Fortress of Ice

“A haunt?” Otter asked, duly impressed.

“It’s supposed to be a grave from before the lodge was built, and nobody knew it was there, nor ever has found it. But late at night pans fall in the scullery, and footsteps go up and down the stairs.”

Otter’s eyes were wide as could be. “Is it a man or a woman?”

“Her. It’s a lady. Well, a woman. She could be a farmer or a herder. Nobody knows. But cakes go missing out of the kitchen, and everyone says it’s the ghost.”

Now Otter looked doubtful and gri

Aewyn laughed, too. “We’ll stay up late and see if cakes disappear,” he said. “We just have to endure Festival to get there.”

“Day after tomorrow,” Otter said.

“Three days earlier than yours, in Amefel, isn’t it? And no dancing.” He understood that Otter was Bryalt, like his mother. “I like your holidays much better. But I daren’t say that, being the Prince. I have to be good. Have you tried your clothes?”

“Clothes?” Otter asked, confused, so he hoped he had not spoiled their father’s surprise.

“Papa sent some. For the whole Festival. Mother said so. I thought they’d have come this morning. They were supposed to.”

“I haven’t seen them.”

“Oh, well, they’ll be there. Probably the servants are brushing them. They had better be there.”

“Where am I supposed to wear them?”

“To services every day.”

Otter wore a look of slight dismay. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that.

“Papa says you should sit with us in sanctuary,” Aewyn said.

“What does the queen think about that?”

“Mother wants you there, too.”

Otter didn’t say anything to that, only looked unhappy.

“Papa says it will be a good thing if you come. People will know you’re my brother. You’ll be welcome. You will. You’re to walk in with us and sit with us, and the people will see who you are.”

A small silence. “I don’t know why.”

“Because you aremy brother.”

“I’m not, quite. It’s pretending.”

“It’s not,” Aewyn said fiercely. “You are my brother. You will be, in public, so everyone knows who you are, and that my father and my mother agree. I heard them talking about it, and my mother says it’s a good idea.”

“If His Majesty says so,” Otter said faintly. “I’ve never been to Quinalt services. What am I to do?”

“Oh, all you have to do is sit when we sit and stand when we stand and stay next to me and do just as I do. The choir sings and the Holy Father gives a sermon every day. We listen, and we get up and go home. The first day is Fast Day. That’s the worst. You have to dress in the dark every day. But we go without eating from dawn to dark on Fast Day, and it’s always breakfast before the sun comes up, because we have to be there at sunrise. But it’s just five days.” It was what his mother used to say to him to cheer him up. “And then the Bryalt holiday starts, midway through. My mother puts up decorations in her chambers when that starts. You could put them up, in yours, well, after Fast Day. You shouldn’t put them in the sitting room, though. We can’t do that.”

“The Quinalt doesn’t allow it?”

“No.” Aewyn lowered his voice, and confessed: “I like my mother’s holiday ever so much better, with the evergreen and candles. Especially the cakes. Do they make the sweet cakes in Amefel, the brown ones with the nuts?”

“Oh, nut cakes, yes. And braided bread with apples in it.” Otter’s eyes brightened. “Do you have that for holiday?”

“Well,” Aewyn admitted, “no one downstairs knows how. But Mother’s maid knows how to bake the cakes herself, and she goes down to the kitchen, and tosses Cook out, and we have them for days.” He saw how Otter’s eyes brightened at that news. “They pass the cakes out among all my mother’s staff, all through the Bryalt holiday, and she puts the evergreen up and lights bayberry candles in her private chambers at night, and they go to the Bryalt shrine on the last night, or at least Mother does, and her maids. My father can’t, and I can’t, not even when I was a babe in arms.” That was always a sore spot with him and with his mother. “She misses the dances. But they sing songs in her rooms. What else do they do in Amefel?”

“They give out the little cakes, free, in the shrine, except if you have coin in your purse you have to make an offering to keep all your other coins lucky. And there’s a pe

“Is it magical?” he asked warily.

“Oh, it’s Gran’s; it could be. She made it for me, from the lucky pe

“The Quinalt takes the money we give,” Aewyn said. “It doesn’t give it out. Everybody has to give something, The priests do give out food to the poor on the last day and set up long tables in the square. First day is the day I hate.”

“Fast Day?”

“That’s the hardest. Fasting daylight to dark. And praying at sunrise in the Quinaltine. We have to go there while it’s still dark, it’s always cold, because the sanctuary hasn’t heated up yet, and it’s long, long praying. You get tired, you mustn’t fidget, and you can’t eat or drink anything, not even water, on the day, from the first the sun rises. Even the horses and the cattle can’t eat or drink until the sun goes down.”

“But they don’t know what day it is!”

“Oh, truth is, they’ll feed themselves off browse. That’s why we put most of the horses we can down in pasture.”

“But it’s thick snow down there now. Will they put out hay?”

“They’re not supposed to, really. If the wind’s blowing, you’ll hear the cattle bawling clear up on the hill. Lamenting the sins of the world, the fathers say. And the horses that have to stay in stable, the courier horses and such, they’re pent in, and there’s no hay.”

Otter had been on his belly, leaning on his elbows before the fire. Now he had sat up. “That’s outright cruel, not to feed them.”

“Well”—Aewyn looked to see where his guards were, and lowered his voice—“the fact is, the grooms up on the hill always spill a lot of grain in empty stalls before the day, and leave buckets full of water, then let the horses across to the empty stalls where the grain is, that afternoon, for all the horses that have to be up on the hill. It is sort of a sin, if the priests had to rule on it, but nobody mentions it happens, so nobody ever complains. And I don’t know for sure, but I’d wager with all this snow that the stable-boys leave a gate open so the livestock down in pasture can get into a section where there’s a haystack. The priests say one thing, but the grooms always get around it because nobody wants the horses tearing up the fences.”

“That’s lying, isn’t it?”

Aewyn gave a second look toward the guards’ hallway. And back. “It’s not really lying. It’s just pretending. Pretending isn’t a sin.”

“It’s still lying. And starving the horses is a sin.”

“Well, you can’t say that to the priests. Nor even where the guards can hear you.”

“I can say it to you, though. Don’t youthink it’s wrong?”

Sometimes Otter’s questions were worrisome. “I don’t know I ever thought about it. We’re not supposed to lie. Or be cruel. But my father says sometimes people have to, anyway, for good reasons. The horses not knocking the boards down would be a good, practical reason for sneaking the grain in, wouldn’t it? And we’re lying so we don’t have to be cruel. So I suppose that one cancels the other.”

“Well, what if we went down to the stable tomorrow and dropped a whole sack of apples?”