C. J. Cherryh - Fortress 05 - Fortress of Ice

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Fortress of Ice

C J Cherryh

Fortress 05

A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0

click for scan notes and proofing history

Contents

The Events of Fortress 1-4

Prologue

•BOOK ONE

One| Two| Three| Four|

•BOOK TWO

Ten| Eleven

EPILOGUE

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents,

and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination

and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to

actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely

coincidental.

rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any

manner whatsoever without written permission except in

the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles

and reviews. For information address HarperCollins

Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

HarperCollins books may be purchased for

educational, business, or sales promotional use. For

information please write: Special Markets Department,

HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New

York, NY 10022.

FIRST EDITION

EOS is a federally registred trademark of

HarperCollins Publishers. Designed by Sunil

Manchikanti

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cherryh, C.J.

Fortress of ice / C.J. Cherryh.—1st ed. p. cm.

ISBN-13:978-0-380-97904-2

ISBN-10:0-380-97904-7

1. Fantasy fiction.

PS3J53.H358 F725 2006 813'.54 22

2006043724

The Events of

FORTRESS IN THE EYE OF TIME,

FORTRESS OF OWLS, FORTRESS OF

EAGLES, FORTRESS OF DRAGONS

^ »

A VERY LONG TIME AGO, LONG BEFORE THE TIME OF MEN,

GALASIEN RULED. ITS world was wide with trade and commerce,

and sustained by wizardry.

But besides wizardry, there was native magic in the world. Far to

the north, in the frozen wastes, the Sihhë existed. They might have

been first of all. The Galasieni seemed to believe so.

The Sihhë were immortal. So the Galasieni believed.

And the Galasieni pursued those secrets of long life. One wizard,

Mauryl Gestaurien, was very close. But his apprentice, Hasufin

Heltain, wanted that secret, and seized power, a wizard-war that

drove Mauryl to the Sihhë-lords themselves, asking help.

In the struggle that followed, all of Galasien went down in ruins.

One tower survived, Ynefel, where Mauryl defeated Hasufin and

drove him into the Shadows.

When the dust settled, the faces of Galasien’s greatest wizards

looked out from the walls of that ravaged tower, imprisoned in the

stone, still living. Mauryl alone survived.

The five Sihhë-lords had come down, and ruled the land, as Men

began to move into the west, and Sihhë blood mixed with that of

Men.

For a number of centuries thereafter the land saw the rule of the

innately magical Sihhë-lords, of whom there were five, and not all

of whom were good, or kind.

Some Men thrived; some learned wizardry. Others rebelled, and

plotted to seize power—hopeless as long as the five lords remained.

But in the passage of time the Sihhë-lords either perished, or

retreated from the world. They left a thinner and thinner bloodline,

half Sihhë, half Man.

Now Hasufin made his bid for life, stealing his way into a

stillborn infant.

It was Selwyn Marhanen, a warlord under the High King Elfwyn

Sihhë, who betrayed his lord and murdered him and all his

house—while the court wizard, Emuin, killed Hasufin for the

second time.

Selwyn Marhanen proclaimed himself king, in the kingdom that

he called Ylesuin. He put down the old religion and all veneration of

the Sihhë-lords, and established the Quinalt, the Five Gods. He

built the Quinaltine in Guelemara, and perished, obsessed with

nightmares and fear of damnation.

His son, Ináreddrin, succeeded him, in a reign distinguished by

wars and internal disputes.

Ináreddrin had two sons, Cefwyn, the firstborn and heir, and

Efanor, the son of Ináreddrin’s heart. Ináreddrin set his eldest son

to oversee restive Amefel, the old Sihhë district, where assassins

abounded, in fondest hope of having him die and Efanor inherit.

Magic was moving again, subtly, but old Mauryl saw it coming.

Locked away at Ynefel among his books, he nevertheless watched

over the world, and he became more and more aware that his old

enemy Hasufin, dead and not dead, had found his way back from

his second death.

Feeling mortality on him, Mauryl created a Summoning, a

defender, a power to oppose Hasufin, but his weakness—or in the

nature of magic— things went awry. What he obtained was

Tristen, bereft of memory.

Hasufin indeed brought Mauryl down, but missed Tristen, who

wandered into the world and found himself in Amefel, a guest of

Cefwyn Marhanen.

