Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03 (18 page)

“I mentioned no shrine.”‘

There was a moment of silence then, and Emuin did not meet his eyes.

“You knew. You expected her,” Tristen said accusingly, “and never told me.”.

“Say I’m not surprised at her,” Emuin confessed, “since she precedes trouble, and trouble we shall have by spring, young lord, so she might as well have the winter’s start on it. I say act on the advice I do give and then we will proceed to the advice you complain I do
not
give.”

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

“And establish this
court
, sir?”

“That, for a beginning.”

“And spend my days settling the design for carved doors, and debating with craftsmen? Hard enough to see to the things I need to.”

“Better that than raising storms in the countryside. Stay out of mischief! Provoke nothing before its time.”

“Provoke
what
, sir? And in what
time
?” It was the very question he pursued, whether Emuin knew there was something on the horizon, or whether he was equally baffled and casting about for hints of what opposed them. “Storms may always come from the west, but Ynefel lies that way, too, and whether the tower is vacant or not concerns me. I have felt it vacant. I’ve thought that it was. Do you know?”

“Yes, it is vacant! I am certain of its vacancy, as I am certain there is no active shrine at Levey, and no hallow nor shadow beneath the oak that fell, not tonight, whatever may have been true at dawn this morning. But I’ll be most grateful, young lord, if you and yours could refrain from poking and prying under every stone in the province. Follow the advice I do give, and don’t rush into other things and then run to me for advice, as if I should have foreseen everything! I don’t. I can’t. I won’t. So there! I’m out of need for supper this evening, and far from polite converse. Entertain your guest. I’ll go back to my tower, by your leave, my good and gracious lord, and let you younger hearts Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

plan the downfall of Tasmôrden. I’m weary.”

“You’ve not had all your supper. And your advice would be welcome. Come upstairs with me and have the rest of your supper. Please, sir.”

Another lengthy silence, Emuin seeming distracted and weary.

“You don’t hear me, do you? Nothing’s come to you?
Crissand

lured you out there.
Crissand
brought you to this shrine. And who is Crissand?
What
is Crissand?”

“My friend, sir. My loyal friend.” Dread afflicted him at the hearing. “Do you say otherwise?”

“Not so far as he wills.” Emuin’s lips trembled in the dim light, as if he would say more, and refrained. “He is Aswydd. And Amefin. And you are Mauryl’s. And have ever been.—Go to your guest. His arrival, too, is momentous, like this ragabones from the streets that you send to trouble the wisewomen. I’ll go to my room.”

“You’re angry, sir. I only wish the truth.”

“I’m in perfectly good sorts. I want my own tower. That number of stairs I can climb, none of this traipsing up to yours and down and up again. I grow weary of this up and down of this stairs, that stairs, come down to dinner, down to the guardroom, up again, pray. Your bones don’t know the pains of age, young sir. The steps yonder are a mountain, my tower equally so, but at least it leads to bed.”

“Sir.” Contrition moved him. He had raised his voice to Emuin, Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

and wished nothing more than to have Emuin’s trust, and did not know how to win it. “I’ll have your supper sent.”

Emuin looked at him, old eyes, much the image of Mauryl’s, worried, and shaded by wrinkled lids. Flesh had fallen away, the lines had gone deeper since the summer. Emuin looked at him, however, and there seemed fire in the shadow of his eyes, the lively dance the candles made.

“Master Emuin, Auld Syes told me things. I’ve tried to tell them to you. Have you heard me?”

“Oh, indeed I’ve heard. Have you?”

“As much as I can understand.”

“Then more than I,” Emuin said. “I’ll go to my tower, in all goodwill, young lord.”

“Have I done well?”

Again that long stare. “You’ve done very well,” Emuin said unexpectedly, and walked away, leaving him to his puzzlement, but hugging that last as dearly as a cloak against a bitter wind.

The old man looked frail as he walked away, frail and fragile, in that hallway that had never felt safe.

It did not feel safe tonight, less so than ordinarily. Many of the candles were out. It was the east wing draft, again, and the servants battled it, lighting and relighting the candles, and never yet had they found the reason of it: for years and years, the servants said, candles there had gone out.

