Fortress of Ice

“What sin did you ever commit?”

Efanor turned one of those rare and pained looks that he had worn ever since a day in Amefel.

“Our father’s loss? That was none of your doing. The fault is mine. By the gods, I refuse to have you carry my faults about. You are notto be that pure, brother of mine, without being a damned saint, and I won’t have it, by the gods I won’t!”

“Oh, we have each our flaws. Marhanen and Aswydd. I could never have achieved that. Gods save us, what a breeding!”

He glared. Efanor gave a little bow, a very little bow, and walked off toward the door, having had the last and telling word, which only vexed him the more.

Sometimes, however, the Marhanen luck simply held out against all odds, blind, deaf, and dumb. He had ridden to battle with it, time and again. It never worked in his favor when he retreated.

And was this boy, half of his blood, not due a share of that luck?

Otter would not be found hiding among the cobwebs tomorrow.

And if Efanor had to rouse out and bribe a score of stonemasons, there would be a miracle. Let the masons talk: let them proclaim in every tavern in town that they had replaced the stone. The people loved their miracles more than truth, and what appeared suddenly to set things right roused passions that paid no heed to rational explanations. He had learned the ways of the faithful, while the object of his own personal belief was across the border, beyond Amefel, and at present gave him no answers.

CHAPTER THREE

i

THE BOY WAS FEARFUL OF GOING BACK: EFANOR SAW THAT, WHEN THE FAMILY gathered before dawn for the morning processional. Aewyn attempted to cheer him, but the boy, Otter—Elfwyn Aswydd, as he was written, now, in the holy record—looked apprehensively into the shadows of the hall and started in every limb when a guardsman thumped a pike against the paving.

They moved, out into a snowy, breathless dawn, and across a soft new blanket of snow in the courtyard and on the street. Only a few earlier tracks marred the white.

They climbed the broad, sparsely torchlit steps toward the open doors and entered the sanctuary as they must do every morning of Festival. And here Efanor climbed a little faster, and seized Otter’s arm and diverted him and Aewyn to the bench behind the king and queen, in much better view of the aisle, and of the lords who filled the benches. The Lord Chamberlain, flustered, filled in the next bench after with his family, and others moved smoothly into place, none noticing, perhaps, until the last row, when some might be left standing: no one sat in the king’s row unbidden; and no one had dared crowd into the Prince’s company in his appropriated row, either. Everything had gone just slightly out of joint.

But Efanor, nearest the aisle now, had placed the boys where he could keep an eye on both of them—Aewyn, he would gladly have sent forward with Cefwyn, so as not to taint the heir with his half brother’s difficulties. He signaled so, but Aewyn, who had stuck like a burr when he had diverted the Aswydd boy, now ignored the urging to join his parents and stuck fast, publicly attached to the scene, making himself a hostage.

Well, Efanor thought, that was as it would be. The masons, paid for silence as well as labor, had done their work last night. A new stone, inconspicuous among the rest, lay in place, unblemished. The altar there was no replacing, but a broad white altar cloth covered the damages. Everything to the public eye was pristine and perfect.

He had gotten perhaps four hours of sleep last night. Otter beside him looked to have gotten less. The lad’s face was white, lips pressed tight.

Cefwyn seemed perfectly happy, his requirements satisfied, his sons in place, the people quiet in the contemplation of the third day, the day of thanksgiving, happier than the day of fasting and the day of forgiveness. They had only the day of petition and the day of praise to get through, beyond this one—and if Cefwyn could draw an easier breath this morning, confident in his deafness to things that might move in the shadows—it at least kept his face serene as a monarch’s ought to be.

Efanor felt no such serenity, nor would, he thought, until the sun rose on the world and shadows slunk back to their proper places.

It was always an uneasy place. Lord Tristen had said it was the Masons who had laid out the foundations, who had deliberately built on a place of power, and attempted—arrogantly—to contain it. But could anyone persuade the Holy Father to let Tristen Sihhë redraw the Lines beneath? No, a thousand times no.

Consequently the conflicting Lines were still there, more gateway than ward. They had flared into life that day of battle and outright broken, badly knit again by the persistent pacing of the Holy Father and other priests, back and forth, back and forth along that track before the altar. It was a ragged line they made, like loose scraps of yarn laid for a defense, not the bright, brave blue that attended Tristen’s sure working—the mending of the Lines had started out as bits of red, then green, where they crossed, and a few, now, blue in the heart of the skein, showed a certain health.

But to Efanor’s disquiet, if he looked in the right way, a shadow seemed to have fallen on the heart of the new paving stone, which the Masons had raised from the i

Now a spot appeared, and spread like ink in water, right by the king’s bench, right by Cefwyn’s left hand.

It was not a spot such as ordinary Men might see, not yet: the choir sang, the congregation rose and sat by turns, but spread it did, and sent out tendrils of stain to touch other stones, ru

No one saw, Efanor thought to himself; not a soul else noticed it.

But when he thought that, he felt a strange thing: that fear sat beside him: not mischief, not a source of the darkness, but fear.

The boy was gazing at the floor beside the bench, his lips pressed to a thin line. Sweat stood on his face.

Efanor shot out a hand without forethought, gripped the boy’s wrist, and pressed that cold flesh, gently, solidly, feeling, still, neither emanation of the threat nor an answering defense. It was a very mortal chill, the shiver of a soul completely vulnerable to the threat it perceived, and knowing not what to do.

Hehad force enough. Efanor had discovered it in him on that day, call it prayer, call it a Working, in Tristen’s terms: he had prayed, then, not to the Five, but to justice, and fairness, and to the balance that kept the living in possession of the hill: he prayed now for the lives of all those present, all the city round about, for his duchy of Guelessar, for all the realm, all weighed against the dead, and whatever force tried to break those Lines that held the shadow back.

Shadow pressed back. The blue Lines turned red, and gold, and a few snapped. The boy shivered, and flinched, and Efanor loosened his grip somewhat, praying with all his might, lips moving now. The boy’s other hand closed atop his, circle closed, force ru

The Lines held. What he held, what he met, in that completed grip, tingled through him in a way he had rarely felt.

It held. It held through the singing and the Holy Father’s sermon, the old man talking on and on about thanksgiving for deliverance from sins, and uttering inanities, outright inanities about birth indicating a soul’s righteousness and rank being given by the gods.