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Ryssand’s son was dead. He had a daughter for his heir…which the Quinaltines, ironically, would not allow, and he the greatest supporter of the strict Quinaltines. What was he to do?
Something to save himself, that would somehow twist and turn until it came out profitable to himself, that was more than likely.
And meanwhile he could get no message to Idrys to tell him there was a traitor within his ranks, no message to Cefwyn to assure him of better news from the south—not without risking a life and possibly putting a dangerous letter in the hands of Lord Ryssand.
He had now only boats to look for…Sovrag lord of Olmern’s boats, and the grain they carried. The storm surge had gone down the Lenúalim, the river ran calmly now at its ordinary level, by the reports he had from Anwyll, and there was no reason for delay, unless Sovrag’s boats had suffered—
Or unless Sovrag had doubts or fears of aiding him, considering the storm brewing in the heart of Ylesuin. Any of the lords who had awareness of the situation Gedd had reported might well think twice about joining their Midwinter feast…and Sovrag’s grain had to be here to avoid famine.
He gave it another day and then he must send a messenger south to Olmern, a far safer direction to ask reasons; and he had to send another rider to Cevulirn to inform him of the delay in supply for the horses.
Midwinter was coming on apace, and the needs of the province were absolute. If Sovrag for some reason failed them, then they still must obtain the grain, all the same…if not from Sovrag, then they might appeal next to his constant enemy among the allies of Lewen field, the lord of Imor Lenúalim, dour, Quinalt Umanon.
Umanon might or might not favor their enterprise, 426 / C. J. CHERRYH
might or might not be keenly aware of the sentiment against him, and might or might not answer Cevulirn’s invitation—and if he came, might or might not tell everything he learned to friends to the north. The plain fact was that Umanon was a Guelen, different from all the other southern lords, associated with Lewenbrook only because Cefwyn as a Guelen prince had brought him in to have the heavy cavalry Cefwyn relied on.
Now a southern call had gone out, furtive and hoping for secrecy…and yet they had not omitted Umanon, who had been one of them, whatever else he was.
And would he answer the call, or betray them?
A gathering of all the south was a difficult secret to keep…and the more difficult as the time drew closer and all the staff down to Cook and her crew assembled the makings of a great holiday.
The best news in recent days was the assembling of young men of Amefel, earnest young men…feckless boys, Uwen called most of them, but well-meaning, with some experienced veterans in the number. It was a good lot. But they were far from the Amefin guard that was yet to be…that must exist by the time the buds broke on the trees.
The Guelen Guard, at Uwen’s order, had undertaken to show the men the use of the long Guelen lance and the small sword, and that the training and short tempers and stung pride failed to provoke Amefin and Guelenmen to open warfare, it was itself a wonder…but that was the regiment they had at hand, and that was what had to be.
The southern longbow many already knew; and perhaps half had horsemanship enough, but those were green youths on of the edge of nobility, accustomed to ride to the hunt, vying with one another to be first to the quarry—not to make an iron front against an
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enemy. The lads, as Uwen called them, were in great earnest for their lords’ pride and their own, but there were two sent home with broken bones, and one all but died of Maudbrook’s icy water on a windy day—his horse had sent him there.
But in recent days the recruits had gone out about the land, faring out toward the remote villages to parade their weapons and make known the authority that sent them.
More, even given the chance there were enemies in the land, they practiced ambushes on one another in the bitter cold and the winter-barren land, merry as otters, Uwen called them.
They were noisy, determined, and since the Guelenmen teaching them had not killed them, they had necessarily improved in the lance and the sword.
Tomorrow, orders which also lay on Tristen’s desk, under his hand as he read, they were to ride east to Assurnbrook, as far west as the limits of Marna Wood; they had already ridden down to Modeyneth and to Anwyll’s camp, to Trys Ceyl in the south and Sagany and Emwysbrook, to Dor Elen, Anas Mallorn, and Levey, displaying the banners, answering questions, bearing news.
