Fortress of Ice

Two boys were at arms practice in the yard below, next to the armory, boys only weeks ago, but now—

Now a father saw changes. Elfwyn, the one had called himself, now and forever, but—Spider, Emuin called him, while Tristen called him Mouse. No longer Otter, to Cefwyn’s sorrow. Nevermore Otter. The boy had gone places even Emuin did not guess and Tristen only hinted at. Even Elfwyn’s eyes had changed, gray and seeming at times lately to look into distances, or to spark fire. The face had grown somber, the stare more direct, at times so very direct that the servants looked away.

His father would not look away from him. Cefwyn would not give him up to the enemy that had tried to take him. He had fought for his kingdom. He would fight for his sons and his daughter.

Take both boys back to Guelemara? No. Elfwyn was home, now, at least as at home as Elfwyn was ever apt to be. His was still a wild heart, but he had ceased to run. He was furtive, but that furtiveness had turned full about: it had become a hunter’s stealth—the look of pursuit, not flight—that displayed itself in his sword-play.

Elfwyn got past his brother’s guard. Aewyn had to jump back. Twice.

And when had thatma

Bump and thump from great distance, from beyond the diamond panes and a floor below. Aewyn recovered, and pressed back, both boys with padded swords. Now Elfwyn retreated, and circled.

No one here in Amefel questioned a bastard’s right to bear arms, no one questioned the boy’s royal paternity—a few, perhaps, shuddered at the taint of sorcery on the Aswydd side, and oh, yes, the good Quinalt father—the lone Quinalt authority in this Bryalt town—had come puffing into the audience hall to express his opinion, and gone out from his king’s presence much more meekly than he had arrived…

A hit. Aewyn, pursuing too rashly, landed on his backside in the snow, and scrambled up again, shield and sword flailing. Then swords hit the snow, shields did, and brothers tumbled, locked in each other’s arms.

They rolled, they wrestled. Cefwyn afforded himself a smile, a hope of a moment’s duration, that the brothers might find their i

Oh, there went Elfwyn free of the clinch, quick and wily, leaping onto his feet, crouched low. Elfwyn gathered up a double handful of snow and flung it, a spray of white.

Aewyn charged right through, but Elfwyn was suddenly back a good half his length, and retreating first.

My sons, my sons, Cefwyn said to himself. Both my sons. A man could do much worse. The clergy called Elfwyn a calamity. And Cefwyn had feared. He still feared, if he let worry have sway over him. But he shut out the dark thoughts, as hard, as persistently as he could. He insisted to believe in this boy, in both of them. Belief, so Emuin had taught him, was its own magic—so long as it was carefully placed, often examined, like a bridge kept in careful repair.

Brave boys. Aewyn’s charge carried through Elfwyn’s mists of snow, and Aewyn almost laid hands on him, but Elfwyn skipped back and back, full circle, now.

No matter to Aewyn. He kept coming, suddenly swinging fists.

Oh, be careful of temper, son of mine. That damnable Marhanen temper…

Aewyn struck. And Elfwyn spun half-about and stopped still, not hurt, but amazed. Indignant.

Aewyn stopped dead. The two stood looking at each other. It was Aewyn who held out his hand, held it out, pressed a step farther.

Then Elfwyn took the offering, and Aewyn clapped him on the shoulder, hugged him in comradely fashion, hugged him close, the two walking side by side away, heads down.

Cefwyn breathed. He had not known he had held his breath, but he had. He watched the two walk aside to the armorer’s shed, and sit down on the bottom step together, and remain so, shoulder to shoulder, finding something mutually interesting in the snow at their feet, weapons forgotten in the snow. It was a breach of discipline, that abandonment of weapons, a fault, but Cefwyn ignored it, wishing, hoping, that he would see the two get up together, friends, brothers—children, again.

They might be talking—or might still hold a sullen peace. He saw Elfwyn take off his glove in the cold. What Elfwyn did then, bending lower, reaching into the snow, he could not tell. But he watched Aewyn staring at that hand, and saw—saw a cold gleam, bright as a mote of moonlight.

Elfwyn closed that bare hand, and opened it, and it was gone. Just gone.

Magic? The chance spark of a jewel in the winter light? Cefwyn prayed for it to be the latter, but the gray sky and the sifting snow afforded no sun at all to strike a spark off metal. The day was leaden, the snow standing on the boys’ arms and backs and heads the moment they sat still. There was no natural source of light now from the heavens. Elfwyn had done it… whatever it was.

And what had that spark meant? What thought proceeded in that dark head, when, after his brother attacked him, he let a cold fire sit in his hand?

There was sorcery, and there was wizardry, and there was magic. Which one had his bastard son learned to practice, and wherehad he learned it?

The boys still sat together on the step. What words passed between them, there was no hint at all, except the bodies were quiet, the heads bowed.

Two things had sparked out there—the cold fire and the hot, the fire in the hand, and the fire in Aewyn’s heart, the ungovernable temper that had damned the Marhanen house through three generations… that had done murder, and earned damnation…

Gods, let one quench the other. Let them be brothers.

A step intruded. A servant, he thought at first: very few dared come and go without at least a cough.

It came just that degree closer than a servant at work and he turned his head, his hand already moving; but it was Tristen who had come in—doubtless an open door, the servants coming and going about their business—but not necessarily, Tristen being what he was. Cefwyn’s hand went back to the window sill, his attention back to the view below. He welcomed the presence by him, the other overseer of the witch’s son—and the queen’s. His friend. Always his friend, whatever the world said.

“Elfwyn has wizardry,” Cefwyn murmured, knowing he was not wrong. “I ever so hope it was your teaching.”

A moment of silence. “The boy was offered many things on his journey. He found something within himself, where it always was.”

Cefwyn turned his back to the window, his face to Tristen, as if a glance could answer what had no answer, nor might have for years. “His mother’s heritage, do you say?”

“His mother had a choice,” Tristen said. “Both the sisters had, at the start. Neither was strong enough. Tarien came closest to escape.”

He thought he understood what Tristen was telling him. He could hardly imagine that Tarien Aswydd could have been like Emuin, that the choice of wizardry rather than sorcery had been within her reach. Some Aswydd far back in the line had made a certain fatal choice, was what he had believed, a choice that had damned all the line.

And he had, in his folly, joined that bloodline to his own, linked these two boys, these brothers.

He looked back at his sons, saw they had risen from the step. Aewyn put his arm about Elfwyn’s shoulders.

Elfwyn’s arm went about Aewyn’s. Two boys, pushing and shoving at each other, meandered back to their fallen weaponry. They gathered swords and shields up out of the snow and, falling in together with a second round of elbows and now evident laughter, passed out of view.