Fortress in the Eye of Time (72 page)

But for some reason Sulriggan failed to seize up what he said and mock him in those terms as he expected Sulriggan to do. Sulriggan's face went quite angry and red.

And abruptly Lord Sulriggan stalked out of the armory.

“Ynefel,” Pelumer said, “he had that for his due. Accept my apology, if for nothing else than indiscretion. I am sure we may differ on a question of tactics without anger.”

“I am not angry, sir. I am sorry he is.”

“Ynefel, you will not win that man. I listened because for His Majesty's sake I would know what he is about. Believe it or not, as you have learned me to be.”

“Sir, I find no reason to doubt what you say.”

The old man bit his lip and gnawed at his white mustaches, seeming unhappy, but thinking, too.

“Well, well,” Pelumer said then. “He would have been mistaken to attack you at arms. I think he thought you an easier mark than that. I think he had expected to entrap you into a challenge—which is not lawful, under the King's roof, as you may recall. You possess the field, sir. I congratulate you.”

Pelumer went away then, out the door, pausing to pick up some paper of the clerk at the door.

“I fail to understand,” Tristen said.

“I think Lord Pelumer meant you scairt His Grace who left,” Uwen said. “Meanin' Sulriggan ain't the fool altogether. That 'un wasn't on the field at Emwy. That 'un come in after all was done, and settled in wi' Prince Efanor. He ain't seen you fight, m'lord. But I think he knows now he was in deep waters.”

He wished he understood, all the same. That the man did not like him hardly surprised him. But that the man wanted to fight him did not make sense. That the man wanted to entrap him and to discourage Cefwyn from friendship with him—that, he did see. He didn't know if it was fair to warn Cefwyn. It seemed to him that there were intricate Rules to govern men's behavior, and to govern what they told authority about and what they did not and settled unto themselves.

He did not know those Rules. He only saw they existed. He was quite, quite stunned by Sulriggan's kind of malevolence. But Hasufin's sort of harm and this man's seemed to have tactics in common, and he found it worrisome this was the man who stood closest to Efanor, except only Efanor's priest.

Efanor did not, over all, like him, and at least this one man, possibly with Efanor's knowledge, possibly without it, was going about quietly trying to turn Pelumer to their side, too.

He was not certain where Fairness lay, in this—whether it was Fair for him to tell Emuin, who would surely tell Cefwyn, and that would make trouble with Efanor, which would make Cefwyn unhappy, when Cefwyn had enough pain.

It seemed something he could deal with. It seemed at least the man had gone in retreat.

 

So it was not something he chose to tell Cefwyn, in the meeting they had. And Cefwyn was not angry with him. Tristen was very glad of that. He had gone to Cefwyn's door specifically to apologize for interrupting him in council, but Cefwyn took
his hand and said it was very well, he had been right to speak out under the circumstances. And Cefwyn had asked him in and shared a cup of tea with him, and directly asked him about the armor, which he said was very fine.

Then Cefwyn told him he had ordered Haman to make a choice of horses for Uwen as well, since, as Cefwyn said, for the King's pride he could not have the chief of personal guard of a lord of Ylesuin drawing his mounts at random from the stables. He gave Uwen the horses and their upkeep, the written order said, as long as Ynefel stabled horses at Henas'amef.

It was a very handsome gift, Tristen had no difficulty in recognizing that. It was another in the succession of gifts Cefwyn had poured out on him in the context of his betrothal to the lady, and he did not know altogether what it meant. “If I had any means,” he said to Cefwyn, troubled and embarrassed, “I would provide for him. I understand what I should do, and I cannot, and I am very grateful.”

“If I had any desire to weigh you down with the administration of a province,” Cefwyn said, “I swear I would bestow Amefel on you and send Orien Aswydd packing. As it is, I find it a very modest upkeep for an entire province of Ylesuin. The horses have come in, Haman advises me. You will need, of course, grooms, standard-bearers,
their
horses and upkeep. And upkeep for your servants.”

