C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 (54 page)

AEWYN’S VIEW. OF COURSE HE knew the men were tired and his father was tired—and cross. He was tired and disappointed and vastly upset, and he had been a little forward, but he would go on and look for his brother, if anybody listened to him, and all that his father and Crissand were doing up there they could do on horseback, out looking in the meanwhile. This was a town. There were other horses. He was tired, but he could keep going. He hadn’t meant to be disrespectful to his father, who often talked to Lord Crissand as if he were family… but he was right, and they weren’t finding his brother, and he certainly didn’t deserve to be sent down to the kitchens and shut out of any news they might get.

But his father being king, everyone had to obey him even if they didn’t like it, and if his father said he was to see the men were fed, nobody else was going to do it if he didn’t, and they would all suffer for it. So he walked on to the guard station where all the soldiers gathered—there were enough inside that they were spilling out into the hall and hanging in the doorway, exchanging rumors. They stood up straighter when he walked up.

“I’m to go with you to the kitchen and be sure you have your suppers,” Aewyn said.

“Your Highness.” There was complete attention from his father’s guard.

“And sometimes staff knows things the lords don’t,” Aewyn added, “so we may learn something while we’re there.” He had learned that wisdom from Paisi, who despite his scruffy appearance and his southern speech, was a very wise and clever man. He had been a thief, and knew all sorts of ways to get past precautions and locks, and to go unseen.

And that thought put an idea in his head, a wicked and desperate idea, and one he knew would upset his father, but things were more desperate than anyone seemed willing to say. Paisi’s gran was not just sick, as Otter— Elfwyn—had thought; she turned out to be dead in a fire, and Elfwyn had run off from Paisi, or Paisi hadn’t been able to keep up with him, which was the same, so things couldn’t wait until morning. Elfwyn never would part from Paisi, especially if something had happened to Gran… Elfwyn hadn’t stolen any book because he was naturally a thief, or because Paisi was; he’d stolen it either because it was his, or because it was important for him to do that, and maybe even Lord Crissand wasn’t supposed to have it in his possession.

Otter had gone to Lord Tristen and come back again, and maybe it was Lord Tristen who had wanted him to do what he’d done and sent him here to do it. Wizards… and Lord Tristen was something more than a wizard… did things for reasons nobody could understand at the time, but it was for the good, if it was a good wizard doing it. The things Lord Tristen did were good things, white magic, hadn’t his father told him that, and told him never to say that to the Quinalt brothers?

That was because Amefin folk and Elwynim did things differently from the start: they respected witches like Gran, they hung charms in their windows, which no Guelen dared do, and they danced at festival—altogether a wilder, freer folk than Guelens, in his estimation, and maybe one reason why he had always liked his brother, who was ever so ready to enter into a bit of mischief and never really feared any rebuke but Gran’s. Who was dead. And it was very sure that whatever had caused that fire was not Lord Tristen, and was not friendly to his brother, who was alone out there.

He walked down the kitchen steps at the head of his father’s towering, armored guard, and presented himself to the kitchen staff. “My father’s guard wants supper, if you please, and hot tea and mulled ale.” It was what they had ordered upstairs, and he knew the guardsmen would gladly agree to that. “And who is the chief cook?”

A white-bearded man came forward and bowed. “Prince Aewyn?

May I serve?”

“That I am,” he said. “And you may. My father and the duke are in conference upstairs, and my father wishes his men fed and comfortable.”

“Your Highness.” A gratifying bow, and a wave of his hand sent the staff into motion.

“And I personally wish to ask, sir, if you know why there would be a book in the wall of the library?”

The cook looked confused, entirely, and guiltily distressed.

“Perhaps you could ask the librarian, Your Highness.”

“I may. I wonder if you’ve heard anything about it. What
are
the rumors?”

“The rumors, now.” The man wiped flour onto his apron, looking worried. “The rumors, Your Highness.” He lowered his voice considerably, and took on a secretive look. “As there was a murder there, back in the last duke’s time. One librarian killed the other, both old men, and books was missing, which never was found…

except…”

“Except, sir?”

