Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03 (19 page)

“Could we not? Keep the signal fires ready, as we did at Lewenbrook, have all preparation made, so if Tasmôrden thinks of coming this way he daren’t. Do we feast at Midwinter? Have I heard that right? Might I invite my friends to supper? Is that the way lords conceal their intentions?

“With polite pretenses, none of which anyone of sense believes, and which no one dares question to one’s face?”

It was what he had seen at Guelemara, and it was heart and soul of the pretenses he had seen Cefwyn and Ryssand make over and over again. The practical use of it had Unfolded like a new word, sure as a well-balanced blade.

“But if we have all those escorts sitting here,” Tristen said, “and if we have an army, won’t the northern lords know then we’re loyal to Cefwyn? And might not Lord Umanon come to us, rather than to the rest of the Guelens? And if
he
comes, wouldn’t Llymaryn and Marisel listen to Cefwyn rather than Ryssand?

And if Tasmôrden had to worry what we intended, might he divide his attention between us and Cefwyn? And might not the Elwynim who support Her Grace take heart?”

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

Again that small silence. “Your Grace,” Cevulirn said, “you are no fool.”

“Emuin says I am. So does Idrys. I was a fool only an hour ago, and made Emuin angry with me. But I know that Corswyndam and Prichwarrin will lie and do everything to their own benefit and none of Cefwyn’s, and if Cefwyn has only them to rely on, they’ll make demands at every moment Cefwyn needs something from them.”

“That’s true.”

“So let him have us. Cefwyn says he can’t muster the south for fear of offending the north. But the north doesn’t approve of us whether we muster or not.
We’ve
marched together. We know our order in camp. We know all those things. We don’t have to argue the way the northerners argue. We can just set up a camp, and this spring, when Cefwyn moves, we move across the river, set
our
camp on the far shore, and let Tasmôrden make what he will of it. Cefwyn forbade us to win the war. But he set me here to guard the border. I’ll guard it—from Tasmôrden’s side of the river.”

“You have Ivanor with you,” Cevulirn said with the fire shining in his eyes. “Olmern, Lanfarnesse… all will come.”

“
Will
Imor, do you think?” Lord Umanon had always stood off from the others, in his brief experience, and detested the newly made lord of Olmern. “I’m least sure of him; but it seems he’s more one of us than he is fond of Murandys. And if we had him with us, we’d have the entire middle of Ylesuin listening to him.”

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

“He detests Murandys. That’s certain. Let
me
send letters. If I summon them in my name, it won’t forewarn the north. Nothing unusual at all in my messengers going back and forth… gods know the northern lords would like to know what we say to one another, but they’ll imagine far too much if you sent the messages. —Your health, Amefel.” Cevulirn lifted his cup and drank deep, here among the brazen dragons and green draperies that had been the scene of fatality with such cups. “Your long rule… Lord Sihhë, lord of Amefel and Althalen.”

“Never say so.” He felt heat touch his face, ill at ease with Cevulirn’s fey and talkative mood. “The people do. I discourage it.”

“You are what you are. And fortunate for His Majesty that you’ve been a faithful friend.
I
don’t stand in your path, nor wish to.”

“Emuin says the like, and I wish he would. I need his advice.”

“I bestow mine. His Majesty is in dire danger, and the danger isn’t at all that you’re Sihhë, lord of Amefel. The danger isn’t even that our king is Guelen and wed to an Elwynim. The danger is that Selwyn Marhanen established his throne on his blackguardly betrayal of a trusting lord, and Ináreddrin Marhanen established
his
throne on the unsatisfied ambitions of his father’s rivals, both of them playing one lord against the other and one son against the other all for fear of assassination… exactly what happened to Ináreddrin, as it turned out; but a man makes his Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

fate, and so do kings.”

“What do you say?”

