Fortress of Eagles

  to become him or to set my hand to his workings, no

  matter your wishes. Don’t mistake us, young lord! I

  cannot amend his Working, never think so! Gods forfend!

  Don’t pull at me so!

  He was duly chastised, and it was a moment before he dared a wider breath.

  —Master Emuin, he said in this waking dream, I meant

  no such thing. Nor ever mistake you. And I only ask—

  Fear had come in from over that dark Edge. There was no clear direction in the gray place, but it had always more or less corresponded with directions in the world of Men. It seemed to him now that he had been facing north, sitting before the fire.

  That would put the perilous Edge at the west…at the west, where Amefel lay, just across the river, not north, toward Tasmôrden.

  But that reckoning set the shadow he had felt in the wind to the east, and the south, which he did not immediately believe.

  He dared not distract himself with wondering, or trying to find himself in the world of Men. There had been the danger, before.

  He felt the uncertainty, now, and felt…

  —Careful!

  He bit down on his lip to draw wits and flesh together. But master Emuin retreated from him without stirring a foot, then ceased to be there, just that quickly. Emuin was safe, escaped from the gray space,

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  and he was alone and still in danger, in a place that gusted with winds.

  The shadow-haunted stone of the guesthouse was another breath away. He drew that breath large and deep and became aware first of the glowing substance of the wards and the Lines, secondly of the substance under him.

  Perhaps he moved in his chair, perhaps jumped with the startlement of solid wood under his fingers. At least Uwen broke off snoring and lifted his head in muzzy startlement.

  “Forgive me, m’lord. I didn’t mean to drop off like that.”

  “I must have dreamt,” he said. It felt like that, like a bad dream, and he still felt his breath shortened. “To bed, both of us.”

  “Aye, m’lord,” Uwen said, and slowly got up as he did. They went back to the hall and to the fine, snug pair of rooms they had.

  But Uwen would not leave him there: Uwen brought his mattress from the other room and settled down on the floor with his sword in his arms, saying he would sleep there or not at all.

  Tristen let his sword stand with his shield in the corner, and lay down on a fine goose-feather mattress, but with coarser blankets and with a rougher ceiling above him than he had been accustomed to have since he came to Cefwyn’s company—it was bare rafters, which cast shadows from the watch-candle they had left on the table. The sight put him in mind of Ynefel, and his room, and the towering great hall with the stairs winding crazily up the stonework.

  That webwork of stairs had creaked in storms. It had been so very fragile. He had known that even when FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 267

  he was living there, and there was nothing more frightening than being on those stairs in the dark, with the whole tower groaning and complaining with the wind. At such times, the stone faces set in its walls seemed to move, and the candle-shadows shifted…and sounds issued forth which were not the wind: shrieks as of bending metal, or of iron doors opening, or of souls in pain.

  Mauryl’s face had seemed to be in that stone. He tried to hold to that thought. Fleeing it gave strength to his enemy, who was dead, but all the same, he would not risk growing uncertain on that point, when so much else was uncertain.

  Mauryl had gone into the stone, and the timbers had fallen, and Ynefel was not the same, in the autumn in which Cefwyn was king of Ylesuin. He dared not let that memory go.

  But the night the candle had gone out, the night he had been on the stairs in the dark…strange, he thought from the vantage of a year of Unfoldings, strange in many respects, and after Lewenbrook, that he should still cast back to that night as the most frightening of his life.

  The Edge was almost as dreadful. That kind of terror wafted out of it when it appeared. The Shadow at Lewenbrook had been a thunderous, dreadful threat; but one could he angry at it. The Edge, like that moment on the stairs, was a cold, sweating sort of fear, and a venturer in the gray space could observe it in curiosity until quite without warning he felt everything tilt toward it. That it appeared again troubled him…and it did not seem to him that the threat of the Edge was situated in the world of Men, not a presentiment of danger, of treacherous guards or accident or weather. He feared it was simply in

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  master Emuin’s increasing frailty, the journey, the packing and unpacking and the disturbing of an old man’s peace…and whether that Edge represented something that only endangered master Emuin when he was in the gray space or whether the danger was always there, he was not sure and did not trust master Emuin to tell him.

  Even wondering about it set the gray space in reach again, at a safer remove, true, but perilous, tonight, all the same.

  The shadow in the wind whisked past him.

  Someone was there.

  There. In the confusion of a strange building and strange wards, in the turning-about of stairs and steps…

  He had last reckoned master Emuin’s presence to what he knew by the road was north…but where was the fireplace now?

  And which direction was the head of his bed at the moment?

  It was not Emuin. It came furtively, quietly, through the gray, but things could suddenly move very fast, and he was not Tristen of Lewen plain at this instant, he was young Tristen, he was Tristen on the stairs in Mauryl’s keep, and knew how a shadow could pounce, and scare, and find access in fear.

  Then it seemed less baneful, even anxious to find him. He thought then that it might be Ninévrisë trying in her unschooled way to find him…and she left herself open on such a night to unguessed hazards.

  No, he said, rebuffed it with a desperate, confused effort, and it left him.

