Fortress of Ice

“His damned maps…”

“The whole world is a map to him. He Sees, I say, but will never quite know when he does, and his scope may widen with age.”

“I’ve gotten twowizards?” It was not completely good news, except as related to his boys’ safety, out in a driving blizzard. “Then help them wizard their way back here, for the gods’ sake. If they have the Gift, then”—he made a vague, descriptive gesture—“slip them through the passages you use and get them here!”

“Hush. Hush.” A look aloft. “If your older boy hadn’t found what he found, the other would have come on it with hisGift, and the worse for him if he had: the one is at least cognizant of wizardry and wary of his mother’s influence. Listen to me. The Gift is not the same in them, nor ever was, but they may link hands.”

“You’re riddling again, Master Grayfrock.”

“The one is no wizard.”

“You said they both—”

“The one is no wizard. The elder of your boys—is no wizard.”

“ Elfwyn? What is he, if not—” A most horrid notion came to him, things at which Tristen had only hinted. “He ismy son, isn’t he?”

“In the flesh, yes, I have no doubt that he is. But there is a hollow spot in him, right about the heart. There always was, from birth.”

“No.” He got up from his chair, to distance himself from such a claim. “A hollow spot? He’s a Summoning, like Tristen? Is that what you’re saying to me?”

“Tristen is not a Summoning. He’s a Shaping, quite a different—”

“Damn it, Master Grayfrock, don’t mince words. Is my son my son?”

“Oh, very much your son. But he’s gone straight where his mother bade him go, and done everything she wanted him to do—up to a point. He has self-will. Hard-won, and hard-held, he has your self-will and your stubborn nature.”

“He has a heart!” Cefwyn declared, outraged. “He has a good heart, not any hollow spot, and if you had been here where you were needed, Master Grayrobe, when you were needed, then you would have had the teaching of him as I asked you from the start, and we wouldn’t be at this pass!”

“Gran did quite well. Admirably well, as happened. So has Paisi.”

Paisi had stood, silent and stricken, at the side of the room the while. But now he took a step forward. “Ye’re sayin’ he ain’t what he seems,” Paisi said angrily, “but I can say there ain’t a bad bone in that lad’s body. He’s a good, proper boy, as ever was.”

“Oh, his bones are quite sound.” Emuin gathered his staff to him, slanted between his knees, and the knob of it against his chest, amid his beard, locked in gnarled hands. “So is his wit and his will. It’s just a hollow spot. It might never even do him harm… unless someone tried to fill it. Unless he allowed it, more to the point, and that is a lad with a very strong will.”

“What do you know of him? You weren’t here.”

“I wasn’t unaware.”

“Damn it,” Cefwyn said. “Damn it, old master, I wish you’d stayed to teach them. At least one of them.”

“There was too much damage I could do, bringing wizardry of greater sort into it. Elfwyn was not ready for a contest. And Aewyn was not ready to believe his own eyes.”

“What was I?” Cefwyn cried. “Was it that needful, old master, to keep me and his mother in the dark?”

“I take it you mean your dear lady.”

“Ninévrisë. Aewyn’s mother, damn it.”

“Well, you were never in the dark,” Emuin said. “You were always in my keeping, and Tristen’s.”

“Tristen knew you were out and about?”

“Oh, I suspect he knew, though ’tis by no means certain, I suppose. Our paths diverged. I visited Gran from time to time, indeed I did. And crossed the edges of Guelessar, and of Elwynor. I visited Cevulirn once, when his wife had the fever, but there was no great need: the lady mended on her own. I have never deserted you, Cefwyn lad, nor forgotten your boys, nor has Tristen, whose delay tonight troubles me exceedingly. I suspect he will come the ordinary way, by horse, that is, not risking the other passage.”

“If hecan’t get through, good gods, how am I to believe the boys are safe? I wish you would speak to him. Or tell me more where the boys are. I would ride after them.”

“To their peril and ours,” Emuin said. “Looking for them lowers our wards. Trying to guide them now diminishes theirs, if they had the wit to set them, and I have the most dire feeling they forgot—they are not safe where they are, not safe at all, and where they are shifts…”

“Then goto him. You’re the wizard. You can do that!”

“I can’t do that! That’s the very point! If I were to venture those paths your reckless sons traveled, there’s no knowing in what province I might land. They’re lucky still to be in Amefel!”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s that book, I suspect—that book, I surmise, takes its own direction in the world, and your lad is hanging on to it, and wrenching it free of his mother, but when he moves, he, she, and it are in grievous dispute about direction.”

“That woman!” Cefwyn said, and absolute loathing welled up in him, the very sort of hatred Tristen had advised him never to countenance toward Tarien Aswydd; but now, in the peril of his sons, it brimmed over. “Tarien Aswydd knows how Paisi’s gran died, and why my son got out of bed at midnight to go dig a hole in the library wall! Master Graybeard, let us get your study back! Let us have answers from that woman, tonight, once for all.”

“Confront Tarien Aswydd?” Emuin asked. “Perhaps.”

“More than perhaps,” Cefwyn said. “You worry about the wards. Assure the strength of what holds her contained. Find out whether or not she truly can reach out of the tower. You can deal with her, I’ve no doubt you can, and we can put that woman somewhere with fewer windows and less luxury. Crissand, are you willing?”

“More than willing,” Crissand said, “whenever it regards getting the truth from my cousin. I shall be glad to know how well she’s held.”

“Not well!” Emuin exclaimed in sudden alarm. “Not well at all! Oh, damn it to hell!” Emuin leapt to his feet, leaning shakily on his staff, and headed for the door of the audience hall. Cefwyn overtook him, and Crissand came close behind as they left the hall and turned toward the tower access.

Two men lay in the hall, both down, as if they had died in their tracks, eyes wide open.

“Guards!” Cefwyn yelled, his battlefield voice, that waked echoes upstairs and down. Emuin ascended the tower steps, Cefwyn fretting behind him, hand on his dagger, and Crissand close after that, round after round of the spiral, into utter dark, except a glow that began to surround Emuin himself and spread about them.

The door above was still barred. Emuin waved at it, and Cefwyn pulled the pin and used fair force to lift the bar. It thumped back, and suddenly the door banged open in their faces, with a howling gust of ice-edged wind. All the windows stood open, and fabrics flew in the wind, the abandoned clothing, the hangings, everything flying at them out of the nightbound tower room.

“Tarien!” Cefwyn shouted into the night.

A crash shook the tower, as if a part of the keep itself had fallen. They were shaken where they stood, thinking the floor might give way, then Crissand, lowermost on the steps, turned and ran downstairs again, Cefwyn behind him and Emuin bringing up the rear.

Guards had gathered in the corridor below, in dark, the gale having blown the lights out, and in that dark the guards pointed to the curtain, which blew in tatters, beside the dark, ordinary wall that was the source of the haunt.

“Bear a light!” Crissand shouted, and Emuin, arriving breathlessly, gasped, “This is not good. Not good.”

Someone had already gone for a light, one of the pine-tar torches they used outside, a light that came in at the stairs and jogged and flickered toward them, fire whipping in the gale, but more difficult for wind to extinguish. Cefwyn waited for it, hand outheld, his heart beating in foreboding as to what he might find in that room at the bottom of the stairs. But Emuin lit his own way, before the torch could arrive, and descended past the flapping curtain. Cefwyn abandoned his request for the torch and came down to protect him with drawn dagger, steps breaking little bits of masonry.