Fortress of Ice, page 13
Best he get up and get dressed and not compound his faults in the household. He heated water in the little warming pan, washed, and dressed in the colors that, in the grim firelight, were red made more red. The shield with the gold Dragon glittered with fire, and the Dragon’s eye glinted with it. He pulled it on, piece by piece; he combed his hair, and put on his fine new black boots, and sat down, this time like a city lad, in one of the two chairs near the hearth, arms folded tightly across the Dragon, his eyes on his boot toes, then on the fire that leapt and menaced in the hearth, a dragon of its own kind.
His eyelids grew heavy. But he was ready for the morrow. The moment he heard a stir in the hall he would go out and go downstairs to wait, even if it was only the servants going about their business. Better early than late, he said to himself. If he turned up in the lower hall an hour early, as well wait there as here.
Supper with the royal family seemed a distant dream, something that, like these clothes, never could happen to Gran’s boy, like the life that never could happen to Otter, just Otter, who drew the water and tended the goats—Gran’s foundling, the witch’s brat.
His eyes shut. He fought them open once, twice, the third time, or perhaps failed, for just a moment. He saw a slit of firelight, and then more, and the fire roared up, thundering around him. He saw fire in the goats’ eyes as they fled in confusion; he saw fire shooting up the little berry bushes by Gran’s door, the ones that grew close and snagged a cloak if they weren’t careful. He saw fire eating up the thatch of the roof, and he was inside, and Gran slept in her bed under her patchwork quilt, and he couldn’t wake her. “Gran,” he cried, shaking her. “Gran!” He lifted her, blankets and all, and tried to shoulder his way out the door, but a beam fell down to block his escape, and fire rained about them.
“Gran!”
He waked so violently he nearly fell out of the chair, and clung to its arms, sweating, not daring move until he knew for certain where he was.
He made his feet move then, just to prove it was no longer the dream around him. He unclasped his hands from the arms of the chair and stood up and walked about a bit, while everything rippled and leapt with fire-shadow and firelight. He reached for the amulet he wore, that luck piece Gran had given him, and for the first time since she had put it about his neck, remembered it was not there. He wanted to touch it, to hold it, and find that warmth of memory it always had. It might, he thought, tell him that Gran was safe and assure him that it was only an empty dream.
He lit the watch-candle and went to find his luck piece, down at the bottom of the cabinet, in the glove where he had hidden it. He shook it out, gathered it in his fist, and it comforted him to have it, but there was no great sense of presence in it, and it failed to ease his fear.
“Gran,” he whispered, holding it in one hand before his lips. “Gran, do you hear me? Be careful of the fire. I had a dream. Are you all right, Gran?”
It grew cold in his hands, cold as the room around him.
And everything was still, everything but the fire crackling in the other room.
He shut his eyes tight, and saw flames and felt the pain of the burn on his clenched hand.
His stomach hurt with fear. Shivers took his limbs. For a moment he thought of slipping down to the stable and escaping onto the road to find Paisi, going home where they both belonged. But he had given Paisi the only horse easy to reach, and the gate wardens would stop him this time. He was trapped, and all he could hear in the world was the crackle and snap of the fire, while the amulet stayed cold in his fingers.
There was one way to know. There was a thing Gran did, when she needed to foretell for a neighbor or, once, for Lord Crissand, when he came to her cottage at night and in secret.
The Guelesfort was still and hushed, with no one to see him. He could do it: he knew what Gran had done. If Gran wouldn’t listen to him by way of the amulet, then the amulet itself might gain her attention… if she was all right. There was that dread, dire chance that the dreams hadn’t come from Gran. There was the chance they had come from the tower in Henas’amef.
And if that was so, if dreams from that place had reached them, disturbed their sleep and sent Paisi out into danger on the roads, then it was possible he could tell Gran that, and if he did—then Gran would be able to deal with it. Gran would go into town and tell Lord Crissand, was likeliest, who would realize what his mother was up to and put a firm stop to it.
He just had to be quick, and do it now, if he was going to do it, and clean up before he ever heard a stir of servants in the halls.
