Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles
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Authors: Fortress of Eagles
FORTRESS OF
EAGLES
C.J. CHERRYH
the second Fortress book
Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles
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Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles
Contents
Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles
PRELUDE
Ages ago, before the time of Men, a place named Galasien grew to
rule as far and wide as any records tell. Mauryl Gestaurien came
from that time and that place. So did Hasufin Heltain, who may
have been a prince of Galasien. Assuredly he was a wizard, as was
Mauryl. Hasufin attempted a kind of magic that defied law and time
and death, and would have ruled with absolute power, if not for
Mauryl, who opposed him, and who at last visited the lands far to
the north, whence he brought back five strangers to aid him. These
were the Sihhë-lords, who wielded not wizardry but magic. In the
struggle that followed, Hasufin fell, and with him fell Galasien, the
citadel of which became the fortress known to the next age as Ynefel.
The five lords and their halfling offspring comprised a dynasty
whose fortress was Ynefel and whose peaceful unwalled capital was
Althalen. They conquered the lands of Men, had Men living freely
among them, and for a golden age lasting centuries they built and
learned and brought comforts and prosperity to the land.
But as Sihhë blood was running thin and a halfling, Elfwyn, sat the
throne in Althalen, a prince was born, and died, and lived again, a
circumstance which alarmed the wizards, the more so when other
princes died one by one. By that means Hasufin crept back into
influence among the living, bidding fair to succeed gentle Elfwyn
Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles
and reestablish the dynasty of lost Galasien.
Mauryl led a conspiracy of wizards to prevent that succession, and
had for an ally a lord of Men, namely Elfwyn’s chief general,
Selwyn Marhanen, who seized power, burned the capital and killed
every last bearer of royal Sihhë blood he could find.
But some of the bloodline survived in the peasantry of Amefel, and
in a few of the lineage who dwelt across the river Lenúalim in the
district of Elwynor. Elwynor refused to join the rebellion, and loyal
Men there established the Regency, believing some claimant to the
throne would arise to defeat the Marhanen lord.
It was not an unwarrantable hope in those days, for indeed every
duke in the realm of Men on the other side of the river attempted to
seize power. Only Selwyn proved more ruthless than any of his
rivals, and established the Marhanen dynasty in Guelessar. From
that time on the name of the kingdom was Ylesuin, and it ruled from
Amefel eastward and north and south. Selwyn’s son Inéreddrin
succeeded him; Uleman Syrillas continually reigned as Regent in
Elwynor, and the old capital of Althalen became a place of ruins
within Ylesuin’s backward province of Amefel, a province despised
for its unorthodoxy, given to know far more of witchery and
wizardry than the dominant sect of Ylesuin, the godly Quinalt, liked.
Mauryl, however, had no part in the wars of Men. Kingmaker, they
called him; but he would not settle the quarrels of Men, ally himself
to either side of the dispute, or set aside either Uleman’s claims or
Selwyn’s to a united kingdom. Elwynor chose Ilefínian as its
capital; Ylesuin chose Guelemara, heart of Guelessar, as the seat of
the Marhanen kings, and Mauryl retreated to the shattered citadel
Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles
of Ynefel to brood or study or do whatever a wizard did who had
survived age after age of the world. Selwyn had appointed him
Warden of Ynefel, and no one knew what Mauryl did, but one
supposed that the world of Men was safer because ungodly Mauryl
sat in his tower and kept away whatever ill might come from that
place.
But Mauryl was not immortal, despite the rumors. The years sat
heavily on him. His studies took their toll. And his enemy, Hasufin
Heltain, was not quite banished. On a certain night in a certain
spring in the reign of Inéreddrin Marhanen, beset by Hasufin’s
threat and working with the last of his strength, Mauryl Gestaurien
worked what he knew would be his last great spell, a Summoning, to
be precise, and a Shaping.
Perhaps he flinched, perhaps he doubted his intention. He had
expected something rather more formidable than what he found
before him. The result was a gray-eyed youth: Tristen, who arrived
without the least understanding even how to protect himself… a
young man far from any understanding of wizardry.
The youth’s understanding of Mauryl, however, grew apace, and by
late spring Tristen clambered about the old fortress at Ynefel with a
childish curiosity about all the world, taming the pigeons of the loft,
even exploring the walled-off end where Owl held sway. Ynefel was
a curious place, and faces appeared in its walls, faces that on
certain nights and in certain light seemed to take on life and move.
But Tristen seldom saw them at it. Every night he took the potion
Mauryl gave, every night slept soundly… every night except one.
And on that night Tristen began to understand there was danger in
Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles
the world. On that night, perhaps, only perhaps, Hasufin found a
chink in the wall that otherwise was warded.
On a day not too long after, Hasufin advantaged himself of that
opening. Mauryl fell at last… himself immured in the dreadful
walls. And on that day Tristen found himself bereft of everything,
left alone to face a world he had never seen or imagined.
He set out on the Road through Marna Wood, guided by Owl, in
possession of a silver mirror and a book he could not read, not
knowing where he was going, but that Mauryl had said someday he
would walk that Road.
He came to the town of Henas’amef, principal city of Amefel, and
into the hands of Prince Cefwyn, viceroy of that uneasy province.
