Fortress in the Eye of Time

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.

Chapter 30  

T 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 yester- day, 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 this 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.