Fortress in the Eye of Time (54 page)

Fool, a small voice was saying to him, and urging that in some way he might have managed this province more wisely—that, if he had, his father might then not have died, though gods knew his father had not done wisely, either.

“We should have men up there and break those stoneworks down,” was Efanor's conclusion, and Cefwyn did not agree, on several accounts; but he said only, “That is certainly one thing we might do,” to avoid starting a public argument with Efanor before the wounds of the last unfortunately well-witnessed dispute had healed, and before his own thoughts were in order. Wine was involved. One could obtain consent of the lords on a matter not requiring debate under such conditions. He did not want to discuss this news until there were clear heads and straighter thinking.

But perhaps he should not even have hinted of contrary thoughts. Efanor went glum and stared at him, and spoke quietly with the priest. Clearly Efanor's pride was still getting before his reason—one certainly saw who stood high in Efanor's personal council, and it truly threatened to annoy him.

Cefwyn let the page refill his cup again, and ordered Sovrag's two scouts set at table and served with the rest: it had been a far trip for two exhausted travelers, and plague take the skittish Amefin diners lowermost at the tables, who were far enough in their cups to be fearful of piracy—at the tables, did they think? Two weary rivermen were going to make off with the Aswydds' gold dinner-plates?

They served enough ale and wine to make the company merry—except Efanor and his priest. The Olmern scouts fell asleep not quite in the gravy, and Sovrag sent men to carry the lads away, while the lordly Imorim were discussing gods-knew-what with Sulriggan. Cefwyn had yet one more cup,
and vowed to himself he would go to bed forthwith, on half of it. Efanor was withdrawing, with his priest, doubtless to godly and sober contemplation.

But on a peal of thunder Idrys, who had been at the doors, came down the narrow aisle between the chairs and the wall, and bent beside Cefwyn's chair to say, in the quietest voice that would carry:

“Master grayfrock's at the gates, m'lord. It's a storm wind tonight, blowing in all manner of wrack and flotsam.”

“Would it had blown Tristen in with him,” he muttered in ill humor. He had drunk rather too much since the scouts had come in. He was not in a mood, in this collapse of things he had hoped were safe, to face his old tutor, the arbiter of his greener judgment, the rescuer of his less well-thought adventures—and to inform Emuin that, no, he had not outstandingly succeeded in his charge to keep Tristen out of difficulty.

But Emuin had been conspicuously absent in his advice as well as his presence, and had fled for clerkly shelter when he remotely comprehended the potential for hazard in the visitor Emuin counseled him keep—and love.

So he swore under his breath, and arose as he had already intended, to take his leave. There was a clap of thunder. Men looked for omen in such things. “Give you good night and good rest, gentlemen. It sounds as if heavy weather has moved in. A good night to be in a warm hall with friends. Drink at your pleasure and respect my guards
and
the premises, sirs. I shall hope for clear heads by midday, and good counsel. Good night, good night.”

Cevulirn rose to excuse himself as well, early and sober, though his lieutenant would remain; Sovrag and his lieutenants would tax the staff's good humor, and Umanon and Pelumer were drinking in quiet consultation on the far side of the room with glances in Sovrag's direction, while Sulriggan and his man were likewise departing. They gathered themselves to order and rose and bowed, on their way to the door.

The King cared little. The King had his old tutor to deal with, and withdrew to a private door that led to a hall that
led again to the main corridor, in the convolute way of this largest of the Zeide's halls of state. Idrys followed him; so did his guard—not to the stairway which led to his apartments, where he would have received most visitors, but down the corridor to the outer west doors, which, before they reached them, opened to the night and the rain, and a gray-frocked trio of rain-drenched religious.

One of them was Emuin, white beard and hair pouring water onto his shoulders, cloak sodden, standing like a common mendicant.

“M'lord,” Emuin said, and to the doubtful servants, who arrived from their stations, began giving orders. “Find somewhere for the good brothers. Take them to the kitchen. Feed them. They're famished.”

