Outside, now, however, all was cold, in the breath of winter, and the threat of coming snow.
Outside was a life within that shadow, but not quite as fragile a life as seemed.
“M’lord?” Uwen asked him, porridge standing on his spoon.
Someone was coming, Tristen was well sure, now.
And up in the heights of Ynefel keep, in the loft where dust and old feathers blew in the winds, Owl opened his eyes and turned his head about as Owl could.
Go, Tristen told Owl silently, and Owl, that recalcitrant bird, spread blunt, broad wings and with two great flaps and a tilt of his wings, went out through the gap in the boards.
ii
the day had been half-kind, half-cruel—a little warmth in the morning, but by afternoon a wicked wind kicked up, rattled through the bare, black branches, and suddenly, with a whirl of old snow off the limbs of Marna’s trees, bit to the bone. Otter kept his hands inside his cloak as much as he could, except as now, when he had to get off Feiny’s back and lead him over uncertain ground, down the slope of a little hillock and around a dead-fall too big to move and too bristly to jump.
He had exhausted the grain, and Gran’s provisions. He had spent two cold, cold nights in this treacherous place, but he persevered, calmly, surely.
Paisi had always told him the woods had its tricky ways, and that it would mislead a traveler if he tried to turn around and get out. So he refused to change his mind and refused to be scared back, no matter the sounds in the dark, no matter the solitude of the place. He was sure he had come about in a circle once— but he was not to be caught by the old woods again: he had 1 9 2
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taken careful note of certain trees and looked at their shapes from more than one side, the way Paisi had taught him, so he could not be tricked unless the trees themselves changed shape.
But with the wind rising and the snow sifting down like a veil, he found it harder and harder to be sure what he saw, and once the dark began to come down, he had no choice but to stop and wrap himself in his cloak. He had brought himself and the horse up against an icy lump of an outcrop, with icicle - dripping rock between them and the gusts, to wait through the spate of snow. There was not a thing to eat. In that fact, he was more than worried.
Something pale sailed through the falling snow, sailed, and turned, and settled on a branch overhead. He looked up at it.
“Who?” it asked him; and he knew it was no natural bird. He got up on cold - stiff legs, and it flew off a little distance.
“Who?” it asked again.
Otter trembled, knowing the reputation of that bird, and whence it came— Paisi had said so, and Gran had nodded, confirming the story. He could see the fi reside that night, when Paisi had told him how that creature had come into the Zeide and stayed with Lord Tristen. “It weren’t no bird as ever was,” Paisi had said. “An’ it weren’t friendly. It’d bite soon as look at ye.
But it turned up where he did.”
“My name is Otter!” he called out to the woods, the owl, and any listener. “I’ve come to see Lord Tristen!”
The owl spread its wings and flew to another, farther tree, veiled in snowfall.
Otter took the reins and clambered up on a rock to get to Feiny’s saddle, fearful that the owl would move again and vanish into the woods. He urged Feiny onward, and the owl took wing, never minding that brush barred his way, and he had to fight past low, clawing branches.
“Owl,” he called to it, “good Owl. Be patient. Stay for me.”
“Who?” it asked, and perversely took fl ight.
The brush was too thick. He had to get down and lead the horse, tugged him along when the horse had as soon stopped altogether, fi nally having to take him close by the bit to keep him moving at all, and going near hip deep through a drift.
“Who?” Owl said, mocking him, and fl ew on through the snow, vanishing almost— but it seemed a bluish light outlined his wings and ran after him, like troubled water. Otter stared into the falling snow, his very eyes chilled, and kept going. Breath hissed between his teeth as he tried to warm 1 9 3
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it before taking it down. At times he lost Owl altogether, but then a passing shape brushed his hair and startled the horse as Owl winged ahead of him, glowing in the overcast.
His feet were already numb. That numbness crept from his feet to his legs and made him stumble in the snow as they left all semblance of a trail and followed a weaving course through a darker and darker forest. Feiny stumbled, and went down to his knees, and Otter pulled on the bridle, trying to help the horse up, all the while keeping his eyes on Owl, who vanished among the dark trunks and snowy branches.
Feiny gained his feet and followed, as numb and as miserable as he, Otter was sure, and Owl showing no mercy at all. He had sped through the darkest of the woods, where there was no light to be seen. The horse struggled and stumbled on hidden roots, and Otter feared he would go down and not get up: he had brought the heavy caparison, but even that was not enough. He took off his own cloak and flung it over the horse, saddle and all. Wind cut like a knife.
“Owl?” he called out desperately, casting about.
A pale shape sailed over his head and on through the trees, and he followed, stumbling, himself, on the uneven ground, and leading Feiny carefully, trying to keep them both on their feet. Ahead, a seam of twilight opened up between the trees, and Owl flew into it. They went after, passing under a network of bare branches, seeing that seam widen. It became a path, and, it seemed, a bridge, on the end post of which Owl sat, turning his face away.
