Fortress in the Eye of Time (76 page)

He knew when he had seen something wise. He could admire it, at least. And he saw the guard gathering the women to take them to the guard-house, for which he was very sorry: he had been there himself, and Orien would not like it.

She stared back at him with no apology. And he supposed she was angry about Lord Heryn. He thought she was very brave to have attacked Cefwyn where there was at least one wizard to have seen it, and he did not think that sorcery had broken master Emuin's skull.

“I think,” he told Uwen and Captain Kerdin in that thought, “that there is someone in the Bryaltine shrine who attacked master Emuin. It might not be one of the brothers, but I don't think master Emuin slipped on the stairs. I think there was someone helping Lady Orien, someone there and in the kitchens.”

“If master Emuin gets well,” Captain Kerdin said, “I don't think I would like to have been that person, Lord Warden, and I fear he's the most likely besides yourself to find out who. But I'll ask the abbot and the kitchen staff who came and went.”

He cast an uneasy glance about him, at the room, at the women. Orien's glance still smoldered. There was still harm
in her. There was still the anger. He felt it as, finding nothing for himself to do, he thought he would also like to be sure Cefwyn and Emuin were safe, and went out into the hall and down the stairs. Uwen stayed with him, saying something about how Prince Efanor had been willing to listen to Idrys, finally, and how Gwywyn and Idrys had gone together to see Cefwyn, whether he was well.

But as he came into the lower hall he had that same feeling, that dread feeling he had had when of a sudden he had known direction to Orien's ill-working—and it was the same direction.

“M'lord?” Uwen asked, as he stopped. Uwen's voice came from far away. The sense he had was overwhelming, that it was
there
, down that hall, on the
lower
floor.

“My lord?” Uwen said again.

It was that end of the hall that had distressed him when he had first come, that place where the paving changed from marble to older stone.

Lines. Masons' lines.

“Stay here,” he said to Uwen, and when Uwen protested regarding his safety: “Stay here!” he said, and went, alone down that hall, past other people, past servants. “Get away,” he said to them, and servants, looking frightened, moved quickly.

He walked all the way down the hall, to that place where the pavings changed. He saw the hall hung with old banners, and looked for the lines, such as he had seen at Althalen, at his very feet.

The lines were scarcely there, scarcely a pale glow. He looked up, up at the bannered hall, and heard the rustling of wings, hundreds of wings. He saw the stirring of Shadows hanging like old curtains, perching on beams, spreading wings like vast birds, and the whole hall shifting and stirring with the darkness that nested in every recess. Wings began to spread, Shadows bated and threatened him, and he stepped back behind the fading safety of the line, wishing for a Word such as Mauryl had used, a spell, whatever it was that Mauryl worked
.

—
Tristen
, came Emuin's voice.
Tristen! Stay back. Hold on to me…Do not let me fall. Hold me!

—
Yes, sir
, he said, and was aware of Emuin near him in the gray space, and was aware of Emuin growing stronger and stronger and that blue line at his feet growing brighter and brighter, until it blazed, until it turned white, and the Shadows were only banners, and the place fluttering with wings had gone away
…

“M'lord!” Uwen said, having disobeyed him, having come, with his sword bare in his hand, to stand by him looking at a hall full of faded banners. “Is summat here, me lord? Is it somebody hiding here?”

Master Emuin was alive. Emuin had retreated until he could only dimly feel his presence, but something had changed in that presence. It was far, far warmer, far more vivid, of far more substance, if one could say that in the gray realm
.

He had never seen Mauryl. He had never heard Mauryl in the way Emuin had shown him to do—and he thought that Mauryl might have been fearsome in this place. Emuin was not—at least, not toward him
.

“It's gone,” he said to Uwen. He drew an easier breath. “There's no one. We should go upstairs, now.”

 

There were a great many people gathered around his bed when Cefwyn waked next. There was sunlight coming through the window, so he had certainly slept a while; and he blinked in slow amazement to see Idrys, and Tristen, and Ninévrisë, and Efanor, all sitting or standing around him.

He could not remember what he had been doing when he went to bed, but he shifted the leg that had been giving him misery, to find it was sore, but no longer acutely painful.

“Is there some occasion?” he asked, embarrassed to be the object of such anxious attention. “My lady.” He did not at all look his best. His hair would be in tangles. He ran his hand through it, and felt his arm quite inexplicably weak.

Annas arrived with a bowl of soup, saying that the kitchen was limited at the moment until they could wash all the pots, whatever that meant, and while he was trying to think of a question, a page came and stuffed cushions behind his back and another held the bowl and spoon for him—prepared to spoon the soup into his mouth in front of all these witnesses.

