Fortress in the Eye of Time (34 page)

“Uwen,—light more candles. I don't want it dark.”

“Aye, m'lord.” Uwen pulled down the covers on the huge bed, another waft of cool air, made it smooth, then took the sole burning taper from the table and walked about the room, lighting all the candles, making the Shadows retreat.

Then he came back and went down on one knee. “There ye be.—Ye feel any better, m'lord?”

“Cefwyn has given me Ynefel,” Tristen said. “He calls me his friend. Did you hear?”

Uwen's scarred face was frowning. “I suppose His Highness has it to dispose, m'lord.”

“Uwen, tell me. Is it Ynefel men fear so? Or is it Mauryl?—Or is it me?”

“I don't know, m'lord,” Uwen said. “Ynefel hain't a good reputation. But hereabouts is a superstitious lot.”

“Go,” he said finally. “Uwen, if you fear me, go.”

Uwen looked up, in fear of him, he was sure of it, and with something else, too, that had once touched Mauryl's face. Uwen scowled then, spoiling it. “Ain't never backed off from no man. And not a good lad like you, m'lord.”

“You don't have to run, Uwen. You can just stand outside with the other guard, no more, no less than they.”

“Ain't leaving ye. And enough of foolishness, m'lord. Ye'd best get ye to bed.”

“No.” He clenched his hands before his mouth, remembered the little scar and rubbed at it with his thumb, staring into the candlelight. A face like his own came to him, dim and mirrorlike, as if it were reflected in bronze. He shut his eyes the tighter, and opened them, and it left him.

“Uwen, Cefwyn believes I'm Sihhë.”

“So folk say ye might be.”

“What does that
mean
, Uwen?”

“Old, m'lord. And wizards.”

“I'm not. I wish I could do what Mauryl could. But Mauryl's lost, Emuin's left me and
he's
afraid. Uwen, I have no way to ask anyone else. What is Althalen and what does Cefwyn think I am? Why does Idrys think I lie? Why does Cefwyn ask me Names over and over again? Why does he talk about killing and burning? Why does he want me to swear to be his friend and defend him if he thinks I'm something he won't like, Uwen?”

Uwen's face was pale. He drew from his shirt an amulet and carried the thing to his lips. “My lord, I fear some mean no good to ye. I don't say as the prince means ye ill, but others—others ye should watch right carefully.”

“Do you feel so? But I will swear to be his friend. I have to
do it. Cefwyn is m'lord Prince, and I must do what he wishes, is that not so?”

“Aye, m'lord,” Uwen whispered. “That it is. But ye don't understand what they intends, and I'm sure I don't. I don't think m'lord Prince has authority of his father the King to do a thing like he's done. The King will hear, sure enough, and then gods help us.”

“So what should I do, Uwen?”

“Ye do what Prince Cefwyn bids ye. Ye swear and ye become Cefwyn's man, and 't is all ye can do. He's a good lord. Ain't none better. But ye don't cross 'im. Marhanen blood is fierce, m'lord. And there ain't no living Sihhë. The Marhanen damned the name, and damned the arms that he give you. For that reason, His Majesty ain't apt to be pleased in what His Highness has done.”

He listened. His heart hurt. “Then I shall send you away. You were brave to stay with me, tonight, in Cefwyn's apartment. But I don't want you to come to harm, Uwen. I never want you to come to harm.”

“He won't harm me, m'lord. For his honor, he won't be laying hands on me. I was his before he give me to you. I'm still in the guard, and he ain't one to dispose his men to trouble. But that ain't reckoning His Majesty the King. I've no wish to be watching them set your head at Skull Gate. I don't want to see Prince Cefwyn's there either, after the King learns what's astir here.” He touched lips to the fist that held the medal. “Don't repeat none of this. Maybe ye hain't no sense of it, m'lord, but growing up in Ynefel surely taught ye some sort of caution. Don't ye cross Cefwyn. Don't think of crossing him.”

“I can't, I shan't, Uwen.”

Uwen's hand pressed his. “Lad…m'lord,…I give ye my oath t' be your man, right and true, by the good gods, by their grace. That's my word on 't. But ye be careful. Ye keep the prince and the Lord Commander happy wi' ye. For your own sake.”

“I shall. As best I can, I shall, Uwen.”

