Fortress in the Eye of Time (75 page)

There was a commotion on the stairs then, a number of men—Dragon Guard—came up the steps and kept going, to the next floor, as Cefwyn's guards and everyone else looked anxiously in that direction.

But not just men of the Guard. Efanor. The priest, all with very determined mien. Lord Commander Gwywyn. Why to that floor? was Tristen's first thought, and then: Ninévrisë.

Efanor had objected to her presence. The priest disliked Elwynim. Gwywyn had begun with his loyalty to Ináreddrin. “Uwen!” Tristen called out, and to the guards:

“Tell Idrys. Efanor is going against the lady. With Gwywyn. Quickly.” He ran for the stairs, following the guards, who reached Ninévrisë's floor just ahead of him. He hurried along behind them, overtaking Efanor and the priest, who were among the last, along with other priests, some carrying candles and some silver and gold vessels.

“Lord Prince,” Tristen said. “What is the matter?”

“Sorcery,” Efanor said, and a disturbed look came over him. “But you would know.”

“Yes, m'lord, I would. And there is no need to disturb the lady.” He saw the Dragon Guardsmen, with Gwywyn, sweep the mere sergeant of the Prince's Guard aside from Ninévrisë's door, along with the rest of the guards. They were going inside, and Tristen went to prevent harm to the lady, as, past
the invaded foyer, a handful of frightened Amefin servants were trying to stand between Ninévrisë and a Guelen prince, armed soldiery and a priest of the Quinalt.

“There she is!” the priest called out from among the hindmost. “There is the evil! There is the sorceress!”

“No, sir!” Tristen said, and pushed his way past the soldiers and the Lord Commander. “This is wrong, sir!” he said to Lord Gwywyn. “No. I've called Idrys. He's coming. Wait for him.”

“Idrys is bewitched the same as the King!” the priest cried, “and this is a Sihhë—don't look him in the eyes! Arrest him! Arrest the lot of them!”

Gwywyn's face betrayed deep doubt. Tristen looked straight at him, but the priest was pressing forward and flung ashes at him, which stung his eyes, and the guards went past him, as the servants cried out in alarm.

“What
is
this?” That was Idrys' voice, and of a sudden something thumped heavily against the wall and clattered down it—a guard in Idrys' path. “You! Out! The rest of you get out of here! Good loving
gods
, have you lost your senses?”

“You have clearly lost yours, Lord Commander!” Efanor shouted at him. “I hold you accountable—I hold you accountable for my brother's life!”

Idrys shouted back. “The King is not dead—damn it, put those weapons away!”

“No!” the priest said. “You have brought the King under unholy influences, Lord Commander, among them this man's! Arrest them, and the women!”

Idrys moved, spun about and set his back to the wall and his side to Tristen, and that quickly a dagger was in his hand. Tristen did not want to draw. It seemed to him once that happened there was no reason, and he only moved to prevent the guardsmen getting past him, men who showed no disposition to want to lay hands on him. The men of the Prince's Guard that Idrys had brought were pushing and shoving those of the Dragon Guard who had come with Efanor and
Gwywyn. On Idrys' side was Uwen, who shoved his way through and stood with a drawn sword facing Gwywyn and his men, followed in rapid succession by Erion Netha and Denyn Kei's-son—armorless, wild-haired, with shirts unfastened, both carrying swords unsheathed. They and men behind them, all of the Prince's Guard, looked as if they had just waked and seized up weapons as they could.

“Hold, all!” Idrys said. “Damned fools! Your Highness, His Majesty is well enough. And he will have you to ask, sir, whence you made this ill-advised assault. This is utter foolishness! Put the swords away, I say! Put them away!”

“I do not take your orders, sir!” Efanor said. “Until I hear the King's word and see his eyes, I do not believe you—and I will have the physician, not a horse-surgeon, attend His Majesty, and other matters I shall set right, beginning with the inquiry into why an accident in the Bryalt shrine, and why the fire, and why His Majesty my brother is lying in peril of his life within hours after a betrothal that gave away far too much to an Elwynim witch!”

