Fortress of Ice Read online

  Last fall, leaving the goats and geese, both boys had vanished for far too long— to be discovered far down by the brook, by Gran’s craft and her boy Paisi’s knowledge of Otter’s habits.

  Aewyn, unrepentant at the guardsmen’s discomfiture, unabashed to have had the king of Ylesuin wading the brook to retrieve him, had declared he had just invited his brother to come to Guelessar and live with them.

  Had the king of Ylesuin quite planned it that way? No. But from the beginning, from Otter’s birth, Cefwyn had had advisement not to make this bastard son Aewyn’s natural enemy— or his own. And he had intended to have Aewyn come down to rustic Amefel to pass a summer, perhaps before he was old enough to get into a man’s kind of mischief in the town.

  Perhaps, he had mused on the way home, friendship between the boys had been very good advice, far wiser than trying to conceal one from the other or keep them apart. He already knew power was at issue, not just Gran’s hedge - witchery, but the craft of the woman he had been fool enough to get a son on— the woman kept prisoner all these years in Henas’amef, because there was nowhere else safe to put Tarien Aswydd, and because the old woman at the farm and the lord of Amefel himself and the lord of Ynefel, who was not too far removed, beyond Marna Wood, all were in a position to watch her continually and prevent her from mischief.

  Wizardry had always been at issue, in the boy’s getting and in his life.

  And where wizard - work or worse was at issue, items found ways to reposi-5

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  tion themselves, to walk on two feet to where they needed to be, to someone’s fortune or misfortune.

  Best know where this one was, at all times. Very wise advice had told him that at the same time he had locked the mother away.

  Even the queen his wife, Ninévrisë, had told him the same, when he had told her what Aewyn had promised. At summer’s end she had just given him another child— one Aewyn had so hoped would be a brother, and predicted would be, against all Ninévrisë’s advisement to the contrary. Aewyn had, just after his ride south this summer, gained a little sister, Aemaryen. The birth was a great relief to the people of Ylesuin, who had wanted an heir to be Regent of Elwynor after Ninévrisë— treaty had sworn that the next child of their union would rule that adjacent kingdom, which Ninévrisë now ruled. And if it had been a disappointment to the Elwynim to have a girl born, it had also been a quiet disappointment to a fifteen - year - old prince, who had so earnestly counted on a brother.

  The consequence had been foreseeable: Aewyn, a loving, loyal brother to his little sister, had nevertheless fallen off his food, pushed items about on his plate, and sighed a great deal, staring out the windows to the west and south, never once mentioning Otter.

  If the baby had been another boy, a prince, Cefwyn thought, he might have had second thoughts about bringing Otter here. But it had been a princess, and he had been entrapped. Aewyn had written him a formal letter, in his own untidy hand, requesting formal audience, and had come into that audience with a written list of reasons why Otter would be no trouble at all in the household, where Otter might live, in an unused apartment down the hall, and how if he had a brother, he would apply himself to his lessons again and forever after.

  Well, what could a father say? He had not forced Aewyn to reach the desperate bottom of his list.

  And clearly his son suffered from want of companionship. Aewyn had not gotten on as well as he might with certain nobles’ sons— their backbiting of one another and their politicking were not engaging traits, and Cefwyn did not force that society. Otter perhaps had enjoyed a certain gloss in Aewyn’s memory because he was distant, and forbidden. But a father could well understand the situation of a prince— gods, indeed, he knew the taste of solitude and endless lessons and long court sessions. He knew the other side of such matters, too: his father had praised Efanor’s accomplishments extravagantly and driven his elder son to low company and bad behavior with those same bickering lordlings. Without those bad habits he himself 6

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  had gained, being determined to spite his own father, there would have been no royal bastard to worry this generation, that was the plain truth of matters. So he knew well how a boy’s misery could turn to bad behavior and very foolish actions.

  He had already been quite understanding in the matter of tutors; he had given Aewyn every gift, every understanding; he had excused him from lengthy sessions; he had taken him hither and yon about the countryside, and let him milk goats and gather eggs, because he saw value in it. He was already far too open - handed, his father would have told him, far too ready to give the Prince what he wanted.

  But the desperation in Aewyn was clear. The promise had been made to the other boy, even if he had intended otherwise. The solution was one he had already leaned toward and dithered over— which was clearly why Aewyn had taken the notion he was leaning toward it. So he had found himself saying, “Perhaps this winter,” and receiving a wild hug that sealed the bargain and became agreement before he had quite thought the realities of the matter to conclusion . . . a bastard son living down the hall from his proper son, subject to all the jealous stares and gossip the lordlings his son so despised could muster.

  Otter, at least, was well aware of his unfortunate connections and his difficulties. He was not baseborn; oh, not in the least— his mother, Lady Tarien Aswydd, imprisoned for life by her remote cousin, Lord Crissand— was alive, like Otter, because those had been Tristen’s orders, before the army had come back to Henas’amef. Let her live, Tristen had said, when others said differently. But Tristen had also said, by no means give her the child.