He needed a string—the cord from a shirt tie served for that. He had the washing bowl. He had clean water from the pitcher. He had oil, from the little bottle they had on the dressing table, for chapped hands and cold-stung faces. He had a candle and a writing quill, which was the feather that would disturb the water.
He hung the amulet from the string, a bond between himself and Gran, so the Seeing would go where he wished. He threaded the feather through a knot in the string and held the string so the tip, hanging down, just touched the oiled water in the bowl. He waited while the draft in the room breathed warmth on the feather, and it trembled as it just touched the water, only slightly disturbing the film of oil.
On that watery surface he looked for his vision, and if he looked at the curls of oil just so he tried to convince himself he could see a fence, and a cottage, and a chimney, that beloved, crooked chimney, perfectly safe.
“Gran?” he said, and his breath disturbed the feather, and made new ripples on the oiled water.
He tried to see her. He tried to see her sleeping—or sick in her bed if that was the case. He tried to make his voice reach her dreams.
“Gran? Paisi is coming home. Paisi is on the road tonight, safe with some traders. We’re both well. Oh, Gran, be careful of fires. Be ever so careful. I had a dream that worries me…”
He heard a step in the other room. He looked up and saw a shadow between him and the fire: Aewyn’s serving-maid, with a tray in her hands.
She saw him. Her hands flew up to her mouth. The whole tray crashed to the floor, in a ruin of pottery.
He seized the cord, took the basin up to try to pretend it was something else. A flood of oiled water slopped out over his arms, down his body, and the maid squeaked and ran back the way she had come, leaving tray and all.
He clutched the amulet fast and took the bowl, to dispose it back on the washstand, his floor awash in spilled water, spilled oil, and spilled porridge.
Aewyn’s maid, the one the guards had teased, had been bringing him breakfast.
He tried to mop the oily water off himself. He went to the fire and tried to blot himself dry, but the oil clung, and would stain when it dried, like deadly sin. Word of that sin was running down the halls by now, unstoppable, on the lips of the one servant who was devout Quinalt.
CHAPTER TWO
i
THE WHOLE FAMILY WAS ASSEMBLED, ALONG WITH THE LESSER LORDS AND Officers who lived in the Guelesfort, down in the lower hall, with all the candles lit. Some of the lords who had the grand houses about the square had come in, to walk in the procession with their banner-bearers and their households. The crowd grew. Still there was no Otter, and Aewyn fretted, standing at the foot of the grand stairway, positioned so that he could see and signal Otter the moment he appeared on that stairway.
He had sent the girl with breakfast, to be sure, for one thing, that Otter didn’t oversleep. And he knew above all other things that Otter was shy of the maids and would have hastened her right out after she delivered it. It had been a little joke, a prank on Otter and on the maid alike: he knew it would send a fine blush to Otter’s face if he was caught abed, and the maid would set down the breakfast and run like a deer. But it had a practical reason, too. One of the men might have lingered, asked for Paisi and asked more questions—so the maid had been the best choice.
But it was the verge of dawn, Otter still hadn’t come down, while the family was all bundled up against the cold and much too hot, standing and waiting. Everyone was preparing to leave, and it was surely only Otter who kept his father waiting this long. Aewyn fretted in silence while the lords talked together in the solemn, irritable way people did on Fast Day. No one was in a particularly good mood, having been awake an hour or so ago, in the dark, to get something on their stomachs. Now breakfast and tempers were wearing thin in the anticipation of a day of no food, no comfort, and dreary sermons about sin and damnation.
Oh, he wished now that he hadn’t been so clever, that he’d just taken Otter’s breakfast down the hall himself and let his servants and guards fuss about it. The maid was a skittish fool as well as a prude. Everyone knew that. She was not only scared of men, she was scared of Amefin folk, scared of everyone who wasn’t Guelen. It was even possible she’d never taken the breakfast there at all and that Otter was still asleep in his bed, with no one to wake him. If that was the case, he swore he would have her beaten.
“Where is he?” his father walked near to ask him.