“No,” he said sharply, and waved away soup, spoon, and boy. “What is this?”

“It was witchcraft,” said Efanor, who sat on a reversed chair, arm along its back.

He was not prepared to make judgments on Efanor and witches.

“Orien Aswydd,” Ninévrisë said. “Master Emuin broke his skull but he says he will be better soon.”

“I feel fine,” he said. “I keep telling you I feel fine. What are all of you doing here?”

“You should fare much better now,” Idrys said.

“I shall, if I have fewer people staring at me.” He was unaccountably weak. He had no desire for the soup. He most wanted to sleep. He decided he would shut his eyes for a moment, and said, “Did you see the horse, Tristen? What do you think?”

“I think he's very fine, sir.”

“Good,” Cefwyn said, remembered his betrothed bride was in the company—with his brother, which he found unlikely, and made the effort a second time to lift his eyelids to be certain it was true. “Forgive me. I don't mean to fall asleep.”

The eyes shut. He was aware of them moving about, and discussing him quietly, and Annas saying they would put the soup back in the pot and it could go on waiting. He had as lief escape it. But Annas was very hard to escape. He had learned that, at Annas' knee.

Was it porridge he should eat? He thought of the sunlight coming in a window of his childhood.

But that was silly. Or magical. On this particular morning, when he was about six or seven, he could hear all the voices
of most of the people who would be important to him in his life. So it was a very important dream, although he didn't know their names, now; but he knew that he would, someday, and he should remember it when he grew up.

I
n two days a Frost had come, and rimed the black slates of the Zeide roof outside Tristen's window. He opened it to test the strangeness of the white coating, and found the air very cold, and the Rime slick and cold and quite remarkable. People went about morning chores in his narrow view of the courtyard below and their breath made white steam. So did his own against the glass. “Look!” he said to Uwen, quite foolishly, entranced by this miracle, and Uwen looked.

“Why does it do that?” he asked Uwen, and Uwen scratched his morning-stubbled chin.

“Because it's cold.”

“But why?” Tristen asked.

“I can't say as I can answer,” Uwen said. “I can't say as I ever asked anybody as would know. That's wizard-question. Breath's warm. Horses do that when they're hot.”

“Give off steam?”

“They can.”

“That's very odd,” Tristen said, and blew more steam at the glass and watched the magic instead of dressing in time for breakfast. He would have liked to ask master Emuin further about the ice and the steam, but Emuin did not wake much, except to eat, even yet, and then he had so fierce a headache Tristen wanted not to be near him. Emuin was angry at him, and upset, and would not see anyone. The priests kept praying in the shrine and called Emuin's getting well a miracle of the gods, but Emuin called himself damned now and said it was his own fault for coming near him again.

That stung. But he told himself Emuin didn't mean it that strongly, and that once Emuin was well, which Emuin would be, Emuin would be in a much better frame of mind. Meanwhile Emuin had confided in him that he was mending
himself, far more slowly than he might—and that such strength as he had to spare at all, he gave to the King.

And Cefwyn was on his feet. Cefwyn was inquiring, Annas said, about the kitchens, the boys that were burned, and the whereabouts of Orien Aswydd, Idrys having told him that troubling matter and the reason of his wound not healing. Cefwyn came down the hall to visit master Emuin, using the hated stick the way Emuin peevishly said, lifting one blackened eyelid, that His Majesty should have done in the first place and not fallen down the stairs like a damned fool.

More kindly spoken, Ninévrisë came downstairs, made Cefwyn tea and fussed over him, Idrys fussed over him, Annas fussed over him—Tristen did the same, such as the others left him room: he brought Cefwyn reports from the pastures and the armory; he had done that yesterday. And he thought, in his collecting of cheerful things to tell Cefwyn, about telling him about people's breaths steaming and the air turning cold, but he thought that it was probably much too commonplace a miracle to entertain Cefwyn.

Annas and Idrys gave orders and kept the household in order; servants were lugging water up the stairs and washing everything the smoke had smudged, and it turned out to have coated even walls that looked clean. Cook had the courtyard full of tubs and fires going, while servants brought out the blackened pots and tables to scrub, and a master builder had taken a look at the timbers and masonry of the kitchen and given orders to a number of workmen. A pile of charcoaled pieces from the kitchen timbers fed the fires in the courtyard, and the smell of cooking vied with the lingering smell of smoke.

