Текст книги "Fortress of Ice"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

But before he had finished, a flow of servants started through the doors, bringing buckets of water, and trooping through into the bath. Others brought a wealth of clothes—far more than a plea of Paisi’s would have arranged. He let the servants bathe him: the water hurt his burned hands; he dressed in his own choice of the abundance the servants provided him, plain brown, but very fine. A gray-bearded man of serious mien—he remembered him as Lord Crissand’s physician—came in and renewed the salve and bandages.

“Paisi was burned worse than I,” he informed that man, who reported Paisi was bathing and changing down in the scullery, where he likewise would be treated. “My apprentice,” the physician said, “is very skilled, young sir.”

He was glad at least that Paisi hadn’t had to wait for such comforts. Breakfast arrived, a choice of breads, on fine pewter plates, with jams, a pile of what looked to be boiled and peeled eggs, with a plate of smoked fish and another of cheese. It was more than he could possibly eat… but he knew from Paisi that nothing he sent back went to waste in the kitchen.

He sat down to eat, alone, and had finished by the time Paisi came back, all shaven and combed and bandaged. Paisi walked in, gave a little bow.

“There’s blackberry jam,” Elfwyn said. The servants had all left. “If you like.”

“A smidgen,” Paisi said, and took a sliver of bread with jam, standing up. “ ’At’s good, m’lord.”

The division was between them again. But Paisi said he had been proud of his service here—he always had been: Paisi had served Lord Tristen, and Master Emuin, and perhaps, Elfwyn thought, it was only his present lord who suffered in the comparison.

“I’ve been thinking,” Elfwyn said, “we should get a proper stone to mark the place. If Farmer Ost gets the land, at least there should be some marker where the house was. We can find one in the fields and move it there.”

Paisi sat down across from him, now that he had finished his bread and jam. “Ost himself has that hitch of oxen,” Paisi said, “and considerin’ the land, an’ all, he’d do Gran a favor.” So they began to lay their plans.

“We can put a bird on it,” Elfwyn said. “A sparrow. Gran would like that. Maybe we can get a carver to work it proper. We do it now while the ground’s hard, or wait till summer.”

“Snow’s going to lie deep another month,” Paisi said. “Ain’t no great hurry. She’ll sleep a bit to herself. She ached so much, m’lord. ’Tis at least a warm bed she got.”

Paisi wept then, and he began to as well. But then he thought of his mother, smug and satisfied in their pain, and went dry-eyed. Paisi wept, while Elfwyn sat and stared out the windows, wishing death and ruin on his mother’s head.

“I think I’ll go upstairs,” he said, purposing to get up, and Paisi took a heartbeat to understand that. Then Paisi shot his hand across the table, dislodging dishes, and seized Elfwyn’s arm, bandages and all.

“No,” Paisi said fiercely. “No! Ye can’t. Ye’re angry. And Gran always said that wasn’t good. You quieten down, m’lord. Ye wait, ye wait to see her. Lord Tristen’s comin’ here, ain’t he? It can’t be that much longer, and he’ll settle wi’ your mother. You can’t. Ye daren’t.”

He settled back into his chair, knowing that Paisi was right, that he would only fail again, and perhaps put others in danger—Paisi himself, or Lord Crissand, this time, to much greater ruin. He looked down at the ring he wore and wished he had taken it off before he visited his mother. He meant to do so when next he did.

But not today. Not, at least, today. He and Paisi stayed in the rooms, doing very little but nibble at the food—more arrived at noon, with Lord Crissand’s regards and an inquiry whether they had other needs. They had none. They ate, and, drawing the drapes, they tried to sleep, but dreams intervened, terrible dreams, from which Elfwyn waked with a cry.

“There, it’s all right, lad.” Paisi put an arm about him.

“It’s her!” he cried in indignation, and swung his feet over the side of the bed. “It’s her doing it! She gives me no peace, Paisi!”

“Could be. Could be the Zeide itself. It’s full of haunts.”

He was quiet, then. He sat there in bed, forearms on his knees, and finally curled back over and went to sleep again.

He dreamed of birds, scores of birds, in a rift in the wall. He thought of Gran’s marker, and the bird of peace he’d intended, but these were raptors, all, with cruel beaks and mad, murderous eyes.

“Birds,” he told Paisi, when, again, he waked with an outcry. “There were birds in the wall…”

“Was it?” Paisi asked him, the two of them in the dark, the seam of sun long since gone from the draped windows. It was utterly dark, except the banked fire in the other room. “Was it, now?”

