Fortress of Ice

He saw Gran’s house as all blackened sticks.

Doors opened and closed. He supposed Brother Trassin had taken his noon dishes out himself, though the man had done little else, and fed himself prodigiously, to judge by the size of the tray he had taken to his rooms.

In time, the man came back from the kitchens. Otter was reading at the time, and only noted it, and kept reading, trying to lose himself in the words.

But the poetry had failed to hold him. It was all about spring and flowers, and outside his windows, snow was coming down again, thick and wild, piling up on the sills—

Snow would be falling, likewise, in Amefel, across the river. Snow would put out fires. Gran was never careless with fires. She never had been.

Brother Trassin came to the doorway of the room with a rolled paper in hand.

“Pray to the gods,” the brother said. “Bad news, poor boy. Very bad news.”

He didn’t understand, at first, what the brother meant. But he laid his book aside on the table. “Sir?” he asked, rising.

“This has come,” Brother Trassin said, and handed him an opened document, its two seals already cracked, two shades of red wax. “I have the greatest concern, boy, the greatest concern for you.”

He was puzzled. He understood he was to read the paper, and held it so the window’s light shone through it. It was from a military clerk’s hand. It said, beyond the opening and name of the Guelen clerk, that a guardsman who had visited Gran had come to the Guelesfort at midafternoon with a spoken message, which was rendered here as the guardsman said it and meant to be delivered to him.

The woman is very ill. She urgently wants her grandson at her side.

It was hardly Gran’s way of saying things, or even a soldier’s, but it had evidently come through a clerk, and the words would have changed. There was, appended to the bottom of the paper another statement, from the Commander of the Dragon Guard: His Majesty excuses you from services.

Somehow—not by the ordinary way messengers came and went—this had gotten into Trassin’s hands. The broken seals—the first was plain, but the second looked like an official seal, with the Dragon on it, in red wax, said that Trassin had read it.

Fear made his stomach upset. He felt a profound shock and all the same, he was angry.

“How did you get this?”

“From the Lord Commander, in your name, boy, as in care of you.”

“And read it? How long have you had it?”

“Dear boy!”

“How long have you had it?”

“Just now I got it. I was in the kitchens. The Guard is forming an escort for you, in the early hours. They are calling up the horses and packing for the journey. They will escort you out before the sun, back to Amefel, to deliver you back into Lord Crissand’s lordship and lose no time about it. I heard this, and went to the Prince, who confirmed it, and I came here, to bring you the message myself, poor boy.”

A message from Gran would have passed Paisi on the road and Paisi would be with her by now. Paisi would be seeing to her welfare. She would be well by now. There was surely no reason to worry—this was at least three days old. Or more than that. And his father knew it, and was sending him with an escort of soldiers—

“Your dreams,” Brother Trassin said, “your dreams of misfortune must have some unhappy foundation in fact, and, poor boy, this instruction is in error. You ca

“I shall pray for my gran, sir.” His mouth could scarcely shape words that might mollify this man, and he had no idea what to say. Brother Trassin had spoken to him very little except to pray over him, and now wanted to advise him not to go, and he had no idea what his father was about, unless—unless they knew of some reason Paisi hadn’t gotten there.

He wanted to fling the missive down, to run, as fast as he could for better advice. But this man had already been to His Grace. Where was there, but Aewyn? And Aewyn would know nothing, not about messages that came through the Lord Commander.

“Pray for yourself, poor boy. Let me counsel you, your gran’s country witchcraft may seem i

His heart beat faster. “What about the fires?” His own dream from last night eluded him, increasingly, hiding details and fading from his grasp: Brother Trassin had waked him and sent it scattering and fading in the shock of being wakened. “What did I say last night?”

“ ‘Gran,’ you cried, and ‘the fire, the fire in the wood.’ And when I waked you, you looked about as if you were there, not here, and you shouted aloud, ‘Watch out for the beam,’ as if you were seeing something not present. These dreams are devil-sent, boy, I know they are. And I told you that you should get up immediately and pray to stop them, but you said go away. So I did. I did, but I did pray for you, boy, and I had the utmost reason, in your refusal.”

“It was just a dream, was all.” He tried to believe that, and to argue rationally with the man. “ Thisis a message from my gran. It came by horse, not devils!”

Even if my father knows something different.

“Devils, I say, devils. The gods never sent you these persistent dreams of fire and harm. The devils do. They called away the witch’s grandson. He had no trouble answering. And if you fall into these visions, and go back to that benighted province, I fear for you. You have not the strength on your own to fight these influences. And think of this—think of this, boy. If the gods do take your grandmother, it may be in time to turn your soul from ruin and save her soul from worse sin. Mark me, boy: the gods in their mercy may have wished to save the young soul who lived under that roof, but you have to turn from your mother’s wicked ways. The gods will not forgive a willful lapse, boy. The gods’ retribution may be delayed, but not…”

“No,” he cried a second time, and struck out, knocking the precious book of poetry to the floor. “My gran heals her neighbors. Her spells heal or find lost things!”

“Her healing is a false healing. Her knowledge is blasphemous. The gods’ prerogatives are not for ignorant hands to use.”

“Go away!” he cried. “Just leave, damn you! Don’t come back!”

“If I do go, I take the gods’ mercy with me. It may be forever, boy!”

“Get out!” He moved toward Brother Trassin, to shove him bodily out of the rooms, but Brother Trassin mistook his intent and abandoned his stance in haste, crying,

“Violence! Gods save us from devils!”

Brother Trassin fled through the arch, across the sitting room, out the door and slammed it.

Otter stood shaking beside the table, unable to prevent the man from spreading lies or offer reason to silence him. Trassin was the Patriarch’s man, and bent on damning him with the priests of the Quinalt and with Prince Efanor and now with every devout Quinaltine, because this man, Efanor had warned him, was here for that very purpose. Priests had power. He had seen that, in the king’s anxiousness to have him please the Quinalt and have his name written in the book, and now everything must have gone wrong. Priests in the Quinaltine might have seen the spot on the floor, and the shadows, and the lines of fire that had grown up during services; Efanor had gripped his hand: he could see them, too, though nobody else had seemed to notice… he had thought he had gotten away safely, escaped the harm and left it all behind.