Fortress of Dragons Page 3

  It was scandalous treatment of a noble king’s officer, but if there was anything wanting to make Tristen the hero of Henas’amef, this settled matters. The commons were delighted, wildly cheering their new lord. Crissand, Edwyll’s son, himself of remote Aswydd lineage, swore fealty to Tristen in such absolute terms it scandalized the Guelen clerks who had come with Tristen—for Crissand owned Tristen as his overlord after the Aswydd kind, aetheling, a royal lord.

  The oath reopened all the old controversy about the status of Amefel as a sovereign kingdom. Crissand had become Tristen’s friend and most fervent ally among the earls of Amefel…who, given a lord they respected, came rapidly into line, united for the first time in decades, under terms forever influenced by Crissand’s oath.

  In the succeeding hours Tristen gained both the burned remnant of Mauryl’s letters, and Lord Ryssand’s letter to Parsynan. The first told him that certain correspondence Mauryl had had with the lords of Amefel might have some modern relevancy…one archivist had murdered the other and run with the letters. The second letter revealed Corswyndam’s connivance with Parsynan.

  Tristen sent Lord Ryssand’s letter posthaste to Guelessar, while Cuthan, revealed for a traitor to both sides, and possibly guilty of more than anyone knew, took advantage of Tristen’s leniency to flee to Elwynor.

  In the capital, Corswyndam Lord Ryssand knew he had to move quickly to lessen the king’s power or lose his own. It happened that one of his clerks had reported that the office of Regent of Elwynor, which Ninévrisë claimed, included priestly functions. So at Ryssand’s instigation, certain conservatives in the Holy Quinalt rose up in protest of a woman in priestly rites. This objection would break the marriage treaty.

  Cefwyn countered with another compromise and a trade of favors with the Holy Father: Ninévrisë agreed to state that she was and had always been of the Bryaltine sect—that recognized, though scantly respectable, Amefin religion. She agreed to accept a priest of that faith as her priest, leaving aside other difficult questions, and on that understanding, the Quinalt would perform the wedding.

  The barons now came with the last and worst attack on Ninévrisë charges of infidelity, Ninévrisë’s with Tristen, laughable if one knew them. But Ryssand’s daughter Artisane was prepared to perjure herself to bring Ninévrisë down. So Cefwyn learned when Ryssand’s son Brugan brought the charges to him secretly—along with a document giving much of his power to the barons, which was clearly the alternative this young lordling presented his king.

  Therein Ryssand overstepped himself: it gave an excuse for a loyal baron, Cevulirn of Ivanor, to challenge Brugan. By killing Brugan, by popular belief, Cevulirn proved Ninévrisë’s innocence. If Ryssand should make public the attack on Ninévrisë, that fact would come out to counter it: Brugan had died a liar.

  But if it should come to public knowledge, someone would surely challenge Cevulirn, and if he won again, another and another would challenge him until they could cast the result in doubt. Cefwyn still hoped to deal with the other barons, and would trade silence for silence, casting the killing as a private quarrel to prevent the destructive chain of challenges and feuds that would tear the court apart.

  But that meant Cevulirn had to leave court, avoiding Ryssand’s presence, and Cefwyn girded himself for a confrontation in court with a powerful baron who had just lost his son to a man who had not stayed to face challenges.

  Into this situation Ryssand’s incriminating letter arrived secretly into Cefwyn’s hands…and Cefwyn thus had the means to suggest Ryssand also retire to his estates immediately, or have all his actions made public to the other barons.

  So the treaty stood firm, Cefwyn and Ninévrisë married, and Tristen settled in to rule in the south as lord of Amefel, lord of the province containing old Althalen and bordering Ynefel and Elwynor across the river.

  But on a day that Tristen, with Earl Crissand and Uwen, set out to visit the villages, they came across an old shrine, where the apparition of the Witch of Emwy, Auld Syes, appeared as the precursor to a terrible storm. Lord of Amefel and the aetheling, she hailed them, as if those titles were not one and the same thing. She bade them ride south to find friends, and then to feed her sparrows.

  Further, she asked permission to visit Tristen at some time in the future—in effect, asked passage through the magical wards of the Zeide of Henas’ amef. Tristen granted it, to his guards’ great distress.

