Fortress in the Eye of Time (74 page)

“Damn,” he heard from Emuin, an exhalation of breath as much as a word. The next was stronger. “Cefwyn?”

There
was
a smell of smoke, however faint, that he had taken for a draft from the fireplace. He heard doors open and close. He saw Idrys leave in haste. He felt disturbance from master Emuin and even through the closed doors heard Idrys shouting at someone in the hall. Emuin was afraid. Emuin was aware, through him, if no other way.

He left Emuin's side and went out through the several doors to the hall, where Uwen was. Servants were standing up and down the hall, all looking anxiously toward the endmost, servants' stairs, where smoke was billowing up. The kitchens, it might be: that was where most chance of fire was, down below and on that face of the building.

“M'lord,” Uwen said, looking, it seemed, for orders, but he had no idea what to do. It was too much disaster at once. They perhaps should move Emuin and Cefwyn to safety—but Emuin could scarcely bear more jostling about; and he had no idea which direction was safe.

“Where is it?” he asked, and no one seemed to know. He headed for the main stairs, which were still free of smoke. Uwen wanted to come with him, but he said, “Stay above. Don't let the servants leave. We may have to carry Emuin and Cefwyn downstairs. I'll find out.”

He hurried alone for the central stairs, those past Cefwyn's room, supposed Cefwyn's guards, absent from their posts, were inside with him, perhaps preparing to take him to safety, and he was halfway down the steps when he heard Cefwyn call out to him from above.

“Tristen! What's burning?”

Cefwyn, without his guards, was standing in a dressing-robe, holding to the newel at the landing. He began to answer, but all of a sudden Cefwyn just—fell down, and his hand slipped on the steps, and he kept falling.

Tristen raced up the steps and stopped Cefwyn in his arms, but there was blood on the steps and blood on him, and Cefwyn had fainted.

Booted feet came running down the steps from above him. “M'lord,—” Uwen began, bending to offer help.

“Where are his guards?”

“I don't know, m'lord, Idrys—”

“Find Idrys!” Too much was going wrong. He feared to take Cefwyn downstairs, exposed to a confusion without guards, without the protections that hourly surrounded him. “Wherever the fire is—Idrys will be there. Find where it's burning. I can carry him.
Hurry!
”

“Aye, m'lord!” Uwen said, and ran past him down the stairs.

He tried to pick Cefwyn up. He almost could manage it, though Cefwyn was utterly limp, and the wrong way about on the stairs. But by then Cefwyn's guards had come running down the steps from above, and helped shift Cefwyn head-upward so he could get his knee and his arms under him and rise on the steps.

He carried Cefwyn up the steps as the guards attempted to help, white-faced and trying to express their contrition, to him, since Cefwyn heard nothing, but he turned his shoulder and went past them, fearing that his carrying Cefwyn might hurt the leg further. Cefwyn was a still, loose weight, hard to keep safe as he maneuvered through the doors of Cefwyn's apartment. His boot slipped a little on the floor and he realized it was blood that made his foot skid. He maintained his hold on Cefwyn's yielding weight, the air hazing dark about him, maneuvered him through more doors, into his bedroom and with a last, difficult balance and rending effort, laid Cefwyn down carefully on the bed.

At that moment Annas appeared, took one look and began calling out rapid orders to pages to bring water and linens, while the guards attempted to explain to Annas they had been trying to assess the danger from the smoke coming up the other stairs, that they had believed Cefwyn asleep, that they never otherwise would have left.

Pages came running with towels. Then Idrys arrived on the run, smelling of smoke, his face streaked with soot. He had a quick look at Cefwyn's leg, and ordered tight bandages.

“The physician is on his way,” Idrys said.

“He fell on the stairs,” Tristen said, still out of breath. “He heard the alarm—”

“Where in hell were the guards?” Idrys demanded, pressing a linen wad against the wound, and the guards again attempted to explain—but Efanor came through the doors, cursing the guards and demanding to know what was happening.

“The kitchen's afire,” Idrys said shortly.

“—Happening to my
brother
, sir!”