The man hesitated, and hesitated twice. “They was found last night, or at least… the boy, the Aswydd boy…”

“My half brother,” Aewyn said, to help the narrative along.

“Yes, Your Highness. Rumor is he took ’em, and fled the town.

His Grace went after, but only him an’ the man came back, the witch’s grandson.”

“Paisi.”

“Aye, Your Highness, Paisi. And neither hide nor hair of the Aswydd— your half brother, begging your pardon, Your Highness.”

“No, no. I’m very anxious to hear every bit you know. Which way did he ride off?”

“West, as seems. Thinkin’ is, with
her
up there—” The cook gave an uneasy glance over his shoulder and up, as if the tower threatened above him. “Whatever it was, he went west, and maybe south, too, maybe to Marna, as nobody can guess. Things finds their way to Marna, if they have to. That’s the rumor, that.”

“Very good,” he said, as if he were his uncle hearing a case: he was disappointed that it was no more than his father had found out upstairs. “Very well.” He nodded, to send the man off, then, seeing that the men were entirely interested in the pouring of ale and the heating of an iron, over at the side of the little kitchen, he simply went back up the stairs, put on his cloak, and took his gloves from his belt.

The kitchen stairs led up right near the western door of the fortress, the little, informal door that led to the sooted steps that led down to the stable, and many people might come and go by it.

He put the hood up as he left the bottom of the steps and crossed the yard, taking advantage of the weather, and he moved as Elfwyn had shown him how to move, not like a hunter, darting and stopping, but like a person on perfectly ordinary and lawful business. Paisi had taught Elfwyn, and Elfwyn had taught him, and now it became useful.

He slipped into the stable yard, where the stablemaster and his boys were tending the Guard horses, and on inside, where his and his father’s fine horses were afforded stalls and special care.

The horses they had come on were much too tired to go on, and only great good luck would get him through the Zeide gate and through the gate below on horseback at all, so it was no good taking one of the others. He simply took one of the guardsmen’s bridles, as an inconspicuous and average sort of bridle, with enough adjustment for whatever he might catch down in the fields. He took bait, a little worn sacking from a peg, with several dippers full of grain, and stuffed it into his coat, then simply slipped out the lesser front door of the stable and walked to the gate, where he had to have his best lie ready. He was carrying a message to a cobbler, to arrange mending for the visitors’ boots… none of the guards might recognize him, if he kept his hood on, covering fair Guelen hair.

But a handbarrow was coming in, it seemed, and the guards were engaged with the man bringing it. So he took his luck as a good sign and slipped past and down, unremarked, just a servant from the hill on late business headed down to the lower town.

He had no food for himself, except to eat a little of the raw grain, if it came to that. That was a difficulty. But it would not, he was sure, take him that long to find his half brother, the same as it hadn’t in the Guelesfort, after no less than the Dragon Guard had searched for hours. He knew his routes. He had had the map of Amefel in his room, and he had studied it and knew the highways and the byways and every farm and field that had ever been taxed in the history of Amefel.

More, he knew where Marna began, and he knew the shortest way, and if his brother had gone that way, he would at least spur his father and the duke into tracking
him
, since they wouldn’t listen to him or even admit him to their councils. He would lead them the right way, and if he had to go all the way to Lord Tristen’s keep, he had the map’s best notion where that was, too. If Gran was dead, if Otter’s sorceress-mother had cast a spell of blindness over the duke and everyone in the keep, then maybe he was the only one in the whole keep who hadn’t fallen under that spell and who didn’t think they could find his brother by sitting and talking about things from before he and Otter were even born.

Elfwyn. Otter didn’t like that name, but he’d taken it for his.

Why? Because it
was
hostile to his family?

What was his brother thinking of, except that he was outcast from Guelemara and now had stolen from Duke Crissand. So Otter was running from him, and had lost Gran and now Paisi, in weather like this? He must be afraid, by now, and cold and desperate, and probably lost, not having committed a map to memory.