  He lay still then, his eyes open on the rafters above him, asking himself where it had been, whether east or west. Ordinarily he knew, but he had confused himself, and he might have harmed it. He was distressed and

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  feared indeed it had been Ninévrisë, and that he might have frightened her.

  Be safe, he wished whoever it had been. Sleep soundly. Be at peace…

  Should I wait for you? was what he had reached out to Emuin to ask.

  Should I suspect harm? he would have asked at the end of their encounter.

  Now he would ask: Have you kept secrets from me, master Emuin?

  Or is it only since tonight that the gray place has become dangerous?

  C H A P T E R 3

  The edge of morning brought cold to the monastery.

  Lanternlight glistened on icy steps as they opened the door to the guesthouse. A guardsman had fallen the three steps to the yard, unhurt, the report was, but only because of the armor.

  “You be careful, m'lord,” Uwen said when they reached the small porch, and moved gingerly on the steps himself. Tristen rubbed his ungloved fingers across the stonework of the banister, exploring the sting and the depth of the coating. He had seen frost, but never such a heavy coating of it, and he had met no footing quite so treacherous. But he learned in the first, the second step, like the Unfolding of a Word, and walked down the steps in Uwen's wake with increasing sureness.

  The men showed themselves undaunted, too, despite a few falls. The younger soldiers played games and pushed and shoved one another like boys; the older men minced about more carefully in the lanternlight across the yard, but the horses and oxen seemed to have no great difficulty, particularly in the churned stiff mud that stood in frosty ridges. Teams moved briskly with their drivers, and grooms brought the saddled horses in quick order of their masters' precedence while the monks scattered sand with brooms.

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  “M'lord,” Aswys came to ask, ??
?will it be Petelly this morning?”

  “Yes,” he said, watching all the activity of men from the side of the steps, wrapped in a warm cloak Tassand had put about him.

  Is it winter, now? he would ask Emuin, who was probably warm in a nest he would not leave until later in the day. Has it begun?

  And what will it mean to the wagons, if snow follows the ice?

  A slight drover's boy struggled and slid past, scarcely managing to keep upright with his arms full of harness. But Tristen kept quietly to the side of the yard. Ice, in all the colors of white came to him with disquieting force, the deeper Unfolding of a Word, Ice lying in sheets and jagged shards.

  The Sihhë-lords had come down from the north, had he not read it?

  At some moments he hoped with all his heart that he was the creation of scattered elements, whatever Mauryl had flung together by magic, a new creature, and innocent of past sins.

  But at other times he had to believe what Idrys had said of him: that he was a revenant, that he was that lord named Barrakkêth…and if that was so, should it surprise him that he found ice and winter touched his heart? He had known Barrakkêth's writings by heart before he read them. So ought it to be a wonder that Ice began to unfold to him, and winter began to settle into his knowledge in all its white strength?

  He thought of Efanor's little book, which he carried next his shirt, and despaired of gods, despaired of other advice that would replace Emuin's and Cefwyn's, and Idrys'.

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  Oh, come, he wished Uwen desperately, speak to me, prevent worse things Unfolding.

  “M'lord,” Uwen said, an immediate intrusion which frightened him as much as the thoughts inside him. “M'lord, the horses is coming'.”

  Mundane matter, mundane advisement. Uwen had needed to speak to him. And the sun, the safe and ordinary sun, was a glow in the east, discernible, now. Breath steamed, men and horses enjoying this edge of dawn. His knees felt weak from the fright, and he stood still, watched the drivers move the teams in, and saw the standard-bearers with their horses near the gate. Saw, as Uwen had said, Aswys and his helpers bringing Petelly and Gia.

  “A skittish morning, m'lord,” Aswys ventured to say.

  “So it seems.” His knees still lacked strength. He had fallen in fits before this when something so potent came on him. He feared it would happen now, and his heart was beating as if he had been running as he took the reins. Petelly's hide was as cold as the saddle as he mounted up, and he spread his cloak about him and Petelly, to warm them both.

  I cannot wait, he thought. I could not have lingered. If Emuin had wished me to wait, I would have heard him.

  Do you hear me, master Emuin? There is Ice, there is Ice all around, master Emuin, and I know its nature, master Emuin…do you not hear?

  The men opened the gates. The sun had just broken above the horizon, and sent out a flood of light on a land rimed and hazed with ice. Rime was on the grass stems along the road, on the stones, on the smallest pebbles, and the rising sun hazed it into delicate morning shades. The puddle near the gate had gained a crin

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  kled coating of ice. Even the ridges of common mud at the edges of yesterday's unsightly puddle had a white coating, and their column of horses and men went out in pale orange clouds of their own breath.

  How could he have dreaded such a sight? Everything was touched with dawn, and common things had become wonderful as common things had once been to him. He was on his way.

  A balance had tipped, around sunrise, and he was on the Road again, where he had business, and urgent business, at that.

  For a moment he imagined Ynefel, in such rime-ice and dawn.

  Mauryl, he would say. Mauryl, have you seen the stones?

  Mauryl, look at the sun above the trees! Look at the light!

  And for a moment Mauryl would forget whatever troubled him and his old eyes would gaze at what he found marvelous.

