C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 (55 page)

He went down the hall, past the grand stairs, with the far hall and the tower guard in his view, and wanted, oh, so much, to walk up those stairs and ask the one person who might have an answer—but she would not be inclined to tell him the truth, not for threats, not for pain. She would gloat to see him come up her stairs.

Worse than that—Tristen wasn’t here, she was, and if she had gotten strong enough to cause this—dared he meddle with the wards on that tower, which were Tristen’s, and which might be failing?

Not tonight, not in the dark, and not with his sons at issue. If she was nudging this and that, outside her tower, let her think she was safe in her mischief—so long as Tristen was on his way here to deal with her.

He went instead into the greater audience hall, servants scurrying about him to bring candles, small frantic lights that flared past gilt columns and figures and ledges. He settled onto the ducal throne of Amefel, once the throne of Amefin kings. He had used it before. It was his right, and no discourtesy to Crissand, who arrived with his own guard, bringing a white-aproned, white-bearded man, the cook.

The old man was terrified, and could only wring his hands and say he had talked to the Prince about what everybody knew, the old murder, and the books gone missing…

“Book,” Cefwyn said curtly. “Book. One book.” The legend had already multiplied the theft. And the cook had apparently said nothing to give Aewyn any notion he hadn’t had before.

“Did he take food with him?” Cefwyn asked.

“No, Your Majesty. Not that I saw.”

“His cloak and a bridle,” Cefwyn muttered. “So he doesn’t think he’s going far.”

“Perhaps he won’t try to go far,” Crissand said, standing near him.

“I can’t say.” He was at a loss, and the sun was going down outside, setting on a road that had taken his sons away from him—the one by a road that might not even lie in the world of Men and the other trying, the young fool, to follow him… all with the highest and best intentions, to be sure.

“Have you any sense at all from the ring?”

“None,” Crissand said miserably. “None at all. As if he’d vanished from the land.”

He laid a hand on his chest, where Tristen’s amulet rested, and it—it tingled, like something alive against his skin. For one blessed moment it seemed he did feel something of direction. It tingled. It burned.

And there was a commotion in the hall, an expostulation from the guards, and a loud and impatient voice that tugged hard at memory. The chamber door burst open, banged back, and of all things, a bearded old man in voluminous gray robes stalked into the audience hall and walked straight up the center of the room.

Emuin. Who had been dead for ten years. Cefwyn sat stock-still, watching this apparition of his old tutor, the master wizard who had been at his side through all the wars and the troubles.

He had snow on his cloak, snow in his hair and beard, and clenched a staff in a hand quite blue with cold. He stamped that staff three times on the pavings.

“Well,” he said. “Well! And in trouble again, are you?”

“Emuin?” Cefwyn asked, far from certain of what he saw. The place was given to haunts and apparitions, but of all of them, this one was welcome, more than welcome at the moment. And he was dripping water onto the pavings. “My son is in trouble.”

“Which son? You have two.”

“That I do. And both. Both are in trouble.”

“Not surprising, given their heritage.” Emuin leaned on his staff with both hands. “A long trek, a damned long trek, this. I am quite undone.”

“Bring a chair,” Cefwyn said, with a wave to the servants, who stood gawking.

“No time for sitting,” Emuin said, and turned and waved his arm and his staff aloft. “Get that damned woman out of my workshop, that for a beginning.”

His
tower. His place, before they had imprisoned Tarien Aswydd in it.

It was so exactly what Emuin would say.

“Not so easy,” Cefwyn said. “Not so easy a matter to dislodge her, my old friend. Tristen put her there.”

“Well, then where is
he
?”

“That’s very much in question,” Cefwyn said, and had his own inquiry to make in the general madness of the moment. “Where have you been, the last ten years, Master Grayrobe?”

“Where have I been?” Emuin repeated, blinking and looking a little confused for the moment. He looked about the hall, as if he might find an answer there, or somewhere about the cornices. “I suppose I’ve been busy,” he said, and swung about to look squarely at him. “Busy. Busy, until it became clear there was no peace to be had.” He stalked forward, to the disquiet of the guards, and flung the staff rattling onto the floor right at the dais steps. “I’ll have that chair. I’ll have it here right now, if you please.”

