Fortress of Eagles

And then he thought, Will any among you fly to Amefel? Are you the same birds as I knew there? Can such small, frail birds fly so far as that?

Winter is coming, snow, and ice. So they tell me. Take care, take care. Find me in Amefel if you wish, if you can, if you dare. Come there safely and soon!

Pealing of the bells, flowing cloth, black and red, stretched across the wind, and the martial tramp of soldiers ringing back from the walls of the Guelesfort: such were the impressions of the moment. Uwen, he was sure, was at his back, and Lusin and the guards waited before him, all ahorse.

“Stay,” Cefwyn said to him, a hand on his arm. The bells, having rung out their chorus, left a numb silence and the last pigeons had fled. “My dear friend,” Cefwyn said publicly, loudly, and it echoed off every wall and house around the square. “ My dear friend. ”Cefwyn turned him and embraced him in full view of the people, as the very air grew still. “I did what I could,” Cefwyn said close against his ear. “Believe in me. Believe in me, Tristen. Trust me that nothing has changed in our friendship.”

“I do,” he said, in all earnestness. “I shall.” In such a silence it seemed even so that people might be listening, so he added as they broke apart: “Your Majesty.”

“Take care, Tristen. Take great care.” Cefwyn looked up, a glance at the windswept heavens. “We might have used the weather-luck last night,” he said, attempting a laugh. His grip bruised. Meanwhile the people waited, as all the ba

Brother. He had looked for no such thing, and he held that word of all Words close to his heart, he who had had neither father nor mother nor mother’s love nor ever been, himself, a child. He had just had the Holy Father’s blessing, and the solemn words of his own oath of fealty and Cefwyn’s pledge to him still rang in his ears. Words, Words, and Words fell like hammer strokes, pealed like bells across the sky.

But undeniable truth was in the silence of the people in the square, the anxious faces, and most of all in the parting of Cefwyn’s hands from his arms. Cefwyn had no power to prevent this moment, and now as he moved from Cefwyn’s embrace, it felt as if someone had moved from between him and a cold, random wind, one that now would gust and blow and chill him to the bone. He refused to look back as he walked down the steps, nor did he look around as he met Uwen, who offered him Gery’s reins. They mounted up. All the rest of the column that would ride down and away with them began to move at his first start forward.

He allowed himself one glance, and saw Cefwyn standing on the steps as he imagined he would see him. Then he turned Gery’s head away and led his column across the face of the assembled nobles.

He had a thousand questions for Cefwyn, oh, a thousand thousand questions… but there had been no time before now to ask, and now that their necessities drew them too far, too fast apart, he feared there might never be. Brother was a Word, but not a word that could bridge the moment. He saw Efanor amid the crowd of nobles, Efanor with his priest beside him, and he saw how Efanor signed a pious wish for him. He knew Efanor wished him well despite all his fears and his jealousy, and he felt a small pang of regret for Efanor, for Efanor’s faith in absent gods, and most of all for Efanor’s failing of Cefwyn’s love… he knew that he was himself the thief of Cefwyn’s affection; and forgiven by Efanor at oh, so great an effort. He saw Cevulirn besides, and imagined warmth in his narrow eyes, at least approval of the choice.

But he saw nothing but cold stares else, on the part of the dukes of the north. They were constrained to be there, detesting his presence the while, and he was sure they were in some remote fashion responsible for his departure: he had heard the story about the lightning, the Quinalt roof, and the coin and knew none of them could guide the lightning, but they were skilled at guiding spiteful words. He understood their rules, now, rules set forth in all the chronicles of the Marhanen reign, and how the barons had supported Selwyn Marhanen, one of their own, to be king over them not because they loved him best, but because he was the only one they all feared, the only one who could hold them from fighting each other. Was it not still the same?

He understood, too, the structure they had woven, the realm of Ylesuin, how all the barons’ influence over their own people and all their rights with the king were posed alike on agreements that rested on oaths, and oaths as they saw it rested on the Quinaltine’s validity; they would not keep their word unless they feared the gods’ wrath on them, and therefore they believed that no one else would keep his word unless he was similarly afraid. They were not Cefwyn’s friends. They were certainly not men Cefwyn would ever call brother, and yet they each desperately sought closeness to the king, each seeking any chance to outdo his neighbors. They feared Cevulirn because Cefwyn loved him; feared Emuin for many of the very same reasons. And Ninévrisë… oh, greatly did they fear her influence.

So how much more must they distrust Mauryl’s heir… and how ready were they to see omens in the lightning last night… omens of overthrow and attack on themselves, and most of all, evidence of forbidden wizardry.

(It was no damned wizardry, master Emuin had said this morning. Why not ask those who know, good loving gods? No, no, no one consults a wizard. Everyone in town takes advice from His Holiness on the matter, when if His Holiness had a smidge of wizardry, he would never have a hole in his roof, now would he?)

He could all but hear Emuin’s voice echoing down the stairs… as in the square, now, before him, the ba

Uwen moved up beside him in a small burst of speed as he eased off Gery’s reins. There were thirty men behind them, a clattering column of soldiery, as they left the square and entered the town.

Master Emuin might avow there was no wizardry in the stroke. But it had been a large and incontrovertible hole above them in the ceremony—workmen had put that canvas over it last night, a task the hazard of which Tristen could scarcely imagine, going up in the dark and the rain, and with the lightning still playing in the clouds. So much men dared, relying on the gods, and on the luck Uwen so often invoked.

But was it only blind chance that had dislodged Mauryl’s Shaping and set him on another Road? He dared not guess, and he thought that Emuin protested too loudly: Emuin knew, must know, must be aware of the damage done in his leaving Cefwyn’s side. And did Emuin deny there was wizardry abroad?

Now the sun speared down into the street ahead and people fell back from his path, not cheering, precisely, a few making a faint pretense of it, and the children skipping along for a better view. Red Gery danced sideways as well as forward, excited at the noise of trumpets and the flutter of ba