Fortress of Ice

Clearly not so. Not nearly careful enough.

“My love?” Ninévrisë said, in his long silence.

“Do you perceive anything untoward?” he asked. The wizard-gift was in Ninévrisë, from her father and his fathers before him. Perhaps he should tell her about the writing there in the frost. He knew he was blind and deaf to such stirrings in the world, deaf as a stone; but something for good or for ill made him reticent, and her son, her son, Aewyn, who had always seemed as blind and deaf as his father—where was he, this morning, after fidgeting his way through services?

Their Aewyn had become as slippery as Otter, and sped off on the hunt without a word to his parents, bent on solving matters himself.

A father was the point the boys shared, the blind and deaf heritage. He had always assumed his blond, bluff son was like him; that if there was any witchery to turn up in his children, small, dark Aemaryen would have that perilous gift, and fair, tall Aewyn would be as deaf as his father.

“Otter is afraid,” Ninévrisë said softly. “Be forgiving of him.”

Another woman might take satisfaction in a rival’s child’s difficulty. Not Ninévrisë. Another woman might have been blind to the risks in the boy coming here, and equally those in his never coming here at all. Not Ninévrisë. She knew what was at issue and where it began.

He laid his hand on hers, where it rested on his shoulder. “Forgiving is all I can be. He is what he is, and I brought him here on Tristen’s advice.”

“None better,” Ninévrisë said. “And I will warrant the boy conjured nothing.” A little contraction of her fingers against his shoulder. “Whatever he did, did not pass the wards. I would feel it if he had.”

“Good for that,” he said, watching the snow fall and hoping he didn’t have a son out on the roads at this moment.

“Your Majesty.” The Lord Chamberlain himself entered the room. “His Highness Prince Aewyn, with Otter.”

Oh, indeed? That quickly?

He turned a serene countenance toward his staff, slipping Ninévrisë’s hand to his arm.

“Admit them.”

Bows, courtesies, ceremonies of approach and departure delayed everything in his life, and never the ones he wanted delayed. The Lord Chamberlain, an old, old man, went out to the foyer, doors opened, doors closed, opened again, and Aewyn finally came through them with Otter in tow, Otter wrapped in Aewyn’s cloak, the one puzzle in the sight, and Aewyn and Otter both a little cobwebby about the shoulders, which was no puzzle at all.

“He didn’t mean to,” Aewyn began, the immemorial begi

“One is very sure,” Cefwyn said.

“It was that fool Madelys, my serving-maid,” Aewyn said. “I sent her with breakfast, before the hour, and she screamed and Otter spilled oil all over himself, and he’d ruined his clothes. Paisi’s in Amefel.”

Now there was a model of concise reporting.

“Paisi’s in Amefel, you say.”

“He was worried about Gran, Your Majesty,” Otter said faintly, “with the weather, and all.”

“So I was going to have my staff look after him,” Aewyn said, with no space for a breath between them, “and see he had breakfast, but that fool maid walked in without a sound and thought she saw what she didn’t see.”

“Was there magic?” Ninévrisë asked, dropping her hand from Cefwyn’s arm. “Otter, tell the truth.”

“I tried, Your Majesty,” Otter said in the very faintest of voices. “I’m very sorry.”

“Why would Paisi go home?” Cefwyn asked.

“A dream, Your Majesty,” Otter said in anguish. “I had a dream. So did Paisi. So I told him he had to go.”

“When was this?”

“Yesterday.”

A full day on the road, in this weather. Fool boy, Cefwyn thought, hoping Paisi was not frozen in a snowbank somewhere along the road. He made a little wave of his hand. “Let us see. Let us see the damage. Unwrap the cloak, if you please.”

Otter had clutched it tightly about him. The boots were not auspicious. He opened the garment, and showed a wreckage of good tailoring, from oil to attic cobwebs and dust, head to foot.

“Oh, dear,” Ninévrisë said.

Otter looked as if he wished he could sink through the floor.

“It’s not his fault!” Aewyn said.

“No, now, be still. Let Otter answer for himself. Paisi left yesterday, alone, one presumes.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Well… not alone. I sent him with some traders.”

Cefwyn raised a brow. There had been a certain resourcefulness in the plot. There was a likelihood Paisi would get through.

“And being without wiser counsel, you took to witchcraft to see his progress? Or was there more to it?”

“I dreamed again. But I don’t know who Sent it.”

“A very prudent thought,” Ninévrisë said, with a look at Cefwyn. “Paisi’s gran might have Sent to him: there is that special co

Wizardry had passed the wards no less than Tristen Sihhë had laid about the Guelesfort windows… there was a troubling thought. An ordinary mouse could have made a new hole, a way into the walls, who knew? Ninévrisë saw to such things, quietly, in her own way, but there were ways to make a breach.

And there was—he never forgot it—one ready source of bad dreams in Amefel.

“So you sent Paisi away,” Cefwyn said deliberately, in the tone with which he daunted councillors. “And told no one.”

“He told me,” his younger son said.

“So you joined this conspiracy.”

“Paisi was already gone,” Aewyn protested, “and he wanted to tell you, but there was the di

“Indeed. And where is the fool maid at this moment?”

“I sent her to the kitchens and told her not to talk to anyone.”

“In the kitchens, not to talk. Gods save us, boy!”

“I threatened her life,” Aewyn said.

“Of course,” Cefwyn said, ignoring Aewyn’s protestations, and looked straight into Otter’s eyes. “A problem broadening by the hour. Do you understand that?”

“I am the only one to blame, Your Majesty.”

No excuses, no temporizing. And, alas, no ready excuse that would cover it. The pale gray eyes that damned the boy in the observation of honest Guelenfolk stared back at him, incontrovertible heritage.

“Don’t use magic,” he said bluntly. “Am I asking a bird not to fly?”

“No, Your Majesty,” the boy said, and in the silence he left for further comment: “I didn’t want to use it. I won’t use it. I won’t, again, Your Majesty.”

A damned cold word, that. Fathermight have carried more intimacy, but the boy had never used that word to him. The exchanges between himself and his own father had been that remote; the tone recalled that fact with an unpleasant chill about the heart, remembering where that bond had ended.

“Well, well, we have to repair the damage as best we can. Tomorrow, dress in your second-best, that’s the way of it. More clothes are coming.”

A hesitation. “There’s a stain on it, Your Majesty.”

“Gods save us, dress in your third-best tomorrow and walk with us. We shall find you staff—who will not, hereafter, see you practicing witchcraft, if you please.”

“No, Your Majesty. Witchcraft, that is.”

“You’re confusing the boy,” Ninévrisë said, holding out her hand. “Otter. Elfwyn. Lad. Come. You shall have servants, if you please, and you shall walk with us in the morning to the services, if you will, and mend things with the Quinalt, the gods willing. Here. Give me your hand.”

Ever so gingerly Otter gave his hand, and Ninévrisë took it, kindly drew him close. “Don’t ever fear to approach your father, or me. It was a mistake, is all, a simple mistake, was it not? Your father will send men to Amefel to be sure Paisi is safe—will you not, my lord?”