He could scarcely conceive of it—or understand what Cefwyn was doing to him: pushing him out on his own, perhaps, which was not unkind, and perhaps even timely; but he still had the suspicion that gifts and generosity came before bad news and parting.

“I am not a lord in any useful sense. I hardly need more than Uwen.”

“Oh, you are
far
more useful and far less expensive than, say, Amefel. How did you find Orien? Civil? Or otherwise?”

“Idrys told you.”

“Oh, my dear friend, Idrys indeed told me. And I wish to know if you have any complaint against her.”

“I know that I shouldn't have gone there. I was there before I knew that. But her guards were wiser than I was: they told Idrys and he came for me.”

“Idrys says you made it out on your own,” Cefwyn said. “Which is far more sense than I had.”

That was a joke, but Cefwyn did not laugh, and Tristen did not. He did not think of anything to report that Cefwyn did not know, but he did not think he could as freely forgive Orien the way he had forgiven the gate-guards and Idrys and all the people who had done him harm of one kind and another. Orien's action seemed somehow more mindful and of a purpose he did not wholly guess, nor wish to. But he tried to guess.

“I have no idea what she wanted,” Tristen said, and Cefwyn looked at him oddly.

“I believe
I
know,” Cefwyn said, as if he were being a little foolish, even for him. But beyond the evident conclusion, he thought it far more than a ploy to lure him to—what he only dimly visualized. Still, he did not wish to launch into that discussion tonight, for Cefwyn seemed very tired, certainly in pain, and should go to bed. “I'll deal with Orien,” Cefwyn promised him. “I am very aware of her displeasure.”

“You should rest,” Tristen said.

“I fully intend to,” Cefwyn said, and declared his intent to go to bed like a good betrothed husband, after which Tristen made his excuses and withdrew across the hall to his own apartment.

Cefwyn had seemed in increasing pain since last night, and that was hard to watch as well as disheartening for their preparations. He could not imagine of his own experience how acute the pain of such a deep wound was, but Cefwyn's face had been quite pale, at the last, and damp with sweat. Tristen wished—desperately wished—that he had Mauryl's ability to take the pain away and to heal the hurt; but he did not.

And worry over Cefwyn might have put him out of the mood to have supper, except Uwen was so entirely delighted
and overcome when he heard about the horses and the King taking a personal interest in him, it was hard to remain glum.

So he took supper in his sitting room with Uwen and the four servants, who were, since he had come back from Althalen, very willing to linger by the table and gossip. He learned, this evening, for one thing, that Lord Sulriggan's personal cook had had a dish turn up very, very salty at the betrothal feast, and Lord Sulriggan called it witches, but the servants thought it likelier the scullery-lads.

Tristen found himself laughing, in far better humor than he had begun. He felt a little guilt, because it was a misbehavior, but not harmful; and by now the servants and Uwen probably had traded stories, so Lord Sulriggan's discomfiture in the armory would probably make the rounds, too—and find especial appreciation in the kitchens.

Opinions about Ninévrisë were also making the rounds of the staff: there was a deep curiosity about a woman who would be, if not queen, still, the next thing to it. The general opinion the servants gave—far more cautiously—was that she was a very kind, a very gracious lady, who, moreover, politely had not complained of a wool coverlet, though her skin could not bear anything but lambswool: it came of being a princess, the staff said, and the servants had had to send after more linens to case all the blankets until they could find proper ones.

Tristen was duly appalled that such information was a matter of common gossip, but Uwen reminded him what he had said to him from the beginning, that a lord's reputation among the servants was just as important as that he achieved among his peers—because it rapidly
was
among his peers. So Ninévrisë was well begun, at least with the staff, who thought her very proper and very accepting of the staff's good intentions.

There was a muttering of thunder as they finished supper. The clouds today had gone over with no more than a spit of rain, and would shed their burden on Guelessar. The farmers of the south and west were doubtless happy, and so, doubtless,
would be the lords and their men who, leaving their tents with the baggage, had started home to their own lands.