 

Wind bore down on the citadel that night, a noisy, cold wind, that had every fire lit and that rattled doors and window-panes, but it seemed innocent. Cefwyn invited him, among others, and sat in front of the fireplace, in a comfortable chair, with his leg propped up, a quilt about him, a cup of wine in his hand, and his friends, as he said, around him: Ninévrisë
and Margolis came down, and he and Idrys and Annas were there. Efanor, more quiet than Tristen had ever seen him, came in while Ninévrisë was reading poetry aloud, and sat and listened, before he came and rested his hand on Cefwyn's arm and in a quiet voice asked him how he fared and wished him and his lady well. The harper entertained them. No one argued. No one mentioned Orien Aswydd. Efanor did not seem comfortable the entire evening, but he was there, and he was resolutely gracious to the lady, who, when he took his leave, early, seized his hands, looked at him and said quite gravely, and in everyone's hearing, “Thank you.”

Efanor did not seem to know how to answer. He turned very red, and held the lady's hands a moment looking at the floor as if he were trying to say something and could not decide what.

Then he said, “My lady,” and left.

Idrys cocked his head with a look at Cefwyn. Cefwyn was looking toward the door—or at Ninévrisë who was looking at the door. Tristen wondered what Efanor had thought of saying, and realized he had held his breath.

 

On the next day leaves lay thick about the land. Tristen rode Dys out and about the meadows, through an orchard bare-branched and piled with leaves that scattered under Dys' huge feet. He on Dys and Uwen on Cass had chased a hare through the meadow and into the brush, and came back with the horses blowing steam into the chilly afternoon air.

And to his surprise and the guards' distress, Cefwyn had come down to the pasture stables. He had ridden Danvy down, followed by a mounted guard. The chill had stung his face, and he was pale, but red-cheeked, and cheerful. “There you are,” he said, and rubbed his leg, if lightly. “Danvy does the walking, fairly sedately, thank you, but far, far less difficult than a sennight ago. I waked this morning feeling very little pain. I won't attempt Kanwy—but I'd take a turn out and back with you.”

“Gladly,” Tristen said, and Cefwyn and he and Uwen and the guard rode out a good distance across the sheep-meadow.

“How do you find the young lad?” Cefwyn asked, and Tristen perceived he meant the horse under him.

“Very fine.” He slapped Dys on the neck, and, in truth, if one had asked which was which horse, he could have told Dys from Kanwy, but most could not, he thought. “I do like him. And I do thank you.”

Cefwyn talked to him then about Dys' breeding and his line, and how Dys had been foaled on a bitter cold morning. Their breath made clouds. Cefwyn tired quickly, but it seemed to him that Cefwyn was very much better very quickly.

“His Majesty looked good,” Uwen said later, “almost so's you'd say he didn't need that stick.”

He was glad of it. But not glad when he visited Emuin directly on his return to the Zeide, and found Emuin scarcely able to wake. He took Emuin's hand, and knelt down by him, and said, into Emuin's ear, so the good brothers who tended him should not hear: “I know what you did, master Emuin. Cefwyn is mending ever so fast. But you must do something for yourself now. Do you hear me, sir?”

Emuin gave no sign of hearing him. He was very frightened. He thought he ought to be able to do more. He wanted both of them, Cefwyn and Emuin, to be well. Emuin had grown so thin, and his hair was all white now, so that he looked very much like Mauryl. The faces were different, but there was something in him that touched those memories and said, though it was not exactly, every-day true, that there had always been something about Mauryl that shone, and that Emuin had that quality, now.

“Master Emuin,” he said. Emuin's hand was very frail, very smooth in his, as if it were becoming like fine silk, like dust on old boards, the way home had felt under his hands, in Ynefel. “Master Emuin. I am here. If there is anything in me that you can use, if there's anything I can give or you can take, and it won't prevent me from what Mauryl sent me to
do—I am here. Do you hear me, sir? I want you to mend
yourself
.”

—
Easier said than done
, the answer came to him. But it seemed to him then that things grew dimmer, and the lines of the Zeide showed around them, blue, and faint, and brighter, then.
He still wants in
.

—
Inside?
he asked.
Why inside, sir? Why not do harm to us outside?
It was so reasonable a question he wondered he had never asked Mauryl. And why, he wondered, at evening? And why indoors?

—
Curious question
, Emuin said.
What is there about buildings? About houses? Dwellings?

—
That people live in them
. It was like sitting with Mauryl, the question, the answer. Foolish boy, Mauryl would say. But perhaps his questions had gotten wiser, if not his answers
.