“Stupidity!” Idrys said. “Damn it, where is the man? Annas! I need linens!—He fell on the stairs, my lord Prince. We've sent for the surgeon. If you would help His Majesty, Your Highness, see if you can stir the surgeon out of hiding. He only lately attended master Emuin, of another fall on the stairs—he's probably in his residence. He wasn't at the fire.”

Efanor, without another word, turned and left.

“We'll have the damned priest in here next,” Idrys said. He had a pad of linen pressed to Cefwyn's wound. Blood soaked the sheets. The endmost stitches had burst. It was not all red blood that came out. “Damn it! Lord Tristen! Go out into the hall, set a guard over Emuin, Prince Efanor, and the lady Regent—gods know, it may rain frogs next.”

“Yes, sir,” Tristen said, and went out and caught one and another servant of his own and had them find out what was happening downstairs. He sent one of Cefwyn's distraught guards upstairs to order the guards watching over the lady to be alert and to make no such mistakes—he thought that the
guard might be especially passionate in urging the point. He had one of his guards to fill out the number at Cefwyn's door and sent another to put extra guards with Efanor, who was searching, he hoped, for the physician.

Rain frogs. Idrys meant ills of every improbable sort. It was too much calamity. He tried to reach Emuin. He called to him, in that gray place, from where he stood; but Emuin was waging his own struggle—and when he would have joined it, Uwen came up to him in midhall. “His Majesty's come awake,” Uwen said. “But he's not well, m'lord, he's not real well. The captain said you might ought to come quick.”

He all but ran to Cefwyn's apartment, and Idrys was still at Cefwyn's bedside. Cefwyn was absolutely white, but his eyes were open. The physician had arrived, the same that had stitched up Emuin.

“Tristen.” Cefwyn reached out his hand and Tristen took it, wishing the pain to stop and for the wound to be well, but clearly it did no good. Cefwyn's mouth made a thin line and sweat broke out on Cefwyn's white face.

“I can't do what Mauryl did,” he said in a low voice, only for Cefwyn. “I wish I could. Mauryl could make the pain go away. And I've tried.”

“Emuin says you're not a wizard,” Cefwyn said. His grip was painfully hard. “I don't call on you to be. Is the fire out?”

“Kitchen grease, Your Majesty,” Idrys said.

“I'd at least expect something more exciting,” Cefwyn said. Cefwyn all but fainted, caught a breath and several more, before he asked: “Emuin. Where is Emuin?”

“Stairs have lately turned hostile,” Idrys said. “Master Emuin fell, m'lord King. He will mend, but he's in no better case than you.”

Cefwyn seemed to have fallen asleep, then, but he was so pale, so waxen-looking.

“It's as well His Majesty should sleep,” the physician said. “Close the curtains. All of you. Out. Away, m'lords.” He set out a jar on the bedside, full of something noxious and something white and moving.

“You,” Idrys said, “take that from this room, sir.”

“The wound is suppurating, Lord Commander. The flesh is corrupt. The maggots will keep it clean.”

“There will be no damned maggots, sir. Out!”

“The flesh is corrupt. I tell you that you are trifling with his life!”

“Get him out of here!” Idrys said. “Get master Haman.”

“I shall go to the prince.”

“Go to the devil!” Idrys said. “I'll not have your hands on him! He'd have been well by now if you'd the talent of your damned maggots. Out!”

Tristen drew a long breath as the man gathered his bottles and left.

“His Majesty don't like the Lord Physician, m'lord Commander,” Uwen ventured, head ducked. “He wouldn't let 'im near Lord Tristen again, he swore not.”

“With good cause,” Idrys said, and adjusted pillows under Cefwyn's knee. “Go! Out! The lot of you! Annas has business here. The rest of you—out!”

 

They had gotten the fire in the kitchen out, so Uwen said, by flinging sand on it, which had been Cook's notion. Cook's hair had caught fire and three of the boys were badly burned: there was sand all over, brought in buckets from the smithy, and every pot and wall was blackened with soot. The fire had broken out, the report was, while the night-cook was asleep.

“Wasn't nothing going on,” Uwen said, “except the morning bread risin', and then by what they say, the grease-pot was overset and it run down into the coals. After that, it was merry hell, m'lord. They don't know if it was some dog got in, that knocked it over, or what, but Cook's just damn lucky. It's sausages from the courtyard, campfires and kettles for us tomorrow. It's a rare mess.”