So Aewyn couldn’t sit there and talk and drink and discuss old crimes in the kitchen. His mother and his father hadn’t brought up a boy who could be patient when one of his own was threatened, and if the family’s other son didn’t merit a search out into the night, if his father thought the Guard was too tired to go on, Aewyn would see to it.

iii

IT WAS A METICULOUS BUSINESS, GETTING DOWN TO THE

TRUTH——TRUTH FROM Paisi, who begged nothing more than for them to be out searching for the boy as soon as possible, and from Crissand, who had talked with Elfwyn at some length, with the librarian who had given him the key, the guard, who had reported the matter, and the officer of the special guard who watched over Tarien: no, the boy had not visited his mother since the day Gran’s house burned, nor had he passed that guard station the night he had gotten into the library and vanished: clearly, then, Cefwyn said to himself, regarding a place where he had lived and ruled for a year, clearly, then, the boy had used the servants’

passages—Paisi said he had had nothing to do with it, nor had guided the boy, who, it turned out, was as slippery as his namesake.

A knock came at the door, and an Amefin guardsman put his head in to beg pardon, but there was the Dragon Guard captain wanting to speak with His Majesty, urgently.

No deference to their host: Cefwyn gave a peremptory wave, beckoning the man in, and the captain slipped in, looking decidedly worried. “Begging Your Majesty’s pardon,” he said, and came close for a confidence as private as might be, in so small a chamber, “The Prince isn’t downstairs or up.”

“Where is he?” Cefwyn asked, with a sudden chill.

“We don’t know, Your Majesty. He was in the kitchens with us, questioning the cooks, about the theft in the library, as was, and we looked around, and he wasn’t there.”

“Good loving gods!” He flung himself out of his chair.

“The Guard is searching, Your Majesty. The Amefin, too.”

“He’s gone,” Paisi said, and immediately put a hand over his mouth, having talked out of turn; but it drew Cefwyn’s attention:

“What do
you
know about it?”

“Majesty, forgive me, but if ’e’s gone, he’s followed my lord, is all.”

“More sense than the whole damned passel of you,” Cefwyn said to the mortified captain, the Marhanen temper getting well to the fore—which was not good. He drew a deep breath and reined it back. “There are a thousand nooks a boy could get into. Ask the Amefin. But assume he went to the gate.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

He snatched his cloak off the peg, marking how his son had taken his own with him—ordinary in a boy being sent off for good, but likewise sensible in a boy who firmly intended to go outdoors.

“May I assist, Your Majesty?” Crissand asked.

“Not
your
fault,” Cefwyn said shortly. “But come along to the stables. I want to know from the gate-guards up and down if any boy went out, for the gods’ sake. He’s been gone long enough to be out and away.”

He left, walked down the hall—a king could not run—and walked down the sooty and well-trafficked steps and out to the stables in the dark. The sun had set.

No, there was no horse missing. That was good news.

“There’s the horses down to pasture,” Paisi said, unasked. “He’d ha’ had to have a bridle or halter.”

“Count them,” Cefwyn said.

The report came flying back that there was one fewer bridle than horses that had come in.

Clever lad
, Cefwyn thought distressedly.

“He might have gone back to the witch’s farm,” Crissand said.

“Follow his tracks at the town gate and at the pastures. And my guess is to search west. West. He knows where Marna is.”

Fear could close in about even a sensible boy, magnifying his doubts and moving him wherever a damned witch wanted. Fear—or overweening determination—could magnify itself, if a boy was particularly vulnerable to magic. And the boy was half-Syrillas.

“I’ll go,” Paisi said to Crissand. “If I could borrow me horse again, m’lord.”

“No!” Cefwyn said, and stormed back across the yard and up the torchlit steps, Crissand struggling to stay beside him, with an accompanying straggle of guards, and Paisi.

“We can bring horses up,” Crissand said, “and supplies for the road.” Every horse they had in stable but three were road-weary and incapable of a chase. “What shall I do?”

“Do it,” he said. It would take well over an hour to send down the hill, get horses from pasture, and get them up here and saddled and a search underway. But Crissand gave those orders.

He gave others, to the Dragon Guard captain. “Find out exactly what the kitchen staff told him,” he said to that man, reaching the inner hall, while resisting the notion to let his temper fly: it never had done him good, and would not now, to strike out at the inept, to race off on impulse into the dark and miss some clue as to what precise impulse might have sent his son out looking for his brother.