fortress of dragons.html (36 page)

In that moment violence lanced between the fortress and the heavens, and Emuin's will deflected it. Thunder boomed and shook the very stones, and men cried aloud in fright.

"We're inside," Uwen said, "an' Ts Grace is watchin' out for us, so the lightnin's ain't to fear. An' if he don't want that babe born tonight, 'e won't be."

Crack! went the thunder above them, and Emuin flung out an angry wish to the heavens, chiding the storm… and Orien Aswydd.

So Tristen did, and stood fast while three more sharp cracks pealed and boomed through the stones. The very air seemed charged, and the smell of thunderstorms and wet stone permeated the apartment, as if a window were open.

A woman's voice cried out in agony, and that pain went through the fortress of dragons.html

gray space.

—
Bring him into the world
! Orien cried, defying him as the lightning whited the windows. Do nothing they wish!

Lightning flared beyond the window, such as he had never seen, whitening everything in the room, and blinding him, deafening him with the crack of thunder.

The blindness lingered a moment in the gray space, and in the world of Men. His sight cleared slowly on Uwen and the frightened staff, sight shot through with drifting fire. And the wards were under assault, from within and from without.

"I'll go to her," he said, and forgot, as once on the parapets of Ynefel, that he had left his clothing. It was his servants and Uwen who pressed that necessity on him, and dressed him in haste, a few moments' delay while he shivered in the cold, as his sight within the world and within the gray space slowly returned, and all the while the wards rang and echoed to the assault. Emuin held it. He did. He was aware of Cevulirn and Crissand, both dim and far and confused about the source, both in danger.

—
Silence
! he bade them harshly.
Be still! Hold the wards
!

In that, their efforts aided him. The ringing grew more distant. Tarien grew quiet, but he was aware of Orien prowling the wards of a physical room, her room, Cefwyn's room, the room where the babe had begun its life. She attempted the window, and opened it, bringing in a gust of rain-laden air. It did not breach their protection: he would not permit it, and, dressed at least to his servants' insistence, he left his apartment, went down the hall and down the stairs, then up again, to the wing that housed the women, while Orien raged at the barriers of the sisters' prison.

Owl whisked up the stairs, a fleeting Shadow of an Owl, as he came to the floor where the women were. Guards were at sharp attention as he passed them, going toward the doors.

Earl Prushan was waked from his sleep, the Aswydds' neighbor in that hall: the old man had come out in his night robe, with his bodyguard and his servants, and farther down the hall, so had Earl Marmaschen and some of the lesser residents, like shopkeepers gap-ing at some parade in the streets, for he brought himself, and Uwen, and his guard.

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"Open the door," he said to the guards who watched the doors.

Orien had opened every window, to judge by the cold wet blast that met him in the foyer and the windblown flare of drapery as he Went into the room. The candles within had all but a few gone out, and in that semidarkness sat Tarien in a chair by the billowing draperies, with Orien leaning over her, arms about her heaving shoulders.

"Let her be!" Tristen ordered Orien.

"She is my
sister
!" Orien cried in indignation. "My sister! The babe is coming! Let her be! This is women's work!"

Tristen strode to the open window vent and shut it, stopping at least that source of draft and harm, and the ringing of the wards grew dim.

The thunder still muttered above them, and lightning flashes made the roofs a tangled maze outside the clear and stained panes of the leaded glass.

Then he turned to the women, and willed the child quiet.

Orien willed otherwise, and held to her sister, cornered as they were.

They were down to two candles, and those fluttering, the wards he set threatened, if not overwhelmed, until Uwen shut that vent as well.

His guards stood in the doorway. And Orien hated them, op^ posed them with all her might, as Tarien's face showed pale in the candlelight, and Tarien's hands made fists that battered the chair arms.

"Let me be!" she cried in the grip of renewed pain. "Let him come!

Oh, gods!"

She convulsed, but the babe resisted: his time was not yet, and he wanted help not to leave the shelter he had, not to move to Orien Aswydd's bidding. And Tarien breathed in great, rapid gasps, her hands clenched on the chair now like claws, and the breath stopped, as if she could not get another.

"
Out
!" Orien screamed at them, and at him: "Don't touch her!
Don't
touch her
!"

