Fortress of Ice

He lay awake after that, dry-eyed, and thought black thoughts about his mother, just upstairs, unscathed, a hateful and dangerous proximity that he would have to ignore just to share this roof, which he wouldhave to share, perhaps for the rest of his days, thanks to his mother’s ruining his chances in Guelessar. Gran was dead, part of that heap of ashes, not even a grave to mark her place in the world, while his mother lived on, smug and happy, he could imagine it, in having destroyed a woman so much her better—

He grew angry, terribly angry, and anger unleashed the hate Gran had always advised him to avoid—hatred of his mother and his circumstances, alike, as if his soul had burned as raw as his hands last night. He didn’t sleep. He couldn’t, now. It seemed forever before daylight crept into the unfamiliar windows of an elegant room, a clear sky with a slight pall of chimney smoke rising into it.

Town smoke. More burning, tame burning, by people who thought fire was their servant.

Paisi waked, stretched, knocked his hand into the bedpost inadvertently, and winced. He blinked, perhaps taking a moment to realize where he was, and to remember their circumstances.

“I’d better get breakfast for us,” Paisi said, as if they were back in the Guelesfort.

“Let servants wait on us,” Elfwyn said. “They will.”

“Not on me,” Paisi said. “I’d rather be stirring about, m’lord, I had, and I know me way about this place like the back o’ me hand.” Paisi had served in the Zeide before, when he was Lord Tristen’s servant, and Master Emuin’s before he left. “Servin’ here was no shame, m’lord,” Paisi informed him. “It was somethin’ I was proud of.”

“Then do that,” Elfwyn told him, surrendering the whole matter, and watched Paisi leave. He lay abed for a few moments after Paisi had left, wishing he could pull the covers over his head and spend the next several days asleep, but the pain of his burns and the memories behind his eyelids gave him no rest at all, and he had never even taken off his boots last night, no more than Paisi had. He got up in defeat, washed the finer marks of the soot off his face, now that clear daylight was coming through the windows.

But before he had finished, a flow of servants started through the doors, bringing buckets of water, and trooping through into the bath. Others brought a wealth of clothes—far more than a plea of Paisi’s would have arranged. He let the servants bathe him: the water hurt his burned hands; he dressed in his own choice of the abundance the servants provided him, plain brown, but very fine. A gray-bearded man of serious mien—he remembered him as Lord Crissand’s physician—came in and renewed the salve and bandages.

“Paisi was burned worse than I,” he informed that man, who reported Paisi was bathing and changing down in the scullery, where he likewise would be treated. “My apprentice,” the physician said, “is very skilled, young sir.”

He was glad at least that Paisi hadn’t had to wait for such comforts. Breakfast arrived, a choice of breads, on fine pewter plates, with jams, a pile of what looked to be boiled and peeled eggs, with a plate of smoked fish and another of cheese. It was more than he could possibly eat… but he knew from Paisi that nothing he sent back went to waste in the kitchen.

He sat down to eat, alone, and had finished by the time Paisi came back, all shaven and combed and bandaged. Paisi walked in, gave a little bow.

“There’s blackberry jam,” Elfwyn said. The servants had all left. “If you like.”

“A smidgen,” Paisi said, and took a sliver of bread with jam, standing up. “ ’At’s good, m’lord.”

The division was between them again. But Paisi said he had been proud of his service here—he always had been: Paisi had served Lord Tristen, and Master Emuin, and perhaps, Elfwyn thought, it was only his present lord who suffered in the comparison.

“I’ve been thinking,” Elfwyn said, “we should get a proper stone to mark the place. If Farmer Ost gets the land, at least there should be some marker where the house was. We can find one in the fields and move it there.”

Paisi sat down across from him, now that he had finished his bread and jam. “Ost himself has that hitch of oxen,” Paisi said, “and considerin’ the land, an’ all, he’d do Gran a favor.” So they began to lay their plans.

“We can put a bird on it,” Elfwyn said. “A sparrow. Gran would like that. Maybe we can get a carver to work it proper. We do it now while the ground’s hard, or wait till summer.”

“Snow’s going to lie deep another month,” Paisi said. “Ain’t no great hurry. She’ll sleep a bit to herself. She ached so much, m’lord. ’Tis at least a warm bed she got.”

Paisi wept then, and he began to as well. But then he thought of his mother, smug and satisfied in their pain, and went dry-eyed. Paisi wept, while Elfwyn sat and stared out the windows, wishing death and ruin on his mother’s head.

“I think I’ll go upstairs,” he said, purposing to get up, and Paisi took a heartbeat to understand that. Then Paisi shot his hand across the table, dislodging dishes, and seized Elfwyn’s arm, bandages and all.

“No,” Paisi said fiercely. “No! Ye can’t. Ye’re angry. And Gran always said that wasn’t good. You quieten down, m’lord. Ye wait, ye wait to see her. Lord Tristen’s comin’ here, ain’t he? It can’t be that much longer, and he’ll settle wi’ your mother. You can’t. Ye daren’t.”

He settled back into his chair, knowing that Paisi was right, that he would only fail again, and perhaps put others in danger—Paisi himself, or Lord Crissand, this time, to much greater ruin. He looked down at the ring he wore and wished he had taken it off before he visited his mother. He meant to do so when next he did.

But not today. Not, at least, today. He and Paisi stayed in the rooms, doing very little but nibble at the food—more arrived at noon, with Lord Crissand’s regards and an inquiry whether they had other needs. They had none. They ate, and, drawing the drapes, they tried to sleep, but dreams intervened, terrible dreams, from which Elfwyn waked with a cry.

“There, it’s all right, lad.” Paisi put an arm about him.

“It’s her!” he cried in indignation, and swung his feet over the side of the bed. “It’s her doing it! She gives me no peace, Paisi!”

“Could be. Could be the Zeide itself. It’s full of haunts.”

He was quiet, then. He sat there in bed, forearms on his knees, and finally curled back over and went to sleep again.

He dreamed of birds, scores of birds, in a rift in the wall. He thought of Gran’s marker, and the bird of peace he’d intended, but these were raptors, all, with cruel beaks and mad, murderous eyes.

“Birds,” he told Paisi, when, again, he waked with an outcry. “There were birds in the wall…”

“Was it?” Paisi asked him, the two of them in the dark, the seam of sun long since gone from the draped windows. It was utterly dark, except the banked fire in the other room. “Was it, now?”

“It’s a silly, stupid dream. I don’t know why birds should be in a wall.”

“Not so silly as that,” Paisi said. “There’s a haunt like that in the Zeide, in the lower hall, right down the way, an’ I don’t like you dreamin’ of it. Ye don’t ever go into that place, if ye see it. Ye go the other way, right fast. All the servants know about it. It’s right down from where your ma’s guards stand. It’s them Lines again, is what Lord Tristen said.”

“He didn’t settle it, when he was here?”

“Oh, haunts has their ways of breakin’ out again, an’ this is one Lord Tristen himself has used, so I guess it ain’t easy to block up—ain’t never done any harm, that I know: it’s more scary than harmful. There’s cold spots upstairs, there’s one in the pantry, but this one’s noisy.”

“Noisy.”

“Like wings beating. Servants skip right fast past that spot, an’ the old stairs beside it. Your ma’s guards ha’ prob’ly seen it more’n once.”