Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03 (36 page)

Meanwhile Annas, scandalized and fearing the spread of the vermin, drove the household harder than their habit, and wanted afflicted premises scrubbed to the walls.

Mixed blessings indeed. No one had seen such a mild winter, wherein stores of wood were far in excess of current need and ice stayed off the small ponds, to farmers’ relief: no need to go out with axes to enable livestock to drink and no need yet to keep cattle close in byres. Autumn had stayed late, and later. There remained the chance, still, of the howling gray blast that would freeze all in a night and obscure the sun for days, but it had not happened yet… leaving them just snow enough to drive the vermin indoors, and the damned fleas with them, such was his own theory… not mentioning the notion of hostile wizardry and ill wishes from across the river, without a wizard left this side of the river.

Damned defenseless, Ryssand’s quarrel had left them, and not alone to the fleas. If there was worse than vermin, if those scudding clouds heralded some wizardous storm in the making, Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

they might well regret the actions that had sent all the wizards south.

All but one.
Ninévrisë
had the wizard-gift. He had neglected her in his reckoning. Perhaps, he thought with a wry laugh, perhaps he should appeal to his bride to attempt the banishment of mice.

Perhaps the court might forgive her her small flaw, for that benefit.

But it was not a matter for jest, the small gift she had, and that he knew she had. More, and far more serious a matter, all the officers who had come back from Lewenbrook knew there was wizardry in the house of Syrillas and that it had not failed in the daughter. But Quinalt roof slates, mice, and fleas and all be damned, he was not about to prompt them to gossip it to the Quinaltine, who doubtless had heard already.

All the veterans, therefore, kept their counsel, even in the taverns seldom admitting there had been manifestations at Lewenbrook and since, oh, nothing of the sort. One would have thought they had fought on some other field, to hear how it was this company or that which had driven back the enemy and cast their ranks in confusion.

Pigeons now battled for narrow space on the ledge, buffeted one another with gray wings. The losers wheeled away and lit in another patch of snow, unruly, disrespectful of each other, now their master was in exile.

So much odd had happened in those days the living witnesses Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

knew not who had been responsible, or even what they had seen.

The apparitions of dead men, the strange lights, the darkness by day… memories of that day shifted and changed like oil on water, so that none of them who had been there quite remembered all of it… nor truly wished to. Men pushed and shoved one another for position, but none of them acknowledged the battles of wizards.

He gave a small shiver, finding his hand chilled to ice by the glass. He drew back his fingers, folded them into a fist to warm them, finding his memories not so pleasant after all. For the pigeons, the silly, gray-coated pigeons, he was tempted to send for bread and take them under royal patronage for Tristen’s sake, never mind what the court would say. It would be simple kindness to poor, dumb things.

But gossip… gossip would pick it up, saying the damned birds

were
messengers, wizardous in behavior, suspecting them of eavesdropping, gods knew. He could not harbor pigeons without the town imagining darkest sorcery.

In fact, as of yesterday and Efanor’s message, he had emerged from the haze of recent matrimony and the confusion of Ryssand’s attempt to prevent it, suddenly to realize he and Ninévrisë were whole, but that very dangerous things had happened around them… to realize, too, that those they relied on, like Idrys, had only been marking time, waiting for them to face the world at large and realize how few their numbers had grown to be.

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

So they did, now missing the absent faces, the voices, the counsel of those who should have shared their new life. Gaining each other, gaining a union that should make all the world the richer, they had lost what they most treasured, and might never see the court come back to what it had been. The reports he had out of Amefel spoke alarmingly of rebellion crushed and decisive actions taken… all well within Tristen’s ability, if they challenged him.

But that side of him was dire and frightening: it had shown itself at Emwy, and at Lewenbrook, not the gentle mooncalf, his defender of pigeons and his friend who marveled at a sunbeam…

but the soldier, the revenant, whose martial skill spoke of another life, one long, long past.