“That Cefwyn’s throne, mark you, is set on a stone Ryssand demanded of him… and
never
was there a greater mistake than granting that and granting Ryssand
any
power. Expediency, expediency, expediency, grant this, grant that, all in the name of this marriage, this war, and all on the excuse of dire threat from Tasmôrden, who has only
become
a threat worth the name at all because Cefwyn would not cross the river immediately after Lewenbrook and take the Elwynim capital for Her Grace. Now, yes, Tasmôrden has slaughtered his rivals, increased his army, and will slaughter Her Grace’s partisans such as exist this winter when the capital falls. Next spring, we will slaughter his, as last summer, Aseyneddin and before him, Caswyddian, slaughtered all who opposed him. Another year of this and there’ll be no man alive in Elwynor but starving peasantry and liars and weathercocks who swing to every wind that blows… no fit population for greatness, that.
There
, Amefel. I’m not reputed a man of many words, and I’ve just spent my entire store, the distilled opinion of six months in His Majesty’s close company.”

“He does regard your opinion.”

“Regard it he may. But His Majesty has had my good advice, Idrys’ good advice, Her Grace’s good advice, and your good advice, and ignored it for bad, all to please Corswyndam of Ryssand, who had a kinglike power in the last reign and to no one’s wonder is our monarch’s rival for authority in this one.

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

There
is the man who will yet do us greater harm than Tasmôrden, mark me. His Majesty believes he may subdue that man by wit, not force, and I say a stout fence is the only solution to an ass that will not keep its pasture.”

He had heard the truth. Everything he had himself observed said that Cevulirn told the matter fairly, and reached some conclusion of his own.

“What does a good lord do with the like of Ryssand, sir?”

“To whom is it necessary that a lord be
good
, Amefel?”

“To his people, sir.”

“So say I. And Cefwyn knows the answer. He only hopes the answer to Ryssand’s defiance will be something different if he can be more clever tomorrow. But the plain truth is, his good and loyal subjects should not be subject to Corswyndam’s spite today. The king has his bride and his treaty now. He has no more leisure to temporize with a self-seeking baron, and his people have none for him to do so.” Cevulirn set down an empty cup.

“I’m well content to have Ryssand for an enemy. I prefer that man facing me, not at my back, for my people’s sake as well as my own. Would Cefwyn would come to his senses.”

“I understand everything you say, sir,” Tristen said. “And I agree.”

“So share a second cup, and I’ll go tamely to my bed, having committed treason enough for an evening. I’ll stay with you the few more days, go home to set things in order, and by Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

Midwinter… ride back here again, with all necessary force if you aren’t in jest.”

“I am not in jest. Henas’amef will supply you with every need, firewood, canvas, grain, whatever you will have. I have a hundred of the Guelen Guard and two hundred of the Dragons, who must go back when spring comes. In the meantime they’re at my orders. Lord Parsynan did nothing to raise a muster, and he did nothing to replace the weapons and equipage after Lewenbrook.” He had not intended to enumerate Parsynan’s failings, and went instead to his point. “My promise to Cefwyn didn’t mean letting Tasmôrden cross before we stopped him.

We’ll have the bridges in our hands.”

Something in the exchange pricked Cevulirn’s odd humor.

“Indeed,” Cevulirn said. “And before I go… perhaps I should have a view of those bridges myself.”

Tristen had no idea whether Emuin had listened to what he and Cevulirn said, but it was his impression the old man had withdrawn from all of it in truth, shut the door to his tower and held aloof from lords making plans he would not advise.

Uwen, however, had heard everything.

“Is it folly?” he asked Uwen, in consequence, after Cevulirn had left and when Tassand and the servants were disrobing him for bed. “I think he means nothing but good to Cefwyn, and I don’t think he’s a fool. I trust him.”

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

Uwen had long since inured himself to questions of that nature, and passing judgment on what Uwen called his betters. Uwen would do it, in private, and quietly. “He ain’t a fool, that ’un, never was.” But the look Uwen gave him after was still troubled, something unsaid, and Uwen waited, gazing into the small fire in the bedchamber, until Tassand and the servants, trusted as they were, had left the room.

So Uwen would do, if he had something to say in absolute privacy, and Tristen gathered a robe about himself for warmth and went to the fireside. The light cast a fire glow over Uwen’s face, brightest on the silver of his hair, which nowadays he wore clubbed, growing longer after the fashion of a man of rank.

“’At boy, an’ his lordship the earl, an’ Cevulirn,” Uwen said, “is all of a piece, m’lord, that woman an’ all… the witch.”

“Wise or not wise?”

