Fortress of Dragons Page 2

  The duties Cefwyn had, however, were not a sham. Ináreddrin had indeed felt a need for a firmer Guelen presence in Amefel, for the Regent in Elwynor had no children but a daughter of his extreme old age, and now the lords of Elwynor, weary of waiting for the appearance of a High King, were now saying the Regent should choose one of them to be king. They saw that the only way for one earl of all the earls to gain any legitimate connection with royalty was by marrying the Lord Regent’s daughter.

  The Regent of Elwynor, Uleman Syrillas, refused all offers from his earls, swearing that his only child, his daughter Ninévrisë, would wield the power of Regent herself. It was unprecedented among the Elwynim and by chance unprecedented among the Sihhë Kings themselves that a woman should rule in her own right. Uleman had nevertheless prepared his daughter to rule…and when the day came that a suitor tried to enforce his demands with arms and carry Ninévrisë away, the Regent refused to yield.

  But the earls’ guards were the army, the only army, that the Regent could draw on, and now some earls sided with the suitor and some sued for themselves while others sided with the Regent.

  Elwynor sank into civil war…and that war insinuated itself across the river into Amefel, where Elwynim families had historical ties and relatives.

  So it was into this situation that Ináreddrin sent Prince Cefwyn.

  And it was entirely characteristic of Ináreddrin that he told Heryn he was to watch Cefwyn and told Cefwyn to watch Heryn, who was, after all, a heretic Bryaltine and a man with ties to the Elwynim earls.

  Unbeknownst to the king, in fact, Duke Heryn was in league with the rebel earl Caswyddian, in Elwynor…and that gave the edge to Caswyddian over his own chief rival, Aséyneddin.

  And Hasufin Heltain, once again dead, as Men knew death, was waiting only for such a moment of crisis and a condition in the stars. Through the situation in Elwynor, that ancient spirit found his way closer and closer to life…he saw Aséyneddin as his ally.

  Mauryl, however, had foreseen the hour Hasufin would make another bid for life, and had saved his strength for one grand, unprecedented spell, a Summoning and a Shaping. So he brought forth his creation from the fire of his hearth—not a perfect effort, how ever, nor mature nor threatening. To Mauryl’s distress the young man thus Summoned lacked all memory of what or who he had been.

  Mauryl gave his Summoning a name—Tristen—and taught him with more patience than Mauryl had accorded any other student, until the day Mauryl lost his struggle with Hasufin once and for all.

  So Tristen, a young man with the innocence of the newly born, set forth into the world to do the things Mauryl intended…if only he could guess what those things were.

  He came not to a wizard, who would teach him, as Tristen had hoped, but to Prince Cefwyn, on the very night when, despising his host, Heryn Aswydd, Prince Cefwyn was sleeping with Heryn’s twin sisters, Orien and Tarien.

  Now Tristen was as innocent a soul as ever Cefwyn had met…a youth seeming incapable of anger, feckless, and utterly outspoken, but wizardous in his origins at the very least, for he confessed he was Mauryl’s.

  Cefwyn’s curiosity was immediately snared; and once Cefwyn began to deal with Tristen personally, he found himself snared indeed—for having suffered his grandfather’s angers and his own father’s cold dislike of him, after the northern lords’ wish for Efanor and Efanor’s desertion toward religion, this was the only offer of an utter stranger’s friendship he had ever encountered, and from a kind and innocent heart.

  Meanwhile Tristen continued to learn…for he was a blank slate on which Mauryl’s spell was still writing, Unfolding new things in wizardous fashion, at need; and providing him knowledge unpredictable both in its scope and in its deficiency. Tristen wondered at butterflies…and asked questions that shot straight to the prince’s much-scarred heart.

  Cefwyn’s affection toward this wizardous stranger made Duke Heryn Aswydd hasten his plans for war…for Cefwyn was growing fey and difficult. Heryn used King Ináreddrin’s suspicion of his son to lure both the king and Prince Efanor to Amefel…hoping then to do away with Cefwyn and the younger prince in the same stroke as King Ináreddrin. Thus he would overthrow the Marhanen dynasty, end Guelen rule as the Guelens fell to fighting each other, aid Caswyddian to become High King in Elwynor, and establish himself as a ruling aetheling, a power in the new Elwynim court.