  South they rode, then, in the rising storm, and encountered Cevulirn, who had turned banishment to good use, riding north to inform Tristen of those matters too delicate to be entrusted to couriers.

  The two of them took counsel how to use their resources to help Cefwyn in the spring, and agreed to call in all the other lords of the south—which Cefwyn could not dare. Their plan was to set a camp across the river and divert Tasmôrden’s attention southward. Cefwyn had forbidden them to win the war, because the Quinaltine northern barons were already distressed about his reliance on the Teranthine south…but together Tristen and Cevulirn saw what they could do to bolster Cefwyn’s cause without violating the letter of their king’s orders.

  Tristen and Cevulirn set out then toward the river to view the situation firsthand. On the way they made a stop in the village of Modeyneth, where Tristen raised the local thane, Drusenan, to the rank of earl in Cuthan’s place, and commanded the raising of an old Sihhë wall to hold the road. In so doing, they found that Drusenan had concealed a number of Elwynim who had fled the war. For want of any other safe place to settle them in his lands, Tristen authorized them to build a refuge within the vacant ruins of Althalen…where no settlement was permitted, under Crown law, but where they were out of the way of traffic coming up and down the vital road to Elwynor.

  Having done those things, Tristen and Cevulirn rode on, and were at the river when Tristen realized, through that gray world only wizards could touch, that the Elwynim capital, Ilefínian, had fallen.

  So there would not be a winter’s grace to prepare: the situation was immediately more grave.

  Meanwhile in Guelemara, and to the discomfiture of Murandys and Ryssand alike, Cefwyn invited his former lover, Luriel, Murandys’ niece, back to court. With considerable inducements of land and favor, he arranged her marriage to the son of Duke Maudyn, lord of Panys, his commander on the riverside.

  In this manner and at one stroke he shone a light on his consort’s generosity and his own reformed habits…and undermined the confidence of his opponents in each other. This marriage allied Murandys’ interests with those of the lord of Panys, who firmly supported the Crown.

  In Amefel, meanwhile, in a reunion of a far different sort, Tristen rescued from prison a young thief, Paisi. This was a street boy who had once guided him to Cefwyn’s justice: Paisi’s fate, he was convinced, was linked to his own, simply because the whole web of incidents leading him to his present allies was a series of linkages, and those linkages were a likely target of hostile wizardry—simply put, those once connected to him at points of critical decision could connect to him again, at points of critical decision, for good or for ill.

  This one looked already to have a taint of ill about it—for in saving Paisi, Tristen had a falling-out with the Guelen Guard, the garrison in Henas’ amef, for it was from them that Paisi had stolen, and Tristen would not see him hanged. Instead, Paisi went to Emuin’s tower to become his assistant…and certain guardsmen and even the patriarch of the local Quinalt left Tristen’s court in anger. Tristen had been right: the boy once involved at a crisis of decision was involved again, and whatever would have happened had Paisi hanged, would not now happen. Some other event was now in progress in which Paisi had some part to play, and he trusted Emuin to keep as much order in that event as anyone could keep.

  The disgruntled soldiers and the patriarch went to Guelemara, and their reports when they reached Guelemara created a storm in the Quinalt. They accused Tristen of serious breaches of Crown law, usurpation of royal authority, and the promotion of wizardry in Am
efel. Strict northern priests, supported by Ryssand, had already preached doom in the streets, and as this further attack gained momentum, Cefwyn moved secretly to silence the most outspoken of these priests, one Udryn, as one of Ryssand’s men.

  Meanwhile, regarding the charges now made public, he could do nothing but declare the laws themselves outdated, since his only other choice was to agree that Tristen was a lawbreaker. This in no wise comforted the orthodoxy, but the open expression of opposition to the king was a little quieter since the disappearance of the priest.

  Tristen and Cevulirn parted company, swearing to meet next with all the lords of their former alliance, on Midwinter Eve, in Henas’ amef. And for his part Tristen settled in earnest to the preparation of a winter camp for an army.

  That same Midwinter was to mark the marriage of Luriel to Lord Panys’ younger son—in a capital seething with dissenting priests and fears of wizardry.