“High time you came,” Cefwyn said, in the rumble of thunder aloft. Idrys said nothing at all.

“High time,” Emuin echoed him, wiping dripping hair out of his eyes, and followed as Idrys led the way to the secluded passage. “I came,” Emuin said, “as fast as old bones could bear, m'lord.”

“Since which of my messages?” He was temperous and felt the wine impede his speech. Emuin had not yet acknowledged him as King: he did not miss that small point.

“With all speed, my lord. As it was I came without escort.”

“Tristen
left
without escort. He took to the road. He eluded all my guards. He's gone toward the west.”

“The lad's doing what he sees fit,” Emuin said. “The lad is in deep and dangerous trouble. I could not prevent it, either.”

“Did I call you here only to hear that, master grayfrock? We need more advice!”

“I gave my advice,” Emuin said. “Did anyone regard it? Did he? I am not an oracle, young King. I never was.”

Young King. There was, finally, the acknowledgment. With the
young
, setting them again in the old relationship: it vastly nettled him.

“And what shall we do now?” Idrys asked. “Is there advice, sir—or only lamentation?”

“Advice,” Emuin said. “Advice. Everyone wants it once the string is loosed, not when the bow is bent. Advice I have, m'lord, advice for him if I can lay hands on him, gods send they find him before matters grow desperate.”

“What, they? Who should find him?” Cefwyn asked, and Emuin:

“The men you sent. Who else? Who else should be looking for Mauryl's handiwork—besides an enemy he cannot deal with and men too desperate for better sense? The Regent is dead, m'lord King, and our Shaping is standing at this hour amid more than he knows how to cipher, by all I can determine.”

“How, determine?”

“By slipping about the edges of the matter, by means I do not want to discuss and you, my lord King, do not want to know. Ask me again for
advice
, by the gods' good grace. No one yet has heeded the advice I have given, but I give it nonetheless—Mauryl's spell is still Summoning, still working, and gods know what more it may do.
I
cannot rule him.”

“You came all the way here to tell me that?”

“Find him for me. Bring him here.
Then
I have hope to reason with him. But he is not what I first thought. He is—”

“What, master grayfrock? He is Sihhë? We have no doubt of that! That he is the King-to-Come of the Elwynim? We know it.”

“More than that, m'lord King.” Emuin's face was rain-chilled and pale. Perhaps it was only that. But the man seemed to have aged a dozen years in the time he had been gone. His mouth trembled. When had it ever done that? “I fear what else he is. So should we all—fear—what he is.”

 

Men went into the tent, and Tristen watched their shadows on the canvas walls. He saw the lady's shadow, as she sat in a chair, and bowed her face momentarily into her hands before she sat back and dealt with the men who came to speak with her. He was sorry to eavesdrop on such a private moment;
but all who came and went became shadows against that wall, as the night had been full of Shadows, and was still full of them: the movements of men through the camp; the play of light and dark against the canvas; and, always, the prowling of the greater, more ominous Shadows beyond their encampment, of which he was constantly aware. So far, these had stayed at bay, perhaps weary from the struggle that had ended in the Regent's death, perhaps satisfied, or perhaps restricted from entering this place by the Lines that still, though glowing more and more faintly, defined the walls—he was not certain. He knew far less than he ought of the gray realm and things that had effect there—he chased his surmises, seeking them to unfold like a Word, but they eluded him. Hasufin had said he himself was buried here—curious thought, and yet, in the way of Words, he would have thought if that was so, he should at least be able to find that place—as
his
place. But perhaps he did not understand such things. Perhaps something very terrible would befall him if he did find it.

Yet through such a connection Hasufin claimed Althalen and through such a connection the old man intended to contest him for possession of it. So there
was
ownership he should have if that were the case and if he knew what to do. And had he not fought the Shadows? Had he not done well at that?

—
Emuin
, he said, wishing to be both there and here.
Emuin, I have found someone you should have known. Perhaps you did know him. I need you. I need to know things
.

