Fortress of Ice

“You doubt your father loves you?”

“He has no particular reason to love me,” Elfwyn said, every word like broken glass. “I’ve stolen. I’ve run away. As you say—I’m good at it. Slippery. The rest, you know nothing about.”

“I know your begetting and your birth, your upbringing—and your talents.”

“I have no talents except for getting in trouble.”

“You are Aswydd.”

“Not on the right side of the blanket.”

“Born to a sorceress and a king and nurtured by a witch. But none of these is the source of your Gift.”

“I’ve no Gift at all,” he said, wanting to veer away from this topic. He shivered, cold despite the fire. “Nor wish to have. What times I’ve tried to do wizardry, I’ve failed. Do you think this storm will be done by morning?”

“Shoving at the world again. Tristen, now, Tristencould budge the weather.”

“Can youstop the wind?”

The ancient fingers stirred, a ripple of a dismissive gesture. “I’m a wizard. That means a wise man. I never try.”

It answered his secret question, the one he feared to ask: did you raise this storm? But he grew bold enough to challenge what he saw. “There weren’t any bowls, before,” he said. “I’d have seen them.”

“Did you expect to find any?” the old man asked.

“No,” he said.

“I did.” A shrug, the ghost of a smile. “Best expect, if you spend the effort of looking. But do it sparingly. I assure you, the joy of some surprises isn’t worth the risk of others.”

Riddles with Gran’s kind of sense at the core. Wizard, indeed, and by that advice, what answers did he reasonably expect to find in this old man?

Vision, Lord Tristen had said. Vision was one of his two words, and what did he see with a close look at this suddenly immaculate stranger?

Danger.

Power beyond what Gran had had. Even, perhaps, more power than his mother’s.

Emuin, he claimed to be. And if he was that famous wizard, he might indeed raise a storm if he really wanted to. And there were not that many wizards, ever, more powerful than his mother. Emuin was indeed one possible answer to the riddle, if he was not a haunt.

Haunts, however, were not in the habit of coming up with bowls and grain.

“Maybe you could conjure us some cakes to finish with,” he said, and the old man tilted back his head.

“Cakes, is it?”

“Well, if you looked for them… and expected them…”

“Impertinent boy!”

“Well, but you can do that, can’t you?”

“Wishing for more than one needs is wasteful.”

“Wasteful of what?”

A forefinger lifted. “Now thereis a wise question. Of what? Of what indeed? Of effort, of soul, of spirit, of thought and life itself. Needing what one wants—now there’s a wicked trap. Wanting what one needs, that can be a trap, too. Poverty can lead a lad from despair to envy, from envy to bad behavior. Knowing exactly what one needs, and workingto get it, there’s the wisdom. Your gran taught you that.”

Gran would use plainer words. “Wishes won’t draw flies. Sweat will.” It had made him laugh, then. Now it reminded him of her, and of her old eyes, far kinder than these. This man, he thought, if living man he is, has seen hard things. He is harder. And far more dangerous.

“I’m still cold,” he said.

“Then move nearer the fire, fool,” the old man said. “Don’t be afraid.”

It set him nearer the old man, who had the best spot, but he did, easing up onto the hearthstones, which had grown warm. The heat comforted his ankles and his feet.

“There,” the old man said. “Is that better?”

“Better, yes.” But he had a greater tremor in his limbs. It was fear, and he liked that less than the cold.

“Let me see the book.”

His heart gave a thump. For the first time he was sure they were trapped here, that he was outmatched by far, and that this man knew exactly what he was looking for.

“Book?” he asked blankly, and the old man sadly shook his head.

“Oh, I had so hoped for more cleverness.”

He had a knife. He knew how to lay wards, too, but had he done that? He had not, despite the night and the storm and them sleeping in a place not his own. He felt the fool. “Maybe I left it somewhere.”

“Maybe you didn’t.”

“I mean to give it to Lord Tristen, and sooner or later he will know about it, if he doesn’t right now. And if hewants it, he could take it whenever he wants. So I suppose it really doesn’t matter if you should take it. It’s his, and you ought to be very careful.”

“It’s certainly not yours, fool. And if he could have taken it, he would have done so, long since. Whence came it, and who gave it to you?”

From underneath a table, in a wall in the library, he recalled, as vividly as if he were in that place, under the very fear and the suffocating compulsion he had had in that moment. It was dreams, again, dreams, that had made him find it…

“ Wheredid you find it?”

“Why should it matter?” he asked, and the old man looked at him from under his eyebrows in a way that made his hands sweat despite the cold.

“Who gave it to you?” the old man asked again.

“I don’t know. I found it.”

“Found it! Are you a fool?”

“No, sir.” His jaw set. “I hope I am not.”

“Lady Tarien. Does that name touch you?”

“My mother.”

“She’s no longer a prisoner. Do you know that?”

He didn’t. He didn’t truly believe it. He didn’t know what to believe tonight.

“I’ll give you another name. Orien Aswydd. Does that mean anything to you?”

An Aswydd name he had heard a handful of times, but it told him nothing in particular. He shook his head.

“Your mother’s twin sister,” the old man said. “Entombed below the lower hall, near the haunt, right beneath her prison.”

Now the fire could not help the cold. He thought about the bad feeling in that little stairway that went nowhere, the place the haunt had flung him.

“She’s gone, too, right along with your mother. Her tomb burst open and there was nothing inside, not even bones. They’re both fled to the winds.”

“Why should I believe you?” he cried, moving away and scrambling to his feet, and Emuin unwound like a serpent, rising like a much younger man and towering over him like a shadow before the fire, between him and his sleeping brother.

“Because I am your friend, boy, and that book in your hands is deadly dangerous.”

Breath seemed short.

“Would it be better in yours?” he asked, and saw, for the first time, the least doubt—the same doubt he felt about having the book. That alone made him think this terrible man might be telling him the truth, and that shook him as deeply as any threat to their lives.

“If I have such a thing,” he said, “don’t take it. Help me give it to Lord Tristen myself. Then I’ll know you areMaster Emuin.”

“A dire thing, for a boy’s hands.”

“Almost a man.”

“A very young man, then, who forgets to lay his wards.”

That stung. “I forgot. But I’m no wizard.”

“No,” the old man said—Emuin, if it was Emuin. “You are not. You’re something else.”

“I don’t want my mother’s Gift.” It blurted out of him, without his willing it. “I don’t want it at all!”

“No,” the old man said sharply, cutting him off. “You don’t want your mother’s Gift, your mother’s foolishness, or your mother’s greed. But the Gift you already have, you might manage better—far better than you have. Can you read the book?”

“No.”

“Not surprising. You won’t, until you want to, though doing so lies within your Gift.”

“It makes no sense to me! I tried. The letters move.”

“They evade you. But not for long. You have very little time to be i