C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 (48 page)

“The boy in the cottage,” the old man said.

“In Gran’s cottage,” he said, with an uncomfortable lump in his throat. Clearly the news had not gotten to this place. And all the while, his dream nagged at him with the most dire sense of something, some secret, some hidden thing within this room that he had to find, that could reach out and kill everything he loved.

“Might I just look around, sir?” He showed the duke’s ring, and the old man peered at it somewhat more closely than the guards ever had, and straightened and bowed, and bowed again.

“His Grace’s permission. Do be careful,” the old man whispered, meaning of the books, of course, but the caution stirred the hairs on his nape, all the same. There was more and more in this room that seemed oddly familiar to him, as if he’d seen it all before, down to that very stack of books on the first table, or the exact clutter on the old man’s desk, which he could never have expected to see.

His heart beat faster and faster. The old man directed him to a table, and brought him books. The
Chronicle of the Eagle
was one.

He opened it very carefully, handled the stiff parchment pages exactly as this man’s predecessor had instructed him. The old man hovered a little less near, told him where other histories were kept, and drifted off about his duties.

He leafed through, standing, finding nothing in particular that caught his eye, except a grand illumination of the Battle of Lewen Field, with soldiers dying and the Eagle banner flying conspicuously. The Sihhë Star was there, black and stark. That he had ever seen that emblem in its proper place still seemed incredible to him, and the ring tingled on his hand as he thought about it.

The fear, however, dogged him, like something standing just at his shoulder, something that darted from one side of his vision to the other, taunting him. He strayed from the table to the shelf the old man had pointed out.

He saw, on the shelves, a large, ancient volume:
The Art of War
, translated by… but the name had worn off the spine. There was
The Red Chronicle
. That book drew him, as one he had long heard mentioned, and he reached toward it, thinking to take it from the shelf.

Steps came up behind him. He turned, empty-handed, and the librarian passed over a heavy volume. He felt, for some reason he couldn’t understand, an unaccustomed guilt and distress at the interruption in his reach, as if he had lied to the old man and could not even remember the lie he had told.

The codex the old man gave him was, indeed,
A History of Amefel

.

“You may read it at this table,” the librarian said, and drew back a chair for him. He sat down, and opened it very carefully, and read at length. It was not the best copyist who had produced this volume, in an overblown script. It was a labor to read it, and he found it a dry, scholarly style, nothing that informed him, nothing so perilous or exciting as he had hoped to find in
The Red Chronicle
.

This one began with very old records, back in the reign of the High Kings, and named every single lord of every single holding, with all the begetting and descending and disputing.

Still, in courtesy to the old librarian who had particularly offered this to him, he stayed at it, laboring over the obscure script, and curious, stiff illuminations of people who stood like pillars, with exactly the same faces and differing gestures. Paisi finally surprised him, having tracked him down.

“I wondered where ye’d gone, m’lord,” Paisi said.

“I wanted to read,” he lied. He suddenly realized everything he’d done since leaving Paisi outside was one long lie, and he didn’t know why he wanted to be here now, but he did and was afraid to be. The book at least gave him respite from dreams and uncertainties: its dry difficulties drew all his faculties into one effort, and left no time for extraneous thoughts, or remembering Gran, or wondering what he would do with himself hereafter. It was only time he had to fill to get from waking to dark, and reading filled it well enough.

Paisi was all over dust and smelled of the stables, not books. “So shall ye be up to supper?”

“In a bit. Go up to the room and rest if you like.”

“More like down to the kitchens to get a bite,” Paisi said. “I’m half-starved. D’ ye want anything, m’lord? Shall I have your supper sent upstairs?”

“In an hour or so,” he said. “Thank you, Paisi.” He didn’t feel hungry. He turned a page carefully, wishing only not to be distracted from where he was, as if he were walking a rail and mustn’t fall off, mustn’t distract himself.

Paisi, probably annoyed with him, or at least not understanding what he was about, left on his own business.

This book was not the thing he wanted. But the library was the place he wanted. He didn’t want to leave it. He didn’t want to look away from his pages. He just wanted to stay where he was, where his heart didn’t hurt and his memories and his dreams didn’t keep slipping into his head.

