Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles (7 page)

But accepting a bride of Elwynim blood for the grandson without quite reclaiming that lost territory was pressing matters to the limit.

The compact between the Marhanen kings and the Quinaltine was stretched thinner than at any time in Ylesuin’s brief history.

And pigeons now shat upon the Quinalt’s porch, by petty sorcery, Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles gods save the day.

He had for a little while avoided being in public with his old friends. See, he would say to the Guelenfolk, who were the heart of Ylesuin, nothing has changed. The gods favor the king and the Quinalt, and there will be peace with Elwynor…

After a small war.

There will be piety and fear of the gods…

But remembering the enemy’s wizardry, why, we do have wizards.

Be assured they are quiet ones. Pray excuse the pigeons. Ignore the slight grayness of master Emuin. Ignore the very conspicuous darkness of the banner of the Lord Marshal of Althalen, alike the new Warden of Ynefel, resurrected from anathema and death itself… I had never planned to love him like a brother.

Worst of all—there
was
a claimant for the throne of Elwynor that he both believed and feared
was
the fulfillment of the prophecy—he knew, and Emuin and Idrys knew, and Ninévrisë herself knew, but he was far from sure Tristen knew.

And he could think of few things that would make Tristen more miserable.

It was almost time. He walked the long corridor from his private office toward the state halls, a vast, well-lighted corridor of fine tall windows with the royal Dragon blazing gold on red, Marhanen heraldry all but dimmed now as sunset shone like fire in the two clear panes to either side.

He saw commotion at the doors ahead. Arrivals had begun. Efanor, he discovered, had come in early, but not too early, and Cefwyn met Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles his brother with a warm embrace, a genuine embrace—though the ornate and overlarge Quinalt medallion Efanor affected turned between them as they met and stabbed painfully through the velvet.

Efanor flattened it to him and renewed the embrace, laughing.

“Did the books come, the two from the south?” Efanor asked.

“Have they come? I’ve not seen them, gods, when shall I have the leisure for books again? Annas!” he hailed his chamberlain, who passed down the hall at a fair clip, shepherding servants and pages who should not be in the receiving hall, gods alone knew why the young fools had chosen that traverse precisely as guests arrived.

“Annas, where are these books my brother sent?”

“In the library, my lord king.” This on the retreat, pages scattering.

“In the
library
. Why the library, for the gods’ sake?” He was promised a first text of the natural philosopher Manystys Aldun, observations of the ocean he had never seen. Efanor had recovered his summer baggage out of now-disgraced Llymaryn, and with it, his forgotten birthday gift, arriving in a pack train which must finally have reached the capital. Cefwyn had waited for it for months… was eager to read the text… when he might find the time.

Being king, he had not his books in his room— but in some damned great room full of books where he could find nothing.

But then Emuin arrived, far from the dire condition Idrys’ report had led him to believe… looking a little like an owl roused by daylight, true, and a little windblown, but properly scrubbed and tidy. His beard, whiter this fall than its previous streaked gray, was well combed. He wore gray, always gray, and bore the Teranthine sigil conspicuous on his chest. It was a war of medallions tonight.

Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles

“Well, well, and welcome,” Cefwyn said, feeling thin arms beneath the robes as they embraced. “They led me to think you had dismissed your servants, master grayrobe.”

“I have! Pottering about, moving my stacks, oversetting my inkpot… if I want ink spilled on my charts, I can do it myself.”

“I can find you other servants.”

“And spying. Spying!” This with a knit-browed glance at Idrys, who stood to the side, loquacious as statuary.

“Idrys means you nothing but well, old master,” Cefwyn said.

“And gives you his report of my reports. If you wish the state of the stars, ask
me
.”

“I shall,” Cefwyn said, suppressing a smile.
Your Majesty
was almost unheard out of Emuin’s mouth. In the old man’s mind, he suspected, he was still the tow-headed royal urchin, leaning inconsiderate inky elbows on precious books.

But for Efanor, also Emuin’s pupil in former days, there had been nothing from master Emuin but a polite nod of his head, a solemn, formal, and entirely correct: “Your Highness.” Did that sting, oh, far more than any omission of royal honors? Cefwyn did not guess.