Tristen for his part thought it a good night to sit by the fire, and in that comfort, still thinking of Cefwyn's misery, he took it in mind to try just a little magic, foolish as the attempt might be, to see if it worked for him at all. Cefwyn's well-being was something he wanted very much—and that might help. Mauryl had said it was easiest to make things what they wanted to be.

So he lit the candles in his room—he always thought of his bedchamber that way,
his
room, as opposed to the outer room where the servants came and went and where Uwen sat and talked with them, or talked with the off-duty guards. Usually the doors stayed open between the rooms, but he shut his tonight, saying that he would retire early and manage for himself, so the servants and Uwen could play dice or whatever they pleased.

He took his Book from the shelf and sat down to read by firelight, the page canted toward the warm glow, and after a little, he looked into the fire as sometimes Mauryl had done, and made pictures to himself in the fire as he had used to do. He saw mostly faces, that suddenly seemed to him like the faces of Ynefel, which was not at all what he wanted to conjure.

He tried to think of Cefwyn, instead, and of Cefwyn's wound being well. Mauryl had done it so effortlessly, and he wanted so much, just, for a beginning, for Cefwyn to be able to rest without pain, and to walk without pain.

A wind gusted up, and came down the chimney, fluttering the fire. He did not like that.

Then he heard a rattle at the window-latch.

He liked that far less.

He shut the Book. Then came a tapping at the glass, which he had never heard, and could not imagine what it was in the middle of the night, on the upper floors, until he thought, as he had not thought in some number of nights, about Owl.

He rose from the fireside, Book in hand, and went over to
the window. The tapping kept up, in a curious pattern, and in the light coming from inside the room, he could see a pigeon on the narrow, slanted window-ledge.

He had left the bread out earlier. But it was an odd time for pigeons to be after it. He could not think that it was natural behavior, and the bread was, he saw in that same outflow of light, gone from the ledge.

Tap. The bird pecked the windowpane, perhaps attracted by the light. Tap-tap. It lost its balance on the narrow ledge and used its wings to recover.

Tap. Tap-tap.

It sounded more frantic. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap. It wanted in. It was a bird he knew. Perhaps for some strange reason it had decided to take his offerings of food from his hand and wanted him to feed it. But he would have to open the little windowpane, and he hesitated to do that.

He tapped the glass with his fingernail to see if that would deter it. Silly bird, he thought. But it hammered the glass with its beak, more and more frantically, beating with its wings. Then it dived away into the dark.

That was very odd, he was thinking; and of a sudden the bird came flying out of the dark and hit the window so hard it left feathers stuck to the glass. It was gone. It had fallen into the dark—broken. He could see in the light from the window a smear on the glass and its soft down stuck there.

He was shaken.

More, he knew who was responsible, and that it was a prank, nothing but a wretched, cruel prank, using a creature he had taught to trust that window for good things.

He was angry. He was very angry.

—
Hasufin
, he challenged the dark and the Wind.
That was not brave. It showed me nothing new about you. I have met a man like you, vain, and sneaking, and a liar
.

—
It was only a bird
, the Wind said.
You should worry about other things
.

Hasufin was trying to scare him. The latch rattled and the pane rocked back and forth.

—
You have much more to lose than this
, the Wind said, and with a thump at the windowpane, it was gone
.

Then it began to rain, a brief spatter that showed drops against the pane, and washed away the feathers and the blood.

T
he next was one of those silken satin mornings, the sort with puddles in the yard, the air smelling fresh, and clouds of pink and silver trying to be gold—it was impossible, in Uwen's cheerfulness, to be down-hearted; and Uwen was right: it was a good morning to nip down the back stairs and through the warm and noisy kitchens, to beg their breakfast still warm from the ovens, bread too hot to hold, with abundant butter, and mugs of tea the kitchen girls brought them on the steps. The bread and the tea alike sent up steam in the nippish morning air and the warm air from the kitchens carried smells almost as good as tasting them.