“It’s a silly, stupid dream. I don’t know why birds should be in a wall.”

“Not so silly as that,” Paisi said. “There’s a haunt like that in the Zeide, in the lower hall, right down the way, an’ I don’t like you dreamin’ of it. Ye don’t ever go into that place, if ye see it. Ye go the other way, right fast. All the servants know about it. It’s right down from where your ma’s guards stand. It’s them Lines again, is what Lord Tristen said.”

“He didn’t settle it, when he was here?”

“Oh, haunts has their ways of breakin’ out again, an’ this is one Lord Tristen himself has used, so I guess it ain’t easy to block up—ain’t never done any harm, that I know: it’s more scary than harmful. There’s cold spots upstairs, there’s one in the pantry, but this one’s noisy.”

“Noisy.”

“Like wings beating. Servants skip right fast past that spot, an’ the old stairs beside it. Your ma’s guards ha’ prob’ly seen it more’n once.”

“Lord Tristen showed me about Lines,” he said, and for the first time it occurred to him that he could draw a protection around them, in this room, the sort that Gran had used to do, and which, in going out of Gran’s house, they had lacked. So while Paisi watched, he got out of bed and walked about the room, drawing the Line with his hand, especially across the gaps, like the tall windows, like the fireplace, and the doors. He drew them once, twice, all about, and a third time; and then, to his own amazement, he saw a little blue glow attend the passage of his hand.

“Do you see it?” he asked, but Paisi shook his head and asked what he meant.

“The wards,” he said. “They’re working. If I’d done them at Gran’s, if I’d done them the way Lord Tristen said, maybe Gran would have—”

“No,” Paisi said sharply. “Don’t ye think such a thing. If Gran’s own wards didn’t work, an’ her a witch, how’s yours to? Lord Tristen hisself might ha’ set ’em and kept your ma’s spite out, but ye ain’t Lord Tristen, m’lord, for all love. Some things is just too strong for a lad.”

“Like the birds.”

“Like the birds in the wall, aye, like that. Ye c’n hold ’em back, or, well, someone like Master Emuin or Lord Tristen hisself can stop ’em for a while, but the wards tend to fade if ye don’t keep at it, so I understand, even for the things they done.”

“I’ll do it, every night, before we sleep. Maybe they’ll get strong enough to keep her out. Maybe we’ll get some honest sleep, and I shan’t be waking you up every hour.”

“Maybe,” Paisi said. “An’ when Lord Tristen comes, he’ll set ’em so’s they’ll hold fast. He’ll settle the haunts, too. All of ’em. Too many folks’s died in this place, too many of ’em angry, not least of ’em Lord Crissand’s own da, who was murdered down the hall, an’ Lord Heryn, that your da hanged off the walls. Come to bed.”

He gave a sigh and came back to bed. And in truth, he did burrow his head into his pillow and sleep, deeply.

But before morning he waked again in a sweat, and heard a furious scratching at the glass and leadings of the window.

“Paisi,” he said. “Paisi! Do you hear that?”

Paisi snored.

It was a bird, he decided. A determined, even frantic, scratching at the glass, something trying to get through. But it had stopped when he sat up.

Maybe—the thought occurred to him. Maybe it had been Owl. Maybe Tristen had sent Owl to them.

That thought he found encouraging.

But he dared not open the drapes to try to catch a sight of the creature.

He dared not stir from bed, not until the sun sent a shaft of daylight through the curtain slit.

ii

LORD CRISSAN0 BADE HIM ATTEND A QUIET DINNER THE NEXT EVENING, ONLY Lord Crissand himself, and his lady, a plain woman with a beautiful voice– not in looks, but in manner, she put him in mind of Queen Ninévrisë, and he was glad she had come to grace her husband’s table. She could chatter on lightly about the keep, about the birth of a servant girl’s infant, about the need for spices and the hope the thaw came soon, and somehow wove a calm about her that did not make it necessary for him to talk about Gran, or their fortunes, or what they were to do with themselves.

That was Lord Crissand’s part, when the lady had left, and they shared a late cup, stronger than Elfwyn’s wont, and perhaps intended to send him to his bed for the night. It tasted strong on his tongue and tingled on its way down, but he drank it, all the same.

“Will Paisi farm the place?” Crissand ended up asking. “It’s poor soil for anything but goats.”

