Fortress of Ice

“Otter!” Aewyn cried, and began to slip out of his encircling arm, and to slide away from him, as if they were sliding on ice. He held tight to Aewyn’s coat, and that grip began to fail, as if the wind that moved them excluded Aewyn. He had his choice, hold Emuin, or hold his brother, and he wrapped both arms about Aewyn and held on.

They plummeted, he had no idea how far, or how long a fall. He only held on, eyes tight shut.

“Otter,” Aewyn said against his ear. “Otter, what’s happening?”

But he had no answer.

In the next moment they landed, hard, side by side, in thick snow.

iv

IT WAS A BITTERSWEET GATHERING OF OLD FRIENDS IN CALAMITY, IN THE LITTLE hall. Past the worry and the fear that gnawed at him, Cefwyn saw the weariness that marked Tristen and Uwen, both, and Crissand ordered mulled wine and a platter of food—food Tristen neglected, though he had two sips of the wine.

What can you see? Cefwyn longed to ask, seeing Tristen’s head bowed and his hands clasped before his lips, his elbows braced on the arms of the massive chair. Tristen had not divested himself of his armor, nor had Uwen, though that was the first thing a man just off a long, cold road would long to do. He simply sat, and stared into nothing, but not in futility, Cefwyn was sure. He was earnestly trying to find pieces—scattered pieces. Emuin. Orien. Tarien. And two lost boys.

And he had said nothing for the last candle measure, nor stirred, nothing more than a wisp of his dark hair blowing a bit in the draft from an opened door.

They had been up to the tower room, wherein a whirlwind had wrought utmost havoc, and left the shutters hanging askew. They had been into the cell below, and in front of the blank wall into which Master Emuin had vanished.

They waited in this small room, and the candles in the sconces dripped drop by drop into their pans. Outside, servants removed bits of stone that littered the hall, where the force of the stones blowing out had shredded the tapestry and landed clear against the opposing wall, scarring the stone there. Others, surely with trepidation, had climbed up those stairs into the tower, to clear away the debris of Tarien’s life there. Comrades had taken the bodies of the guards for burial, two decent men with widows and children: Crissand had passed word he would talk with the women as soon as he could. The deaths sat on the king’s conscience: it was the king’s prisoner they had guarded, two brave men, completely defenseless against sorcery, all amulets and protections inadequate to save their lives.

Hate had killed them, spite directed against him. He determined, sitting there, waiting for some breath of an answer, that he would take the women and children under his own protection, the men having died in defense of him and his.

But justice for it—justice was very much in doubt.

Tristen drew a visible breath. The hands didn’t move. The eyes didn’t blink. Everyone hung on that slight motion.

Then Tristen lowered his hands down onto the arm of the chair and leapt up, turning for the door. Uwen jumped to his feet, and Cefwyn, hardly slower, followed, with Crissand right at his heels, and all the bodyguards caught completely off their guard, broke aside from the door, getting out of their path.

The haunt came alive down the hall, beyond the stairs. Servants ran in terror, and the thunder of wings raised a wind that blew down from the tower’s ruined windows and up from the depths of the cell. Tristen reached the midst of it, the rest of them right with him, and the wind blasted them with cold and a spate of snow. Uwen drew his sword, and Cefwyn reached for the dagger he wore, as the sound of swords drawn echoed behind them all.

It was a disheveled figure that came out, a figure all swirling white hair and gray robes, turning back, his hand held out to someone invisible still within, and the winds screaming about them all.

The haunt stopped, stopped cold, leaving the area dark, and snow melting on the floor, and Master Emuin standing baffled and distraught in the middle of it.

“I couldn’t hold them!” Emuin cried in dismay, and Cefwyn’s heart sank. Tristen was there with him, and if anything magical was going on between the two of them, if they had said anything to each other down those corridors wizards used, Cefwyn was deaf to it, and cursed his deafness. It was Crissand to whom Tristen turned next, and said, “A cloak. He is chilled to the bone. A cloak, and the warm wine—Master Emuin.” Tristen seized the old man by the arms and held him upright, the staff trailing from Emuin’s hand and his eyes all but shut. “Stand. Stand fast, Master Emuin. Help is here.”

“The boys.” Emuin’s eyes rolled open, his head sank, and it was all Cefwyn could do to keep his own hands from seizing the old man and shaking him.

“I am here, Master Emuin,” he said. “Where did you lose them?”

“In between,” Tristen answered for Emuin. “Take him, take him, Cefwyn. Uwen, you must stay with him!”

“As I shan’t do, m’lord!” Uwen cried in protest. “No!” But without a breath or a flare from the haunt, Tristen ceased to be there—just—was not there, and Master Emuin was on his way to falling as Cefwyn seized the old man about the body and held him on his feet. Crissand helped him, and Uwen took Emuin’s staff. The lot of them, guards and all, were left there, in a hall in which the snow was melting and the old man they held in their arms was colder than the grave itself.

Servants came ru

“The little hall,” Cefwyn said, remembering the warm fireside they had left, its fire stoked to its fullest to warm Tristen and Uwen. They carried the old man, who weighed very little at all, up the hall to this room. Servants hovered as they disposed Master Emuin on the warm stones in front of the fire. Cefwyn knelt, holding the old man, and Crissand disposed his cloak about him and chafed his pale hand, while Uwen laid the staff beside him.

“Old Master,” Cefwyn said. “Master Grayfrock. Come back. Come back to us. Can you hear?”

The old man’s eyes slitted, ever so little, and the pupils rolled just slightly toward him.

“Tristen has gone?” Emuin asked.

“He went after them.”

Emuin shook his head. “I tried.”

“That you did,” Cefwyn said, holding Emuin fast, while the fire blazed and crackled, impotent against the chill in the old man. “Come now. Wake, wake, do you hear me? None of this slipping back again. Stay out of that place you go. Tristen is on their track and needs no help. There’s mulled wine. Uwen Lewen’s-son is here. So is Crissand. Wake and make sense to me. Tristen is out looking for them, I say.”

The eyes drifted shut. Slitted open a second time. The brow knit, much as if the old man was trying to think of a long-forgotten fact. “He shouldn’t be out there, the fool.”

“Who? Tristen?”

“He’s in danger. He’s particularly in danger. The boy has that book.”

“What sort of book? What sort of book is it, Master Emuin?”

“His unmaking.” Coughing racked the frail body, and Cefwyn propped him up until it stopped—propped him up and took the offered cup of wine, touching the merest edge of it to the old man’s lips.

“Wine, if you can manage it, old master.”

“Ale,” the old man said, never opening his eyes. “I’d rather ale. I’m dry as dust.”

“It’s here, Your Majesty.” The servants had brought up every likely need, when they had been sitting in this room. Liquid splashed into a deep tankard, and a yeasty smell spread through the air before the cup even reached Cefwyn’s hand.

“Here,” he said, and this time the old wizard’s hand reached up and steadied the tankard, and he drank three deep gulps before he breathed.

“Where are my boys?” Cefwyn asked, ru