Fortress of Ice

“Well, shall ye go rouse up ’Is Grace an’ gi’ it to him?”

“No,” he said, suddenly sure, as if he were toeing the edge of a precipice, and this book the only thing that kept his balance on it. “No. To Lord Tristen. We have to get it to him.”

“Well, ’e’s comin’ here, ain’t he? So’s we can just wait.”

“We can’t wait.” He left the door, brushed his way past Paisi, and snatched up his cloak. “Paisi. Help me. We have to get out of here, and they’ll be here, they’ll be here any moment.”

“Aye,” Paisi said, stung into action. “Who’ll be here?”

“Lord Crissand’s guards.”

“Do we run for it, then, m’lord?”

“We have to.” He pi

“I take it we ain’t findin’ Lord Tristen too easy,” Paisi said.

“We do as we can.”

“Then we better have food,” Paisi said. “Food’s what ye think of when ye’re deep into things and don’t know how long.”

“Don’t go asking,” he begged Paisi, and Paisi shot back:

“Who said askin’? I’ll get it, m’lord. Gettin’ away is one thing, but apples an’ turnips ain’t in season out there in the woods. Ye get on to the stables, an’ ye act the lord and get the night boy to get them horses out, an’ gods help us, is all—hurry, is it? Was they chasin’ ye when ye run?”

“They don’t know who was there,” he said. That, at least, was true, he was sure of it. No one had seen him. “But the librarian knows where the key is, and they won’t be long figuring out I did it.”

“I don’t understan’ ye a bit,” Paisi said, “but that ain’t no matter: I never understood Lord Tristen, neither, when ’is notions took ’im, an’ if we got to find ’im in the mid of the night, I’ll wager there’s ’is doin’ in it somewheres. Come on, lad.”

He wished it were so simple. He wished it were Lord Tristen who had driven him, sweating and crazed, to steal what he had just stolen. Or that he had time to explain his fears and his choice to Paisi. But Paisi was right: every moment made it more likely his mother would get her way, and he couldn’t explain: when his mother wanted something, they’d had the cruel proof just how far she could reach. She had grown stronger, or hidden her strength. And it wasn’t distance that would save them. It was speed, before she could work her spells and draw someone else to help her. It was a stronger shelter, a protection Lord Crissand couldn’t offer this book, or them.

They left the room, and Paisi reached past him to shut the door, normal as could be: he understood Paisi’s signal to be calm, to do things at a reasonable pace. It seemed forever, the little distance to the servants’ stairs at this end of the hall, but then Paisi hurried, down and down to the main floor—while all the other end of the hall, down toward the library, with light flaring off the walls, rang with voices and the shadowed movement of guards.

“Stay with me!” he begged Paisi. “Never mind the food!”

“Kitchens,” Paisi hissed, and dived off down the stairs in that direction, where the kitchen hall diverged from the outbound door. He had no way to stop Paisi, only his own part to do.

He shoved the heavy door open and went out into snowfall, a white haze that haloed the single torch that burned in the kitchen yard. Remembering how Paisi proceeded, he made a careful descent of the icy steps, down to the yard, where he couldn’t but leave tracks. So he strode boldly across the yard to the stables.

A single guarded light burned inside the warm, horse-smelling dark. He went down the aisle until he found the stall the stableboy used for his cot, and there he gathered up his courage, took a deep breath, and roused the boy out.

“My horse and my servant’s,” he said to the boy, lordlike, trying to keep a steady voice, and showed the duke’s ring on his ungloved hand. “I’m Elfwyn Aswydd. This is His Grace’s ring.”

The boy might never have seen the duke’s ring, or know what it permitted, but it was silver, it was bright in the shadow, and Aswydds ruled in Amefel. The boy looked doubtful, and afraid, then rubbed his eyes and moved, not sluggardly, despite being roused out of bed and with his shirt hanging.

He couldn’t seem a lord and saddle his own horse. That was the difficulty in his plan, that he had to stand and wait, all the while dreading the approach of the guards, who might already have caught Paisi in the kitchens. Sorcery bent things. It moved a breeze to move a leaf to attract attention or sent a wayward thought to turn a guard’s head, and his mother had stopped raging, now and gotten down to other means, the subtler, distant ways he was sure she had used to damn him in Guelessar… she was down to sorcery, now. And how did he even hope he could outride her intent to have this thing, or steal this little book out of her grasp?

Why had she wanted him back in Amefel? It wasn’t love.

Why had she killed Gran and given him no other place to be?

Why had the librarian trusted him, a newcomer, to give him a key he hadn’t even known to ask for?

He stood while the boy saddled Feiny, then led him into the aisle.

Swift, single footsteps approached, outside, and the door opened. It was Paisi, Elfwyn saw to his profoundest relief, Paisi carrying a heavy white bag, and passing the laboring stableboy as if what was going on in the middle of the night was absolutely as it ought to be.

“I got it, m’lord,” Paisi said, handing him the bag. “You hang on to this, an’ I’ll help the boy.”

It speeded matters. Paisi led up Tammis for him to hold the halter rope, and helped the boy finish up with Feiny’s complex harness, then ordered the boy to open the stable doors.

The boy opened one door. It was enough. Paisi took the flour sack, slung it over Tammis’s withers, and they mounted up, Elfwyn struggling for the stirrup—he had learned how to reach it and pull himself up; and Paisi gave a hop and was up, bareback. They rode out of the stable yard and onto the snow-buried courtyard.

At the iron gates that barred their way to the town, Paisi rang the little bell, a small, terrifying sound that brought the night watch out into the falling snow.

“Aswydd business,” Paisi said, and Elfwyn boldly showed the ring toward the lamplight.

There might at any moment be a search of their room, a search leading eventually down to the stables, out into the same courtyard. But the night guards had to get on their working gloves and move the heavy iron latch, which shrieked aloud in the quiet, and heave one frozen gate open, cracking ice off the hinges.

They rode out into the upper town, took the road to the town gate, and struck a quick pace.

“There’s bells they can ring,” Paisi said anxiously. “There’s the thief bell can stop the town gate from openin’ until they ask up the hill. We got to hurry, lad.”

The fine snow obscured all but the nearer buildings, and wrapped them in white as they put the horses beyond safe speed on the downhill course, but there was no traffic at all, only a shutter or two flung open in curiosity at the noise, and most shut with a thump soon after.

They reached the gate, and the gate-guards had heard them coming.

“Aswydd business,” Paisi said crisply, and the guards saw the ring Elfwyn showed and gave way to it, shoving hard to open the little sally port against the new snow.

The sally port was enough for two riders. They ducked through singly and picked up the pace, quitting the vicinity of the gate as fast as they could. Snow wrapped them about, and still no bell sounded.