Fortress of Owls

Could there be a snare in too much beauty? Could there be too much expectation of good, and too much faith?

Could ever there be too much love?

And could love require lies?

He asked himself that. He had drawn Crissand once into the gray space himself, though he doubted Crissand had since ventured it on his own. He doubted, too, that Crissand had any least notion what had happened to him in that moment, or how he had found himself confronted while absent and, coatless and desperate, sent out into the snow.

He could teach Crissand, he thought, how to reach that place where concealment was very difficult. He was sure Crissand’s gift was strong enough. But to set Crissand at liberty in that place… there were dangers in it, dangers in the gift, dangers in the wandering. Dared he believe Crissand would never venture it on his own?

But Crissand’s attention was suddenly for a snowy ridge. He pointed to it and said, with a whitened barleyfield on the one hand and a bare-limbed apple orchard on the other, that they were coming to the crossroads.

“There is Padys Ridge, and the shrine and the spring just below it.”

A very old oak, winter-bare, fronted that ancient outcrop, sole wild representative of his kind in an otherwise tame land of orchards and small, pruned trees. Just beyond it, still within the reach of its limbs, snow-covered, was the slight evidence of a road.

“There’s our turn to Levey, my lord.”

“Ba

Crissand had said there was a shrine of sorts. Indeed, with the scouring of the morning’s wind, a small pile of man-set stones was peeping out from its snow blanket. It recalled one near Emwy village far to the west. That had been summer. The spring here was frozen where it flowed out of the natural rock, and had made a glorious mass of icicles.

“Padys Spring and the shrine, my lord. One of the last of the old places. The king’s men overthrew most, wherever they found them. I ask you’ll keep it. The village sets great store by it.”

“A shrine of the Bryalt?” he asked, largely ignorant of gods, study as he would in Efanor’s little book.

“Perhaps older, my lord. Though Bryalt offerings may turn up here, the king’s law and the Quinalt notwithstanding.” Crissand spoke in the hearing of Guelenmen, in Uwen’s hearing most of all, and was surely aware it. “We go uphill from here, a clear, smooth road, as I recall it, no ditches or pits to fear on either side.”

No track disturbing the snow since the last snowfall, either, but the blanket sank down considerably in a long line through the ridge, showing where the road was, and the stone sheep walls on either side, visible ahead of them, confirmed it. They rode past old stones, and many of the Guelenmen made a small sign against harm.

“The farmer folk are staunch Bryaltine,” Crissand began to say as they rode past.

But just as they passed under the spreading branches of the oak a fierce gust of wind blew past them, driving the ba

Chapter 2

Gods!” Crissand said in dismay, and reined up sharply… for an old woman stood by the shrine, so gray and brown in her shawl and skirts she might have been part of the oak in the last blink of their eyes. She had drawn her shawl over her gray head, but hanks of her hair flew in the gale and the driven snow. She had a necklace hung with smooth river stones and knots of straw. Her skirts were weighted with braided cords and coins, and the fringes of her shawl flew wild as the icy wind skirled up.

“Gods!” Crissand said a second time, with an anxious laugh, soothing his horse with his off hand. “You gave me a fright, mother. I don’t know you. Are you from Levey?”

She was no stranger and no common woman, Tristen knew it, and held Gery still: Uwen had halted beside him. So had all the column behind halted, and the ba

“Auld Syes,” Tristen said, for to name a thing was to have some power to bid it. “What brings you so far from Emwy?”

“Why, I come to bring the lord of Amefel to his senses,” the old woman said, and pointed a bony bare arm from out of the clutch of flying fringes, stark and commanding as the wind continued to blow. “Lord of Amefel and the aetheling! Why do I find the twain of you riding west like common fools, when your road lies south? South for friends, lord of Amefel, north and east for foes, and blest the lord who knows one from the other! Mistake them not again, lord of Amefel!”

North for enemies and south for friends was no news; but east was Guelessar, and the king… and many another enemy, the barons not least. Tristen doubted nothing, and listened with ears and heart. Auld Syes had told him truth before.

And aethelingshe said, the lord of Amefel and the aetheling, as if they were not the same thing… the twain of you, she said, lord and aetheling—which met his heart with a loud echo of all the wonderings he had had to himself. The guards who heard might not have heard that salutation in the same way: the common folk attributed both titles to him. Perhaps even Crissand failed to gather that implied duality.

But he did, and sat staunchly holding the red mare still between his knees, resolved not to flinch no matter the news out of the east.

“Lord of Amefel I am now. What shall I do for you, lady of Emwy?”

“Can truly you do aught, new lord? Have you true power, or is it only illusion you wield?”

A second shot winged home with an accuracy that might miss all attention but Uwen’s: Illusionwas one of the two words hammered in silver on the blade of the sword he bore at his side; Truthwas written on the other, in bright letters of long ago, and of all men present, only Uwen knew what the writing on the blade signified: Uwen, and this old woman.

Of a sudden he found himself afraid, trembling with the old woman’s challenge not in the gray space but on the earth and in it, and under his horse’s feet. The blade he had rarely drawn, that dark metal presence that generally lurked quiescent at his hearthside.

Truth… and illusion. He was both, and would she show him the division in himself?

“If I have power to grant anything for you, lady, that will I.”

“The living king at last sits in judgment. South, south, lord of Amefel, fare south today. And when you find my sparrows, my little birds, lord of Amefel, warm them, feed them. The wind is too cold.”

His bones shook. He could not obtain his next breath.

“Find my sparrows!” Auld Syes cried, or the wind cried to him. “Find my sparrows when you have found your friends!” A brutal gust slammed into the ba

“Lad!” Uwen cried in alarm, and the wind dislodged snow from the oak above them, a thicker and thicker curtain of white that hid the old woman in its heart, a gray shadow.

“Auld Syes!” Tristen shouted, disturbed by this talk of sparrows, friends, and kings. “Auld Syes, I am not done with questions for you! May I hold you?”