Cefwyn was heir to the Marhanen throne, and through Cefwyn
Tristen came to the tutelage of Emuin, once Mauryl’s student
himself.
But in short order Tristen so frightened Emuin that the old man fled
the court, seeking sanctuary elsewhere—for Emuin realized what
Mauryl had done and set into his hands. “Win his love,” was
Emuin’s parting advice to Cefwyn, and Cefwyn, bored, isolate amid
Amefel’s rustic lords, now realized he had a somewhat dangerous
guest… and attempted to entertain the strange young man.
Therein a prince who had no friends discovered one… and saved
his own life, for Hasufin Heltain, the ancient spirit that had
destroyed Ynefel and Mauryl, had failed to overcome Tristen, and
had come whispering to any ally he might find to bring him back to
power… the enemies of the lord of the Elwynim, and also the lord of
Amefel, Cefwyn’s host, Lord Heryn Aswydd, who himself had Sihhë
Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles
blood.
Cefwyn might have died in ambush. But Tristen, finding a horse
under him and a sword in his hand, discovered gifts he did not know
he possessed… and Cefwyn began to be sure that what Mauryl had
Summoned was, in his captain’s parlance, no lad from lost Elfwyn’s
scullery, no halfling, even, but one of the vanished Sihhë-lords,
perhaps Barrakkêth himself, the first, and the most feared.
Meanwhile the plot Hasufin engendered reached to the king… who
fell to ambush. Cefwyn, crowned, challenged the traitor, Lord
Heryn. But not only the Marhanen king had perished. As Uleman of
Elwynor was old and weak, disputations regarding that succession
had arisen, and Uleman was hounded to his death by rebels
pursuing him even into Cefwyn’s kingdom.
At the Regent’s death, Cefwyn met Ninévrisë, the new Lady Regent,
face-to-face… and knew he had met his bride.
But Orien, Lord Heryn’s sister, was not disposed to forgive her
brother’s death or to cede Cefwyn to a foreigner; and Hasufin had
now a sorcerous and angry woman to do his work. Cefwyn’s
brother also opposed a foreign bride. And the Elwynim Lord who
had hoped to claim Uleman’s daughter and the kingdom was open
to persuasion… and to sorcery.
Orien’s attempt on Cefwyn’s life failed. And to set Ninévrisë on her
father’s throne and to marry his way to a unified Ylesuin, Cefwyn
summoned all the lords of the south to war, to prevent the intrusion
of Elwynim rebels into Amefel… and win his bride her throne. But
he faced more than the rebel leader: he faced a shadow building
Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles
and building along that frontier, one Tristen understood, and knew
for a greater threat than Cefwyn could possibly understand. Cefwyn
was moving exactly where that shadow wished him to move, and
Tristen had no choice but to take up arms as the army of the south
of Ylesuin marched to Lewenbrook. Wizardry had allied itself with
those rebels, wizardry which had brought down one Marhanen king,
Cefwyn’s father, and now bid fair to set its own pawn on the throne
of a new kingdom.
Tristen, however, found within the book the mastery of magic, his
own heritage, which had eluded him. He rode to war as lord of
Althalen and Ynefel, under a banner counted anathema by the holy
Quinalt, but cheered by the Amefin commons. At the last he and his
man Uwen Lewen’s-son rode against the Shadow that had loomed
over Marna Wood in an hour when men were falling left and right
to a power no sword could fight.
But Tristen rode with a sword graven with magical words of
Truth
and
Illusion
, cleaving one from the other, and wielded that weapon
against the Shadow of shadows. He found himself at Ynefel, then
hurled into shadow, lost to Men forever…
Except that fearing that his power might grow too great and
overwhelm him, and draw him out of the world of Men, he had
given his shieldman, Uwen Lewen’s-son, power over him. He made
a common soldier his judge, whether to call him back or to let him
vanish from the world as too great and too dark a danger.
And Vwen called him.
Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles
BOOK ONE
Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles
CHAPTER 1
The path, slanting up through young forest to gray rock and old trees, became a hollow, leaf-filled track at its end. When Tristen reined in and stepped down from the saddle, ankle-deep in autumn, the silence on that hill was so great he could hear the individual fall of leaves as soft, distinct impacts… until Petelly tugged at the rein, impatient of good behavior, and leaves cracked and rustled under his massive feet.
Guelessar’s forested hilltops had shown bright red and sunny gold above the fields not a fortnight ago. They had cast off much of that color in the wild winds of recent days, the result of which had piled up in ditches and against fences all along the roads. The trees on this height stood all but bare, more exposed to the winds than those lower down the trail, and Tristen scuffed through ridges of brown and gold as he led Petelly along.
He had ridden out for pleasure on this late-autumn day in this first year of his life and this first year of king Cefwyn’s reign. He had come into the world as a wizard’s Summoning in the soft, whispering green of spring, and he had discovered the world of Men in a summer of full-voiced leaves. He had come to his present maturity by his first autumn, with his duty to the wizard Mauryl all done, and with Mauryl immured in the ruins of Ynefel. He was, Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles amid dreadful battles, sworn to a king who called him his dearest friend and declared him Lord Warden of Ynefel and Lord Marshal of Althalen to honor him—but the lands the king had granted him held no inhabitants, only shadows more or less quiescent and benign. He was lord of mice and owls, as His Majesty’s captain was wont to say.