"Be easy," he said, and touched Tarien's hand nonetheless. A breath came. "Be still."

"Don't hear him!" Orien said. "Bring the child into the world!"

They were linked, these twins: Tarien's body clenched in pain, fortress of dragons.html

answering her sister.

"No," he said. He feared for the guards, and Uwen; and he turned on Orien himself, gathering force, wishing not to harm the one twin, but resolved now to sever them.

—
No! Orien cried, and flung all she had at him
.

But he saw how in the gray space a delicate knot bound them,
delicate but strong and of lifelong standing. It was not force that
would sever it, or the keenest knife, only a delicate undoing, and both
twins resisted, Tarien with sobs and interrupted breath, half-fainting
in her sister's arms.

He would
not
that Orien force her sister. He would
not
, and Orien fought back with burning eyes and a grip in this world and the gray that defied him to untangle her.

He began to do so, in the gray space, prying the two apart, but it was agony for Tarien, who clung to her sister, and would not let her go.

Then he knew Emuin was aware, and was on his arthritic way up the stairs toward him, already in this wing. Paisi, too, was hastening Gran Sedlyn out her door. Thunder cracked, the heavens riven and battering the windows with rain.

—
Let him come! Orien cried. This is the mixing of bloods, this is the
heir of the High Kings, this is the vessel of the great lord, and in him
is the prophecy, greater than Mauryl's working, longer than Mauryl's
working
!

—
Hasufin Heltain's vessel, Emuin said, at distance, overcome with a
pain in his side. Orien struck at him, intending a mortal wound,
struck at Uwen, who could not perceive it, struck at him, at every
living thing in her reach, randomly and without reason
.

"
No
!" Tarien screamed, as a crack of thunder ripped the air. Her back arched away from the chair and Tristen flung himself to his knees, seized Tarien's clawed hand in his, and willed her pain to ebb.

Threat lanced at his back; and Uwen was there, quick as Orien's strike.

A silver knife struck the floor and spun away across the figured carpet, ending under a chest. Orien struggled in Uwen's grip, but Tristen willed her silent and her curses void. Her strength was ebbing, like the thunder that muttered in the distance now, after that fortress of dragons.html

last violence. He held Tarien's clammy fingers in his, tenderly, quietly.

"Be still," he said, sorry for her pain. "Hush. Hush."

"My prince," Tarien said between pangs and on sobbing breaths. "He was
my
prince, before he was hers—and I have his son. I have his son! She can't take that away!"

"Hush," Tristen said, and rode the waves of pain with her: he could do that, now, in the quiet that settled around them. He smoothed the waves, stilled them to a flat sameness of discomfort, until she leaned her head against the chair and drew deep breaths, sweat beading her white brow.

The child within grew quiet.

"Your sister wants your child," Emuin said harshly, and he was there in the room, a shadow against the last two candles. "She wants him for Hasufin Heltain, and to be his, the babe must die—open your eyes, woman! You have a little of the craft and a smattering of the wisdom! You'd have more if you didn't blind yourself! See her!
Look
at what she truly wishes!"

"Let my sister alone!" Orien cried from across the room, where Uwen and the guards had taken her. "Let me go!
Damn you
!"

She was exhausted now, not an imminent threat. "Shut that window!"

Emuin said, and Gweyl moved, shut the last of the window vents, at the far end of the row. That stopped the bitter draft. "Fool!" Emuin said, and meant Orien Aswydd.

"Murderer!" Orien screamed back, and wished Emuin dead, as she had wished him dead at summer's end, and moved one of her servants to murder him. "I
curse
you!" she cried, and tried things she had read in ancient parchments, a treasure trove of Mauryl's letters, but Emuin swept that aside with hardly more effort.

"It's not the words," Emuin said, "it's the wisdom, and that doesn't come by wishing, woman! It doesn't come by spite! Come, gather it up! Can you?"

She could not. All her efforts scattered to the winds. The storm was gone, the violence within it was gone, and what was within Orien ebbed and dissipated like the force of the wind. The air had that feeling.

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"Take her to the guardhouse," Emuin said, "and stand guard over her.

You, Gweyl, yourself."