“I don’t know, sire,” Aewyn said faintly. “He should have been here. I sent my maid with breakfast, to wake him. Shall I go up and find out?”
“We have to leave now. We have no choice,” his father said, vexed, then turned and dispatched one of his own bodyguard upstairs on the spot, with orders to rouse Otter.
No choice. No choice, now, and no Otter with the family, Aewyn thought, as his father waved a hand and set the whole processional moving toward the doors. And it was the worst outcome: his father’s men were apt to ask close questions, particularly if they did find Otter abed, and Otter was a godless Amefin, in the reckoning of all too many Guelenfolk. This morning was to be Otter’s chance, his moment to make his best appearance before all the people, nobles and commons, to be written in the book and quietly mend so many things that had been wrong as long as they had been alive.
It was Otter’s chance, and if he didn’t come down the stairs in the next few moments, it was worse than a missed chance: it was a disrespect to the Quinaltine and to the family and most of all to their father… only the family knew it, of course, at this point, but that meant the family servants and guards knew it, and that meant kitchen staff was going to find it out by noon, and half of Guelemara was going to know it by nightfall.
The great doors opened on the dark. Lantern-bearers went downstairs and out first. The snow fell in a fine sleet outside, hazing the lanterns and the torches, as a wave of cold gusted in at them. A priest and two acolytes met them at the doors—doubtless they had been freezing quietly for the last half hour. The priest walked ahead, chanting about sins and atonement and ringing a bell, the acolytes swinging censers, which glowed with inner fire.
The family walked first after that. It was too late, too late, now, for Otter to make his appearance; and with a backward and despairing glance at a vacant stairway, Aewyn fell in with his mother.
Incense could not linger in the wind. It left the censers as fast as it rose, leaving nothing but the faintest impression. That walk down the Processional Way and into the Quinaltine square was even more exposed to the wind, and the steps of the Quinaltine itself had gotten slick and treacherous despite the boys generously sanding the treads. Aewyn stayed close to his mother, who had refused to relinquish Aemaryen to the nurse this morning and was in no cheerful mood.
Inside, the incense was thick in the comparative warmth, the dim sanctuary packed with worshippers who rose to their feet, a thunderous echo as the family walked in. Anyone who might have thought to see Otter with the royal family this morning looked in vain… an absence that would signal something in itself. Aewyn walked by his uncle’s side, his mother and father walking together down the aisle, with his little sister in his mother’s arms. Trumpets sounded, startling the handful of pigeons who always seemed to have found a way to settle on the lofty cornices inside, and the choir broke out in a hymn of repentance and sorrow, while the birds flew about in consternation. In his heart, Aewyn wished he could fly up and sit elsewhere—up in the dark rafters would be nice, where no one had to look at him, but the family was destined for the very front row, up by the railing that seperated the priests from everybody else.
They reached their seats. When the king sat, then the nobles and the commons could sit down. The skittish pigeons flew into the sacred place and out again, and the priests arrayed themselves behind the altar that divided the railing.
His father’s bodyguard was always right behind them. So was the Prince’s guards, who still attended Efanor, and Guelen guards stood at intervals by the pillars as the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Marshal of the North reached their seats. The majority of all the seats went to the nobles, the rest to the richest burghers of Guelemara—the poor were obliged to stand out in the dark as the sun came up and the snow came down, for the whole length of the services, while the priests talked about sin and repentance.
Do the poor people get a service, too? he’d asked his father, a year or so ago, and his father had said, No. The sermon is on sin. Rich sinners contribute more. And probably, with the nobles and the burghers, His Holiness has the right audience.
Hush, my lord, his mother had said, looking about at the servants.
And his father: Rich men give power. That’s the offering the priests most covet. The boy should learn that. He’s of an age to know how the world goes.
The priests shouldn’t hear you say it, his mother had said, and his father had said:
See? Power. Power is what they want most. And, mark me, son of mine: they shouldn’t get too rich a diet of it.