“Let me get them boots off. Ye'd do better abed.”

Tristen thrust out his foot and braced himself for Uwen's pull on one and the other. He shed his clothing and let Uwen put him to bed. He shivered between the cold sheets.

“Shall I blow out the lights, m'lord?”

“No. Uwen, please. Let them burn. Let them burn until morning.”

“Aye, m'lord. If 't please ye, I'll send for more candles. We'll light 'er like a festival, only so's ye sleep.”

T
he bell at the lower town gates tolled arrivals. Cefwyn continued to sift through the revenue reports, ignoring the bell until one of the guards outside opened the door and crossed the foyer to report that Lord Heryn Aswydd was demanding admittance.

Idrys was otherwise assigned. Cefwyn considered, finally rose and gave instructions to grant the demand, with appropriate precautions.

The lord of the Amefin had brought his twin sisters. Heryn bowed, Orien and Tarien curtsied, and Cefwyn folded his arms and leaned against the dead fireplace, secure if nothing else in the guards who had trailed this trio into the room.

“What is this at our gates?” Heryn asked.

“I do hardly know, Your Grace, being here, and not there, and not prophetic, but I will assume they are several of the neighbors.”

“Send these men of yours away.”

“Patience.” Cefwyn returned to the table and perched on the corner, amid the tax records. “Though I have limited patience myself. Your tax accounts are exceedingly nuisanceful, Lord Amefel. My master of accounts daily assails me with new complexities of records-keeping.—Do believe that my humor today is not the best.”

Heryn's face was all formality. “I shall have my seneschal make account to me where this fault may lie. But do rest assured, my lord Prince, that the Crown has always received its due.”

“You've furnished this hall in grand style, Amefel. I would rather iron and horses than gilt and velvets, with matters as they stand on the far borders.—Or perhaps you don't count the Elwynim a serious danger to your interests.”

“I have constantly maintained the requisite levies.” Heryn drew a quick breath and made a wide gesture. “This is not the issue, Your Highness. There are strangers at my gate, that you may call neighbors, but I do not. I protest this treatment of me and my house. I protest the dismissal of my personal guards. I am treated like a lawbreaker. I cannot but believe that Your Highness has lent his ear to malicious influences.”

“Idrys, mean you? Pray don't attack him. I fear he's not here to defend himself. He's pursuing business you set him.”

“M'lord prince?”

“A messenger you managed to dispatch.” Cefwyn raised his voice and the twins backed away. “Where is your man Thewydd?”

Heryn went white, and for a time no one moved, neither he nor his mirrorlike sisters nor the equally mirrorlike guards who escorted them.

“Dispatched to your father,” Heryn answered after a moment, “that His Majesty the King may know my situation, my duress, and my complaint.”

Cefwyn let go a long breath, angry, and hoping that a message to Guelemara was the only truth. “You have the right to appeal any grievance to the King. You hardly need subterfuge to effect that, no midnight departures or disguises.”

“I have the right to walk my own hall unimpeded, but your treatment of that right makes me doubt the others.”

“You may say so, Amefel. You may complain to my lord father. I'll seal and stamp the message myself if you like. But you will give account to me
and
to my father the King when the accounting comes.”

“I am prepared to do so, Your Highness, in clear conscience.”

“You have hazarded your man's life,” Cefwyn said. “If taken, he will pay for your lack of trust in me, since Idrys, as you well know, is not a patient man.”

“My lord Prince.” Heryn spread wide his hands in an attitude of entreaty. “I protest this arrest. I have done nothing—”

Cefwyn gestured toward the records. “Nothing improper? You've bled this province
white
, sir. You've made the Crown look rapacious and you've appropriated to yourself taxes you declared to the province to be due to the Crown. Is that of advantage to us in our defense of a dangerous border? Does that win the loyalty of the peasants? Have I even cavalry to show for it? No. Gold dinnerplates.” He stalked as far as the windows, lest his anger choke him, turned and paced back, and Heryn stood with Orien and Tarien on either hand, a whey-faced lot and suddenly loathsome to him. “You may regret having appealed to His Majesty, Heryn Aswydd, since, having invoked the King's law, you will now be unable to stop it. And I, my finely-dressed lord, and ladies, have begun a long list of questions in which my father the King will interest himself when he summons you to Guelemara. We speak of
treason
, sir, as well as theft.”

