Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03 (63 page)

“Lord!” a man cried from the open doors, and in starkest urgency: “
Lord! The hall! The light, in the hall
!”

The way Auld Syes had trod here had not sealed itself. When the man cried that, all the gray space bid fair to spill in upon them—

not baneful in itself, but a cascade too much, too swift, too terrible a knowledge, from every candle in the hall. He steadied it back.

And neither was that the source of the danger, for danger had followed Auld Syes like a hound on a scent. It sought a Place in Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

the fortress; and now he felt the widening of a rift—a breach in the wards at that place he had never trusted.

It was from that place the poison came, from that place the lights were threatened; and from out of that gulf the wind buffeted them. It was that spot in the hall, that one most haunted place.

“Uwen!” Tristen cried as he began to run toward the doors of the great hall, for no other man would he have as a shieldman, and no man else in the world would he trust to beware the Edge.

In the next instant a hand caught his sleeve, and stayed him long enough for a sword hilt to find his hand. A buffet on his shoulder sent him on.

“Go, lad!” he heard Uwen say, so run he did. He was the defense Uwen had, the defense any Man of his guests had, and he plunged into the corridor where conditions were the same: the candles there streamed the same silvery gray toward him, spots of light in a dark where Shadows ran, dark small streamers along all the mortar.

He flung up his hand, called the wards all to life, threatening all that broke the Pattern of the stones, the ancient masonwork.

At his summoning, a blue glow intruded into the gray sheen of the candles, and a glow ran along the base of the walls, up over doorways… every Line of the old fortress glowed, walls and doorways made firm and real. Shadows that flowed moved along those Lines, obedient, until they began to race toward that Place, that foreignness in the hall.

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

Beyond a doubt he knew Auld Syes herself was in danger, as if a thread of her being had come through this doorway, and now, retreating, stretched thinner and thinner within.

He was aware of the great mass of the ancient stone around him, and of the presence of friends at his back: he reached the old mews, that most haunted place, the place where the wards were least firm—and in and out of which the winds rushed.

He settled a tighter grip oh the borrowed sword, felt with a sweep of his left arm for Uwen’s presence where Uwen would always stand. He was there. He felt Cevulirn and Crissand likewise near him, wizardous and detectable in the gray space, more than the others. Emuin, too, was there, reaching toward him a strong and determined power, in an attempt to hold the wards…

But the blue light grew, source of the winds that battered and buffeted them.

There, there within the old structure, the Lines were almost overwhelmed, and there if dark could glow, this did. Shortly before the struggle at Lewenbrook, he had stared into a vacancy and faced the rousing of countless ghostly wings.

So the rift began to grow, and grow, and he knew what he would face. “There it is,” he said. “Where it always was. It’s open. —

Emuin? Do you see?”

“I see it,” Emuin said, and others crowded near.

“Stay here,” he said. “Uwen. Stay here. Keep the others safe.”

“No, my lord,” Uwen’s voice said flatly, at his very shoulder, Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

“Lord Crissand’s close behind ye; but he ain’t your shieldman an’ I am, beggin’ his pardon, an’ lord Cevulirn’s. I’m wi’ ye, so go on.”

“Bear a light!” Crissand called out, and the answer came back,

“There is none!”

“Then find one!” Umanon cried angrily. So yet another of the lords had followed him. “Gods bless, man, find one!”

No light would serve, not here, and he needed all his strength.

The light he had lent the candles everywhere in the hall he gave up, so that the dark came down in the mortal world and overwhelmed the corridor in which they stood. Men cried out in alarm. But the blue of the Lines and the blue of that Place shone the brighter in the darkness, guiding him forward.

He could not say he walked. He held the sword half-forgotten in his hand, and it seemed now instead of the solid stone of the wall, a slatted, airy structure through which blue light streamed. That was the old mews as they had been. He advanced, knowing Uwen’s presence at his side one moment and then gone abruptly as he walked beyond the solid stone of the existing wall and the Place within the walls opened wide.