“He wanted Farmer Ost to take it over,” Elfwyn said, which he hadn’t intended to say, until Ost could make his own petition. He hoped he hadn’t done wrong. “Ost was good to our gran, and came to help her that morning, so we hoped to give the land to him. We were going to put up a stone.”

“Well, you wear that ring,” Crissand said, “so the gift will stand, won’t it? And that ring will get certainly get a stone set.”

He had forgotten. He began to pull it from his finger in some confusion. “I should give this back.”

“No. Not yet. You keep it until Lord Tristen comes. A stone, you say. I’ll have a proper one set up, right on the roadside, where travelers can see it. A stone for an honest, good woman. A brave woman, who sheltered kin of mine—you are my cousin: I take you for such, with all good will. And you should know, I would have taken you in much before now. You went to Paisi’s gran on Lord Tristen’s advice, which I hope was a happy place for you. I hope you bear no thought that I failed in kinsmanship.”

“I’m a bastard cousin, m’lord, and I hope I was never a burden.” The kindness Crissand showed him opened wounds and brought him unexpectedly close to tears, and to truth. “My mother—my mother likely killed Gran, to spite me, because I visited her. I made her angry. She couldn’t come at me, so she killed Gran, the same hour as I left her.”

Crissand’s face, ordinarily clear-eyed and kindly, darkened. “If she did that, then she may find terms changed. If you’re to be here, perhaps it’s time we found a new place to lodge this woman… I do not call her your mother: she has never merited that good name. If her sorcery did start the fire, then she’s a murderess after being pardoned once from a death sentence, and she will not stay under this roof to trouble you, not by my will, and likely not by Lord Tristen’s.”

That was the best news he had had. But conscience made him say: “She would try to strike at you or yours, then, my lord. You should take the ring back for your own protection. And send your lady and your children far off while you deal with her… her Sight doesn’t reach the river. Or it didn’t seem to: I dreamed, even in Guelessar. And I’d no notion she’d come at Gran when she couldn’t hurt me. I never once thought of it. Now I’m afraid to stay here, my lord, for your sake.”

“Keep the ring,” Crissand said. “Keep it on you day and night. Between her and my household, Lord Tristen set other protections. They hold. They hold, thus far.”

“Gran’s protection didn’t hold her out.”

“Tristen will have no trouble dealing with her. I’ve sent a letter to your father and told him your news, that Tristen is coming to Amefel, and I would by no means be surprised if your father came south himself. I have also sent to Lord Cevulirn, and would by no means be surprised to see him come out of Ivanor: he would scarcely forgive me if he hears Lord Tristen is abroad, and I failed to tell him. And Sovrag of Olmern, and even old Pelumer of Lanfarnesse. We dealt with Hasufin Heltain, who was a hundred times the threat that woman is, and I assure you we will find a way to deal with Tarien Aswydd. Go to bed, cousin. Trust this house has protections much beyond that ring: it travels with you. That is its particular virtue.”

“I am greatly honored, m’lord.”

“Cousin.” Crissand shook him gently. “Go rest. Sleep.”

“I shall, sir.” He gathered himself up, made a little bow, and left, a little unsteady from the unaccustomed drink and warmed by the touch, and feeling a little disconnected from the world, with all the changes in his fortunes. He walked out of the little dining hall, and down the late-night darkness of the broad corridor, in which the servants had extinguished all but a few candles. All he had to do from there was go to his left and immediately up the main stairs.

Perhaps it was the wine—the lights seemed to dim as he turned in that direction, as if someone had extinguished the candles one by one, while past the great stairs, farther down the corridor, near the place his mother’s guards stood, he saw a blue light and perceived the sound of wings.

It was the haunt, he thought. Or his dream. But he was sure he was awake.

He knew its threat. He knew he should run right up the stairs, but up above looked dark, and light only down here, and he stood looking down that rightward hall until he could see that blue light stronger and stronger, like the light of healthy wards. It began to cast the shadow of wings on the other wall.

That way lay his mother’s tower. Her guards would be there. They must see it, too. And what if it washis mother, testing the strength of those wards?

He could reinforce them. If her guards were in danger, he might make a difference and prevent any harm. His mother might strike him, but he could engage her and keep her occupied: in that regard he had no fear for his own safety.

He went in that direction, and with every step the pulse quickened in his veins and the dread and, indeed, the resolution increased.

