Fortress of Dragons

Tarien knew about the child, he kept thinking to himself. When she went to Anwyfar, she knew. When they dealt with Hasufin Hel-tain, and bargained with him— Orien knew.

"M'lord?" Uwen asked, for he had faltered on the first step. All the accumulated hard days and wakeful nights came down on his shoulders at once, and he found he could not set his foot to the step.

"Are ye hurt, m'lord?"

Uwen's arm came about him, bearing him up, and with that help he essayed the first step. Another arm caught him from the right, Lusin, he thought, and he made the next, telling himself that he must, and that rest was at the top of the stairs, just a little distance down the hall.

"Are ye hurt?" Uwen insisted to know.

"No," he said. "Tired. Very tired, Uwen."

" 'At's good, then, m'lord. Just walk."

He climbed up and up the right-hand steps, those that ascended above the great hall, leaning on two good friends… and there he paused, drawn to turn and look down on that staircase, on that lower hall lit as it was from a mere handful of sconces. There burned but a single candle in each at this dim hour.

He had come up this stairs from the great hall the one night he had come very close to believing Orien and falling into her hands… and then, too, Uwen had seen him home.

He had run these steps the night Parsynan had murdered Cris-sand's men… and the shadows of those men haunted the whole lower hall, all but palpable at this hour.

He had gone down these steps toward the great hall as a new-made lord, and there faced a haunt that now was all but under his feet, the old mews, out of which Owl had come.

And did it stir, tonight, that power, knowing these twin sisters had come home?

He willed not. Trembling in the support of two strong men, he willed strength into the wards that kept the fortress safe. He willed that nothing within these walls, no spirit and no living soul, should obey Lady Orien, accustomed as this house might have been to her commands.

He did all that on three breaths, and was at his weakest, but he was sure then that the haunt below in the mews had not broken out or answered to Orien's presence, and that most of all reassured him, for of all dangers in the fortress, it was the chanciest and the greatest.

"Shall we take him on up, then?" Lusin asked, tightening his arm about his ribs, clearly supposing his lord had lost his way.

" 'E's stopped on 'is own," Uwen said pragmatically, against the other side, and shifted his grip on his wrist and about his waist. "An' 'e'll start on 'is own. 'Is Grace is thinkin' on somethin' worth 'is time, and I ain't askin' what till he's through."

"I'm very well," Tristen said then, although for the life in him he could not think of what he had just been doing.

"Lean on me, lad," Uwen said then—neither Uwen nor Lusin was as tall as he, but they had their leather-clad shoulders beneath his arms, and a firm grip around him, and bore him up the last step and down the corridor. His head drooped. He was next aware of his own foyer, outside Uwen's room.

And could not bear to go back into the bedchamber.

"I'll sit by the fire," he said.

"The fire an' not your bed, m'lord?" Uwen asked. "Your bed's waitin'."

"Not now." It was an effort for him to speak, now, not that it was hard to draw breath, but that his thoughts wanted to wander off, and the firelight seemed safer than the dark in the rooms beyond.

Time was when he would fall sound asleep at moments of revelation, at any moment when new things poured in on him so fiercely and so fast that his wits failed to keep up. For hours and hours he would sleep afterward, no physician availing to wake him, and when he would wake—when he would wake, then he would have remembered something he never knew.

But such sound sleeps no longer happened, not since the summer, when War had Unfolded to him in all its terror. He no longer had that grace, nor dared leave his servants and his men a day and more unadvised. He fought to wake, and make his limbs answer him— and yet it was so much effort. If he could only sit by the fire, he thought, and see the light, then he would not fall asleep.

"Will ye take food, lad?" Uwen asked.

"Hot tea," he said.

"Tea an' honey," Uwen said, and a distant murmur went on a time, then a small, distant clatter of cups until one arrived in Tristen's hand.

He drank, and the fragile cup weighed like iron, an effort even to lift. There was no strength in him, and he supported one hand with the other to have a sip without spilling it.

Uwen hovered, waiting for him, perhaps expecting to drop it. Uwen had ridden through drifts the same as he—but was not half so tired.

"Petelly," Tristen said. He did not remember now where he had left his horse. His last memory of Petelly was of his shaggy coat snow-plastered and his head hanging.

"Havin' all the grooms make over 'im," Uwen said, "an' 'e's sleepin' by now, as you should be doin', m'lord."

He gave a small shake of his head. "Not now. I daren't, now. pve things to do."

He failed to remember where Owl had gone… Owl had gone off to kill mice, perhaps, or flown off to some place more ominous, but at least Owl had gone, and nothing worse would come tonight.

"What d' ye wish, m'lord?"

That was a fair question, one to which he as yet had no answer.

"Ye want to post a guard up there wi' the ladies," Uwen reminded him. "There's servants in this house that served the Aswydds."

"Do that," he said, and then heard, in the great distance, Uwen naming names to Lusin, choosing Guelenmen, Quinalt men, men least likely to listen to the Aswydds' requests or to flee their threats.

He had another sip of honeyed tea, sitting before a fire that had been Orien's, in an apartment that had been Orien's, green velvet and bronze dragons and all. It had been Orien's apartment, and Lord Heryn's before her, and on the best of nights he never felt quite safe here. He watched it, guarded it as much as lived in it, and of all places in the Zeide where he could bestow the twins, he would not cede this one to Lady Orien.

The old mews was virtually under his feet here, that rift in the wards out of which Owl had come, and which he had not been able to shut, since.

"Tassand's gone to see to the guests," the next-senior of his servants came to report to him… Drys, the man's name was. "Your Grace, would you have another cup? Or will you have the armor off?"

He had lost his cloak somewhere, or Uwen had taken it. The brigandine's metal joinings scarred the chair, and the padding beneath it was much too warm.

He must have assented. Drys knelt and began to undo buckles about his person, and two others helped him from the boots. He stood, then, with Uwen's help, and shed the brigandine, piece by piece. It was light armor, and lighter still the padding beneath, but the very absence of its weight was enough to send him asleep on his feet.

" 'Ere, m'lord," Uwen said. "You ain't stayin' awake. Best ye go on to your bed an' sleep. The ladies is under guard an' dawn's comin' afore ye know it. Ain't a thing in the wide world ye can do else for anyone, but to sleep."

He was defeated. Drys set a cup of mulled wine in his hand, and the mere pungent smell of it sent his thoughts reeling toward the pillows and the warmed soft covers. Whatever he had tried to think of before he stood up to shed the armor went fleeting into the dark.

" 'At's good," he heard Uwen say, realized he was abed, and felt Uwen draw the coverlet up over his shoulder.