«
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i

SNOW

HAD

GIVEN

WAY

TO

NIGHTBOUND

MIST,

ALL-ENVELOPING MIST, SO THICK Elfwyn could not even see the ground under Feiny’s hooves. He had searched and called until he was hoarse, looking for Paisi, and now that it was this ghostly mist, he decided that Paisi, having better sense, and if he had lost him, would either wait for the fog to clear and track him by his trail through the snow, or he would have gone back to town, giving up altogether, and perhaps concluding that he wasn’t meant to go to Ynefel with him this time, either.

“Please,” he asked the gathering dark, in hope that he would cross Lord Tristen’s path. “I have something I must give you. Please find me. Please keep Paisi safe.”

The ring that he had hoped would inform him of Lord Tristen told him nothing. At this point, he only hoped he was headed aright, that Owl would come sweeping out of the fog and guide him… Owl had seen him safely both ways, and this time his journey was for Lord Tristen’s benefit, and for Paisi’s, none of his own, that he knew… because the very last person his mother would destroy would be him, if only because a fool might still be useful to her. He had no wish to be a fool, but he began to think he was not clever enough to do otherwise where his mother was concerned.

Speed, tonight—speed. As much as he could manage and keep Feiny from going down under him.

The wind picked up. He thought it might sweep away the fog and give him and Paisi a means to find each other, but the wind became a stinging gale and the fog was no less at all. It sighed, it moaned—

And then he thought he heard a voice within it, faint and far, something trying to get his attention.

It might be Tristen—but there was no reason for Tristen’s voice to be so soft, that he knew. He began to think it came from his left, then from his right and again, behind him, as if it sported like the wind, and mocked him, as he was sure Lord Tristen never would. It wanted his attention, and now he began to believe it was his mother. He reached a sheltered place, beside a tree-capped and cup-shaped ridge, and for the first time he could see the snow underfoot.

Now the one voice began to be many voices, and streaks appeared in the snow, deep gouges, one and four and six and more in the bank beside him, then underfoot, as the horse jumped forward as if something had touched him with a whip.

He patted Feiny’s neck with a gloved hand, trying to keep both of them from panic, and he began to wonder distractedly if he had heard Paisi hunting him, and mistaken his voice for a haunt. He grew so fearful that he kept Feiny still, still as he could, cold, now, so very cold.

Here, however, seemed safer than going on with the voices in the wind, and he turned the horse full about, walking a line, a circle, and doing it three times, and wishing his little Line to hold fast, such as it was.

Streaks ran across the snow as far as his Line, and stopped. Then he knew what he heard was no trick of the wind. He got down from the saddle and held the reins close under Feiny’s jaw, where he could get good leverage. He wished them safe, wishes such as Gran would make when they slept at night, and wished the same for Paisi, wherever he was.

Nothing was going right. He was exhausted, and wanted just to sit down, but he feared doing that—he saw the streaks scarring the snow all about his Line, like some ravening beast trying to get in, and he dared not relax a moment.

“Lord Tristen,” he whispered, carrying the ring to his lips. “Lord Tristen, help us.”

But it was as if, as the haunt battered the Line he had drawn, he himself grew wearier and wearier. Feiny, too, drooped, and his head sank, tail tucked for warmth. He opened his cloak and pressed it across the horse and his body against it, and stood there, growing more confused by the moment and no longer certain of the world beyond. He’d lost Gran, lost Paisi, lost everything—

Everything but one. For some reason he began to think of Aewyn with a vividness that overwhelmed the snow—there was one warm presence in the world, one point of warmth in all this storm. He began to believe there was, and that they could reach each other no matter the distance.

The laughter of children came down the wind. He blinked, his lashes frozen half-shut, and he saw a strange, sober little girl peering at him from among the rocks.

The girl faded suddenly, gasping in alarm, and the wind blew a blinding gust into his eyes, making him blink.

But his brother wanted him. That, above all things.

His brother needed him.

Knew everything he had done, and still loved him.

He thought about that, as his knees went, and pitched him down into the snow. He didn’t stay there. He found purchase on the rock, then on the horse’s stirrup, and levered himself back up.