Parsynan was at someone’s ear, up in Ryssand, but he had passed through the midlands to get there. The Quinalt consequently was busy as the kennel fleas, at this lord’s ear and at that one’s, complaining of wizardry and heresy on the borders, of a populace that hailed Tristen their Lord Sihhë and raised forbidden emblems.

Silence it, he had said to the Patriarch yesterday, with no patience whatever. I need Amefel steady and peaceful, and however Tristen obtains it, well and good.

That last he had found himself adding as if he had to justify his order, as if some
value
for Tristen should make a difference to the Holy Father.

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

He wished peevishly he had not been so weak as to add that argument, wished that he had his grandfather’s gift for stopping argument short of justifying himself.

If he were his grandfather he would have said, “The king’s friend is the king’s friend and whoever slights him will have me for an enemy. Damn the lot of you anyway.”

Tristen’s message, precious as it was, had stated in amazingly few words the overturn of all he had arranged in Amefel. He had feared Tristen might prove such a sparse letter writer. Master Emuin had his tower back. A lord of ancient lineage had suffered exile.

Tristen
had exiled an Amefin earl. The lamb had assaulted the lion.

And let the rest of them, from Henas’amef to Lanfarnesse, beware their sedition and their scheming, these rebel southrons who had never yet been willing to recognize a Marhanen king.

With that gray-glass stare and a question or two, Tristen could assail their very souls, snare them, entrap them in a spell of liking that had no cure… he could attest to that, for he missed sorely the man who had done all this to him.

He had sent his own messenger to Tristen, and another to Cevulirn, asking after their health, professing his gratitude…

asking after his carts, in Tristen’s case, and hinting at a readiness to march in Cevulirn’s. He had a province of Amefel rescued from rebellion due to Tristen’s quick action; he had the Amefin people cheering his choice and not throwing rocks at his troops, Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

which was also worth gratitude… if it were only a little less fraught with rebel Bryaltine sentiment for vanished kings.

All these things he had said, in letters to his two dearest friends, and realized thus far, muddleheaded with courtship and marriage, he had been very fortunate until this day simply to have had no disasters.

And as for Tristen, Tristen, whom wizard-work had raised or Shaped or whatever wizards minced up for words… there was no safer place to put him. Mauryl Kingmaker had sent them a gift thus double-edged, a soul who might be Barrakkêth incarnate.

And the Elwynim had long prophesied their King To Come, thinking some surviving one of halfling Elfwyn’s sons might creep out of the bushes and byways to proclaim his thread of Sihhë blood and claim the crown of the old High Kings.

It was, after all, safest that he had himself fulfilled all the prophecies he could lay hands on, naming Tristen lord not only of Ynefel, to which he most probably had right, but to Althalen, and to heretic Amefel, where they might proclaim him lord of most anything in relative quiet. The Teranthines could embrace such heresy. He… even… could bear with a neighboring king, even a High King, did Tristen somehow stray into power.

Dared he, however, could he, should he… ever mention such thoughts to a bride he hoped would remain on this side of the river, in his realm, a peaceful, not a reigning, wife? Among all the preparations he had laid, the moving of troops, the Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

marshaling of aid in council, the hammering-out of titles to bestow on Ninévrisë Syrillas, and this cursed business of priests, sodden or sober… dared he even think the thoughts when he had a bride so gifted as Tristen hinted she was, who might pluck his guilty imaginings out of the very air? He was a king. It was his fate, his duty, to make as much as he could favorable to himself, and therefore to his people.

Pigeons flew up of a sudden, battering each other with their wings at a movement, a sound. The door had opened, and a messenger had come in, and two of his ordinary guards, and Ninévrisë, she… white and frightened, carrying her skirts as if she had been running, all this in a trailing attendance of two anxious maids, Cleisynde and Odrinian, both Murandys’ kin. The man in a Guelen Guard’s colors was still mud-flecked from a hard ride, had wiped smears of it across his freckled young face, and looked exhausted and dazed.

“Your Majesty,” the young man had gotten out, before Idrys, too, arrived with his own aide in close attendance, and the young man looked around to see.

