower!” The lad was solemn now, and puffed up with importance, and, dismissed, bowed and raced up the outside steps in frantic haste, slipping on the ice there.

  There went more mud into the halls, but certainly the boy was no worse than the soldiers. Advising Tassand might have waited until he returned from the ride: he had all but forgotten his agreement in the distraction of the hallway. But now Tassand would attend master Emuin before master Emuin could forget he had ever agreed, so they would not have that argument again. He might have the stairs clear and master Emuin’s noxious pots and powders out of the stairwell before evening, which might let Cook’s servants reach the old man with food without breaking their necks.

  On such chance encounters and with such chance-met messengers he did business, and that, he was sure, was part of the trouble. When they had set out from the capital he had felt overwhelmed with the size of the staff he had brought along, and now he found it a very scant number to accomplish the running of a province. Cook, an Amefin woman, had found him several reli

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  able new servants for the halls; Ness at the gate, who was Amefin, had found two more for the storerooms; and the clerk they had brought from Guelemara, a Guelenman who nevertheless looked to make a home here in Amefel, was looking for likely lads with suitable training.

  The house staff he had inherited from Parsynan came from service in or to noble Amefin houses, each one of which had its ambitions and each one of which would hear reports from those they lent. Such servants as had served Lord Heryn and Orien had mostly fled across the river, some in fear of the king, some in fear of their neighbors and rivals…and those servants that did remain of the original staff had to be watched by the servants he trusted.

  But still he gathered them—all the servants, all the folk who in some way had dealt with him in his first days. He counted them part of Amefel, and his, even searching after the lad who had first met him as a stranger in Amefel and guided his steps to the gate-guards. He sought them out, guided them into his safekeeping…and thus out of the hands of malign working from across the river, not enough of a staff yet, and those missing pieces were well scattered and hard to find again, which the more persuaded him it was necessary. He was here. He had a Place in the world. Certain things and persons had led him to that Place, and having done so, they were snared in magic: therefore, they had to be found.

  Meanwhile, waiting for the lost to return and for the staff to reknit itself, they were short-handed.

  “So master Emuin is havin’ Tassand’s help after all,” Uwen said, standing beside him at the bottommost step, looking over the yard from that slight advantage, taller than he by that means, when ordinarily that was not the case.

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  “If he admits he ever agreed,” Tristen said. “But I’ve learned.

  I press my advantage while I have it.”

  “Gods know what’s in them baskets o’ his,” Uwen said. “I ain’t pokin’ into ’em, an’ I hope Tassand’s careful. Gods know what’ll crawl out.”

  The boys were bringing the horses up by now, and the guardsmen that were serving as his escort arrived, already ahorse, passing in front of one of the wagons. Its ox team backed away from the crowding of half a dozen horses, not something an ox hitch or its wagon did well, and its left wheel aimed for a stack of barrels.

  “Hold there!” Uwen shouted at the standing driver, seeing it in the same instant, and ran to slap the nearer ox on its rump and start it forward. The driver with his goad saw his dilemma and diverted his team on around the small circle of free space to face the gate, cart wheels not making the turn well, where Uwen again got to the fore, holding up both hands. “’At’s good.

  Now ye hold that cart right here, man, no matter who says otherwise, until His Grace is down the hill. Don’t ye be blockin’

  the road.”

  That effectively blocked all the other carts behind, who could not come through to load, but it saved them having that lumbering vehicle before them all the way down the hill…an incongruous precedence for a show of the ducal banners that would have been. The carts were gathering up the tents and heavy stores to take them down the hill, a slow process, that evidently had not started at dawn, when the ice was hard: they must have waited for the sun.

  And that raised a question where Captain Anwyll was, who was supposed to be dealing with the drivers and the setting forth of the supplies to the river. Tristen observed Uwen’s crisp passing of instructions, faulted Anwyll for his absence from the scene, then realized that he himself as the lord of Amefel had been

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  more properly looking out for such considerations as the order of precedence, rather than gazing at the icicles.

  Mooncalf, His Majesty’s commander had been wont to call him.

  “Where is Anwyll?” he asked Uwen.

  “Dunno, m’lord. I’ll find out.”

  The safety of others depended on him. He saw numerous failings in himself which he was resolved to mend, and knew that, no, it was not usually the grand things in which he failed: he had very reasonably, if high-handedly, contradicted the king’s orders, taken the wide risk with the weather in sending Cefwyn’s carts to the border with necessary supplies instead of back to Cefwyn, where they would wait idle all winter. The carters were irate: they had expected to be done and back on the road in the opposite direction, headed for Guelemara and their homes before the snows blocked the roads for good and all, and instead they were out on Amefin roads, which were little more than cattle-traces.

