Fortress in the Eye of Time (49 page)

Soldiers, Tristen asked.
Soldiers
, for the gods' sake. In so short a time Tristen's concerns had changed so much.

He remembered the methodical rise and fall of a blade in Tristen's hands. A dark figure wreaking destruction without pity.

The bowed, sad figure that rode ahead of them homeward, on the tired red mare.

He leaned painfully on the stick and turned, furious with his own pain and faced with the innocent guards at his own door, two Guelen guards, still of the Prince's Guard, and, part of the lending of trusted men of other commands, two Lanfarnessemen, giving him Guelen of the Dragon Guard and the Prince's Guard to spare to other posts.

Then, on unremitting duty, there were the two in chains, lordly Erion and the river-brat Denyn, horseman and pirate, keeping at least the semblance of peace between themselves—and looking anxious under his close notice.

“How do you fare?” he asked them, fighting the pain, compelling himself to be patient and soft-spoken, when an outcry of rage was boiling behind his teeth.

“Well, Your Majesty,” Erion murmured.

“The wounds are healing?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

He looked at Denyn. “How do you deal with your companion?”

“Very well, Your Majesty.”

Erion's right wrist and Denyn's left were wrapped with leather against the galling chain.

“Do they,” Cefwyn asked the Guelen sergeant, “keep the peace?”

There was a little hesitation, a tense regard from the sergeant. “Aye, m'lord King.” He did not entirely believe that report, and regarded the pair skeptically and at length, but it was unprecedented that a Guelen sergeant should lie for two miscreant foreigners. He had made matters clear to the fractious barons. What remained was cruel, and a difficult matter for his own guard, and it challenged his own pain. “Free them of the chain,” he said, and walked away—insisting to himself that he was himself free, that he was
not
bound to Tristen; that he owed nothing to Tristen; that Tristen's apprehensions were of no substance and Tristen's appearance in his court in this most perilous time for Ylesuin was more related to an old man's natural demise than to any immutable destiny of the Marhanens—and that Tristen's fears were no more than innocence confronted with the very frightening sight of the King's justice.

Which…had not stayed Tristen's hand on the field at Emwy. He was, if one believed anything about Tristen, a conjured soul who had shown a frightening skill at arms, a conjured soul who was mostly surely
not
the feckless, bookish Elfwyn of the
Red Chronicle
. There had been defenders in that hour who had fought for Elfwyn—some of them his heirs; but Tristen had defended
him
. Tristen had saved him from certain death. Was
that
the action of an enemy? Was that a man he should doubt, no matter what Idrys found or did not find in archive?

Perhaps he should have listened to Tristen. But to send troops to combat Tristen's nightmares of Althalen would do no favor, not to the men nor probably to Tristen's reputation.

And if Tristen's fears owned more solid form, if such a
band met not with nightmares but with living enemies, come on reconstructed bridges across the Lenúalim, it would engage Ylesuin prematurely on a front he was not ready to open—which he did not wish to open at all if he could delay the matters he had with the Elwynim Regent into sensible negotiation. He was not, whatever his anger, whatever his passion said, about to lay waste the whole Lenúalim valley in retaliation. He had a kingdom of provinces in precarious balance, he had a southern frontier with the Chomaggari always looking for advantage. He could not, for a gesture, for vengeance, for any consideration, give way to temper and attack Elwynor, even when his own spies said Elwynor was in extreme unrest: he dared not lock both their kindred peoples in a struggle the coastal kingdoms would see as their opportunity to take lands long disputed on his own borders.

Meanwhile there was hope: the Regent was old. If the Sihhë prophecy were the substance behind this uneasiness and this resurgency in wizards, if the Elwynim knew the Sihhë standard was brought to light in Henas'amef, and that a Sihhë lord stood high in council, something might well begin to change on the Elwynim side of the river, and peace that had been impossible for two generations might be possible in the third.

Give me opportunity, he asked privately of the gods he privately doubted—because in two generations of Marhanen rule no King of Ylesuin had had sure command of the western marches.

In two generations of Marhanen rule no King of Ylesuin had had a hope of establishing lasting peace on any border.

And he could not allow Tristen to leave him—not in respect to his hopes of peace and a reign that would not be remembered for its disasters.

Nor for his own sake, he found; it was a large part of his anger and distress that, absent Tristen, he could see no one—no one he could look to for his own happiness. Emuin would ask him common sense. Idrys would lay out cruel choices and remorseless reason for taking them. Tristen asked him simple
questions that made him look again at simple things he thought he knew.