“Accuse me of sorcery?” Ninévrisë cried. “Oh, very well, dear sir!” She snatched up a small book from off the sideboard and held it aloft. “I have your gift, my lord brother-in-law, I am reading your gift in search of
your
truth and
your
faith! I had not known it came with such other behavior!”

“Don't listen to her!” the priest was shouting, and Ninévrisë:

“Oh, well, and am I so dangerous? I have dismissed all my men! I have trusted you! I have His Majesty's sworn word for my safety and his personal grant of these premises for my privacy!”

“This is enough!” Gwywyn was saying, appealing for reason and truth, but the words were starting to echo, with the priest shouting, and Ninévrisë shouting, and of a sudden men were shoving one another again, and steel rang on steel, as came a stabbing pain at the base of his skull, Emuin's presence…drawing him in, warning him…such as he could hear…

Small and angry, something in the east…close at hand. Deadly dangerous. A step in the dark, a burning of candles, candleflames, not orange of fire, not blue of amulets, but smoldering black, with a thin halo of burning white, smoke going up in thin plumes above them…above a fluttering of wings…shadows and wings
…

—
The east
, he heard Emuin say.
Harm…against the King. The stairs. The east stairs by the grand hall
…

He could not get breath to speak, he could not think past the pain, except that he could not desert the lady, he needed help, and he snatched Ninévrisë by the wrist past Uwen and Erion, with the outcries of the servants in his ears, with Efanor bidding them stop him, and men attempting to do that, but Uwen and Erion were there with drawn swords, holding off a number who backed away from them, as he whisked Ninévrisë past the priest, past Efanor and Lord Gwywyn and in an instant in among the Prince's Guard.

But that was not where he was going, blinded by headache and so afflicted by Emuin's pain it all but pitched him to his knees. He reached the stairs. Ninévrisë was crying out questions. He realized he was holding her too tightly, and let her go, wishing her to come with him. Hearing Idrys and Gwywyn shouting at each other above, he ran, and she ran with him, down and down the steps—

He was aware of alarm in the lower hall, then, people staring in fright as they passed, people trying to intervene with questions. He saw the east stairs in front of him, and he did not need Emuin now. He knew. He felt it, a small tingling in the air, but a presence, nonetheless, that had taken alarm.

“What is it?” Ninévrisë breathed, hiking her skirts, trying to overtake him on the steps as he reached the floor above. Orien's guards looked at them in startlement as they came.

“Sirs,” he said as calmly and reasonably as he could, and hoping pursuit did not overtake them. “Open this door. Now.”

The guards did as he ordered. He had never been past the foyer of lady Orien's rooms. Now he went past those inner
doors, with Ninévrisë and the guards, as women inside cried out in alarm. In the opening of both inner and outer doors, cold wind gusted through a window-panel wide open to the night, and carried on it a stinging, perfumed smoke. Candle flames wavered in the gale, and flung shadows about a group of black-clad women with astonished faces, horrified looks.

In front of them were candles on a table, a basin of something dark, severed red braids and a sprig of thorns. Among those women he
felt
presence, and chief of them he sensed was Orien Aswydd, who faced him with her face stark and hard, in the flaring light of a single candle. All the other candles had gone out.

“
Damn you!
” Orien said, and indeed there was a flash of gray and a tingle in the air
.

“
Is this Orien Aswydd?
” Ninévrisë demanded. “
Is this Orien Aswydd, who killed my messengers?
”

“
Get out!
” Orien cried at her, then, in fear, “
Keep away from me!
” for Ninévrisë brought anger into the gray world—Ninévrisë started for her and women scattered, and Shadows scattered around them. It was not good to feel. It shivered through the air, it set all the gray to rippling like curtains, fluttering like wings. It welcomed anger
.

“No!” Tristen cried, and seized the table edge, overturning it in the way of the women, and the candles and the basin and all went over in the light from the door. Fire flared in the spilled wax on a woman's skirts, and shrieking, the woman tried to smother it.

In that firelight metal had flashed in Orien's hand. He saw it, spun Ninévrisë back as Orien came past the end of the table, and evaded her as another woman drove a blade past him. She did not aim well, he thought, and in the slowness of such moments and without difficulty he caught the woman's wrist—in near darkness: one of the guards had smothered the burning cloth and the other stopped the women from fleeing. He took the knife and let the woman who had attacked him go, at least to the keeping of the guards.

