Fortress of Ice

Tristen gazed afar off for a moment, and Cefwyn, having poured out that ill-assorted chronicle like flotsam in a millrace, caught his breath.

Tristen looked down the hall toward the haunt, or toward the library: it was uncertain which. “The book,” he said, out of that choice of calamities. “That’s what it is. The spell on it avoided my finding it years ago—it hid from one thief. It avoids me now. It was Mauryl’s, but not the last spell on it, I fear. And Emuin has been here. He tried to strengthen the wards in my absence. And he could not.”

When had the gray-eyed i

But Uwen intruded between them and caught Tristen’s arm sharply. “M’lord! This is Cefwyn, an’ Uwen with ’im. Paisi, too, an’ Lord Crissand. Ye hear? Hear us!”

A shudder went through Tristen’s frame, and that gaze swung to Uwen, then to Cefwyn.

“Elfwyn,” Tristen said. “Elfwyn came to me. And Emuin came to you.”

“Not a half an hour ago,” Cefwyn said. “He left, and I don’t know where.”

Tristen shook his head. “The ways are cut off. They’ve become mazes. I’ve not seen Owl for days. And Elfwyn, and his brother… I can’t find them, though I know they’re out there. Magic is undermined. Wizardry may have a better chance.”

“Brandywine,” Crissand said to someone, and a servant raced off. “We should get the horses down to the stable.”

Exactly how they were to get two great destriers and the loaded pack-horses down the central stairs without calamity was another matter, but Tristen said quietly, “No. We’ll be going as we came. The Line that prevents it no longer holds. You should give this place its own way, Lord Crissand. Let it be a mews, since that’s what it wants to be. It might be safer.”

“M’lord,” Uwen said in concern.

“I ca

Tristen’s enemy was the heTristen did not name, the one who had been Mauryl’s student, and ultimately his murderer: Cefwyn suspected that much. Hasufin Heltain—servant of the Sihhë-lords, and the one who, even dead, had insinuated himself in Elfwyn Sihhë’s stillborn son, to do murder within the house and bring the Sihhë down… so much he knew, too. His family, the Marhanens, had come into power in that upheaval. The reigning Marhanen knew certain details of that downfall, none of which gave him great pride or comfort. And he did not like to hear that Heltain’s black workings and Mauryl’s in any wise looked alike to Tristen’s eye.

Tristen, in the same heartbeat, had reached for the warhorse’s bridle and looked at Uwen Lewen’s-son, who gathered his own reins from the hands of a frightened house servant.

“Where are you going?” Cefwyn asked in dismay.

“There were keys left in the world,” Tristen said, looking straight at him. “I suspect Tarien was to get to the book. Orien was to bring it to him.”

“Orien was surely dead.” The image of the sorceress living this long in utter darkness, walled within her tomb, was horrid beyond any he could conjure. But there had only been the cloak left, not a bone nor a single leaving else.

“Hasufin died ages ago,” Tristen said, argument enough.

“Our wards are down,” Cefwyn said. “They’re utterly destroyed. Will he come here?”

“No,” Tristen said, when he had in no wise been above stairs, or walked the perimeter as a wizard would. But he was not the young wanderer in the world that he had been, either, whatever he had become, or might be about to become. Cefwyn felt a pang of loss, not unmixed with a fear of what his sons faced if Tristen was to retreat from the world, and as if Tristen had heard his thoughts, Tristen seized his hand. “My friend,” he said, with that gray-eyed gaze. “My oldest friend in the world. I tried to get here, and every accident held me. Now I know the trouble, I shall not leave this place undefended. We shall go to the stables, Uwen and I, and put the horses up. We shall come back straightway, afoot.”

Tristen let go, then.

And was not there, neither he, nor Uwen, nor two destriers and two pack-horses. They left only that sort of evidence iron-shod horses left in the hall, puddles of snowmelt, a scarred floor, and a lingering smell of horse.

The stables, Tristen had said. Tristen had wanted to be there. And was.

Why, then, damn it all, had he not wantedto be in Henas’amef in time to prevent Orien Aswydd’s rising from the grave, or Tarien’s breaking out of her tower?

Every accident, Tristen had said.

The simple answer was that Tristen had indeed wanted to be here, and that a very, very potent sorcery had sent him aside—not destroyed him: it would have, if it were easy; it was not; but that was in fact its aim—even a Man deaf to magic could figure that they were under attack, and that it would not get better with daylight.

A potent sorcery had raised the dead and broken Tristen’s wards. And how had it gotten past those wards, and what had made Tristen himself vulnerable… Cefwyn feared to guess its name, but he thought he had.

One of his two sons was blood kin to the sorceress—one of his sons had gone visiting Ynefel and drawn Tristen into this fight. The other of his sons, tied to that line by loyalty and paternity, had gone chasing after his brother. All of that was a tangle of wizardry and magic that chilled his heart. Nor was his daughter safe, with Ninévrisë in Elwynor, where magic had an ancient foothold. His whole family was tangled in this scheme of a dead sorcerer, and Tristen was the one power another dead wizard had appointed, more than that, Summoned, Shaped, whatever Emuin insisted, to stand on the bridge and keep the dead from taking Ylesuin back from the Marhanen’s hands. Ordinary folk couldn’t challenge Tristen. Not these days. But the powers that he was appointed to prevent—those could.

Those already had, in delaying him.

Back in the wars, he and Emuin and Tristen had managed to isolate the several elements of Hasufin’s power and bring one down, confine another, and another, and hang one chief culprit, peeling Hasufin’s power apart bit by bit, breaking it in this place and that, until Tristen had a chance.

Three pieces of that power, counting that book, had just broken loose again, thanks to Tarien Aswydd and his own eldest son, indicating that even apparent death might be a diversion.

And what did he say?

“Let us go back to the hall and wait,” he said to Crissand. “If he can, he’ll be back in a moment, and use the west door, this time. If I know anything about it, he’ll be searching that place he goes to, trying to find any trace of the boys.”

“That he will,” Crissand said, who had the Sight, himself. “I have no notion where he is. But the ring Elfwyn carries is his: nothing opposing him, he may well be able to see it.”

iii

THEY BOTH SLEPT AND WAKED AMID THE PILED HORSE GEAR, AND THE COLD grew more and more bitter, while exposed flesh grew numb despite the warmth of the horses sharing their shelter, and the thickness of the saddle, which gave up warmth slowly. The horses slept, it might be, but the wind howled and worked at the shingles, finding new places to get in, and made their own rest uneasy. “I think we should stay awake,” Elfwyn said finally, shaking at Aewyn. “We can sleep in the day. If we had food we shouldn’t be so cold, but we don’t, and we should move about a little. Rub your hands. Make them warm.”