C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 (30 page)

Paisi said: “But ye can’t ride, Otter. Ye was mad to take out like that, wi’ no food, nor shelter, nor yet a saddle nor proper bridle, good gods! What if the horse had throwed ye?”

“Well, he did, a few times.” He’d landed, fortunately, in snow, and not on his head. “But I got back on.”

“Lucky he didn’t run off,” Paisi said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Gods, ye’re still cold. Ye shouldn’t have.”

“They were going to send me in the dark, with soldiers. I didn’t want to go with soldiers, Paisi. I just wanted to be here.” His jaw clenched without his wanting it. A muscle jumped, and his heart beat harder. “I did everything the king asked of me. But I’m sure he thought I was a fool.”

“Ye ain’t a fool, and he didn’t think any such thing,” Gran said. “I ain’t feelin’ he’s angry, to this hour.”

Gran’s feelings were not to disregard. It comforted him to think that. It was as warm as the food in his belly, and brighter thoughts occurred to him, now that the adventure was over.

“Prince Aewyn has become my friend,” he said. “We’ll always be friends. And Her Majesty wasn’t angry at my being there.”

“That ’un, she wouldn’t be,” Gran said.

He got several more bites down, the two of them just staring at him as if they could hardly believe he was there, and Paisi got up and put a small log on the dying fire. It was late. They ought all to be going to bed, but Gran got him another bowl of soup, and he began, finally, to be warm inside.

“The horse,” he said, on another mouthful.

“The horses is both fine,” Paisi said, but it came from a far distance. He was home, but he wasn’t. He had gotten where he had to go, but he hadn’t. He had found out who he was, but he didn’t know why it had failed to satisfy his questions. He was back at his starting place, and everything was to do again, all the questions to ask again, all the mistakes to make again… trying to find out where he should be.

“Boy?” Gran asked him, and he couldn’t even look at her. He just sat, with the bowl in one hand and the bread in the other, and stared away at white, white snow and dead branches, as if the journey had never ended at all, and he wasn’t finished.

He wasn’t finished. He couldn’t be home yet.

“Otter, lad.” Paisi took the bowl and the bread from him and set it aside, then tipped him right over onto the bed and started pulling his boots off, then threw covers over him. “There’s a lad. Just too tired, ain’t we?”

“Not finished,” he said. His teeth were chattering as he pulled his own belt off. “Not finished yet.”

“Well, no, I don’t suppose.” Paisi was humoring him, tucking him in like a child. “We’re all right, here. Don’t you fret.”

He shut his eyes, still seeing snow, and dead branches. It was like that, as if he couldn’t finish his journey at all, nor come home until he’d done something very important, something that had only started in Guelemara, when the shadows, the horrid shadows, had started running between the stones. He was aware when Paisi came to bed, warmth and weight beside him under the covers.

“Are ye asleep, Otter?”

“I dream, Paisi. I dream of snow.”

“Well, sma’ wonder, that.”

“You’ve got to take care,” he said, then slipped away. If Paisi said anything or asked anything after that, he didn’t know.

But when he waked, Gran was up, and stirring about breakfast, making porridge in the small pot, and Paisi was lifting his head from the mattress.

“There’s breakfast about to go to waste,” Gran said, as she said most mornings, if they were still abed. Paisi got up, and Otter got up and huddled near the newly fed fire, both of them to take warm bowls in hand. Otter filled his belly with warm porridge and a bit of toasted bread.

“That’s better than the king’s table,” he said to Gran, who grinned at him, pleased, but not believing him in the least.

And the snow came back while he ate the bread. It came back into his heart and into his vision, and he never wanted it, but nothing was finished. It began to grow in him, the notion, then, for the first time, that there was one other person than Gran and Paisi and the king and queen who’d had something to do with his mother and his birth, and that he’d never seen him, nor had to do with him, and that there were things he could learn nowhere else. Ill luck had dogged him every step of his visit to Guelemara, and the source of it was not his father, not Gran, nor Paisi, nor even Brother Trassin.

He had brought it there with him, in what he was, and who he was born. Those who loved him most would never tell him there was no hope. They would go on trying to make him better than he was born.

But one person had no reason to lie to him, and one person in the world might see him for what he was.

He felt at that very moment that feeling of eyes at his back, that feeling that the tower, so faint and minute on its hill, was nearer to him and more real than the walls about him, when ordinarily Gran’s walls could keep that attention away from him. Now they were failing. He didn’t want to think about his mother. Gran’s walls were near, and strong, stone and wood and wattle, and potent with Gran’s magic, and at that very moment he saw Gran look very sharply toward the north and say,

“Stop that!”

