Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03 (24 page)

“We won’t know, then, until we hear from Haman,” Tristen said.

“And the lords are coming, within the hour?”

“Aye, m’lord. Word’s passed.”

He had been remiss in letter-writing. Idrys had bidden him write often, very often; and now in Uwen’s report he thought he should write that days-delayed letter.

“Go do what you can do,” he said, “but be back when I go down to the hall.”

“Aye, m’lord.”

So Uwen went off to find those he was now sure were unavailable and well away, and Tristen sat down at the desk with dragon legs and under the brazen loom of dragon jaws, and took up pen to warn Idrys directly of all that had happened. He was all too aware now that along with the Dragons he had dismissed all his most reliable Guelen messengers, except his private guard.

The Amefin guard would not be able to traverse Guelessar unquestioned or unremarked, and might not so easily reach Idrys.

He had retained not a one of the Dragons at hand; and under the circumstances, trusting the Guelens to report ill of their own officers seemed folly. There was Gedd. He might well send Gedd.

Uwen, however, might well find an honest man or two in the unit of which he had been a part as late as midsummer. Not all of them had marched home, of those who had fought at Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

Lewenbrook; and, Cevulirn’s help notwithstanding, he could not afford to dismiss the Guelen Guard. Honest men must be the heart of what he should have done by now and must now urgently do with the Guelens: depose or assign elsewhere officers who had carried out the massacre. Now that the sergeant and the captain had fled, if that was indeed their course, then all the harm their reports could do would have been done… and he was increasingly convinced that they had fled, and that the Quinalt had warned them.

Overtake the fugitive officers on the road, frighten the horses from under them…
that
he might do, as he had done to Parsynan.

But it had not prevented Parsynan getting to Guelessar, as he was well sure Parsynan had done; and he found himself more than reluctant to invade the gray space with such a reckless assault.

And when he realized that in himself, he let the pen pause, asking himself why he did hesitate.

Fear of killing: there was that. There was no guarantee how they would fall, and a fall was chance and chance was the realm of wizards.

There was no guarantee such an act would in any wise prevent the gossip arriving at a bad time; when it arrived was now a matter of a horse’s strength, reasonably certain. But to bring it into the realm of chance also laid things as open as a window flung wide to whatever influences might be seething just out of reach of his inquiries.

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

There was Ivanor… arrived the very day he sent the Dragons to the border.

And arrived on the heels of portents and omens, word of lords and aethelings, himself and Crissand and prophecy.

Now Paisi, a waif detestable to the Guelens and sheltered by the Amefin gate-guard, had become the cause of upheaval in the Guelen Guard, the garrison that was Amefel’s surest and readiest defense.

His hand trembled somewhat as he dipped the quill in ink. The thoughts that came to him were not quiet ones, nor assured in their direction. Emuin’s sudden spate of advice to him and to Uwen assumed the character of a milestone reached, a point at which Emuin would speak; and now, now he was aware of Emuin’s eavesdropping.

—You know
, he said to Emuin, and had nothing but Emuin’s retreating presence, refusing to utter a thing.

Anger came back, a blinding anger, and he smothered it, quickly, as some foreign and hostile thing.

To find Emuin standing at distance, watching him.

Watching, saying nothing, power intact.

Emuin
could
still keep secrets from him.

Had not Emuin always said he would not stand in the path of his intentions? Yet Emuin did exactly that, refusing his demands, keeping him from leaping from one stepping-stone of advice to the next, distracting him…
leading
him, by his frustrated Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

questions, to examine things for himself, letting things Unfold to him. And leading him yet again, by his affection, by his anger, by his very conviction that Emuin held secrets from him…

While he had no answers from Emuin… he delayed acting.

While he delayed acting…

He found other courses to take.

The anger subsided, grew cool. Master Emuin still said not a word to him, but he stood in the winds of the gray space and detected a certain small satisfaction wafting on the winds.

—Is that your tactic, sir
?

Emuin did not ignore him, rather watched him warily, and he ignored Emuin, mostly, at least, aware that time was short and the earls would be gathering.

He wrote, in the time he had. And paused, the feather brushing his lips, and gazed at the candleflame, recalling how, in the mysterious ways of wizards, once at Mauryl’s hearth he had been allured by fire. His hand still bore that small scar. He never forgot that he could not grasp the flame, only feed it or extinguish it.

Such was wizardry. Such had been Mauryl.

Such was Emuin, uncatchable, even by such a power as he had in himself. If his power was the wind and the whirlwind, Emuin’s, like Mauryl’s, was the fire, small as a spark, leaping up to consume whole houses, and moving aside from a curious finger.

And had not Mauryl been very like that? Mauryl, whose half-Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

burned letters still contained only requests for supply and observations on the weather? A murderer had thought to find far more in Mauryl’s writings, and yet… what could they learn of Mauryl or any wizard in the small exchanges? It was the long work that said more, the persistence of the little spark smoldering outside its hearth, the one, slight, unnoticed act of chance.

—I respect you
, he said to one he was sure had his ears well stopped and his heart warded.
I respect your working, sir, nor

am such a fool as to ignore it. When I transgress, you will not

tell me; but should I transgress against
you,
sir, I beg you

continue to call me a fool. I fear the silence more than the

shadows
.

I will to do good, sir. But we are, are we not, something

different one from the other? If I am the wind, you are the fire,

and may burn, but mine is the stronger force.

I am Sihhë. Is that the lesson I am finally to learn, that I am

not a Man and that I should
not
practice wizardry
?

If that’s so, sir, it would seem I need you. I need you very much.

The captain of the Guelens has very likely fled, and mischief

will come of it, and wizardry might prevent him.

