Fortress of Eagles

  Winter when it came was a last season before the full circle of a year…the very last season.

  New to the land, he had once thought summer the mature and natural state of the world, and seen every hill as Unfolding new secrets to him forever. Then autumn had shown him nothing was forever. It brought him the bitter, dusty smell of fallen leaves, the moldy pungency of willow leaves strung in ropes, slender and yellow along the edge of the spring at the bottom of this hill. Lastly it showed him this view of hills, the secrets of all the hills of Guelessar unveiled.

  But what would winter bring him? Snow and ice, yes. But now that he saw the year not as extending forever forward but as turning back upon itself, he saw life coming a circle, like a horse running, discovering itself not free, but pent in and bound to repeat its course again and again and again. What he thought he had left behind might come again. What he had thought done might come undone. And spring, when all things should come new…spring, in which most men looked for new life…he had cause to fear.

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  He came back to his edge, his reliable little cliff. He looked down on the four men the king had lent him, and on Uwen Lewen’s-son, a gray-haired soldier whom the king had appointed to be his friend, his constant companion, his adviser in the world. He knew he should go down now and not put them to the trouble of riding up this narrow trail to find him.

  But he continued to be disturbed, having found things on the hilltop not what he had expected, having thought thoughts he had never planned, and he knew Uwen and the other men rarely objected to time to sit and talk amongst themselves, which they were doing quite happily at the moment.

  So he left Petelly to his search for bits of green, sure he would not stray far, or that if he did, Uwen would intercept him below. He waded through brush and ducked through thickets to the south and west of the hill…snagged his hair doing it, hair as black and thick and long as Petelly’s mane, and by now, like Petelly’s mane, stuck through with twigs and leaves. He was not willfully inconvenient to those who watched over him. But he was chasing the vision of Amefin hills, a sight and a knowledge that mattered to him in ways he could not explain. If he could but achieve that vantage before his guards lost patience, if he could come just a little to the side and past a rocky shoulder of the hill—if he could know he was not that far from his beginnings and fix the territory of his memories as a place, not a state of mind…

  Then perhaps he could dream forward and not constantly back toward the lost things he remembered. Making peace with that, he could perhaps begin to see things as vividly ahead of him, instead of the gray space that seemed to occupy all his future…

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  Oh, indeed, he saw more hills westward, gray and brown with barren trees that he imagined might be the very edge of Amefel. And from this hill, on this day of leaf fall at the end of autumn, he imagined that he looked back all along the course he had come.

  Foolish pursuit, perhaps. It was, after all, nothing but hills and gray trees like the other views from this place. It was his heart that saw the rolling hills, the land of his summer and his innocence, the land where he had met Cefwyn, the land which had taught him so much and which had nothing to do with this autumn, these trees, this hill in Guelessar. He hung a moment with his arms on a thick, low branch, the wind cold on his face, the sights of summer in his eyes, and with a sigh and a thought, he saw all the way to spring, to Ynefel. He heard the kiss of the river Lenúalim on the tower’s foundations. He looked down from the high tower of Ynefel over the tops of storm-tossed trees, and out over the Road from the half-ruined roof of the loft where Owl had lived.

  The narrow, rickety steps to his room came to him, too, exactly so. The study and the fireside flitted through his thoughts, warm and cozy. Ynefel was so much smaller a place than the high-walled Guelesfort, or even Amefel’s Zeide, which hove up above Henas’amef and housed hundreds of people.

  Mauryl’s forest-girt tower had been so very much smaller, so much plainer in all respects, he knew that now, yet it had been so full of memorable things…as for instance he could recall in sharp detail every twist of grain in the weathered wood of the sill in his bedroom; he could conjure every detail and imperfection of the horn-paned window of his room, whereupon the rains and the lightning had written mysterious patterns in the

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  night. Ynefel seemed far larger in his memory than such a small place should reasonably be, as if by some enchantment it held more life, or had been more substantial than ordinary buildings.

