C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 (40 page)

Perhaps, Tristen thought, he should have ridden out with him and conveyed him home. He had foreseen trouble. But the world had been shadowed these last few days, and it would have meant, had he gone out from Ynefel and devoted himself to one boy, on one solitary track through the woods, that he would lose track of other things, to the peril of all.

More, his presence risked drawing more attention than the boy already had on him. The boy had fallen into a dark place, one of those shadows Marna had within it, where even Owl had had trouble finding him. Likely the boy had not known that old stones lay near, likely had never even felt the gap in the earth, but he had gotten out of the trap and away, and come out of shadow unscathed, at least.

Leaving the keep now, abandoning his vantage at Ynefel, meant he would suffer a degree of blindness during the boy’s passage, which would have brought the boy into greater danger. He would suffer a degree of blindness to movements in the land when he did ride to Henas’amef—the balances there had already shifted, tipped, trembled on the edge, and if he moved, he sensed, he would tip them right over.

None of what had happened in Henas’amef of late was what he wanted. If he went there, when he went there, it would shake the world and the world beyond it. But what had been gnawing away at the peace all these years had its own intentions, and undermined, and shifted, and would have its way, sooner or later. The boy was the lever that moved things. He had been born for that.

The boy, however, had gotten safely as far as Gran’s house, and slept inside her wards tonight. It was Cefwyn and Crissand who had their troubles at this hour. Those did not grow quieter. Peace might last a little longer.

Perhaps he should still delay going, and only see whether things settled now that the boy himself had settled to rest for a time. The intervention of a Sihhe-Iord in the affairs of Men had rippled the calm surface of ordinary years, and he had seen how his withdrawing to Ynefel had smoothed things out for a time: things that ought to sleep slept more deeply, the longer he kept his distance. The whole world drew an easier breath.

And should he go now, hastening everything, to divert this boy?

He was a good lad. Gran had made him that.

Uwen came and went among Men much more frequently, usually with Cook: the two of them had gone, generally as plain travelers, into villages, and now and again as far Henas’amef itself to consult with Lord Crissand, or to exchange messages—oh, with far less fuss than the lord of Ynefel would generate, and very little ripple in the peace. They were quiet, and clever, and came back full of news and gossip—news he would not have thought to ask, names that quickened fond memory—servants he had known, and minor lords, and sometimes they brought news from Guelessar, or down the river: familiar names, like Sovrag, and Cevulirn, that conjured warm evenings and happy moments as well as dreadful. The two of them had ridden out, and came back bringing him the oddest trinkets, a curious tin box, a fine pair of gloves, packets of spices from the southern trade… all these things he valued, but the things he most longed for no one could bring him in a bag of trinkets. A quiet supper with Lord Crissand was what he wanted, or rarest and dearest desire, with the friend of his heart, with Cefwyn himself.

Oh, he had made ventures, but never since the boy had grown old enough to ask questions.

He had met with Paisi, oh, at least half a dozen times, at the edge of Marna Wood: if not for Gran and the boy, Paisi would have gladly ridden into Marna and begged to stay.

He remembered a dirty-faced boy, who had also been Paisi, in the streets of Henas’amef, the day he was lost. Paisi running errands for Master Emuin. Or holding a baby who could not go back to its mother.

Time ran back and forward for him when he let his mind wander.

He had visions at times… he had been a dragon once—he had felt his own power increase beyond all bounds, had felt the earth shake, seen men cast to ruin in a breath. He had drawn apart, to keep his influence out of the world, but, oh, he was so tempted to go into Guelessar, and to turn up in his old friend’s path, and just to say, as Cefwyn had used to say to him, “Shall we go riding?”

Those had been the best times of all.

And when, since that day, he did go out into the world, when the poor or the desperate begged for health, for fortune, for justice—he had been the Dragon, and the power was always there. Oh, indeed, the touch of a Sihhë hand could work such magic… the people knew it. Some, if they knew the price, would pay it…

And whenever he worked, he knew. The smallest magic could just as easily, and not by his intent, bind an unwarded soul to his own life, as Paisi was bound, as Gran was. Healing could just as easily make some desperate man an open gateway to things that man would never expect to meet. Men prayed to their gods. They prayed by their own understanding, reckless of what they invoked, and wanted things, wanted so very much—and sometimes with such complete justice and need—

Some things he granted. But some things he never would. He would not, for instance, raise the dead. Mauryl had done that, had clothed a soul long in the dark.

