Fortress of Ice

“Then help me! If it’s so dangerous, then maybe you shouldn’t take it either. I won’t let you have it. I’ll fight you, if I have to.”

“Oh, lad.” The forbidding shadow shifted, and became an old man leaning on his staff and looking down pensively at the floor. “Lad. Ninévrisë Syrillas held you in her arms sixteen years ago, and wished you your father’s grace.”

“Her Majesty.”

“The same woman. While she carried Aewyn within her, she wished you well. Lord Tristen himself laid hands on you and wished you well. These are strong bonds, perhaps the stronger now that you know them.” Emuin settled to the floor with a sigh, leaning heavily on the staff. “Ignorance is never safe.”

“The queen. And Lord Tristen.”

“And Gran, an excellent woman. She has not faded. Believe me, she is in good company.”

Elfwyn sat down again, refusing belief, refusing anything that touched what he so wanted to believe… but unwilling to lose that thread, either.

“She wouldn’t become a haunt.”

“No, no.” The old man sank down and leaned his staff against the fireside. “Not the sort of haunt that’s within the Zeide, that much is certain. She was never discontent; but protective of her boys, oh, that she is.”

“She’s dead.”

“Indisputably.”

“I don’t believe you even knew her! I never saw you there.”

“I never came under Gran’s roof,” the old man said. “But meet her, yes, more often than any other in these years. I came to consult with her, oh, many times at the fence, when she was weeding the herb garden, or out in the meadow, when she was herding goats. I came until you started to grow inquisitive. You don’t remember that, do you?”

He did remember a ragged old man at the fence, an old man with a staff—a customer, like many others who wanted Gran’s cures. But if his mother could conjure dreams, this old man, this wizard—what could he do with memories?

“Then why, like any honest visitor, didn’t you come inside?”

“You were not of an age to keep secrets well.”

“Why did it matter?”

“How often did you see your mother?”

“Once a year.” He didn’t see how that answered his question, and then did. “Once a year, on my birthday. I’d see her, and the duke would give me a present. I didn’t know other boys didn’t get presents from the duke. But I thought it was peculiar that my mother lived in a tower and hated everyone.”

A smile turned the old man’s face gentle. He reached out a long, thin arm and put a small log on the fire.

“I suppose you could keep that one burning all night, if you wanted,” Elfwyn said.

“Oh, perhaps I could, but why want what you already have? The wood is there. I use it, much more easily than that, I assure you. Do you think wizard-work is easy?”

“If you wanted to, you could have kept Gran from going hungry.”

“If Gran wanted to, I’m sure she could do the same, but she didn’t. She wanted as little of your mother’s attention as she could have, and she never would have allowed your visits to the tower, except it was the agreement with your mother, and to breach that, breached other things.”

“Like wards.”

“Like that,” the old man agreed.

“But she escaped, you said. She and Orien Aswydd. If she had a twin, why didn’t I know?”

“Because that name doesn’t enter pleasant conversation in Amefel. I’m surprised your mother didn’t mention it. Though— weshould have been surprised she did not. Now it seems indeed we should have taken note.”

“Riddles! It’s my life! It cost Gran’s! My mother killed her!”

“Contain your anger. Anger will be your particular struggle.” He nodded to something behind him, toward, he saw with a glance, no more than Aewyn, sound asleep, deaf to all they said. “You love him. That was Tristen’s wish, and Ninévrisë‘s, and your father’s. He is your chance for redemption and your inclination toward utter fall. Do you understand me?”

“If I betray him,” Elfwyn said.

“If you betray him,” the old man concluded, “or if you fail in the promises Ninévrisë laid upon you. If you betray him, it will be fatal to us all.”

“I never would.”

“You ought to know: Orien Aswydd wished you born. The only spark of motherhood in that house was in the woman that bore you. Tarienwould do anything in those days to preserve your life, which she thought threatened.”

“She never loved me!”

“As near as she can come to love, she loves you—loves you as her possession, as much as she hates your father for casting her aside. She wanted you. Wetook you from her, Tristen, I, the queen, and your father: wetook you from her, and promised her she might see you once a year, or when you wished. I’ll warrant you generally saw her better side.”

He didn’t want to hear any good about his mother. He shook his head. “She gave me sweets. She gave me things she’d made. Gran said they were charms, and wouldn’t let them in the house.”

“I’ve no doubt,” the old man said. “But she tried, poor creature. You’re certainly the best thing she ever created. And there is her other side. She and Orien both slept with your father. Orien saw to it that Tarien was the one who got with child, I strongly suspect. Therewas a woman ill suited to motherhood.”

He blushed at hearing such details about his begetting. He couldn’t look the old man in the eyes. But the old man reached out, startling him, and lifted his face with a hand beneath his chin.

“Orien wanted you born, I say. She was Tristen’s enemy. And she’s loose.”

He drew back and still stared at the old man. “I never met her.”

“No. But I have a notion just how she left her prison, and where she resides tonight. What was sundered is rejoined. They were always half of one. Now, I fear, they areone.”

“Orien’s haunting my mother?”

“Possession,” the old man said. “Possessing is much different, and much more serious. I doubt your mother has much to say about it. Your mother is a skilled sorceress. Orien, now, Orien is something else. And Orien has, in the past, had an ally. He’s the one to fear. He is very much to fear. He wants that book. He failed, in the past, to get it. But try as I might and try as Tristen might, neither of us could find it. I know where it is now: I have no trouble knowing, which argues that someone warded it into that place for the long years we failed to find it, and we assumed it burned along with other manuscripts, since we didn’t recover it with the others. So it never left the library at all. Where didyou find it? Which wall of the library?”

His mind rebounded from one mad proposal to the other, from a horrid fate for his mother, which he never would wish on her—to some third person he didn’t understand, and back to his own theft.

“The south wall,” he admitted.

“We searched there,” Emuin said. “We should have taken the whole damned wall down. But again—the one who warded it didn’t want Tristen’s hands on it. That could be two wizards: one would be Mauryl himself. The other would be Hasufin Heltain.”

“Is he that other person?”

“Orien’s ally? Yes. He’s Tristen’s enemy. And Mauryl’s.”

“And mine?”

Emuin turned his face away and poked into the fire with another stick. “That is a question, isn’t it?”

“Well, I don’t forgive my mother. I’m sure I don’t love her sister, and I never heard of Hasufin Heltain. I don’t intend any of them should have the book. I want to go and live at Ynefel, and study there.”

“So did he.”

“Who? This Hasufin Heltain?”

“He lived there. He studied there. He ripped the place apart and killed his teacher, ultimately.”

“I’m not him!” Elfwyn said. “I’m King Cefwyn’s son, I’m Gran’s, I’m Paisi’s, and I’m Aewyn’s brother, all these things! And I don’t want to be my mother’s! Help us get to Ynefel!”

“And would that lead, I wonder, in the direction you truly want? You have an enemy. You have more than one, I suspect. He will come at you when you are most desperate, and his ways may look like escape.”