  Prince Efanor, however, had not ridden with the king. Fearing for his father’s life if the accusations were true, yet willing to give his brother a last chance to confess, he had ridden straight to Cefwyn to find out for himself the truth ahead of their father’s arrival, to spring any trap upon himself if one existed. It was a brave act of a religious man, and of a brother Cefwyn had once loved.

  And when Cefwyn knew his father had listened to Lord Heryn and was proceeding with Heryn’s full confidence into Amefin territory, he was horrified, and rode at once to prevent the ambush he foresaw, no matter the danger.

  He arrived too late, and was almost overwhelmed by the force that had killed the king. Heryn’s plan would have come to fruition but for one thing: the knowledge of warfare Unfolded to Tristen that day, on that battlefield, and in that knowledge and with a sword in his hands, the gentle stranger turned warrior. He rescued both the princes and defeated Heryn’s allies.

  When Cefwyn reached Henas’amef not only unexpectedly alive, but king of Ylesuin, Heryn paid with his life for his treason. Tristen, however, wounded by his own self-knowledge and by witnessing Cefwyn’s justice, strayed into the hills, where he fell in with the Lord Regent of Elwynor. Lord Uleman was dying, and in hiding from his rebel earls. The old Regent’s last wish was to bring his daughter Ninévrisë to Cefwyn Marhanen, as his bride…for the only hope for the Regency was peace with Ylesuin. The Regent died, his spirit possessing the ruins of Althalen, and he was buried there.

  So Tristen brought Lady Ninévrisë to Cefwyn, and the new king of Ylesuin fell headlong in love with the new Regent of Elwynor.

  Tristen, for his services to the Crown, became a lord of Ylesuin, no longer mocked for his simplicity, but rather feared by the Guelenfolk, for no one who had seen him fight could discount him. The townsfolk and countryfolk of Amefel, on the other hand, adored him, and saw in him the fulfillment of the prophecy of the King To Come—a fulfillment Cefwyn himself foresaw, and did not attempt to fight. “Win his friendship,” was Emuin’s sage advice regarding his dealings with Tristen, and so he had; and now Cefwyn saw before him the chance for that friendship to settle the whole world at peace, for he did not see Tristen as a reigning king, but as a king in symbol, a reconciliation with the Sihhë. As he declared to Ninévrisë, nothing would be more cruel than to settle on Tristen’s glad spirit all the daily obligations of a reigning king.

  Meanwhile Heryn’s sister Orien became duchess of Amefel, since Cefwyn was not ready to set aside the entire dynasty, and had seen none but the ordinary Aswydd flaws in Orien. He hoped to content the people of Amefel with that appointment and thought that a woman with no martial skills and no command of an army would be a more biddable ruler in the troublesome district.

  Orien, however, was bent on revenge, and lied in her oaths. Lacking armies, lacking skill in war, she sought another means to power…and with her earliest attempts at the wizardous legacy of her house, found her answer in sorcerous whispers from the enemy, Hasufin Heltain.

  She was not a great wizard, not even a moderately great one, but she deceived herself that she was. Hasufin’s immediate goal was an entry into the fortress of Henas’amef, but because of Tristen and Emuin, he could not breach the wards. It was no difficulty at all to move his pawn Orien to make an attempt on Cefwyn’s life and another pawn to make an attempt on Emuin’s life. Meanwhile he drew the rebel army across the river to all-out war: Aséyneddin invaded Amefel in force.

  The first two attempts fell useless: Cefwyn and Emuin both survived.

  The third, Aséyneddin’s, was the real one, aimed not at kingship—Aséyneddin’s purp
ose—but specifically at Tristen, whom Hasufin recognized as Mauryl’s last and most effective weapon, and who must go down if Hasufin was to prevent Tristen’s rise as a Sihhë-lord.

  Sorcery, a wizardous art reliant on chaos, was strongest in a moment of chance and upheaval, and there was no moment of upheaval among Men greater than the shifting tides of a battlefield. So Hasufin made his strongest bid to destroy Tristen, who stood between him and the life and substance he could gain through Aséyneddin.

  In the world of Men, at a place called Lewenbrook, near Ynefel, the Elwynim rebels, under Lord Aséyneddin, met Cefwyn Marhanen’s opposing army. That was the conflict Men fought.