And his curiosity. That, too. To his alarm, he didn’t see the guards. The light of the haunt overwhelmed the hall and blotted out the sight of them. This, he thought, was where he should stop, and having what Lord Tristen had taught him, he should reinforce the wards. He saw, along the floor, faded, near white old Lines, where the stonework was mismatched. Over them lay new, stronger blue lines, like that blazing blue of the haunt itself, shadowed with beating wings, a sound that became like thunder in his ears. He looked, and a wind out of it began to stir his hair. There was in fact a gap there, and when he even thought of mending it, the Line belled outward and swept him into a place of long perches, beating wings, and slashing beaks.

Now in mortal fear, he cast about to escape the haunt, and stepped out, across the Lines, but found himself not where he had been, but at the blank face of a wall, behind which he sensed an even greater horror—he had no notion what should be that terrible in the blank wall he could see, but without even thinking clearly, he spun about to escape, rushing in among the birds, as the lesser danger.

The birds vanished around him. He stumbled against an upward step, a short stairs in utter dark. He banged his shin on further steps, and staggered up through the clinging, dusty folds of a curtain to…

To the hall where he had started. The place the haunt had been was now just as ordinary as a wall could be. Night candles gleamed placidly in the sconces, untroubled by any wind, and the guards, his mother’s guards, down the way, stood at their posts as if they had never noticed the haunt at all.

He had just come up a stairway from a level he had no idea existed, behind a tapestry. And if he had more courage, he might go back down the steps behind that tapestry and confront what he was sure now was simply too much strong wine, or an overwrought mind, or too many dreams.

He had not the courage to go down into that shadowed place. The memory was too strong. He simply turned, trying not to look like an utter fool for having blundered through a curtain, and walked back toward the grand stairs and up.

Paisi was awake, sharpening his dagger by the fire, bandages and all, as Elfwyn slammed the door of their chambers shut at his back.

“M’lord?” Paisi asked him.

“It was the haunt, Paisi.” He came breathlessly down the short entry hall to the fireside, to light that still could not overcome the memory he had of that cold blue light, the sound of wings that still buzzed in his ears. “It was the haunt. I was just init.”

“ Init?”

“It was the wings, and I was somewhere else, then, back in the hall and nobody else even noticed. The candles didn’t blow out. The guards didn’t leave their places.”

“That haunt leads places, is what,” Paisi said. “An’ once’t Lord Tristen and Lord Crissand went all the way to Elwynor by that haunt.”

“To Elwynor!”

“Or elsewhere. No knowin’ where ye was. Ye stay away from that place. Ye don’t above all go in there.”

“I didn’t! Or I didn’t mean to. I don’t want to again!”

“Ye sit down, lad. Ye ain’t used t’ drink, an’ ye had some, didn’t ye? Ye pour your own water in, if someone serves ye strong wine. Specially if it’s more ’n one. Damn, I knew I should ha’ come down t’ serve ye.”

His head spun and felt stuffed with wool. And he hadn’t wanted Paisi acting as his servant, standing behind his chair. But he’d wished at the time he had dared pour water into what the duke offered him, which was clearly costly wine. Next time, he said to himself, he would do it, and never mind the embarrassment. Crissand had called him cousin, treated him like a grown man. Crissand, however, would forgive his manners.

“Maybe it wasjust the wine,” he said. “Maybe I’ve had too many dreams.”

“There’s a good lad. Or maybe ye did see the haunt. I ain’t sayin’ ye didn’t.”

“I’d swear I did.” He didn’t speak for a while, only sat and watched the fire. “It scared me. It scared me more than anything, and I can’t even say why it did. It was only birds, after all.”

“Dead ’uns,” Paisi said, and kept sharpening the blade. “An’ how’s ’Is Grace?”

“The duke,” he said, remembering. “His Grace said it’s not just Lord Tristen who’s coming. He wrote to my father and maybe he’llride down when Lord Tristen does. And the lords of the provinces southward. Do you think my father will come?”

“Oh, aye, he’s bosom friends wi’ Lord Tristen. He always has come, if herides out.”

“You already knew that?”

“I wasn’t goin’ t’ promise it in case of something different happenin’, but it’s likely enough.”

That good news tingled all the way down his limbs, and he let himself ever so slightly believe that it could be true. If Tristen was here in person to keep his mother at bay, things might work out with his father, too. That scratching at his window might indeed have been Owl. And curse the fear he’d had: he’d been too scared to let Owl in.

“His Grace said he might,” he said to Paisi, “and he said, too, that he’d raise the stone for Gran, a marker right on the roadside where everybody can read it.”

Only the king or the duke could put something on the public right of way. Even a goatherd knew that.

