C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 (51 page)

He clambered back to his feet and opened the little book in the middle, but there was not enough light on this side of the room to read what was in it. He took it to the fireside, where the stick he had thrown in had taken light.

The letters crawled in front of his eyes, refusing to take shape, as if tears blinded him, or as if his eyes had grown as dim as Gran’s.

He felt the burning of his mother’s attention, felt it bearing down his back, as if she were standing there right at his back.

Get it! she seemed to say to him, as fiercely as she had ever spoken. You’ve gone this far. Now bring it to me.

“Boy,” another voice seemed to say to him—a faint, far voice, that for all the world was Gran’s.

He looked up. He saw Gran, standing right there, like a figure in smoke. “Boy, don’t dare let her have it.”

He felt as if he were smothering, as if he could not get his next breath. The fire crackled and snapped, and part of the stick fell, flaring bright flame as it did.

Fear became horrid and acute, choking him. He shut the little book in fear, and at his next blink, Gran wasn’t there. She never had been there, he thought. It was his mother who had put this shameful theft into his head, this fever like the grip of a nightmare, that he now knew wasn’t right—it was his mother that had come whispering into his ear, encouraging his fears, telling him the truth could be had, and that the truth would save him and all he loved…

it was a lie. It was all a lie, and he had looked at the book, and the letters wouldn’t take shape for him.

Vision was the word; had not Tristen said that? Vision.

Knowledge. Answers held from him all his life. Dark places. The more he tried to see, frantic with fear, the more he couldn’t remember the other word, and couldn’t think what he ought to do with this thing he had brought into the light, except something that looked and sounded like Gran had said not to obey his mother.

A book, a book, for the gods’ sweet sake, exactly what one would expect in a library, a little codex that could be hidden so easily among all these books and stacks, but for some reason, and by some one, it had been hidden in a wall instead. And for all the years of his life, his mother had made no requests for any material thing, but she wanted this—this, after a decade and more without a request.

Just holding it now made his hand tingle, and made the ring on his finger glow soft, safe blue, not the baleful red of the glow he had followed. It seemed safer, by that, in his hand, than it had been where he had found it. When he had touched Tristen’s wards, it had felt like that, the tingling, and his heart had raced, had it not? It was only fear.

He felt a prickling at his nape. His mother still watched him. His mother
wanted
him, suddenly raged at him, like a silent shriek…

but Gran had said, still quietly, as she did all things—no.

His mother should not have it. There was nothing good his mother wanted in the world, and if her desire had driven him to such behavior—and if she wanted this little book now, then he had to prevent it getting to her. He could put it back where he had found it. But shoving it back into the wall would never serve, not after all the damage he had done, and the plaster tracked about.

The librarian would go to Lord Crissand, and Lord Crissand would want to see the object of his mad search, and once it was in the open, it was apt to theft by anybody else his mother might move, like a precious jewel left lying undefended in the street.

Footsteps sounded in the hall, in such great stillness, more than one footfall. His pounding heart leapt with a second fright, and he froze where he stood, then realized that the firelight he had roused might show through the seam of the doors and in those tall, uncurtained windows. Someone might wonder. Someone might open that door.

He had the key. He fumbled after it, and moved stealthily to the door and locked it from the inside. The lock clicked like the crack of doom, and he froze, scarcely daring breathe.

But what was he doing? He had the key. The librarian had allowed him to be here. He could face Lord Crissand’s guards and tell them—tell them he had come down to borrow a book.

And say what, about the plaster?

The footsteps reached the door. He heard muffled voices, and his heartbeat thumped in his ears, so that he hadn’t good sense. The latch moved.

And stopped, against the lock.

“We better get the captain,” someone said outside.

And the footsteps went away.

He had been a complete fool. He had dug this thing out, and now there was no concealing it, no time to hide his work, or the white plaster tracked across the floor. He wanted only to get this thing away and hide it until Lord Tristen arrived, or, failing that, he wanted to think it through before he confessed to Duke Crissand.

And things could go wrong. His mother could make things go wrong. He felt her attention, and her anger on him, burning and furious, and seeking some way to set everything on end and get her hands on what he had. She might have gotten him here—with the guards out and about on a search he might even get to her stairs.