  More, while the carts would not move in the deep winter, they were still Cefwyn’s, and the king needed those wagons in Guelemara for very much the same reason as he himself was fortifying the border in the south. He hoped that he was right in his estimations—that no sudden Elwynim incursion on Cefwyn’s west would make them necessary in the north, for he was not only keeping Cefwyn’s carts for one more duty, he had also appropriated to border defense the detachment of Dragon Guard that had escorted him to Amefel.

  But he had had no choice. When Cefwyn had sent him to take command of the garrison of Guelen Guard, neither of them had foreseen the situation, that the Guelen Guard of the garrison would have so

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  bloodily offended against the Amefin that the Amefin would no longer deal with them. The Guelens had to be set down, the Dragons sent to do their work.

  Nor had he been able to ask Cefwyn what to do. Messages went slowly and unpredictably between Amefel and Guelessar, and with the weather, more so. He had not had a reply to his last message from the capital, it was six days to send and obtain an answer, at least, and meanwhile he could only solve the problems he had at hand: keep the disgraced
Guelens under tight rein, in garrison at the capital, and send the reliable Dragons to hold the river to be sure the Elwynim did not keep their promise to the earls of Amefel and invade.

  More, if the weather turned a little worse for a little longer, the river could freeze, and if it froze, there would be no division between Amefel and Elwynor. For that reason he wanted reliable men there to watch…especially over the main road at Anas Mallorn, north of Modeyneth, which was the only road that would carry a large force rapidly to the heart of Amefel.

  And that meant the men he was sending to the river had to have supply enough to last the winter in case the weather turned worse.

  So he had no choice but to borrow the king’s carts, weighing one disaster against another, and knowing Cefwyn was better served by a southern border in good order than by strict, uninformed obedience to his orders.

  Such decisions, strategy, and maneuvering of armies, he could make with a clear head and strong confidence. He had done all that, and it weighed very little on his mind. It was the daily and moment-by-moment details of the operation that eluded him, and the details from which the sights and the sparkle of the sun claimed his attention. He knew the captains should

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  have argued more strenuously about this day’s outing, about the carts, about the decisions he made, but no one had, and that was his abiding concern. They took his orders so well that no one told him his mistakes these days, and Uwen came back to him with no more than a shrug and a glance back at the drivers.

  “Fools,” Uwen said, tugging his hand into a gauntlet.

  Uwen should be here, administering the town. But Uwen would not let him ride out alone, and on the other hand, Amefel was too volatile a command, the feeling against Guelenfolk far too bitter to leave Captain Anwyll in charge of the capital. He left command to Lord Drumman, whom he trusted, an Amefin, and he hoped the Guelen Guard would create no new difficulty about it…not mentioning the other earls. He was only now learning which earl resented which other one in what particular respect.

  But Drumman was generally liked. Therefore, he sent Anwyll to do the one thing a determined Guelenman might do with the goodwill of the earls: guard the river; Uwen he set in as much authority as Uwen was willing to take, but today Uwen went with him…his guard did, too, Guelen and conspicuously fair amid the generally darker Amefin.

  “There’s Lord Meiden, m’lord,” Lusin said, and indeed, a little late himself, Earl Crissand had just ridden under the gate and past the rear of the inbound carts.

  But not just the earl. The earl brought with him his own escort, the men of Meiden all cloaked and armed, and now completely obstructing the small courtyard around the oxcarts…indeed, Crissand’s guard turned out to exceed his own, a show of force from a decimated house…he did not fail to notice it himself, as all around him the men of his own, Guelenborn, escort stiffened their backs and stared with misgivings.

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  Crissand, too, seemed to realize he had made a misstep, and rode up much more meekly than he had ridden in. “My lord,”

  Crissand said, above the discontent lowing of oxen, and dismounted to pay his respects. “I had expected far more men.

  Forgive me. Shall I send back my guard?”

  Did Crissand think so many guards prudent, and was Crissand right in estimating safety and risk out in his own rural land?

  Crissand was young as he, at least in apparent years, and did many things to excess, but he had never seemed to be a fool regarding Amefel, and knew his land. They were Crissand’s villages they proposed to visit. Tristen’s eyes passed worriedly over the situation, as confusion reigned for a moment in the small yard and the Guelenmen of the Dragon Guard eyed the Amefin of Crissand’s household in suspicious assessment amid the oxcarts.

  In the same moment a stableboy oblivious to all the rivalry of Guelen and Amefin escorts brought red Gery up, holding out the reins. Tristen found it easier to set his foot in the stirrup and be under way than to sort out the excess of guards and weapons and precedences and this lord’s sensibilities and that lord’s distrust. He was not unarmed, standing naked in his bath. He did not fear Crissand.

  “Bring them,” he said to Crissand’s anxious looking up at him.