Had good ever come of that?

Mauryl had never said—but then, the final word was not written, and Mauryl himself had never known the outcome of his Shaping.

That was all he dared say of himself, that he tried to do the best he could, which was as little as possible.

He would not, for instance, deal with children, or try to bend them one way or the other. Childhood baffled him. He hadn’t grown that way. He had simply stepped into the world as he was and learned it as he could. He understood that, in Elfwyn, he dealt with a creature not yet a Man, but something nearly a Man, a creature with a Man’s passions, but not quite a Man’s desires; a Man’s yearning, but not a Man’s self-restraint. That would come. And when it came, there would be another new creature, one which had not existed in the world until Cefwyn had engendered that life in Tarien Aswydd’s womb. Elfwyn Aswydd was
not
Tarien’s remote kin, long dead, or Cefwyn’s grandfather, also dead. He was something of both, and neither. He was a wild force, a power unto himself, and most unpredictable of all, he was still in that stage of things Unfolding within himself—not as things had to
him
, out of a mature knowledge and the distant past, but taking shape out of bits and scraps of what other people showed him and what his intellect could make of it. There was, in fact, no knowing which way Elfwyn Aswydd would turn.

His mother had her own plans for him; but worse, she had made herself a window through which other things could look, and her plans, set into motion, had never been all her own. Her time had run, irrevocable in the world of Men. Threads had come together in a design that wove through and through this boy’s existence.

Hasufin Heltain was one thread. Heryn Aswydd was one. Orien was. And Tarien Aswydd.

Stubborn he was—and what else? He was Cefwyn’s son, equally.

He sat thinking until the sun rose, trying to ponder what this boy was.

And in the morning he walked into Uwen’s cottage. There he found that Uwen was sharpening his sword, tending his own weapons for the first time in a long time.

He sat down by Uwen on the bench and took a cup of tea from Cook.

“Ye’re thinkin’ about the outside, are ye, m’lord?” Uwen asked him.

“That I am,” he said quietly, aware that Cook was listening with one ear, while putting bread to bake.

“Is it the old enemy, m’lord?” Uwen asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “How could you suspect?”

Uwen shrugged while the whetstone kept moving. “The boy. The Aswydd woman. An’ the king. Things is come together lately.”

“That they have,” Tristen admitted.

“An’ last night ye had the whole hall lit.”

The candles came and went. He rarely thought about them. “I suppose I did.”

“So,” Uwen said. “Ye ain’t slept much since the boy went out.”

“I often don’t.”

“Ye ain’t, ’cept Owl is back, so the boy’s got where he’s goin’. An’

Dys, he come in on ’is own from pasture this mornin’. Ye called him.”

“Did I?” He was amazed. He’d wanted the horse. He’d wanted Uwen. Both knew that without his saying so.

“So,” Uwen said, looking up and down the gray-sheened edge of the metal. “So, well, the bones is some older, but these hands ain’t forgot.”

He’d worked his little magics to keep Uwen hale and strong, and Cook and Cook’s son, too, since Cook made Uwen happy… it was his little secret, a furtive and quiet magic, worked within the walls, and this without polite asking. Dys didn’t age, nor Petelly, nor any of the horses. Cadun grew up, but never older, and if there was wrong in that, he only hoped Uwen forgave him, if Cook and Cadun did not. This morning was as close as Uwen had ever come to remarking on his own long good health.

But he needed Uwen. This was the truth inside the truth: he knew that time ran too fast for his liking, and that Men faded.

With them, with this one comfort, he was content; and without them, he was alone.

