Fortress of Ice

Efanorhad attended the boy in sanctuary, and discovered his distress, and tried to protect him, when the king, under public witness, could not touch his own son. Who must have been terrified beyond anything he showed.

Would he had taken a different course. Would he had never agreed to leave the boy believing that damned message for any length of time, nothing so long as an hour, which he had hoped was only enough time to deceive Brother Trassin and see him out the door. All through the boy’s visit, he had left Otter to Aewyn, thinking the world at peace. He had feared too much attention from him might frighten the boy, or, at the other extreme, encourage too much presumption of favor.

Now he had fractured the peace, high and wide.

Now, please the gods he might find the boy still at the pasture, still trying to get up on that tall beast, but he doubted it. Otter was no great fighter, but he was agile, and clearly no moss grew on that lad once he had formed an intention to move.

He only hoped the horse might simply slip the boy softly into a snowbank and take off for his home fields. He hoped, in the whiteness ahead, to see a cloaked figure afoot and coming toward them, dashed in his hopes of escape or doggedly headed toward Amefel afoot.

But when he came to the byroad that led off to the Darkbrook pastures, tracks in the snow showed a boy going in and a horse coming out onto the main road.

No need to divert off the road to the pasture lane and back. The condition of the tracks showed a passage old enough, but not buried: they had to move. The horse in question had only a boy’s weight to carry, and the horse, a piebald gelding, an accidental breeding of one of his own mares, was nevertheless strong, fast, and surefooted on bad ground.

Did the boy have any food with him, for him or the horse? Had he taken more than a cloak for cover? The snow, whipped off the ground by the wind, made a disobliging veil across the road, blurring all distant sight, making too great a haste reckless indeed. He put Anfar to all the speed he dared, and his guard rattled around him.

But what had he asked himself before this, when luck had seemed to favor the boy and when he eluded searchers and found ordinarily competent men sheltered in the gatehouse, in an uncommonly strong spate of snow?

Simple bad luck?

He dared not assume it was.

They followed the track until it merged with that of local farm carts and foot traffic, and lost itself, near Pany Well. The sun sank, colored red, in the magic-ridden west.

“Your Majesty,” Paras said then, the captain of his bodyguard, riding close. “There’s no catching him. His horse has no weight to carry.”

He didn’t look at the man. Temper boiled just below the surface, the hateful Marhanen temper, which broke things and did wild things that only added fuel to anger.

He breathed once, twice, three times before he simply turned Anfar’s head toward Guelemara, and his guard swung in about him.

Well, he said to himself, staring straight between Anfar’s ears, no question where he’s gone, and if more than luck aims him, no question he’ll get there safely.

Follow him? Gossip enough attends him. Everything I do is marked and noticed, parsed and interpreted, and gossiped from here to Olmern.

And what can I do now? What’s fit to give a boy, to pay for the hellish ride he’ll have had?

Favor for the grandmother he loves? That she already has. That she would have, regardless.”

A message? More cold words on paper?

I’ll ride out myself before too many days, he thought, when this racket dies down. I owe the boy far more than any letter.

It was full dark when they met Idrys and his men coming toward them, on a road otherwise deserted, at the snow-choked bottom of a hill where their outward passage had already broken the drift.

Idrys, wrapped in a hooded cloak, saluted him, and asked no foolish questions. The boy was not with them. They were exhausted and out of sorts in their meeting.

“Two men will go on to Lord Crissand,” Cefwyn said, saying nothing about the message that had started this journey. “Send a man on. This message for Lord Crissand: treat my son as a guest in your province, treat his man as mine, treat his grandmother as a woman I favor. Protect them against hostile influences by any means necessary, and supply them with whatever comforts they may lack. And the messengers will visit my son’s house and say this: your father and brother send their love. You will visit us again come summer, when we hope for a quieter season. All the house regrets your leaving. Must I repeat it?”

The skills of a courier would have made it sure, word for word and with no variance, but, “Aye, my lord king,” Idrys’ lieutenant said, out of the dark. “I shall remember it.”

Idrys’ men did not promise what they could not perform, not twice. He nodded, stripped off his glove, and gave the man a lesser ring, the one he used for messages. Cold fingers transferred it: a warm bare hand closed solidly on it, across the moving gap between Anfar and the other horse.

“If you should overtake the boy on the road,” Cefwyn said, “do not attempt to bring him back against his will. Tell him his part of the message, escort him safely to his grandmother’s house, then deliver the message to Lord Crissand before you come back. Find out what the grandmother may need and personally see she has it.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Two of the Dragon Guard rode off into the night. Cefwyn said not a word as Idrys and two others of his men turned about to ride with them. Silence persisted another few moments.

“A clever boy,” Idrys said.

“He is that,” Cefwyn muttered. “And your damned message went awry. It went greatly awry, Crow!”

“It went half an hour early. Trassin heard the gossip in the kitchen from a horse groom, and came upstairs to the Guard office, looking for the message, beforeit went the path we intended. He took it and flew right to the boy.”

“So were you at all tracking him?”

“Oh, tracking every step, and always a step behind. The brother brought this missive to the boy—and cometlike, blazed to the Quinaltine in great agitation. This indeed, we attended, attempting to get a man to report from inside the Quinaltine. The watcher upstairs had gone downstairs on his track; another was summoned to go back to the room and assure the boy’s safety. The boy had left. That man left to report to me. His Highness arrived and went to you.”

“Would you had let Trassin go and brought the boy to me. Damn it all. Damn my own complaisance. Imay have an enemy in my own son.”

“You already havean enemy, my lord king. His mother continues alive, of all the Aswydds that were. And the boy evidently managed to leave the room in the scant few moments my men upstairs had followed Trassin downstairs. Downstairs, one of my men, realizing pursuit of the monk had drawn two men from upstairs and from the eastern door, and fearing that the monk might have done the boy violence, hurried upstairs—which left no one watching the lower hall. He found the room vacant and went to the west hall to inquire of the Prince’s Guard, who had not seen him at the Prince’s door or on the stairs. The Prince then heard the report—hence there, and to you, and meanwhile my men had gone down to report to me—while the boy was eluding our precautions at the stable and also at the gates, likely the Guelesfort’s western gate, a miraculous single step ahead of our inquiries all the way. We did nothear about the horse in pasture until one of my men consulted the stablemaster. But that was after you had left, my lord king.”

It was not in Master Crow to apologize. He came within a hair of it this time.

“It was not the advice I had, Crow. It was my taking it. I lied to my son. I never liked it. I should never have done it. And damn the man! What has he told the Holy Father, do you know?”