C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 (61 page)

“Teach you wizardry? Useless. Teach you magic? I cannot. No more can I teach any Sihhë what resides in his blood and bone.”

“Sihhë!” He laughed bitterly, refused this time with nonsense.

“Sihhë, I say. A spirit the like of which I could never conjure, nor could Tarien. Such a conjuring weakened Mauryl Gestaurien to his death, and he was ten times the wizard I am, not to mention a hundredweight the worth of Tarien Aswydd. Born or called—you are half his brother, at least have trust that
that
side of the blanket is not in doubt. Doubt your mother’s half of the proposition instead.

Neither she nor your aunt could have done this unaided.”

“Riddles, again! Don’t trust her, you mean? I never trusted her, and I never knew I had an aunt.”

“Riddles I hardly know how to say—except you are the living Gift. Otter. Elfwyn. Elfwyn. Elfwyn. Say a thing three times and it binds. I suspect you were bound to that name long, long ago, and your mother had no choice in naming you.”

“Tell me what you mean!”

“I mean,” Emuin said, “that you have already gone to the proper source to learn certain things, and left it, one supposes, uninformed.

Perhaps even
he
failed to know you.”

“Lord Tristen? I asked him to teach me, and he wouldn’t. He told me I was Elfwyn, not Otter.”

“He wouldn’t teach you, or he couldn’t,” Emuin said, and frowned darkly. “And he named you. Then I suspect he did see what I see.”

“What? Give me the truth, Master Emuin! What did he see?

What do you?”

“A conjuring,” Emuin said. “A Summoning that opens a door.”

“What door? Make sense, please, sir!”

“
You
govern what door, if you have the will.
Do
you have the will, Spider Prince?”

He drew a deep breath and balked, growing angry, angrier than he had been since the day Gran died. “I have the will for anything, sir, if I’m informed. I’m Otter, if you like. Lord Tristen said I should be Mouse, not Owl. And he said nothing at all about spiders.”

“Good,” Emuin said, looking squarely into his eyes. “Very good, Spider Prince. Otter. Mouse. And Elfwyn. But never Owl? Probably a good idea.”

“Damn you!”

“Oh, that would
not
be easy,” Emuin said, laying a hand on the emblem at his breast. “And many have tried. But gratitude… that, I would think, I am due, at least a little, for coming out here in the cold.”

The anger fell away from him. Embarrassment took its place, for ever asking what was beyond his station in life and for ever cursing this man, no matter how desperate. “A great deal, Master Emuin, a very great deal, only—”

“Guard yourself from such words and such thoughts as damning folk. When you were a child you could let words fly. Now, when a man’s mind stirs in you, such things become dangerous. As for the Gift, you could easily make that recalcitrant candle burst in flame.”

“If I could have done it, sir, I certainly would have. I tried. I did try.”

“While you believe you cannot, you will not. Will is all of it. You have decided to be King Cefwyn’s son. You wish to become his acknowledged son, with all the people changing their minds about you. While that wish governs you, so you will become—with all the good or ill for your father or brother that that one choice may bring.

But to become the other thing that you are, you must stop wishing to be Cefwyn’s son or Aewyn’s brother.”

“I never can!”

“So you say now,” Emuin said gently. “But the years roll on, and time changes us. You may need to renounce Aewyn to protect him from your enemies. Think of that, Elfwyn Prince.”

A bitter laugh rose up in him. “I’m no prince. And I’ll never renounce my brother or my father.”

“Every person has will, and while wizards have more force than most, the collective populace can be gathered, and swayed, without magic—indeed they, being blind to it, can be swayed that much more easily. They are deaf to magic, but their will, my boy, can be as potent as a wizard’s conjuring—more so than some. So know what you defy, when you send your wishes toward the people.

Passion can do a great deal to awaken that giant. Beware of stirring it. And beware, too, of ordinary men: thwart our wishes, that they can, and open doors, or simply leave them unlatched—that they will do with amazing fecklessness, or spite.

They can be the hands and feet of a wizard’s wish, individually.

They can open any door at all. Never, never discount them. Never trifle with them. And beware of using them. They have their own interests. They fear magic greatly, and will hate you for it if they detect it. They will often turn contrary, when they know they’re meddled with.”

“They already hate me.”

