Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles (30 page)

Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles It might have been any ride they had ever taken in Guelessar, though at a slow and plodding pace, the banners comfortably furled and cased now that they were out of sight of other men. The banner-bearers talked together in quiet voices, alike .the Guard, riding behind them, Captain Anwyll with his aides.

At their first rest Uwen changed off to Liss to ride, and gave Gia a rest.

“Two fine horses,” Uwen said, in delight at the mare, fairly beaming. And then, soberly, and blushing, “M’lord, it were still very good of ye.”

“If I can please no one else,” Tristen said, “I would please you.”

Uwen blushed, bright red. “M’lord.”

He wished he had not said that. He knew not what to say to soften it.

“His Majesty’s given ye a province, m’lord. And in the Quinalt’s eye. The northern lords’, too. We’ll be back again. Ye’ll see His Majesty by spring, and ’twixt me and you, the town will be cheered up by then.”

“He had to take Sulriggan back.”

“Oh, well, but sooner or later he’d have to, and His Majesty knew it an’ Sulriggan knew it. It was sooner, is all, by about a couple of months, and ye can lay to it his lordship Sulriggan’ll catch cold before any battle. He probably wishes His Majesty had stayed choleric until after the war and never would call on him at all, but there wasn’t a chance of that, anyway, so all he gets is a few months Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles to work his way back into better graces. The Holy Father has a rotten weak reed of a cousin in Sulriggan, that’s the truth, and whoever relies on him, His Majesty’ll chew him up bones and all.”

“Perhaps he will,” Tristen said. “At least I doubt Efanor will believe Sulriggan again.”

“His Highness has his eyes open more than some thinks,” Uwen said, and for a time they rode talking of Efanor, and then recalling Amefel and thereby the stables in Amefel, and wondering whether they could improve the drainage in the stables sitting at the bottom of the hill.

Perhaps, Tristen thought, Cefwyn had not been entirely unwise to send him south. Very near Cefwyn’s apartment, amid all the gathering of the court, he dared not even wonder what Cefwyn was doing, or how he fared or whether the land was safe… dared not until he was far from the walls. But today, at this distance from the men around him and in command of the column as it was, he simply drew a deep breath, reached, and the world was wider by half again.

He was aware of Uwen, of the horses, of all the men and all the patient oxen, even of the wheeling hawks that soared, fearless of the chill autumn winds, looking for mice or sparrows.

Poor creatures, he thought, seeing a hawk stoop beyond a leafless copse of trees. He forever pitied the hunted, and thought of Owl, and wondered where he laired, nowadays, whether he had gone back to Ynefel now that it was free of threat.

He was thinking like a boy again, and making wild and foolish conjecture, as he had done on the hilltop. But, oh, he could dare more. He could draw the gray light to the sunlit world, he could do Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles battle with shadows if he found them—

But he had far rather simply be aware of the lives, the living, the loyal and the loved. He had proposed to sleep in the saddle, but unexpectedly found his thoughts too rapid, racing ahead of the slow wagons. He was unavoidably morose at the thought of leaving Cefwyn and Ninévrisë, but he breathed with increasing anticipation of the road and the freedom ahead.

The sun was warm enough to raise a slight sweat on his shoulders when the wind slacked, and the wind did fall and stayed still in late afternoon. They rested from time to time, changed horses, for the horses’ ease; and Uwen, trading Liss for Gia again, looked well content, a man with an old friend and a new and trying to assure one of his affection without slighting the other: all at once it Unfolded what Uwen was doing, and how he loved both, but Gia more, the other being all to discover. Was not a king much the same, when he had to consider who sat next him at table?

And the world, in widening, slowly widened behind them, too, to the subtle feeling of cold water, the smell of sweat, the shapes of stones.

“Master Emuin is finally on his way,” Tristen said, drawing Uwen’s curious glance.

“He’s leavin’the gate?”

“Oh, farther. By the little stream we crossed, the one near the rocks, with the old tree with the hole in it.”

“Does he come so far on the road and ye not see?”

“He can slip about when he wishes,” Tristen said, “better than I, I Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles think. He’s quite clever. I think it comes of being old.”

“And what does he say?” Uwen asked, and Tristen wondered that at once. A sting of displeasure came back.