  Tristen’s advice had been law in Amefel. It was also advice Cefwyn took, above all other.

  And although Cefwyn had had no stomach for hanging a woman who’d been his mistress, and none at all for doing away with the helpless infant, circumstances had given him no choice but to have that child brought up almost within sight of Tarien’s prison. Again at Tristen’s word, he had had him brought up by a hedge - witch who would spot sorcery if it reared its head in the boy and who might educate him in needful ways.

  The boy had the Aswydd look. The gray eyes very certainly couldn’t have come from the Marhanen side of the bed: eyes gray as old ice, in a face dark of complexion, dark - browed and dark - lashed. He was a handsome boy, but not one whose stare Guelenfolk much liked . . . now that they had fi nally seen him up close.

  Now . . . gods knew the rumor of his origins was out, now that he was 7

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  walking the corridors in the Guelesfort. No good to call him Otter any longer. Everyone knew what name his mother bestowed on him: Elfwyn.

  Elfwyn, after the last Sihhë king of the old kingdom, the enemy of the Marhanen. The name alone had counseled the boy’s demise, all those years ago.

  The name his mother had given him was a direct challenge to the king of Ylesuin: kill your own son. Do it, and kill me, and see how your life turns.

  Mercy was its own revenge. Tarien Aswydd lived. And sixteen years on, her naming had lost much of its sting. The people knew the name. That the boys were friends and the queen accepted him had been delicious gossip for the late fall season, then faded into simple fact— it evoked a little shiver, the Sihhë being a recent memory; but that was a matter no one dared broach with Cefwyn— by the gods, they would not, and knew it. Best now if a boy bearing that name could publicly befriend a Marhanen prince, become his good right hand, and let people see the name sat, not on a wizard, but a sober, studious boy— let them see that dark, somber face break into smiles and laughter as it had, this late fall in Guelemara; as it did now, while the boys caught their breath. And Cefwyn had made his decision: he could have sent the boy home, as seasons turned. But he had not. Festival approached, and the new year. He could send him home. But he purposed not to.

  Aewyn was by a finger or two the taller of the two boys, certainly the stronger— he broke things: he had a reputation for it,
to as much mortifi cation as a prince was allowed to suffer. On the brighter side of that coin, the people of the city compared him to his fair- haired great - grandfather, a true Marhanen, a throwback to the blond, bluff Marhanens, and never, in any of his tutors’ imagination, destined for scholarship. But a father knew. A father knew that Aewyn did think, that the boy who had been his riding companion out and about the country wanted to know things— and was no fool.

  Otter had found that side of Aewyn. Otter was priest - taught: Cefwyn had seen to that, in his visits to Amefel, and now Aewyn, who had rejected tutor after tutor, had taken a sudden deep interest in scholarship, taking books of natural history from the library, of all things, he and Otter together, and seeking out the room of royal curiosities, which the library had under lock and key: the hide of a two - headed calf, the egg of an unknown bird, and various strange bones. The librarian had reported their visits in some distress, fearing damage or mischief particularly with the precious books, which only scholars ordinarily had license to take from the room.

  But the Prince had his way, and when they were not bashing each other with blunt swords in the courtyard, the boys had read, explored, and looked up maps, Aewyn’s one scholarly passion. Maps of the realm. Maps from 8

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  beyond the borders. Old maps, new ones— they had visited the chart room, where only lords and officers were supposed to be . . . and pored over military maps. Aewyn had begun this interest as a child: he had been lured into literacy only because the colorful maps had words on them he wanted to read, and, oh, count on it, to this hour he knew his maps and directions down to the most obscure hamlet in Osenan, with any detail of who lived there and how—

  A perfect young tax collector, Cefwyn had used to say to his queen, perfect, if he were not the heir to the throne. Now he had drawn Otter into his passion, and of all things, the boys read to each other, would anyone believe it? They had gone out and about the halls mapping the passages, and down into the cellars looking for hidden halls and unknown rooms— there were none, but it did turn up a hidden cache of wine.

  And who knew? There might be more to Aewyn yet than people suspected. Aewyn had hated the sessions with the Quinalt priest who taught him and attempted to sneak catechism into the reading; Aewyn had sabo-taged those lessons with numerous pranks, and the priest, being discharged, had predicted that such an irreverent prince was never going to be a scholar of any sort. The next tutor had come in saying that the best they could do was instill doctrine in him and keep him on the straight and narrow, while his armsmasters turned him into a warrior. That tutor had been discharged in a week, and in that dismissal, of a man the Holy Father had provided, Aewyn had not even had to make the request.

  The priestly tutors were wrong. A loving father had concluded that beforehand purely on faith, but with, of all things, Otter’s coming to Guelemara, he was finally vindicated. His legitimate son would have the size, yes, to bully his way through situations: that was what all the tutors wanted to foster in their prince and future king.

  But Aewyn’s petition for his brother’s coming to Guelessar had shown certain traces of scholarship, had it not?