Hasufin’s power moved against Cefwyn, against the Marhanen,

attempting to stir up trouble in Amefel—but the seeds of discontent

in Amefel were the old loyalties to the Sihhë-blood kings—a

bloodline which thinly survived in Amefel, in the house of Heryn

Aswydd.

There was, ironically, one other in whom it ran very strongly: it

was Tristen, who had become Prince Cefwyn’s friend.

King Ináreddrin died in an ambush Heryn Aswydd arranged.

That meant Cefwyn became king, and he hanged Heryn

Aswydd—but he spared the lives of Heryn’s twin sisters, Orien and

Tarien, both of whom had been Cefwyn’s lovers—and one of whom,

which he did not know, was with child. He married the Lady

Regent of Elwynor, an independent kingdom which still honored the

traditions of the lost Galasieni, and she produced a legitimate son.

Tristen, gathering more and more of his lost memories, stood by

Cefwyn, to the resentment of Cefwyn’s own people—even when

Cefwyn’s victory in a great battle at Lewen Field, in Amefel, drove

Hasufin from the world in a third defeat.

By now Tristen was known for much more than a wizard: people

in the west openly called him Tristen Sihhë, and all of Elwynor and

Amefel would have been glad to proclaim Tristen High King and

depose Cefwyn. Emuin, Cefwyn’s old tutor, advised Cefwyn to be

careful of that young man and never to become his enemy—and

Cefwyn heeded the old wizard’s advice. He bestowed arms on

Tristen, the Sihhë Star, long banned, and would have made him

Duke of Amefel.

Hasufin, however, was not done: he used the Aswydd

sisters—one of them the mother of Cefwyn’s bastard son. In the

end, Tarien, her baby taken from her, was imprisoned in a high

tower, spared her sister’s fate by Tristen’s intercession.

And in years that ensued, Cefwyn regarded Tristen as a brother,

and leaned on his advice and Emuin’s.

But Emuin left the world, and Tristen himself lived in the world

only as long as Cefwyn truly needed him: his presence roused too

much resentment from Cefwyn’s people, the eastern folk of the

divided kingdom. He set things in order in Amefel, saw a good duke

in power over that land, and retreated increasingly into Mauryl’s

haunted tower.

Cefwyn’s queen now had a son, an heir for Ylesuin, and then

produced a daughter, who would inherit her own Regency of

Elwynor. In these two children of loving parents, east and west

were united, and peace settled on the land for the first time since

Sihhë rule.

The bastard son lived happily enough in rural Amefel, foster

brother to old Emuin’s former servant. The world went back to its

old habits, and forgot, for a few years, that its peace was fragile.

PROLOGUE

« ^ »

SNOW CAME DOWN, LARGE PUFFS DRIFTING ON A GENTLE

WIND, WAFTING ABOVE the stone walls of the courtyard. Snow

fell on dead summer flowers, on the stones of the broken walls, a

fat, lazy snow for a quiet winter’s afternoon.

Tristen watched it from the front doors of the ancient keep,

walked out and let it fall onto his hands, let it settle in his hair and

all about his little kingdom. The clouds above were silken gray, so

far as the great tower of Ynefel afforded him a view above the

walls, and the leaves, clinging to dry flower stems, regained a

moment of beauty, a white moment, remembering the summer sun.

He kept a peaceful household in the grim old fortress of Ynefel,

with Uwen and his wife—Cook, as she had been when Uwen

married her, and Cook she still liked to be—though her real name

was Mirien. They fared extremely well, never mind the haunts and

the strangeness in the old keep, which Cook and Uwen had

somewhat, though haphazardly, restored to comfort.

The snows had come generously this winter, good for next year’s

crops, of which Ynefel had none but Cook’s herbs and vegetables,

and for good pasturage, of which it had very little, cleared from the

surrounding forest. This snow brought a quiet cold with it, no

howling wind, only a deep, deep chill that advised that the nights

would be bitter for days. The Lenúalim would continue to flow

along under the ancient bridge, collecting a frozen edge of ice up

against the keep walls, possibly freezing over, but that was rare.

Though it would be well, Tristen thought, to take care of the rain

barrel today, bring the meltwater they had gathered into the

scullery and move the barrel in, before nightfall.

