C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 (39 page)

Fool
! he said to himself, distraught.
Fool
!
So smug, so sure… and
it’s gone
.

He sat there, however, having no other answer and no rescue for his folly. Owl came back, perched smugly on a branch nearby, waiting for him.

“I’ve lost it,” he said aloud to Owl. “What shall I do? Can you tell him?”

Owl paid no attention at all, but took wing before he had quite gotten back into the saddle.

He had to get back to Gran and Paisi and get their advice about the message he had lost.

But what would Lord Tristen’s message have said? It surely advised Lord Crissand of what Tristen had already said to him, that he intended to ride out and probably pay Lord Crissand a visit—that, at least, he knew, and he could at least advise Lord Crissand that there would be a visit.

And then he had a reason to ask Gran if she could See what Lord Tristen was up to—because he ached to know when Tristen would ride out, and whether that riding out had to do with him. He had had a kindly welcome at Ynefel, no question—but Lord Tristen had looked into matters, as he had said, then decided to send him out first in some degree of haste.

That haste, he had denied to himself for the last several days, but haste it was—urgency was certainly what he had felt in his dismissal.

Well, Guelenfolk had certainly wanted him gone from their premises, which, now that he was gone, probably made things easier for his father.

He would never expect that a place like Ynefel and a Sihhë-lord should have any fear of him at all—but why, then, had Lord Tristen decided there was so much hurry about dismissing him?

That was what it had seemed to him, that at first Lord Tristen had been preparing to have him stay in Ynefel keep a few days, and then something had changed, and Tristen had flung him out onto the road into a coming storm.

Surely Lord Tristen, who could look out into Amefel and Guelessar, could have watched over him, right on his doorstep.

Instead, Owl had run off at the very worst moment and left him, as if the bad luck that attended him was too much even for Owl to overcome, because he was a wicked boy, bent on ducking himself in a brook and losing a message Lord Tristen had meant to send…

Maybe he was truly cursed from birth, the way the Guelenfolk thought. Tristen had told his father not to kill him—but Tristen had told his father not to kill his mother, either, and everybody agreed his mother was the wickedest woman that ever lived, so that was no recommendation.

So what was he? And why were people everywhere he went so much better off without him?

He felt cold despite the cloak and the horse’s warmth, chilled right to the heart.

Tristen hadn’t been willing to teach him wizardry. Maybe he had been too dangerous, too evil to teach—though Tristen had seemed to consider it moderately, and had shown him wards, and when he had done them—which was wizardry, was it not?—they had clearly worked.

So maybe he wasn’t irredeemably wicked. Lord Tristen might be testing him, whether he could overcome his birth.

He hadn’t done well so far, losing the message… but he knew it now, and it was no time to sit on his hands and mope, as Gran would say.

Telling the truth to Lord Crissand was the most urgent thing, and when Tristen did come to Henas’amef he would go to him at the first chance and confess outright that he had lost the message.

Tristen had dealt with him kindly, even if he had stripped his comfortable name away from him and told him to carry the one he was born with: it didn’t mean that he was damned. It meant that he was no longer a child, and he had to be a man, and deal with that name.

Be Mouse, Tristen had advised him, and not Owl.

Timid and brave, like Mouse. Wise, like Mouse. Not fierce and faithless, like Owl. He would not have understood that about those two creatures if he hadn’t visited Ynefel and seen how they were.

He wouldn’t have thought twice about them if Tristen hadn’t made him stop and think about their natures, and his—and he’d not been able to kill the fish, had he?

That had been a test. He knew that now. He’d doubted it when they’d had fish for dinner, all the same, but Tristen had said something about its being all right to be Owl, but not at all right for him…

Which meant Tristen had seen some virtue in him, had he not?

And Lord Tristen had, after all, taught him wards, and given him the fire kit, last of all. Tristen had given him exactly what he needed and left him to rescue himself.

What were his two words, that Tristen had given him, that he had to gain for himself?

Vision was one. Clearly, if he’d been looking at what he was doing, he wouldn’t have ridden his horse onto thin ice. If he’d Seen himself, stripping all his clothes off, or paid any attention to what fell on the ground, he wouldn’t have lost the letter, would he?

Vision was something he’d needed to have, and hadn’t.