He was supposed to be meditating on his sins, not on the priests’ bad behavior; but there it was: he meditated on that exchange with his father instead, every word of it brought fresh in his memory by present circumstance. He meditated on Otter, and their plot to feed the horses, against the priests’ will; and on Otter’s absence this morning, which worried him no end, and was probably because Otter, who was shocked that people lied, had decided he didn’t want to be lied to when he was as upset as he was about his gran. His father’s guard had failed to turn him up; he had heard no late arrival coming in.
He hoped Otter had just gotten upset and hidden away when the search started—Otter would do that: he had no great trust of soldiers. He knew all the hiding places Otter could use, all the secret places he had shown Otter in the Guelesfort, and if Otter was hiding, he would be deeply hidden, where his father’s guards, not having spent a childhood in the Guelesfort, would not likely look—or fit into.
The Holy Father got up and talked about sin, sin of thoughts and sin of deeds, sins of omission and sins of commission, in clerkly detail. His Holiness said they had to examine all they did and failed to do, all they thought of doing and all they refrained from doing. It seemed to Aewyn that if they did all that, they’d never budge from where they sat, and he was otherwise inclined. His thoughts were already winging through the Guelesfort, impatient to act the moment they escaped the sanctuary.
Aemaryen began to fret, a thin, plaintive cry. Other babies took to crying, which roused still others, so that it was a wonder the priest could remember what came next. But crying babies led him to talk about lamentations for sins: lamentations, as if babes in arms had committed any sins. End to end of the dome it racketed, unfed babies, unhappy mothers and fathers, fretful two-year-olds, who had to be admonished not to fidget, and toddlers, who only knew they were hungry, too, and kept swinging their feet or squirming.
Aewyn sat and clenched and unclenched his hands, clenched his toes in his boots, bit his lip and counted the rosettes on the railing behind the altar. When he was done with that, he counted the orbs that decorated the screen behind the altar; and then he counted the intersections of bars that screened the choir.
The choir stood up and sang, a high, piercing wail, lamenting the sins of the world. By now every baby in the sanctuary was crying—crying for the sins of the world, the priests said, like the dumb, unfed beasts. His mother spent her service trying to comfort the baby, while his father sat stone-faced and unmoving at this comparison.
And somewhere in the halls of the Guelesfort, themselves missing services, his father’s guard kept searching, he supposed, to no avail yet, since they hadn’t dragged Otter into services like some escaped felon.
But, oh, gods, he thought then: if they had started looking for Otter, they were likely looking for Paisi, too—and that trail went clear to the town gate and on.
It certainly wasn’t the way they’d hoped for their father to find out about Paisi’s escape. Otter might think of that, too, and just run for it, being a skittish sort.
Lamentations for sins, and a spate of long, long singing. Aewyn made himself sit still, working his toes to keep his feet from going numb on the chill floor. He lost track of what the Holy Father said, wondering how far Otter could get in three hours, if he had suddenly decided to follow Paisi, and run.
If he had… their spring was ruined. Everything was ruined.
If he had… maybe he was as far as Esbrook, by now, but not if the snow was still coming down outside. It had been snowing before dawn. But in the shadowy bowels of the Quinaltine there was no way to for him to know now whether the snow had stopped or whether it had come on a blinding blizzard.
Third long lamentation, and a prayer for which they all must stand, even the king and queen. Aewyn stood up in his new boots, working his feet to bring the blood back to his toes. The sanctuary by now smelled of musky incense combined with wet fur, furs that had come in snowy and then, soaked from snowmelt, now overheated. Everyone stank, stank of fur, stank of perfume.
He wanted desperately to be back in the Guelesfort. If he was there, he could find Otter. He knew where to look, and he could talk to Otter and get sense out of him—if he hadn’t gone for the gate.
At last, at last, the singing drew down to the final hymn, the one that cursed the Bryalts. Aemaryen had long since exhausted her outrage and dropped off to sleep, one small arm trailing from his mother’s arms, and he saw his mother’s weary and angry expression, her impatient side-to-side rocking of his little sister. Nurse, who was in the row behind, leaned forward and mutely offered again to take the baby, but his mother doggedly shook her head and kept rocking Aemaryen, her lips grimly set.