He had no friend, none, in his entire life, that his father had not minutely examined and appointed to serve that function. He had no prospect or enterprise to draw him from day to day except the duty of a king. And of men who crowded close about an heir apparent, and those, far more numerous, who must settle their future hopes and daily needs upon a king, he had three he relied on: Annas for his comfort and his good sense; Idrys for his dark and practical advice, Emuin for the knotty questions of justice a king could face—but of all he knew, he had never found any man who reached the less definable needs of his heart, until, that was, Tristen asked him foolish questions and touched those things in him he had thought men gave up asking. Tristen had brought the wondering of boyhood back to him, and he found himself
thinking
about things and looking at them in odd ways, when for years he had simply defended his own thoughts, taken wild pleasures to give his detractors a less vital bone to gnaw, done his duty to the Crown and barred his soul against those with something to gain of him.

A king could live without a friend: gods knew his grandfather had, and his father, by what he knew. He might reign long, might become well respected, might die in a productive, peaceful, perhaps safer, old age, alone.

But his heart would have died long before that day.

P
etelly had tired, long since—had run as far as he could and went at long, brisk walks along the Emwy road, among the wood-crowned hills. Petelly was not as fast as Gery, but he was strong. Perhaps Uwen could overtake him, Tristen thought. Uwen was good at things a soldier did. But for the while he was free, and he had no wish, at least for a day or two, to be near anyone who knew him, though dearly he loved the sound of Uwen's voice, and already missed him. He worried about him, as well, if Uwen followed him too closely or somehow failed to hear his message; but he counted on Uwen to be wise, and to read the trail he was leaving on the muddy road.

Such a din of things had begun bearing in on him, so many echoes and voices had begun clamoring for his attention and his understanding, that he longed for his space of silence before Uwen or someone of the Zeide did overtake him. He no longer made sense of any single voice. He felt drawn thin, overwhelmed with pieces and shattered bits of knowledge of Henas'amef and of things that meant nothing to him, that everyone believed should be vastly significant.

Now—now, deep in the hills, at last with only Words he knew about him, and no one speaking to him, he could draw a peaceful, considered breath.

He could not have borne, last night, some new constraint of Cefwyn's fears holding him locked in his rooms. He could not bear some new, more dreadful event tumbling in on him before he had understood the last.

Most of all, he could not bear Cefwyn making some new demand of his unquestioning belief—or Emuin arriving to take charge of him and severing him from Cefwyn—for Cefwyn might well yield him up to someone who could
occupy him for a time; and then forget about him and his advice for days upon days. He did not fault that Cefwyn would abandon him: he knew that Cefwyn was busy. But he knew that his concerns were important. And it occurred to him that, absent, he would weigh far more heavily on Cefwyn's thoughts, and what he had said might weigh far more than it ordinarily did.

But if Cefwyn could lock him away and know where he was, Cefwyn would cease to think about what he had said. So, absent, he decided, he was far more present than if he were at Cefwyn's elbow.

Here he felt free, no longer hedged about with constraints, no longer so unremittingly battered by chance. He rode in both fear and anticipation of what lay ahead of him, at least to discover more truths of the world than he knew now, and, by that, to be less helpless than he was among men who knew who they were.

It was not without discomfort, this journey: he was still soaked through, although the sun warmed the cloak and Petelly's body warmed him. He had eaten very little on the road to Emwy, nothing on the way back, had missed his supper asleep yesterday evening, and his breakfast this morning, and after that his noon meal, so that by now he was a little light-headed, but he did not at all miss the clatter of his well-meaning and kindly servants. He had been hungry before, on the Road. He took it for no great hardship. He let Petelly graze a little for his midday meal as they went. Petelly had left a warm, dry stable and run both far and fast for his asking, and was surely as glad as he was to see the sky clearing and to feel a warm afternoon sun touch his back. Petelly had mouthfuls of thistle-bloom, one after another—he seemed to favor the purple, feathery sprays, and they grew profusely on the hillsides and along the road, silvery, jagged leaves, and tassel-like puffs rising above the gold and green of the grass and the thickets of broom.