He decided not to worry Uwen about the bird. Uwen wanted to talk about horses, excited and trying to contain it. So was he looking forward to the trip down to the pastures, and once the mugs went back to the kitchen, they headed out to the stables in the morning chill.

He rode out on Petelly, and Uwen on a bay, Gia, that was his favorite—but today-Gia was Uwen's horse, for good, as Petelly was his; and the pleasure Uwen had in the fine-looking bay was that of a man who, Uwen said, had never owned his own horse, and never looked to own one at all, let alone one so fine as this.

“So ye brought me luck, m'lord,” Uwen said. “Tell His Majesty, because he don't share converse much wi' me, of course, that I'm glad, I'm very, very glad, and I won't for the life of me make him sorry he was so generous.”

“I shall tell him so,” Tristen said. They rode down through the gate and down the main street, among the first abroad on this all but eerily quiet morning. The Zeide court had been cluttered with business yesterday, but now they rode all the way to the main gate seeing nothing but a handful
of early wagons and the craftsmen opening their shops.

They rode out the gates and there was nothing but trampled ground and a small camp of wagons and horses where the camps of the lords had stood. The mud was deeply tracked, showing the tracks of all the horses taking out in their various directions home, some south, some east.

But strangest of all, the trees—the trees had gone overnight to red and brown, as the grasses had already gone to gold and pale browns.

“The border lords are all leaving,” Tristen said as they rode along the wall eastward, toward the pastures. “It looks so bare. It frightens me, Uwen. The leaves—the leaves are all dying.”

“Why, lad, of course they die. It's autumn.”

“Autumn?” It was a word of brown and falling leaves. Like Winter. Like snows white and deep.

“Aye, lad. Of course.”

“But they come back.”

“In Spring? Of course they do.”

Uwen laughed and he felt foolish. Of course they did. He suddenly apprehended that they did. It was far rarer nowadays that a Word that vast came leaping up at him out of something constantly underfoot and never, till then, comprehended. But of course it was autumn, and the nip that had been in the air was part of those changes, and Snow might come. He was fascinated by the thought.

And there, in a set of stallion paddocks insulated from each other by tall hedges and strong fences, they had brought in the heavy horses, huge creatures with platter-sized feet and heads the size of apple baskets—wonderful, powerful creatures he had seen hitherto only in scant numbers: Cefwyn's big black, Kanwy, and Umanon's gray, both of which the grooms had exercised in the practice yard.

They dismounted at the stables that lay alongside the paddocks and some distance down the lane, leaving Petelly and Uwen's bay in the care of one of Haman's boys, and walked down the high-hedged lane in the direction the boy
told them, deep into the maze of paddocks separated by old hedges. In the paddocks they passed, boys with buckets were grooming and clipping and braiding the manes of several of the horses; and in one, a farrier and a number of apprentices and grooms were tending feet and seeing to the immense shoes the heavy horses wore—not an easy job, as it looked: the horse in question was not wanting to put his foot up.

They were watching that, when an old man on a pony rode up behind them to say the horses they wanted were right along next, and to come with him.

The next hedged paddock, that at a crossing of lanes, held a horse so like Kanwy that Tristen at first thought that was the horse he was seeing—a huge black fellow with abundant feather over vast feet. The horse looked up, and there were no eyes, just a nose under a huge fall of hair, with ears coming through it. He had to laugh.

“He wants clipping,” the man said, having slid down beside them. “His name is Dys…Dysarys, but we call him Dys. His Majesty's Kanwy is his full brother, and their sister, Aryny, she's staying up in the hills: His Majesty don't risk her, no, Lord Warden. I'll hail up his trainer.”

The old man led the pony down a side lane on that errand. Tristen put out his hand, and Dys came over to smell his fingers and look him over from the secrecy of his fall of bangs.

“Gods, he's fine,” Uwen said reverently. “Pretty, pretty lad.”