A lord, a king, could do that damp task for himself quite handily,

but Cook would likely send her nephew to do the chore, in her

notion of propriety. Uwen would be in the thick of the weather by

now, doing his work up on the hill pasturage, bringing hay up to

the horses and the four goats—a little spring flowed there, assuring

that the animals had water in almost all weather. Cook would be

fussing about down in the cottage, stuffing cracks, being sure she

had enough wood inside the little house that flanked the keep:

easiest to have that resource inside, if the snow became more than

a flurry, and there was, Tristen thought, certainly the smell of such

a snow in the air.

So, well, what had a lord to do, who had only three subjects?

He could let the snow carry his thoughts to his neighbors across

the river, beyond Marna Wood. He could stand here, missing old

friends today, with his face turned toward the gates that so rarely

opened to visitors. He knew a few things that passed in the land,

but not many. He knew that Cefwyn queried him; he answered as

best he knew, but he thought less and less about the world outside

the walls, beyond the forest. He wondered sometimes, and if he

wondered, he could know, but he rarely followed more than the

thread of Cefwyn’s occasional conversation with him, a warm,

friendly voice. He was reluctant, otherwise, to cast far about,

having no wish to trouble old and settled things in the land.

Occasionally, in summers, he entertained visitors, but lately only

two, Sovrag and Cevulirn, who came as they pleased, usually

toward the fading of the season. Emuin—Emuin, he greatly missed.

Emuin had used to visit, but Emuin had ceased to come, and drew a

curtain over himself. Whether his old mentor was alive or dead

remained somewhat uncertain to Tristen—though he was never

sure that death meant the same thing to Emuin as to other Men.

Uwen traveled as far as Henas’amef from time to time, with

Cook’s boy. Uwen reported that Lord Crissand fared quite well in

his lands, and from Crissand Uwen gathered news from the capital

of Guelemara, where Cefwyn ruled. The queen had had a daughter

this fall, so Uwen reported, and that family was happy. It was good

to hear.

He longed to see the baby. He so greatly longed to see Cefwyn…

to be in hall when the ale flowed and the lords gathered in fine

clothes, to celebrate the return of spring—he might go if he chose.

But it was not wise. It was not, in these days, wise. He had

fought the king’s war. He had settled the peace.

He had been a dragon.

He could not forget that, and in that memory, he stayed to his

ancient keep, hoped for the years to settle what had been unsettled

in those years, and let his friends live in peace.

SNOW FELL THICKLY ON GUELEMARA, GRAY CLOUDS

SHEETING ALL THE HEAVENS and snow already lay ankle deep

in the yard, but the threatening weather had not brought quiet to

the courtyard. His Royal Highness Efanor, Prince but no longer

heir of Ylesuin, tried manfully to concentrate on his letters, while

young lords laid on with thump and clangor below the windows,

shouting challenges at one another and laughing. Efanor penned

delicate and restrained adjurations to two jealous and small-minded

priests of the Quinaltine, while sword rang against sword—fit

accompaniment to such a letter, in Efanor’s opinion.

The clergy was in another stew, a matter of a chapel’s income

and costs, a niggling charge of error in dogma on the one hand and

finance on the other hand—when, among priests, was it not?—and

ambition in another man: the latter was, in His Royal Highness’s

opinion, the real crux of the matter.

Bang and clang. Pigeons flew up from off the roof in a wild flurry

of wings past the window, and Efanor calmly sanded the ink on his

second letter, tipped wax onto the paper, and sealed it.

Pigeons settled, fluttering and arranging their feathers. Efanor

rose from his chair and walked toward that diamond-paned

window—another storm of wings, wheeling away toward the

Quinaltine roof, not so far across the processional way.

He had a view of the courtyard from here. And it was not just

any two lords’ sons battering at each other below. It was Cefwyn’s

sons, his nephews, neither beyond sixteen years. It was a game. It

was high spirits. Metal flashed in gray light, and the snow that had

already fallen was trampled in a wide circle, the pale stone walls of

the Guelesfort echoing with mock battle.

So he and Cefwyn had used to do, in the days when their father

Ináreddrin was king.

He still had his skill with the sword. He opted now for a gray

goose quill, in battles more constant and with less-defined

outcomes.

His brother the king had invited his other son, his illegitimate

son, to Guelemara, to spend the holidays. It was not what he would

have advised the king to do. But his brother had planned it, planned

it for too many years to think now whether this was the right year.

The boy was growing up. It was this year, perhaps, or forever too

late. Were not the court’s controversies full of brothers who found

things to divide them?