"No!" Orien cried, outraged. "Tarien!"

Tristen made no move to intervene. Emuin had the matter in hand, and the wrongness within Tarien's body was the greatest concern, the distress of the child. He dimly heard the commotion of Orien's forcible departure, but he held Tarien's hand and willed her safe and the baby safe until he lost all feeling in his knees—and until finally a more friendly fuss in the room heralded Gran Sedlyn's arrival, a peasant woman with strong, competent hands and a comforting voice.

"Get the lady to bed," was Gran Sedlyn's quick order, and Tristen gathered himself up as Uwen helped Tarien to rise, and between the two of them, one on a side, they took Lady Tarien to her bed in the next room—the same that had been Cefwyn's bed when he was here.

There Gran settled her and tucked pillows beneath her back and made her comfortable. "No place here for men," Uwen said, and drew him back.

But Tarien's hands moved upon those sheets, and he sensed, in that haze to which her mind had retreated as the pain had eased, the memory in her of that bed, her bed, a hint of remembered scent, that was Cefwyn.

There was love, a woman's love, at once foreign to him and comprehensible: love and loss of a man, and a bond to the child within.

No place here for men, Uwen had said, and he felt strange and lost in Tarien's grief, yet understanding the loss, which was his own loss.

Neither of them had kept Cefwyn here. No one could. His Place was elsewhere, his love elsewhere bestowed…

"Summat warm to drink," Gran Sedlyn wished, whether for herself or for her charge was unsure. Paisi hovered over his gran, and Cook was there, summoned by the abbot, so she said, but little needed now as a midwife: Cook had made sweet tea, and brought it, but Tarien turned her face away angrily and swore she could take no such thing, even as that real scent chased the beloved, remembered scent away. Her spell was broken. She suffered loss again. Women bedeviled her, her sister, Gran, Cook: they hovered and chided and would not let her lie alone in her grief.

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It was women's magic. He felt the soothing influence in the gray space; but elsewhere, at the limits of his awareness, Orien Aswydd raged in her new confinement, full of violence, trying desperately to have Tarien's attention, and attacking her guards.

He feared for Uwen—acutely, in that instant. He cast Emuin only a glance.

"Orien's threatened Uwen."

"Go," Emuin said, and he left matters in the apartment to Emuin's care and went out, almost without a guard, for the ones at the door had no orders regarding him and the ones guarding him had all gone downstairs with Uwen.

The wards lower down rang to Orien's efforts. They had shut her behind an iron door and it did nothing to prevent her curses. He ran to the end of the hall, sped down the west stairs and down and down to the guardroom steps, where Uwen was.

Safe, he was glad to see, but not for any of Orien's wishing.

"There's an unhappy woman," Uwen said with a jerk of his thumb toward the closed door.

"She's done all she can to breach the wards," Tristen said, and went down himself, and laid a firm binding on the door and all about.

Within, Orien flung herself at the door and hammered at it with her fists, cursed him and raged at the barrier until her voice cracked.

But she would not get out and no Shadow would get in. Tristen turned and looked at the corners of the small nook where the guardhouse stairs came down, at the dark places beyond the smoking tallow candles.

Reeking of death and slaughter, Emuin had said in rejecting such candles, and reek they did. This entire stairwell did. The Aswydds had made this a place of pain, and so it was now: Shadows lurked in the seams of the stone and in the nooks beyond the light—murdered Elwynim, some; malefactors, murderers, thieves, and traitors… the innocent and the guilty and the unfortunate: all the pain suffered in this place, all the lives that had ended in this small room.

—
Be free
, he said to some, and others he bound, for it Unfolded to him how to do that, as he had not known when he was confined here fortress of dragons.html

himself. She might have rallied such Shadows. He removed them from her reach.

Then the place was quieter, save only Orien Aswydd's hoarse shrieks and occasional and faltering strikes at the door.

Last of all he felt a presence, a Shadow among other Shadows, and from the tail of his eye thought he saw one he knew—Heryn Aswydd, bloodied and burned as he had died. Cefwyn had sent away all the Aswydd dead and tried to dispossess them of their Place in the world, but the living Aswydds had come here, and brought the dead ones back, or waked this one from sleep, so he feared.