  He remembered the loft, oh, the loft, the silky, gray-brown dust, and the pigeons on the rafters there, each and every nameless one, and he remembered the day he had discovered Owl.

  Ynefel was in ruins now. Mauryl was gone. He had seen Owl last at Lewenbrook, before the banners fell, before so many died. On that day, too, the world had had a terrible wealth of detail, and every rock and every tree had found edges. Every shadow had been alive and rolling down like midnight on embattled armies.

  He remembered the cold and the dark of that hour, and a shadow become substance. He felt the bitter chill of sorcery and felt—was it only memory?—a perilous slippage in place and time.

  Then he knew he had gone not forward but back into memories he wished only to escape. He began hastily to retrace his steps in all senses, retreating from the sight, fleeing from the unwardened west, back toward Petelly.

  The urgency grew less immediately as he left that side of hill.

  It was only a hillside. Only a hillside in Guelessar, so great a relief he might have laughed at his own foolish fears. It was autumn, again, among the leaves, the opposite end of autumn, at that, from the battle at Lewenbrook, and as he reached Petelly he saw that Petelly had no concern whatsoever…had not even interrupted his browsing. So he had been completely foolish, he thought, to have feared anything. Shaken, he patted a winter-coated shoulder and caught Petelly’s reins, leading 10 / C. J. CHERRYH

  Petelly along toward the trail and a meek and dutiful return to his guards.

  Petelly was in no hurry to go, however, and with a great, unbalancing jerk on the reins stopped and lowered his head among the leaves, sure he had smelled some tidbit he favored.

  It was just as easy to let him finish his search as quarrel with him.

  There, close by, was the most curious log, shelved with velvet fungus.

  Now here was a wonder of the woods, marvelous in its smoothness: Tristen abandoned the discipline of his horse, knelt to touch and found the velvety shelves unexpectedly tough, resisting his inquisitive, ungloved fingers.

  The wood, peeling in patches, was gray and weathered beneath, long dead. This growth, on the other hand, was alive, out of that death. Was it not a miracle?

  Or did spring hide in apparent death, and was spring lying hidden in winter, as signs of winter had hidden these last few days in autumn?

  Were the seeds of next things always there, in the circle of the year, and was that how the world worked its miracles? The wellspring out of which things Unfolded to him said yes, yes, the life did not wholly die. Even in utter ruin and winter to come, there was hope. Even in a dead log were miracles waiting.

  And had this particular, velvety, curious growth any virtue in wizard-craft, he wondered in a practical vein, hunkering down for a very much closer look and tucking his cloak about his knees to protect it from the damp? Would Emuin like it?

  He had no wish to spoil what was curious and wonderful if Emuin had no use for it, but it did look like something a wizard would admire…and something that might be useful, a point FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 11

  of change and regrowth that might have potency. He brought Emuin birds’ eggs fallen in the wind—like the dry one he had in his purse just now, along with a curious oak gall from a grove near a sheep fence at Dury.

  Had he feared the sight of distant woods, a mere moment ago? There was no fear in him now. At times he was well aware how he skipped from serious thoughts
to thoughts other folk saw as quite frivolous, and he suspected on his own that this might be one of those moments, but the thought he had fled was past and the sight that had led him to that thought was hidden now by the hill. His guards had not yet grown annoyed with him, and he knew he was safe on this hilltop. He had also spent his short life with wizards, who as a type observed a different sense of priorities and set a different importance on strange objects than ordinary folk.

  Had the fungus been there in the summer? Or did it appear when a tree died? Or did it appear only seasonally as another sign of winter?

  The latter was the kind of question he would have asked Mauryl more than Emuin, Mauryl being far more inclined to far-ranging questions.

  But Mauryl was gone with Ynefel, and all such questions of the natural world went unanswered these days. Emuin was far more likely to tell him the use of a fungus than the behavior of it—when he could gain Emuin’s attention at all.