Blue light softened to something near moonlight, just enough to see by, sifting through rafters and broken beams of a ruined gable end.

Perches stretched along either wall of this place, and above him wings stirred and whispered. To his first impression it was the Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

sound of his pigeons, and safe, but in the next blink of an eye the wings that spread and bated about him were nothing so innocent.

Cries came to his ears, birds of prey, hawks in great numbers, and the scream of wood on stone and the shriek of the birds and the shriek of the wind were one and the same.

The hawks pent here, scores of them, were ghosts out of a Place and a Time all but forgotten, and if they were tame at all, were tame to hands long dead.

Yet had Auld Syes gone this way?

Was it after all a doorway, that broken gable, a breach in the Lines that Were, admitting him to Lines that Had Been?

He saw before him a Place within a Place, and a Door that had never quite closed, perhaps on purpose.

There
was the entry, there, in the heart of the moving wings and the haze of the streaming light that cast a glow on pale, black-barred feathers, on mad, wild eyes and open beaks that seemed to shriek forth the sound of winter storm.

The semblance of snow flew then, a battering storm half-obscuring the light, and when it ceased…

When it ceased it was not the old mews about him now, but the loft,
his
loft this spring in Ynefel, and the fluttering wings were only his feckless, faithful pigeons on their rafters.

He had come home. Mauryl would be below, at work at his table, elbow-deep in his charts of stars and movements of the planets, all of which pointed to this night.

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

He was in his loft again, and the blue glow of moonlight brightened to sky, and latest dusk, and his birds were coming home, arriving by ones and twos, stirring up dust and old feathers.

He had no names for them, had never thought they needed names, no more than the aged mice who dwelt in the wall of the downstairs hall, near Mauryl’s table. But oh! he knew them, and welcomed them, and for a moment the place opened wide to him, in utter innocence and happiness. He flung wide his arms and turned to see the familiar pattern of sky and broken boards… no need to ward such places, Mauryl said, for they were only holes.

The Lines of Ynefel had stood firm despite those gaps, and Mauryl had remade the wards every evening—

—warding his window for him, too, at the foot of the first bed he remembered: his little horn-paned window, beneath which the first sinister crack had come into the wall. The rain had written patterns on it. He had, never knowing what he did or undid.

He stopped turning and stood still, heart skipping a beat as he recalled that widening, dreadful seam. He was sure now beyond all question that the ruin that had brought Mauryl down had begun there, proceeded there, worked there until there was no way for the wards to hold. Hasufin in his assault on Mauryl’s tower had come to that window and pried and pried at the stones, trying his young dreams, stirring up the shadows that were all too frequent there.

He
had been the weakness in Mauryl’s defense: he, his dreams, his curiosity, his tracing random, foolish patterns on the window, Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

amid Mauryl’s wards.

His room was below him. His bed. The stairs that led down, led there, to that room with the window.

And he knew at the same time he was in the old mews at Henas’amef, in the Zeide, near the new great hall.

He still remembered how he had come here. It was so easy here to forget his very life, to lose the thread that bound him to Uwen, and Emuin, and all the rest. He kept firm hold of that memory, clenched it like a guiding thread—he knew the way… no, not

back
, back was too little a word. He knew the way
home
, and his home was no longer here, was not this loft, this hour, this dim evening last spring.

He knew at any moment a youth might come up the stairs. That youth would bring a candle and a book, the Book, which at that time had been a mystery to him, but was not so now.

Nor were the secrets in that book secrets any longer. He knew why he had felt vague fears of presence when he lived at Ynefel, so now he knew what at least one ghostly presence was.

And if he knew when he had been afraid, he might predict, perhaps, the sites and times of his visitations to Ynefel; and by that, he might come here again.

He stood very still. The boy hid in nameless terror of Mauryl’s steps on the stairs, and feared the voices, oh, the voices, as all the imprisoned faces in the stone walls cried together.

Any moment Mauryl would come through that door, and Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

confront him, the dearest sight and the most dreadful in all the world.