That was one thing he wished he could tell Cefwyn.
And, aside from the want of grain, stores had turned up, out of cellars in town, out of caves and cists in the hills: reserves of grain, preserved meat, gold and silver which the lords had held secret, and, mysteriously, too, but from different sources, a number of weapons which had not been in the armory since Lewenbrook had shown up in the hands of these young men.
“As they ain’t fools,” Uwen had said wryly, “an’ now they know they have a lord who ain’t Guelen, why, back the gear comes from under their beds.”
428 / C. J. CHERRYH
Over all, while the news from Guelemara chilled Tristen’s heart, there was reason to think the south was safer than it had been. If Tasmôrden intruded into his lands at this very hour he would meet both an armed and organized band of Elwynim veterans…and the otters, those small, scattered squads of an Amefin cavalry he would not expect, on horses that were increasingly fit.
And that Amefin cavalry was armed with both bow and lance, for harrying an enemy and making his foraging impossible: such were their orders—no all-out engagement, but a deliberate harrying, keeping contact with an enemy band while they sent a series of messengers with word to Henas’amef, to bring in the heavier-armed Guelens.
There was that force out and about.
Modeyneth and Anas Mallorn, which lay near the sites of likely crossings, had built stout shutters and towers for archers.
The old wall beyond Modeyneth was now, by work proceeding by day and night, man-high across the road, with a stout gate, braces, and an archer’s tower. The men who built there, both of Modeyneth and other villages of Bryn, built in weather which never mired the roads, and built with the advantage of stones already cut.
Not least, Anwyll and the Dragon Guard at the river maintained close, fierce guard over sections of decking which could again be laid rapidly over the bridge frameworks, and which were stout enough to support even wheeled traffic—once his Midwinter gathering determined to secure the other bridgehead as theirs, and set up a camp inside Elwynor.
They were as near ready as he could hope…save only the grain to feed all these men. And the fear, now made clear in Gedd’s report, that he might have taken
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far too much for granted, regarding the Guelen and Ryssandish fear of him and the south.
Talk to Emuin, Cefwyn had written him.
Paisi, hair disheveled, roused from the diurnal night of the shuttered tower, made tea. Emuin read Cefwyn’s letter atop the clutter of charts, then nodded soberly as Tristen meanwhile relayed Gedd’s report in all its alarming substance.
“Well, well,” Emuin said, and bit his lip then, shaking his head. “What Cefwyn wishes me to explain when he says consult me, is the Quinalt, and its distaste for things Amefin. I think you know that.”
“I know the guardsmen I sent and the patriarch all went to Cefwyn’s enemies. And the drivers of the carts I sent back will talk.”
“The carters you sent back will talk, and the soldiers that went without leave have talked, and the Amefin patriarch has certainly had words to say within those walls, all manner of words about the grandmothers in the market, and about me, and any other sign of wizardry. That’s nothing we can prevent now.”
“As for the other, sir…the prophecy…” He disliked even to think about it, but it was there, part of the letter, with Cefwyn’s assurances.
“It’s all one.”
br />
“It is not one, sir. I fear it’s not. The carters will talk about the same things the patriarch complained of, charms in the market, and about the Elwynim at Althalen—”
“No small matter.”
“But the greater is, Ninévrisë’s father called me young king.
Auld Syes did much the same. The Elwynim wait for a King To Come, and Tasmôrden flies the banner of the King of Althalen above Ilefínian.”
430 / C. J. CHERRYH
“Does he?”
“Yes!”
“What will you do about it?”
I won’t allow it, he almost said. But he thought then of the disparate elements he had just set forth to Emuin, and found in them subtle connections to events around him that frightened him to silence.
“Tea, sir, m’lord.” Taking advantage of the silence, Paisi desperately set the tray down and poured. It was bitter cold in the tower, and Paisi’s hands trembled, hands as grimy as ever they had been in the street.
“Wash,” Emuin said. “Treat my potions as you treat common mud, boy, and you’ll poison both of us.”
