C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 (28 page)

“It was not the advice I had, Crow. It was my taking it. I lied to my son. I never liked it. I should never have done it. And damn the man! What has he told the Holy Father, do you know?”

“That the boy attacked him.”

“Attacked him? Our Otter? Never!”

Idrys asked darkly, “Will you tolerate this teller of tales?”

“Nothing to provoke His Holiness, Crow. Leave him to Efanor.

For now. This will be silenced. Or I shall take other measures.”

“My lord king.”

He knew Idrys; Idrys knew his ways. The arguments between them were old, the disagreements frequent, but they did not long revisit things done and beyond recall, like the untidy chance of a horse groom in the kitchen. Or the chance of a boy choosing exactly the right moment to duck down a stairway or out a door.

It was exactly the sort of luck that had attended them for days, was it not?

For a time after that exchange, the creak of saddle leather and slight jingle of armor was all the sound about them. There was nothing left to do, Cefwyn thought, but what Idrys’ very trustworthy men were now doing, going on to Amefel and being sure the horse did not throw the boy and leave him afoot. There was no hope left of his finding the boy tonight. Nor was there any hope of amends to the boy for the lie. There was only a long, cold ride home from here, and an explanation to his wife and to his son.

Sometimes, trying to do justice, trying to balance one need against another, the king of Ylesuin missed the mark very badly. And this was beyond bad luck.

His hand, still bare, sought the inside of his shirt, where Tristen’s medallion lay, warm against his chest, hidden from all sight.

Keep him safe
, he wished, like a prayer, but not to any god.
I’ve
tried so long to keep from doing wrong with the boy. I kept my
distance this season to let the boys manage for themselves. I tried to
bring him onto the rolls, into public view, where people could see
he’s such a well-favored boy. I tried to do well for him. And now
plainly I’ve not done the right thing. Nothing I’ve done in years has
gone this badly amiss
.

Keep him safe.

Keep all of us safe from whatever’s afoot in this business.

Something surely is.

Sometimes, when he thought of Tristen, he felt a comforting warmth, a sense someone was listening.

Tonight the warmth failed and faded, and he put the glove on quickly, numb to the bone.

«
^
»

i

FESTIVAL ENDED, THANK THE GODS, IN SUCH AN

UNPRECEDENTED GLUT of charitable bread and ale that the city reeled homeward in much better humor. Street preachers found no audience in a driving snow. Bread and ale had appeased the populace, Brother Trassin had dropped from sight and hearing, apparently withdrawn to cloistered service for his health, and the Holy Father, miraculously recovered from his fever, approached the royal precincts to be appeased with gold.

“The hell he will!” was Cefwyn’s initial response: he had had perhaps an hour of sleep before services, had missed breakfast in favor of that hour, had had to confess failure to his son, and was still in no good humor; but Efanor bent near the kingly ear, and whispered, “The stone has stayed clean the while, and the scratches on the altar are diminished.”

“Conveniently!”

“The Holy Father has declared a miracle and declared the omen portended the imminent fall of a cleric the Holy Father rightly despises. It’s all gone to religious debate between the Holy Father and the street preachers, brother. It’s to the good of us all, not least the boy, who’s quietly written down in the book as blessed, for anyone to see, and the Holy Father has declared him—Guelen.”

“Give him a hundredweight for his masonwork,” Cefwyn said sourly, wishing it were within his prerogatives to hang Brother Trassin. “And his cloistered spy.
Guelen
, for the gods’ sake!”

“Guelen. But still bastard.”

The old man approached. Cefwyn summoned up a smile and a gracious word as the Patriarch came to pay his respects, in this first royal audience of the new year.

“Your Majesty,” the old man said, and bowed. Cefwyn took his hand and kissed his cheek.

“I hate him,” Aewyn said afterward, leaning near him on the other side, standing, and Cefwyn, on his throne, and facing more petitioners and a headache, leaned his head against the angry young brow.

“Don’t hate those who serve you, boy. Shape them with skill or be rid of them.”

“I wish you’d be rid of him,” his son said. “He’s to blame for this.