He worried about it.

But meanwhile Cevulirn of Ivanor had arrived hard on Emuin’s heels and slipped in silently, leaving his guard outside, men of the White Horse. Cevulirn was tall, thin, all gray and white in his colors, a man who might fade into mist and fog. He was not that imposing until one looked him in the eyes or saw him with horses or on the battlefield, and Cefwyn had seen all three. Cevulirn was the Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles one of all the southern barons he was most supremely glad to have linger in the court—speaking of spies, which Cevulirn assuredly was, ready to bring the southern barons immediately back to court if the northern ones beset the king with undue demands for favors for their personal causes.

And that well suited the king, who did not want to meet those northern demands and who looked to the south, the alliance he had once forged desperately against Elwynor, to support him most strongly in his determination to gain his Elwynim bride.

“My friend,” Cefwyn hailed him, and for two entire breaths had time to ask Cevulirn the state of his affairs, but not to hear the answer, before Ninévrisë herself arrived.

He had not taken account that he had neglected to invite any other woman. The court, which remarked every nuance of what the king did and did not, would surely remark that particular indiscretion, plucking it out of the overheated air in the kitchens if they lacked spies among his servants.

But he and his companions of this hall had made a warlike council in Amefel both before and after Lewenbrook. The politicking around the ladies’ court in Guelemara might be thick as bees around a hive, and the bees might buzz about Ninévrisë’s future status, and the proprieties of a good Guelen lady, and, gods witness, whether her simple bodice and single-petticoated skirt was a fashion to be copied or a scandal to be deplored. But the ladies of the bower never quite acknowledged the one truth most entirely unwelcome to their imaginations: that Her Grace was a head of state, not some ducal daughter to be judged by them; and that Her Grace would Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles have been attended to this hour, not by ladies, but by four good men, lords of Elwynor, had they not fallen in her defense in an act of memorable courage. Her Grace the Regent of Elwynor had led men of twice her years under arms and been obeyed in the field and in the council chamber; but alas, alas for the gossip, on this side of the river she did not entrain family influences which might define her status with the women of this court or their ambitious priests of the Quinalt… how else could they know her worth? And, gods! her petticoats were insufficient.

Her Grace the heretic arrived with only the four of the king’s guards assigned to her, to sit in the intimate, doubtless drunken company of half a score men at their leisure, including a king ill reputed as a prince… oh, depend on it: the gossip would fly by morning. Here they were, if a wizard-priest, the captain of the King’s Guard, the king’s pious brother, and the silent lord of Ivanor could possibly be counted raffish and daring… why, Cevulirn was a southerner, after all, and not a good Quinaltine, but Teranthine like master Emuin, if Cevulirn ever chose to make any philosophy evident.

Clatter, clatter, clatter of women’s gossip, and be damned to them and their suppositions. The king did as he pleased tonight and needed those he gathered close to him. His heart needed them.

It wanted only the Lord Warden of Ynefel’s haunted precinct to complete the evening, and Tristen was, not uncommonly, late.

Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles
CHAPTER 4

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Cefwyn had said there was no need of formality. As we did in the first days, the message had said, but they had gotten in from their ride just at sunset, and had to wash, and dress in clothes fit for the king’s supper table.

Tristen wore dark brown and Uwen wore green, no badges at all of Ynefel’s dark repute (which he escaped whenever he could) and this time no weight of mail or defense of weapons. The guards—there were always at least four at the king’s private chambers, besides the score up and down the hall outside—knew them and let them in without their having to say a word.

“The lord of Ynefel and Althalen,” the guard informed a hurrying page, and the page bowed and led them quickly down the reception hall to the smaller banquet hall—past Annas, hurrying about as usual, then past Idrys, who was never far from the king. Idrys had a seemingly lazy attention for them, as sharp-edged as ever—Idrys missed nothing at all, and seemed uncommonly amused.

The page showed them into the hall. Gratefully, it was not to be one of those state affairs, with tables reaching from the front of the hall to the back, in double rows, a din of voices and lute players in which no one could hear what happened a table away: those affairs could never be arranged in a single day. The invitation tonight had Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles been a surprise, and set in the Blue Hall, which was actually mostly gilt, with only touches of blue in the ceiling. Tristen had been here once before, just after the oath-taking, in what Cefwyn called the coziest hall in the king’s apartments.