“He bids me mind my business,” Tristen said, laughing.

Uwen cast him a sidelong glance. His gray hair blew in rising wind as the sunlight found it, all against a blue sky. Light touched Uwen’s weathered, cold-stung face with perfect cheerfulness.

This is where I must be, Tristen thought then, absolutely certain of it, for no reason. This is where Uwen must be, with me. We belong on this road… and all is well.

Other men are where they
need
to be. But Uwen and I are where we
must
be… there is a difference.

Then came, with the cold chill of water, with that clarity of sun on stones, the uncertainty of certainties that seeped out of the gray place, but it was Emuin’s troubled doubt that owned this fear. Come rain, come lightning, come spells or wizards’ wishes, this muddy road was a thread stretched out strongly toward Ynefel… it ran
there
, Tristen thought, and thought of his window at night, the rain crawling across the horn panes. But that was but one place of all the places it led.

Ink followed the goose-quill tip, red wax dripped onto parchment under a window full of sunset. The royal seal made a scant, a listless imprint.

Cefwyn fixed the duke of Ryssand with a cold stare then and did not Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles himself pick up the parchment, or invite the duke to do so. An anxious page fidgeted and failed to move.

The Patriarch himself slipped in and did the deed, picked up the rattling document and bowed without quite looking Cefwyn in the eye.

A disappointment.

I am coming to hate this man, Cefwyn thought of Corswyndam, Lord Ryssand. Corswyndam was a lank, hawk-nosed, wet rag of a man, the sort that smothered any enthusiasm, disapproved anything not to his advantage, used the Quinalt as sword and shield and purse of pennies, and had interest in nothing that did not serve his own interests.

He had not the luxury, now, to hate the Patriarch. The Patriarch was thus far too useful. Why, if there were no Patriarch, then that parchment might have rested on the table until the page called a servant to move it. As it was, the Patriarch clutched it in reward of services rendered and no one present mentioned exactly what those services were.

But the king met with the duke of Ryssand and the duke of Murandys, and officially settled the matter of Sulriggan’s return on the very evening the king’s friend was on his way to Amefel… and the king had the small satisfaction of seeing no triumph on any face
except
the Patriarch’s.

The two lords had looked to enjoy this evening. They had looked, perhaps, to accusations of sorcery, and expected better of the Patriarch than they had gotten. But the Patriarch knew on what table Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles his meals were served henceforth and forevermore, and knew that the two lords at his back felt betrayed, and therefore he had double reason to stand close by his king.

Sulriggan would return to court, the Patriarch’s cousin; and gods send the duke of Llymaryn would be prudent, now, having coasted so close to royal anger. Ironic, that the king’s two best allies in the troublesome north might turn out to be the Patriarch and his cousin Sulriggan. He never would have seen that as likely. But Emuin had left him in order to advise and restrain Tristen, a far chancier element. That left, of royal intimates, only Efanor, only the Regent, only the Lord Commander, several other officers, and Cevulirn—a gray, often silent presence.

So at present, in the court as it was now and for time foreseeable, yes, the Patriarch was his ally and Sulriggan was the Patriarch’s man… such as he was.

He smiled on the Patriarch, a warm, a proprietary sort of smile, the sort he denied the two lords. He meditated on the rewards of piety, on his new use of the gods, from a perspective he had not had until his enemies hewed down the tall tree that was Tristen… or at least, until he lengthened his view of the realm not as protecting a small, threatened circle of intimates but as reaching to his good neighbor Amefel, his good neighbor Cevulirn of Ivanor, his dearest love the Regent from across the river, and hell take these two barons. He had the Patriarch, and soon he would have Sulriggan, both in the center of his hand, clever as they had thought they were, and neither would be anxious to see that hand ever become a fist.

“I add,” he said to the Holy Father, “I add the welcome of the Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles Marhanen house, and the use of the bedchamber lately in use by the duke of Amefel, for residence within the Guelesfort.” He said nothing about the cook, that unholy power in Sulriggan’s household. Within the Guelesfort, the lord of Llymaryn had to rely on the Guelesfort kitchens, and be damned to Sulriggan’s culinary tastes. There was a second thorn in that royal rose, too, that Sulriggan would not be guesting with, say, Ryssand or Murandys.

