C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 (45 page)

Paisi seized hold of him, held him fast, and he fought to get free.

“No, no, lad, ye can’t, ye can’t, ain’t no one can go in there. Come on. She might ha’ gone out th’ shed.”

He ran with Paisi around the back, to the yard where the goats stood, firelight reflecting off their slit eyes, and the geese ran this way and that to escape them, all confused. He went as far as inside the shed: the house door was shut, and fire showed in the seams of the logs that made the shed wall.

“Gran?” he cried, searching that darkness. “Gran?”

“Lad,” Paisi said, close by him. Paisi had an armful of Feiny’s tack and shoved it at him. “Get it out. Get out.”

“You get out!” he shouted—the roar of the fire made it necessary to shout, and he carried the gear out and dumped it on the snow, as Paisi rescued a load of tools—that was all they saved.

“As Gran’ll skin us if we let all burn,” Paisi gasped, his face all smeared with soot. “Get another load. Get the grain out.”

“Where’s Gran?” he asked, shaking Paisi by the arms. It was as if Paisi had an overwhelming conviction Gran wasn’t there, couldn’t be there, as if Paisi, who had always been his rock of safety, was as confused as the goats and geese. “Paisi, she’s not out here!”

Paisi turned a shocked face toward the fire, toward the house, as if it had only then come through to him.

“She ain’t,” he said, then Elfwyn took a firm grip on Paisi’s arm, to be sure he didn’t rush back in. They stood there, they and the goats and the geese, and the horses beyond the fence, while the fire roared up, coming out the door, rushing past the shutters and licking up the thatch.

“She did it,” Elfwyn said, finding a thread of a voice, when breath itself was hard. “She did it. The ring protected me. It didn’t protect Gran. And it doesn’t protect you.”

“The hell,” Paisi said, and Elfwyn held him harder, and they hugged each other, there being nothing else they could do. They stood there, burned on one side, frozen on the other, and shook like rabbits, until a terrible crash sent sparks flying out at them, scared the goats and geese and the horses, and stung them all into backing up. The whole center of the house had fallen inward, and the open roof shot flames to the twilight sky.

There was nothing to do but stand and watch it, arm in arm, holding on to each other.

“She didn’t See it,” Paisi mourned. “Sure, she didn’t See it comin’.

It’s a terrible end, a terrible way to go.”

“They burned the Aswydds,” Elfwyn said. He hadn’t been alive then, but his mother had told him that. “She did it. No question she did it.
Him
, she said… she hates
him
, and she couldn’t hit me, so she burned the house down. I dreamed she would. I just didn’t know what I dreamed.”

Paisi’s grip held his arm hard, now. “Was it fire ye dreamed?”

“The second dream was. And the third. And after.” It was hard to speak. Smoke had made his throat raw. “I hate her, Paisi, I hate her beyond anything in the world.”

“No.” Paisi shook his head fiercely. “Ain’t good. Ain’t good. Gran’d say it ain’t good.”

“Well, she’s not able to say, is she?” He said that because he hurt, but he was sorry in the next moment because he upset Paisi, and he pressed Paisi’s head close to his. “I loved her. I loved her so much, Paisi. I didn’t know I did, but I do. She’s my gran, no matter. And when Lord Tristen comes, he’ll deal with my mother. I can’t, damn it, I can’t!”

“Can’t help Gran,” Paisi said, and wiped his arm across his face.

“House was hers anyways. No good to me, was it? We just got to tidy things up an’ get the fire out. She’d hate it burnin’ on like this.”

“Have we got the bucket?” Elfwyn asked, trying for practicality.

They had, and they took turns working the windlass for the well and hauling water up, and the other would take the bucket and fling it on the fire, bucket after bucket, starting with the herb garden that ran along the wall, and working up to the door and the windows. They worked on and on into the dark, when the interior of the house glowed and lit the pall of smoke that hung over them.

They worked, and finally the fire began to sink. It was all blackened timbers by first light, black sticks thrusting up out of a heap of ash and smoking embers. That was all there was.

Paisi had burns on his hands, when gotten, neither of them was sure. And by the time the sun was rim up on the horizon, Farmer Ost arrived, with his ox hitch and his cart.

“Who’s there?” the farmer called out as he came. “Is ever’body all right?” And Paisi said no, Gran wasn’t, which was the first time they had said that truth to someone else.

“Gods a-mercy,” Ost said, heaving down from his cart. “I saw the fire in the night. I should ha’ come straightway.”