The feeling of being watched went away then, like a candle going out, so that he could breathe again. Gran hadn’t troubled about the snow; but the tower she rebuked, and wove her magic about him, like warm winds.

But it was not warm enough to stop the snow. It drifted through a forest, all winter-bare, and lay trackless and unvisited in his inner vision.

“Otter?” Paisi asked.

“I’m not done,” he said, and set the porridge bowl down and stood up, aches and all. “It’s not finished.”

Paisi laid a hand on his arm, but Gran motioned him not to, and Paisi let him go. After that, he felt as if he had been set free, even blessed. He looked at Gran and saw no forbidding, no disapproval of him.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Not to her!” Paisi exclaimed.

“No. West. I have to ask him—I have questions to ask.”

“Of ’Im?” Gran asked. “
What
will ye ask ’Im, lad?”

“I have no notion yet. But he was there when I was born, wasn’t he? And when I went to Guelemara, where I thought all my life I was supposed to go, it wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I was wrong to go there. I didn’t like it, Gran. I liked Aewyn, and the king was good to me. And Prince Efanor was. And the queen. I liked them all. But Guelemara didn’t fit me, and now, all the way home, I kept thinking I had to be sure you were safe; but now that you are, I don’t know what to do. I can’t go ask—” He made the slightest nod of his head toward Henas’amef, toward the tower, and felt a shiver, even so, as if a tiny chink were opened in Gran’s spells, exposing them to a very persistent force. He tried not to pay attention to it. All his safety seemed elsewhere. Westward. “He’s what’s left to ask, isn’t he? I have to go and ask him—whatever occurs to me to ask.”

“Then ye’re right. Ye should go there,” Gran said. “I’d never stop ye.”

“Can’t it wait,” Paisi asked, “at least until the snow melts?”

“No,” he said. “No. I can’t wait. Soldiers will be here.” A shiver came over him, a terrible sense of urgency. “I’m sure they were behind me on the road. They will come, and I have to go. I have to go today.”

“It ain’t fair to leave Gran!” Paisi said. “She’s lyin’ when she says she ain’t that sickly. She was sick when I come here. An’ we can’t go off an’ leave her.”

“Then don’t think of leaving her alone, Paisi. I’ll go.”

“M’lord!”

“We’re home, and I’m not ‘m’lord’ here, and I can do for myself.

I’ll take my own horse. He’s had food and shelter for days. Now yours can rest. There’s only one horse fit to go, anyway.”

“It ain’t right!” Paisi protested. “I’m not to leave ye! Himself said I wasn’t to leave ye!”

He set his hand on Paisi’s shoulder. A year ago, he’d not been tall enough. Now he could, and looked at Paisi almost eye to eye. “But I’m going to
him
, Paisi. That makes it different. And I can ride. I fell off often enough on the way home, I learned, didn’t I? This time I’ll even have a saddle.”

“ ’Tain’t a joke, m’lord.”

“No,” he said, “it isn’t, Paisi. Just take care of Gran.”

“I’ll fit Feiny out for ye,” Paisi muttered. “An’ ye ride slow on ’im, and ye mind your way. That’s a treacherous, wicked horse, I had me fill of his manners on the way here. An’ ’at’s a dire, dark wood, Marna is. Sensible people don’t go in there. Not even bandits go in.

Or if they do, they don’t last long.”

He had seen the borders of Marna Wood when he was a young boy. He had gone that far, with Paisi. He had seen the dark, dead trees, and Paisi had told him then that things died, that went under those branches. The trees there never leafed, except a little straggle of branches, and never died, either. It was magical, in itself. And Ynefel lay beyond that boundary, across the river. That was where Lord Tristen lived.

So it was the way he had to go, and when he knew that, he could breathe again. It was not that he wanted to go at all. He had changed since he had last ridden out from Gran’s yard. He had learned to live in the king’s household. He had learned to stand straight and speak up when asked; he had learned to say m’lord this and m’lady that, and how to hold a knife and spoon—all useful things, but none useful in the world now. He knew how to tend goats and make cheese, and these were skills that would feed his body, but never his soul: not for him, to live in this little house. He suddenly knew that, and it was a lonely feeling, but it was at least a peaceful feeling. It was not that he meant to leave forever. But he had to leave, for now, for as long as he had to. And Gran had Paisi.

That meant everything was as it ought to be. The world was astonishingly simple, when he removed himself from Guelemara, and from here.