“Aewyn!” he shouted against the wind. “Aewyn! Do you hear me?”

ii

AEWYN!” THE SHOUT CAME DOWN THE WIND, AND AEWYN

KEPT ON, KEPT ON, though the borrowed horse fought to turn and take them away from the blasts, and, riding bareback and with just a halter, he fought to keep the horse going. It might be the wind itself that made that sound. It might be a trick of his ears. In the blowing snow and the dark he had lost all referents. He had no notion at all where the town was, or where he was. He had been foolish—when was that a novelty?—and now he had lost himself so thoroughly in the dark that if he did turn back, he could only hope the honest Amefin horse could find his way home and let some horseboy know there was trouble. He had studied his map. He knew every detail of the land. He had had every confidence in his knowledge; but the dark and the snow took all that away from him, and there had been a fog, of all things, a fog with a blasting wind.

He had no recourse now but to go as near west as he could imagine, to keep on the horse’s back, and keep the horse moving, by little increments, until the dawn could warm them.

Then came that voice, not on the course he chose, but over to the right, and far away. And did he then take himself off what he thought was the right direction, and go aside for a ghost of a voice on the wind? He would be a fool.

“Aewyn!” it said, and he was all but certain he heard it.

There were haunts in these places. It was far from safe to listen to voices. But hadn’t his father said to him that his deafness to magic was a defense?

He turned the horse off toward that sound, and called out, “I’m here! Do you hear me?”

He didn’t know if he heard an answer. He thought he did. The blowing snow completely obscured what, by the horse’s lurching and stumbling, was rough ground, and he and the horse together could as likely drop off an edge into a snowbank without warning.

But a shadow appeared in the white, the shadow of a horse, and the shadow of a rock, and a strange border of snow, streaked and gashed as if a whole herd of cattle had tramped it. He was uncertain of that ground, but his horse headed for the shadow-one willingly enough, and having reached that horse, Aewyn slid down beside an object mostly plastered over with snow. It was a body. It was a smallish body. He tugged and heaved, and saw it was his brother.

“Get up,” he cried, hoarse from his shouting. “Get up, damn it!”

His brother flung his arms about him and struggled to get up, holding to him as if he were a rock or a tree, and managed to stand.

The horses on either side of them cut off the wind, blessed relief, but his brother seemed to drink the warmth away from him; Aewyn began to shiver, and tried to get his brother to his horse, and held the stirrup, but his brother had no strength to hold on and help himself.

“Damn,” he said, shaking at him. “Otter, you have to. You have to, is all. Hold on to the cursed saddle.”

“I lost Paisi.”

“Paisi’s safe. He’s with our father. Just get up!”

His brother took a grip and tried to lift himself by the saddle straps, and the horse stood still, at least. Aewyn bent and shoved and lifted from below for all he was worth, and Otter hauled himself the last bit into the saddle, belly-down and exhausted.

Aewyn got to the other side of the horse and hauled at his arm, then his knee to pull him across, while Otter struggled to help.

Aewyn pulled hard, despite the horse starting off, and between his efforts and Otter’s, the leg came across, stiff and cold as it was, while the beast tried to turn a circle.

“Father’s waiting for you,” he shouted at Otter, to make him hear, and hanging on to the bridle to stop the animal. “We came all the way here to find you. You have to stay on the horse! I’ll guide us! I can find our way!”

He feared Otter would fall off at the first jolt. He was that weak.

But he took Otter’s reins, and got on his own horse, who, in the company of another horse, had not wandered off, and began to lead them back toward what his sense of direction told him would be the highroad.

After a time of riding, he was no longer sure where that was, and he had not found the landmark of a market road he thought he would find. He was fiercely proud of his skill with maps, and he was utterly confounded. Luck had brought him to his brother, luck that had nothing to do with his skill; he had—the priests would never approve—hoped for that kind of luck, on his mother’s side of his heritage, and gotten it, or at least he had linked up with his brother’s own sort of luck. If they weren’t guiding themselves, now, then happenstance was, and happenstance, where magic was concerned—so his father had always told him—had a mind and an intent of its own. Sometimes— his father had told him—its intent was not quite what one would like.