Fortress of Owls

“Ye should rest,” Uwen said, straying bleary-eyed from his bedroom. The candles had burned far down. Some had gone out. It was the dead part of the night, and nothing was stirring but the wind outside and the steady battering of wind against the windows. “Ye don’t sleep near enough, lad. Now what in hell are ye doin’ at this hour?”

Now that Uwen said it Tristen felt the weariness of actions taken, decisions made, the small hope of things accomplished. Before him, he saw a stack of matters dealt with in a night that for many reasons, Emuin’s answer and the Elwynim and the confrontation with Crissand included, had afforded him no prospect of sleep.

It was the second such night in a row… yet weary as he was, he had no inclination to sleep.

Uwen had gone sensibly to bed at midnight, but his face too, candlelit, stubbled with gray beard, seemed weary and fretted with responsibility and his lord’s sleepless nights.

How much had Uwen watched, he asked himself.

“I nap,” he said to Uwen. “Go back to your bed. Don’t worry for me.”

“I don’t know where ye find the strength to stay awake,” Uwen said with a frown, “or again, maybe I guess, an’ I’d ask ye take to your bed like an ordinary lad an’ rest your head if I thought ye’d regard me. I don’t know whether witchery’s a fair trade for hours again’ a pillow, but honest sleep is afore all a good thing, m’lord, and makes the wits work better, an’ I’d willingly see ye have more of it.”

“I’ll try. Go to bed.”

He thought that Uwen would go away then. But Uwen lingered, came closer, until the same circle of two remaining candles held them both, the other sconce having failed.

“Ye recall,” Uwen said quietly, “when ye was first wi’ us, how ye’d learn a new thing and ye’d sleep an’ sleep till the physicians was all confounded. D’ ye recall that?”

“I do recall.”

“And now it don’t happen, m’lord, ’cept down there in hall, wi’ you an’ young Crissand staring back an’ forth an’ not a sensible word. Ye don’t sleep. Ye’re not helpin’ yourself.”

“No,” he agreed. “I suppose I’m not.”

“An’ by me, my lord, I’d far rather the sleepin’ than the not sleepin’, if ye take my meanin’. So I ask ye, please. Go to bed. Take some wine if ye will. But try.”

He had been all but set on a more forceful dismissal, but of all others, Uwendid not deserve a dismissal or a curt answer.

Indeed, differences. A change had happened in the way he met the world of new things, and the way he ordered Men here and there. What new things he encountered did not so much Unfold to him these days as turn up inthe shadows of his intentions, warning him only a scant step before he must wield the knowledge. His life had acquired a sense of haste, and feeling of being a step removed from calamity. He was engaged now in battle with paper and clerks and carpenters, with Elwynim companies and grain from Olmern, with the adoration of desperate men and the jealousy of his friends.

He resented sleep.

But… Flesh and blood as well as spirit, Mauryl had indeed warned him, with the sharp rap of his staff on the steps. Crack! Crack-crack! The echoes still lived in his memory, still made him wince. Pay attention! Mauryl would tell him. Uwen had told him. Should he not heed?

“See here,” Uwen said with a sidelong glance at the brazen dragons. “Will ye take mybed? I don’t have any of them things leaning above myrest. I don’t wonder ye don’t sleep un’erneath them damn things, but rest ye must.”

“I promise. I promise, Uwen. Go off to bed. I’ll put myself to bed in a very little time.”

Uwen looked doubtful, and began to leave, then turned back, feet set.

“Swear,” Uwen said.

“By the gods?” he asked wryly, knowing Uwen knew where that study sat with him, in Efanor’s little book.

Uwen said not a thing. But neither, now, would Uwen leave.

“I’ll go to bed,” Tristen said, conceding. “Go on. I’ll not need Tassand.”

“Tassand’ll have my head if I don’t call ’im,” Uwen said, and went off to do that.

So difficult things now became. And now Uwen had set his teeth in the matter of his master’s difficulties and would no more let go than a dog a bone.

“M’lord?”

Uwen was merciless, and insistent.

So he took himself to bed, attended by two sleepy servants, loomed over by Aswydd dragons.

Then, lying still in the dark, he found himself at the edge of exhaustion, and afraid, wanting just the little assurance things in the place were in order… he stretched out his awareness as thin and subtle as a waft of air to the rooms around him, touched Uwen’s sleeping thoughts, and his guards’ drowsy watching at the door. Gathering sleep was like pitching a tent for protection, stretching thin ropes this way and that to ground he knew was stable.

And when he extended his curiosity farther still, he was able to reach Emuin, who was distracted, and a boy, whose feet were cramped in new boots, and who kept Emuin’s night hours.

He had not alarmed them or even attracted notice in his tenuous wandering. The boy poured tea and served in fear, his concentration all for the gray-haired untidy man in the tower with him, while Emuin chased the mysteries of the stars through his charts. The boy thought mostly of food and whether he dared reach for the last small cake.

It was enough: he had succeeded once at subtle approach, assured himself his household was safe and folded around him like a blankest.

He spread himself thi

The man ran, and did not elude him, but hid shivering in the shadows, in fear of justice that might last him for days.

But fear was enough, unless he found the man twice.

He sailed away, longed to reach Crissand, but in this fey mood sent his thoughts past that house, down the street, to the gates.

He was aware even further, of men and horses outside the walls, and villages drowsing under a sifting of snow north and south of Henas’amef.

He felt the lonely camp at Althalen, and the soldiers’ camp on the Lenúalim’s cold and windy shores; he dreamed of wings shadowing the road, broad, blunt wings, peaceful in the night. Snow began, and fat flakes whirled and spun beneath those wings.

He had found Owl, so his dream told him. At last he had found the source of his fey restlessness, and rode Owl’s thoughts, as Owl showed him all the land from high, high above.

Owl flew right across the village of Modeyneth, the guard posts, the bridges, and the river, and soared on above the land of Elwynor, to a city afflicted by siege and ravaged by fire.

There was Tasmôrden. Therewas the enemy that threatened Ninévrisë’s people and Cefwyn’s peace, and Owl circled above that place, finding the insubstantial Lines of the fallen town also broken and faltering in their strength.

Now he was well awake in this dream, and angry, and violating every sense of caution he had urged in Crissand.

He saw, yes, the faint glow of wizardry about Tasmôrden, not that Tasmôrden himself wielded it well, but that it was in the air of the place, and that somehow it moved there, raw and reddened and white with struggle.

There was wizardry about the town as well, ragged blue of guard and ward, Uleman’s making, Tristen thought: that clear light, however fragmentary, was like Uleman’s work, Ninévrisë’s father. His care, his courage, all, all defended Ilefínian, but had not prevailed to hold it. The ragged red had come in on the edge of sword and axe, leapt up in the burning and smoldered in the glow of embers.