“My lord,” Orien began, and winced as her brother gripped her arm and pulled her back.

“Do not involve yourself,” Cefwyn advised her. He turned his shoulder to them. The bells rang down at the outer gate, distant and clear on the air, but there was another bell pealing out now, that of Skull Gate, and a clatter of hooves echoed off the inner walls.

“What have you done?” Heryn asked him.

Cefwyn looked out the window, ignoring Heryn and all he represented.

The doors opened. One of the Guelen pages entered, out of breath. Sasian, his name was, an earnest lad. Cefwyn signed to him. “Your Highness,” the lad breathed. “It's Ivanor's banner, and Imor's.”

Cefwyn's lips made a taut smile. Cevulirn and Umanon together, neighbors and allies, the horsemen of the southern plains and their city-dwelling allies from across the Lenúalim.

Here. Safe. Answering immediately to his summons. Breath left him in a long sigh, and he cast a look askance at Heryn's pallid face.

“We have
guests
, Amefel.”

“To be entertained at my expense?” Heryn cried. “You are quartering Ivanim in my town?”

“Expense, expense, matters with you do seem to have a single song, Lord Heryn. We are conferring on matters of import to all the region; the others will doubtless be arriving before twilight.”

Heryn opened his mouth and shut it quickly.

“No,” Cefwyn agreed, “I would not object in your place, Amefel.” He made a chivalric gesture toward Orien: pale, russet-haired,
ambitious
Orien. “You will have the opportunity to play hostess to all the region; an opportunity to use all that grand gold dinnerware, all this surplus of servants and display. You should be delighted, dear, vain…lady.”

Color rose to Orien's face. Tarien turned white.

“Out!” Cefwyn said to her and her sister, and she whirled and fled, remembered to curtsy, and fled again. After an opening and closing of her mouth Tarien left in her wake, and two guards went with them.

“My lord Prince,” Heryn said, choked with rage. “Your treatment of my sisters does you no honor.”

“Your sisters are charming whores, and do you cry honor, who made them serve where you could not?”

Heryn swore. The guards moved with a clash of metal and Heryn's hand stayed from the dirk he wore. For a moment Heryn seemed on the verge of that fatal madness, then wisely mastered his impulses in favor of more diplomatic assault. Cefwyn regarded him with disappointment.

“You are dismissed, Your Grace.”

“I am not your servant, to be dismissed so rudely. Or do you fancy yourself already King?”

“Surely
you
fancy I shall
not
be.”

For a moment Heryn's face was void of expression, and a chill came on Cefwyn's skin. A mistake, to have baited the man. He had misjudged the threat. Coxcomb, liar, usurer and outright tax-thief that he was, Heryn Aswydd was in fact dangerous.

Nine assassins, and the last a troop of them, in lands Heryn patrolled.

Of course the man would not be provoked to draw—and the man knew the prince trod on fragile ground, raising armies.

Heryn did
not
know other things shaping quietly in the handiwork of women. He trusted that Heryn did not know. But in those books of account there were debts at outrageous interest that other lords and even tradesmen owed that
kept
the nobility of Amefel swilling at Aswydd's trough.

Cefwyn turned to the page, who stood the while frozen in horror. “Go back, lad; see the lords at the gate offered all courtesies and welcome. Have the master-at-arms run up the flags of all our guests beside mine and Amefel's, as they arrive. Go. Haste.”

The boy sketched a hasty bow and fled. Cefwyn returned to his table, sat down, and found his place in the records. “Perhaps,” he said to Heryn, “you would care instead to assist me in my reckonings of the proper tax. Doubtless you can explain these accounts and the source and disposition of these revenues.”

There was absolute silence. No one moved, neither Heryn nor the guards. Heryn leaned insolently against the table by the door, red-bearded, elegant Heryn, who had succeeded after all in surprising him with an audacity and mental quickness greater than he would have believed in the man.

Cefwyn, seething with anger, turned a massive page, the numbers on which swam in front of him.

Tax the people at more than the Crown rate, then lend them money back to pay the tax—collecting interest through the town's moneylenders who let the income out again through
their
fingers. Those books also his men were searching for, this time in town. Well it was to have probed the man to the quick, he decided. Almost he had regretted pressing him thus far, but now at least he knew the temper of the man, underestimated as it had been.