“Weren’t nothin’ ye could do, by then,” Paisi said, and clapped the old man on the arm with a hand hanging shreds of blistered skin.

“Gods, ye’re burnt.”

“Both of us,” Paisi said, and laid his other hand on Elfwyn’s back.

“We done all we could. Ain’t no farm left, just the goats an’ the geese, and us and our horses. Gran’d want ye to take the goats an’

geese. Ye been a good neighbor, and ye’re first come. Far as I’m concerned, ye can farm the land, though ye must go to the duke an’

say so, which I’ll agree to. I ain’t no farmer. Never was.”

“What shall we do?” Elfwyn asked. There was no living in the goats and the geese: there never had been. It was all in Gran’s trade in simples.

“I’d say we wait,” Paisi said, “we go to town an’ we wait for him who’s comin’, an’ that’s the best thing. How else are we to feed the horses, ’cept we go to the duke an’ tell him what’s what.”

He wasn’t saying, before Farmer Ost, that there was anything but bad luck to blame, nor did he invoke Tristen by name, but Lord Tristen was, Elfwyn thought, the only choice they had. They caught the goats and geese for Farmer Ost, they told him their names—all but the youngest geese had names, at which Farmer Ost nodded and agreed—though Ost said he would come back for the geese with a proper crate: the goats would go in the cart, tied in place.

Paisi threw in the tools, which were more valuable than the goats, and then, with an oddly forlorn look, tossed the bucket into the cart with the rest.

“Just fixed that damn thing,” Paisi muttered, and they went to gather up their rescued horse gear, which was mostly Feiny’s, and had to be fitted on with burned and bleeding fingers.

Osten was off down the road with the goats and the tools.

“I hope he gets back after those geese,” Paisi said, as if it were a matter of ordinary business. He tried to talk in an ordinary way, but Elfwyn was in no sort of spirits to talk at all, now that they faced the ride back to Henas’amef.

I did it
, he kept thinking.
I did it. I made her angry. She’d
already told me what she would do, and I was a fool. I brought it on

.

The town guards questioned them as they came in. “What’s happened with you?” one asked, and Paisi answered, “Candle burned the house down, I guess. We’re to see the duke.”

There was a frown at that. There was, on the one hand, the evidence of wealth, in the horses, and of disaster and bad luck, in the soot that blackened both of them. But Elfwyn showed the ring on his grimy hand, and the guards immediately let them pass.

“Ye want one of us should come up wi’ ye?” the senior asked.

“No,” Elfwyn said. “Thank you.” Nothing seemed real or right.

His whole hand tingled, and yet he didn’t feel the sense of threat he was accustomed to feel: it was a furtive presence watching him.

She knew, he thought. Maybe, hurting him, she’d hurt herself—maybe gotten the pain of his burns. He didn’t know, nor wanted to go close to her, but he had no choice but go to Lord Crissand as their immediate lord, and the source of all help. He knew Paisi was right.

They rode halfway up the hill, to the Bryalt shrine, where there was a house of healing, and a fountain for washing on the public side street. They washed there, letting the soot stain the water, and the lay brother who attended the place came out to provide his services.

“We have no money,” Elfwyn informed the old man first of all. “It went in the fire. But you can ask the duke.”

The old man looked at them, and looked at the two fine horses, which told a different story, then shook his head and waved his hand. “You wait,” he said, “you wait,” and he went into his little shrine. He came out with unguents and bandages, and would have tended Elfwyn’s burns first, but Elfwyn insisted the man deal with Paisi’s hands, which were much worse.

He was only getting to Elfwyn’s hurts when a panting handful of the duke’s own servants showed up from the street, bringing more unguents, and two cloaks, which they refused to put on, being so dirty—“I can’t,” Elfwyn said, and by then the pain and the exhaustion all but overwhelmed Paisi, who simply sat down against the fountain rim and had his head in his hands. He felt like doing the same.

“His Grace had a report,” the foremost servant said, “and wishes you may come up to the hall as soon as you can.”

It was what they had to hope for, on a day in which they had lost every material possession except two horses they couldn’t feed, and Elfwyn bent down, the one to make the decisions now, as Paisi had done, down at Gran’s farm.

“We have to get up and go,” he said, his head close to Paisi’s, his bandaged hand on Paisi’s shoulder. “I’ll help you get up. When we get up there, there’ll be a place to stay, a roof over our heads, and whatever we need. The duke has sent his own servants down. I think the gate-guards or the priest must have sent word up the hill.