  Aewyn’s fidgeting, a fond father could suspect, was not after all the restlessness of a simple mind but that of a boy who, contrary to his bluff appearance, had long since understood the point at issue, was bored beyond endurance, particularly by catechisms— had not he been similarly bored? If Aewyn had not had Otter, Aewyn might not have imagined there were better teachers . . . as Otter, who could dive and dart with native skill, had never learned the value of keeping an enemy a sword’s distance away from his skin.

  Each learned from the other.

  As now. Bang and clang, all measured, interspersed with prankish feints 9

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  and laughter. A month and more of those two together, more than two fortnights without so much as a quarrel between them or a cross word for the staff from Aewyn . . . and that, too, was a marvel. Too great a silence and compliance from Aewyn had never boded well for the household’s tranquillity, until now.

  But everything was changed, with this boy’s coming. Had he ever seen Aewyn as happy as he was?

  Bang, and down went the shield, the royal prince thrown onto his rump, but not defeated. Aewyn scrambled and threw a handful of snow. Snow came back, as Otter shook a sapling branch down on him in a cloud of white. With a shout that rang off the walls, Aewyn surged to his knee, sword be damned, and gathered a mighty snowball behind his shield, but not in time. A well - thrown snowball hit him, but on the fast - moving shield.

  Oh, then the fi ght started, snowballs and shieldwork, as fast as two rascals could form and throw.

  Aewyn had the Marhanen knack for offense: his snowballs were accurate, and he flung them with all the strength in his arm, stubborn and strong— but with his namesake’s quickness, Otter dived behind the hedge and worked up the row, to throw from ambush.

  Now that, Cefwyn thought, was a boy brought up by a witch and a thief, not an armsmaster. Then Aewyn, baffled at first, took to the hedges that rimmed the little practice - yard, a warfare on which Cefwyn held grand vantage, neither boy paying the least attention upward.

  An otter’s cunning was no small gift to bring to the royal line. For all the years these two lads had lived, the realm had been at peace, the two boys born within months on either side of the great battle— but the skills of attack and defense had to come down to them, no matter. Aewyn had the clas-sic training— rode well, stood well, swung well, while Otter had never sat a horse before he rode to Guelessar.

  Aewyn, on the other hand, had never had to hunt an otter in the bushes, but he was gaining the knack after being ambushed. An impartial father simply watched from on high, offering no advice.

  Snowballs from either side. Neither hit a thing but winter hedge. And both boys ducked. Aewyn had abandoned his shield. So had Otter. A fast scramble ensued, each seeking new positions. New snowballs formed.

  A gust of wind came down off the Guelesfort roof, a white cloud enveloping balcony and garden alike. Cefwyn found snow on his sleeves, on the balcony rail— a second gust and a third, and the boys below, hit by ava-lanche, shoveled snow at each other with their hands.

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  But the wind that had come over the roof brought new snow with old, a gray veil rapidly drawn between the yard and the spires and spiked roof ridge of the Quinaltine, across the wall. The noble houses round about grew dimmer still. New snow and old mixed together in sudden violence.

  A prudent man knew when to step back into the sheltering room. A father wondered when his sons would have the same good sense. A blast came down from the dark cloud that had crept up behind the Guelesfort. Now the afternoon light darkened, and the wind began to whip the snow off all the eaves.

  “The weather’s turning.” He said it conversationally, as to an old friend, closing his hand on the amulet he wore beneath the leather and velvet— he conversed, one - sided, at times when his world grew strange or his nobles grew fractious. He rarely had any sense from the locket whether Tristen heard him or not. Faith was a certain part of his wearing it, faith and remembrance, and the warm confidence of friendship, which rode there, close as his own heartbeat— it was not an amulet he wore too openly, nor ever showed the Quinaltine fathers, whose business it was not. Now he did imagine a presence, poised between winter and warmth, and he lingered there, gazing outward into gray.

  “My dear friend,” he murmured. “Do you hear? The wind’s rising. The fickle warmth before, and now the snows come hard. A late winter, and an edge in the wind. Is it snowing where you are?”

  Perhaps the sensation was false, wishful thinking. The cold seemed fresh and keen, and a venture to the balcony rail showed the boys heading for shelter, sensibly taking their gear with them, then vying to get through the door at the same time, like sheep.

  “I wish you were here this season, my friend. I wish you could
see how the boys have grown. I was doubtful. But they teach each other. They teach themselves.”

  They made it through the door, which shut. The king had memories of winter practice with his own brother, of scampering through that hall to the stairs, and down to the kitchens, where the ovens maintained the warmest spot in all the Guelesfort.

  A memory of berry jam and butter, on fresh - baked bread, while one’s fingers were still numb. Efanor with berry stain on his cheek, chiding him for stain on his nose.

  “There’s happiness here, this winter, old friend, there is, never mind Efanor’s dire predictions. There are good qualities in them both.”

  Taste of berries that he could have at any time, being king. But jam baked 1 1

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  into a twist of dough and hauled out just when brown and hot, that was sweetest, the best thing on a winter day. One had to get such things straight from the oven, not ported up through a chain of ceremony.