Uwen’s face turned profile to him, eyes set on the fire. “Wisht I knew, lad. I ain’t th’ man to advise a duke.”

“You called me lad.”

“That I did, an’ beg pardon. I shouldn’t have done’t.”

“Call me that, and tell me the truth. Am I a fool?”

Uwen’s gaze swung back to him, earnest, surreal in the firelight and shadow. “I ain’t th’ one to say that, m’lord.”

“Uleman called me
king
. Auld Syes said the lord of Amefel
and

the aetheling; and the second she meant was
Crissand
. I know it was.
Crissand
is the aethelings’ heir. She meant he should be Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

lord here. And what should I be? What should
I
be, Uwen?”

“What she said was a lot muddled,” Uwen said soberly, “but there ain’t but one king in Ylesuin, and anything else is treason, lad, just so’s ye know’t. I’d follow ye at any odds, but so’s ye know, I don’t think His Majesty wants to hear any
king
in Amefel. I don’t think His Grace of Ivanor wants to hear it either, and His Grace of Ivanor won’t follow you over that brink.
I

would, but he won’t.”

It was dire to think of any king but Cefwyn; and he would not think it. “I
know
that. And I would never do anything against Cefwyn.”

“Yet I think His Majesty has his own idea what ye are, lad, an’

His Majesty’s Commander ain’t in doubt.”

“Has Idrys talked to you? Can you say?”

“Oh, I’ll say, m’lord. Ye’re my lord, an’ the Lord Commander don’t expect otherwise when he talks to me, as I confess he did, before we left Guelemara.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh, reasonable things. Sayin’ I should have a care, an’ not let ye do anything rash, an’ to watch your back, m’lord. The Lord Commander wishes ye better ’n ye might think. Ye may be what ye are, but ye ain’t Lord Ryssand, an’ ye ain’t ever
asked
for Amefel: it was His Majesty give it to ye, wi’ His blessing an’ His Holiness’s blessing to boot, so, aye, His Majesty was the one who made the Holy Father willin’. It weren’t the other way Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

around. And ye can rest a’ nights knowin’ His Majesty knows what ye are, an’ still stands by ye, ’gainst Ryssand an’ the Quinalt and all of ’em.”

The low music of Uwen’s voice was sweet to him, stilling fears, allaying anxieties and doubts, and telling him things he longed with all his heart to believe.

“You don’t fear me, Uwen.”

“Ye keep askin’, an’ it’s the same answer, m’lord. Ye should have answered master Emuin a wee bit softer, but ’e understands, same as me, it’s a man’s weight ye carry now, an’ a burdensome weight it is: small wonder if ye feel it. Yet ye should answer him softer.”

“I know. I repent of it. I repented the moment I’d done it.”

“M’lord, I ain’t findin’ fault.”

“No.
Fool. Fool
is what Idrys would say.
And
Mauryl. Auld Syes frightened Emuin. And yet, yet she only warns, by all I know. What wizards
do
… that’s another question.”

“It’s above me, m’lord. Far above me… what wizards do.”

“What
I
do, what Mauryl’s done, what Emuin’s done… all these things… tie one to the other. Cevulirn didn’t come because Auld Syes wished it.
And who raised the storm
, Uwen? Who raised the storm?”

“It damn sure weren’t natural, m’lord. An’ whatever happened at that place, it ain’t what it was when we rode in. That great tree uprooted… like whatever were there, was all done, old as it was: Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

’at was what I thought of. It was old, an’ it was all done and broke.”

“That it was.” He saw in memory the ancient tree, its roots ripped from shadow to light, out of whatever secret places they had grown, deep in the earth, under it, among the old stones.

Shadows might well have broken out. They might have followed Auld Syes, or her daughter. That, too, Emuin must have seen, as he had seen it.

He shivered, barefoot on the warm stones, beset by the draft in the room. The dragons loomed above them, and cast fire-shadow of dragons on the ceiling, all points and coils, enveloping all they did.

“I should write soon,” he said. It was scarcely a fortnight since the last letter, which must move by courier over snowy roads, and at hardship to man and horse.

“To His Majesty?”

“To Cefwyn, yes. Idrys said as often as I wished, I should write.

The last I wrote was about Cuthan.”

“Letters has a way of strayin’, m’lord. And for the sweet gods’