Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03 (49 page)

He resented sleep.

But… Flesh and blood as well as spirit, Mauryl had indeed warned him, with the sharp rap of his staff on the steps.
Crack!

Crack-crack
! The echoes still lived in his memory, still made him wince. Pay attention! Mauryl would tell him. Uwen had told him. Should he not heed?

“See here,” Uwen said with a sidelong glance at the brazen dragons. “Will ye take
my
bed? I don’t have any of them things leaning above
my
rest. I don’t wonder ye don’t sleep un’erneath them damn things, but rest ye must.”

“I promise. I
promise
, Uwen. Go off to bed. I’ll put myself to bed in a very little time.”

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

Uwen looked doubtful, and began to leave, then turned back, feet set.

“Swear,” Uwen said.

“By the gods?” he asked wryly, knowing Uwen knew where that study sat with him, in Efanor’s little book.

Uwen said not a thing. But neither, now, would Uwen leave.

“I’ll go to bed,” Tristen said, conceding. “Go on. I’ll not need Tassand.”

“Tassand’ll have my head if I don’t call ’im,” Uwen said, and went off to do that.

So difficult things now became. And now Uwen had set his teeth in the matter of his master’s difficulties and would no more let go than a dog a bone.

“M’lord?”

Uwen was merciless, and insistent.

So he took himself to bed, attended by two sleepy servants, loomed over by Aswydd dragons.

Then, lying still in the dark, he found himself at the edge of exhaustion, and afraid, wanting just the little assurance things in the place were in order… he stretched out his awareness as thin and subtle as a waft of air to the rooms around him, touched Uwen’s sleeping thoughts, and his guards’ drowsy watching at the door. Gathering sleep was like pitching a tent for protection, stretching thin ropes this way and that to ground he knew was stable.

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

And when he extended his curiosity farther still, he was able to reach Emuin, who was distracted, and a boy, whose feet were cramped in new boots, and who kept Emuin’s night hours.

He had not alarmed them or even attracted notice in his tenuous wandering. The boy poured tea and served in fear, his concentration all for the gray-haired untidy man in the tower with him, while Emuin chased the mysteries of the stars through his charts. The boy thought mostly of food and whether he dared reach for the last small cake.

It was enough: he had succeeded once at subtle approach, assured himself his household was safe and folded around him like a blankest.

He spread himself thinner and thinner on the insubstantial winds… was aware of all the servants and the guards throughout the Zeide, all about their own business when they were not about his; he was aware of the town, asleep but for a few who watched or worked, and one man of ill intent whose hand shook under his attention and faltered of the lock he had meant to open.

The man ran, and did not elude him, but hid shivering in the shadows, in fear of justice that might last him for days.

But fear was enough, unless he found the man twice.

He sailed away, longed to reach Crissand, but in this fey mood sent his thoughts past that house, down the street, to the gates.

He was aware even further, of men and horses outside the walls, and villages drowsing under a sifting of snow north and south of Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

Henas’amef.

He felt the lonely camp at Althalen, and the soldiers’ camp on the Lenúalim’s cold and windy shores; he dreamed of wings shadowing the road, broad, blunt wings, peaceful in the night.

Snow began, and fat flakes whirled and spun beneath those wings.

He had found Owl, so his dream told him. At last he had found the source of his fey restlessness, and rode Owl’s thoughts, as Owl showed him all the land from high, high above.

Owl flew right across the village of Modeyneth, the guard posts, the bridges, and the river, and soared on above the land of Elwynor, to a city afflicted by siege and ravaged by fire.

There was Tasmôrden.
There
was the enemy that threatened Ninévrisë’s people and Cefwyn’s peace, and Owl circled above that place, finding the insubstantial Lines of the fallen town also broken and faltering in their strength.

Now he was well awake in this dream, and angry, and violating every sense of caution he had urged in Crissand.

He saw, yes, the faint glow of wizardry about Tasmôrden, not that Tasmôrden himself wielded it well, but that it was in the air of the place, and that somehow it moved there, raw and reddened and white with struggle.

There was wizardry about the town as well, ragged blue of guard and ward, Uleman’s making, Tristen thought: that clear light, however fragmentary, was like Uleman’s work, Ninévrisë’s father. His care, his courage, all, all defended Ilefínian, but had Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

not prevailed to hold it. The ragged red had come in on the edge of sword and axe, leapt up in the burning and smoldered in the glow of embers.

Bodies, untended and unburied, lay frozen in doorways and at shrines, under a dusting of snow that began to bring innocence back to the night.

A banner flew above the high fortress of Elwynor, and he knew that banner… not the black-and-white Checker and Tower of the Regent of Elwynor, no, but a black banner, a single star that was very like the black banner of Althalen.

With a crown above the star.

Was it a vision of things now, this very night, and was
that
the banner Tasmôrden claimed? If so,
dared
this man appropriate to himself the land and honor Cefwyn had given, and then set a crown on it, the emblem of a king?

Away
, he wished Owl, on a thought, and Owl soared away south, bending a long, long turn, and crossed the river again far to the west, where Marna Wood shadowed the snow, and glimmered with far more potent wards.

Up, up, up and aside from the barrier, Owl’s wings tilted sharply, and Owl took a dizzying plunge through buffeting winds as Owl met something and flinched.