“They scarcely know you exist,” Emuin said. “And they have not decided what you are. That is why I counsel you, beware of waking that giant. Be the spider. Or be Mouse. Use the edges of the walls.

Find crevices from which to watch and live quietly, if you can manage it, while you learn.”

“If anyone harms Aewyn,” he began.

“Let no enemy find out how much that would move you, or I assure you that will be their first recourse. Let no enemy know your weaknesses. Strive to be your own master. That is my advice.

Know whence come the motions of your heart, Spider Prince, whether they are light or dark, fair or foul, whether they be what you will or what you would not: know them for what they are, and shape yourself as you would wish to become. That will be magic enough, for a start at it. Go to sleep. I shall watch.”

He didn’t want to. But his eyes grew heavy on the instant. He snapped them right open.

“Strong-willed,” Emuin said. “But if you can’t trust me in this, you can trust me in nothing. Trust me, I say!”

Something thumped, outside, in the wind. A good many things had flapped and bumped in the wind, but this came at the door. And Emuin looked that way, sharply, and set his staff against the floor to rise, not with the alacrity of a young man.

“Master Emuin?” Elfwyn asked, and leapt up and took his arm.

“Hold your brother,” Emuin snapped. “
Hold on to him
!”

The door burst open. Bitter wind rushed inside, scattering coals, bringing dark as the fire blew up the chimney. Elfwyn flung himself to Aewyn’s side, seized up his brother in his arms as Emuin reached them.

“Hold on!” Emuin shouted at them. “Hold my hand! We are going to your father!”

He reached. He grasped Emuin’s fingers, and the wind caught them, whirled them away through gray mist, a spinning confusion of themselves, and the horses, and their gear, and all the straps loose and confused.

“Otter!” Aewyn cried, and began to slip out of his encircling arm, and to slide away from him, as if they were sliding on ice. He held tight to Aewyn’s coat, and that grip began to fail, as if the wind that moved them excluded Aewyn. He had his choice, hold Emuin, or hold his brother, and he wrapped both arms about Aewyn and held on.

They plummeted, he had no idea how far, or how long a fall. He only held on, eyes tight shut.

“Otter,” Aewyn said against his ear. “Otter, what’s happening?”

But he had no answer.

In the next moment they landed, hard, side by side, in thick snow.

iv

IT WAS A BITTERSWEET GATHERING OF OLD FRIENDS IN

CALAMITY, IN THE LITTLE hall. Past the worry and the fear that gnawed at him, Cefwyn saw the weariness that marked Tristen and Uwen, both, and Crissand ordered mulled wine and a platter of food—food Tristen neglected, though he had two sips of the wine.

What can you see? Cefwyn longed to ask, seeing Tristen’s head bowed and his hands clasped before his lips, his elbows braced on the arms of the massive chair. Tristen had not divested himself of his armor, nor had Uwen, though that was the first thing a man just off a long, cold road would long to do. He simply sat, and stared into nothing, but not in futility, Cefwyn was sure. He was earnestly trying to find pieces—scattered pieces. Emuin. Orien. Tarien. And two lost boys.

And he had said nothing for the last candle measure, nor stirred, nothing more than a wisp of his dark hair blowing a bit in the draft from an opened door.

They had been up to the tower room, wherein a whirlwind had wrought utmost havoc, and left the shutters hanging askew. They had been into the cell below, and in front of the blank wall into which Master Emuin had vanished.

They waited in this small room, and the candles in the sconces dripped drop by drop into their pans. Outside, servants removed bits of stone that littered the hall, where the force of the stones blowing out had shredded the tapestry and landed clear against the opposing wall, scarring the stone there. Others, surely with trepidation, had climbed up those stairs into the tower, to clear away the debris of Tarien’s life there. Comrades had taken the bodies of the guards for burial, two decent men with widows and children: Crissand had passed word he would talk with the women as soon as he could. The deaths sat on the king’s conscience: it was the king’s prisoner they had guarded, two brave men, completely defenseless against sorcery, all amulets and protections inadequate to save their lives.

Hate had killed them, spite directed against him. He determined, sitting there, waiting for some breath of an answer, that he would take the women and children under his own protection, the men having died in defense of him and his.

But justice for it—justice was very much in doubt.

Tristen drew a visible breath. The hands didn’t move. The eyes didn’t blink. Everyone hung on that slight motion.