  And in the middle of the ceremony the Quinalt Patriarch was found murdered, with Bryaltine symbols about his person.

  The wedding fell apart in riot and religious frenzy, in which Ninévrisë’s unfortunate priest fell afoul of a mob and lost his life.

  Cefwyn countered quickly to gain the favor of the mob by diverting suspicion toward Tasmôrden’s agents…though he himself suspected the zealot priests and an act of very local revenge. He took clear command of the capital and of the situation, at least for the day, and moved to counter Ryssand, whom he blamed above all others.

  Back in Ynefel, Tristen’s guests had come, every one of them, and they settled to feast on a night Emuin had warned Tristen was the hinge not only of the year, but of a magical age of ages.

  At the stroke of midnight Auld Syes entered the hall in queenly guise and danced one dance with Tristen…after which the lights went out and the old haunt in the lower hall broke wide open.

  Tristen entered into it, in defense of all the rest, and found himself not in battle against shadows and dead wizards, but walking in Ynefel of old, himself a shadow in the life of the Tristen who had been.

  There he met Owl, companion of his early days with Mauryl, his guide through Marna Wood on the road that led him to Cefwyn, and his harbinger of war at the battle of Lewen field.

  And Owl came with him when he crossed that bridge again, back to the haunted mews at heart of the Zeide. Owl was on his arm when he returned, to the distress of all around him…who knew now that they dealt with magic and that the war Tristen proposed was not only of iron and edges.

  But rather than reject that war and their magicwielding ally, they gave thanks to have Tristen on their side and pledged their support anew.

  Owl was not the only venturer out into the world that night.

  Orien and Tarien Aswydd fled their exile as armed men descended on the defenseless nuns who sheltered them…Quinalt men, attacking a Teranthine order. Reflection of the riots in the capital, religious conflict had come to the countryside of Guelessar.

  And the outlawed Aswydds turned to the only home they knew, to Henas’ amef, hoping for shelter.

  Elements once part of wizardry were participant again, rewoven into the design.

  BOOK ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  A slow procession passed by night, little disturbing the sleep of Henas’amef. Tristen on bay Petelly, two ladies on horses the lords of Ivanor had lent them, with Captain Uwen Lewen’s-son and Tristen’s bodyguard attending, all climbed the hill in a lazy fall of fat lumps of snow.

  That families were asleep and shutters were drawn and latched up and down the streets lent welcome anonymity to their passage…for by day the sight of the duke of Amefel riding in company with the red-haired former duchess and her sister would have alarmed the town.

  As it was, their small party reached the Zeide’s West Gate and dismounted with little fuss. The stableboys turned out dutifully, bleary-eyed with sleep—until they discovered their lord had brought two visitors they never wished to see again. Then young eyes grew wide, and the boys moved fearfully and quickly about their business.

  The gate-guards, who had come inward bearing torches to light the stable yard, also recognized the visitors by that light and seemed utterly confounded to know who the women were. So with the west stairs guards, who came down in their turn and stopped in their tracks.

  “Here’s your own lord!” Uwen Lewen’s-son said to the gawkers. “An’ he’s gi’en refuge to these ladies, on account of some damn godless bandits has burned down the nunnery at Anwyfar. They walked here in the storm, half-dead and near frozen, which ain’t their choice, nor His Grace’s. Don’t gawp, there, man! Help their ladyships inside! An’ you, Edas! Run up to Master Tassand an’ tell him come down an’ get ’is orders! Haste about it!”

  Tristen himself was only too glad to have turned over Petelly’s reins to a stableboy. Now he climbed the west stairs, taking charge of his guests.

  “Where shall we lodge?” Orien Aswydd asked him haughtily, turning and standing fast at the landing a step above him, and only a breath later did Tristen realize she was none so subtly inquiring after her former rooms. Those rooms happened to be the ducal apartment—his apartment.

  And little as he liked his lodgings, green velvet draperies and all the heraldry of the Aswydds into the bargain, he had no intention whatsoever of allowing these women that symbolic honor of place. The ducal apartments were not merely rooms: they were an appurtenance of high office, a place from which the duke’s orders flowed to all Amefel, and no, and twice no, Orien Aswydd should not have them.

