Fortress of Ice

But when he fell back into the pillow he fell into the hallway again, and something pursued him, down the hall, around the turn to the library. He knew the library door: he had visited it with the duke when he was still small. He knew every detail of that amazing room, the eagles on the doors, carved shapes that screamed out of the wood, and he worked feverishly to get the latch open in time, as the pursuit of the hunter birds beat and thundered behind him, rattling the very stones of the keep. In there was safety, in there was what he had to have, and the birds behind him threatened that…

The door came open. He was in the library, with its tall windows, its many tables, its tall stacks and shelves of books; and he was so sure that the answer to the hallway behind the tapestry was somewhere in this room, behind something, hidden, and if he could get it, and if he could solve that puzzle, then he would be safe, and Paisi would be safe, and nothing would ever threaten them like this again.

But the blue light and the wings had reached the library door, and beat to get in.

Lord Tristen needed to know. He had to have what was in this room, and if it went elsewhere, even he was helpless. Tristen grew weaker and his mother more powerful, high up in her tower, so long as this thing stayed hidden… she struggled, sending the haunt, to get it into her own hands. If she got it, she would be unstoppable. She was on the track, with the birds, and he couldn’t find it.

Elfwyn waked, bolt upright in bed, and sweating. Paisi slept, snoring in his sleep, common and welcome sound.

When sunlight came through the windows again, he was too ashamed to tell Paisi. It was just one of his dreams, fading, now, in import and in detail. He couldn’t even remember why he had been so afraid of birds, of all silly things, and what he had been after, and why he had waked screaming.

His mother’s work.

Or a warning. There were other haunts here. There were other ghosts besides a gathering of birds, hadn’t Paisi said so.

iv

THEY WENT DOWN TO SEE THE HORSES IN THE MORNING, TAKING A TREAT FROM their breakfast, and finding them in excellent care and glad to see their masters. They lingered there, talked a time with the stableboys, and Paisi and the stablemaster fell to discussing people they’d known in the war years, before Elfwyn was even born.

Elfwyn knew none of the names, and the wind was cold. His coat was thin, suited only to indoors, and he grew rapidly chill. So while Paisi talked, he simply slipped off quietly, waved, so Paisi would know he was going, and went on inside the fortress, intending to go up to the room and get his warmer cloak before he went outside again.

He didn’t know why he walked as far as the center stairs of the lower west wing, when he passed a perfectly fine stairs he could have used to go above; or why he walked farther than that, down close to the haunt; but he could see, down in the east wing, and with the lower hall lights all lit, where the guards stood watch, and the blank wall where the haunt had appeared.

Yes, there was indeed a tapestry there, or some sort of hanging, short of that place: it was not the only one in the hallway: there was no sign it concealed any mystery. And on from that, beyond the guards, but before the end of the hall, was the intersection of the east-west hall with the north hall.

That way led to the library, and a view of a small garden—he remembered it from his childhood, when he had visited here; and suddenly the dream came back in particular detail. He walked that far, and did see, indeed, a difference in the stones, both in the style of stonework and in the pattern where something had been walled up, a change even in the quarry from which the floor pavings came: something had been walled up and changed, and the Lines here might not be what they ought to be… Tristen himself had repaired it, and in great temerity Elfwyn ran his hand along that wall, not looking at his mother’s guards, who must think him a very peculiar sort.

Stay inside, he told the haunt. Mind your place.

The tapestry however, gave under his fingers, hiding a short stair just as in his dream. He moved it back, and cautiously, mindful that the guards were out there watching this trespass, went down those steps into a dark lit only by a seam of light from under the curtain. He felt his way down, and came up against a blank masonry wall.

Something else was walled up here. These stairs had surely led somewhere, once. But the little light that came in under the tapestry gave little definition to the stones, and his own shadow covered all possible detail. Nothing here seemed so imminently frightening, but he began to think it was not a good place to be. He decided to ask Paisi what had used to be here.

He went up again, into the hall, and past the place of the haunt then, trailing his fingers along the wall, and past the guards, who stood facing one another, leaning on the columns near them and talking with one another, so absorbed in their conversation they seemed not to have seen his odd behavior. They never looked his way. Or perhaps he had entered again into the dream. The feeling of that dream began to overlay the hall as it was, but the shape of the hall, exactly as his dream had believed he remembered it… was exactly like this, when he was sure he would never have recalled such detail as the moldings and the shape of the arch at the intersection.

Now he burned to know if the library doors themselves were exactly as what he had dreamed, or he remembered from so long ago, and he walked that hall, and found the doors open, not shut. He peered into the shadows behind one, and saw the eagle with its beak open, indeed, carved in the upper panel, and when he walked into the doorway, he saw the tables as he had dreamed, and the windows, and the shelves… and there was something here. He had dreamed there was something here, of such importance, such dire importance…

An old man in dusty robes intercepted him. “Sir?” that man asked. “Are you looking for a particular book?”

It was what one did in the library. “A history,” he said, trying to seem like a lad bent on business. History was his favorite kind of book. He feared to be caught by a stranger, like this man, and questioned on matters he could ill explain. “A history of Amefel.”

“Well, now, there is that. There are several. Might I ask your name, young gentleman? Are you a guest?”

“My name is Elfwyn Aswydd,” he said, and saw the old man’s jaw drop. “I’m Lord Crissand’s guest,” he said, trying to erase that dismay. “My name used to be Otter. His Grace always has lent me books, for years and years.”

“The boy in the cottage,” the old man said.

“In Gran’s cottage,” he said, with an uncomfortable lump in his throat. Clearly the news had not gotten to this place. And all the while, his dream nagged at him with the most dire sense of something, some secret, some hidden thing within this room that he had to find, that could reach out and kill everything he loved. “Might I just look around, sir?” He showed the duke’s ring, and the old man peered at it somewhat more closely than the guards ever had, and straightened and bowed, and bowed again.

“His Grace’s permission. Do be careful,” the old man whispered, meaning of the books, of course, but the caution stirred the hairs on his nape, all the same. There was more and more in this room that seemed oddly familiar to him, as if he’d seen it all before, down to that very stack of books on the first table, or the exact clutter on the old man’s desk, which he could never have expected to see.

His heart beat faster and faster. The old man directed him to a table, and brought him books. The Chronicle of the Eaglewas one. He opened it very carefully, handled the stiff parchment pages exactly as this man’s predecessor had instructed him. The old man hovered a little less near, told him where other histories were kept, and drifted off about his duties.