Then Tristen lowered his hands down onto the arm of the chair and leapt up, turning for the door. Uwen jumped to his feet, and Cefwyn, hardly slower, followed, with Crissand right at his heels, and all the bodyguards caught completely off their guard, broke aside from the door, getting out of their path.

The haunt came alive down the hall, beyond the stairs. Servants ran in terror, and the thunder of wings raised a wind that blew down from the tower’s ruined windows and up from the depths of the cell. Tristen reached the midst of it, the rest of them right with him, and the wind blasted them with cold and a spate of snow.

Uwen drew his sword, and Cefwyn reached for the dagger he wore, as the sound of swords drawn echoed behind them all.

It was a disheveled figure that came out, a figure all swirling white hair and gray robes, turning back, his hand held out to someone invisible still within, and the winds screaming about them all.

The haunt stopped, stopped cold, leaving the area dark, and snow melting on the floor, and Master Emuin standing baffled and distraught in the middle of it.

“I couldn’t hold them!” Emuin cried in dismay, and Cefwyn’s heart sank. Tristen was there with him, and if anything magical was going on between the two of them, if they had said anything to each other down those corridors wizards used, Cefwyn was deaf to it, and cursed his deafness. It was Crissand to whom Tristen turned next, and said, “A cloak. He is chilled to the bone. A cloak, and the warm wine—Master Emuin.” Tristen seized the old man by the arms and held him upright, the staff trailing from Emuin’s hand and his eyes all but shut. “Stand. Stand fast, Master Emuin. Help is here.”

“The boys.” Emuin’s eyes rolled open, his head sank, and it was all Cefwyn could do to keep his own hands from seizing the old man and shaking him.

“I am here, Master Emuin,” he said. “Where did you lose them?”

“In between,” Tristen answered for Emuin. “Take him, take him, Cefwyn. Uwen, you must stay with him!”

“As I shan’t do, m’lord!” Uwen cried in protest. “No!” But without a breath or a flare from the haunt, Tristen ceased to be there—just—was not there, and Master Emuin was on his way to falling as Cefwyn seized the old man about the body and held him on his feet. Crissand helped him, and Uwen took Emuin’s staff. The lot of them, guards and all, were left there, in a hall in which the snow was melting and the old man they held in their arms was colder than the grave itself.

Servants came running with a cloak, and with a cup of wine.

Both were useless.

“The little hall,” Cefwyn said, remembering the warm fireside they had left, its fire stoked to its fullest to warm Tristen and Uwen. They carried the old man, who weighed very little at all, up the hall to this room. Servants hovered as they disposed Master Emuin on the warm stones in front of the fire. Cefwyn knelt, holding the old man, and Crissand disposed his cloak about him and chafed his pale hand, while Uwen laid the staff beside him.

“Old Master,” Cefwyn said. “Master Grayfrock. Come back. Come back to us. Can you hear?”

The old man’s eyes slitted, ever so little, and the pupils rolled just slightly toward him.

“Tristen has gone?” Emuin asked.

“He went after them.”

Emuin shook his head. “I tried.”

“That you did,” Cefwyn said, holding Emuin fast, while the fire blazed and crackled, impotent against the chill in the old man.

“Come now. Wake, wake, do you hear me? None of this slipping back again. Stay out of that place you go. Tristen is on their track and needs no help. There’s mulled wine. Uwen Lewen’s-son is here.

So is Crissand. Wake and make sense to me. Tristen is out looking for them, I say.”

The eyes drifted shut. Slitted open a second time. The brow knit, much as if the old man was trying to think of a long-forgotten fact.

“He shouldn’t be out there, the fool.”

“Who? Tristen?”

“He’s in danger. He’s particularly in danger. The boy has that book.”

“What sort of book? What sort of book is it, Master Emuin?”

“His unmaking.” Coughing racked the frail body, and Cefwyn propped him up until it stopped—propped him up and took the offered cup of wine, touching the merest edge of it to the old man’s lips.

“Wine, if you can manage it, old master.”

“Ale,” the old man said, never opening his eyes. “I’d rather ale.

I’m dry as dust.”

“It’s here, Your Majesty.” The servants had brought up every likely need, when they had been sitting in this room. Liquid splashed into a deep tankard, and a yeasty smell spread through the air before the cup even reached Cefwyn’s hand.