Fortress of Eagles

“Supper, sir,” Tristen said cheerfully, “a holiday supper. Breakfast, of sorts. But there’s the holiday ale. There’s a keg of it outside, in Uwen’s keeping.”

“Breakfast,” Emuin said. “No ale. Ale muddles the wits and I need mine, young sir. But tea would be very welcome. Cursed rain.” Emuin composed a rattling stack of selected parchments and cleared a small space on his huge chart table. Then, with some ado, he poked up the embers in the entirely inadequate fireplace, added tinder, then a few sticks, and raised a little fire. He looked into the sooted teapot, seemed to decide there was sufficient water, and swung it over the fire on its dragon-shaped hook, the tower room’s one elegance.

“Well, sit down, sit down,” Emuin said, and Tristen set out ham and bread on the table, settling himself as Emuin set out two chipped pottery cups and a spoon of dubious recent history.

Emuin wore nothing like the finery he had worn to the king’s hall two days ago. Emuin’s second-best gray robe, the Teranthine habit, had threadbare spots and the hem was out, not to mention the ink stains. Ink blackened his thumb and two fingers. His white hair hung in ringlets, looking damp, probably from a determined look at the heavens. As Men went, he was old, quite, quite old, Tristen had come to understand— older, perhaps, than most Men ever came to be, and Emuin had lost patience with things he had seen too many times. That was what he had said about the court and his servants alike.

But novel things interested him. “I thought you would enjoy these,” Tristen said, laying out the oak gall and the bird’s egg.

“Thrush,” Emuin said of the egg, and that Word Unfolded in a delightful song, a moderate-sized brown bird, ample reward for his care in bringing it back unbroken. “Ah,” Emuin said, and admired the oak gall. “Very useful.” He set it by in a place of honor. They sat near the only warmth, and wisps of Emuin’s hair, drying somewhat, flew about in the drafts, what of it he did not braid into an immediately unwinding pigtail.

The water boiled while they talked of autumn colors and the leaves and why evergreens did not cast their leaves at all, a conversation Tristen was sure he never could have had in the king’s gathering below, for all his regret of the jeweled ladies. They poured tea as the sounds of merriment wafted up from the town square through the unshuttered windows.

“The fools,” Emuin said, in the chilly drafts. “They’ll be soaked. It’s for the young and the foolish out there tonight, no question.”

“Burning sins, Uwen said.”

“Would they could get all of them. I’ve a few to contribute. We could toss Lord Corswyndam on the pyre.”

He could discern Emuin’s levity. Not so with everyone he dealt with. He could laugh at the image of someone carrying stiff old Lord Corswyndam like a log of wood and flinging him onto the fire. The lord of Ryssand was not Cefwyn’s friend, nor was he Emuin’s. Corswyndam and Lord Prichwarrin of Murandys, however, were very good friends, to no one’s comfort that he knew of. “Do they do the same in Amefel? Do they burn sins?”

“No. Not in Amefel. They burn straw men. But they’ll be dancing and drinking everywhere across the northern land tonight, in Guelessar, in every province, Panys and Murandys, Teymeryn, Isin and Marisal.”

“Everyone callsthem northern.”

“They do.”

“But they lie east.”

“Only from Amefel.”

That was a perplexing thought. There was something about Emuin’s remark on sin-burning that had begun to trouble him, as if something very troubling were trying to Unfold, and he resisted it, knowing it could only upset him on a night when he had no wish to be disturbed, only comfortable in Emuin’s company.

“Devils try to come in on the wind,” Emuin said, “so northern folk say, so they chase them with fires. In the south they celebrate the first day of winter, and on Midwinter Day they light the fires again, to encourage the sun.”

“And do they? And does it?” he asked, hovering close to the thought of bonfires as warmth, and remembering a book, not Efanor’s little book. He had burned that book in a like great fire, but the words of it, words he himself might have written, kept bobbing up to the surface of very dark waters. They were words he had written… if he was Barrakkêth. He huddled his long limbs close, fearing with all his soul what Emuin might say next.

“There are no devils and the sun does very stubbornly as it will. But one is north and one is south. What the old people did, their descendants do, not even remembering why. Now in the northern duchies they burn up sins. I truly doubt its efficacy, but the Quinalt has never put a stop to it, only made it sins, instead of enemies.”

Great fires like the fire at Henas’amef. They had burned Lord Heryn’s men. Had that pyre burned their sins with him? Fear of the fire had not daunted Lady Orien or her sister Lady Tarien, but it daunted him.

Great fires, pages of a book curling and catching fire, and bodies of men blackened and twisted. The smell of it came to him, a memory, or a spell-wrought understanding. If he was Barrakkêth, he had had no mercy on his enemies, so they wrote. If he was Barrakkêth, he had overthrown lost Galasien centuries ago, and reigned over Men in fire and blood. So his books said. In fire and blood the Sihhë dynasty had risen; in fire and blood it had gone down at Althalen, when Cefwyn’s grandfather had burned the last halfling king, another great fire.

Was it for his sins?

If he had burned, was he pure? And if he had come back into the world, had he come sinless? Men thought not, it was clear. Even Emuin thought not.

There had been five true Sihhë. Five who had come down out of winter, bringing their weapons, their knowledge of war, their i

Only then had Mauryl withdrawn entirely from Men and shut himself in the fortress of Ynefel. Only then had the realm split in two: Ylesuin had had the Marhanen kings; and Elwynor had declared the Regency under Uleman, then a young man, and settled down to wait… for a true king, a Sihhë king, the King to Come, so long as Uleman lived.

Now Elwynor had grown weary of waiting. Now every hedge in Elwynor produced a claimant, a rebel, a man who wished to deny the Regency could pass to Uleman’s daughter Ninévrisë… certainly many Elwynim were ready to deny Ninévrisë if she married a Marhanen king. So Elwynor burned villages for their sins. He saw the bright, bright fire, and the black shadows that had been Men in his dreams of Althalen. They hoped to stop the burning, he and Cefwyn, and put an end to fire and sword.

“Why do they say north?” He had been chasing that thought, among worse ones, through the mazy paths of the oak grain on the tabletop, and he was suddenly moved to ask a question, to escape the chance of something more Unfolding. North was a potent question. It was the question of the Sihhë. But the sudden query confused Emuin: he saw that. “North of what mark do they reckon, sir, to call Amefel the south?”

“Ah,” said Emuin, then, and appeared to consider the question. “That is to say, north of the Amynys before it flows into the Lenúalim. That was the old boundary, the Guelen boundary, if you would know.”

“And where is that river? Well south and east?”

“East and bending north, if you would know. Between Marisyn and Marisal.”

“Yet Amefel is north of that, too. And Amefel they always reckon south.”

“So they do. And slant their maps out of true to make their own lands seem more level, gods forbid that Ylesuin should tilt.”