Fortress of Ice

But he had rather have given the food away to someone who hadn’t any. And he wagered the kitchen stores were still full, so what provision had the Guelesfort made about that? Did they carry it all out and bring it back tomorrow? Surely they didn’t throw out all the barrels and barrels of goods, or burn all the bread.

Fire, fire to light the night. He warmed himself enough, finally, to get up and scurry back to the bedchamber to douse the candles, and then, hating the dark, he came back to his warm quilt and warmer stones, all tucked up and very weary now. It seemed days ago he and Paisi had sat by this very fire, but it was only this morning, and they had made their theft and gotten away with it, and he had trudged up the hill and met Prince Efanor, which had led to tonight at the king’s table… all, all in one long span of hours that left him very tired, very relieved Aewyn forgave him, and very prone to drop off to sleep.

He daren’t, he told himself at first, and then thought he could risk a little nap, sitting up by the fire, his head on his arms and the blanket close about him. He put a new stick of wood on, then let his eyes shut, if only for a very little time, and listened to the snap and crackle of the new wood.

x

FIRE, FIRE AND WAILING, FIRE THAT LEAPT UP AROUND GRAN’S ROOM, AND sealed the doors and the windows. The wailing was of a soul in pain, and the fire became a roar, burning face and seared eyes…

“No,” Otter cried. “No!” He flung off the blanket to wake up, and scattered coals, and put his hand on an ember, which made him cry out and flinch.

He had flung the corner of the coverlet into the firebed, and he snatched it back in pain and fear, putting out the smoldering fire on the fine blanket with his bare hand. Pain and smoke alike made his eyes water, and he sat bare-shouldered in the chill, cradling a burned hand. The fire had gone nearly out, which had saved him from setting the whole coverlet afire. He sat and shivered.

He had put out the candles and let the fire die down to embers, and in doing so, he had thoughtlessly lost all markers to tell him the hour. He looked at windows which showed a haze of light, but when he got up, shivering, and tried to see whether that was approaching dawn, no, it was only snow haze around the two torches that burned all night, and a few more about the Quinaltine, obscured in a brisk snowfall.

There was no knowing what time it was, and he had to be up and dressed on time, above all else. The nightmare and the burn had his stomach upset, and his limbs shivered as he went out into the little hall and listened at the door for anyone stirring outside. He opened the door to the outer hall and looked out, wondering if there might be a passing servant, but the hall was eerily dark, with only one watch-candle still burning far down by the landing, and none in his wing. He shut the door and retreated back to his fire, lost, with no idea what hour it was and not daring go back to sleep now.

He built the fire up again, shaking so from the fear of the nightmare and from the cold that his knees knocked against each other. He thought of how Paisi might be sleeping in fair comfort by the merchant’s campfire, in some wayside shelter. And then he wondered if Paisi had dreamed the same nightmare.

That was the most terrible thought, that it was another warning, and he could not confirm it to Paisi, nor could Paisi tell him what he had seen.

Danger, it foretold. Danger of a terrible kind. Sickness, and then fire in the night, cutting off all escape for an elderly woman fevered and abed. He sat shaking from a chill he could by no means banish, watching the tame fire in the hearth leap and jeer at him. The crackling and snap of the fresh wood sounded loud in his ears, and he sat there listening to it, finding it more and more ominous.

Best he get up and get dressed and not compound his faults in the household. He heated water in the little warming pan, washed, and dressed in the colors that, in the grim firelight, were red made more red. The shield with the gold Dragon glittered with fire, and the Dragon’s eye glinted with it. He pulled it on, piece by piece; he combed his hair, and put on his fine new black boots, and sat down, this time like a city lad, in one of the two chairs near the hearth, arms folded tightly across the Dragon, his eyes on his boot toes, then on the fire that leapt and menaced in the hearth, a dragon of its own kind.

His eyelids grew heavy. But he was ready for the morrow. The moment he heard a stir in the hall he would go out and go downstairs to wait, even if it was only the servants going about their business. Better early than late, he said to himself. If he turned up in the lower hall an hour early, as well wait there as here.

Supper with the royal family seemed a distant dream, something that, like these clothes, never could happen to Gran’s boy, like the life that never could happen to Otter, just Otter, who drew the water and tended the goats—Gran’s foundling, the witch’s brat.

His eyes shut. He fought them open once, twice, the third time, or perhaps failed, for just a moment. He saw a slit of firelight, and then more, and the fire roared up, thundering around him. He saw fire in the goats’ eyes as they fled in confusion; he saw fire shooting up the little berry bushes by Gran’s door, the ones that grew close and snagged a cloak if they weren’t careful. He saw fire eating up the thatch of the roof, and he was inside, and Gran slept in her bed under her patchwork quilt, and he couldn’t wake her. “Gran,” he cried, shaking her. “Gran!” He lifted her, blankets and all, and tried to shoulder his way out the door, but a beam fell down to block his escape, and fire rained about them.

“Gran!”

He waked so violently he nearly fell out of the chair, and clung to its arms, sweating, not daring move until he knew for certain where he was.

He made his feet move then, just to prove it was no longer the dream around him. He unclasped his hands from the arms of the chair and stood up and walked about a bit, while everything rippled and leapt with fire-shadow and firelight. He reached for the amulet he wore, that luck piece Gran had given him, and for the first time since she had put it about his neck, remembered it was not there. He wanted to touch it, to hold it, and find that warmth of memory it always had. It might, he thought, tell him that Gran was safe and assure him that it was only an empty dream.

He lit the watch-candle and went to find his luck piece, down at the bottom of the cabinet, in the glove where he had hidden it. He shook it out, gathered it in his fist, and it comforted him to have it, but there was no great sense of presence in it, and it failed to ease his fear.

“Gran,” he whispered, holding it in one hand before his lips. “Gran, do you hear me? Be careful of the fire. I had a dream. Are you all right, Gran?”

It grew cold in his hands, cold as the room around him.

And everything was still, everything but the fire crackling in the other room.

He shut his eyes tight, and saw flames and felt the pain of the burn on his clenched hand.

His stomach hurt with fear. Shivers took his limbs. For a moment he thought of slipping down to the stable and escaping onto the road to find Paisi, going home where they both belonged. But he had given Paisi the only horse easy to reach, and the gate wardens would stop him this time. He was trapped, and all he could hear in the world was the crackle and snap of the fire, while the amulet stayed cold in his fingers.

There was one way to know. There was a thing Gran did, when she needed to foretell for a neighbor or, once, for Lord Crissand, when he came to her cottage at night and in secret.

The Guelesfort was still and hushed, with no one to see him. He could do it: he knew what Gran had done. If Gran wouldn’t listen to him by way of the amulet, then the amulet itself might gain her attention… if she was all right. There was that dread, dire chance that the dreams hadn’t come from Gran. There was the chance they had come from the tower in Henas’amef.