  But when Aséyneddin faltered, Hasufin sent out tides of sorcery in reckless disregard. A wall of Shadow rolled down on the field, and those it touched it took and did not give up. It was Hasufin’s manifestation, and all aimed at Tristen’s destruction.

  Tristen, however, took up magic as he took up his weapons, when the challenge came. When Hasufin Heltain loosed his sorcery, Tristen rode into the Shadow, penetrated into Ynefel itself, and drove Hasufin from his Place in the world.

  Cefwyn meanwhile had prevailed in the unnatural darkness, and when the sun broke free of the Shadow, he had managed to hold his army together and continue the assault. Aséyneddin’s forces, such as survived, shattered and ran in panic.

  It was a long way back to the world, however, from where Tristen had gone to fight. Exhausted, hurt, at the end of his purpose, Tristen all but resigned his wizard-made life, finished with Mauryl’s purpose, too weary to wake to the world of Men.

  But he had once given his shieldman Uwen, an ordinary Man with not a shred of magic in him, the power to call his name. This Uwen did, the devotion of a simple man seeking his lost lord on the battlefield, and Tristen came.

  There was a moment, then, when Cefwyn stood victorious over the rebels, that he might have launched forward into Elwynor: the southern lords had rallied to the new king, and would have followed him. But Cefwyn saw his army badly battered and in need of regrouping. He knew the enemy was on the run, meaning they would sink invisibly into Elwynor’s forested depths—and he knew, as a new king, that he had left matters uncertain behind him. The majority of his kingdom did not even know they had changed one king for another, and the treaty he had made with Ninévrisë had never reached his people. He stood in the situation his grandfather had faced, at the end of summer, with a winter before him.

  Good campaigning weather still remained, but harsh northern winters and the Elwynim woods could make fighting impossible. So for good or for ill, Cefwyn opted not to plunge his exhausted army, lacking maps or any sort of preparation, into the unknown situation inside Elwynor, which had been several years in anarchy and still had rival claimants to the Regency. Instead he chose to regroup, settle his domestic affairs, marry the Lady Regent, ratify the marriage treaty, and rally the rest of his kingdom behind him in a campaign to begin in the spring. It seemed unlikely that any great power could rise in Elwynor during autumn and a winter, given that the rebels were now fighting among themselves and that his army and Tristen had already defeated the two strongest forces Elwynor could field.

  So Cefwyn went home, trusting his father’s trusted men, gathering up his brother Efanor, to take up the power of the monarchy as it had been.

  So he thought. But when he reached his capital, he discovered his father’s closest friends among the barons meant to wrest the real power into their own hands, for his father had let them do much as they pleased for years—had taken their decisions and put his royal seal on them. The clerics had preferred Efanor: that was a known difficulty. But the barons had for the last decade had a king they could rule. They meant to have another one, and in their minds and by all prior reports, Cefwyn was a wastrel prince who would be a weak king if they simply provided him diversions and women. He could be managed, they had said among themselves.

  That was not, however, the nature of the king who came home to them: Cefwyn arrived surrounded by their southern rivals, who were clearly in favor, and allied to Mauryl’s heir, betrothed to the Elwynim Regent, advised by a wizard, and proposing war on the Elwynim rebels. The barons quickly realized they were not facing Ináreddrin’s dissolute son: it was Selwyn’s hard-handed grandson, and the barons, accustomed to dictating to the father, were set down hard.

  So the most powerful barons of the north took a new tactic…they were older, cannier, more experienced in court politics: they already had the good will of the most conservative priests. They would use the Quinaltine and the people’s faith, prevent the marriage, treat the Lady Regent as a captive—and seize land in Elwynor.

  Cefwyn determined just as resolutely to bring them into line and shake the kingdom into order. He sent the southern barons home to attend their harvests and to prepare for war, all but Lord Cevulirn of Ivanor, whose horsemen had less reliance on such seasons, and who stayed as a shadowy observer for southern interests.

  In Elwynor, meanwhile, the wars had come to a swifter conclusion than anyone expected. One rebel lord brought a largely hired army out of the hills, supplied it off the resources of the peasants, besieged his own capital of Ilefínian, and declared the Lady Regent a helpless captive in the hands of the Marhanen king. This brought the situation Cefwyn had left in Elwynor to a state of crisis, and Cefwyn took immediate steps to set elite cavalry at the bridges that faced Elwynor. This both stabilized the border and removed some of the force on which the Crown maintained its authority.

