Fortress of Owls

It could not be Auld Syes using the gray space. It was a fearsome thought, for something about her and her daughter he had always been reluctant to challenge there.

Yet he went on. If danger was here, it was not the sort Uwen or Lusin could face, nor Crissand with a dozen men-at-arms behind him, and the presence he felt was faint and weary and fading, as if at any moment it would go out and leave him no guide at all in this snow-choked night.

“Hallo!” he called out, and searched the gray space, as well, trying to learn its nature.

But fainter and fainter the presence grew, no longer moving toward him. Whether the travelers had a horse, or whether they went afoot he had not been sure, but he often could tell whether creatures lived and moved in a place, a fox, a hare, a horse, or a man: he had no such sense tonight, only of himself and Petelly—not even of Owl. Such as a wish would help, he wished them to stay alive and not to sink down and become lost in the snow, for things were chancier and chancier, and he no longer trusted the gray space to tell him… only Owl, only Owl, moving against the obstinacy of the storm that did not want him to reach these lives. The weather fought him—had broken free of his will, poured snow and sleet and bitter ice, and now he fought it, and Owl fought it, and brave Petelly lowered his head and plodded as best he could, shaken by the gusts, wishing continually to turn back.

Came the third and the fourth hill, and a cold so great Petelly stumbled to his knees and he had to get off before Petelly could rise again. He stood with his arms about Petelly’s ice-coated neck, wishing him health, wishing not to have harmed him by this mad venture, and Petelly all at once gave a great sigh and brought his head up, as if he had taken a second wind.

Mount he did not, however, for Petelly’s sake. He led him, the reins wrapped securely in gloved fingers too stiff with ice to feel what they held, and he walked, and walked, until he saw a something like a rock in the middle of the road, a lump that should not be there.

He reached it, and prodded it, and it Unfolded into a cloaked, exhausted woman, and another, in her arms.

“Lord!” she breathed., and clung to him as he helped her up. “My sister… my sister. Help us.”

Even in the dark and the driving snow he knew that voice and that shadowed face, knew it from his earliest meetings in the world of Men. Lady Orien clasped his arms in entreaty, the thick snow gathering apace to the side of her hooded cloak and her face, and he bent to help her fallen sister, who lay huddled in the snow, limp and difficult to rouse. “Come now,” he said, and laid his hands on Lady Tarien, and wished her to wake.

But he did not wish alone. Orien lent her efforts, laid her hands on his, and the gray space shivered around them. Then the limpness became shivering, and Tarien half waked.

“They burned the nu

“We’ll put her on my horse,” he said, and gathered Tarien up to her feet, feeling the thickness of her body as he held her. It was not at all the lithe, lissome Tarien he knew.

“She’s with child,” Orien said as he half carried her. “Be careful of her.”

He stopped, looked at her, dismayed at what he heard, dismayed that Owl had betrayed him, and led him here, to this unwelcome presence. Yet what could he do but leave them to die here, and nowhere had he learned to be that heartless.

Half-fainting, Tarien tried to grasp the saddle leather herself. He lifted her as high as he could, and willed Petelly to stand still while with some difficulty and Orien’s help with Tarien’s skirts and cloak he managed to settle Tarien upright on Petelly’s back.

“He’ll warm you,” he said, and settled the cloak over her and Petelly together, about her legs. He reached up, caught its edges, and closed her half-senseless fingers on it. “Keep hold of it. It’s not far to Henas’amef, and the wind will be at our backs, now. It’s not that far to shelter.”

“We were nearly there,” Orien said.

And Owl had led him.

Orien faltered in the high snow, her boots snow-caked and inadequate, but Petelly had enough to do with one. They walked, and Tarien rode. Orien leaned against him at times, seeking to shore up her strength through wizardry as she must have done for more than one night on this road—not a good heart, but brave, and now failing. With trepidation he lent her what she must have to walk, not at all pleased with the rescue, and strengthened that much, she began to speak in broken phrases of fire and sword, of their walking day and night.

“Where was this?” he asked, and learned from Orien’s labored speech of an attack on Teranthine nuns, of the two of them hunted through the night as the nu

“We had a horse,” Orien said. “But he ran last night. The snow came, and the weather grew worse and worse—we slept in a farmer’s haystack, and never found the house. We walked, and walked… and then we heard you, where we had all but given up.”

Winter had raged from the time they must have left their exile. It had chased them with a vengeance.

But the storm wind had seemed to lessen from the very moment he had found them in the snow, as if wizardry or outraged nature had spent its strength and now gave up the battle. The clouds broke and scudded past until, under a heaven as black and calm as the land was white, they topped that last hill before the town.

There the night showed them stars on the earth, the watch fires of camps around the snow-besieged walls of Henas’amef.

“An army?” Orien asked in dismay. “An army, about my town?”

“My army,” Tristen said in that moment’s pause, and added: “My town. My province.”

He began to walk again, leading Petelly, with Orien at his side.

Owl flew ahead of them, on broad, silent wings.

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