“That’s grand,” Paisi said, not too enthusiastically, and shrugged, looking into the fire. After a moment he said, with a sigh: “She’d say it was too grand for her, wouldn’t she?”

He thought about that. “She would.”

“I tell you, I think she’d like it if we got the oxen and moved her in a country stone wi’ no writin’ nor fancy carvin’ at all. She’d complain she couldn’t read any writin’, nor ever could learn. It was just a frustration to her, an’ her eyes were too poor when I tried to teach her. But she’d like a good stone.”

The manners of the fortress, its fine clothes and its ambitions had settled into him so quickly he’d fallen right into the duke’s grand notion, had he not? Paisi was who could make him know what Gran would say, so plain, so matter-of-fact in her speaking. Gran wasn’t someone, he thought, who could be honored by the duke. She was someone who might honor a duke or even a king with her blessing, from such a stone. Calm and peaceful as the earth, she was… always had been.

And it was strange, that when Paisi had said that, just in her words, he heaved a deep sigh, just like Paisi. He could think of her again, not the fire, not the ashes, but Gran as she was, smiling at them, or poking about her stove, all the fire in the house tame again and under Gran’s dominion…

As ought to be, he thought. As forever ought to be. A pang of grief still touched him when he remembered now, but for a moment he was convinced that Gran was all right, despite his mother, despite him and his mistakes, despite everything.

His mother might have power—might have blackest sorcery—might have broken loose the Lines and let loose the haunt in the night… but he’d gotten out of it, hadn’t he, all on his own? Despite anything she did to try to scare him or get him up those stairs, he could live under this roof, growing wiser, and stronger, and never, ever visit her again, despite all her tantrums and threats.

Lord Tristen would see to her. And then there would be justice for Gran.

iii

THE WINGS, HE DREAMED. THE WINGS. THE WINGS WERE IN THE WALL. AND Elfwyn knew even amid the dream that he was only dreaming, and he turned over and slammed the pillow with his burned fist, which hurt, and dragged him halfway out of sleep.

But when he fell back into the pillow he fell into the hallway again, and something pursued him, down the hall, around the turn to the library. He knew the library door: he had visited it with the duke when he was still small. He knew every detail of that amazing room, the eagles on the doors, carved shapes that screamed out of the wood, and he worked feverishly to get the latch open in time, as the pursuit of the hunter birds beat and thundered behind him, rattling the very stones of the keep. In there was safety, in there was what he had to have, and the birds behind him threatened that…

The door came open. He was in the library, with its tall windows, its many tables, its tall stacks and shelves of books; and he was so sure that the answer to the hallway behind the tapestry was somewhere in this room, behind something, hidden, and if he could get it, and if he could solve that puzzle, then he would be safe, and Paisi would be safe, and nothing would ever threaten them like this again.

But the blue light and the wings had reached the library door, and beat to get in.

Lord Tristen needed to know. He had to have what was in this room, and if it went elsewhere, even he was helpless. Tristen grew weaker and his mother more powerful, high up in her tower, so long as this thing stayed hidden… she struggled, sending the haunt, to get it into her own hands. If she got it, she would be unstoppable. She was on the track, with the birds, and he couldn’t find it.

Elfwyn waked, bolt upright in bed, and sweating. Paisi slept, snoring in his sleep, common and welcome sound.

When sunlight came through the windows again, he was too ashamed to tell Paisi. It was just one of his dreams, fading, now, in import and in detail. He couldn’t even remember why he had been so afraid of birds, of all silly things, and what he had been after, and why he had waked screaming.

His mother’s work.

Or a warning. There were other haunts here. There were other ghosts besides a gathering of birds, hadn’t Paisi said so.

iv

THEY WENT DOWN TO SEE THE HORSES IN THE MORNING, TAKING A TREAT FROM their breakfast, and finding them in excellent care and glad to see their masters. They lingered there, talked a time with the stableboys, and Paisi and the stablemaster fell to discussing people they’d known in the war years, before Elfwyn was even born.

Elfwyn knew none of the names, and the wind was cold. His coat was thin, suited only to indoors, and he grew rapidly chill. So while Paisi talked, he simply slipped off quietly, waved, so Paisi would know he was going, and went on inside the fortress, intending to go up to the room and get his warmer cloak before he went outside again.

He didn’t know why he walked as far as the center stairs of the lower west wing, when he passed a perfectly fine stairs he could have used to go above; or why he walked farther than that, down close to the haunt; but he could see, down in the east wing, and with the lower hall lights all lit, where the guards stood watch, and the blank wall where the haunt had appeared.