“It’s only pitch, sir.”
“Dirt,” said Emuin. “Scrub. You shouldn’t sleep dirty, boy.
Gods!”
“Sir,” Paisi whispered, and effaced himself.
Emuin took up a teacup. “What will you do about it?” Emuin asked again.
“I don’t know, sir,” Tristen said, turning his own in his fingers. “I think the first is coming here and asking you what I ought to do. And I earnestly pray you answer me. This is beyond lessons. I can’t take lessons any longer. What I do may harm Cefwyn.”
There was long silence, long, long silence, and Emuin took a studied sip of the tea, but Tristen never looked away or touched his cup.
“So you will not let me escape this time,” Emuin said.
“I ask, sir. I don’t demand. I ask for Cefwyn’s sake.”
“And with all your heart.”
“And with all my heart, sir.”
“Do you think you are the King To Come? Does that Unfold to you, as some things do?”
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He asked Emuin to give up his secrets—and his question to Emuin turned back at him like a sword point, direct and sharp and simple.
“No,” he said from the heart. “I’ve no desire to be a king or the High King or any king. If I could have Cefwyn back as Prince Cefwyn and his father alive so he didn’t have to work so, and all of us here at Amefel, that’s what I would most wish, for everything to be what it was this summer…but I can’t have that, and I could only do him harm if I wished it, so I don’t. I won’t. You say I must win Cefwyn’s friendship…and that doesn’t come of anything I’ve done that I can see. Everything I’ve done has turned his own people against him!”
“Young lord,” Emuin said, “you’ve gained very many things, and know far more, and now you’ve almost become honest.”
“I have never lied, sir!”
Emuin fixed him with a direct and challenging stare. “Have you not?”
“Not often.—Not lately.”
“Ah. And have you often told the truth?”
“Have you told it yourself, sir. Forgive me, but is this not the lesson you showed me, to keep silent, to leave and not answer questions. I keep quiet the things I fear could do harm, and the things I don’t understand!”
“Exactly as I do.”
The anger fell, left him nothing, and still no answer.
“Is that all you learned of me?” Emuin asked. “Silence?”
“No, sir, there were very many good lessons.”
“And do you not, as you say, count it good, to keep silent when speaking might work harm?”
“What harm would it have worked, for you to have stayed by me this summer? What harm would it work 432 / C. J. CHERRYH
now, for you to tell me the dangers ahead, if I swear to take your advice?”
“Harm that I might do? Oh, much. Much, if I interfere—”
“—If you interfere with Mauryl’s working. But do you say, then, sir, that you can interfere with Mauryl’s working? Or can anyone? Are you that great a wizard?”
“Who are you?”
Back to wizard-questions, the quick reverse, the subtle attack, and that one went straight as a sword to the heart.
“Who are you?” Emuin repeated. “This time I require an answer.”
Tristen drew a deep breath, laid his hands on the solid table surface, on the charts, the evidence and record of the heavens, for something solid to grasp…for very nearly he had said, defiantly, out of temper, and only to confound the old man, I am Barrakkêth.
So close he had come, so disastrously close it chilled him.
“I am Tristen,” he said calmly, lifting his head and staring straight into Emuin’s measuring eyes. “I am Mauryl’s Shaping.
I am Cefwyn’s friend and your student. I am the lord of Althalen and Ynefel. Tristen says all, sir, and all these other things are appurtenances.”
“Not lord of Amefel?” Emuin asked with that same measuring look, and his heart beat hard.
Crissand, he thought.
Crissand, Crissand, Crissand.
“Cefwyn must grant me Amefel,” he said to the wall, the wind, the fire in the hearth, not to the boy sitting silent or the wizard gazing at his back. “Cefwyn must grant me this one thing.”
“Has he not? It seems to me he granted you Amefel.”
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“No. He made me lord of Amefel, in fealty to him. He hasn’t given it to me. And that he must do, for his own safety.”
There was a long, a very long silence.
