Fortress of Ice

But after all the hurry and flurry of the di

It became a very resentful silence.

One more, he kept thinking, one more piece chipped away by the priests. A son, this time. The half of me, before this, when Tristen had quietly slipped even out of Amefel and sent him only a letter, saying, “They hate me too much.”

Too cursed much. The damned priests. Always, the damned priests. And the people he ruled. The hatred of Guelenfolk for the Sihhë who had ruled the west had not faded at all. Hatred had sent Tristen from the world of Men—though Tristen would never accuse his people or blame those who drove him out.

The anger that had slowly welled up came brimming over, rendering him furious beyond words. He more than suspected traitors among the priests, mortal men who thought they knew better than their king. The scratches and the spot were all too convenient to create a furor, not yet a sedition, but so easily could the matter have gone to riot and bloodshed, given the bloody-handed history of the Quinaltine and its priests.

Efanor claimed a manifestation, and he did not disbelieve in such powers; but on the other, and from a king’s jaundiced view, it might have a common, human, seditious origin, even human conjuring of the forces Efanor warned him against. Oh, that that were the truth, and that he could find the author of it and get his hands on one priest’s throat—

But he was wiser than that. Wiser than his father. He drew no absolute conclusions. He refused the answers his temper wanted—the assumption that hidden enemies in his own realm had done it, forces he already detested, the old contenders for power over the king…

Anger and imprudence had ruled his father Ináreddrin before him, distrust of those around him had let the very conspirators, agreeable men, into his father’s deepest confidence, until ultimately those men had brought his father down. The temptation to see enemies and opposition where there was only frustration was, oh, so easy when one wore the crown. It was natural enough that the common folk feared an Aswydd bastard from across the border, it was natural there be whispers… it was natural they look to the gods for signs.

The gods hadn’t helped him, had they, when the kingdom tottered on the brink of sorcerous ruin?

Magic, however, he had seen work. Sorcery and wizardry he had seen in abundance. Religion he had not seen work at all, except to watch it deny him friends and drive an i

So damn all priests—the gods never helped him to what he wanted, never did anything that he could see but gather money from rich and poor alike, paying back a little bread and ale for the poor, and observing silence on sins for the rich.

The gods were not particularly good about silence for hissins, leaping gleefully onto his mistakes, not even sparing his attempts to do good. The gods deserted him whenever he relied on them in the least—and yet, in all justice, he knew he was never really faithful to them—not like Efanor, whose piety was always tinged with just a little sensible doubt—

But Efanor still prayed. Efanor saw the same things he saw and somehow managed to think the gods existed behind the false appearances, managed to find divinity hidden behind the priests, power behind the superstition and the terror, all with a doctrine that Efanor never was able to explain.

And Efanor had at least said he liked the boy, had he not?

Efanor had counted Tristen a friend, had he not?

And if there were gods, and if there was faith, Efanor had a grip on that realm and saw merit in the boy. So he was not wrong in what he had done.

Above all, he didn’t deserve to have all he loved forever hedged about and threatened by priests as well as dark magic—

Dark magic. Thatwas the worst of it. Magic of things Tristen hadn’t created, and didn’t wield—magic the Aswydds had slid into when they were kings in Amefel.

There were facts the Marhanen house would have to deal with: not only was his bastard son half-Aswydd, which entailed a strong Sihhë co

And that was the knowledge that tainted his relations with the Quinalt priests: that, the way he knew secrets about them, they had his queen’s heredity to call up anytime they wanted to declare war on him. Challenge them for their misdeeds, and they could challenge him with that.

They had been affronted, when he brought an Aswydd bastard here, installed him in the house, then held him over into Festival. He knew it. He had known it would be not be smooth going when Tristen asked him to care for the boy.

Had he misinterpreted what Tristen asked of him? Should he have cherished the boy in Amefel, near his mother’s influences, after all, instead of trying to remove him from that district?

So, well, and his men had failed to find a single rider in a snowstorm… no miracle, that, no magic—at least not in the single event. But add up all the others. His first riders, the ones sent out to find Paisi and report back, had said not a thing. He had no idea what was going on at Henas’amef, or whether the boy’s ill dreams—and his own false message—were unhappily true.

A dark presence shadowed the doorway. Master Crow was abroad at late hours.

“Crow?”

“My lord king?”

“Damned inquisitive Crow. No news?”

Idrys shook his head. “No, my lord king.” A silence. Idrys didn’t leave. “The storm is abating. There’s a star showing.”

“Oh, things are remarkably settling. The boy is arriving where Tarien desires him to be, is he not? Now all is peaceful.”

“There’s a thought worth a shudder.”

To save a kingdom—a king worked under a different sort of law, did he not, with different constraints? Mercy was at times the wrong mercy, and a king’s mistaken kindness made orphans and widows, laying the dead in heaps and windrows.

Had he possibly been selfish to refuse a murder or two, of a sorceress, even of his own son?

His personal virtue didn’t reside in the gods. He found it in Tristen’s mercy. The Quinalt, be it noted, had driven Tristen away from him and left him without counsel, except his brother Efanor.

And Idrys. Always Idrys, this dark advisor.

“There will be one more mission,” Cefwyn said to Idrys, “and put a good man on it. This letter must not lose itself in a snowstorm, or go astray, or be read by the messenger. It will contain very damning things.”

“My lord king?”

“Sit down. Be still. I have to think.”

Crow sat. Cefwyn picked up the quill, uncapped the inkpot, wrote, at considerable length for a royal message. He wrote, and sanded and sealed it.

“To whom goes this?” Idrys asked, when he delivered it to Idrys’ hand.

“To Crissand. Treat it with extreme caution.”

“Shall I ask?”

“It states that he should be on his guard regarding your very sensible misgivings. And that he should send a message westward.”

Idrys’ chin came up slightly. “Indeed.” Idrys did not disapprove of the notion. Clearly. “High time, indeed, my lord king.”

He more than forbore to check the man in his liberties, he encouraged him, for his soul’s sake—knowing one old advisor at least would never lie to him. He sent Crow out to rouse a messenger at this hour, with the conviction his Commander of the Guard would choose a man of strong loyalty, who would treat the missive as critically as a battlefield dispatch.

And if his own head weren’t burdened with a crown he had never wanted, he’d take horse this hour and ride all the way to Ynefel tower himself, by way of Henas’amef, while he was about it. Devil take the Quinalt and all their works—if he had not the Crown to burden him, he’d take wife and son and daughter with him and stay at Ynefel for all his days, in the company of an honest friend, the one man who had never deceived him, never counseled him to take the expedient, darker paths.