He knew Uwen most wanted to see what they had for him. He reached out his hand further, and Dys went off with a flip of a thick tail, kicking up immense heels.

The trainer came walking up from the paddock next, a middle-aged man who introduced himself faintly as, “Aswys, m'lord. I come with 'im, and hopin' to stay with 'im a while, courtesy of His Majesty. I'm trainer to Dys, here, and to Cassam, next over, who's to be your man's horse.”

“I would be very pleased, sir,” Tristen said. “Thank you.” The horse had come over again, clearly accustomed to the
trainer, who patted the huge neck that extended across the rail at this gate-end of the paddock. He did not think, regarding taking Aswys along with the horses, that he needed doubt Aswys' skill: Cefwyn would not have a man who was not competent, and he saw nothing in the way the man looked at the horse that told him otherwise.

“He's hard mouthed,” Aswys said, “if ye have a hard hand, m'lord, but if ye go a little easy, he'll heed ye far better.” The trainer was worried, Tristen heard that, and saw it on his face. “Should I saddle him up, m'lord, by your leave?”

The trainer wished him to ride and not wait until later. The trainer hoped he would like the horse and appreciate him. The man was, if anything, very proud and fond of this horse that he could never own, and Cefwyn had given Dys away to a lord with no land and—Sulriggan had said it yesterday—no good reputation.

“Do, please,” he said, and the trainer looked at least moderately encouraged, and ordered the boys to fit Dys up with his tack while he showed them the other horse in his charge.

That pen held a blue roan gelding that Cefwyn had bestowed on Uwen, a bow-nosed fellow with a beautiful satin coat; Cassam was, their guide and now trainer said, also of the King's stable, not related to Kanwy or Aryny, but out of a Marisal mare and a Guelen stallion.

“Can we have 'im under saddle, too, sir?” Uwen asked hopefully, and while they arranged that, Tristen went back to the other paddock, where at that very moment the thump of large feet hitting the mud beyond the hedge told him Dys was not accepting saddling quietly.

As he came back in view, Dys was snuffing the air, then came across the pen at a run, appearing to move slowly, by the very size of him, but carrying himself lightly all the same.

And the boys went over the fence.

Then the trainer came back and whistled at him, ducked through the fence and whistled again. Dys came trotting up and let himself be caught. The trainer buckled a chain to his
halter, jerked it as Dys snapped peevishly at the boys that brought the tack through the fence, not intending to strike them, Tristen marked that as he leaned on the top rail. Dys did not like strangers in his paddock; and Dys was a fretful horse even while the saddling went on in the hands of a man he trusted. Dys observed everything about every movement around him, and wanted to keep all strangers including the one at the fence where he could see them: his skin shivered up his forelegs, his nostrils were wide, and even from where Tristen was standing he could see that Dys had begun to sweat.

And the trainer had known it when he sent the boys in—arranging to
show
m'lord what a young and stubborn lord might not heed in the way of warnings.

This lord heeded. The trainer called him over. Tristen ducked through the fence, keeping clearly in Dys' sight, and Dys, snorting and snuffling as he walked up, lowered his head and stretched out his neck to smell him over. Dys was interested in his fingers and his coat as they brought up the mounting block.

He did not believe the calm for a moment. “Give me the brush,” he said, and took it from the trainer and went over Dys' shoulder and neck and patted him. He ran his hands over Dys' legs and, trustful at least of the mail shirt he had on under his coat, let Dys smell his back and around his face.

Then he quietly took the reins and with a quick use of the block, rose into the saddle.

Dys moved out a few paces and turned a quiet circle, wanting more rein, maneuvering to have his way. And did not get it.

It was different than riding Gery's light, quick motions. But a Name almost came to him, a Name, not a Word; and as they picked up speed around the enclosure, Dys answered his call for this lead and that, shaking his neck when the pressure went off the reins. The boys opened the paddock gate and they went off down the lane between the pens, the boys and a stray, yapping dog chasing after.