Since the day he became a Dragon, he held in his heart a vision of a place frozen in ice, remote from all Men—a place before Men, and before love, and before everything. He couldn’t quite remember a time he had been there, but he feared it more than anything. It was that place where the Enemy had been, and yet it seemed to him that he had been there before he knew Mauryl, that he had watched Mauryl arrive at those gates, oh, long before many other things had happened, and long before there was Uwen, to tie him to
this
place and
this
time. Tristen had lived his first year in the world of Men less than two decades ago; lived that year, and the next, and many after it. But the cold place was there, always, in the back of his fears, an icy fastness where nothing he loved had yet existed. It had been so easy to spread anger out onto the winds, like the Dragon, and be there again; but once he was there, he might not remember how to get back.

Uwen was his strength, but also his weakness. His Enemy would ever so quickly exploit that weakness if he entered the world again; and his need for Uwen would bring Uwen grief if ever his care had a lapse. He knew it. So did Uwen know it, wise man that he was.

He became sure this morning that Uwen knew his somewhat guilty secret, counted the years he had spent here, and did forgive him.

“So,” Uwen said, “do I go, or do we go together this time, m’lord?

Ye’ve waited for the boy. Now he’s gone where he’s goin’, or Owl ain’t a prophet.”

“Brave Uwen. We shall both go, and go soon, I think we must.

But something is moving, and if I leave the tower, I shall not have the vantage to see where it goes. The wind is up this morning. Do you hear it?”

Uwen looked up, on blue sky and a clear day. “Is it that, m’lord?

Is it woke again?”

“I don’t know. Put our packs together. We shan’t take a great deal with us when we go, and we may go at any hour, day or night.”

“Aye, m’lord. Just my gear, an’ yours. As used t’ be.”

iii

THE GOOD CLOAK FROM GUELESSAR HAD FARED THE

WORST—IT WOULD NEED mending as well as washing, and there was no time for either. Elfwyn put on Paisi’s best—Paisi insisted; and the two of them kissed Gran and took the horses the king had given them, and rode out to the highway, himself on Feiny, with his saddle, and Paisi on Tammis, with nothing but his halter.

It was a brisk, snowy ride to the gates of Henas’amef, under a blue bright sky at first, then under the frowning shadow of the battlement. They rode cautiously, climbing an icy street they had never before traversed on horseback. And the people of the town, who would never have looked twice at two walkers, looked up at them curiously and suspiciously as they passed like lord and man.

Some might know Paisi, who came and went in the town, and if they did, they knew who they might be, though they might wonder greatly that they now came in on horseback. One or two such made the sign against evil, but only one or two, likely more piously Bryalt than the rest—in the main, the townsfolk hung charms about their houses and had no fear of witches or their cures: oh, no, it was the taint of sorcery that drew the ward signs, and the looks askance.

Overall, the town was in a fading holiday mood—the last vestiges of tattered dead evergreen festooned housefronts and shops, the Bryalt holiday having come and gone and lingered during his venture west, and people were likely in the very last throes of too much drink and leftover holiday cakes. The shops were still mostly shut, this early in the morning. The evergreen dripped with icicles here and there, shed needles, or hung haphazardly tattered, ruined by days of wind and weather.

Paisi had not come into town for holiday, so he said. He had been just off a long ride, had been too busy mending leaks and repairing the goat-shed fence for Gran, and besides, as Paisi had said, he had been too worried about a certain fool for a number of days after.

“I was never in danger,” Elfwyn said, and knew that he lied, and wasn’t sure why, except he had no desire yet to tell Paisi what Paisi was so curious to learn—what Tristen had said, or what he had said to Lord Tristen.

He wanted to have the visit to Lord Crissand behind him, that, before anything else, and he didn’t want to think about where he had been, or about Lord Tristen at all until he had to. There was, besides Paisi’s completely reasonable desire to know, that presence that loomed above the town, less so, ironically, as they were nearest to it: the houses cut off all view of the Zeide and its tower, and seemed to cut off all sense of it as well. Elfwyn had ridden out from Gran’s place refusing to look toward the town, and refusing to look up when they drew close to it: he chattered with Paisi or minded the frozen mud, or anything at all he could contrive to keep his mind off that place—he so dreaded coming into town.

But here, in that strange absence of notice from the tower, they rode calmly up the street, and quietly up to the Zeide gates, where gatekeepers, respecting anyone who came on horseback, made haste to open them.