She could arrange that.

But she could not make him bring it to her. No.

The footsteps were gone. She could make them turn back. She’d already reached out of the wards to harm Gran, and he might be the only soul in the Zeide keep aware enough to defy her…

He unlocked the door, ducked out into the dim hallway, and had the presence of mind to lock it back to delay pursuit. His heart pounded against his ribs. At any moment the guards could come back, and lies and misdirection were his only cover if they did catch him. With a trembling hand he extracted the key from the grip of the lock, then turned and ran down the hall, up the dark servants’

stairs, breathless. His mother wanted him, wanted
the book
, all the while his mother knew exactly where he was—knew, and directed things awry.

He raced down the upper hall as stealthily as he could. He reached his own door, dashed in, closed the door, and shot the bar.

“What ha’ ye done?” Paisi asked, from out of the shadows, and he spun against the door.

“I don’t know,” he said in despair, pressing the tiny book to his chest. “I don’t know.”

“What ha’ ye got there?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

“Lad, lad—ha’ ye completely lost your senses?”

“I may have,” he said, overwhelmed. “The guards are in the library by now, and my mother—my mother—wants this. She’ll get it, Paisi. And she mustn’t have it. I don’t know anything else, but she mustn’t have it.”

“Well, shall ye go rouse up ’Is Grace an’ gi’ it to
him
?”

“No,” he said, suddenly sure, as if he were toeing the edge of a precipice, and this book the only thing that kept his balance on it.

“No. To Lord Tristen. We have to get it to him.”

“Well, ’e’s comin’
here
, ain’t he? So’s we can just wait.”

“We can’t wait.” He left the door, brushed his way past Paisi, and snatched up his cloak. “Paisi. Help me. We have to get out of here, and they’ll be here, they’ll be here any moment.”

“Aye,” Paisi said, stung into action. “Who’ll be here?”

“Lord Crissand’s guards.”

“Do we run for it, then, m’lord?”

“We have to.” He pinned his cloak on. He snatched up his gloves and his dagger while Paisi was putting on his own cloak. He remembered the key, then, and took the time to turn it out of his purse, and leave it on the dining table, his one gesture toward honesty. The ring should go with it. But the ring, Lord Crissand’s pass, was their way out. “I have His Grace’s ring. I can get our horses from the stable if we just hurry.”

“I take it we ain’t findin’ Lord Tristen too easy,” Paisi said.

“We do as we can.”

“Then we better have food,” Paisi said. “Food’s what ye think of when ye’re deep into things and don’t know how long.”

“Don’t go asking,” he begged Paisi, and Paisi shot back:

“Who said askin’? I’ll get it, m’lord. Gettin’ away is one thing, but apples an’ turnips ain’t in season out there in the woods. Ye get on to the stables, an’ ye act the lord and get the night boy to get them horses out, an’ gods help us, is all—hurry, is it? Was they chasin’ ye when ye run?”

“They don’t know who was there,” he said. That, at least, was true, he was sure of it. No one had seen him. “But the librarian knows where the key is, and they won’t be long figuring out I did it.”

“I don’t understan’ ye a bit,” Paisi said, “but that ain’t no matter: I never understood Lord Tristen, neither, when ’is notions took ’im, an’ if we got to find ’im in the mid of the night, I’ll wager there’s ’is doin’ in it somewheres. Come on, lad.”

He wished it were so simple. He wished it were Lord Tristen who had driven him, sweating and crazed, to steal what he had just stolen. Or that he had time to explain his fears and his choice to Paisi. But Paisi was right: every moment made it more likely his mother would get her way, and he couldn’t explain: when his mother wanted something, they’d had the cruel proof just how far she could reach. She had grown stronger, or hidden her strength.

And it wasn’t distance that would save them. It was speed, before she could work her spells and draw someone else to help her. It was a stronger shelter, a protection Lord Crissand couldn’t offer this book, or them.

They left the room, and Paisi reached past him to shut the door, normal as could be: he understood Paisi’s signal to be calm, to do things at a reasonable pace. It seemed forever, the little distance to the servants’ stairs at this end of the hall, but then Paisi hurried, down and down to the main floor—while all the other end of the hall, down toward the library, with light flaring off the walls, rang with voices and the shadowed movement of guards.

