Fortress in the Eye of Time

He looked then to the Lord Captain for wisdom in the matter.

Kerdin looked quite dubious himself. But Tristen thought Ninévrisé had acted very wisely, since she had put Efanor on his best ma

More, she had not embarrassed Efanor when she might have. And Efanor knew it.

He knew when he had seen something wise. He could admire it, at least. And he saw the guard gathering the women to take them to the guard-house, for which he was very sorry: he had been there himself, and Orien would not like it.

She stared back at him with no apology. And he supposed she was angry about Lord Heryn. He thought she was very brave to have attacked Cefwyn where there was at least one wizard to have seen it, and he did not think that sorcery had broken master Emuin’s skull.

“I think,” he told Uwen and Captain Kerdin in that thought, “that there is someone in the Bryaltine shrine who attacked master Emuin. It might not be one of the brothers, but I don’t think master Emuin slipped on the stairs. I think there was someone helping Lady Orien, someone there and in the kitchens.”

“If master Emuin gets well,” Captain Kerdin said, “I don’t think I would like to have been that person, Lord Warden, and I fear he’s the most likely besides yourself to find out who. But I’ll ask the abbot and the kitchen staff who came and went.”

He cast an uneasy glance about him, at the room, at the women.

Orien’s glance still smoldered. There was still harm in her. There was still the anger. He felt it as, finding nothing for himself to do, he thought he would also like to be sure Cefwyn and Emuin were safe, and went out into the hall and down the stairs. Uwen stayed with him, saying something about how Prince Efanor had been willing to listen to Idrys, finally, and how Gwywyn and Idrys had gone together to see Cefwyn, whether he was well.

But as he came into the lower hall he had that same feeling, that dread feeling he had had when of a sudden he had known direction to Orien’s ill-working—and it was the same direction.

“M’lord?” Uwen asked, as he stopped. Uwen’s voice came from far away. The sense he had was overwhelming, that it was there, down that hall, on the lower floor.

“My lord?” Uwen said again.

It was that end of the hall that had distressed him when he had first come, that place where the paving changed from marble to older stone.

Lines. Masons’ lines.

“Stay here,” he said to Uwen, and when Uwen protested regarding his safety: “Stay here!” he said, and went, alone down that hall, past other people, past servants. “Get away,” he said to them, and servants, looking frightened, moved quickly.

He walked all the way down the hall, to that place where the pavings changed. He saw the hall hung with old ba

The lines were scarcely there, scarcely a pale glow. He looked up, up at the ba

He saw the stirring of Shadows hanging like old curtains, perching on beams, spreading wings like vast birds, and the whole hall shifting and stirring with the darkness that nested in every recess. Wings began to spread, Shadows bated and threatened him, and he stepped back behind the fading safety of the line, wishing for a Word such as Mauryl had used, a spell, whatever it was that Mauryl worked.

—Tristen, came Emuin’s voice. Tristen. Stay back. Hold on to me ....

Do not let me fall. Hold me!

—Yes, sir, he said, and was aware of Emuin near him in the gray space, and was aware of Emuin growing stronger and stronger and that blue line at his feet growing brighter and brighter, until it blazed, until it turned white, and the Shadows were only ba

“M’lord!” Uwen said, having disobeyed him, having come, with his sword bare in his hand, to stand by him looking at a hall full of faded ba

Master Emuin was alive. Emuin had retreated until he could only dimly feel his presence, but something had changed in that presence. It was far, far warmer, far more vivid, of far more substance, if one could say that in the gray realm.

He had never seen Mauryl. He had never heard Mauryl in the way Emuin had shown him to do—and he thought that Mauryl might have been fearsome in this place. Emuin was not—at least, not toward him.

“It’s gone,” he said to Uwen. He drew an easier breath. “There’s no one. We should go upstairs, now.”

There were a great many people gathered around his bed when Cefwyn waked next. There was sunlight coming through the window, so he had certainly slept a while; and he blinked in slow amazement to see Idrys, and Tristen, and Ninévrisé, and Efanor, all sitting or standing around him.

He could not remember what he had been doing when he went to bed, but he shifted the leg that had been giving him misery, to find it was sore, but no longer acutely painful.

“Is there some occasion?” he asked, embarrassed to be the object of such anxious attention. “My lady.” He did not at all look his best. His hair would be in tangles. He ran his hand through it, and felt his arm quite inexplicably weak.

A

“No,” he said sharply, and waved away soup, spoon, and boy. “What is this?”

“It was witchcraft,” said Efanor, who sat on a reversed chair, arm along its back.

He was not prepared to make judgments on Efanor and witches.

“Orien Aswydd,” Ninévrisé said. “Master Emuin broke his skull but he says he will be better soon.”

“I feel fine,” he said. “I keep telling you I feel fine. What are all of you doing here?”

“You should fare much better now,” Idrys said.

“I shall, if I have fewer people staring at me.” He was unaccountably weak. He had no desire for the soup. He most wanted to sleep. He decided he would shut his eyes for a moment, and said, “Did you see the horse, Tristen? What do you think?”  “I think he’s very fine, sir.”

“Good,” Cefwyn said, remembered his betrothed bride was in the company—with his brother, which he found unlikely, and made the effort a second time to lift his eyelids to be certain it was true. “Forgive me. I don’t mean to fall asleep.”

The eyes shut. He was aware of them moving about, and discussing him quietly, and A

Was it porridge he should eat? He thought of the sunlight coming in a window of his childhood.

But that was silly. Or magical. On this particular morning, when he was about six or seven, he could hear all the voices of most of the people who would be important to him in his life. So it was a very important dream, although he didn’t know their names, now; but he knew that he would, someday, and he should remember it when he grew up.

Chapter 31  

In two days a Frost had come, and rimed the black slates of the Zeide roof outside Tristen’s window. He opened it to test the strangeness of the white coating, and found the air very cold, and the Rime slick and cold and quite remarkable. People went about morning chores in his narrow view of the courtyard below and their breath made white steam. So did his own against the glass. “Look!” he said to Uwen, quite foolishly, entranced by this miracle, and Uwen looked.

“Why does it do that?” he asked Uwen, and Uwen scratched his morning-stubbled chin.