Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03 (39 page)

“So it was not chance, not the lightning, and not Cefwyn sending me.”

“It was, and it was not. Do you know so little of wizardry, young lord? No. I forget you
need
not know a damned thing about wizardry. You need not learn anything. Things Unfold to you.

Might leaps to your fingertips and all nature bends when you Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

stamp your foot.”

Emuin was exaggerating, vastly so, but reminding him how little he had bent himself to Emuin’s art, and how little he knew of it.

“For us mere Men,” Emuin said in a surly tone, “it’s chance and not chance that such things happen. Learn this: wizardry loads the dice, young lord, but they still can roll against the wall.

Surely you know that much. And maybe it’s a flaw in you, that you need not study, but find it all at your fingertips: gods know what you can do.”

“I wish to learn, master Emuin. I
wish
to be taught. I’ve asked nothing more.”

“Oh, you’ve asked far more, young lord. You’ve asked much, much more. But let us walk together down this path of chance and if and maybe. Let us look at the landmarks and learn to be wise. If there had been no lightning stroke and you had not come, and then Amefel had risen… what would have happened?”

“Calamity.”

“So. But then what did happen?”

“Crissand’s father and his men took the fortress. And then I took it.”

“And Crissand Adiran survived, but his father did not. Was this chance, too? The rebels took the fortress. They died. Two events not necessarily benefiting the same power. Crissand escaped the slaughter. A third event. You seized Amefel. A fourth.”

Not necessarily benefiting the same power.

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

“Lad,” Emuin gazed straight at him. “Lad, are you listening to what we’re saying?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What have I told you?”

“That there may be two powers.”

“No. That there may be more than one.”

“Yes, sir,” he said in utter solemnity. “I do hear.”

“You are one of those powers,” Emuin said. “That’s always worth remembering. Don’t act carelessly. Don’t assume the dice have only one face. It’s only by considering all the faces that you can load one of them.
That’s
wizardry, young lord. That’s why it means learning, difficult, farseeing learning.”

The echoes in the air remained, a brazen, troubling liveliness, as if all events balanced on a point of time and might go careering off in any direction without warning.

“I can swear I didn’t raise the storm or conjure Auld Syes,”

Tristen said, grasping at that straw.

“Then reckon at least three with the ability must be involved here,” Emuin said, “and four, young sir, for
I
didn’t raise them, either.”

“Lady Orien?”

“Think you so, lord of Amefel?”

Emuin changed salutations and none of it was without significance. It was lessons again. It was a signal to him: he was Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

not at this moment
young lord
.

And he gave Emuin as honest answers as he had given to Mauryl, last spring, in hope ultimately of revelations about himself such as Mauryl had given him.

“Her dragons lean over me as I write. Lady Orien broke the great Lines there, in that room in particular, when she opened it and let in Hasufin. I repaired them as I could. But I never am at ease in that place.”

“Well, well,” Emuin said, “and well reckoned. Now never after this say that I failed to advise you. I have advised you. Now and at last you may have heard what I say, beyond all my expectations. I have warned you, as best I can.”

“And else?” Tristen asked. “Is Orien all your warning?—Or is it Hasufin?”

Emuin’s charts lay scattered across the table, charts of great sweeping lines and writing that teased his eye with recognition, but that was not the fine round hand Men used nowadays. He moved one, in Emuin’s silence, and made no sense of the parchment, the visible sign of studies Emuin pursued and would not divulge.

“Don’t disarrange my charts, pray. Go raise walls against the law. Chastise the fool boy you’ve given me. I leave it to you.

Leave me to my ciphering. Gods! Don’t—”

He had picked up a chart, almost, and let it down again.

“Don’t disarrange them. I’ve enough troubles.”

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

“Does the order matter?
What
do you cipher, sir? Wherein is it wizards’ business, all these writings? Do you draw Lines also across the sky and ward the stars, too?”

“None of your concern, young lord! Leave my charts, I say, and go find that wretched boy wizard you freed from a just and deserved hanging. He’s probably filched three purses on his way to the kitchens.”

