Fortress of Owls

“Curiosity. A lifelong study. My diversion. All wizards have such charts.”

“Mauryl did. Parchments, papers, everywhere, and all blown about when the tower fell. I find it curious you have the same study.”

“Mauryl lived centuries. The planets were a passing show to him.”

“And to you, sir?”

“Damn, but we’re full of questions. Question, question, question.”

“So Mauryl taught me. So I learn, sir, or try to. I’ve been respectful and said yes, master Emuin. But you said I should study wizardry. You said I should look at all the faces of the dice.” He understood dismissal, however, in Emuin’s distress and reticence: Emuin wished him gone, so he rose and crossed the room and set his hand on the door, with a backward look at the stone, unplastered chamber, at shelves untidy and groaning under their load, and a bed at least supplied with new blankets.

More blankets were under the bed, where Paisi had tucked a pallet, perhaps; it looked to be that, or a repository of Emuin’s discarded clothes.

“I’m glad you’ve shut the windows,” he remarked in leaving, “and I’m glad you’re not alone here.”

“Bryaltine nuns,” Emuin muttered. “The Sihhë star in the marketplace and hung on pillars, and His Reverence to Guelessar. Don’t surprise Cefwyn with these things. And in your writing to Idrys, apart from Cefwyn, make a thorough job of explaining, lad. Make it very thorough. I’ve no doubt His Reverence will.”

Chapter 7

The senior clerk came to the ducal apartment at Tristen’s request, and proudly presented a thick set of papers, figures, great long lists of carefully pe

But this was not the answer, at least not in a form that Unfolded to him. And asking the clerk what the sum of the accounts meant he could buy produced only confusion, a business of owed and received and entitled and the seasonal difficulty with contrary winds in distant Casmyndan, southward.

“Ciphering,” Uwen said, when the clerk had gone, and added with a little laugh, “which I don’t know wi’out I count on my fingers, an’ for large sums I wiggle toes. So I ain’t a help there. I’d best take mysel’ to the horses an’ the men and leave ye to your readin’, which ye don’t lack in that stack.”

“It’s coins. It all stands, for coins, does it?”

“Coins, m’lord. Aye, I reckon, in a way, it does that.”

“Crowns and pe

“’At’s some few sheep,” Uwen said. “An’ ’at there’s why Your Grace has clerks.”

“I have no difficulty with the numbers,” Tristen said, “only this business of pe

“Pe

“Show me,” he said, pushing the papers across the desk, “if you will. Youunderstand.”

“Good gods, I ain’t the one.”

“The clerk hasn’t helped. Youshow me.”

Nothing had Unfolded, nothing showed any least promise of Unfolding to show him the sense in these papers and accounts, which he had asked for, and he had until the first hour after noon before he should meet with the earls and give his own report.

Uwen obediently came closer, picked up a paper, and looked at it.

“Here’s fine, fair writin’, but the sense of it’s far above me, m’lord.”

“So are farthings and half farthings above me.” Tristen laid his finger on a number on a paper that chanced to be in front of him, that of one fleece. “What’s that to a pe

Uwen craned sideways to look. “That ’un I can show ye.”

“Here.” He swept aside the papers, and found a fair unwritten one. But Uwen, disdaining the pen and the clean sheet, sat down on the other side of the table, emptied out his purse, and showed him how many coppers made a gold crown, and each five coppers a king’s pe

Ha’farthings, a petty sum, did not pay the bill when he considered what the cost was to feed and clothe and house the staff, and then to fit out men-at-arms and build the ruined walls.

And Uwen professed his purse out of coins, and not even one fleece was accounted for.

“Get those in the cupboard,” Tristen said, for he knew there were gold ones there, and silver, and Uwen and he made stacks and piles in order, until they accounted for a whole flock at once.

After that he could look at his list of sheep and know how much gold that was, and therefore how many of those sacks that were in the strong room deep, deep in the heart of the Zeide, where the strongest guard was mounted.

“Let us go downstairs,” he said.

“M’lord,” Uwen protested, “we can’t be stackin’ the bags in th’ countin‘ room.”

“I wish to see it,” he said, “now that I understand this much.”

So down they went, the two of them, and the guard that always attended him, all rattling and clumping down to the main hall and down and down the stairs that otherwise led to Emuin’s tower, until they came to the strong room and the guarded door.

To him the strong-room guards, members of the Dragon Guard, deferred, and unlocked and unbarred the place. The escort as well took up station outside, and Tristen and Uwen stood amid stacks and bags of gold, and plate, and cups, and all the service that had graced Lord Heryn’s table, besides the ducal crown and various jeweled bracelets and other such.

“Now, them jewels,” Uwen said, “I hain’t the least idea.”

Tristen said nothing, for the sight of all of it seemed at last to Unfold to him a comprehension of the treasure Lord Heryn had. He had been down here once before, in his first days here. But only now, well lit and laid out as it was, he began to know the extent of it.

“M’lord?”

He drew in a deep breath, more and more troubled by what he saw.

“This is a very great lot of gold,” he said.

“That it is.”

“Men died for this,” he said. “Very many men died for this.”

“An’ damn cold comfort,” Uwen said, thrusting his hands into his belt and letting go a great sigh, “’cept as it buys firewood and all. An’ don’t ask me why gold should be worth so much, ’cept it’s such as a man can carry the worth of a horse in his purse, an’ damn unlikely he could carry the horse.”

He scarcely heard Uwen, except the last, and he gathered up the threads of it belatedly and gave a small, shaken laugh. “That it is. But there are too many horses in this room and not enough in the stable; and too many loaves of bread here and not enough in Meiden’s villages, aren’t there? That’s what you mean.”

“I think it is, m’lord. A box like as we brought from Guelemara, we’d fill it a lot of times in this room, and that box full up with gold is enough for two hundred men and horses for half a year. That’s the ciphering I know.”

“Imor and Olmern sell grain for gold.”

“Both do, and is likely to be jealous of each other, if ye pardon me, m’lord. Imor don’t like the Olmernmen, but the Olmernmen have the boats.”

Amefel could do with both grain and boats in its defense, Tristen thought, and standing in all this wealth of gold, he knew that he beheld a kind of magic in itself, to summon boats, and feed men. Gold became grain, and sheep, and well-fed villages. Parsynan had gathered taxes and put them in this room; so had Heryn, over years of rule, and aethelings before him had done it since the time of Barrakkêth and before. Cefwyn, he knew, had taken some sum of money away, so Cefwyn had said at summer’s end, for the welfare of the province, and because the king’s tax was due, but far more was here than the tax should ever have required, and what was anyone doing with it?