He might even have done the scratches. I know he sent Trassin.”

“And has apologized and will not transgress again against your brother. He has written him down Guelen, not Amefin. Should we appoint a new man, to make new mistakes? We shall just have to find an honor for your brother, a good Guelen title.”

“It wasn’t a mistake,” Aewyn said glumly, “and he’s not our friend.”

“Good lad.” Cefwyn kissed his son’s convenient brow and pressed his arm. “But we know what he did and have that to hold over him when we need. Keep his sins in mind. They’re as good as coin.”

“Otter’s not Guelen. He won’t want to be Guelen. He’s Amefin, and he likes being that.”

“Hush,” Cefwyn said, in the approach of the duke of Carys. He managed a smile, a gracious extension of his hand to one who was truly a friend.

Three days on, one of Idrys’ company came back, having turned back at the river ford to deliver a report. “The lieutenant believes the boy has crossed the river dry-shod,” that man reported, “and the lieutenant crossed on into Amefel to carry the message as ordered. He sent me back to advise the Lord Commander and understand the situation in the capital.”

“Stay and warm yourself,” Cefwyn said, “and put yourself at your commander’s orders.” He did not dispose Idrys’ men, not ordinarily, and Idrys would have his own questions to ask the man. He was not utterly surprised that Otter had eluded them, and would, at this rate, be home or close to it. He hoped the boy had indeed had a dry crossing, and slept warm.

He had had a dream of his own last night, however. He had dreamed he rode after the boy, and that he fell farther and farther behind, until in a white gust, Otter vanished. That dream continued to haunt his day.

Aewyn picked at his meals, an unheard-of degree of distress. He had discharged two of his servants for reporting his mood, he had taken to the library and demanded maps of Amefel, and sulked through the family dinner that quietly celebrated the end of the Bryalt feast.

“Where is
his
chair?” he asked loudly, and the servants froze in confusion. In fact the table was arranged for the intimate family, and there was no place set for Otter.

“He will be back,” Ninévrisë said reasonably. “Your father has made that very clear. And I believe he will come. Do not you?”

Aewyn frowned and pushed his peas about the plate, disconsolate.

He only picked at his dessert, and that final display, with his surliness toward his mother, truly roused Cefwyn’s temper, but he kept it under tight rein nonetheless.

The evening was full of storms. Aemaryen was fretful. Even the servants went about glum and downcast, and one dropped a dish, a crash that dented a gold-rimmed plate and brought down the majordomo’s silent fury.

Your father has made that clear, Ninévrisë had said.

Sent, and by a guardsman. He had been reluctant to put that royal apology on paper. He had turned back, when he had told his son he would do better than that, and his son had hoped, had he not? A son always hoped his father could work a miracle.

Afterward, in his office, at his desk, he found a blank sheet under his hand and the pen near, and he picked up the pen, and found himself wondering again what he could write, what he dared commit to paper. Messengers had been intercepted before this, and a gods-cursed run of bad luck in the visit counseled caution.

His queen was waiting. His servants would not go to their beds until they had seen him to his.

But after all the hurry and flurry of the dinner, after all the press of petitioners and favor-seekers, there was a silence, a very lonely silence.

It became a very resentful silence.

One more, he kept thinking, one more piece chipped away by the priests. A son, this time. The half of me, before this, when Tristen had quietly slipped even out of Amefel and sent him only a letter, saying, “They hate me too much.”

Too cursed much. The damned priests. Always, the damned priests. And the people he ruled. The hatred of Guelenfolk for the Sihhë who had ruled the west had not faded at all. Hatred had sent Tristen from the world of Men—though Tristen would never accuse his people or blame those who drove him out.

The anger that had slowly welled up came brimming over, rendering him furious beyond words. He more than suspected traitors among the priests, mortal men who thought they knew better than their king. The scratches and the spot were all too convenient to create a furor, not yet a sedition, but so easily could the matter have gone to riot and bloodshed, given the bloody-handed history of the Quinaltine and its priests.