“You know,” said Emuin, “if other things have disturbed Ryssand and Murandys, this one will hardly calm their fears.”
“Crissand Adiran is lord of Amefel. He is a king, master Emuin, he is the Aswydd that should rule, and if I set him here, on this hill, and see him crowned, I would think I had done well, and that I had done Cefwyn no disservice at all.”
There was long silence, a direct stare from Emuin and Paisi’s eyes as large as saucers.
“The next question. What are you?”
“Mauryl’s Shaping, sir. Cefwyn’s friend, and your student, lord of Ynefel, lord of Althalen.”
“And of those folk there settled?”
“If they remain there.”
“And this is your firm will.”
“I am Mauryl’s Shaping.”
“What we say three times gathers force, and what you say three times has uncommon force, lord of Althalen.”
“I’ve told you all I know, sir, and beyond, into things I hope.
So what do you advise me to say? More, what to do, sir? Idrys has a liar in his service, and Cefwyn is in danger.”
“If I knew that, young lord, I’d sleep of nights.” Emuin moved the letter aside and moved one of his charts to the surface, a dry, stiff, and much-scraped parchment. He looked at it one way and another, and then cast it toward him, atop a stack of equally confused parchments.
“This, this, young lord, is as much as I do know. This is the reckoning that Mauryl himself would have 434 / C. J. CHERRYH
seen coming, that once in sixty-two years these portents recur in the heavens, and where they occur at the Midwinter, there is the Great Year begun, that is, the time until the wandering stars hold court together and move apart again. This is the season of uncommon change…but this is nothing to you, I suspect.” Emuin’s tone took on a forlorn exasperation, much like Mauryl’s when confronting his helplessness. “Nothing Unfolds. No great revelation.”
“No, sir.” He looked at the parchment, and considered the things Emuin said and cast it down again, unenlightened. “I don’t know what you’re saying. About the stars, I gather, but nothing more. I know Mauryl studied them. And you do. But I’ve never understood the things you find.”
“Magic is an unfettered thing. You…are an unfettered thing.
But wizardry, wi
zardry, young lord, is a matter of numbers…patterns, as nature itself is patterns, and the gathering of forces. Think you that winter happens by magic? No.
Everything in nature, young lord, is a march of patterns, the chill in the air, the sleep of the trees, the waning of the summer stars and the rise of the winter ones, that in their turn will set…”
“These things I see, and you tell me they recur.”
“Yes! So if you would work a great work of wizardry, do you see, there’s no sense doing hard things, only the easy ones. Do you want a snow? Ask for it in winter! Much easier. Find patterns in nature and lay your own Lines where they go, much as you set the Lines of a great house, observing doors and windows where they want to be.”
Emuin seemed to expect agreement, understanding—some-thing.
“Yes, sir.”
“But you don’t! All this is frivolous to you! You FORTRESS OF OWLS / 435
treat patterns the way a young horse treats fences, to have the fine green grass at your pleasure. And gods save us on the day you treat natural laws as that great dark stallion of yours treats stall slats, and simply kick them down.”
“I trust I’m never so inconsiderate of your work, sir, as Dys of master Haman’s boards.”
Emuin grunted, then gave a breath of a laugh, and at last chuckled and for the first time in a long time truly did regard him kindly. “Good lad. Good lad. When I fear you most, you have your ways to remind me you are Tristen.”
“I am. And shall be, sir. And never would treat your patterns carelessly. I have more understanding than my horse.”
Emuin did laugh, and wiped an eye with a gnarled finger, and wiped both, then his nose. “Oh, lad. Oh, young lord. We’re in great danger.”
“But we are friends, sir, and I’m yours, as I am Cefwyn’s.”
“That, too, is a snare, young lord, and one I avoid very zealously: we must both look at one another without trust, assuming nothing, as we love one another, as we love that rascal Cefwyn. Fear friendship with me! Avoid it! Examine my actions, as I do yours, and let us save one another.—But you asked, and I answered, and let me answer, again, such as I can. Hasufin—”