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"When?" he asked. "How will we know?"

"She ain't immediate, I don't think," Uwen said, who had had a wife, once, and children. "A hellish far walk, she's been, if they come from Anwyfar, an' in the snow, and a-horseback before that. If she was near, that might ha' brought it on. And it didn't."

"Eight months?"

"Seven or eight, maybe."

In magic and wizardry, more particularly in sorcery… there were no coincidences. Seven or eight months… from its beginning, which was also to reckon.

"Could she have gotten the child in the summer, and no one know?"

"Damn sure she did," Uwen said somberly, "an' all that time, and her bein' a witch an' all, I'd about wager she knew right well, m'lord, that I would."

His thoughts grew vague and frightened and darted here and there in distracted fashion as he walked. His shoulders had felt the burden of armor for hours, as his cloak and his boots were soaked through with snowmelt. He had been scant of sleep for far too long, had walked, letting Tarien ride on the way home—and he thought now, after a month of striving and wrestling with Amefel's danger and Ylesuin's, now that he had done something so irretrievably foolish as this, he might rest… he might finally rest, as if he had done what folly his restlessness had aimed toward, and as he faced the stairs upward all the remaining strength was flowing out of him like blood from a fortress of dragons.html

wound.

Tarien knew about the child, he kept thinking to himself. When she went to Anwyfar, she knew. When they dealt with Hasufin Hel-tain, and bargained with him—
Orien knew
.

"M'lord?" Uwen asked, for he had faltered on the first step. All the accumulated hard days and wakeful nights came down on his shoulders at once, and he found he could not set his foot to the step.

"Are ye hurt, m'lord?"

Uwen's arm came about him, bearing him up, and with that help he essayed the first step. Another arm caught him from the right, Lusin, he thought, and he made the next, telling himself that he must, and that rest was at the top of the stairs, just a little distance down the hall.

"Are ye hurt?" Uwen insisted to know.

"No," he said. "Tired. Very tired, Uwen."

" 'At's good, then, m'lord. Just walk."

He climbed up and up the right-hand steps, those that ascended above the great hall, leaning on two good friends… and there he paused, drawn to turn and look down on that staircase, on that lower hall lit as it was from a mere handful of sconces. There burned but a single candle in each at this dim hour.

He had come up this stairs from the great hall the one night he had come very close to believing Orien and falling into her hands… and then, too, Uwen had seen him home.

He had run these steps the night Parsynan had murdered Cris-sand's men… and the shadows of those men haunted the whole lower hall, all but palpable at this hour.

He had gone down these steps toward the great hall as a new-made lord, and there faced a haunt that now was all but under his feet, the old mews, out of which Owl had come.

And did it stir, tonight, that power, knowing these twin sisters had come home?

He willed
not
. Trembling in the support of two strong men, he willed strength into the wards that kept the fortress safe. He willed that nothing within these walls, no spirit and no living soul, should obey fortress of dragons.html

Lady Orien, accustomed as this house might have been to her commands.

He did all that on three breaths, and was at his weakest, but he was sure then that the haunt below in the mews had not broken out or answered to Orien's presence, and that most of all reassured him, for of all dangers in the fortress, it was the chanciest and the greatest.

"Shall we take him on up, then?" Lusin asked, tightening his arm about his ribs, clearly supposing his lord had lost his way.

" 'E's stopped on 'is own," Uwen said pragmatically, against the other side, and shifted his grip on his wrist and about his waist. "An' 'e'll start on 'is own. 'Is Grace is thinkin' on somethin' worth 'is time, and I ain't askin' what till he's through."

"I'm very well," Tristen said then, although for the life in him he could not think of what he had just been doing.

"Lean on me, lad," Uwen said then—neither Uwen nor Lusin was as tall as he, but they had their leather-clad shoulders beneath his arms, and a firm grip around him, and bore him up the last step and down the corridor. His head drooped. He was next aware of his own foyer, outside Uwen's room.

And could not bear to go back into the bedchamber.

"I'll sit by the fire," he said.

"The fire an' not your bed, m'lord?" Uwen asked. "Your bed's waitin'."