Yes, there was indeed a tapestry there, or some sort of hanging, short of that place: it was not the only one in the hallway: there was no sign it concealed any mystery. And on from that, beyond the guards, but before the end of the hall, was the intersection of the east-west hall with the north hall.

That way led to the library, and a view of a small garden—he remembered it from his childhood, when he had visited here; and suddenly the dream came back in particular detail. He walked that far, and did see, indeed, a difference in the stones, both in the style of stonework and in the pattern where something had been walled up, a change even in the quarry from which the floor pavings came: something had been walled up and changed, and the Lines here might not be what they ought to be… Tristen himself had repaired it, and in great temerity Elfwyn ran his hand along that wall, not looking at his mother’s guards, who must think him a very peculiar sort.

Stay inside, he told the haunt. Mind your place.

The tapestry however, gave under his fingers, hiding a short stair just as in his dream. He moved it back, and cautiously, mindful that the guards were out there watching this trespass, went down those steps into a dark lit only by a seam of light from under the curtain. He felt his way down, and came up against a blank masonry wall.

Something else was walled up here. These stairs had surely led somewhere, once. But the little light that came in under the tapestry gave little definition to the stones, and his own shadow covered all possible detail. Nothing here seemed so imminently frightening, but he began to think it was not a good place to be. He decided to ask Paisi what had used to be here.

He went up again, into the hall, and past the place of the haunt then, trailing his fingers along the wall, and past the guards, who stood facing one another, leaning on the columns near them and talking with one another, so absorbed in their conversation they seemed not to have seen his odd behavior. They never looked his way. Or perhaps he had entered again into the dream. The feeling of that dream began to overlay the hall as it was, but the shape of the hall, exactly as his dream had believed he remembered it… was exactly like this, when he was sure he would never have recalled such detail as the moldings and the shape of the arch at the intersection.

Now he burned to know if the library doors themselves were exactly as what he had dreamed, or he remembered from so long ago, and he walked that hall, and found the doors open, not shut. He peered into the shadows behind one, and saw the eagle with its beak open, indeed, carved in the upper panel, and when he walked into the doorway, he saw the tables as he had dreamed, and the windows, and the shelves… and there was something here. He had dreamed there was something here, of such importance, such dire importance…

An old man in dusty robes intercepted him. “Sir?” that man asked. “Are you looking for a particular book?”

It was what one did in the library. “A history,” he said, trying to seem like a lad bent on business. History was his favorite kind of book. He feared to be caught by a stranger, like this man, and questioned on matters he could ill explain. “A history of Amefel.”

“Well, now, there is that. There are several. Might I ask your name, young gentleman? Are you a guest?”

“My name is Elfwyn Aswydd,” he said, and saw the old man’s jaw drop. “I’m Lord Crissand’s guest,” he said, trying to erase that dismay. “My name used to be Otter. His Grace always has lent me books, for years and years.”

“The boy in the cottage,” the old man said.

“In Gran’s cottage,” he said, with an uncomfortable lump in his throat. Clearly the news had not gotten to this place. And all the while, his dream nagged at him with the most dire sense of something, some secret, some hidden thing within this room that he had to find, that could reach out and kill everything he loved. “Might I just look around, sir?” He showed the duke’s ring, and the old man peered at it somewhat more closely than the guards ever had, and straightened and bowed, and bowed again.

“His Grace’s permission. Do be careful,” the old man whispered, meaning of the books, of course, but the caution stirred the hairs on his nape, all the same. There was more and more in this room that seemed oddly familiar to him, as if he’d seen it all before, down to that very stack of books on the first table, or the exact clutter on the old man’s desk, which he could never have expected to see.

His heart beat faster and faster. The old man directed him to a table, and brought him books. The Chronicle of the Eaglewas one. He opened it very carefully, handled the stiff parchment pages exactly as this man’s predecessor had instructed him. The old man hovered a little less near, told him where other histories were kept, and drifted off about his duties.

He leafed through, standing, finding nothing in particular that caught his eye, except a grand illumination of the Battle of Lewen Field, with soldiers dying and the Eagle banner flying conspicuously. The Sihhë Star was there, black and stark. That he had ever seen that emblem in its proper place still seemed incredible to him, and the ring tingled on his hand as he thought about it.

The fear, however, dogged him, like something standing just at his shoulder, something that darted from one side of his vision to the other, taunting him. He strayed from the table to the shelf the old man had pointed out.