“Might I stay longer?” he asked when the librarian said that he had to go to supper, and went about to turn out the few old men who had occupied other tables.

The old man looked at him carefully and gave him a key. “These are very, very few,” the old man said. “You may come in and read, lad, as pleases you. I can see you read like a scholar. Admirable.

Admirable in a lad. But have extreme care of candles, bank the fire, and lock the door when you leave. These books are the kingdom’s treasures, and irreplaceable.”

“I shall be careful, sir,” he said, taking the key, which tingled in his fingers, the longed-for prize. “I shall be ever so careful.”

He stayed a little while after. Once he was sure the old man was gone, he got up and took
The Red Chronicle
from its shelf. He read by close candlelight—the windows were dimming—how the Sihhë-lords’ reign had extended over Amefel, Elwynor, and most that was now Ylesuin. In those days magic had been ordinary, and the Sihhë lived long lives, spanning generations of Men, doing as they pleased. Guelemara had not been the capital in those days: it was a place called Althalen, in Amefel. And a great wizard, Mauryl Gestaurien, had served the Sihhë-lords, from the fortress of Ynefel.

So had Selwyn Marhanen, a warlord under the Sihhë King.

Nothing was then as it was now. Gran had never told him these things. Paisi hadn’t.

And this Selwyn Marhanen, this warlord out of Guelessar, had defended the borders of the Sihhë from attacks from the south, while making secret alliances with a priest of a militant sect, the Quinalt—in that day when most Men were Bryalt, or, always in the case of wizards, Teranthine…

Was the Quinaltine not yet built, then? Or all the great city of Guelemara? He tried to imagine the world as it had been, and leafed carefully ahead to see that Selwyn Marhanen had killed several of his brother lords among the districts of Men, and entered into agreements with others. The Sihhë King in those days was Elfwyn, Elfwyn Sihhë, who relied on the Marhanen and trusted him.

The guttering candle wavered, making the letters crawl and move. He looked up, realized that the windows were now completely dark, the fire in the little fireplace was out, and his whole body was stiffened from long sitting.

He shivered, held his chilling fingers above the candleflame to warm them, and simultaneously realized, with a little touch of dismay, that Paisi might not realize he was still here, now that the door shut.

There was tomorrow. There were any number of tomorrows for books. He shut the
History of Amefel
on the table, to protect its pages from drafts, before returning
The Red Chronicle
to the shelf.

He would, he told himself, be back when he was not cold and hungry and getting to the end of a candle stub. He lifted the candleholder to light his way to the door, careful not to spill the brimming wax, and as it tipped, a little did spill into the catch-basin, and the flame leapt up on a clear wick, showing him the way, indeed, but making all the room a threatening place, the tall cases and the looming stacks full of secrets, tales that had shaped his present existence, laws and rights of rule—so, so many things he didn’t understand and needed to know, if only to defend himself from forces he did not comprehend.

But for now he took his single candle to the door and let himself out, blew out the candle stub, and left it on the ledge outside the door, to be renewed by servants who saw that such things appeared in due order. The halls were mostly deserted, and he remembered that horrid apparition—he hadn’t realized he’d trapped himself on the other side of it, after dark, and he didn’t want to go near that place, not even with his mother’s guards on watch down there.

There was, however, the way the servants used.

He went down to the end of the short hall, and found, indeed, the servants’ stairs, and climbed up those short, dark stairs to a dimly lighted hall above—one bend and another, which took him above the haunt. He hurried along, breathless, trying not to break into a fearful run. Servants were going up and down the halls at this hour, collecting the washing and used dishes of other residents, the minor lords of the town and the province, lords who lived here, or visited here, where now a witch’s son found refuge from calamity.

He didn’t feel he belonged in this place. He wanted not to be here, under his mother’s witness. He wanted to be back in Guelessar if he had to live in a palace. He wasn’t sure he wanted to read more of the book, and to know how his namesake had died, and, in detail, how Aewyn’s family had turned on the Sihhë King.

He reached his own door, pushed the latch and whipped inside, breathlessly glad to meet light and warmth and, indeed, the smell of supper.