  No, there was probably no use in bringing it with him. He could by no means being all of it, and bringing less than that would spoil it. He meanwhile had the bird’s egg, which was pretty, speckled finely brown on white, and he knew Emuin would admire it. He stood up, tugged at Petelly’s reins, seeking the trail through a maze of leafless branches on what should have been a

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  shorter route. But it proved choked with thorns. He stopped, stood, looked for a way through the maze.

  In truth, the world in general had become much more familiar to him, less a-jumble with new things and unguessed words, so that in the close confines of the Guelesfort an entire fortnight might pass without his finding something new. But outside its walls, he gathered wonders and set himself in perdicaments his guards indulged with kind patience…this might be one. He came to this hilltop for the silence and the sound of the trees, only to think without the sounds of five men and horses about him, and for a moment, so engaged, and perplexed about his path, he might almost hear Mauryl’s voice saying. “Boy? Boy, where are you now? What have you gotten into, lad?”

  A rising wind whispered through dry branches. It almost seemed he did hear that voice, that he was in some secret hiding place where it was not Mauryl who was lost, but himself, and only for a moment. He would turn around, and he would see Mauryl standing there, his plain brown robes blending with this gray autumn woods, his hand about that staff of his, his white hair and beard alike flying in the gentle whim of the breezes.

  “So what have you found?” Mauryl would say, if he was in a patient humor, and Mauryl would come have a look at his log and tell him the name of the fungus and whether he should bring it in pieces back to the hall to join the vast collection of strange and curious things Mauryl treasured. Mauryl’s robes, never reputable or fine, and always smudged with the dust of the old fortress, would surely acquire tags of leaf mold and dirt just as his cloak had, Mauryl’s hair would have just such unseemly detritus of leaves, and his face would FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 13

  take on that look of concentration that was Mauryl at his kindest.

  Petelly’s nose met his shoulders and shoved. Tristen drew in a breath rough-edged with the smell of oak and earth and autumn, and knew that Mauryl would not be there, not at distant Ynefel, certainly not on this hilltop in Guelessar, and that he had well and truly overstayed his time, since he heard the jingling of men and horses coming up the road. His guards had grown concerned, or curiosity had moved them, and leading Petelly toward the trail to meet them, he saw to his chagrin that they had all come.

  Uwen was in the lead as they came up the turn, then Lusin, Syllan, Aran, and Tawwys, armed and armored, the lot of them—as of course he was, or more or less so. He had let Petelly carry his sword, which he had stowed behind the saddle, but he conscientiously carried a dagger on his person as Uwen advised him he should, and beneath his brown ordinary cloak and leather coat, he wore the mail the kind and the king’s captain commanded he wear, even though he considered it very little likely that enemies would cross the Lenúalim and tramp across a good deal of Guelessar to invade this hunting preserve and climb this very hilltop. In all truth, most Men had rather not face him with or without that sword, and he suspected that the guards the king assigned him generally served him better in deterring the approach of the unwary than in fending off hazards.

  He pulled and scraped his way past berry bushes as his guards arrived, jingling and breathing and thumping and creaking, four men in the red of the King’s Dragon Guard, with his sworn man Uwen in plain brown. Uwen wore only the smallest black badge of

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  Althalen over his heart, the same as he wore himself. The others, being king’s men, wore the gold Marhanen Dragon and red coats.

  “So what ha’ ye found?” Uwen asked him amiably from horseback, with no reproach at all, while four riders fanned out among the trees to turn around, the trail being just wide enough for one horse. The hindmost of his guards was very steeply on the slope, even so. “And should we be riding back soon, m’lord?” Uwen asked. “This’d be our turning, here below, to go back by way of Cressitbrook, if ye’d rather a different road going home. As we should now.”

  “We should,” he agreed shamefacedly. He saw his guards looking warily about for curiosities, for chills and shadows and other such events of his company, but without a word he climbed up on Petelly and eased him past the other horse’s nose. Uwen turned next. The king’s men turned about in the woods and followed.

