Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03 (3 page)

Hasufin’s immediate goal was an entry into the fortress of
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

Henas’amef, but because of Tristen and Emuin, he could not
breach the wards: so he moved his pawn Orien to make an
attempt on Cefwyn’s life, moved another pawn to attempt
Emuin’s life, and at the same time drew the rebel army across the
river in all-out war.

—

The first two failed. The third was aimed at Tristen, whom
Hasufin recognized as Mauryl’s last and most effective weapon.

Sorcery would be at its strongest in a moment of chance and
upheaval, and there was no moment of upheaval greater than the
shifting tides of a battlefield: thus Hasufin made his strongest bid
to break into the world and destroy Tristen, who stood between
him and life and substance.

In the world of Men, at a place called Lewenbrook, near Ynefel,
the Elwynim rebels, under Lord Aseyneddin, met Cefwyn
Marhanen’s opposing army. That was the conflict Men fought.

But when Aseyneddin faltered, Hasufin sent out tides of sorcery
in reckless disregard. A wall of Shadow rolled down on the field,
and those it touched it took and did not give up. It was Hasufin’s
manifestation, and all aimed at Tristen’s destruction.

Tristen, however, took up magic as he took up his weapons, when
the challenge came. When Hasufin Heltain loosed his sorcery,
Tristen rode into the Shadow, penetrated into Ynefel itself, and
drove Hasufin from his unsteady Place in the world.

Cefwyn meanwhile had prevailed in the unnatural darkness, and
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

when the sun broke free of the Shadow, he had held his army
together. Aseyneddin’s forces, such as survived, shattered and
ran in panic.

It was a long way back to the world, however, from where
Tristen had gone. Exhausted, hurt, at the end of his purpose,
Tristen resigned his wizard-made life, finished with Mauryl’s
purpose, too weary to wake to the world of Men.

But he had once given his shieldman Uwen, an ordinary Man
with not a shred of magic in him, the power to call his name. This
Uwen did, the devotion of a simple man seeking his lost lord on
the battlefield, and Tristen came.

—

There was a moment, then, when Cefwyn stood victorious over
the rebels, that he might have launched forward into Elwynor:
the southern lords had rallied to the new king, and would have
followed him. But Cefwyn saw his army badly battered and in
need of regrouping, he knew the enemy was on the run, meaning
they would sink invisibly into Elwynor, and he knew, as a new
king, he had left matters uncertain behind him. The majority of
his kingdom did not even know they had changed one king for
another, and the treaty he had made with Ninévrisë had never
reached his people.

It was the end of summer. Good campaigning weather still
remained, but harsh northern winters could make fighting
impossible. So for good or for ill, Cefwyn opted not to plunge his
exhausted army, lacking maps or any sort of preparation, into
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

the unknown situation inside Elwynor, which had been several
years in anarchy and still had rival claimants to the Regency.

Instead he chose to regroup, settle his domestic affairs, marry the
lady Regent, ratify the marriage treaty, and rally the rest of his
kingdom behind him in a campaign to begin in the spring.

He went home, trusting his father’s trusted men, gathering up his
brother Efanor, and attempting simply to take up the power of
the monarchy as it had been. But when he reached his capital, he
discovered his father’s closest friends among the barons meant to
wrest the power into their own hands… as his father had let them
do much as they pleased for years. It was no longer a matter of
the northernmost barons preferring Efanor. They had had a king
they could rule, they meant to have another one, and in their
minds Cefwyn was a wastrel prince who would be a weak king:
he could be managed, they had said among themselves, if they
kept him diverted.

That was not, however, the king who came home to them: Cefwyn
arrived surrounded by their southern rivals, who were clearly in
favor, and allied to Mauryl’s heir, betrothed to the Elwynim
Regent, and proposing war on the Elwynim rebels. This was not
Ináreddrin’s dissolute son: it was Selwyn’s hard-handed
grandson, and the barons were appalled.

So they took a new tactic… they were older, cannier, more
experienced in court politics. They would use the priests, prevent
the marriage, treat the lady Regent as a captive—and seize land
in Elwynor.

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

Cefwyn was as determined to bring them into line and shake the
kingdom into order. He sent the southern barons home to attend
their harvests and prepare for war, all but Cevulirn, whose
horsemen had less reliance on such seasons and who stayed as a
shadowy observer for southern interests.

In Elwynor, meanwhile, another of the rebel lords, the survivor
of all the others, took advantage of the confusion to bring his
army out of the hills, besiege his own capital of Ilefínian, and
declare the lady Regent captive in the hands of the Marhanen
king.

Cefwyn took measures to ensure that the Quinalt would approve
the marriage and the treaty by which he would agree to put
Elwynor in the hands of as lady Regent, independent of the
Crown ofYlesuin.

The barons retaliated with an attempt to limit the monarchy over
them.

And if Tristen had been feared in the south, he found he was
abhorred in the north. He kept to the shadows… for Cefwyn,
fighting for his right to wed the woman he loved and trying to
wrest back sovereignty in his own capital, feared Tristen’s being
caught up in the fight.

Obscurity, however, only increased the mystery. The barons saw
Tristen as an influence on Cefwyn that must be eliminated. On a
night when lightning, whether by chance or wizardry, struck the
Quinalt roof, a penny in the offering in the Quinaltine was found
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

to be Sihhë coinage, with forbidden symbols on it; and the
charge was forbidden wizardry, attacking the Quinalt and the
gods.

Cefwyn suspected that His Holiness the Patriarch was devious
enough to substitute the damning coin, and Cefwyn moved
quickly to force the Patriarch into his camp. But the coin
together with the lightning threw the wider court into such alarm
that Cefwyn felt compelled to remove Tristen from controversy.