  Nor should she have any other such stately rooms, now that she made a demand of it, not a decision of spite, but rather of realization that nothing he granted her was without consequence in the view of those watching him. Her deserts were in fact the West Gate guardhouse and the headman’s block: King Cefwyn had stripped title and lands from her, but spared her life, despite the fact her crimes included attempted regicide. Cefwyn had spared her life and sent her off to the nunnery instead on the understanding she would never return to Henas’amef or set claim on the duchy.

  And now, now so very soon after the new year, here she stopped at the west doors of her former hall, drew herself up straight and defiant despite the ravages of weather and a body lately failing from exhaustion, and strongly suggested she be given the honors of her birth and recent office.

  One could—almost—admire her…but one could never, never yield to her.

  “We’ll find a place suitable,” Tristen said curtly. “Rooms better than the guardhouse, at least.” He knew the outrage he provoked by adding that last remark, but it made his point. And turning to Lusin, his chief bodyguard: “Tell Cook to come.” Cook, like many of the servants, had served the Aswydd lords before he had taken the dukedom, which was to say only last year; but now he relied on her and trusted Cook as the only woman of his close acquaintance. More, Cook had children, several of them, and might understand Lady Tarien’s condition better than a man would.

  Regarding that condition, however, Cook’s was not the only advice he needed now. Master Emuin was awake, and knew, and had known about the ladies even before they reached the town gates.

  —What shall I do? he asked Emuin now within the gray space wizards used. The Aswydd women might hear him, this close, but in this moment he did not care. Where do you say should I put them?

  —I’m sure I don’t know, Emuin said, and as the gray place opened wide, they stood, in their wizardous aspect, in a place of cloud and wind, equally wary of the Aswydds—who were there, unabashedly eavesdropping on them. This is inconvenient.

  They had feared the stars, had gotten through the perilous time of change with no worse calamity than the arrival of Owl, who was somewhere about, and they had hoped that Owl was the end of the last troubled epoch and the beginning of a more auspicious age.

  But, perhaps on the same night, counting the time it took to travel so far—for so it turned out—Orien and Tarien had left their exile and set out to reach Henas’amef and their for
mer home.

  —With child, no less, Emuin said, and turned a fierce and forbidding question toward Tarien Aswydd. —Whose, woman?

  It was harshly, even brutally demanded, so uncharacteristically forceful that Tristen flinched. In the same instant Orien flung an arm about her sister, who shied from answering and winked out of the gray space like a candle in the wind.

  Orien’s was a swift, defiant retreat.

  Emuin’s abrupt question rid them, if only momentarily, of the Aswydds’ wizardous eavesdropping, and for Tristen’s part, he was no little chagrined that he had never asked so important a question in all the long walk back with the women. In his own defense, his attention in those hours had all been to the simple struggle with the snow, and with Orien’s challenge to him…and then with the dismay his allied lords, down in the camps about the town wall, had felt very keenly, simply to see Orien back in Amefel. That Tarien was with child had seemed to him one of those things women could arrange, and one of those states women at times maintained—consequently had he, a wizard’s Shaping, born of fire on a hearth, asked himself that one simple, essential question before bringing the women here?

  No, he had not.

  Whose child, indeed, begun in a nunnery, where, as he understood, there were only women?

  Or perhaps not in the nunnery.

  He felt a shadow pass in the gray space, and at the same moment, in the world, felt the wind of Owl’s wings pass him and sweep on.

  So Owl, who had guided him to find the sisters in the storm, was still abroad in the world. And magic was. And everything that had seemed simple now became a series of choices, each one with consequences.

  “The west wing,” he said to the men waiting for their orders. “Lodge them there.” He knew the house had at least one set of rooms vacant in that wing, since Cevulirn had chosen to camp with his men. And no one lodged in rooms fit for the duke of Ivanor could complain of being slighted; but anything less than her former state as duchess of Amefel was too little in the estimation of Orien Aswydd, who had attempted Cefwyn’s life and on that dice throw, lost everthing. He thought twice and made a firm choice. “Cefwyn’s rooms.”