Too much had divided these two. Yet they found a way to be

friends.

Gods protect them, Efanor thought.

SNOW CAME DOWN, AS KING CEFWYN STOOD ON THE

BALCONY OF HIS bedchamber, watching two boys at arms

practice in the yard, boys on the verge of becoming men.

Elfwyn was the elder, nicknamed various things, but his

caretaker, in the distant countryside of Amefel, had called him

Otter, that being a safer name than the one his mother had given

him. So Otter he had been for all his life, and the name well fitted

him: a dark, quick boy, wary and wild, as free and merry as an

otter in a brook: Cefwyn had seen all that before the boy had ever

crossed the river or taken up residence under his roof—much as he

had restrained himself from loving this boy, his firstborn son. The

eyes alone should be a caution—gray as the distant sea, and quick,

and denying everyone a direct stare. It was too early to know what

he would do in the world or what paths these two young men would

take in their lives.

But today, in the snow, in the blurring of distant lines and the

changing of the landscape below this window—Cefwyn found

himself moved to hope that bringing the boy to Guelemara was a

good idea, that Otter’s was a wild heart, but a good one, overall.

His son, now, his legitimate son and heir—Aewyn, a few months

the younger—was very much the Marhanen prince: sturdy, blond,

and blue-eyed as Guelenfolk ought to be—and where his queen had

found such a head of hair in her dark northern ancestry was a

wonder: it curled, it bounced, it refused confinement, much like its

owner.

Who would have thought it so apt a brotherhood, the slim dark,

wily brother, and the sunny, headlong one? Aewyn could overpower

his elder brother by sheer strength—but first he had to lay hands

on him.

Brothers they had been, partners in mischief from their first

meeting. The boys had found each other, in fact, with no one quite

ready for it to happen. Ceremonial occasions, the annual visits to

the duchy of Amefel, had regularly brought Cefwyn past a certain

tiny farm on the roadside, just at the outskirts of Amefel’s capital of

Henas’amef. He had paused there, every year that he took this trip,

for a dipper of water from the well. Every year he talked to the old

woman who held that farm, just to be sure things were still as

peaceful as he had left them.

Came the year Aewyn had gotten on his pony and ridden with

him, his first long ride out from Guelessar to Amefel, to show

himself to the people he would someday rule.

And on the very first visit on which Aewyn had gone with him,

Aewyn being barely six—he had spied the dark-haired lad by the

shed, the lad by the shed had spied him, and Aewyn, no one quite

noticing, had slid down from his pony and escaped through the

fence to make his own visit. Otter had been shy and retreating,

Aewyn quite bent on his acquaintance.

Every year after that, whenever the royal procession had stopped

at Gran’s little farm, Otter had been quick to appear, and Aewyn

had been just as quick to get down and renew acquaintances—so

eager for that, that the festivities of the Amefin court, the presents

and the sweets, proved far less allure to Aewyn than the annual

meeting with the boy on the farm. The annual stop at Gran’s place

therefore extended itself into half an hour, and an hour— became

long enough for the guard to dismount, water their horses, and take

a cup of cider; became long enough for a king and a hedge-witch to

share a mug of country ale and discuss affairs of curious range,

since he had found that the old woman could give him more sense of

local events in half an hour than a meeting of the town ealdormen

in half a day. The boys had played together at tag, gathered eggs,

milked goats—certainly things the Crown Prince never would have

done under ordinary circumstances. In earliest days Aewyn had

sulked at being set back on his pony, and Otter, in Cefwyn’s

keenest memory, had stood silent, grave, and equally unhappy in

Gran’s rustic goat yard, watching their departure. Otter had darted

one keen glance at him, that first year, a dark, wing-browed glance

that had haunted him for miles, it was so like his mother’s.

Last fall, leaving the goats and geese, both boys had vanished for

far too long—to be discovered far down by the brook, by Gran’s

craft and her boy Paisi’s knowledge of Otter’s habits.

Aewyn, unrepentant at the guardsmen’s discomfiture, unabashed

to have had the king of Ylesuin wading the brook to retrieve him,

had declared he had just invited his brother to come to Guelessar

and live with them.

Had the king of Ylesuin quite planned it that way? No. But from

the beginning, from Otter’s birth, Cefwyn had had advisement not

to make this bastard son Aewyn’s natural enemy—or his own. And

he had intended to have Aewyn come down to rustic Amefel to pass

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