  Cefwyn took immediate measures to assure that the Quinalt would approve both the marriage and the treaty that recognized Ninévrisë as Lady Regent of Elwynor, independent of the Crown of Ylesuin, and renounced all claims to each other’s kingdoms.

  The barons retaliated with an attempt to limit the monarchy over them, and to reject both the marriage treaty and their king’s associates.

  Tristen and Emuin both had kept to themselves since their arrival…for Cefwyn, fighting for his right to wed the woman he loved and trying to wrest back greater sovereignty in his own capital, wished to obscure the presence of wizardry in his court.

  Obscurity, however, only increased the mystery surrounding Tristen. The barons saw him and Emuin as an influence on Cefwyn that must be eliminated, and on a night when lightning, whether by chance or wizardry, struck the Quinalt roof, a penny in the offering in the Quinaltine was found to be Sihhë coinage, with forbidden symbols on it.

  The charge against Tristen was to be sacrilege, wizardry attacking the Quinalt and the gods.

  Cefwyn suspected that His Holiness the Patriarch himself was devious enough to have substituted the damning coin, and Cefwyn moved quickly to compel the Patriarch into his camp. But the rumors were so rife that Cefwyn felt compelled to remove Tristen further from controversy and from the site of rumors. In what he thought a clever and protective stroke, he sent Tristen back to Amefel not as a refugee in disgrace, but as duke of Amefel…a replacement for the viceroy he had left to replace the disgraced Orien Aswydd.

  Now this viceroy was Parsynan, a minor noble appointed on the advice of some of these same troublesome barons, notably Murandys and Ryssand…for Cefwyn had exiled Orien Aswydd and her sister to a Teranthine nunnery for their betrayal, and had never appointed another duke, until now.

  Hearing that Tristen was going to Amefel, and that Parsynan was recalled, Corswyndam Lord Ryssand panicked, for he feared certain records might fall into Tristen’s hands and thus into Cefwyn’s. He sent a rider to advise Parsynan of his imminent replacement.

  Corswyndam’s courier rode hard enough to reach the Amefin capital ahead of Cefwyn’s messenger. Receiving the message, Parsynan quite naively brought his localally Lord Cuthan, an Aswydd by remote kinship, into his confidence, since this man had supported him against his brother earls before.

  Cuthan, however, was in on a plot to create war in Amefel, a distraction for Cefwyn. If Amefin earls rebelled and seized the citadel, Elwynim troops would then invade and engage with the
king’s forces: this was what was promised, and Cuthan not only failed to warn Parsynan it was coming…but he also said nothing to warn his brother lords that a detachment of king’s forces was about to arrive along with a new duke, one they might approve. One or the other would happen first, and Cuthan meant to stay safe.

  So, ignorant of such vital information, certain Amefin, led by Earl Edwyll of Meiden, seized the South Court of the fortress of Amefel and settled in to wait for Elwynim support.

  In the same hour, losing courage, Cuthan told the other earls that the king’s forces were coming.

  And there were as yet no forces from Elwynor: Tasmôrden’s forces had not arrived.

  The other earls consequently sat still…which suited Cuthan well: he and Edwyll were old rivals, and now Edwyll was patently guilty of treason, sitting alone in the fortress with the Marhanen king’s forces approaching. And none of the rest of them were yet guilty of anything, as long as they kept their secret. The one most apt to betray it—was Edwyll himself.

  Then in a thunderstroke, before anyone had thought, Tristen arrived and moved swiftly uphill to the fortress to take possession. The commons turned out to cheer. The earls of Amefel rapidly set themselves on the winning side.

  Edwyll meanwhile died, having enjoyed a cup of wine—out of Orien Aswydd’s cups, untouched since the place was sealed at her exile. Whether Edwyll’s death was latent wizardry attached to Orien’s property, or simple bad luck, the command of the rebels now devolved to Edwyll’s son, Thane Crissand, who was forced to surrender. Tristen now had the fortress in his hands.

  Not satisfied with the death of Earl Edwyll, however, or possibly at the instigation of some party to the guilty secret, Parsynan, in command of the garrison troops, seized the prisoners from Tristen’s officers and began executing them.

  Tristen found out in time to save Crissand…and summarily dismissed Lord Parsynan from the town in the middle of the night and without his possessions.