“Well, now,” Paisi said. “Thank the gods. Where
was
you? With

’is Grace?”

“In the library, still,” he said.

“I came by, an’ the door shut. I hoped ye was with ’is Grace, but I couldn’t get no sense out of the servants. There’s supper, if ye wish’t.”

“In a bit. A little wine, maybe.”

“That we can do.” Paisi went to the table and poured a cup, and from a second pitcher, water. “What was you readin’ so late and so urgent?”

“A history. A history of Elfwyn King.”

“Oh, well,” Paisi said, worried-looking. The same boding dark was outside the windows, firelight glittering on the glass, as he gave him the cup. “That ain’t too cheery, is it?”

“No. It wasn’t.” He didn’t want to explain the tightness in his chest or the unrest in his heart. He drank, and sat down by the fire, ignoring supper. It was only the drink he wanted, to take the dust of the place out of his mouth and the attraction of it out of his mind. “It wasn’t.”

Paisi stretched his feet out in front him, warming his boots.

“Well, I got a far simpler question for ye. I was talkin’ to the stablemaster, an’ they were talkin’ o’ takin’ the horses down to the pastures as they do, to the winter stables. But the four paddocks left free down there is way on the end, an’ they’re askin’ if we’re apt to be needin’ the horses too often. I said I’d ask you.”

“I don’t know,” he said, which was foolish, because he did know, and there wasn’t much chance they’d be riding about the countryside anytime soon.

Unless Aewyn came with his father. There was that.

“Maybe they could stay up here just a little longer,” he said.

“It’s fair cramped here, m’lord. They’d be happier.”

“I don’t want my horse down the hill!” he said, more curtly than he meant. But he couldn’t think of a reason. He took another sip and swallowed half the cup after. “He’s mine. I want him here, is all.”

“I’ll tell ’em so,” Paisi said. “Ain’t ye goin’ t’ eat, m’lord?”

“I’m not that hungry,” he said glumly, but he came and sat at the table and picked at the food, and had another cup of watered wine.

Paisi had his own wine plain, not in the brightest of moods.

They sat for a while. “If Aewyn should come,” Elfwyn said, to mend his earlier tone, and because what had sat for hours at the bottom of his thoughts had finally bobbed up to the surface, the conviction that nothing they would do here was permanent—“and with Lord Tristen here, too—I might want my horse—I’d hope to go riding with Aewyn. I don’t know when they will come. I don’t know what might happen.”

“Aye,” Paisi said then, seeming happier having a reason. “That might be. An’ then I’d have mine, too, because ye ain’t t’ go nowhere wi’out me, hear? Ain’t got Gran to look after, and if you go ridin’ off wi’ Lord Tristen or ’Is young Highness, I’m goin’, no question. So I’ll tell ’em that.”

Paisi didn’t ask about the books. Elfwyn didn’t mention the detail of things he’d learned. The forced good humor of yesterday, dealing with Gran’s death, had grown weary on them both. Gran was a matter they neither one mentioned this evening. There was nothing they could plan for themselves: all they could plan remained at the king’s pleasure, and the duke’s, and Lord Tristen’s, when he might arrive. The rooms they shared were only lent, nothing their own, and they had no duty except to each other. Even that needed very little: house servants did all the work and all the carrying, and arrived more often than they needed, so Paisi was at loose ends, and Elfwyn even more so.

They waited uneasily and without speaking about their unease—waited for Lord Tristen, waited, possibly, for the king, and for Aewyn to come. They waited for what might change the whole course of their lives, and finally sighed and decided on bed, to face another day of much the same.

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THE WIND TURNED FOUL TOWARD DARK, CARRYING

BLOWN SNOW INTO THEIR faces, stinging eyes and noses. It was a hard day’s ride for a boy, and Cefwyn rode between his son and the wind while the Dragon Guard rode around them, and ahead, trampling the snow into a broader path.

Aewyn’s flow of questions had stopped even before the sun went down.

If they did not come to the way shelter before too long, Cefwyn thought, he would order tents broken out of their small pack train.

In this weather, and with a boy in the company, they traveled at least with canvas, and fire-pots, and a certain amount of food already prepared.