Fortress of Ice

“There’s a draft on my arm,” Aewyn complained, shivering, once when they both waked, “no matter how I turn.”

“At least we’re all out of the wind,” Elfwyn said. “And it’s only a draft.”

They were at least partly warm, close together. The horses shifted about and bickered, occasionally treading on something broken in that end of the single room, and the wind raged outside, a wind that pried at edges and whipped to this side and that of the little cottage looking for ways inside. Something thumped. A shingle might have just flown off: a new draft started, right above them.

“It’s wicked out there,” Aewyn said.

“It’s bad. But morning will be warmer. We can look around for a flint or something when it gets light enough.”

“I hope it doesn’t snow us in,” Aewyn said. “The door opens out, remember.”

“There is the window,” his brother said. “We can get out that way if it comes to that: we wouldn’t be the first. And I’m sure there’s a roof trap if that gets covered, or we can just knock some shingles off: there’s one gone already, I’m quite sure.”

His brother wasn’t afraid of the storm. Otter—Elfwyn—had spent all his winters in a cottage like this, where the door could be snowed shut. Probably it happened every winter, and the wind howled and rattled shutters, beyond windows with goatskin panes, and all his winter nights must have been this long and dark.

Elfwyn had grown up with no servants, no guards, nobody but Gran and Paisi to see him fed and keep him out of trouble, and for protection against things that might threaten a remote cottage, only Paisi’s dagger and a stick from the woodpile. He had sounded weak and foolish, he decided. His father’s son should not be either weak or a fool. He had found Elfwyn, had he not, and Elfwyn had been in dire trouble until he had found this place, so he had saved both of them, had he not? He had not lost his way, even when the fog had closed in around him and he had been utterly without landmarks: a sense had guided him. He had not lost the horses, when that kind of accident might have doomed them both.

So when his father found them, his father might even say he hadn’t done too badly, except not bringing food and blankets along; and neither, really, had Elfwyn done badly, for a boy who had never ridden a horse until this winter. His father would be so glad to see them, he would gloss over the part about stealing the mare, and the mare would come back sound: he was absolutely determined on that.

In all their other troubles, he hadn’t even asked about the book Elfwyn was supposed to have stolen from the library. He didn’t truly care about that. He supposed Elfwyn had it, and had a good reason to have gotten it, and they would settle that: Elfwyn probably thought he was going to get into dire trouble—Elfwyn was always convinced trouble would fall on him—and once they settled things with Lord Crissand (and he knew his father could), then his brother would be back in Henas’amef, and the book would be put wherever it needed to be, and Lord Tristen would come, and they would both have days to spend without worrying about anything. When he had had his few a

When his father forgave them both, they could figure out how to get Elfwyn safely back to Guelemara, since he had no Gran to go to any longer. Paisi would come, too, and maybe be a man-at-arms, or an almost-prince’s bodyguard, in which case he would wear fine clothes and carry a sword, which would get Paisi out and about the country on horseback, wherever Elfwyn went: he was a much more inventive companion than his own bodyguards, and he could think of nobody better for Elfwyn’s protection.

They would be safe forever after, he and his brother, coming back to holds and keeps and well-fortified places after their rides, to safe, warm places, where the wind didn’t ever sound like that.

iii

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS, MASTER EMUIN?” CEFWYN asked, and the old man, strengthened by ale and two rapidly vanishing seed cakes, wiped a few crumbs from his mustache and blinked, looking very real, indeed, and a little confused by the question.

“That long, has it been?”

“The boys are mostly grown, old master. They’re in dire danger out in the storm.” Fear and desperation made him ever so anxious to trust this apparition; experience with mysterious appearances—and he had seen them— warned him to be very cautious. “How can you have arrived here out of the dark in our hour of trouble and have no inkling what’s gone on?”

“That, yes,” Emuin said. “Didn’t I come for that? I think I did.”

“Then do it!” Cefwyn said. In every particular this old man was the man Cefwyn remembered, the man that Crissand, too, would remember, down to the freckles on Emuin’s high brow and the length of his snowy beard. The ring on his hand was the same—Cefwyn remembered that well, too, a plain silver ring with a black stone; and given the character of the jewelry wizards and the like had passed around, Cefwyn no longer looked on it as personal adornment. He reached a hand to the amulet he himself wore, took it off and held it out, risking he knew not what. “This is Tristen’s. Can youget his attention, pray?”

Emuin held up his hand, preventing him, refusing quite to touch the amulet. “One of his, it certainly is. But may we not just trust to his intentions, and not be shouting to each other all we know through chancy passages? I think waiting is far the wiser course.”

“Shouting down chancy passages, is it?” He didn’t like what he heard— but he did understand that reference to wizardly ways of getting one another’s attention. “My sons are out there freezing to death in a storm at this moment, Master Grayfrock. Risks, I am willing to take, I assure you, and let Tristen handle whatever comes galloping through after such a message.”

“Your son has carried something perilous, carries it right through the shadow.” Emuin gave a wave of his hand, and it trembled. “For that, I would be ever glad to reach for him and drag him here by the hair of the head—but so would she reach after him! Have a care, and put that damned thing back about your neck, boy! For the gods’ sake bring it not so near me! It could happen without our willing it!”

Boy, it was, and him having boys of his own, both older than he had been when Emuin had taken a sullen, wayward young prince in hand and taught him to dread that voice raised in reprimand. He dropped the chain back about his neck and wore his amulet openly, not caring to conceal it in this hall where wizardry and magic had honor. “Is it his mother who’s done this?”

“Certainly she has her fingers well into it,” Emuin said, and took a drink of ale that left beads standing on his mustaches. He wiped his mouth. “She is dangerous.”

“My sons,” Cefwyn said, vexed and worried. “And Tristen, for that matter. Where is he?”

“A serious matter,” Emuin said, and shut his eyes, and went thin-lipped for the moment. “The boys… the boys have the book… they are alive. They’re together.”

“ Together!” He knew not whether to be angry with his wayward heir or overjoyed to hear that he had succeeded against all odds. “Aewyn foundhim!”

“It was inevitable,” Emuin said, “or close to it. Both your sons have the Gift, but not the same gift, have you discovered it?”

“Aewyn? He’s as blind as I am!”

Emuin shook his head. “No. He is not blind, nor helpless. Nor are you quite as blind as you wish to think. The younger of your sons—has the Syrillas Gift.”

Aewyn? “Has he? He has the Sight?”

“He has it in a peculiar way. I’d judge that he Sees, and has no idea that he does. Finding things is an untaught skill with him.”