There was Emuin looking scrubbed and like his old self; and Ninévrisë was talking freely with Efanor, who was smiling, tonight, and without the doleful priest who often came with him. Even the pages were those who had attended Cefwyn in Amefel and whom he had kept in service, though other lords had besieged the throne with offers of eligible sons and nephews.

Best of all, Cefwyn came and clapped him on the shoulder, bidding him welcome; and for a few distracted moments Cefwyn talked to him about the weather and the wedding and the harvest.

“I hear the barley is exceptional,” Tristen said, and Cefwyn gave him a wondering look.

“Uwen told me today,” he confessed, and Cefwyn laughed.

“It is a fine harvest,” Cefwyn said. “Come, come, are you too warm with that cloak? Boy! —Gods, they’ve heated the hall like a forge.”

Tristen surrendered his cloak. Uwen had deserted him for the outer hall and would have his supper there, Tristen was sure, where Uwen would be far more comfortable with the Ivanim guard, and with Idrys’ lieutenant, than among lords.

Meanwhile it was impossible to follow anything Cefwyn said; Tristen’s thoughts flew entirely asunder. He had come in from riding all unsuspecting. He had taken to eavesdropping on his own guards for the sheer comfort of voices and here he was, snatched Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles into a gathering of all his own old friends. He felt his heart more than fill; he felt it loosen from its habitually guarded state, and he looked about him in sheer dangerous delight… aware of Ninévrisë as he was of Emuin.

He saw Emuin’s frown from across the room.

He ducked his head then and made his presence in this world and in the gray space instantly smaller and quieter.

But damp the happiness, no, it could not, and Ninévrisë crossed the room to meet him and take his hands.

“Tristen,” she said with great warmth.

“My lady Regent.”

“You look very well,” she said. He tried not to reach into the gray space. They could speak with no word spoken—alone of everyone but Emuin she could reach there, as her father had been able to do; but only scarcely, a wisp of a presence at the strongest: she was no wizard. She only had the heritage, and had consciously abandoned it.

“Here we all are,” Cefwyn was saying just then, summoning all of them to table. “Come, come, everyone, no standing on ceremony tonight. By royal decree among the lot of us, I make today a start on harvesttide, no great echoing halls and long speeches, no worries, not a care. So be at your ease, all my good friends, my dear soon-to-be-bride—sit by me. Emuin is a priest—he will keep the proprieties.”

“No priest,” Emuin said. “I am most carefully not a priest.”

“Close enough for propriety in this company: a cleric, a man of years and dignity. My lady to my left, Efanor to my right hand—

Cherryh, C J - Fortress 02- Fortress of Eagles Cevulirn, next Efanor, Tristen, opposite, then my good master crow.

Gods, what joy to see you.“

They talked a moment. Efanor delivered a very long supper prayer, and after serving and conversations began again, Cefwyn talking of horses, of the weather, the prospects for the winter… and the spring, Idrys reminded them.

“No,” Cefwyn said, then, “no, not a word on that matter. I did not bring you here for any council of war, only for the pleasure of seeing you. Friends, look you, a gathering of friends. That is all my pleasure tonight.”

“My lord king,” said Cevulirn, and Emuin lifted his cup.

“Friends,” Cefwyn said again, “with whom I can say with particular significance that this has been both a bitter year and a good year.”

“Aye to that,” Idrys said.

“A year of ending and beginning, a year of loss and finding… and all of you were with me through the storm. I drink your health, your wealth, your fortune for long years to come, and I hope for many more days in which we can gather like this.”

Cefwyn drank. Then Efanor got up from his chair. “Gods rest our father,” Efanor said then, lifting his cup, “and gods rest them all who died, and gods save the king and the Holy Father.”

Everyone drank to that, too, though Cefwyn did not seem entirely pleased. It was like Efanor to bring the gods and the dead into everything, and he was not quite sure Efanor should in all propriety have paired the Patriarch with the king.