And the stairs to Emuin’s tower equally well suffered from it, Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

especially when Emuin opened his door.

“Syllan,” Tristen said.

“M’lord.”

“Go with him. See he’s provided for. Make tea for him.”

Tristen was never to be without at least two guards, but Uwen counted among them. Syllan bowed his head and went after master Emuin, while he and his armed companions continued up the stairs.

“Master Emuin’s sayin’ there’s troubles,” Uwen muttered on the way up to his apartment. “An’ dangers, an’ what good are we simple lads when it’s wizards?”

“I don’t think that’s to fear now,” he said. “The things we have to fear I hope are all across the river at the moment.”

“If that was so, ye wouldn’t need us.”

Uwen had right on his side.

“I wish I had been more moderate with him,” Tristen said. “I made him angry.” He had been angry himself, and that had never been his habit. He regarded the past moments with some dismay, and recalled he had been angry with Parsynan, for good reason, and angry at the archivist’s murder, and angry at the workmen underfoot. He had been angry, in fact, for days, and felt as if never yet had he been able to lay aside the sword… that was the feeling he had. He was different from Men. He was different still when he took up the sword, and until he laid it down, and he felt as if he had taken it up at the gates of Amefel and never since Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

been able to let it go.

And now he had fairly shouted at Emuin, or would have, if there were not the witnesses, and he had cast Cuthan out, and sent Parsynan on his way afoot, and done very many things that he would never have done until he had unsheathed the sword at the gates of Henas’amef.

He did not know what to do about it, save to continue to carry it, and to defend the town as he had begun to do. But, he said to himself as he came to the level of the hall, he could not go about full of temper. He had yet to learn how to carry the sword and not use it, that was the thing. He supposed that Cefwyn managed, and that Uwen did, and other men who had soldiering for a profession… for that he was very good with the sword did not mean it entirely protected those who were on his side.

Had he not gone alone across the field at Emwy? Had he not endangered all those trying to protect him?

There seemed a sober lesson in that, and he thought that Emuin might have delivered that lesson to him without a word, only by his absence. It was with a far quieter tread that he came up on the doors where his other guards waited, Aren and Tawwys, with the Ivanim escort… and the presence of the latter advised him that Cevulirn had not left, for which he was humbly grateful.

“I need guards against assassins,” he said to Uwen as they walked into the foyer. “I think the Elwynim will try, at least. I fear more for my friends. For you. Be on your guard.”

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

“Wi’ Tasmôrden in charge over there,” Uwen said, “I expect

’em, aye, before all’s done; and now ye take in that light-fingered boy, which worries me for other reasons. He’ll gossip all to Ness, an’, m’lord, ye ha’ rumors enow.”

It was true. And it was worth considering.

Cevulirn sat, done with his supper, a cup of wine in hand, his feet before the fire… Tassand’s arranging, certainly: Cevulirn’s head was bowed, and he looked tired; but Cevulirn looked up with a level and completely wary stare as Tristen arrived at the fireside.

“It’s settled,” he said to Cevulirn, and sat down in the matching chair, waving Uwen and also Lusin on to the remnant of their supper. “Thank you for waiting.”

“Will my lord eat?” Tassand asked, quietly at his elbow.

“I’ve had enough,” he said, in every effort to answer his staff kindly; and deftly as a whisper of soles on the floor Tassand set a cup of wine in his hand and a plate of sweet cakes on the small table within carry of his hand. “Thank you, Tassand.”

“My lord.” Tassand absented himself then. They held the fireside to themselves, and still Cevulirn asked no questions, but curiosity… that was in the air.

“It was a boy I’d been looking for,” Tristen said.

“Ah.”

“A boy with the gift. As you have,” he said to Cevulirn, chasing a small gray thought into the tangle of intentions.
Cevulirn
was one like Paisi, one he was reluctant to give up, a man essential Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

also to Cefwyn’s safety.

And Cevulirn glanced down, a momentary veiling of that gray stare, and that was as much truth as needed be between them.