“Your Majesty,” the Patriarch said. And the dukes of Ryssand and Murandys looked out of countenance. Supper was preparing, and they all were invited, in a court composed exactly as they had wished,
purified
of wizards and their conjuring.

Barley soup tonight and so long as the harvest held out. Plain Amefin fare. The royal cook might rebel, but it would be barley soup every evening, not a Ryssand leek in evidence, Amefin venison and Llymarish beef, and not a fish, not a one, from Murandys’ weirs.

A taste for plain fare gave him an excuse for sending wagons and messages to Amefel. He was writing a letter in request of sausages and the state of affairs in a province that had never concerned his father except as a source of wool, taxes, and rural discontent mediated by a lord he had trusted far too much.

He recalled an Amefin tailor, a chandler, even the mason who had repaired the stable wall. Perhaps there were walls about the Guelesfort that wanted patching, or perhaps the king needed a winter cloak of fine Amefin wool. Oh, there might be spells sewn into it: the whole province of Amefel was rife with heresy.

He should not favor Amefel alone. If there were fish, they should Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles also come from Sovrag’s people, who caught them downstream of Murandys, when they were not engaged in petty brigandage. It was a poor province, when it was not raiding; and a royal purchase of fish might give relief to Sovrag’s neighbors, among whom was Cevulirn. If there was grain, the south had that. If there was timber and stone, there was sullen Imor.
Damned
if he would sit helplessly nodding to the demands of the north. They had set him at odds with them and declared their war against his friends in pettiness and shadows. He knew them, and he knew their taxes and wherein they chose to pay the Crown in bags of grain and barrels of salt fish, which they took from the hands of their peasantry.

Refuse Murandys’ salt fish? Levy instead a demand for timber and labor? To glut the fisheries without warning would lower the price of fish, which the people could eat as well as sell, but it would threaten Murandys and force him to look to Ryssand for the timber.

Diminish the requirement for timber the king could not: he needed it for bridges.

Best consider carefully which of his lords he wished to push at the other, and for what goods, and who would cheat whom, if he demanded, say,
gold
of Murandys, declaring a royal distaste for barrels of fish. And where would Murandys obtain gold? Selling that fish to Guelessar at, perhaps, a lower price.

Perhaps merely opening the discussion tonight of a distaste for fish would so alarm Murandys as to make him far more amenable. Or there was another possible topic of interest, which he had never mentioned, awaiting its usefulness.

“Do you know,” he remarked to Murandys, “Lady
Luriel
sent me a Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles letter. Several of them, in fact.”

He saw the intake of breath, as Murandys, his mind set on the Patriarch’s cousin, realized he had an overlooked piece on the board, his niece, who did not love him, who had been writing letters on the eve of the king’s marriage and risking the king’s perhaps unfavorable interest. Cefwyn smiled his grandfather’s smile quite consciously, and rose from his chair.

“We’ll discuss it,” he said. “The tables are laid, I’m sure, gentlemen. We expect your company.”

Nestled between two hills, a Quinalt monastery occupied that small wedge of flatland created by the road’s branching to Marisal in the south and to Amefel to the west. Clusyn was its name. It was a waystop the king’s party had used on its way to Guelemara; and thanks to its provision for travelers at any season Tristen found no need to make a camp under canvas, a great benefit, which obviated the necessity of unloading a significant amount of canvas in a rising damp and, worse, loading all that canvas up again in the morning, when the air was bitterly cold.

Instead a traveler met safe walls, and their company even found meals waiting. The king’s messenger, on his way to Amefel by post-horse ahead of them, had advised the monks such a number of men would be following him by evening, and that news had had the honest monks baking up leavened bread, entire baskets of it coming hot from the oven right at sunset. Monks had swept out the sheds and the space along the south wall, provided hay for their horses, Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles and managed their arrival as a marvelously efficient process, one monk directing their wagons to the end of the yard, where at another brother’s direction each set of drivers might unhitch its team on the spot and lead them to the appropriate area by the stables, oxen to one side, mules to this place, horses to that. The next wagon went beside that one, and the carts in the order of march, and so on, all by the wan light of a setting sun and shadows lengthening over the modest walls… walls the purpose of which seemed to fence out hungry deer, not hostile men.