Fortress of Eagles

Then the next row was moving, last but his. How should he find Uwen? It seemed in this arrangement that the lords’ captains had to follow as best they could; and he feared making a mistake and calling attention to himself, or breaking one of those weak patterns. He was far from sure the Holy Father would know it if he nudged something magical by mischance, but certainly if it had been intentional wizard-work, a misstep would draw attention.

Cevulirn was moving now, so it was time for him. He drew a deep, anxious breath, wished nothing ill to happen… but Emuin had warned him to wish very little. He thought very hard of being as harmless as he could be and of burning very, very dimly in the gray space as he followed Cevulirn: he wished to show no more fire than Cevulirn himself, and wished to do no more harm than Cevulirn did. He had the pe

He followed Cevulirn’s gray cloak out toward what had become dimmed sunlight, with the smoke overhead a haze above the door, a stinging haze stirred by the passage of the great ba

The smell clung to him. He walked still behind Cevulirn, saw Idrys shadowing Cefwyn, now, ahead of him. There was Gwywyn, captain of the Prince’s Guard, with Efanor. Then the captain of the Guelesfort, and then Lord Maudyn, commander of the forces on the riverside, and all the captains, and then the barons and their captains, and then the minor nobility of the town of Guelemara itself, all spreading out on the steps and below them. The guard captains overtook their lords, and the groups formed again, separate in colors, but not in so much sunlight as when they had gone in: clouds had swept in above the square, rendering them all shadowless, breaking down those ordinary barriers of daylight. People in the square had surged forward as the first ba

Uwen silently joined him, a relief and a comfort as the Patriarch came out and stood on the steps above them. The old man lifted the box left and right, toward the frowning, ominous heaven.

No! Tristen wished to say, as all of them, commons and nobles alike, looked up. He saw harm. He could not say from what. But harm… indeed.

The Patriarch lowered the box, and from behind him filed two rows of priests, each carrying a bundle of sticks, out and down the steps, curious sight to behold. The priests reached the bottom of the steps and proceeded on across the square. Had not Uwen said the priests did not approve the bonfire? Yet they brought their bundles of sticks, and flung them on. Cheers attended the act.

“What are those bundles?” he asked Uwen, beneath the noise and the cheering.

“The sins of the lords,” Uwen said. “And the bad old things. All goin’ into the fire, m’lord.”

“Mine, too?” he asked Uwen, having a sudden, irrational hope of mending what he could in nowise reach, things his skills had done, things he had not done, fears he had brought to the land and hopes of others that he had not met. He knew he was flawed. Mauryl had said so from the start; and Emuin generally refused to teach him. Between Efanor’s gods and the burning of sins, dared he hope?

But in that moment a cruel cold wind had begun to blow, a chill gust that snapped ba

Uwen was not instant to answer his foolish question, either. “Such sins as ye have, m’lord, which by me ain’t much. Certainly not compared to some I could speak of. ” Uwen was wrong in that: If he was the Sihhë-lord some thought, if he was Barrakkêth, then had he not sins? And if he was not the Sihhë-lord Mauryl had Called, was he not flawed? And did not the little book Efanor had lent him speak of flaws and sins as one and the same?

But Uwen took a lighter tone, as talk and merriment broke out on every hand for no reason that he could see except the tossing of the bundles on the pile. “Truth is, m’lord, I don’t know about the burnin’, but the ale flowin’ free, and the dancin’ and all, that do cure the heart. If rain don’t drown all tonight, folk’ll dance their feet bare tonight, and the ale will flow, and all. Gods bless, the sins they’ll burn tonight ain’t even committed yet.”

The trumpets sounded, and the lords all turned behind the royal company, and they all trooped toward the Guelesfort, away from the square.

Tristen felt greater relief with every step away from the Quinaltine and its tormented shadows. The ale was flowing already, as he saw along the sides of the square, where huge barrels were set up and where no few of the common folk had gathered even during the royal procession. In the distance, now that the trumpets were silent, a street drummer and a flute player struck up a lively tune. That lilting sound of the flute lifted his spirits; and if he simply looked straight ahead, he could ignore the warding signs people made against him, and that muddle of lines and trapped shadows he had seen. Could Emuin fail to see it?

Yet Emuin was, after all, a Man. All but him… were Men.

He had the Quinalt medallion about his neck. He had never even remembered it during the ceremony. He had never seemed affected, or to affect anything at all. That was good, perhaps, but he was increasingly disappointed.

He had met no gods, after all, only poor unhappy shadows. He imagined that the shadows would stir about madly over the next few days, lent substance by the offerings and the reinforcement of the skewed line, and perhaps they would attempt escape briefly when the sun was hidden and no light penetrated that darkness.

But nothing the highest of all priests was doing could free them. Trapped spirits were indeed the unhappiness that had troubled him about the place. They were the power in the earth there, too many dead, too much forgotten and disregarded. He could not imagine the Mason who had done the last construction, ignoring all that was done before.

But somehow the walls had not fallen down nor had the place broken out in irruptions of spirits. He supposed that the last Masons had been the very likeness of the Patriarch and the priests, blind to what they were doing, or even deliberately transgressing something they had knocked down and wished to obliterate—as the Quinalt truly tolerated no opinion but its own and evidently deluded itself that its will had more potency. In that sense the Lines might have been jumbled by choice, and the sight he had seen might be truly the Quinaltine as Efanor refused to see it, as even the Holy Father refused to see it—a site at war with shadows, a trap to the dead it professed to safeguard in holiness.

Yet, he thought, did master Emuin look on such things unmoved? Or wherein was the difference between Emuin the priest and wizard, and Efanor the devout and princely man, except one wished to knowand the other wished to believe, and the former wished to keep all his secrets and the latter wished to spread his opinions about to acquaintances?

But dared he think… both were Men, and all he had for guides, and this was the quality of his advice now that Mauryl was gone? The enormity of ignorance directing him was beyond all his fears.

They passed through the gates of the Guelesfort, crossed the courtyard, where the servants had gathered in some number, and where lords’ men who had not been in the processional sought their particular station through a waving forest of ba