“He’s mine, at least… that he’s in my care. And his listening in the town is for my sake. And if he helps you, claim duty of him; but he won’t cease to be mine, master Emuin, unless you ask for him. Until you give me reasons, I won’t change it.” His converse with Emuin had skipped from question to question, all around the things he most wished to know, and grew cryptic and uneasy.

“Why the stars, sir? What can you hope to find? Or to do?”

“Curiosity. A lifelong study. My diversion. All wizards have such charts.”

“Mauryl did. Parchments, papers, everywhere, and all blown about when the tower fell. I find it curious you have the same study.”

“Mauryl lived centuries. The planets were a passing show to him.”

“And to you, sir?”

“Damn, but we’re full of questions. Question, question, question.”

“So Mauryl taught me. So I learn, sir, or try to. I’ve been respectful and said
yes, master Emuin
. But you said I should Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

study wizardry. You said I should look at all the faces of the dice.” He understood dismissal, however, in Emuin’s distress and reticence: Emuin wished him gone, so he rose and crossed the room and set his hand on the door, with a backward look at the stone, unplastered chamber, at shelves untidy and groaning under their load, and a bed at least supplied with new blankets.

More blankets were under the bed, where Paisi had tucked a pallet, perhaps; it looked to be that, or a repository of Emuin’s discarded clothes.

“I’m glad you’ve shut the windows,” he remarked in leaving,

“and I’m glad you’re not alone here.”

“Bryaltine nuns,” Emuin muttered. “The Sihhë star in the marketplace and hung on pillars, and His Reverence to Guelessar. Don’t surprise Cefwyn with these things. And in your writing to Idrys, apart from Cefwyn, make a thorough job of explaining, lad. Make it very thorough. I’ve no doubt His Reverence will.”

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

Chapter 7

«
^
»

The senior clerk came to the ducal apartment at Tristen’s request, and proudly presented a thick set of papers, figures, great long lists of carefully penned numbers and tallies. Tristen had found a keen interest in his resources since his venture out to the river and back. He had inquired of his clerk what he had at his disposal.

But this was not the answer, at least not in a form that Unfolded to him. And asking the clerk what the sum of the accounts meant he could buy produced only confusion, a business of owed and received and entitled and the seasonal difficulty with contrary winds in distant Casmyndan, southward.

“Ciphering,” Uwen said, when the clerk had gone, and added with a little laugh, “which I don’t know wi’out I count on my fingers, an’ for large sums I wiggle toes. So I ain’t a help there.

I’d best take mysel’ to the horses an’ the men and leave ye to your readin’, which ye don’t lack in that stack.”

“It’s coins. It all stands, for coins, does it?”

“Coins, m’lord. Aye, I reckon, in a way, it does that.”

“Crowns and pennies,” Tristen said, and drew up that sheet of common southern paper, one of a score of papers on which long columns marched in martial order. But not of martial things.

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

“Five hundred crowns and seventy pennies of sheep.”

“’At’s some few sheep,” Uwen said. “An’ ’at there’s why Your Grace has clerks.”

“I have no difficulty with the numbers,” Tristen said, “only this business of pennies and pence coming from them.”

“Pennies and ha’pennies and small pence,” Uwen said, in that quiet, astonished mildness that attended such close, odd questions, “an’ being as we’re in Amefel, the king’s pence an’ th’

old pence an’ the farthing an’ ha’farthing, an’ the king’s reckonin‘ an’ the old reckonin’. All in the market at the same time, in Amefel: no small wonder if ye blink at it.”

“Show me,” he said, pushing the papers across the desk, “if you will.
You
understand.”

“Good gods, I ain’t the one.”

“The clerk hasn’t helped.
You
show me.”

Nothing had Unfolded, nothing showed any least promise of Unfolding to show him the sense in these papers and accounts, which he had asked for, and he had until the first hour after noon before he should meet with the earls and give his own report.

Uwen obediently came closer, picked up a paper, and looked at it.