  The wind, an entirely natural wind, blew dust up and sent leaves across the path as they left the hilltop. Petelly danced and skipped through the insubstantial obstacle. The men rode after him in haste, and for a moment they went pell-mell down the chancy turn, over ground buried in leaves. Tristen knew the footing, and so did they all. There were no roots, stones, or holes; but he knew that there was no threat above to give any reason for haste, either, so he pulled Petelly down to a reasonable pace past the spring. They all came safely to the lower road again, sheltered from chill breezes and wayward memories by the looming, forested hills on either hand.

  “No shadows,” Uwen said, having overtaken him.

  “No shadows,” he assured Uwen. “Not a one. I was listening to the wind up there. Looking at the

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  hills.” For some reason, perhaps because it was a matter for wizards and not for soldiers, he was reticent about confessing his looking out toward Amefel. “There was a fungus I had never seen.”

  “A fungus, ye say.”

  “On a dead trunk.”

  “Oh, them things.” Uwen seemed both relieved and amused, and it was as he expected. Uwen ventured not a ghost of a guess what the growths were named, or what their virtue was.

  “Ye don’t eat ’em, least I for certain wouldn’t. Mushrooms is done for the year.”

  “To come back in spring?” So many things were promised to return in the spring. And some things would Unfold to him the moment he asked a question, but some things would not.

  “Or in the fall?”

  “A lot in spring, or in rainy spells. I don’t rightly know about that up there, that kind. But cooks dry the wholesome ones in the kitchen for the off-season, so ye never fear, m’lord: there’ll be mushroom soup aplenty all winter. I heard Cook say yesterday there’s a special attention to mushroom soup for harvesttide on account of Your Grace.”

  Harvesttide was only two days off. He did indeed like mushroom soup, and he would be as happy as most in the approaching celebration if he were happy in other points, and if he knew he were welcome among the other lords, but neither was the case.

  Still, it was too fine a day for melancholy on that account.

  Uwen rode beside him, knee to knee on Liss, a mare Uwen greatly coveted, and they were comfortable a while in silence.

  It was still a wooded road after they had taken the Cressitbrook way, winding deep among the base of hills where only the king’s woodsmen cut wood, and where only the king and the king’s friends
>
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  hunted. It needed no quick pace at all, as Uwen had said, for them to reach Guelemara before dark. The road they took now showed no track of horses or men since the rains, and therefore held less likelihood of meeting anyone. The men rode more easily, far from any critical eye, talking of whatever took their fancy, and anticipating the harvesttide festival, for which the town had been preparing for days, building a bonfire of truly prodigious proportions.

  Friendly voices, friendly company surrounded him, past the spring and down along the little brook that flowed down from it. Tristen listened idly and watched the leaf-paved road above the twitch of Petelly’s black-tipped ears—busy ears, they were, alert to every burst of laughter and every whisper of the freshening wind out of the west.

  C H A P T E R 2

  There were pearls, an abundance of pearls. Cefwyn trod on one and winced, hoping it was only one of the sleeve-pearls, not some stray and costly one from the wedding crown, which lay in partial glory and strips of ribbon on the table. A mound of pale blue velvet and gold- and pearl-colored satin stood like a mountain range against the high, clear windows of the former scriptorium. The center panes of amber glass cast a bar of golden light across the room, from the embroidering maids to the far, scrapstrewn tables in this, the domain of the Regent and her ladies-in-waiting.

  He endured his own wedding fittings in a hall similarly devoted to the groom’s garments, a hall piled with red and gold…Marhanen colors, more modest heaps, however, although he was the king. He was astounded by this volume of fabric, grown by half again, he swore, since his visit two days ago.

  Could so much cloth possibly be involved in a few gowns for one slender woman? He had thought he was expert in ladies’

  accoutrements…but find his bride on their wedding night, in such an array?

  Even finding his bride in this room proved no straightforward task, amid heaps and bales of velvet,