So he put on his boots and his cloak, while Paisi, who had shoved his feet into work boots, had gone out to see to Feiny. Meanwhile Gran made up a packet of food for him.

“An’ there’s ample grain for the horse in the shed,” Gran said as she tied up the bundle, “as the young duke has sent, an’ gods, we’ve had a wicked time keepin’ the goats from it, ha’n’t we?”

“I’m glad His Grace has taken good care of you,” he said. He was done. He took the packet, and by that time Paisi had come in, saying Feiny was saddled, and had his gear, and had a pack of grain besides a blanket Paisi had used.

“Which ain’t as clean as it was,” Paisi said, “but it ain’t the Guelesfort, an’ the washin’ ’ll freeze like planks in this weather, won’t it? You got to watch Feiny, now, I’m tellin’ ye. Don’t you get too confident with ’im. He’s feistier ’n Tammis, tricksy as a downriver peddlar. You got to do with him the way ye do with ol’

Crook-horn, an’ slap ’is jaw if he offers to bite.”

“I will,” Otter said, and hugged Paisi and hugged Gran last. “You take care, most of all. You take great care, Gran.”

“Go on wi’ ye, flit here, flit there, home again an’ gone. Give ’Im our respects, hear? Say I said so. Mind—” Here Gran seized him by the arm with more strength than seemed likely in her hand. “Mind ye skirt Althalen, and leave the highroad there. Don’t ye stray into the old ruin, and above all don’t go so far as the ford at Lewenbrook, where the old battlefield is: that ain’t the way. The old places has their ways of drawin’ a body in, if a body has the Sight, as you do, and they don’t let go if they lay hands on ye. The gray lady ain’t no harm at all, nor’s her daughter. But don’t gawk about and don’t poke into any old stones.”

“I won’t. I won’t, Gran.” The stinging in his eyes was not the smoky chimney’s fault. It was his own, for standing there too long, with Gran pouring every warning in Amefel into his head, all in a rush. He kissed her, then ducked out the shed-side door, and found Feiny waiting for him out in the daylight, all saddled and caparisoned, ready and fretting. He had learned, however, on the road, not to dawdle about any business with horses, and after giving Feiny a rub on the nose and a pat on the neck to let him know who he was dealing with, he gave a little hop to get a grip on the saddle and get his toe in the stirrup. Then he rose, high as the shed, able to look down on the thatched eaves, Feiny dancing under him.

Paisi came out to wave good-bye. Gran came as far as the sheltered front door, and the longer they delayed with the door open, the more the chimney would smoke up Gran’s mantel-stone, besides the cold getting into the house and chilling away all the effort of heating it. He waved back, and thumped Feiny with his heels and took up rein—quickly, and firmly, because Feiny started off with a jerk of his head, trying to get the bit. Feiny had his own notions, at the gate, of turning back eastward, Paisi was quite right.

West was his rider’s firm choice, however. Otter used a heel to reinforce that choice, and Feiny threw his head and veered off and fussed the whole width of the road before he would turn westward.

But it was a clear enough morning. Again, just to the north, he could see the town under gray cloud, with the lowering smoke of cooking fires obscuring the heights where the Zeide sat.

The smoke obscured the tower, but he felt that reproachful gaze, the same as he had felt it every day of his life until he had left for Guelessar, and the whole last bit of his way home.

He knew it was there the same as he knew the place of the sun in the sky—more constant than the sun, it never changed. It never moved, or sank, or rose. Unlike the sun, it was sometimes warm, sometimes cold, and this morning it changed subtly from one to the other, as he went along the road. It grew colder, and more troubled, as he rode past the turn that would take him to Henas’amef.

He refused to look in that direction. He had no intention of going up there for any farewell. He gave a kick, and Feiny jumped, and launched into an outright head-down rebellion along the road, a revolt that tried his strength and courage before he could haul that stubborn head up again and get moving westward at a sane pace.

But what Feiny chose next was a heavy-footed jog of a gait he was not to encourage, Aewyn had told him that. Feiny clearly didn’t respect his handling, and with trepidation, he thumped his heels in and kept a firm grip. The discussion went on, Feiny throwing his head and trying to turn around, and himself kicking every time the horse stopped, struggling with the reins, and finally, finally, getting his way, the horse having sunk into sullen obedience, in the right direction at a sensible, smooth pace. There weren’t other horses to follow. They were leaving safe, warm places. It was a cold morning, and Feiny didn’t want to go west. The horse’s ears switched occasionally but stayed flat and angry.