—
That people live in them
, Emuin said ever so faintly, and the lines glowed bright.
That we invest something here. That it becomes a Place for us. And we cannot be harmed…in certain ways…while that Place exists for us, even in our dreams. We must violate our own sanctuary, to be harmed…in those ways. But your Place is also his. And his is also yours
.

—
At Ynefel, you mean, sir
.

—
At Ynefel
, Emuin said. He felt Emuin's fingers move, and tighten.
I shall hold fast. I have done what I can. I fear what you are. But I shall not cripple you by asking anything or by restraining you. Do what you were Summoned and Shaped to do
.

—
You fear what I am, sir,…Do you know what I am? Can you at least answer that? Can you warn me what I might do wrong?

—
No
, Emuin said.
I don't think I can. I can't think of those things. I can't foresee
…

I cannot begin to foresee the things you invent to do, Mauryl said. Rain in puddles. Rain on the parapets. Flash of lightning. Can you not think of consequences, Tristen? And he had said…I try
.

—
You have never admitted the enemy to your heart
, Emuin said.
You have never compromised with him. Never do it. Never do it, boy. Now go away. Don't bother me. I have enough to do
.

He was in the room again. His foot had gone to sleep. Emuin rested, no worse, no better than he had been. He thought he had heard Mauryl's voice. Or that he touched what Mauryl was. Or had been.

He rose quietly. The brothers bowed to him in their dutiful way. He bowed to them, and felt the amulet beneath his shirt, the circle that Cefwyn had given him, that Emuin had given Cefwyn. It never showed in the other world. He was only conscious of it now because it had been Emuin's, and was a wish for protection.

But he was Emuin's protection. He had become Cefwyn's.

I cannot begin to foresee, Mauryl had said, the things you invent to do.

Think of consequences, Tristen.

 

The next day likewise dawned with frosting breath and a slick spot in the courtyard where one of the servants slipped and fetched himself a crack on the head that master Haman had to attend, since the lord physician had left in angry disgrace—in attendance on Lord Sulriggan, the rumor was, who had left for his capital, and good riddance, most said.

Cefwyn called a war council for noon, in his apartments. Tristen was hesitant, but Idrys said he should be there, so he came. So did Efanor. And Ninévrisë and Lord Captain Kerdin, and Lord Commander Gwywyn, but none of the Amefin lords, many of whom were at harvest, and no one from Sovrag's men, who were all over on the river, Cefwyn said, in opening, but they were sending messages by way of the daily couriers from several points, and that he had sent dispatches to the villages and the lords of Amefel.

The dining board bore a stack of small maps, which Idrys said had just arrived last night, which recorded every large
rock, every hillock, everything Ninévrisë's few men had explored in the area of Lewen plain, north and west of Emwy's ruin. Lord Tasien had sent a message to Ninévrisë by way of the Guelen messengers: Lord Tasien said that he had met with rivermen from Lord Sovrag, who had brought supplies downriver, and who had reported a quiet shore: that was the same as Sovrag's messages had said.

Lord Tasien had also reported in his letter to Ninévrisë that they had made a wall and trench camp that was well begun, with the help of the Amefin peasants who had come up with the wagons. Tasien reported his men under canvas, digging their fortification, and awaiting word from inside Elwynor, and said they had seen no sign of hostile forces on this side of the river.

Efanor shook his head only slightly, perhaps in amazement that they were receiving such a report from the Earl of Cassissan—less charitably estimated, in personal disbelief that Lord Tasien's word could be relied upon. But Efanor said nothing, only remarked later and very mildly, for Efanor, that it was very odd, very odd to have a woman in a council of war, but that the Elwynim were very efficient, and seemed to be experienced men—which made Tristen ask himself where the Elwynim had been fighting; but he kept that question to himself.

Efanor in general was on very good behavior. Gwywyn was very proper and made no allusion at all to the doings the night of the fire. He only seemed apprehensive, and increasingly relieved as the meeting went on and his counsel was taken with equal weight with others'.

“There's a lot that's ashamed of themselves,” Uwen said when he spoke of the meeting later. “What I hear, that night all that business got started there was a gathering over in the Quinaltine, praying and the like, and the lord physician having a tantrum and saying His Majesty was going to die.
I
think,” Uwen had added, “that the Prince thought His Majesty might have died, on account of the lord physician being sent out. I don't doubt the lord physician was a lot of
the cause there. And there was priests out talking to the staff, saying that the King was bewitched. Which I'd put to nothing, m'lord, but I don't like much that gathers around that priest.”

Then Uwen added another thing that troubled him. “I'm Guelen,” Uwen said. “And I seen just a touch too much of Quinalt priests and their politicking. Ain't nothing to do with praying. They don't like wizards.”