But do you say I should not wield it? That
magic
is my skill,

and I should avoid wizardry
?

He listened until the ink dried on the quill tip, and he heard no answer, none, at least, in words.

But there was a sense of presence grown more peaceful, a touch Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

softer than the feather and more subtle than a word. The dragons that loomed over this place threatened that peace: creatures of fire, reared in angry postures.

Yet was the carving oak, or horse?

Was the image bronze, or all that a dragon might be?

The nearest of them loomed, a spell in its own right, and warred against the peace. It leered across his shoulder, flanked him, stared outward with him, with its bronze and dreadful countenance, an Aswydd beast, witness of all that had happened here… and trying, so it seemed, to be his ally.

Do I command the dragons
? he asked that silent, wizardly witness, with none but an afterthought to the king’s men who bore that name, or to the arms of the Marhanen, the golden dragon on the red field, which was the emblem of the kingdom as well. His immediate question was to what extent he could reach back into Aswydd power, and rely on it; but in the way of such questions, it answered itself differently.

The echo of understanding the question raised in him was that the Aswydd dragons extended their reach into Guelessar, and that they backed the Marhanen throne, not Sihhë emblems… never the Sihhë emblems. The dragons were solely the emblems of Men and kings and lords of Men. This room he had never felt he owned. This room he had warded by his presence, as much as lived in it. It was useful to everyone’s safety that he lived here and kept the wards.

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

Yet it came to him, yes, he did command the dragons, now, and only so long as these creatures of fire and passion failed to rouse his anger, or his passion, or his fear. That long, and only so long, did he command them, and only that long did he command those who were their masters.

The dragons and those who commanded them must not break that condition. They must never break it. With wind and fire alike they could deal, but never break that condition. He was writing a message to the Lord Commander, with the local garrison in disarray; he was facing a meeting of the lords of Amefel, to sit and do justice, and the dragons loomed above, reminding him their anger was fire, and his will was wind.

He felt that silent and wizardly witness to his musings, sealed as he was, and deliberately withdrawn from the soundless sound in the silence that lapped about this room of his refuge. This, too, Emuin witnessed.

The quill when he dipped it and wrote scratched like claws on stone, as if the dragons stirred on their perches. Shadows, the tame ones that had a right here, lurked and crept under tables and in the folds of green drapery, within cabinets and in corners as he shaped his report.

He owned magic as his birthright. Having it, he knew he must be careful of it. He never loosed the shadows that belonged here, never, in fact, allowed the lights to be extinguished: candles always burned here, and he never shut the drapes by day. The ones who had died in this room were not wholly his men; but Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

they were faithful to Amefel, and he willingly lived under their witness, conscious of their leanings, and sure now, as in Auld Syes’ salutation to him and Crissand, that he held what would not forever be his.

Emuin heard that, too, and tried very quietly to slip away. But Emuin could not elude him now: often as Emuin might have watched, unseen, mistrustful of him before this, he was not unseen now, and might never be again.

—Know that,
Tristen said, wounded,
and know I have heard at

least one and two of your lessons, master Emuin. And because I

have heard, I’m about to hear the demands of stonemasons and

of the earls. I wish the Guelens and the house of Meiden will

not go at each other’s throats
.

Why
, why,
master Emuin, do wicked purposes seem to slide by

so easily, and these men escape me to do mischief and Mauryl’s

letters burn, and reasons for all this wickedness slip through

my fingers? Is this the way of things in the world? Or is there

cause aside from me and you
?

Is that the reason of your mistrust?

And is that mistrust of me the reason you came here, after all?

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

Chapter 7

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^
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There was no miraculous word of the fugitives by the hour the court convened… and that was not to Tristen’s surprise or Uwen’s. The readiness with which the court assembled did somewhat surprise Tristen: the summons had gone out to the earls to come early and present their petitions, such as they had, before the banquet… a feast which had already been planned for their guest for the evening, and on which Cook had labored since yesterday evening, to a mighty shouting and commotion around the kitchens. That event Tristen expected would see no tardiness.

But the earls all came, every one, even earlier than the requested hour; and so Cevulirn attended the audience of his neighbor province, dressed in his plain, serviceable gray and white, yet no lord in the hall was more dignified by his finery than Cevulirn by his demeanor. He drew every eye by his mere presence in hall, and stood at the side of the steps of the dais to give his account of doings at the court, the marriage of His Majesty and Her Grace, and the death of Brugan, son of Corswyndam, Lord Ryssand.

There was no restlessness at all in his hearers, and all hung on the account of a man who doled words out like coin, well weighed and sparingly.

“What shall we do?” Drumman was quick to ask, when he had Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

heard Cevulirn’s account of his dismissal from the king’s court.

“This is an attack on the south and on all of us, our privileges, our rights, soon enough our land. We have in king Cefwyn a monarch who at least respects our soil and look how these damned northerners deal with him!”

“Aye,” said no few, from among the ealdormen of the town, too, for Cefwyn had ruled Ylesuin from Henas’amef for some few weeks.

“Let ’im favor us in the least and here’s the barons with their noses out of joint!” someone shouted out of turn. “Earl Drumman has the right of it. We fought wizards and the Elwynim at Lewenbrook, and buried our sons, where we could find ’em, an’

where’s bloody Ryssand?”

“Safe,” said Cevulirn, in a fleeting still moment of the shock of that forwardness. “Safe, sir, and hopeful of comfort and power for himself, which does
not
come with a marriage to Ninévrisë of Elwynor, who will strengthen Cefwyn Marhanen. You see very clearly. Ryssand is my enemy. I assure you he is the enemy of your lord as well.”