Fortress of Owls

“Your Grace should welcome them,” Tassand said close to his ear, helping him as Tassand had agreed to do. “Then ask the priests to pray.”

Tristen stood up somewhat abashed and looked around him; he had to wait for silence.

“I wanted you to come,” he said when there was sufficient silence. “I need all your good advice. And I’ve missed you very much. I’m glad to see you. Be welcome.”

There was applause to that. “Here’s to the Sihhë-lord!” Sovrag roared out, that word that he hoped never to hear, but there was no restraining Sovrag at all. “Gods bless ’im, say I!”

He was supposed to invite the priests. Emuin stood up, to the rescue, splendid in his new robe. Teranthine gray he wore, and he wore the Teranthine sigil, standing forth as a cleric, tonight.

“Father,” Emuin said with a wave of his hand toward the other end of the high table, where the Teranthine father and the Bryaltine abbot sat in close company. “If you’ll do the honors.”

“Delighted,” said the Teranthine, shook back his voluminous sleeves from his forearms like a workman preparing to work, and gave a prayer so rapid and so authoritative the soldiers present all but came to attention. “Gods bless this gathering,” the Teranthine concluded, passing the matter to the Bryaltine, who rose with his cup and tipped out a few drops onto the stone floor.

“Honor to the earth,” the abbot said, “honor to the dead in the passing of the year; honor to the living, in the coming of the new. A Great Year passes tonight. A new one begins. Let the good that is old continue and let the rest perish. Gods save the lord of Amefel.”

It pleased some: Tristen thought it should please him, but he was less certain about the matter of perishing… and if ever there should be a moment the gray space should come alive, on this night, with these two honest priests and Emuin, now it should… but it failed without the flicker of a presence, not even Emuin’s closely held one.

And what should he do now? Tristen asked himself, for there was a ritual aspect to this feast, this gathering of close friends—as if Men wished to be sure where all they loved was when the world changed. And was that enough, and had they raised enough godliness in this gathering?

But just then the servants paraded out with another course, the fabled pies, so there was an end to the speeches and the gods-blessing and all speculation on the new year. There was laughter, and Midwinter Eve, that had loomed so ominous through Emuin’s year, turned to high good spirits and the praise of Cook’s pastries.

Midwinter Eve had been imagining, and pla

Then Sovrag called out that a good Midwinter Eve wanted tale-telling, and he had heard of the business with Ryssand’s son, but he wanted a full recitation for the wider hall.

A small silence fell—Sovrag was several cups past sober and meant no harm at all, but it was no good story, and Cevulirn, with that still, dignified calm that hushed all around him, refused.

“It’s too recent, and I’d rather Lord Pelumer. He has a winter story.”

“Which?” asked Pelumer.

“Why, when you were young, Lanfarnesse. The deer in the treetops.”

That caught interest even from the drunken, and Pelumer needed no pleading. He told of the year the Lenúalim froze so deep carts could cross it, and how the ice had lasted into spring. He told how the snow had drifted so high up the trees the deer browsed the high branches.

Then it was so cold a man carrying wood had his fingers break off, and it was so cold an ox team turned up frozen in their yoke, still standing.

Tristen thought that part very sad.

“A man could walk to Elwynor from here,” Pelumer went on, “since the river was a highroad, white and smooth as glass. I saw it. I was a boy of seven years, and I walked from Lanfarnesse into Marna and back, chasing the deer and seeing what I could see. Marna was all asparkle with ice. The High King sat in Althalen, and the High King’s rangers kept the woods. But no one dared kill the deer in Marna Wood. And no one went to Mauryl’s tower, either.

“Yet I saw it through the trees, and knew then how far I’d come. I turned back, walking the river home, not wishing even in those days to have the sun set before I’d cleared that part of those woods. Down and down went the sun, and the ice went from bright to gray. Then I walked as fast as I could, and began to run, with the clearest notion there was something right at my shoulders. I ran and I ran and I ran, until a shadow rose up right in front of me.

“It was a King’s Ranger,” Pelumer concluded, to the relief of the young girls from Merishadd, who had leaned closer and closer together, and all but jumped. “And he said it was very well I never looked back, for those who did never came out again.”

There were delicious shivers. But Tristen knew better, and so did Sovrag, surely, who leaned back in his chair, and began his own tale of river-faring, less eloquent than Pelumer, involving his own first trip up to Marna, with his father’s crew, even then trading with Mauryl.

“We went to the old tower, right up where the water meets the stones, and the old man’d come and never bargain, but say what he’d pay. That was his habit. And me da was careful about the hour, that’s so. By sundown we cleared that wood—and was raidin’ the shore by Lanfarnesse after that…” This with a wink at Pelumer. “But we’re honest men, now, an’ sittin’ in a warm hall, with clear water an’ the wind turned out of the north this evenin’. That’s the breath of the hoary old north wind, as blows the boats home. Mother South Wind, she’s blowed us here, and old man North Wind, he’s chasin’ us home—can’t ask for better. Wizard-luck, that is for us, ’specially if it blows us back with the next load.”

“Wizard-luck, indeed,” Emuin said somberly, from Tristen’s right, next Crissand at the table. “Luck andwizardry.”

“Was it you?” Sovrag asked—respecting the cloth and the wizard, as it seemed, for there was a caution in Sovrag whenever he spoke to Emuin. “Uncommon lack o’ snow, there is.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Emuin said, not the admission Sovrag courted, and it left Sovrag with not a thing to say on that subject. Tristen took quick note of the tactic, seeing it turned on someone other than him.

But Sovrag was rarely without something to say. “An’ no ice in the river, master wizard, not this year. Boats, boats can run free an’ badluck to Tasmôrden, say I! Here’s to wizard-luck an’ Ilefínian—an’ to hell with that blackguard Tasmôrden!”

“So’t is!” Uwen said, from Tristen’s left. “But there’s tomorrow for that.” It was a valiant effort for a shy man to speak out and stem the flood of war talk— but his effort failed, for Lord Durell was drunk enough to propose they should make a foray against the enemy immediately.

“Deck the bridge at the Guelen camp and have the blackguard’s head within the week!” Durell cried, lifting his cup. “To hell with ’im!”

“I doubt it will be so easy,” Cevulirn said.

And Crissand, who was no more drunk than Cevulirn, which was to say, not at all, said, “On any cold, clear morning, with a will, we’re ready.”

“Damn Tasmôrden,” said Lord Azant, and Drumman: “Long live Lord Tristen!”

Then Emuin, who had had more than one cup himself, and who had blunted Sovrag’s first foray, lifted a hand. “Inappropriate for me to curse,” Emuin said. “And His Majesty has demanded patience of us. And no talk of war tonight.”

There was a muttering at that.