  And for a moment Mauryl would find wonder in it, too, and tell him the Name of it, and remind him of the thousand things he had forgotten to do, in his distraction of the hour.

  He could be distracted, still, by beauty, by the wonder of a stroke of sunlight. Perhaps at such times he made himself open to wizardry—or conversely, was as warded and safe at such moments as Ynefel at its strongest. Perhaps threats simply slid past his attention and he made himself immune. He knew that he wielded magic as well as iron, and yet looked away from it, and made himself fables to explain his own presence in the world, and sought gods who might be more powerful than himself. It would be very comfortable if there were someone more powerful than himself, on this Road, on this particular morning, someone to guide him, even

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  someone to blame: Hasufin Heltain had been a comfort, in that sense, a voice, an answer, where otherwise was only gray and shifting cloud. A few days ago he could not imagine the spring; now he imagined ruling Amefel. Last night he had quit the gray place in fear that there was someone and this morning he thought with regret of his enemy. Last night he had feared an Edge and this morning in a tentative probe of the place he could not find no limit to contain him.

  Last night Emuin had been there. This morning Emuin was not, a circumstance which meant nothing more, he told himself, than the very mundane truth of the mortal world, that Emuin was still asleep, and that he would have no thanks for pressing harder and gaining Emuin's attention on a mere whim.

  What would he say in this now glorious dawn?

  —Forgive me, master Emuin, but I grew afraid…

  —Comfort me, master Emuin: I miss Cefwyn. I have

  missed him from before we rode out of Amefel together,

  and this morning, for no good cause, I doubted…

  —Forgive me, master Emuin, that this morning I sought

  gods. Now I have no master but my oath to Cefwyn.

  —On the hilltop where I have arrived, I can see all the

  things I have ever known. I fly free as a leaf on the wind.

  —But there are places beyond the hills, and days beyond this one, master Emuin, and there are Shadows where

  the sun has no power. Do all Men walk as blind as I?

  He dared not press harder with his thoughts. It was so easy to slip deeper and deeper into the gray place, where he feared they were no longer alone. The

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  presence last night ran through his thoughts like an escaping dream. Had he dreamed it, thus at the edge of sleep? Was it a memory, or had it truly happened?

  That it fled recollection troubled him.

  Might Ninévrisë indeed have reached out?

  Might she—or Cefwyn—be in difficulty? Had the barons set about some new mischief, and did Cefwyn need him to come back?

  If there was any answer from Emuin, the hills hid it from him, while to his backward glance the column had grown behind him, continuing to form inside the monastery walls like a balled string extending itself, and that unwinding was almost done now. They were well and truly on their way to Amefel.

  The magic of the frost grew thinner as the sun climbed, as the frost left the eastern side of hills, then the west, persisted only in the shadows, and at last vanished altogether.

  By noon the sun had brought a warmth to their backs, an easy warmth. Even toes in boots grew warm, and Petelly, who had shown an uncommon keenness to frolic this morning had settled down to the general pace.

  Master Emuin, Tristen was vaguely aware, was decidedly awake now, had made not quite such an early start, and ached in his joints with the bouncing of the wagon. It was not a good beginning, this trailing along the countryside for miles and days, and he was sorry to leave master Emuin further behind, but what more could he do? he posed the peevish question.

  He had no more answer than before, and at their 276 / C. J. CHERRYH

  noon rest, weary of worry, fretting in Emuin’s protracted and maddening silence, he had Dys brought up in the line an
d rode him for the rest of the afternoon, a lively contest of wills, since Dys had not worked in a month. Uwen had called up Cassam, his own heavy horse, at the same time, and the two horses being stablemates, and both needing to have a little room around them, they rode at times beside the column, at times ahead.

  One could easily drowse on Petelly, rest one’s eyes with caution on Gery, but one never forgot the difference of being on Dys. The big hooves went down with a heavier sound, the motion was broader, softer, and more deliberate. Dys’ ears were constantly up, then flat, for Dysarys expected enemies.

  Yet Dys loved attention, too, and since most grooms were afraid of him, he got less of it than he liked…

  Very like his master, Tristen thought.

  But it was a good, level ride, the road presenting no particular difficulty for the wagons and no need to plan alternatives. The bridges on a king’s road would bear a loaded cart without worry, or failing that, offered fords with good firm approaches and no great depth. So he had nothing to do but contend with Dys’ humors and watch the grass blowing in the breeze. He was aware from time to time of master Emuin, eventually that Emuin had reached the monastery at long last and was safe, but full of aches from being tossed about on the wagonseat and sore from a stint of riding. He was sorry for that. Master Emuin settled in for a belated noon meal, and then took a nap.

  But as the hours passed he began to realize master Emuin had no intention of leaving the monastery. And when the sun went down in a bank of cloud and they

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  were pressing into a murky twilight to reach their scheduled camp he was aware of master Emuin sitting by a warm fireside sipping ale.

  —Master Emuin, he began. But had no answer, only the waft of master Emuin’s extreme vexation.

  No more had he stood overlong on the tower stairs on those evenings when master Emuin would not open the door. On prior evenings he had simply set the basket down and gone back to his rooms, reckoning the old man had studies and reading to do of some great moment.