Fortress of Ice

What rank, this boy? Efanor wondered, distracted. What holiness, this lad, the bastard, whose presence this place abhors?

Whose life this place fears…

It fears him, fears the Aswydd blood. The old enemy, is it, you shadows?

The Marhanen lie buried here, Efanor thought: my father, my grandfather, the queens, the forgotten princes, those who never reigned, and those who did— my grandfather who slaughtered the Sihhë-lords and overthrew their palaces… who suborned the Aswydds in the doing of it, but the Aswydds were never the object of the attack and never suffered what their lords did. The Aswydds ruled on, under special provision, with their own peculiar titles and honors preserved— the Aswydds still rule, by Cefwyn’s own dispensation.

Aswydd blood can’t be the disturbance here.

Something else is.

A howling wind seemed to go through the sanctuary, up among the ba

Had he heard some threat yesterday, when the censer fell?

There had been a thunderclap in that moment, in Efanor’s ears. Thunder in the snowfall, that no one seemed to have heard, only the fall of the censer, the ringing of metal, the racket of the congregation all out of their seats, striving to see…

“Good lad,” Efanor whispered, under the singing. “Good lad.”

A desperate look turned to him. The boy’s hands were like ice. Beyond, Aewyn had looked aloft, and cast them a worried look, as if perceiving some trouble beyond his ken.

“You should not come here,” Efanor said to the boy in his grip. “I know that. I shall talk to your father.”

“My lord.” The boy tried to withdraw one hand, and Efanor let him, retaining only a hold on his wrist.

“I shall see you safely out of here, when the congregation rises. Walk quietly. I shall keep close by.” Efanor let go the boy’s wrist as the congregation rose. He slipped an arm around him instead, and when Cefwyn and Ninévrisë began the procession, drew him into the aisle, proceeding together behind the king and queen, down the long walk toward the opening doors. Aewyn came up on Otter’s other side, and put his arm about him, the image of familial devotion as they came out the doors.

It was surely more familial devotion than Cefwyn might want displayed, making clear to all the witnessing crowd outside that here was the Aswydd sorceress’s son, the family mistake, in the very heart of the family, embraced by both generations. Cefwyn might not see the shadows ru

Otter must not go there again, Efanor said to himself, shaken. He must not go there. Cefwyn’s will or no, he dares not.

He slipped his hand from the boy’s shoulder then, letting Aewyn and Otter go their way in the mistaken blitheness of boys, the darkness inside now past. They made a game of walking together through the snow as they reached the bottom of the steps, kicking it into flurries.

Boys, still. Boys whose fates rested in other hands than their own—

In the hands of grown men, who had to act with the limited understanding they had; and Efanor turned back forthwith toward the Quinaltine, taking an untracked walk toward the priests’ door, along the side of the building, where a wintry, snowy hedge concealed his visit from common view.

He opened the unlocked door, walked into the close, echoing warren that held the private chapels, the robing rooms, the wardens’ chambers, and the storerooms that supplied the less public aspects of the Quinaltine services. He climbed up a flight of narrow steps, and into His Holiness’ less public domain, where the Holy Father, the Patriarch, was shedding the heavy gold miter. His sparse white hair had wisped up into random peaks. He looked like any old man caught in dressing, except for the golden raiments, except for priests and lay brothers who raced up to him to ask questions and receive instructions, departing again at a run. It was a hive overturned, buzzing with distress and worry.

“Your Holiness,” Efanor said.

“Your Grace, the spot is back. It’s back, it’s on the new stone, and it’s larger. The whole city will see the mark!”

“Shut the doors.”

“Shut the doors? It’s Thanksgiving, the day before Praise. I have another service to hold in an hour, and the commons at eventide. We can’t shut the doors!”

“We’ve other stones. We’ll lay another stone. The services will be late today.”

“What will we tell the populace?”

“Tell them anything. Lie. Decry excessive drunke

He turned on his heel and left a royal order hanging in the air. The Patriarch might send to the king to confirm it; and he had to reach his brother beforehand.

He lost no time at all, crossing between the Quinaltine and the Guelesfort. Unlike his brother, he moved at times without guard or escort, and this was notably such a moment, in which his plain raiment and his haste was disguise enough, given the sifting fall of snow. The crowd in the square was waiting to be let into services that would, alas, be hours delayed. The guardsmen closing the Guelesfort gate realized who he was and let him pass.

He left melting snow behind him as he climbed the servants’ stairs, up to the level of the royal apartments and straight down the hall… past the boy’s rooms, and past Aewyn’s, straight for his brother’s.

But not without interception. A black-clad guardsman checked him with a hand on his arm, right near his brother’s door.

Idrys.

“Your Grace,” the Lord Commander said in a low voice. “I take it that it was not without disturbance.”

“No,” he said, “it was not.”

ii

IT WAS A VISITATION OF ILL OMEN: CEFWYN SAW IT COMING——EFANOR, PASSING the guard at his chamber doors with no lingering courtesies, went straight to the point, just when the Lord Chamberlain had begun a report, and asked for complete privacy.

“The mark is back,” Efanor said directly.

“No such thing!” Cefwyn said. “I looked. I saw nothing at all.”

“Some see it. Some, among the priests, the Holy Father—as well as your Aswydd son—do. Isee it. It will manifest again. I’ve ordered the doors shut, the stone replaced. Your miracle, brother, has failed; worse, it’s gone wrong. All through the service, I was with the boy…”

“Who did nothing!”

“I will warrant myself, by deed or word or invocation, he did nothing— but what he saw, and what I saw, brother—”

“These Lines.”

“You’ve seen them yourself. I know you can see them.”

“I agree they’re there. Once and twice, yes, I’ve seen them elsewhere, in darkest night. Why should we be so blessed this time? And why should it be the boy’s fault? Why not one of the priests doing this?”

“I don’t at all deny that it could be. But the fact is, other things manifest when the boy is there. They frighten him, and what I saw there this morning frightens me. Listen this time, brother. Whatever the cause, for the boy’s sake, for yours, the boy must not go through those doors again.”

Master Crow had come in, sole exception to the request for utter privacy, and stood by, arms folded, the last man on earth who might see mysterious Lines or give way to superstition; but he, like Efanor, had seen far more unaccountable things in his life.

“My lord king,” Idrys said unbidden, “consider, not alone the boy’s mother, but the mother’s sister. Born at a sorceress’s will—”

“You are about to offend me, Crow.”

“Sorcery brought you into the Aswydd’s bed, sorcery conceived a son you will not now disavow—on what advice, yes, has generally been good advice, but Lord Tristen never counseled you to bring that boy into the Quinalt, my lord king. I would wager heavily on that. This was your own notion.”