"Not now." It was an effort for him to speak, now, not that it was hard to draw breath, but that his thoughts wanted to wander off, and the firelight seemed safer than the dark in the rooms beyond.

Time was when he would fall sound asleep at moments of revelation, at any moment when new things poured in on him so fiercely and so fast that his wits failed to keep up. For hours and hours he would sleep afterward, no physician availing to wake him, and when he would wake—when he would wake, then he would have remembered something he never knew.

But such sound sleeps no longer happened, not since the summer, when War had Unfolded to him in all its terror. He no longer had that grace, nor dared leave his servants and his men a day and more unadvised. He fought to wake, and make his limbs answer him— and fortress of dragons.html

yet it was so much effort. If he could only sit by the fire, he thought, and see the light, then he would not fall asleep.

"Will ye take food, lad?" Uwen asked.

"Hot tea," he said.

"Tea an' honey," Uwen said, and a distant murmur went on a time, then a small, distant clatter of cups until one arrived in Tristen's hand.

He drank, and the fragile cup weighed like iron, an effort even to lift.

There was no strength in him, and he supported one hand with the other to have a sip without spilling it.

Uwen hovered, waiting for him, perhaps expecting to drop it. Uwen had ridden through drifts the same as he—but was not half so tired.

"Petelly," Tristen said. He did not remember now where he had left his horse. His last memory of Petelly was of his shaggy coat snow-plastered and his head hanging.

"Havin' all the grooms make over 'im," Uwen said, "an' 'e's sleepin'

by now, as you should be doin', m'lord."

He gave a small shake of his head. "Not now. I daren't, now. pve things to do."

He failed to remember where Owl had gone… Owl had gone off to kill mice, perhaps, or flown off to some place more ominous, but at least Owl had gone, and nothing worse would come tonight.

"What d' ye wish, m'lord?"

That was a fair question, one to which he as yet had no answer.

"Ye want to post a guard up there wi' the ladies," Uwen reminded him. "There's servants in this house that served the Aswydds."

"Do that," he said, and then heard, in the great distance, Uwen naming names to Lusin, choosing Guelenmen, Quinalt men, men least likely to listen to the Aswydds' requests or to flee their threats.

He had another sip of honeyed tea, sitting before a fire that had been Orien's, in an apartment that had been Orien's, green velvet and bronze dragons and all. It had been Orien's apartment, and Lord Heryn's before her, and on the best of nights he never felt quite safe here. He watched it, guarded it as much as lived in it, and of all places in the Zeide where he could bestow the twins, he would not cede this one to Lady Orien.

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The old mews was virtually under his feet here, that rift in the wards out of which Owl had come, and which he had not been able to shut, since.

"Tassand's gone to see to the guests," the next-senior of his servants came to report to him… Drys, the man's name was. "Your Grace, would you have another cup? Or will you have the armor off?"

He had lost his cloak somewhere, or Uwen had taken it. The brigandine's metal joinings scarred the chair, and the padding beneath it was much too warm.

He must have assented. Drys knelt and began to undo buckles about his person, and two others helped him from the boots. He stood, then, with Uwen's help, and shed the brigandine, piece by piece. It was light armor, and lighter still the padding beneath, but the very absence of its weight was enough to send him asleep on his feet.

" 'Ere, m'lord," Uwen said. "You ain't stayin' awake. Best ye go on to your bed an' sleep. The ladies is under guard an' dawn's comin' afore ye know it. Ain't a thing in the wide world ye can do else for anyone, but to sleep."

He was defeated. Drys set a cup of mulled wine in his hand, and the mere pungent smell of it sent his thoughts reeling toward the pillows and the warmed soft covers. Whatever he had tried to think of before he stood up to shed the armor went fleeting into the dark.

" 'At's good," he heard Uwen say, realized he was abed, and felt Uwen draw the coverlet up over his shoulder.

Mauryl had used to do that small kindness for him. Uwen had done it most nights, from the time Uwen had begun his service… only this summer. So quickly he had sped from youth to manhood— and missed so much, never having the ordinary things a man might know.

Summer seemed long ago, an autumn ago, a winter ago. He was wiser now, and knew there were dangers in the world he had never reckoned in the summer.