Disaster, and he and Ninévrisë alike could guess from what source. This young officer had come from downstairs, from the stable-court, from the road, from hard riding, and he was Lord Maudyn’s man, a messenger from his commander at the river.

“Your Majesty,” the courier said in a breath, “Ilefínian has fallen.”

Cleisynde was first at Ninévrisë’s elbow, of all the women, the Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

cousins from Murandys, who poised their cupped hands under Ninévrisë’s arms, awaiting a fall, an outburst.

There was none. There were not even tears, only the evident pain.

Not an unexpected blow, Cefwyn thought, nor was it; but, black weather over there notwithstanding, Tasmôrden had carried the siege to the end, meaning the death of Ninévrisë’s loyal folk in the capital, her childhood friends, her supporters, her kin, cousins, remote to the least degree, all, all doomed and done in a stroke.

And yet she stood pale and composed, a queen in dignity and in sharp sense of the immediate needs. “When and how?” she asked the messenger.

“My lord had no word yet,” the man said anxiously, certainly knowing who Ninévrisë might be, but still caught, damn him, in a gap of stiff Guelen protocol that turned the messenger to him.

“Your Majesty, I took horse as soon as the fires were lit. My Lord Maudyn will send to you with each new report he receives, but at the time I left, we knew nothing but the signal fires.”

It was tormenting news, disaster, and yet nothing of substance to grasp, no word whether the town was afire or whether there was an arranged surrender, or what the fate of the defenders and the nobles there might be.

“Rest for the messenger,” Cefwyn said. He had his standard of what ought to be provided for men and horses that bore the king’s messages, and his pages knew what to do for any such Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

man. “Fetch Annas.”

“Your Majesty,” it was, and: “Yes, Your Majesty.” and all the world near him moved to comply; but nothing in his power could provide his lady better news, and what use then was it, but the ordering of armies that could bring her no better result?

“We knew it would come,” was all he found to say to her, with a stone weighing in the pit of his own stomach.

“We knew it would come,” she agreed, and turned and quietly dismissed her maids on her own authority. “See to the messenger yourselves,” she bade them, “in my name. And tell Dame Margolis.”

In
tell Dame Margolis
was every order that needed be made in Ninévrisë’s court… as
fetch Annas
summed up all his staff could do. The news would make the transit to the court at large, the comfort of courtiers and true servants would wrap them about with such sympathy as courtiers and lifelong servants could offer. At least the gossip that spread would have the solid heart of truth with those two in charge of dispersing it.

But the Regent of Elwynor would stand as straight and strong as the king of Ylesuin stood, and not be coddled or kissed on the brow by her husband, even before the Lord Commander.

“
Is
that all we know?” Cefwyn asked of Idrys as the door shut and by the maids’ departure left them a more warlike, more forceful assembly.

“Unhappily, no more than the man told,” Idrys said, “but more Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

information is already on the road here, I’m well certain we can rely on Lord Maudyn for that. There’s some comfort in what the message didn’t say: no force near the river, no signal of wider war coming on us. The weather’s been hard, by reports. Nothing will move down those roads to the bridges.”

“Thank the gods Amefel
isn’t
in revolt at the moment,” Cefwyn said. “Well-done of Tristen. Well-done, at least on that frontier.”

There was now urgent need, however, to move troops west, to the river, in greater numbers, and the transport was stalled in Amefel.

And to Amefel, the thought came to him, the fugitives of Ilefínian were very likely to come, unsettling that province and appealing to the softest heart and most generous hand in his kingdom for shelter and help. That, too, was Tristen’s nature, and it was damned dangerous… almost as sure as a rebellion for drawing trouble into the province that was Ylesuin’s most vulnerable and volatile border with Elwynor.

“We’ll have no choice but wait for more news,” Cefwyn said.

“But we will move the three reserve units into position at the river.” With a scarcity of carts and drivers, the vast weight of canvas necessary for a winter camp was going to move very much slower than he wished, and therefore men who relied on those tents would not move up to their posts except at the pace of their few carts.