“We shall go down,” he said, “and meet Amefel's other guests. It should be time. Will you join me, Your Grace?”

“Of course, Your Highness,” Heryn said.

He closed the book, and swept up with his own guard the Guelen guardsmen with Heryn, men whose eyes were shadowed with a service in which they alternated sleep and duty. The duty would be lessened with the arrival at that gate, with troops other than Guelen and Amefin available to dispose about the Zeide.

They went out and down the hall at a brisk pace, down the steps, and got no further than the turn toward the doors before, shadows against the light, a troop of men came in.

Cevulirn and Umanon together, travel-stained, dusted from the road, and weary from a day's ride. “Pages!” Cefwyn called out. “The lords' baggage to their quarters. Rouse out Lord Kerdin and see to their men!” He met the lords with a handclasp and a clap on the arm that raised dust, the consequence of a large troop in a dry spell on the roads. “Welcome, welcome, both. A long day, a long ride. You are the earliest. I trust my men have been down by the gate to provide your captains what they need.”

“Prompt and well-prepared, Your Highness. Your Grace.” The latter Cevulirn addressed to Heryn, who met them as if he had remained undisputed lord in Henas'amef.

“Your Highness, Your Grace.” Umanon was a smallish, stout man with drooping mustaches and the figure of a wheel blazoned in white on his green surcoat: lord of Imor Lenúalim, and a master of rich farmlands and the great high road. Cevulirn stood at his shoulder, a thin, tall man whose colorless hair and mustache and gray surcoat made him curiously obscure to the eye; his device was a white horse that betokened the wide plains of Ivanor, the good grasslands and sleek horses that were the wealth of the unfenced south.

“We've arranged water and wood for your encampments,” Cefwyn said. “We trust you'll leave your captains in charge and enjoy the hospitality of the hall. We expect more of your brother lords to arrive, and this evening we'll make formal reception in the grand hall, granted the rain stays at bay and our other guests arrive in timely fashion. At worst, good food and good company for those of us who do meet.”

“At your pleasure, my lord Prince,” said Umanon; and in his dark eyes, as in Cevulirn's gray stare, was keen curiosity; but they were too prudent to ask questions where answers had not been advanced in the letters or put foremost in the meeting.

“It is not war,” Heryn said, “nor is anyone taken ill. I am as puzzled as yourselves at this gathering. But welcome, my lords, welcome, all the same.”

Cefwyn smiled tautly at Heryn's conscious malice and brazen effrontery, and saw dismay leap into the lords' eyes, a second glance at him,—and caution.

“His Grace Lord Heryn is not in favor, today, as you see. He even sends to His Majesty in protest of my orders. But I am jealous of my life, my lords, as I assure you is my royal father, and Heryn has lately been most careless in that regard. You surely noticed the ornaments of our south gate. I urge you take precautions for yourselves: assassins of some stamp or other have been a damned pest in Amefel this summer. Heryn does of course swear they're Elwynim. But overtaxed farmers can grow desperate, and even blame their prince for their plight.”

There was a lifting of heads, scant glances toward Heryn: there was no great bond among the southern lords, and with that handful of blunt words he marked Heryn as plague-touched. Heryn's poisonous tongue merited him a visit to the cellars, but to have the man delivered to prison in his own hall, particularly under witness of the neighbors, was extreme. Heryn's boldness so far had saved him from his own prison, and his answer had, as happened, neatly warned the visiting lords, always jealous of their privileges, that they well might be cautious: that the Marhanen prince might be exceeding the authority the King had lent him.

But now Heryn bowed, all humble, and was oh, so far from the drawing of a weapon that alone would give the prince clear cause to remove a baron of Ylesuin to his own well-stocked cellars. Clever man, he thought, and far braver than he had reckoned him.

“This evening, my lords,” Cefwyn murmured, and they
bowed in courtesy, prepared to go off with an assortment of pages and attendants.

Heryn, too, took his chance to leave under that general dismissal, bowing and sweeping up the Guelen guards assigned to him, so that his treatment in his own hall would be clear to his unasked guests. The man had a gift and an instinct for epic.

Heryn was Amefin, he was noble, accepted by the Amefin lords as well as by the peasants he abused, at least as one of their own.