Fortress of Ice

That way lay his mother’s tower. Her guards would be there. They must see it, too. And what if it washis mother, testing the strength of those wards?

He could reinforce them. If her guards were in danger, he might make a difference and prevent any harm. His mother might strike him, but he could engage her and keep her occupied: in that regard he had no fear for his own safety.

He went in that direction, and with every step the pulse quickened in his veins and the dread and, indeed, the resolution increased.

And his curiosity. That, too. To his alarm, he didn’t see the guards. The light of the haunt overwhelmed the hall and blotted out the sight of them. This, he thought, was where he should stop, and having what Lord Tristen had taught him, he should reinforce the wards. He saw, along the floor, faded, near white old Lines, where the stonework was mismatched. Over them lay new, stronger blue lines, like that blazing blue of the haunt itself, shadowed with beating wings, a sound that became like thunder in his ears. He looked, and a wind out of it began to stir his hair. There was in fact a gap there, and when he even thought of mending it, the Line belled outward and swept him into a place of long perches, beating wings, and slashing beaks.

Now in mortal fear, he cast about to escape the haunt, and stepped out, across the Lines, but found himself not where he had been, but at the blank face of a wall, behind which he sensed an even greater horror—he had no notion what should be that terrible in the blank wall he could see, but without even thinking clearly, he spun about to escape, rushing in among the birds, as the lesser danger.

The birds vanished around him. He stumbled against an upward step, a short stairs in utter dark. He banged his shin on further steps, and staggered up through the clinging, dusty folds of a curtain to…

To the hall where he had started. The place the haunt had been was now just as ordinary as a wall could be. Night candles gleamed placidly in the sconces, untroubled by any wind, and the guards, his mother’s guards, down the way, stood at their posts as if they had never noticed the haunt at all.

He had just come up a stairway from a level he had no idea existed, behind a tapestry. And if he had more courage, he might go back down the steps behind that tapestry and confront what he was sure now was simply too much strong wine, or an overwrought mind, or too many dreams.

He had not the courage to go down into that shadowed place. The memory was too strong. He simply turned, trying not to look like an utter fool for having blundered through a curtain, and walked back toward the grand stairs and up.

Paisi was awake, sharpening his dagger by the fire, bandages and all, as Elfwyn slammed the door of their chambers shut at his back.

“M’lord?” Paisi asked him.

“It was the haunt, Paisi.” He came breathlessly down the short entry hall to the fireside, to light that still could not overcome the memory he had of that cold blue light, the sound of wings that still buzzed in his ears. “It was the haunt. I was just init.”

“ Init?”

“It was the wings, and I was somewhere else, then, back in the hall and nobody else even noticed. The candles didn’t blow out. The guards didn’t leave their places.”

“That haunt leads places, is what,” Paisi said. “An’ once’t Lord Tristen and Lord Crissand went all the way to Elwynor by that haunt.”

“To Elwynor!”

“Or elsewhere. No knowin’ where ye was. Ye stay away from that place. Ye don’t above all go in there.”

“I didn’t! Or I didn’t mean to. I don’t want to again!”

“Ye sit down, lad. Ye ain’t used t’ drink, an’ ye had some, didn’t ye? Ye pour your own water in, if someone serves ye strong wine. Specially if it’s more ’n one. Damn, I knew I should ha’ come down t’ serve ye.”

His head spun and felt stuffed with wool. And he hadn’t wanted Paisi acting as his servant, standing behind his chair. But he’d wished at the time he had dared pour water into what the duke offered him, which was clearly costly wine. Next time, he said to himself, he would do it, and never mind the embarrassment. Crissand had called him cousin, treated him like a grown man. Crissand, however, would forgive his ma

“Maybe it wasjust the wine,” he said. “Maybe I’ve had too many dreams.”

“There’s a good lad. Or maybe ye did see the haunt. I ain’t sayin’ ye didn’t.”

“I’d swear I did.” He didn’t speak for a while, only sat and watched the fire. “It scared me. It scared me more than anything, and I can’t even say why it did. It was only birds, after all.”

“Dead ’uns,” Paisi said, and kept sharpening the blade. “An’ how’s ’Is Grace?”

“The duke,” he said, remembering. “His Grace said it’s not just Lord Tristen who’s coming. He wrote to my father and maybe he’llride down when Lord Tristen does. And the lords of the provinces southward. Do you think my father will come?”

“Oh, aye, he’s bosom friends wi’ Lord Tristen. He always has come, if herides out.”

“You already knew that?”

“I wasn’t goin’ t’ promise it in case of something different happenin’, but it’s likely enough.”

That good news tingled all the way down his limbs, and he let himself ever so slightly believe that it could be true. If Tristen was here in person to keep his mother at bay, things might work out with his father, too. That scratching at his window might indeed have been Owl. And curse the fear he’d had: he’d been too scared to let Owl in.

“His Grace said he might,” he said to Paisi, “and he said, too, that he’d raise the stone for Gran, a marker right on the roadside where everybody can read it.”

Only the king or the duke could put something on the public right of way. Even a goatherd knew that.

“That’s grand,” Paisi said, not too enthusiastically, and shrugged, looking into the fire. After a moment he said, with a sigh: “She’d say it was too grand for her, wouldn’t she?”

He thought about that. “She would.”

“I tell you, I think she’d like it if we got the oxen and moved her in a country stone wi’ no writin’ nor fancy carvin’ at all. She’d complain she couldn’t read any writin’, nor ever could learn. It was just a frustration to her, an’ her eyes were too poor when I tried to teach her. But she’d like a good stone.”

The ma

And it was strange, that when Paisi had said that, just in her words, he heaved a deep sigh, just like Paisi. He could think of her again, not the fire, not the ashes, but Gran as she was, smiling at them, or poking about her stove, all the fire in the house tame again and under Gran’s dominion…

As ought to be, he thought. As forever ought to be. A pang of grief still touched him when he remembered now, but for a moment he was convinced that Gran was all right, despite his mother, despite him and his mistakes, despite everything.

His mother might have power—might have blackest sorcery—might have broken loose the Lines and let loose the haunt in the night… but he’d gotten out of it, hadn’t he, all on his own? Despite anything she did to try to scare him or get him up those stairs, he could live under this roof, growing wiser, and stronger, and never, ever visit her again, despite all her tantrums and threats.

Lord Tristen would see to her. And then there would be justice for Gran.

iii

THE WINGS, HE DREAMED. THE WINGS. THE WINGS WERE IN THE WALL. AND Elfwyn knew even amid the dream that he was only dreaming, and he turned over and slammed the pillow with his burned fist, which hurt, and dragged him halfway out of sleep.