He had wrung water out of Cefwyn's beautiful cloak, and knew he owed Cefwyn both its return and an apology for its
condition. He had taken off his coat as he rode this morning and wrung it out, but wearing it, rumpled as it was, and wearing the cloak spread out on Petelly's rump was the only way he could find of drying them, save this early morning when he had let Petelly rest. Then he had spread the cloak out on stones under the sun, so it had become merely damp instead of sodden. His new coat with the silver stitching seemed ruined for good—it was soaked, the padding under the mail was soaked,—his boots had stayed somewhat dry during the ride, but walking in the wet grass this morning, leading Petelly, had soaked through their seams, and he did not want to get down and walk on the road, and gather mud that would end up on Petelly and his saddle-skirts.

Fool, Mauryl would say, fool, out in the rain again.

But Mauryl's rebuke carried no sting at all now. It had become a bittersweet memory of an old man who had been very patient with him, and with his own perpetual failure of Mauryl's desperate expectations.

He could hear Mauryl in the quiet of the countryside: at least the memories of Ynefel had begun to come clear to him in greater detail and with more color than in Henas'amef. He had had his head and his ears all stuffed with the presence of Henas'amef, the Words of Henas'amef, the Names of Henas'amef, some of which had touched him and taught him and made him wiser.

But now, in the hills, under the sky, he found himself thinking very clearly of Ynefel, and Mauryl, and the things of his earliest memories. The advice of Men had filled his ears with a clamorous assault in town. Here, he listened to the Lark and watched a Fox trot along the hill and thought—how Mauryl had said it was very easy to make things do what they wanted to do.

And if Men in Henas'amef called that wizardry, he never recalled Mauryl calling his work that, though Mauryl had called himself a wizard. Mauryl had simply expected a thing to be as it wanted to be. And it was. Mauryl never seemed to think it remarkable. He didn't think it remarkable, either.

So perhaps it had been easy to make himself be here—because this was what he wanted to do, and this was the direction he wanted to ride. Nothing had been able to stop him last night and nothing had prevented him this morning.

He recalled Mauryl saying he would know what to do when the time came for him to go. And he had indeed known. He had followed the Road and found Emuin. So what Mauryl had promised him had come true.

And now that he thought about it, it did seem that he might know when it was time for him to do other things, and to take other Roads, even to take up the one he had been on, which he had once thought led through the gate of Henas'amef.

But perhaps his Road had only turned there, and gone along beside the wall of the town. Perhaps that was why it now drew him out again, and perhaps the clamor and clatter of the town and the gathering of lords and their men had troubled him because they were all outside Mauryl's wishes.

That was one state of his thoughts. There were two. One state of his thoughts was calm and safe, and he knew he could rest as he rode, and do as he pleased, and arrive where he wished to arrive, and ask the questions he wished to ask. That was the freedom.

The other state of his thoughts was not calm. The other was full of jagged edges and Words half-unfolded and things that might and might not be, and all the ties he had made to people. That state of his thoughts was full of Cefwyn's expectations of him, and Emuin's, and Uwen's, all unfulfilled. He did not know where good or bad resided, whether with the things Mauryl had wished him to do, or with the things that bound him by friendship to Cefwyn. The thoughts did not at the moment seem compatible.

He knew that in the simplest thinking of all, he should have stayed for Emuin and accepted Emuin's advice, even if it was to stay in his room and keep silent.

But it seemed to him—leaping to that other way of thinking—that he had found his way past the gates without
hindrance because that too was the way things wanted to be. If that indeed was wizardry, then Mauryl had done it or he had.

 

Lady Orien did not expect visitors this afternoon. That was evident. Maids snatched at sewing and scattered, white-faced, from the benches at the solar windows. Orien herself cast aside her laprobe and rose up in a scattering of colored threads.

Orien was not at her best. There was little color in her face, and her clothing was gray, looking old and outworn, a gown chosen for comfort, surely, not show. The red curls were drawn back severely and braided in a long braid. Small bruises marked her left cheek and her chin, marks the source of which Cefwyn did not know, but guessed as possibly one of his guards. She seemed entirely unnerved at his sudden intrusion. Her fine hands locked together as if to stop their movement. But she was never at a loss for argument.

“I should have thought you would pay me some courtesy of announcement, Your Majesty. But, then, you own the guards and doubtless you will make free of my door when you will.”

It was by no means the contrition he had had reported to him. The soft, even voice had little quaver in it; the eyes, none.

I misjudged Heryn to my father's ruin, he thought. Have I likewise misjudged my act of mercy? It grows late to order other deaths; now it would have the taint of persecution.

