Fortress of Ice

“They do.”

“Lord Crissand is Aswydd like Otter, and the duke of Amefel.” A small recitation as Aewyn made sure of his facts, counting them on his gloved fingers. “Aswydd like Otter, and his father was Edwyll, who was murdered—”

“Who said such a thing?”

“Uncle.”

Efanor, was it? And what other sordid tales was his brother giving the lad. “He was.”

“And the duke of Amefel has a peculiar grant of power, because they were kings before us, and opened their gates to my great-grandfather. Amefin dukes are earls, except Crissand, who is a duke the way Guelenfolk think of it, and he’s His Grace to us, and aetheling to his own people, who have earls and thanes and other sorts of nobles. But my brother is more directly Aswydd than Crissand is.” A plaintive question. “Is it because he’s illegitimate that he’s not duke?”

“Yes, in plain words, yes.”

“But he would be the rightful duke, would he not?”

“Wishes don’t overcome his illegitimacy. He is not, nor ever can be. There are other Aswydds. But they rebelled against us and conspired to kill your grandfather; and I exiled the lot of them.” The rest of it wasn’t a pretty story. It was one, perhaps, that he should inform his son, considering they were going there; but the story still stuck in his throat, like the grief and anger of that night.

“How did you meet Otter’s mother?”

“She was the younger sister of the duke. And I lived a wild life before I met your mother. Well, truth to tell, I was a fool when I was younger. I know all the trouble a young man can get into, which is why I say you’re not to do that sort of thing. Sins come back to you.”

“Otter isn’t a sin!”

“No.” Cefwyn managed a little smile. “My sin, but not his. I find no fault in him. But so you should know—his mother hates me.”

“She’s a prisoner there.”

“She is.”

“Because she’s a sorceress.”

“Because she’s a sorceress, yes.”

“But you made love with her!”

I

“Hear what I said,” Cefwyn said, in Emuin’s best ma

“You love Mother.”

“Deeply.”

“You didn’t love Otter’s mother, ever, did you?”

“I didn’t. Never, never, my boy, link yourself to a woman who cares nothing for you, or that you care nothing for, either. It’s a bad mistake. Your brother was conceived the one night I spent with her. The very night I met Lord Tristen. Think of that, too. Sorcery was in it.”

“Because of Lord Tristen?” Aewyn asked.

“Tristen is—”

“Not a sorcerer. I know. There is a difference.”

“There was a sorceress in it, all the same, Tarien’s sister. She didn’t get herselfwith child, but Tarien did.”

“You slept with her sister, too?”

Both in the same bed, but he spared his son that particular news, and simply nodded. “Being a young fool, in one year, I got myself a son with a woman who was my mortal enemy, worse, the enemy of my own house, and my people—then became king. And that, my son, made life no easier for our young Otter—begi

“To spite the Marhanens. You said so.”

“So I did. And time you know this, son of mine: your great-grandfather would have killed her and her unborn child because the mother and the aunt plotted against us, and because the babe to be born would—all other difficulties aside—mix two very troublesome bloodlines. If she had lived long enough to name him as she did, that defiance alone would have assured your great-grandfather would have killed them both. That was the sort of king he was. Your grandfather would just have beheaded her sister, married Tarien off to some hairy Chomaggari, and had Elfwyn living in a tent down in the south… until, of course, sorcery took a hand in it and brought the boy back to be our lifelong enemy. Perhaps I was wrong to try to make his life comfortable. Sometimes I have had that fear. But I did it on Tristen’s advice. And for my own inclinations, it seemed to me a good thing—not to have my other son for my enemy, or yours. So I took the risk. I’ve done all I could to make him turn out well. And when you asked, I brought him to live with us. I did hope it would work out.”

“I likemy brother.”

“So do I,” he said, and the dark felt a little less cold, when he recalled that earnest, gray-eyed face. “I like him very well. Paisi’s gran did a good job, bringing him up and defending him from his mother.”

“Elfwyn calls her his gran, too. But he knows she’s not really his.”

“An excellent woman, let me tell you. And plain and wise, and capable of a fairly potent charm or two, by all Tristen told me. Thank the gods for her and for Paisi, too, who’s been a brother to him, or no knowing how he might have turned out. So perhaps Tristen’s advice was right after all.” It cheered him to think how Gran had turned to good the evil Tarien had pla

“What was the name of that other woman?”

“Which woman?”

“The sorceress. The other one.”

“One shouldn’t—”

“—speak their names,” Aewyn said. “I know. But isn’t it good I know that?”

“No need for you to know it. She’s dead. But her name was Orien. Orien Aswydd.”

A moment of silence. Aewyn tucked his coat the more tightly about him, the bitter wind skirling up a skein of sparks. “She’d be Elfwyn’s aunt, wouldn’t she? Does Elfwyn know about her?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Paisi’s gran certainly does. So does Paisi. So does everyone in Henas’amef and half of Ylesuin, for that matter, who were alive in those years. One just doesn’t speak of sorcerers. It’s bad luck. So, no, I don’t know if your brother does know at all. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s time I did tell him, as I’m telling you.”

“He doesn’t like his mother at all,” Aewyn said. “I thought it was odd he didn’t. But I understand, now.”

“What did he say about her?”

“He said she lived in a tower in Henas’amef, that she was a prisoner. That Gran was his real mother.”

“Well, then, that is the truth of his heart,” Cefwyn said, “and the word that counts.”

They might have been any father, any son, about a campfire, against the winter storm and wind, and in the way of such conversations, apart from court and hall, and at a time when his dear wife was, by now, likely similarly cold and snowbound in the north—necessary things finally could be said, tales told, things passed on between generations, links forged.

He felt a bond that night that he had never had with his son, a meeting of man with man this night. For the first time in that firelit, sober countenance, he saw the fine outlines of the good man he would become.

He was rich, in Aewyn. He longed to have such a conversation with his other son, wanted to have it soon, before any other misunderstanding could drive a wedge between them. It seemed the year for it.

Something burned him, however, a pang like ice and fire at once. He stood up, facing into the bitter wind, and the pain centered just above his heart.

“Papa?” his son said, breaking the spell of maturity. It was the child asking, plaintively, worriedly: “Papa?”

Tristenwas there, and it was no gentle touch. Cefwyn clenched the amulet under the layers of cloth, and his heart beat high, like a commitment to battle.

Tristen was suddenly on his way out of Ynefel—he had not made the motion, until now, but Tristen was coming, he was as certain of it as if Tristen had suddenly glanced at him within the same room. Tristen had looked toward him, and perhaps just now guided those last things he had told his son.

He suddenly had the notion Tristen had delayed his departure—delayed, first to guide Elfwyn to Henas’amef and last, to bring him and Ninévrisë both safely out of Guelessar, with their respective children.