In what he thought a clever and protective stroke, he sent Tristen
back to Amefel not as a refugee in disgrace, but as duke
ofAmefel… a replacement for the viceroy he had left in charge.

Now this viceroy was Parsynan, appointed on the advice of some
of these same troublesome barons, notably Murandys and
Ryssand… for Cefwyn had exiled Orien Aswydd and her sister to
a Teranthine nunnery for their betrayal, and had never appointed
another duke, until now.

Hearing that Tristen was going to Amefel, and that Parsynan was
recalled, Corswyndam Lord Ryssand panicked, fearing that
certain records might fall into the king’s hands. So he sent a
rider to advise Parsynan of his imminent replacement.

Corswyndam’s courier rode hard enough to reach the town of
Henas’amef the Amefin capital, ahead of the royal messenger
bearing the official notice. Parsynan quite naïvely brought his
local ally Lord Cuthan, an Aswydd by remote kinship, into his
confidence, since this man had supported him against his brother
earls before.

Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

Cuthan, however, was in on a plot by the Elwynim to create war
in Amefel, a distraction for Cefwyn, and the plan was to seize the
citadel, on the promise Elwynim troops would then invade and
engage with the king’s

—

forces. Cuthan not only failed to warn Parsynan it was coming…

but he also said nothing to warn his brother lords that a
detachment of the king’s forces was about to arrive. One or the
other would happen first, and Cuthan meant to stay safe.

So, ignorant of important pieces of information, certain Amefin
lords, led by Earl Edwyll of Meiden, seized the South Court of
the fortress of Amefel to wait for Elwynim support.

In the same hour, losing courage, Cuthan told the other earls the
king’s forces were coming, and there were as yet no Elwynim.

The other earls failed to join Edwyll… which suited Cuthan: he
and Edwyll were old rivals, and now Edwyll was guilty of
treason, sitting in the fortress with the king’s forces approaching.

And none of the rest of them were guilty of anything.

In a thunderstroke, before anyone had thought, Tristen arrived
and, to the cheers of the populace, moved swiftly uphill to the
fortress to take possession. The earls of Amefel rapidly set
themselves on the winning side.

Edwyll, meanwhile, died, having enjoyed a cup of wine out of
Orien Aswydd’s cups, untouched since the place was sealed at
her exile… and whether Edwyll’s death was latent wizardry
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

attached to Orien’s property, or simple bad luck, the command of
the rebels now devolved to Edwyll’s son, thane Crissand, who
was forced to surrender. Tristen now had the fortress in his
hands.

Not satisfied with the death of Earl Edwyll, however, Parsynan,
in command of the garrison troops, seized the prisoners from
Tristen’s officers and began executing them.

Tristen found out in time to save Crissand… and dismissed Lord
Parsynan from the town in the middle of the night and without
his possessions, scandalous treatment of a noble king’s officer,
but if there was anything wanting to make Tristen the hero of
Henas’amef, this settled matters: the people were delighted,
wildly cheering their new lord. Crissand, Edwyll’s son, himself of
remote Aswydd lineage, swore fealty to Tristen in such absolute
terms it offended the Guelen clerks who had come with Tristen,
for Crissand owned Tristen as his overlord after the Aswydd
kind, aetheling, a royal lord, reopening all the old controversy
about the status of Amefel as a sovereign kingdom. Crissand had
become Tristen’s friend and most fervent ally among the earls of
Amefel… who, given a lord they respected, came rapidly into
line, united for the first time in decades.

In the succeeding hours Tristen gained both the burned remnant
of Mauryl’s letters, and Lord Ryssand’s letter to Parsynan. The
first told him that correspondence Mauryl had had with the lords
of Amefel might have some modern relevancy… one archivist had
murdered the other and run with the letters. The second letter
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

revealed Corswyndam’s connivance with Parsynan.

Tristen sent Ryssand’s letter posthaste to Guelessar, while
Cuthan, revealed for a traitor to both sides, took advantage of
Tristen’s leniency to flee to Elwynor.

In the capital, Ryssand knew he had to move quickly to lessen the
king’s power against any baron, and one of his clerks had
reported that the office of Regent of Elwynor, which Ninévrisë
claimed, included priestly functions. So at Ryssand’s instigation,
the Holy Quinalt rose up in protest of a woman in priestly rites,
which would break the marriage treaty.

Cefwyn countered with another compromise and a trade of
favors with the Holy Father: Ninévrisë agreed to state that she
was and had always been of the Bryaltine sect, that recognized
though scantly respectable Amefin religion, and if she agreed to
accept a priest of that faith as her priest, leaving aside other
difficult questions, the Quinalt would perform the wedding.

The barons now came with the last and worst: charges of
infidelity, ’s with Tristen, laughable if one knew them… but
Ryssand’s daughter Artisane was prepared to perjure herself to
bring Ninévrisë down, and Ryssand’s son Brugan brought the
charges to Cefwyn, along with a document giving much of his
power to the barons, which was clearly the alternative.

Therein Ryssand overstepped himself: it gave an excuse for a
loyal baron, Cevulirn oflvanor, to challenge Brugan and, by
killing him, change the character of the effort. The gods had let a
man of the king’s kill the man who made the charge, and if
Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03

Ryssand should make public the attack on , that fact would come
out.

But if it should, someone would challenge Cevulirn, and another
and another… or if it did not, Ryssand could not be expected to
deal civilly with the man who had killed his son. Cefwyn still
hoped to deal with the other barons, and would cast the killing as
a private quarrel to prevent the issue becoming public.