The other word was—

He could see Tristen telling him, but the image faded when he tried to think of that second word—it faded, like a dream by daylight, a simple word, an obvious word, the sort of word that anyone ought to possess. It was something he had, quite indignantly, thought he already possessed, but Tristen hinted he did not…

Love, might it be? He had wondered often enough in his life whether he had been loved enough, or by the right people. He had wondered whether he had enough of it, on his way to Ynefel.

Love was important, love from mother, or father, or brother—and the one he knew he had won, but one of the three he knew he never would, and the middle of the three, he doubted he had deserved. Love, but not yet from his father and certainly never from his mother. Tristen said whatever it was, that it was all-important for him… but was it love? Love was what he had been hoping for, lately.

Tristen had said…

He became convinced there was something he had forgotten entirely, something that rested just outside his reach.

Worse, more things began to escape him, faster and faster. The snow had whited out the world, and now it whited out the very memories he had hoped to carry away with him—since his struggle against the cold and the weather, he had more than lost the message, he had let other details begin to escape him. He wanted to write them down, but found nothing on which to write and nothing with which to write. He scratched it with a piece of sharp twig on his own bare hand, until it bled:
Vision
, he wrote.

Owl was gone. In the very moment when he had broken off a twig and written it, he had misplaced Owl again, or Owl had misplaced himself.

But in the next little space of riding, the woods thinned before him, and he saw snowy meadowland, and when he had ridden a time across fenceless meadow, he came on the snow-covered and untracked ridge of the east—west road. In a time going east, he found a milestone, capped with ice, half-buried, and hard to read.

Thirteen, it said. Thirteen snowdrifted miles from Henas’amef, and it was only noon. There was hope of making it by sundown, if only Feiny had it in him.

«
^
»

i

FEINY COULD NOT, AFTER ALL, DO IT BY SUNDOWN. AND

THE CHOICE HE HAD was to camp by the wayside, in a ditch, with the grain all gone, and all Cook’s cakes eaten yesterday, or keep going into the dark at as steady a pace as Feiny could manage.

It was long, long after dark before he rode within view of Gran’s first fence, and Gran’s house sitting quiet and dark. He rode up to the gate that kept the goats in, and led Feiny on around to the goat shed, up against the house. He opened the door ever so quietly, and led Feiny in, but Tammis, safe and warm inside, saluted Feiny in a reasonably quiet voice, and he suspected he was heard inside the house. He was cold, too cold for clear thought, but Feiny had carried him long and hard, and he was of no mind to leave him comfortless. He unsaddled the horse and rubbed his sweaty back down with grain sacking that hung—he knew it by habit, rather than sight—by the outside door, while Feiny tried to force his head into Tammis’s bin, hoping for grain. The goats bleated into the dark.

There was far too much commotion to get past Paisi’s hearing.

He heard the front door open, as Paisi had done before.

“It’s me!” he called out, to forestall any caution. “Paisi?”

“M’lord,” Paisi cried, coming into the shed, and shoving two sleepy goats out of his path. “Ye silly lad—ye could ha’ rapped at the front door an’ had help.”

“I was trying not to wake Gran.”

“Who’s wide-awake, an’ who knew you were comin’, as was! We waited supper a while, an’ then so as not to waste lights, we went on to bed.” Paisi flung arms about him, slapped him on the back, and hugged him hard. “Gods, ye silly boy, ye’re safe. Did ye even get there?”

“I saw him,” he said, in his own defense.

“Gran thought so,” Paisi said. He found the grain bin and the bowl they used to dip it up, and poured a measure into the trough, to Feiny’s immediate preoccupation. “He’s fine, he’s fine. You just come inside, lad. Get yourself warm and fed, an’ I’ll come back an’

tend the horse.”

Warmth and food came very welcome. He went in by the back door, out of the shed, blinking in the dim light of the banked fire.

Gran was indeed out of her bed, using the pothook to swing the pot over the coals, but it had become too heavy for her in recent years.

He gave it a shove, his hands still gloved, and hugged Gran gently, wanting to stand there a good long while, just in that comfort.

“I saw him,” he said. “He was very kind. He was younger than Paisi,” he added. That never ceased to amaze him.

