Fortress of Owls

“Uwen,” he said. And Uwen stepped up to the low dais at once and without question, while he continued, helplessly, to look out at the assembly.

“Is there any threat, any harm to the halls or the town?”

“None as I see, m’lord,” Uwen said, in that reasonable, plain voice that brought quiet to horses and men alike. “Gi’ or take the old lady an’ the owl.”

There was laughter, then, an anxious, brief and loud laughter.

Tristen laughed softly, too, and afforded Owl the side of his hand to sit on. Owl’s talons this time drew blood, but that was negligible. He was rescued by the laughter, grateful to tears for the presence of friends who he now believed would not turn their shoulders to him and whisper behind their hands.

“Owl’s not altogether an ordinary bird,” he said in the difficult silence that followed, and drew another, uncertain laugh. “He goes and comes where he likes, and I suppose at the moment he likes to be here, but he may just as well decide to live in the woods. I think it bodes well, his coming.”

As if Owl heard, he took off toward the cornice again, and sat up there, staring balefully at all below him.

“There,” Tristen said. He wondered, distracted thought—if Owl was a Shadow, did Owl need to eat? The loft had shown he did. The servants should leave at least one door open… to a fierce winter draft and the hazard of his pigeons, he was sure. He dreaded that prospect, and saw the lords’ lingering disquiet. “He’s only an owl,” he said, “no matter how he comes and goes.”

“Lord Tristen is no different than he was,” Emuin said then, speaking up. “And be assured, he wishes well to all of you.”

It was in some part strange to be talked about in his hearing, much as Cefwyn and Idrys and Emuin had used to discuss him as if he were a chair or a table, when he had first arrived in Cefwyn’s hands.

Now he heard Emuin assuring his friends he would do no harm to them—and was it so? Whatever Owl was or meant, he was no natural bird, and did an ordinary lord keep a Shadow for a guest? He had his few, his faithful; but he saw all the faith, all the trust he had built with other Men near to falling in shards and pieces.

“Dance,” he said, “and drink.”

“’At’s right,” Uwen said loudly. “Fill the cups, there, and bring the sweets, and you harpers set to, somethin’ quick, wi’ the drummers!”

The drums rattled into a light cadence, Owl glared from the cornice, and the piper found his wind.

Then as Uwen came close, so Sovrag joined them, and Umanon, Azant, and others of the earls… not shu

“What’s the meanin’ on’t?” Sovrag asked. “Lights goin’ out and strange old women comin’ into hall… were she a ghost?”

“Change,” said Emuin. “Change is in the stars, change is in the wind, and safer to ride it than to be ridden down.”

And meanwhile the gray space roiled and swirled, alive not only to the two of them, but to other presences, however faint and far.

Close at hand he felt the preternatural awareness of lords such as Crissand, in whom the wizard-gift burned, in Cevulirn, in whom it shone like a candle-flame, and in more than one of the others in the general company.

—Do you know? Tristen asked Emuin. Were you aware there were so many with the gift?

—This is the south, Emuin said, as if that answered all. And you are lord of it. Be wise. Bare no more secrets to these men, for your own sake. And Cefwyn’s.

Owl, on his perch, turned his back to the sounds. Men and women uncertainly took hands and danced.

Emuin, in his gray court robes, stood silent and composed himself until he made not even a ripple in the gray place.

Are you angry? Tristen wondered. He found he was, and he did not know at what, except the fear he had just passed.

And that fear perched, a little ball of feathers, up on a cornice in the hall.

Come here, he wished the bird peevishly, expecting no obedience. But to his surprise Owl flew down and, instead of perching, flew out the doors of the hall, out into the corridors.

Half the matter was solved, at least. The guards opened doors to let various folk come and go, and Owl would take care of himself.

Chapter 6

The smell of burning might be only the fire in the fireplace, but Cefwyn’s memory could not purge itself of the unholy reek that had hung over the square.

Fire had not spread from the shrine to the wooden porches nearby, which some cited as a miracle; but it was no miracle that the rioters, driven from the square, had slipped out into the town to make mischief.

All through the night the several Guard companies had alternately stood guard and chased drunken looters, until exhausted men, a tavern owner, and short tempers had clashed bloodily at Market and Hobnail Alley just before the hallowed dawn.

It was Midwinter Day.

A new year began, and the streets stood at last in numb, universal quiet, the convulsion spent… so Idrys had reported, blood-spattered and smeared with soot when last they had spoken to each other.

Toward midnight they had admitted an orderly line of mourners through the shrine, the Holy Father decently robed and the shrine aglow with hundreds of candles and echoing with choral music. Passions sank, in that solemn, dignified sight, and Efanor’s suggestion of a second pe

But at the dawn he had heeded his guard’s strong requests to take himself out of the dangerous outer streets, and go back to the safe center and up to his apartment, to lie on his bed if not to sleep. “The kingdom needs a live king with his wits about him,” Idrys had said, when they had dealt with a roving, armed band of thieves. “Go. Hunting brigands is my work.”

So he had come back, under escort, and found Ninévrisë had never gone to her own apartments. She had taken charge of his pages, taken his desk, sat all night directing the servant staff’s oversight of the threatened Guelesfort and the care of the town’s wounded—rendering judgment, too, where A

She slept, exhausted, once she had him by her, resting against his side.

“Where is Luriel?” he finally thought to ask her, at one waking. “Is she still in her apartments?”

“She came back,” Ninévrisë said. “Her gown is the worse for wear, so Fiselle says.”

“Panys’ son was with the Guard, the last I saw him. A good man.” His fingers strayed across Ninévrisë’s shoulder, finding her arm as prone to tremors as his own, utter weariness, no more. Then the enormity of it all, and memory of the Holy Father’s last visit, when he had been so afraid, came back to him. “I never expected it, Nevris. The old man warned me. He tried to warn me. I didn’t think they’d dare anything like this.”

“Poor Benwyn.” Her voice was hoarse, unlike herself. “He had nothing to do with sorcery, or magic… he never threatened the Holy Father. He had nothing to do with it.”

Benwyn had nothing to do with it, but someone had taken pains to paint the murder with an Amefin look.

And who would know so well what Amefin charms looked like, but one who had been there?