Paisi, can you stand up?”

Paisi managed it, and with the servants’ help, and the priest’s, they got onto the horses and rode up the hill and through the gate to the stables.

There they turned the horses over to His Grace’s stablemaster and limped on into the scullery, where His Grace’s own physician came down to see to them, and the chief of his servants came to see they had drink enough, and a little watered wine, and warm water to wash in, besides new clothing.

Servants led the way to rooms upstairs, in an arrangement not unlike the Guelesfort, though much older. It was all carved, dark wood, and there was, again, a small servants’ quarters where the staff wanted to bed Paisi down.

“No,” Elfwyn said. “He’s not my servant. He’s my brother.”

“I ain’t,” Paisi said quietly. “Cousins, at best, by adoption, as is, an’ I’m his man, an’ shall be. But I’ll stay close by m’lord tonight, if ye will—he’ll rest best if I do.”

It was quiet, after the servants left. It was deathly quiet.

And, clothes and all, lying atop the coverlet, they went to bed.

“We’re back where we was,” Paisi said, lying on his side by him. “

’Cept it ain’t the Guelesfort.”

“It’s my fault!” Elfwyn cried, tears welling up, and Paisi put his hand on his shoulder, gently so.

“Ain’t. Gran’d have a fit to hear ye say it, so don’t. If it was her, lad, that was an old, old war, your ma wi’ Gran an’ Lord Tristen. Ye ain’t nothin’ t’ that fight, yet. Ye may be. But ye can’t be yet, so no such talk. If ye was a wizard, say, I’d ask why ye didn’t See it, ye know—”

“I did See it. I Saw it in my dreams.”

“Oh, aye, an’ maybe I saw fire, too, which could mean Gran might burn the soup: it’s one thing to See, it’s another to know what ye Seen, an’ still another t’ stand up an’ fight the likes of her.”

“I tried, and I shouldn’t have gone up there. I thought I could do it, and I was an utter fool. I thought the ring would keep me safe, and I didn’t think about Gran and you not being protected, the same.”

“Aye, but Gran were a witch, an’ Saw clear as can be if it was in her to See it. You was there, lad, right enough, but there was Lord Tristen himself could ha’ stepped right in—he can do that. He can arrive like lightnin’. I know’t him to do it. An’ he didn’t come, nor know ye was steppin’ into trouble, so ye can’t blame yourself for not knowin, nor’d Gran ever blame her Otter for what a witch herself couldn’t stop.”

He wept for Gran, quietly. It was all he had left to do. Sleep came down on him in the middle of the day. He slept into dark, and waked when servants brought supper in, but neither he nor Paisi ate much.

He lay awake after that, dry-eyed, and thought black thoughts about his mother, just upstairs, unscathed, a hateful and dangerous proximity that he would have to ignore just to share this roof, which he
would
have to share, perhaps for the rest of his days, thanks to his mother’s ruining his chances in Guelessar. Gran was dead, part of that heap of ashes, not even a grave to mark her place in the world, while his mother lived on, smug and happy, he could imagine it, in having destroyed a woman so much her better—

He grew angry, terribly angry, and anger unleashed the hate Gran had always advised him to avoid—hatred of his mother and his circumstances, alike, as if his soul had burned as raw as his hands last night. He didn’t sleep. He couldn’t, now. It seemed forever before daylight crept into the unfamiliar windows of an elegant room, a clear sky with a slight pall of chimney smoke rising into it.

Town smoke. More burning, tame burning, by people who thought fire was their servant.

Paisi waked, stretched, knocked his hand into the bedpost inadvertently, and winced. He blinked, perhaps taking a moment to realize where he was, and to remember their circumstances.

“I’d better get breakfast for us,” Paisi said, as if they were back in the Guelesfort.

“Let servants wait on us,” Elfwyn said. “They will.”

“Not on me,” Paisi said. “I’d rather be stirring about, m’lord, I had, and I know me way about this place like the back o’ me hand.”

Paisi had served in the Zeide before, when he was Lord Tristen’s servant, and Master Emuin’s before he left. “Servin’ here was no shame, m’lord,” Paisi informed him. “It was somethin’ I was proud of.”

“Then do that,” Elfwyn told him, surrendering the whole matter, and watched Paisi leave. He lay abed for a few moments after Paisi had left, wishing he could pull the covers over his head and spend the next several days asleep, but the pain of his burns and the memories behind his eyelids gave him no rest at all, and he had never even taken off his boots last night, no more than Paisi had.