But he was not unguarded. He had Uwen. Owl was somewhere about.

Emuin was awake and wary. Even knowing the quality of the guests he had brought beneath his roof he could draw himself smaller and smaller and smaller, until he could finally wrap himself up in a small dark ball of awareness, and gather to him his hard-won memories.

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For memories he did have now, not many, but vivid ones that spread themselves like shadowy curtains. He saw visions of battlefields and forest, he smelled the stone of Ynefel's rain-swept tower, and faced Mauryl's rain-soaked indignation.

He met Uwen's gray-stubbled face by evening candlelight, saying to him, "Lad, ye mean well. 'At's worth somethin'."

And Emuin's face, gray-streaked beard gone whiter and whiter at the roots, and eyes sunk deep in wells of shadow: "
Mean
well, young lord? Do well, there's the challenge!"

He saw Owl, sitting in a leafless, ghostly tree in Marna Wood. Owl dived away and flew before him through the night, his self-appointed guide, above a white stone path that was the Road into the world.

He saw Owl, shining with wizard-light, fly before him through an unnatural night of sorcery, amid the clash of iron and the cries of dying men.

He saw Cefwyn, standing by a tattered banner, saying to him, 'We've won!" as if it were true for all time.

He curled tight against the dark, holding fast to these things that bounded the spring and summer of his single year of life, too weary to be as afraid as he ought.

He sank so deep he saw the dark before him.

Then, not in fear, but in sober realization of his danger, he began to travel away from that Edge, resolute instead on reaching the world, determinedly gathering up his resources. He bent all his will on opening his eyes, and on being alive.

He lay still a moment, counting what he had brought back with him, for his dreams were not like Uwen's dreams. Where he went in his dreams was not, perhaps, memory: he had begun to fear so, at least.

He remembered not dreams, but efforts; and what he remembered of his ventures told him things.

It told him that all the books in the archive of Henas'amef, all the accumulated wisdom of the kings and dukes of Amefel arrayed on those dusty shelves, was less knowledge of time past than what he could draw to the surface, if the Unfolding came on him again.

But he resisted it. Perhaps that was the reason the Unfolding happened less often now… he feared to know. He wished not to fortress of dragons.html

know. Men said that he was Barrakketh, first of the warlords of the Sihhë. But he did not know it. He refused to know it. The Book of that knowledge he had burned in fire, the night before the battle at Lewen field, but the knowledge of the Book that Barrakketh had written he had stored away as too fearsome, too inimical to all he wished to know. Waking, he tucked that away, and carefully remade his world without that knowlege, testing every part of it, renewing his ties to those he loved. He slept seldom, and waked relieved to remember he did have Uwen, who always slept near him.

He had Emuin. Not Mauryl. Emuin… though the width of the fortress lay between them.

He had Cefwyn, who was his friend, though the width of a province and the distrust of all the court lay between them.

He waked by dim daylight cast from outer windows through the archway of his bedchamber. He waked in the great bed beneath the brazen dragons of Aswydd heraldry, and recalled that these things were so.

And in rare luxury of absolute abandon he drew deep, grateful breaths into his chest, finding everything well under his roof, even given their guests, and Orien Aswydd, who would never own this bed again, and never rest where he had slept.

This part of the world he remade, too, and made it sure in his mind, for doubt was a breach, and doubts he refused to entertain. He was safe, abed, suffering the aches of last night's long ride.

His servants moved about. They needed nothing from him. Out in the yard the whole fortress had waked to life without him. The garrison had begun its drills. The town had spread open its shops and gone about its trades. The camp outside had waked, stirred its fires to life, and the tavern help from inside the walls had bustled out with hot porridge to feed the men gathered there. Far across the fields, in pens they had established for the army that would gather there, stablehands tended their charges. Down by Modeyneth men set to their day's work on a wall he had ordered restored, and as far as the Lenúalim's banks, soldiers watched and warded the border. All these things happened this morning without his guidance, or rather, within the compass of his care but without his oversight; and the progress of those unwatched matters reassured him that the sun reliably rose and fortress of dragons.html