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Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
Fortress of Owls
C.J. Cherryh
the third fortress book
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
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BOOK THREE
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
HarperPrism
10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and
dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are
not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual
events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by C. J. Cherryh
ISBN 0-06-105054-7
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
The Fortress Cycle
1.
Fortress in the Eye of Time
2.
Fortress of Eagles
3.
Fortress of Owls
4.
Fortress of Dragons
Visit HarperPrism on the World Wide Web at http://www.
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
To my editor, Caitlin,
whose belief in this story carried it to print—
To Jane,
who patiently read and remarked, version after version—
And to Beverly,
who compiled the constantly growing lexicon out of all these
pages—
Thank you
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
PROLOGUE
There is magic.
There is wizardry.
There is sorcery.
They are not now, nor were then, the same.
Nine hundred years in the past, in a tower, in a place called
Galasien, a prince named Hasufin Heltain had an inordinate
fear of death. That fear led him from honest study of wizardry
to the darker practice of sorcery.
His teacher in the craft, Mauryl Gestaurien, seeing his student
about to outstrip his knowledge in a forbidden direction,
brought allies from the fabled north-land, allies whose magic
was not taught, but innate. These were the five Sihhë-lords.
In the storm of conflict that followed, not only Hasufin
perished, but also ancient Galasien and all its works. Of all that
city, only the tower in which Mauryl stood survived.
Ynefel, for so later generations named the tower, became a
haunted place, isolated within Marna Wood, its walls holding
intact the horrified faces of lost Galasien’s people. The old
tower was Mauryl’s point of power, and so he remained bound
to it through passing centuries, though he sometimes
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
intervened in the struggles that followed.
The Sihhë took on themselves the task of ruling the southern
lands—not the Galasieni, whose fate was bound up with Ynefel,
but other newcomers, notably the race of Men, who themselves
had crept down from the north. The Sihhë swept across the
land, subduing and building, conquering and changing all that
the Galasieni had made, creating new authorities and powers to
reward their subordinates.
The five true Sihhë lived long, after the nature of their kind,
and they left a thin presence of halfling descendants among
Men before their passing. The kingdom of Men rapidly spread
and populated the lands nearest Ynefel, with that halfling
dynasty ruling from the Sihhë hall at unwalled Althalen.
Unchallenged lord of Ynefel’s haunted tower, Mauryl
continued in a life by now drawn thin and long, whether by
wizardry or by nature: he had now outlasted even the long-lived
Sihhë, and watched changes and ominous shifts of power as the
blood and the innate Sihhë magic alike ran thinner and thinner
in the line of halfling High Kings.
For of all the old powers, Shadows lingered, and haunted
certain places in the land. And one of them was Hasufin
Heltain.
One day, in the Sihhë capital, within the tributary kingdom of
Amefel, in the rule of the halfling Elfwyn Sihhë, a queen gave
birth to a stillborn babe. The queen was in mourning—but that
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
mourning gave way to joy when the babe miraculously drew
breath and lived, warmed, as she thought, by magic and a
mother’s love.
To the queen it was a wonderful gift. But that second life was
not the first life. It was not the mother’s innate Sihhë magic,
but darkest sorcery that had brought breath into the child—for
what lived in the babe was a soul neither Sihhë nor Man: it was
Hasufin Heltain, in his second bid for life and power.
Now Hasufin nestled in the heart of the Sihhë aristocracy, still
a child, at a time when Mauryl, who might have known him,
was shut away in his tower in seclusion, rarely venturing as far
as Althalen, for he was finally showing the weakness of the
ages Hasufin had not lived.
Other children of the royal house died mysteriously as that fey,
ingratiating child grew stronger. Now alarmed, warned by his
arts, full of fury and advice, Mauryl came to court to confront
the danger. But the queen would not hear a wizard’s warning,
far less dispose of a son of the house, her favorite, her dearest
and most magical darling, who now and by the deaths of all
elder princes was near the throne.
The day that child should attain his majority, and the hour he
should rule, Mauryl warned them, the house and the dynasty
would perish. But even that plain warning failed to persuade
the queen, and the king took his grieving queen’s side, refusing
Mauryl’s unthinkable demands to delve into the boy’s nature
and destroy their own son.
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
In desperation and foreseeing ruin, Mauryl turned not to the
halfling Sihhë of the court, but to the Men who served them.
He conspired with Selwyn Marhanen, the warlord, the Sihhë’s
trusted general, and encouraged Selwyn and other Men to
bring down the halfling dynasty and take the throne for
themselves.
In that fashion Mauryl betrayed the descendants of the very
lords he had raised up to prevent Hasufin’s sorcery.
Hence they called Mauryl both Kingmaker, and Kingsbane.
And with the help of Men and with wizards drawn from all
across the kingdom, Mauryl seized the chance, insinuating both
the Marhanen and his men and a band of wizards into the royal
palace. Then Mauryl and his circle held magic at bay while a
younger wizard, Emuin, killed the sleeping prince in his
chambers—a terrible and bloody deed, and only the first of
bloodshed that night.
Destroying Hasufin, however, was the limit of Mauryl’s interest
in the matter. The fate of the Sihhë in the hands of Selwyn and
his men, even the fate of the wizards who had aided him, was
beyond his reach, and Mauryl again retreated to his tower,
weary and sick with age. Young Emuin took holy orders,
seeking to forget his deed and find some salvation for himself
as a Man and a cleric.
Given this opportunity, Selwyn’s own ambition and Men’s fear
of magic they did not wield led them to rise in earnest against
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
Sihhë rule: province after province fell to the Marhanen.
The district of Elwynor across the river from Althalen,
however, though populated with Men, attempted to remain
loyal to the Sihhë-lords, and raised an army to bring against
the Marhanen, but dissent and claims and counterclaims of
kingship within Elwynor precluded that army from ever taking
the field. The Marhanen thus were able to take the entire
tributary kingdom of Amefel, in which the capital of Althalen
had stood, and treat it as a tributary province.
But rather than rule from Althalen, remote from the heart of
his power, and equally claimed by all the lords of Men, Selwyn
Marhanen established a capital in the center of his home
territory, declared himself king, and by cleverness and
ruthlessness set his own allies under his heel, creating them as
barons of a new court.
From the new capital at Guelemara, Selwyn dominated all the
provinces southward. He and his subjects, mostly Guelenfolk
and Ryssandish, were true Men, with no gift for wizardry and
no love of it either, leaning rather to priests of the Quinalt and
Teranthine sects. Selwyn raised a great shrine next his palace,
the Quinaltine, and favored the Quinalt Patriarch, who set a
religious seal on all his acts of domination.
Of all Men loyal to the Sihhë, only the Elwynim held their
border against the Guelenmen… for that border was on the one
hand a broad river, the Lenúalim, and on the other, the
haunted precincts of Marna Wood, near the old tower.
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
So the matter settled… save only the question of Amefel, the
province on the Guelen-held side of the Lenúalim River:
Selwyn’s hope of holding his lands firm against the Elwynim
rested on not allowing an Elwynim presence on that side of the
river. So holding Amefel was essential.
Now the history of Amefel was this: Amefel had been an
independent kingdom of Men when the first Sihhë-lords walked
up to its walls and demanded entry. The kings of Amefel, the
Aswyddim, had flung open their gates and helped the Sihhë in
their mission to conquer Guelessar, a fact no Guelen and no
Guelen king could quite forget. In return for this treachery, the
local Aswydd house had enjoyed a unique status under the
Sihhë authority, and always styled themselves as kings, as
opposed to High Kings, the title the Sihhë reserved for
themselves alone.
Having conquered the province, but fearing utter collapse of