“His years ain’t ours,” Gran said, as Paisi came in and shut the door behind them. “Nor ever shall be.” She made him stand back and took his cold face in her two warm, age-smooth hands, making him look into her eyes. “Aye, ye seen him, hain’t ye, lad?”

“He said I was Elfwyn. He said that was my name.”

“Then it has to be, now, don’t it? Come, sit on the bench. Paisi’ll dip ye up a bowl.”

He did. He took what he was given, ever so grateful to be home, and safe. There was fine bread and butter, good potato-and-cabbage soup with a bit of pork besides.

“His Grace sent it,” Gran said.

“The King’s Guard came by,” Paisi said, having a bit of soup himself, as Gran had some of the broth. “An’ then His Grace of Amefel’s men, wi’ a right sensible Bryaltine father, wi’ some good aromatics for Gran.”

If Paisi thought a Bryalt father was sensible, that was a wonder in itself.

“So we ain’t wanted for a thing,” Paisi said. “How was it, wi’ Lord Tristen?”

“He remembered you and Gran very kindly,” Elfwyn said. “He invited me to dinner, and to sleep the night in Ynefel.”

Gran nodded solemnly. “Ain’t surprised,” Gran said.

“And he said the king was worried about me, and he showed me wards, Gran. And mine glowed!”

“Ain’t surprised for that, neither,” Gran said.

“And then he said he would come to Henas’amef. I don’t know whether only to Amefel, but he gave me a letter for Lord Crissand.

And I lost it, Gran! I fell in the brook, and I lost it!”

There was a small silence. “Did ye, then?”

“Well, what shall I do?”

“What do ye incline to do?” Gran asked him.

“Go to Lord Crissand first thing tomorrow and tell him as much as I know.”

Gran nodded. “That ye must do, then. Paisi told the king’s men you’d gone an’ where you’d gone, and they didn’t follow. An’ Lord Crissand knows where ye were, o’ consequence, so he’ll be wonderin’.”

“First thing in the morning,” he said. He was melting a puddle onto the floor, off his boots, and it had become muddy from dirt in the shed. He put the bowl down, having eaten as much as he could, and the bowl clattered against the stones as he set it down, his hand was shaking so. “I think I’m a little tired, Gran.”

“That ye be,” Gran said. “Paisi, get ’im to bed. Is that horse settled?”

“They’re settled.”

“Great hungry horses—thank the gods ’Is Grace is feedin’ ’em.

The goats is gettin’ fat off just the grain an’ hay they spill. Go to bed, Elfwyn, lad.”

Gran called him that name, as if that name was his even here, but in spite of everything, welcome had settled all around him, warm and good as Gran’s house always was. He gathered himself up, and sat down again on the bed he shared with Paisi, and managed to get his boots off, and his stockings, which had holes in them, and had worn bloody blisters. There was mending and washing to do, when there was light enough. He took off his belt and fell into bed, which still seemed to move with Feiny’s weary gait, and that was that—he managed to lift his head only when Paisi came to bed.

“Good to have you back,” Paisi said.

“Good to be back,” he murmured into the crook of his arm, head down again, nose buried. Gran’s amulets were all about the bedstead and under the mattress, which was goose feathers, and ever so comfortable, especially with Paisi’s warmth by him. The snow could fall tonight. He was warm and back to his beginnings, as if his soaring rise to princedom and his passage through Ynefel had never happened. He was only Gran’s boy again, more than a little lonely, but protected.

Vision, Tristen had said. He had that scored onto his hand. And now he saw Gran’s place as safety in a cold, dangerous world, and the humble beginnings he had longed to escape. Gran’s love, and Paisi’s—those were, he thought, his first and greatest treasures, those he never had valued enough. He lay with Paisi’s warmth next to him, and the cottage snug against the wind, no matter how hard it blew.

That was the way Paisi kept things. He hoped to be as clever with his hands. It was a Gift, potent unto itself.

Vision. Seeing things for what they were and what they could be.

What was that other word? It still eluded him.

ii

OWL WAS BACK IN THE KEEP, DISAGREEABLE AND

PEEVISH. HE HAD LOST A FEW feathers, and sat puffed and mad-eyed on the newel post upstairs.

It had not gone well. Luck had not run the boy’s way, and a good deal of his path had become obscure, deeply shadowed.