There was no need to press him. Cevulirn knew why he was here, knew his own value, at least that he had been moved enough to act. Crissand, also gifted, had felt ill at ease in the ride, and taken a small army for an escort. The boy Paisi might deny he had anything but luck after being taken up by the guard, but all these things had come on one day: the winds were blowing as they would and the coincidences of their meeting diminished to none.

And tonight, when his heart searched the gray space and the land around him, he knew unfinished tasks, unanswered questions…

all these things, and knew the evening had provided him more essential pieces than he had had in the morning, even in his visit to stir Emuin forth from his tower. He knew all the gaps in the wards, both of the Zeide and of Henas’amef; and such faults in his defense as he could shore up, he had repaired.

But he felt uneasy in Auld Syes’ appearance; uneasy in the overthrow of the oak; uneasy in the fact that he lacked officers and lords fit to maintain order while he fared out; uneasy that he lacked an army at his disposal when the border was a long, wooded, unobserved river between his fields and Elwynor, and he had never so much as seen those lands.

“Will you stay with me?” he asked Cevulirn. “Or must you ride south again?”

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

“I have affairs to set in order in my own land,” Cevulirn said,

“and a muster to raise, considering the spring: this in the chance His Majesty will call me.”

The tainted south, Cefwyn had said. That phrase would not leave Tristen’s thinking: wrong, wrong, wrong, it was, and yet there was Cefwyn’s reasoning.

“And if he will not, and will not call me,” Tristen said, “yet the border is my border; and I will not permit Elwynim to fight on Amefin soil. Cefwyn says the north must win the war; but I say the south mustn’t lose it.”

“Well said; very well said; and if Your Grace wished me to winter here, and my men and horses under canvas, here or at the border, that we might do, if you deem it needful… or even convenient… so the south should not lose the war.”

Perhaps it was that hint of wizard-gift he had felt in Cevulirn, that among the lords of the south and north, he had always felt greatest affinity for this lean gray man.

“Tasmôrden in besieging Ilefínian,” Tristen said, “promised the Amefin aid if they would rebel. But that’s failed. Now I have the province, and I only wish Cefwyn would let us cross to Ilefínian.”

“So I urged on His Majesty and His Majesty’s Commander,”

Cevulirn said.

“I begged Cefwyn send the both of us, but he still said the attack must come from the north.”

“For
fear
of Ryssand and Murandys.” Tristen shook his head.

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

“And yet he relies on them.”

“He is Guelen,” Cevulirn said. “He has that firm idea that heavy horse and pikemen are the secure heart of his army. He and I have argued that point long and hard. But that’s what he says to hide the truth of his reasons… the real reason he went home this summer. He had dissent within the Guelens. He saw danger in Murandys, danger in Ryssand’s ambition, and most of all in Ryssand’s influence with the Quinalt. If we had driven north to Ilefínian this summer, if we had set Her Grace on the throne and all had gone as smoothly as we could wish—
he
would have had to come home to Guelemara and present them an alliance with Elwynor which Ryssand would have opposed. And
that
would have stirred the north to join Ryssand, and Nelefreissan, Isin, Murandys for a certainty… the kingdom would have split. He faced them to fight for the Elwynim treaty and his marriage on level ground, and by all evidences, he’s won over most of the lords. Only when Ryssand assailed Her Grace’s honor,
then
he would have drawn and broken with Ryssand and Murandys, to the ruin of all the kingdom if they took up arms. Gods help the realm—and thank the gods for the letter you sent him.
There
we have our hope of being called and Ryssand being sent home. But

we
must be ready… ready to move so quickly the north can muster no objection.”

“To stand under arms this winter? Cefwyn forbade us because he had to forbid us. But might not lords come here to hold a council

—with very large escorts? We border Elwynor. Crissand thought Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

it necessary to have a large escort. Might not others?”

“Lord of Amefel, you’ve grown very devious.”

The stillness had become so great that the crackle of the fire was a third voice. From Uwen and Lusin, somewhat removed, came not a sound.

“What we did this summer, we could do again,” Tristen said.