Fortress of Ice

That was the last business at hand, thank the gods. The edict had been prepared in advance, and a message already dispatched to the Patriarch: the hearing was no more than a venting of his anger and a public warning; but it exhausted him. Rumblings of discontent in the clergy were slow to settle, Quinalt zealots had made the Bryalt holiday grim, his son moped about, neglected his studies, and erupted in temper with his bodyguard and threatened to dismiss Selmyn himself, not the most pleasant of displays.

Most of all, his son wanted to know any news that arrived from Amefel, and daily seemed to hint it was kept from him. That tried his own temper, and his forbearance, and made his wife unhappy.

Now news had come, and it was not quite the good news he had hoped to give to his son, nor entirely bad, either. It might be the wisest move old Gran could have made, sending Otter off in that direction—if he could get there safely.

He took himself back to the robing room, shed the trappings of kingship and took himself and his message upstairs, Idrys shadowing him the while, ahead of his bodyguard. Idrys being a mortal man, curiosity doubtless consumed him. But he asked no questions until they reached the royal apartments.

There, Cefwyn drew the message from his belt and handed it to Idrys, who read it.

“Gone to the Sihhë-lord,” Idrys said then. “But on whose advice, my lord king?”

“That isthe question, is it not?” On longer thought, he found himself somewhat relieved, but he could not settle in his heart what he felt about his own failure. “The grandmother’s, perhaps. Certainly not his mother’s.”

“That one won’t be happy.”

“No,” he said. “She won’t.” Nor would his son, who would begin to think about that territory and begin to inquire into matters his son had never asked. So there had been a war. So the Sihhë-lord, his father’s good friend, had risen up, then gone away again, and never visited the capital, not since he was born. It had been no concern of Aewyn’s.

Until now.

Wiser, long ago, if he had separated the grandmother’s whole household from Henas’amef—settled her down in Ivanor with Lord Cevulirn, perhaps: his people understood wizards, and revered an honest hedge-witch, much as the Amefin did. Or down in Olmern, where Sovrag was lord. Nothing daunted that old river pirate. He’d made the decision where to put the boy when Tristen had been in Amefel, and he had never changed the arrangement when Tristen left the realm, deeming it wise not to disturb what seemed settled.

Well, he knew what Tristen would say about easy and natural courses… the thing that felt so right and natural to do… the situation unexamined for year upon year, as things subtly or not so subtly shifted: decisions forgotten and allowed to stand, though the safety in them had subtly eroded away.

Maybe—maybe he should have refused advice to send the boy home.

Otter had gotten through Festival and been written down; he could have taken ill for the last ceremonies, attendance at which was often taken somewhat lightly, if the privations and worship of the first days had rendered a body indisposed. They could have gotten through it.

But at least the boy had evaded his mother. He had not gone into the town: he had left, out of his mother’s reach. That was to the good.

“I’ll write a letter,” he said. “All hospitality for the messenger.” Idrys gave him back the letter, rolled up, and Cefwyn laid it on the desk. “We know what we know, and no more. It may be to the good.”

Idrys left. Efanor arrived, before he had quite sat down to write the reply.

“There was a message,” Efanor said, and Cefwyn told him the gist of it.

Efanor sat down unbidden, in the informality of the privy chambers, sat down and rested his arm on the side of Cefwyn’s desk. “Well, better than I had feared.”

“Better than frozen in a snowbank,” Cefwyn said shortly. “Everything’s better than what could have happened.”

“And the woman is well.”

“Perfectly well, as seems,” Cefwyn said. “His dreams were for naught.”

“ Tristenwouldn’t send a false dream.”

“We know who would. Spare me. I have yet to explain to my son where his friend is. He will ask, of course, when he’s coming back, and if he’s gotten my letter, and I have to say no, the letter went to Crissand, but not to our fugitive, and nothing is mended.”

“The spot on the stone, meanwhile—”

“The Holy Father’s masonry, brother, is not my chief concern. And you said—”

“The blot is there again,” Efanor said. “Not visible to everyone. But—”

“How many paving stones has the i

“Don’t make light of it, I pray you, brother. Listen to me. This is not the Holy Father looking for favors. If your son has gone to Lord Tristen—”

“If he has. He most certainly has. There’s nowhere else he could go, in that direction, and what in the gods’ own name does it have to do with the Quinaltine floor?”

“I told you, after the war, after the battle in Elwynor, the foundation—”

“The foundation is flawed. The Lines run amiss. I know it. They wouldn’t have Tristen deal with the matter, oh, no, nothing so reasonable. Now I’m to repave the whole Quinaltine, a stone at a time?”

“It’s not that, brother.” Efanor reached out and laid a hand on his wrist, quietly compelling him. “The foundations, yes, were mislaid from the start. The Lines are completely askew. I know you can’t see them, but trust me in this, they’re not what they ought to be.”

“Given that, they never have been.”

“Our grandfather founded the place on old ruins, and took them over, and they’re flawed from that begi

“Good gods, brother.”

“Pavings are not the flaw here. The flaw is in the rock beneath.”

“The Holy Father proposes to tear down the Quinaltine?”

“I’ve not broached this with the Holy Father.”

He stared at his brother, not believing what he heard. “Tear it down.”

“As we build a new shrine.”

“Oh, good gods!”

“The manifestation—” His grip on Cefwyn’s wrist tightened. “The manifestation has not gone away with Otter’s departure. If anything, it’s spreading.”

“Well, then it wasn’t his fault, was it? Tell that to the street preachers! Did Nevris mention to you there was a tavern brawl, which ordinarily isn’t my concern; but this man was preaching against Bryalt observance, trying to burn down a tavern and blaming my son when he did it?”

“Otter, you mean.”

“Yes, Otter, damn it.”

“You think of him in those terms.”

“As my son? He is my son. He ismy son, brother, however inconvenient. I can do nothing about that. Nor can he. I thought you thought well of him.”

“Well of him, indeed. But he’s a doorway. Whose, remains to be seen.”

“Gods, you sound like Emuin!”

“I heartily wish Emuin were still with us. He would tell you—”

“What, that I have a spot on the Quinaltine floor and we have to tear the building down? And it’s all my son’s fault?”

“No. He’d say that the door has already come ajar. The boy seesthe Lines…”

“So do you,” Cefwyn retorted.

“He more than sees the Lines, brother. Things beyond the Lines see him. I see the Lines. And I guard my own soul. Who guards his?”

“Well, damned well not the Quinalt Father, does he, despite writing him down in the book? And what will the old man say when you propose to tear the building down? I’m sure that will patch things.”

“Listen to me: the Lines, the Lines, brother. I don’t understand them, but they exist, they’re confused, they’re a trap for spirits, and as tangled as they’ve grown—I’m not sure even Tristen could untangle them…”

“They won’t let Tristen through the doors, remember? They won’t take blessings from a Sihhë. And we can’t afford to build another Quinaltine.”