But Orien also had gone down in a pile of dark skirts and
Ninévrisë was standing on Orien's hand with one slippered foot. There was another knife, as the guards were finding the women in general so armed; and Ninévrisë trod hard on the hand when Orien tried to claw her ankle and tried to overthrow her by dragging at a handful of her skirts.

Tristen bent and took the knife from crushed fingers, then took Orien by the wrist, pulling her not entirely gently to her feet.

“Damn you!” Orien's eyes burned with rage and with fear. She fought to be free and he let her go. “Damn you!” She spoke Words, but no sound came. Wind blasted into the room.

“Good bloody gods,” one guard said.

“I think you should take her away from here,” Tristen said. They were Names she had spoken. He did not know what they attached to. He found no image of them but dark. The air felt far less dangerous after that gust, but a cold wind was still breathing through the open panel. “Shut the window, sir. I think it's far better shut.”

“On my soul we had no idea, m'lord,” the chief of the guards said unsteadily, while the others held the women—there were five of them—at bay in a corner backed by shadowy dark drapes and gilt cord. The light all came from the hall, the doors open straight through, but that itself was dim. Came then another touch at the gray—but that was Emuin, glad despite the headache, glad to know what was happening, though Tristen felt a fine sweat on his skin and felt the room go around only in that instant of awareness.

“Content to be the Marhanen's chattel,” Orien said, nursing a sore wrist. Her face was lit strangely by the remaining candles. It seemed no longer beautiful, but ominous and terrible, the countenance she turned to Ninévrisë. “You above all others should be ashamed.”

“Your Grace of Amefel,” Ninévrisë said with utmost coldness, “you have made a very grave mistake.” And to the guards: “I would call the Bryalt. I have no intimate knowledge of this sort of thing. But I think they should see this
room, these women, and these objects before they are removed. There are some of these things very surely of harm. I know what things like this mean. They are banned in Elwynor. I assure you, sirs, I have done none of this, nor ever did my father.”

The four guards were not the only ones present now. There was Lord Captain Kerdin, and Prince Efanor who came in clutching an amulet and trailing a number of Quinalt priests.

“It
was
sorcery,” Efanor said. “It
was
black sorcery. Arrest them.”

“I trust this time you don't mean me, Your Highness,” Ninévrisë said. “Or Lord Tristen.”

“No, Your Grace of Elwynor.” Efanor's expression was strained. “I fear we did mistake the source. But if you knew where to go—I ask why you waited so long.”

“Your Highness,” Ninévrisë began in exasperation.

“My lord Prince,” Tristen said. “
I
could not find the source, and I am Sihhë; master Emuin scarcely did, and
he
is a wizard.”

“He is a
priest
,” Efanor said harshly. Tristen recalled how Idrys had said never argue about priests with Prince Efanor, and did not argue the point.

“I think your priest should make prayers in this room,” he said, not seeing how it could do good or ill, but that it might please Efanor. “But first I think they should close this room and let wise men and Emuin decide what to do with these things.”

“This is a nest of evil,” Efanor's priest muttered, “and these women should be burned.”

The women some of them began weeping. Orien did not. “No, sir,” Tristen said respectfully, and added, knowing he posed them a quandary of authority, “I think His Majesty the King should decide what to do with them.”

That silenced them.

“Take them to the guard-house,” Efanor said. “Set a guard on them and light candles all around. Your Grace of Elwynor, my apologies.”

“I do accept them, Your Gracious Highness,” Ninévrisë said, and offered her hand, which Efanor hesitated to take, then kissed gingerly. “Thank you, Your Highness. If you would take me to His Majesty, please, I should much be obliged. I've had a fright.”

“Lady,” Efanor said, and, which Tristen would have thought very improbable upstairs, he watched Efanor with the lady on his arm walk out past the priests and the guards, in all good and fair grace.

He looked then to the Lord Captain for wisdom in the matter. Kerdin looked quite dubious himself. But Tristen thought Ninévrisë had acted very wisely, since she had put Efanor on his best manners. More, she had not embarrassed Efanor when she might have. And Efanor knew it.