Fortress of Ice

“You’ve got to take care,” he said, then slipped away. If Paisi said anything or asked anything after that, he didn’t know.

But when he waked, Gran was up, and stirring about breakfast, making porridge in the small pot, and Paisi was lifting his head from the mattress.

“There’s breakfast about to go to waste,” Gran said, as she said most mornings, if they were still abed. Paisi got up, and Otter got up and huddled near the newly fed fire, both of them to take warm bowls in hand. Otter filled his belly with warm porridge and a bit of toasted bread.

“That’s better than the king’s table,” he said to Gran, who gri

And the snow came back while he ate the bread. It came back into his heart and into his vision, and he never wanted it, but nothing was finished. It began to grow in him, the notion, then, for the first time, that there was one other person than Gran and Paisi and the king and queen who’d had something to do with his mother and his birth, and that he’d never seen him, nor had to do with him, and that there were things he could learn nowhere else. Ill luck had dogged him every step of his visit to Guelemara, and the source of it was not his father, not Gran, nor Paisi, nor even Brother Trassin. He had brought it there with him, in what he was, and who he was born. Those who loved him most would never tell him there was no hope. They would go on trying to make him better than he was born.

But one person had no reason to lie to him, and one person in the world might see him for what he was.

He felt at that very moment that feeling of eyes at his back, that feeling that the tower, so faint and minute on its hill, was nearer to him and more real than the walls about him, when ordinarily Gran’s walls could keep that attention away from him. Now they were failing. He didn’t want to think about his mother. Gran’s walls were near, and strong, stone and wood and wattle, and potent with Gran’s magic, and at that very moment he saw Gran look very sharply toward the north and say,

“Stop that!”

The feeling of being watched went away then, like a candle going out, so that he could breathe again. Gran hadn’t troubled about the snow; but the tower she rebuked, and wove her magic about him, like warm winds.

But it was not warm enough to stop the snow. It drifted through a forest, all winter-bare, and lay trackless and unvisited in his i

“Otter?” Paisi asked.

“I’m not done,” he said, and set the porridge bowl down and stood up, aches and all. “It’s not finished.”

Paisi laid a hand on his arm, but Gran motioned him not to, and Paisi let him go. After that, he felt as if he had been set free, even blessed. He looked at Gran and saw no forbidding, no disapproval of him.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Not to her!” Paisi exclaimed.

“No. West. I have to ask him—I have questions to ask.”

“Of ’Im?” Gran asked. “ Whatwill ye ask ’Im, lad?”

“I have no notion yet. But he was there when I was born, wasn’t he? And when I went to Guelemara, where I thought all my life I was supposed to go, it wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I was wrong to go there. I didn’t like it, Gran. I liked Aewyn, and the king was good to me. And Prince Efanor was. And the queen. I liked them all. But Guelemara didn’t fit me, and now, all the way home, I kept thinking I had to be sure you were safe; but now that you are, I don’t know what to do. I can’t go ask—” He made the slightest nod of his head toward Henas’amef, toward the tower, and felt a shiver, even so, as if a tiny chink were opened in Gran’s spells, exposing them to a very persistent force. He tried not to pay attention to it. All his safety seemed elsewhere. Westward. “He’s what’s left to ask, isn’t he? I have to go and ask him—whatever occurs to me to ask.”

“Then ye’re right. Ye should go there,” Gran said. “I’d never stop ye.”

“Can’t it wait,” Paisi asked, “at least until the snow melts?”

“No,” he said. “No. I can’t wait. Soldiers will be here.” A shiver came over him, a terrible sense of urgency. “I’m sure they were behind me on the road. They will come, and I have to go. I have to go today.”

“It ain’t fair to leave Gran!” Paisi said. “She’s lyin’ when she says she ain’t that sickly. She was sick when I come here. An’ we can’t go off an’ leave her.”

“Then don’t think of leaving her alone, Paisi. I’ll go.”

“M’lord!”

“We’re home, and I’m not ‘m’lord’ here, and I can do for myself. I’ll take my own horse. He’s had food and shelter for days. Now yours can rest. There’s only one horse fit to go, anyway.”

“It ain’t right!” Paisi protested. “I’m not to leave ye! Himself said I wasn’t to leave ye!”

He set his hand on Paisi’s shoulder. A year ago, he’d not been tall enough. Now he could, and looked at Paisi almost eye to eye. “But I’m going to him, Paisi. That makes it different. And I can ride. I fell off often enough on the way home, I learned, didn’t I? This time I’ll even have a saddle.”

“ ’Tain’t a joke, m’lord.”

“No,” he said, “it isn’t, Paisi. Just take care of Gran.”

“I’ll fit Feiny out for ye,” Paisi muttered. “An’ ye ride slow on ’im, and ye mind your way. That’s a treacherous, wicked horse, I had me fill of his ma

He had seen the borders of Marna Wood when he was a young boy. He had gone that far, with Paisi. He had seen the dark, dead trees, and Paisi had told him then that things died, that went under those branches. The trees there never leafed, except a little straggle of branches, and never died, either. It was magical, in itself. And Ynefel lay beyond that boundary, across the river. That was where Lord Tristen lived.

So it was the way he had to go, and when he knew that, he could breathe again. It was not that he wanted to go at all. He had changed since he had last ridden out from Gran’s yard. He had learned to live in the king’s household. He had learned to stand straight and speak up when asked; he had learned to say m’lord this and m’lady that, and how to hold a knife and spoon—all useful things, but none useful in the world now. He knew how to tend goats and make cheese, and these were skills that would feed his body, but never his soul: not for him, to live in this little house. He suddenly knew that, and it was a lonely feeling, but it was at least a peaceful feeling. It was not that he meant to leave forever. But he had to leave, for now, for as long as he had to. And Gran had Paisi. That meant everything was as it ought to be. The world was astonishingly simple, when he removed himself from Guelemara, and from here.

So he put on his boots and his cloak, while Paisi, who had shoved his feet into work boots, had gone out to see to Feiny. Meanwhile Gran made up a packet of food for him.

“An’ there’s ample grain for the horse in the shed,” Gran said as she tied up the bundle, “as the young duke has sent, an’ gods, we’ve had a wicked time keepin’ the goats from it, ha’n’t we?”

“I’m glad His Grace has taken good care of you,” he said. He was done. He took the packet, and by that time Paisi had come in, saying Feiny was saddled, and had his gear, and had a pack of grain besides a blanket Paisi had used.

“Which ain’t as clean as it was,” Paisi said, “but it ain’t the Guelesfort, an’ the washin’ ’ll freeze like planks in this weather, won’t it? You got to watch Feiny, now, I’m tellin’ ye. Don’t you get too confident with ’im. He’s feistier ’n Tammis, tricksy as a downriver peddlar. You got to do with him the way ye do with ol’ Crook-horn, an’ slap ’is jaw if he offers to bite.”

“I will,” Otter said, and hugged Paisi and hugged Gran last. “You take care, most of all. You take great care, Gran.”