Trees passed in a screen on either hand. They went as far as the sheep-meadow beyond, and he asked turns of the horse, while the foolish dog, outdistancing the boys, nearly came to grief: Dys kicked out unasked, clipped the hound, and turned, and the dog after that kept his distance as Dys made long passes and turns across the meadow.

Then Tristen gave him a free run, which happened to be to the west, toward Ynefel, and the thought came simply to run and run and run, and somehow to escape, and to take Dys, too, where he need not do what all his existence aimed at doing—to be safe, and free, and doing no harm. He began to like this horse—but not what his training had made him; and what they both were created to do.

But they reached the end of the meadow, and a fence; and when he rode back again, Uwen was out with the roan gelding.

Dys accepted his stablemate quite reasonably. There was a little to-do, a little fighting the rein; but they rode out together for some little distance, and Dys began taking the rein very well, changing leads with ease, making nothing of rough ground, quite willing to have the roan behind him or beside him on either hand.

They were out for long enough for the horses to work up a good sweat, and, mindful that the horses had been moved in yesterday, and on the road for days, they rode back again, the horses breathing easily, shaking themselves and seeming to have enjoyed the turn outside.

The trainer did not doubt either of them now, Tristen thought, when he turned Dys back to him at the paddock gate. And one of the boys said, not intending to be overheard, Tristen was sure, that the Sihhë were known to bewitch horses, and he had bewitched that one.

After that, for, in anticipation of dealing with horses and mud, neither of them had worn their best, they took a hand in the unsaddling and the brushing-down, to the amazement of the boys who usually did such things for lords and their men.

But by then Aswys was talking to them both, going on at
length about how Dys had been foaled late in the season and how Cass, for so they called the blue roan, had been one of those horses into everything—had gotten himself up to his neck in a bog when he was a yearling and fallen in a storm-swollen stream the next year: “Keep 'im away from water,” was Aswys' advice on Cass. “He'll drown, but he's too stubborn to die.”

Tristen liked Aswys. Aswys had gone from guarded, worried, and unhappy to a man, as Uwen put it, they'd drink with: a Guelen man, moreover, Uwen said. Not that the Amefin lads hadn't the knack with the horses, but, Uwen said, Guelenfolk and the heavy horses talked a special language.

And Uwen was very pleased with Cass, as he himself was with Dys, though he was still taken with Petelly, and made it clear to Petelly, as they rode up to the gates again, that he was still in good favor. Uwen said, regarding Cass, that he was the best horse he'd ever had under him.

“I do like the big 'uns,” Uwen remarked as they rode through the streets. “There ain't no foolery about 'em. But if you ever get one hard-mouthed, gods, I rode one once in my foolish youth, the grooms was tryin' to saddle and he took down a shed with both heels and dragged me an' four boys through the fence. Gods, I hated that horse. I rode him four years, till a damn Chomaggari ran him through the heart. And I cried me eyes out.”

It was, Tristen believed, all the truth. And they went up to the hill for baths and a change of clothes, and talked horses for hours.

Uwen was the happiest he had ever known him. And Tristen sat down while Uwen watched and wrote a note to Cefwyn, saying how pleased they were, and how fine the horses were. The door guards when Uwen delivered it said that Cefwyn was sleeping, which was good, and that Emuin had given him a sleeping-potion to achieve it—which was not good.

But Tristen thought that Cefwyn would be glad to have the note, or any other expression of cheer, and for what it was
worth, he sat down by the fire and wished Cefwyn well, as hard as he could.

 

That evening he shut his inner doors again, wanting quiet—and leaving Uwen the chance to come and go on his own business. He had saved a little bread from yesterday, and set it out for the pigeons that frequented his window—but they were shyer than usual, and perhaps afraid. There might be the smell of blood about the window, for all he knew. He waited a little while, then gave up and in the fading sunlight laid out both his Book and Mauryl's little kit on the table.

It had occurred to him that Mauryl had given him both gifts, and that more than the Book might be magical—or, a new thought, it might take both gifts together.