  In truth he would be solely an Amefin lord, relying only on these men, once he dismissed his Guelen forces back to Guelessar, as he must when he had raised sufficient Amefin units.

  Was that why Crissand had brought so many—that Crissand had proposed to supply the escort for him?

  How he would have a ducal regiment in any good order by spring without setting one earl against

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  another was another question—which earldom would contribute men and how many? But it was not today’s question…for once he was up and had Gery’s lively force under him, the motion and the prospect of freedom chased all more complex thoughts from his head. He was in the right place; he had done the right things. He ached from too much sitting in chairs and far too many difficult and contentious decisions in recent days.

  He knew he had sat blind to the land he was supposed to be governing, and hearing his choices only from the lips of advisers. Now he had that saddle under him and Gery willing and eager to move, he was eager to go, and circled Gery about with an eye to the gate as Uwen and his guard mounted up.

  The two troops muddled ranks for a moment, then began to sort out in fair good spirits.

  The Dragon Guard themselves had been glad to have an outing away from the barracks, and good humor prevailed, though Tristen suspected a sharp rivalry still manifested in the haste and smartness with which the banner of Amefel unfurled in Sergeant Gedd’s hands. The Eagle on its red field made a brave splash of color against the whites and browns and grays of the yard; and after it the two black banners of his other honors unrolled from their staffs, the Tower of the Lord Warden of Ynefel and the Tower and Star of the Lord Marshal of Althalen…both honors without inhabitants, but Amefin ones, so the Amefin made much of them. It was a brave show; and protocol held the banner of the Earl of Meiden to unfurl second: a blue banner with the Sun in gold, as brave and bright as Earl Crissand himself, dark as his fellow Amefin but with a glance like the summer sky. He might have been embarrassed for a moment in the relative size of their guards; but the day was so brisk and keen there was no resisting the natural joy in him. There was love in

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  Crissand Adiran, of all the earls, a disposition to be near him, to seek his friendship—and how could he have thought ill of Crissand’s reasons?

  There was love, a reliable and a real love grown in a handful of days, and Tristen did not know why it was: friendship had happened to both of them, on the sudden, completely aside from Tristen’s both endangering and saving Crissand’s life. It was no reason related to that, it was no reason that either of them quite knew. Crissand had simply risen on his horizon like the sun of his banner…and that was that. Prudence aside, putting by all worry for master Emuin and his advice, and for the workmen and for all the household, all in the friendship that had begun to exist, they were together, and there was a great deal right with the day simply in that.

  With banners in the lead they rode out the iron-barred gates of the Zeide, gate-guards standing to sharp attention to salute them. The racket of their hooves echoed off the high frontages of the great houses around about as, wasting no time in the square, they began the downward course…numerous enough for an armed venture rather than a ride for pleasure, and they drew curious stares from those with business about the fortress gates, but as they entered the street the sun broke from a moment of cloud, shining all the way down the high street to midtown, lighting a blinding white blanket on gables of the high frontages, and that glorious sight gave no room for worry.

  Traffic had worn off the snow in the streets to a little edge of soiled ice, and the brown cobbles ran with disappointingly ugly melt down that trace of sunlight, but above, about the
eaves, all was glorious. The houses grown familiar to Tristen’s eye from the summer were all frosted with snow and hung with icicles,

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  and the sunlight danced and shone on them as they rode, shutters dislodging small falls of snow and breakage of ice as they opened for townsmen to see. The cheer in the company spread to the onlookers, who waved happily at this first sight of their new lord outside the fortress walls, and in company with Amefin. Already they had encouraged high spirits.

  And, oh, the icicles…small ones, large ones, and a prodigious great one at the gable of the baker’s shop, on a street as familiar to Tristen’s sight as his own hallway atop the hill…familiar, yet he had never noticed that gable, never noticed half the nooks and crannies and overhangs of the high buildings that carried such sun-touched jewelry today.

  It seemed wondrous to him, even here in the close streets.

  He turned to look behind them, gazing past the ranks of ill-as-sorted guardsmen and cheering towns-folk as dogs yapped and gave chase. It gave him the unexpected view of the high walls and iron gates of the Zeide, all jeweled and shining as if enchantment had touched them.

  Lord Sihhë! someone shouted out then, at which he glanced forward in dismay. Others called it out from the windows, Lord Sihhë and Meiden! in high good cheer. The sound racketed through the town, and people shouted it from the street.

  Lord Sihhë indeed. That, he had not wished. The Holy Father in Guelessar would never approve that title the people gave him; and the local Quinalt patriarch, before whom he had to maintain a good appearance, was sure to get the rumor of what the people shouted. Feckless as he had been, he had learned the price words cost, and he wished he could hush those particular cries…but they did it of love, nothing ill meant, and it was all up and down the street. The old blood might be anathema to the Guelen Quinalt; but

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