Efanor claimed a manifestation, and he did not disbelieve in such powers; but on the other, and from a king’s jaundiced view, it might have a common, human, seditious origin, even human conjuring of the forces Efanor warned him against. Oh, that that were the truth, and that he could find the author of it and get his hands on one priest’s throat—

But he was wiser than that. Wiser than his father. He drew no absolute conclusions. He refused the answers his temper wanted—the assumption that hidden enemies in his own realm had done it, forces he already detested, the old contenders for power over the king…

Anger and imprudence had ruled his father Ináreddrin before him, distrust of those around him had let the very conspirators, agreeable men, into his father’s deepest confidence, until ultimately those men had brought his father down. The temptation to see enemies and opposition where there was only frustration was, oh, so easy when one wore the crown. It was natural enough that the common folk feared an Aswydd bastard from across the border, it was natural there be whispers… it was natural they look to the gods for signs.

The gods hadn’t helped
him
, had they, when the kingdom tottered on the brink of sorcerous ruin?

Magic, however, he had seen work. Sorcery and wizardry he had seen in abundance. Religion he had not seen work at all, except to watch it deny him friends and drive an innocent boy out into a snowstorm.

So damn all priests—the gods never helped him to what he wanted, never did anything that he could see but gather money from rich and poor alike, paying back a little bread and ale for the poor, and observing silence on sins for the rich.

The gods were not particularly good about silence for
his
sins, leaping gleefully onto his mistakes, not even sparing his attempts to do good. The gods deserted him whenever he relied on them in the least—and yet, in all justice, he knew he was never really faithful to them—not like Efanor, whose piety was always tinged with just a little sensible doubt—

But Efanor still prayed. Efanor saw the same things he saw and somehow managed to think the gods existed behind the false appearances, managed to find divinity hidden behind the priests, power behind the superstition and the terror, all with a doctrine that Efanor never was able to explain.

And Efanor had at least said he liked the boy, had he not?

Efanor had counted Tristen a friend, had he not?

And if there were gods, and if there was faith, Efanor had a grip on that realm and saw merit in the boy. So he was not wrong in what he had done.

Above all, he didn’t deserve to have all he loved forever hedged about and threatened by priests as well as dark magic—

Dark magic.
That
was the worst of it. Magic of things Tristen hadn’t created, and didn’t wield—magic the Aswydds had slid into when they were kings in Amefel.

There were facts the Marhanen house would have to deal with: not only was his bastard son half-Aswydd, which entailed a strong Sihhë connection, but there actually ran a faint thread of Sihhë blood in his other son—in Aewyn, himself, through Ninévrisë.

And that was the knowledge that tainted his relations with the Quinalt priests: that, the way he knew secrets about them, they had his queen’s heredity to call up anytime they wanted to declare war on him. Challenge them for their misdeeds, and they could challenge him with that.

They had been affronted, when he brought an Aswydd bastard here, installed him in the house, then held him over into Festival.

He knew it. He had known it would be not be smooth going when Tristen asked him to care for the boy.

Had he misinterpreted what Tristen asked of him? Should he have cherished the boy in Amefel, near his mother’s influences, after all, instead of trying to remove him from that district?

So, well, and his men had failed to find a single rider in a snowstorm… no miracle, that, no magic—at least not in the single event. But add up all the others. His first riders, the ones sent out to find Paisi and report back, had said not a thing. He had no idea what was going on at Henas’amef, or whether the boy’s ill dreams—and his own false message—were unhappily true.

A dark presence shadowed the doorway. Master Crow was abroad at late hours.

“Crow?”

“My lord king?”

“Damned inquisitive Crow. No news?”

Idrys shook his head. “No, my lord king.” A silence. Idrys didn’t leave. “The storm is abating. There’s a star showing.”

“Oh, things are remarkably settling. The boy is arriving where Tarien desires him to be, is he not? Now all is peaceful.”

“There’s a thought worth a shudder.”

To save a kingdom—a king worked under a different sort of law, did he not, with different constraints? Mercy was at times the wrong mercy, and a king’s mistaken kindness made orphans and widows, laying the dead in heaps and windrows.