Suddenly Tristen found the wind rushing past him and the earth rushing up.

Air turned to substance, became the bedclothes, and the frantic Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

pounding of his heart became a leaden rhythm of recent threat.

He was still in midair, even lying on his bed. That was the way it felt. And Emuin had stopped his pen, having blotted his page.

His agitated next reach overset the inkpot. He righted the pot without a second thought and held his breath at the feeling that shivered through the night.

—
Tristen?
Emuin asked.

—
Safe
, he said within the gray space.

Yet the west in the gray space shadowed dark as his dream, and
the winds blew cold to the bone.

—
It was a dream, sir, no more than a dream
.

—
Was it?
Emuin asked. Hovering there within Emuin’s heart
was a question and a fear directed toward that shadow, for that
was a deep and dark one.

But in the east, now, a second shadow grew, a niggling small
one, and a faint glow of light that had no explanation.

And a third, in the north, where the black banner flew.

—
There is a wizard
, Tristen said, and sat up in bed, catching the
covers about him against the chill.
There is someone, here, and

here, and here. Do you see the glows, sir? It is more than one.

One’s come close… one’s followed me…

—Be careful! Emuin chided him.

But Tristen flung himself out of bed, caught the bed covering

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

around him and trailed it to the room next, losing it as he

reached the hearth and his sword that stood against the stones.

He snatched up the hilt and slung the sheath off.

The silver inscribed on the blade, Illusion, flashed in the dim

light, and the sheath clattered across the floor. Naked, sword in

hand, he faced the window into the shadowed night, and saw all

the town of Henas’amef flared up in Lines beyond the glowing

Lines of the Zeide’s walls. There were all the wards, all the

magic of craftsmen and householders warding their own doors

and walls: the common magic of parents and homekeepers and

the pure trust of children… all these things Unfolded to him in

that unworldly glow, block by block, house by house, outward

toward the great defensive wall of Henas’amef itself, a blue

bright Line often retraced and constantly tended.

Something had challenged them.

But they held. They held.

Uwen’s reflection arrived in the glass, Uwen’s pale skin

ghostlike across that angular maze of Lines before his vision.

Uwen’s silver hair was loose and at odds about his balding

temples; he had his sword in hand and a cloak caught about

him, nothing more, nor asked the nature of the alarm… he had

simply come, armed, to his lord’s side, the two of them naked to

the cold of the threatening night and the glory of the town.

“The Lines,” Tristen said, “all have leapt up. Stand, stand still.”

“What does ’e mean?” Other reflections arrived, night guards

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

coming in from the doorway, servants from their quarters and

the back hall.

“Nothing’s gotten in,” Tristen said. He was aware of all the

Lines before and below and behind and above him, even with

his eyes open, a net in which he stood; and then of the stairs

that ran to Emuin’s tower.

At that, he was aware of E^rnuin, who with stealth and subtlety

he was only learning had been there for the last few moments.

Emuin stood with him, there in the gray space, and the blue

lines glowed softly, running along the edge of the steps of

Emuin’s tower and down and down again and along the lower

hall on the opposite side, and up again, quick and live as the

spark of the sun on winter ice.

“M’lord?” Uwen asked.

“Nothing has come in,” Tristen said. “The place is safe.”

“Aye, m’lord,” Uwen said, and the guards with him said

nothing at all, only looked about them uneasily.

Then, only then, Tristen set his hand on the stone of the sill and

wished the whole town safe.

Only one place resisted him, and it was that discontinuity of

stones in the lower hall, that change from old to new that

marked the join of the old fortress to the new: from the first

time he had confronted it he had known it was a weakness in

the building.

And was it lack of courage, he asked himself, that he did not

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

tonight go down and dare that black middle of the eastern hall?

Was it, instead, prudence, that he did not directly challenge

what at the moment was doing no harm… and what had, with

the whole town, resisted whatever his foolish curiosity had

roused out of the dark.

He traced the one compromised windowsill, drawing the Line

with his finger, and willing it sound and safe.

Then he could say, with some assurance. “I’m sure now. Go

back to bed. Go back to bed, all of you. The threat is gone.”

The night guards went, quietly and doubtless to talk among

themselves once they reached the hall. Uwen’s reflection

remained, pale ghost against the dark that now filled the

window.

“I dreamed of Owl,” he said to Uwen. “There’s wizardry

abroad.”

“Aye, m’lord, that I rather guessed.”

It struck his fancy, Uwen’s quiet humor. It touched his heart

with a relief almost to tears, that Uwen still dared deal with him

as friend and guide, and he would not profane that offering or

examine it.

“I don’t think it’s a danger tonight.” He turned and faced

Uwen’s solid presence with his own, and handed Uwen the

sword he held, for he did not trust his own steadiness to sheathe

it: his eyes were still bemazed by the vision of Ilefínian and of

Henas’amef, and the black banner and the Lines. “Tasmôrden

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

is flying the banner of Althalen.”

“Is he?” Uwen failed to ask how he had seen that, and simply

heard it for the truth. “He ain’t right wise, then, is he, m’lord?

You an’ His Majesty will have summat to say on that score, I

fancy.”

“That we will,” Tristen said, not without thinking of Auld Syes’