Tristen paced the floor, with nothing better to do—there was nothing he
could
do. Emuin was holding out on his own and cursed at him for a distraction, saying there were untoward
influences.
The ether is upset
, Emuin insisted, which he did not understand, but he remembered the pigeon and the latch rattling, and with the dark outside the window-panes, he paced and he looked for the intervention of the enemy in all that was going on—he feared to attract Hasufin's notice, but feared Hasufin was laughing at all of them this moment. If a window-latch could rattle, he said to himself, a pot might rock and go over.

He had not prevented calamity, he with his little attempt at magic. He felt his failure keenly, and wondered whether he was not in fact responsible for the calamity. And from time to time he went across the hall and asked the guards how Cefwyn fared, but there was no news, except that master Haman had come and looked and said he could bring up a poultice they used on the horses, and he could stitch it up, but that was all that lay in his competency.

According to the guards and the gossip in the hall, Idrys had then said, “Do the horses generally live?” and Haman had said, “Yes, sir,” and Idrys had had Haman bring what he had.

It did not please Prince Efanor, who sent the physician back with two of his guard and ordered Idrys to accept his treatment. Idrys had told the guards and the physician they were in danger of their lives if they meddled further.

So they had gone back to Prince Efanor to report that.

 

A long time went by, in Haman's comings and goings, in the drift of smoke from the downstairs—many rooms had their windowpanes ajar, letting it flow out, but the smell of smoke clung to everything, and the servants were bundling fine clothes into linen wrappers and sealing the doors of chests and such with wadding. Emuin seemed better, at least so his servants reported, and had called for tea, but had headache and did not want to be moved, cursing his servants and telling the good Teranthine brothers that he wanted them to go light candles in the sanctuary.

What good would that do? Tristen wondered when he heard it, and wondered whether Emuin was in his right mind, or hoping for this salvation of his. He went down the hall to see Emuin, and Emuin was indeed better in color, but seemed to have lost substance, if that were possible.

“Sir,” he said. “Did you want more candles in here, or what can I do?”

“I want the brothers to light the candles,” Emuin said, and confided to him then so faintly he could hardly hear: “to get them out of here before I go mad. Is it dawn?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you feel it—no! don't look there. Stay out of that Place. Something's prowling about. It's here. Gods, it's
here
.”

“I feel something dreadfully wrong. The air is
wrong
, sir.” He went down to his knees and caught Emuin's cold hand in his—but Emuin did not move his head at all from where it rested, and seemed in great pain, perhaps not hearing him, as no one else ever had heard him when he tried to say the most desperate dangers. “It doesn't ever stop, sir. It's getting worse. I had my window rattling. And one of my birds killed itself.”

“He's reaching out,” Emuin whispered, so faintly he might not have heard if he had not had his ear close. “He wants
me
. He wants me to die, apostate from the order—he wants me very badly. He wants me to die
here
, in this place—and damned to hell. Useful to him. Another stepping-stone.”

“Mauryl used to speak Words, and the tower would feel safer, at least. Do you know any of those Words, sir?”

“I haven't the strength right now to think of them. Let me rest awhile. Let me rest. My head hurts so.”

He brushed his fingers across Emuin's brow, ever so gently, wishing the pain to stop. But it was impudent even to try with a wizard such as Emuin was. “If my wishes help at all, sir, you have them.”

“They are potent,” the whisper came, but Emuin's head did not move, nor his eyes open. “They are more potent than you know, young lord. Potent enough I could not die. Damn you!”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and took it for an old man at the edge of sleep, and in pain.

“Cefwyn,” Emuin said then, seeming agitated. “Watch Cefwyn. Young fool.”

He did not know which of them Emuin thought the fool, but he said, “Yes, sir,” and got up and left for Cefwyn's room.

But the guards, very quiet and very correct since Idrys had had private words with them, said only that the King was in some pain, and that Idrys had said he might come in whenever he wanted.

He thought that he might visit Cefwyn, but there was a sense of ill everywhere alike, that same sense that he had had before, and he seemed to bring it with him.