“You are safe here,” he said coldly. “Do not presume too much on my patience. You asked to be heard. I am here.”

“I thought it was myself who would be summoned,” she said, and brushed at her gray skirts. “This is all I can do for mourning.” Now, now came the quavering voice. Worse, it did not have the sound of pretense. “Do I learn now what will be done with me and my sister?”

“What would you ask, Lady Orien?”

Her head came up; her chin lifted. “I would
ask
, my lord King, for Amefel.”

Her audacity astounded him. He recalled with shame how she had flattered her way into his bed, while she plotted with her brother against his life and against his father's life. His gullibility appalled him.

“I am Aswydd,” she said. “Like other Aswydds, I can divorce sentiment and policy. Give me Amefel for my holding. I shall mourn my brother and bow to circumstance. It will save Your Majesty division and confusion within the province at a time when Your Majesty has greatest need of unity. And it will prevent contention among other lords as to who may claim the spoils—with all the feuds and history entailed.”

“I need no advice from you or your sister on policy.”

“No, my lord King, since you well know these things to be true.”

What she said made clear sense, but he did not stop hating the woman. “Have what you ask,” he said then, and was gratified that it surprised her. The color quite fled her face and she looked as if she would gladly sit down; but she could not, in the King's presence, and he did not give her that leave. “Your cousins I shall banish, all, far eastward, stripped of all properties, which I give to you. That will doubtless give them great love for you, Orien Duchess of Amefel, and constant hope of your charity. But extend them none, on pain of death. Your sister Tarien will have no estate. It is yours, and you may not bestow it in your lifetime. You will remain under arrest, Your Grace of Amefel and Henas'amef, until it pleases me to release you. You will be in all particulars…sole holder of the title.”

“So that there will be no lord to face you in council but myself, and no man to stand for me.”

“Ah, but I shall stand for you. Is it not the ancient custom of Amefel that a man who deprives a lady of her male kin must see to her welfare? A Crown wardship for you, Your Grace. And Lady Tarien's wardship and that of your cousins to you. No one will harm you. But I would not have a dozen of my lords competing for your tarnished favors, or have you
or your sister
politicking between the sheets. When you wed, Your Grace, if
ever
you know another man—and I shall take a dim view of impropriety—it will be with my approval; and the Aswydds' rule over Amefel
ends
with your name, by one means or another. Be assured, you are lord
and
lady in Amefel.”

Orien's face had gone quite pale. She made a slow curtsy. “My lord King,—”

“I let you live. I let your sister live. If you were Heryn's brother, Your Grace, you would fare differently, I assure you. Cross me again and you'll find no further mercy. That I would execute a woman—never doubt. But your brother swore in dying that you no more than obeyed his orders as lord of Amefel; and therefore you and your sister and your cousins are alive.”

“My lord,” she breathed, and her face was rigid.

“Never grow arrogant, my lady. You will never have any champion for your opinions but myself, and I like them little. Your head is insecurely set and might make pair with your brother's on the south gate at any moment.”

“I beg my lord King, his body for burial.”

“That I do grant. Neither I nor the ravens have more use for it. But on condition the burial be private and seemly. Yourself, the priests, your sister,…my soldiers.”

Orien swept another curtsy, slow and deep, showing her breast. He lingered, looking at her, wondering what had ever attracted him to this cold, scheming woman, or why he let her have her life now. The look she gave him was not Heryn's, but something more direct and more defiant.

“The bloody Marhanens,” she said in a soft voice. “Always extravagant in revenge. I thank my lord King, that I have discovered a gentler nature to moderate your justice.”

The fact of her sex was there again, and mitigated the epithet generally used and seldom dared to the Marhanens' face. Again a different Orien flashed into memory, pale skin and silks and tumbled hair. Her bruised face offended his sensibilities.

“We have beheaded women before, we Marhanens. Remember that. I shall never trust you. But neither will I persecute you, Lady Orien.”

“My women and I,” she said gravely, “will make prayers of gratitude for that.”

He cast a sharp look at the servants in the shadows of the room—well-born, some might be, even bastard cousins. But two were peasant-looking, darker-haired, of Amefin blood and maybe older, wearing such talismans as Amefin women wore. He looked at Orien, lady of Amefel in more than in his grant, and feared their curses, and witchery.

“Pray rather that my good humor continues,” he said. “Where is your sister?”