“Here’s fine, fair writin’, but the sense of it’s far above me, m’lord.”

“So are farthings and half farthings above
me
.” Tristen laid his finger on a number on a paper that chanced to be in front of him, that of one fleece. “What’s that to a penny? That one there.”

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

Uwen craned sideways to look. “That ’un I can show ye.”

“Here.” He swept aside the papers, and found a fair unwritten one. But Uwen, disdaining the pen and the clean sheet, sat down on the other side of the table, emptied out his purse, and showed him how many coppers made a gold crown, and each five coppers a king’s penny, and what was a farthing piece, worth a cup of ale, and why ha’farthings were
in
the reckoning but left out of the actual payment because there was no such coin ever minted in the history of the world.

Ha’farthings, a petty sum, did not pay the bill when he considered what the cost was to feed and clothe and house the staff, and then to fit out men-at-arms and build the ruined walls.

And Uwen professed his purse out of coins, and not even one fleece was accounted for.

“Get those in the cupboard,” Tristen said, for he knew there were gold ones there, and silver, and Uwen and he made stacks and piles in order, until they accounted for a whole flock at once.

After that he could look at his list of sheep and know how much gold that was, and therefore how many of those sacks that were in the strong room deep, deep in the heart of the Zeide, where the strongest guard was mounted.

“Let us go downstairs,” he said.

“M’lord,” Uwen protested, “we can’t be stackin’ the bags in th’

countin‘ room.”

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

“I wish to see it,” he said, “now that I understand this much.”

So down they went, the two of them, and the guard that always attended him, all rattling and clumping down to the main hall and down and down the stairs that otherwise led to Emuin’s tower, until they came to the strong room and the guarded door.

To him the strong-room guards, members of the Dragon Guard, deferred, and unlocked and unbarred the place. The escort as well took up station outside, and Tristen and Uwen stood amid stacks and bags of gold, and plate, and cups, and all the service that had graced Lord Heryn’s table, besides the ducal crown and various jeweled bracelets and other such.

“Now, them jewels,” Uwen said, “I hain’t the least idea.”

Tristen said nothing, for the sight of all of it seemed at last to Unfold to him a comprehension of the treasure Lord Heryn had.

He had been down here once before, in his first days here. But only now, well lit and laid out as it was, he began to know the extent of it.

“M’lord?”

He drew in a deep breath, more and more troubled by what he saw.

“This is a very great lot of gold,” he said.

“That it is.”

“Men died for this,” he said. “Very many men died for this.”

“An’ damn cold comfort,” Uwen said, thrusting his hands into his belt and letting go a great sigh, “’cept as it buys firewood and Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

all. An’ don’t ask me why gold should be worth so much, ’cept it’s such as a man can carry the worth of a horse in his purse, an’

damn unlikely he could carry the horse.”

He scarcely heard Uwen, except the last, and he gathered up the threads of it belatedly and gave a small, shaken laugh. “That it is.

But there are too many horses in this room and not enough in the stable; and too many loaves of bread here and not enough in Meiden’s villages, aren’t there? That’s what you mean.”

“I think it is, m’lord. A box like as we brought from Guelemara, we’d fill it a lot of times in this room, and that box full up with gold is enough for two hundred men and horses for half a year.

That’s the ciphering I know.”

“Imor and Olmern sell grain for gold.”

“Both do, and is likely to be jealous of each other, if ye pardon me, m’lord. Imor don’t like the Olmernmen, but the Olmernmen have the boats.”

Amefel could do with both grain and boats in its defense, Tristen thought, and standing in all this wealth of gold, he knew that he beheld a kind of magic in itself, to summon boats, and feed men.

Gold became grain, and sheep, and well-fed villages. Parsynan had gathered taxes and put them in this room; so had Heryn, over years of rule, and aethelings before him had done it since the time of Barrakkêth and before. Cefwyn, he knew, had taken some sum of money away, so Cefwyn had said at summer’s end, for the welfare of the province, and because the king’s tax was due, Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

but far more was here than the tax should ever have required, and what was anyone doing with it?