But he found no echo of Emuin, either, only a small furtive presence in the grayness, a presence that deliberately eluded him
.

And quite suddenly he met those ill-meaning Shadows that circled and circled the perimeter of the walls, like birds looking for a place to light. He retreated. He held his Place and tried to ignore them in theirs.

Silhouettes against the light within the tent, men filed out again, silent and grieving Men. He could see in the play of
shadows against that canvas wall how each man bowed and took the hand of the old man's daughter, who sat beside the light, and that they then passed into a confusion of images where the old man lay. This momentary distinction and subsequent confusion was very much what he had met in the gray realm, and he feared unwitting connection, one with the other: he feared resolution of images here and in the gray place, that might carry something of danger.

Men outside the spider-tent gathered in small sad knots, angers subdued in uncertainty as cloud rolled in above the brush and the ruins, taking even the starlight. The night had turned cold. His cloak was in the tent. He worked chilled hands, and could not feel his own fingers; but the velvet-covered mail pressing the damp padding and shirt against his body were some protection, so long as the wind stayed still. He was as weary as if he had walked all the distance he had traveled in the gray space, and as if he had grappled with substance, not Shadow.

He did not know what to do, except to wait. And that had its own dangers.

Then, the cap on all their discomfort, a cold mist began to fall. Men shifted off the stones in the midst of camp and clustered by a taller section of the ruined wall, looking at him or toward the tent and talking together in words he could not quite hear. They had come ill-prepared for anyone's comfort but the old man's, he thought. There should have been more tents. He had the feeling, he knew not where he had gotten it—perhaps from the old man—that they had been encamped here for some time, and he wondered what had already befallen them, whether they had been escaping something as he had, in his own lack of preparation; he wondered how they had lived, and thought that Emwy village might have helped them with some things—but Emwy was burned, now.

Things had surely changed for the worse for them with that. He wondered whether the men who attacked the King had known they were here, or what it had meant to them; and he wondered whether the men Idrys had out had simply
missed this place, being afraid of it as men were, or whether the Regent, himself a wizard, had sent searchers astray.

But there were no answers in chance things he overheard, only curses of the weather and from a few, talk of whether they might go home now.

No, one said shortly. It seemed they might die. Or something dire would happen.

At last two men came to say the lady had sent for him. He rose from his place on the wall and went with them, trailed by a draggle of unhappy and suspicious men as far as the door.

He ducked his head and went inside, where the lady sat. Ninévrisë wore a coat of mail which compressed her slender shape. She wore the Regent's crown, at least he supposed it was the same thin band holding her dark cloud of hair. Armed men stood beside her, among them, Lord Tasien.

At the other side of the tent, beyond a wall, the old man lay still and pale, with lamps at his head and his feet.

“They say you killed my father,” Ninévrisë said. “They say you bewitched him.”

“No, lady, no such thing. I tried to help him.”

“Why?
Why
should you help him?”

“He seemed kind,” he said, in all honesty, but it seemed not at all the answer that Ninévrisë had expected. Overcome, she clenched her fist and rested her mouth against it, her elbow on the chair arm and her face averted, while tears spilled down her face.

“I believe nothing that the Guelen prince sent,” said the man beside Tasien. “We should go back across the river tomorrow and seek a peace with the rebels as best we can.”

“I shall
die
before I go to Aséyneddin.” Ninévrisë brought her arm down hard against the chair and hardened her face, tear-damp as it was, as she looked back to Tristen. “You, sir! Are you another prospective bridegroom? Why should my father listen to you? Why, except that
lie
the Marhanen bade you wear, should my father hail you King? The Sihhë arms, wrapped in a Marhanen cloak? Give me grace, the gods did
not make me so gullible! Someone knows where our camp is. Someone told you.”

“The cloak is Cefwyn's, my lady. I was cold. He lent it to me, that's all.”

“Lent it to you. And sent you to my father? The Tower and Star are outlawed, sir,
by
the Marhanen. And how dare you?”