And dared they meet? Dared they, he and Mauryl, cross life and death and stand face-to-face, time present, time never to come?

Dared he? Dared they? Was it folly, or would Mauryl even see him if he tried?

His very breath seemed to stick between the bellows strokes of his chest, the hammerblows of his heart.

But he was not done with the loft. To go back undefeated, still master of this place, he must not run from it in fear: he must find what it wanted
tonight
, in Henas’amef.

There was a terror here besides Mauryl. And to find it he must face the blank wall at the end of
his
loft… which was not the end at all.

That wall secluded the true Shadow which ruled the heights of Ynefel, a perch surrounded by detritus of his depredation.

Owl lived there.

And one day a boy in Ynefel had found the way to Owl… and now the man came back, seeking what he had feared in that hour.

He looked through the broken boards, saw Owl on his perch, and Owl turned on him a furious glance.

Then wind rushed through the loft, a dreadful wind, and the place changed. Light streamed and spun through the broken beams and ruined wall, and ghostly wings stirred about him, hunters seeking Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

prey, seeking
him
, so it seemed, and denying him any gain here.

The old mews reshaped themselves around him, drawing him back and back, but Ynefel was still just beyond, still with danger in it.

“M’lord!” Uwen shouted.

And in the pale heart of the light, at the very end of the old mews, he saw a great blunt-winged shape flying, flying, striving to reach him in the world of Men. Owl was coming, desperately beating through that storm of light and wind.

He lifted his hand the rest of the way, offering a place for Owl’s feet, and called out to him, “Owl!” which was all the name Owl had. The blued light caught the great orbs of Owl’s eyes, whose centers drank in all light, whose intent seemed some prey beyond him.

Perverse bird. Owl was never biddable. He would miss him, fly astray, Tristen thought.

But at the very last Owl reached him and checked his speed, blunt wings rowing in the wind… lowered with a buffet of air, and feather-skirted feet clamped hard on his hand.

Owl sat safely then, no great weight, despite his size, but a weight, all the same. Abruptly Owl’s head swiveled completely around, golden eyes regarding him sharply, in what seemed profound amazement at one instant, and secret knowledge in another.

“Owl,” Tristen said, resettling his grip on the borrowed sword to Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

nudge Owl’s feathers with a finger. Owl struck with his beak—

closing on nothing, for Tristen was quicker.

“Where now?” he asked Owl, unoffended. “Where must I go?”

But Owl gave him no answer, only hunched down, no glowing apparition of an owl, now, but a lump of untidy feathers and a turned shoulder, as obstinate in presence as he had been in illusion.

“M’lord,” Uwen said, right beside him.

The wind had fallen away. The perches all around him were vacant. The light quieted to a soft and dimming glow.

Of a sudden he was aware of the Place diminishing around him, and of his way back diminishing as well. He swung around, saw Emuin and Uwen too close to him for safety.

Then he was in a hallway under a few faint candles. Crissand and Cevulirn were waiting. Umanon and Sovrag and Pelumer all had weapons drawn. Even the waif Paisi was there, his eyes wide as saucers.

“M’lord,” Uwen said then, as if to call him back to himself, to life, and his friends.

“I was at Ynefel,” he said. He had never intended other than honesty with the lords, and knew he would trouble them with that advisement, but honesty he would hew to. “Owl came to me. I don’t know why.”

“What meaning to it?” Sovrag asked. “D’ ye know?”

“No. I don’t.” He was cold from his sojourn in the gray space, Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

and now very weary. He saw they were troubled. Emuin watched, with what feeling, whether approval or disapproval, Emuin did not impart to him, not even in the gray space.

Crissand gazed at him as if he had found a strange creature in their midst, a strange creature, fearsome, and dreadful. Cevulirn regarded him with doubt. Only Uwen was still by him unchanged, undaunted, faithful as the stone underfoot, standing here before an ordinary wall, before candles which had turned out to be lighted after all.