“Stay with me!” he begged Paisi. “Never mind the food!”

“Kitchens,” Paisi hissed, and dived off down the stairs in that direction, where the kitchen hall diverged from the outbound door.

He had no way to stop Paisi, only his own part to do.

He shoved the heavy door open and went out into snowfall, a white haze that haloed the single torch that burned in the kitchen yard. Remembering how Paisi proceeded, he made a careful descent of the icy steps, down to the yard, where he couldn’t but leave tracks. So he strode boldly across the yard to the stables.

A single guarded light burned inside the warm, horse-smelling dark. He went down the aisle until he found the stall the stableboy used for his cot, and there he gathered up his courage, took a deep breath, and roused the boy out.

“My horse and my servant’s,” he said to the boy, lordlike, trying to keep a steady voice, and showed the duke’s ring on his ungloved hand. “I’m Elfwyn Aswydd. This is His Grace’s ring.”

The boy might never have seen the duke’s ring, or know what it permitted, but it was silver, it was bright in the shadow, and Aswydds ruled in Amefel. The boy looked doubtful, and afraid, then rubbed his eyes and moved, not sluggardly, despite being roused out of bed and with his shirt hanging.

He couldn’t seem a lord and saddle his own horse. That was the difficulty in his plan, that he had to stand and wait, all the while dreading the approach of the guards, who might already have caught Paisi in the kitchens. Sorcery bent things. It moved a breeze to move a leaf to attract attention or sent a wayward thought to turn a guard’s head, and his mother had stopped raging, now and gotten down to other means, the subtler, distant ways he was sure she had used to damn him in Guelessar… she was down to sorcery, now. And how did he even hope he could outride her intent to have this thing, or steal this little book out of her grasp?

Why had she wanted him back in Amefel? It wasn’t love.

Why had she killed Gran and given him no other place to be?

Why had the librarian trusted him, a newcomer, to give him a key he hadn’t even known to ask for?

He stood while the boy saddled Feiny, then led him into the aisle.

Swift, single footsteps approached, outside, and the door opened.

It was Paisi, Elfwyn saw to his profoundest relief, Paisi carrying a heavy white bag, and passing the laboring stableboy as if what was going on in the middle of the night was absolutely as it ought to be.

“I got it, m’lord,” Paisi said, handing him the bag. “You hang on to this, an’ I’ll help the boy.”

It speeded matters. Paisi led up Tammis for him to hold the halter rope, and helped the boy finish up with Feiny’s complex harness, then ordered the boy to open the stable doors.

The boy opened one door. It was enough. Paisi took the flour sack, slung it over Tammis’s withers, and they mounted up, Elfwyn struggling for the stirrup—he had learned how to reach it and pull himself up; and Paisi gave a hop and was up, bareback. They rode out of the stable yard and onto the snow-buried courtyard.

At the iron gates that barred their way to the town, Paisi rang the little bell, a small, terrifying sound that brought the night watch out into the falling snow.

“Aswydd business,” Paisi said, and Elfwyn boldly showed the ring toward the lamplight.

There might at any moment be a search of their room, a search leading eventually down to the stables, out into the same courtyard.

But the night guards had to get on their working gloves and move the heavy iron latch, which shrieked aloud in the quiet, and heave one frozen gate open, cracking ice off the hinges.

They rode out into the upper town, took the road to the town gate, and struck a quick pace.

“There’s bells they can ring,” Paisi said anxiously. “There’s the thief bell can stop the town gate from openin’ until they ask up the hill. We got to hurry, lad.”

The fine snow obscured all but the nearer buildings, and wrapped them in white as they put the horses beyond safe speed on the downhill course, but there was no traffic at all, only a shutter or two flung open in curiosity at the noise, and most shut with a thump soon after.

They reached the gate, and the gate-guards had heard them coming.

“Aswydd business,” Paisi said crisply, and the guards saw the ring Elfwyn showed and gave way to it, shoving hard to open the little sally port against the new snow.