Fortress of Owls

“We’ll have no choice but wait for more news,” Cefwyn said. “But we will move the three reserve units into position at the river.” With a scarcity of carts and drivers, the vast weight of canvas necessary for a winter camp was going to move very much slower than he wished, and therefore men who relied on those tents would not move up to their posts except at the pace of their few carts.

Damn, he thought, and then, on his recent thoughts and his praise of Tristen for steadying the province, gave a little, a very little momentary consideration that where Tristen was, wizardry was, too… far more than in the person of Emuin. Nothing untoward would happen there, that Tristen could prevent.

There followed a very small and more fearful thought that the hole in the Quinalt roof was not coincidence and the withholding of those carts was not coincidence, either. He knew it was never Tristen’s intent to hamper the defense in the north. Tristen might well have gotten wind of the impending events in Elwynor, too; but the timing of it all had the queasy feeling of wizard-work, all of it moving the same direction, a tightening noose of contrary events.

He knew, for all the affairs of Ylesuin, a moment of panic fear, a realization that all the impersonal lines on maps and charts were places, and the people in them were engaged in murdering one another at this very moment in a mad, guideless slide toward events he did not wholly govern and which those maps on his desk yonder no longer adequately predicted.

They were on the slope and sliding toward war, but even who was on the slope with them was difficult to say.

Difficult to say, too, who had pushed, or whether anyone remained safe and secure and master of all that had happened above them. Tristen’s dark master of Marna Wood, this Hasufin Heltain, this ill-omened ghost, as Tristen described him—devil, as the Quinalt insisted—was defeated and dispelled at Lewenbrook, his designs all broken, and heor itwas no longer in question. The ba

But Tristen had fought among them up to a point, and then something had happened which he did not well understand, or even clearly remember to this day. Darkness had shadowed the field, an eclipse of the light, night amid day; and so the sun sometimes was shadowed, and so wizards could predict it to the hour and day.

But had something been inthat darkness? It seemed that the heart of the threat had been not the rebel Aseyneddin, but Hasufin Heltain, and when Hasufin retreated and Tristen cast some sort of wizardry against him, then Aseyneddin had fallen and that war had ended, the darkness had lifted, and all the forces of the Elwynim rebel Aseyneddin had proved broken and scattered in the darkness. Light had come back on a ground covered with dead, many of them with no mark at all.

A man who had fought at Lewenbrook had a good many strange things to account for, and memories even of men in charge of the field did not entirely agree, not even for such simple things as how they had turned Aseyneddin’s force or ended up in the part of the field where they had seen the light break through. They could only say that in the dark and the confusion they had driven farther than they thought and won more than they expected.

Yet…

Yet none of it seemed quite stable, as if they had not quite deserved their good fortune and did not understand how they had gotten there.

They had won, had they not? Yet here he stood with a bereaved wife and no less than Idrys saying there was little they could do.

And if someone pushed them over the precipice toward another conflict, with lightning striking the roof and Tristen driven in apparent retreat… still, they had won the last encounter.

Had they not?

And would they not win against whatever lesser wizard Tasmôrden dragged out of the bushes?

Would they not?

Damn the Quinalt, whose fear of wizardry gave him no better advice than to avoid magic… when the whole of the Quinaltine combined could do nothing of the sort Tristen had done on that field, and nothing of the sort Tristen could do again.

And damn the Quinalt twice: theyhad sent Tristen to Amefel, even if it was his good design, and done only in time to avert the whole province rising up in arms.

Was thatnot good fortune… save his carts, which the weather would not let them take across the bridges anyway?

So here they were… committed, and before the winter forced the siege to a fruitless end; and before any white miracle of the gods could intervene to save Ninévrisë’s capital. It was not contrary to their unhappy predictions, at least… none of them had held out infallible hope.

He sent Idrys and A

“He will not hold it,” was all he could say to her. At least without witnesses he could gather the Regent of Elwynor in his arms and hold her close against his heart.

“I have never wished I had wizardry,” Ninévrisë said, hands clenched on his sleeves. “Until now. NowI wish it, oh, gods, I wish it!”

“Don’t,” he said, frightened, for she knew what she wished for, and the cost of what she wished, and reached after it as a man might grasp after a sword within his reach… very much within his reach; and no swordmaster, no Emuin, no Tristen to restrain her. He touched her face, fingers trembling with what he knew, he, a Man and only a man, and having no such gift himself. He took her fine-boned fist and tried to gain her attention. “Don’t. I know you can. I believe you can. You can go where I can’t follow, and do what I can’t undo, being your father’s daughter. I know. I knowwhat you do have, I’ve never been deceived, and if Emuin were here… gods, if Tristen were here, he’dtell you to be careful what you wish.”

She gazed at him, truly at him, as if she had heard Tristen say it himself, in just those words. Then she grew calmer in his arms. She reached up and laid fingers on his lips, as if asking silence, peace, patience. The tears had spilled and left their traces on her cheeks in the white, snowy light from the window, and all the world seemed to hold a painful breath.

“I love you,” she said. “I’ll love you, forever and always. That says all.”

“It will always say all. And they won’t win, Nevris. They won’t win.”

“But oh, my friends, all my friends… my family… my home and my people…”

“I know.” He set his arms about her, let her rest her head against his shoulder, and she heaved a great, heartbroken sigh with a little shudder after. “Gods save them. We’ll go. We’ll take the town. We’ll have justice.”

If he had gone to Elwynor in pursuit of Tasmôrden at summer’s end, if he had not insisted on dealing with his own court, his father’s court, and all the old men, believinghe would have loyalty from men who had hoped he would never be king.

Folly, he could say now: the might of Ylesuin had been readier then than it was now, if he had only taken the south on to a new phase of the war, and damned the opinions of the old men who supported the throne in the north. If even two or three of the midlands barons had come behind him and gathered themselves for war along with the southern lords, they might have crossed the river, carried through to the capital… he had had Tristenwith him, for the gods’ sakes.

But what had he done with Tristen’s help? Set it aside. Tried to silence him for fear of his setting northern noses out of joint. Kept him out of view instead of using his help. And not demanded Emuin come down out of his tower and forewarn him. He had delayed for deliberations with men he had thought reliable and necessary and respected their arguments and their long service to his father, telling himself that their opposition to him had ended when he took the crown. Well now he had the consequence of it.