Otter tugged at the bridle and brought Feiny along.
Owl spread his wings and flew as they passed the last screen of branches.
A fortress sat across that bridge, a place so overgrown and age - eaten it seemed a part of the rocks. The fortress gate cut off all view beyond the wall, except a little scrap of river and the top of a ruined tower.
Owl sailed up and up over that wall, and toward that ruined height, and vanished.
He had no choice now. He trusted himself to the old stones and the timbers and led Feiny across what might be a rubble pile or a bridge, on timbers with no few gaps. The ancient gates rose higher and higher, until they blotted out the sky. He stood and hammered them with his fist, which made little sound at all.
“Lord Tristen!” he called out to the heights. “Lord Tristen, can you hear me?”
Even his voice seemed lost, swallowed by the deep sound of the moving 1 9 4
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river under him, and he stood alone in the dark, beyond shivering in the cold.
Twice more he shouted out and beat at the gate, waiting each time, in fading hope of an answer.
He had been a fool, he thought. He had come uninvited. He might die out here, no one knowing until spring and snowmelt.
Then a door opened and shut, somewhere beyond the wall, and he called out again, desperately: “Lord Tristen! It’s Otter! Gran and Paisi’s Otter! Can you hear me?”
Footsteps came, faintly in the distance beyond the gate, and then closer and closer, muffled by new snow, crunch, crunch, crunch. An inner bar grated and thumped back, and the gate swung and creaked inward, just enough to let him and the horse pass through.
He eased through the gap, seeing first a snowy courtyard, and the black bulk of the keep, and then, right by him, a grim man in a cloak and gloves.
“Sir,” he said respectfully, though he knew this thickset man could not be the lord himself, and he found his teeth chattering when he did it. “I’ve come, I’ve come—”
“Ye’re here,” the man said. “Ye’ll come in and have a warm bowl and a cup o’ tea.” The man took the reins from his fingers and patted Feiny’s snowy neck. “A horse in a cloak, is it? My son’ll see to ’im. Ye’ll come along.”
“You’re Uwen Lewen’s - son.”
“That I am,” the man said, and led him and the horse toward a low, ram-shackle, and snowy
cottage, with a long stable beside it, and other horses.
That pricked Feiny’s interest, and drew a soft, low grunt, and an answering restlessness from the stable.
“He kicks,” Otter said, warning Master Uwen as the horsemaster had warned him, but now a young man had come out of the cottage, the open door of which shed a momentary rectangle of light onto the snow. He shut it, walked out, and that young man received his orders from Master Uwen.
“A good rub and a careful feed,” Uwen said. “He’s been without, summat, hain’t he, lad, an’ ain’t ye, both?”
“There was grain yesterday,” Otter said, “but not much.”
“Good lad.” Uwen’s heavy arm landed about his shoulders and swept him on, irresistibly, into the light of the door and up the steps into the cottage.
Inside, the warmth was thick and all - enveloping, and a red - faced, gray-haired woman bent by the hearth, ladling up a bowl as Uwen shut the door.
The latch dropped. The woman set the bowl on the table, with a spoon and a piece of bread.
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“Sit,” the woman said, no more to be questioned than Gran, and Otter eased his numb feet past the bench and sat down.
“The silly lad let the horse wear ’is cloak,” Uwen said. “Which is a good lad, by me. Kick the boots off, boy. Warm those feet. Floor’s warmer ’n that frozen leather.”
He had a piece of bread in hand, dipped in the good thick soup, which was hot, and good, and the wonderful bread was fresh - baked. He obeyed, however, using one foot to shove off the other boot, and ate and struggled with the second boot at the same time.
“That’s a boy,” Uwen said, and bent down by the table and pulled the boot off himself, and rubbed his icy feet with large, warm hands. “Half -
froze, is what. Best is warming from the inside. Where’s that tea, wife?”
“Here,” the woman said, and set a mug down by the bowl, which was just in time to wash down a bite. Otter did that, and felt his throat overheat all the way down. It made his eyes water, and Uwen tugged the hood back off his head and felt of his ears, which were cold and sore.
“Well, well,” Uwen said, “he’ll be well enough.” As if he were a sheep they were looking over; and mannerless as a sheep, he’d devoured the bread and sat with spoon in hand to get the substance of it, the best soup he’d ever had, even better than Gran’s.
“It’s so good.”
That pleased the woman.
“Welcome here,” Uwen said. Hoodless himself, he proved crowned with grizzled stubble, and had an old scar on his cheek that ran right back into his hair, a soldier’s kind of mark, and that fit with what he knew of Uwen Lewen’s - son. “My wife’s Mirien, but ye can call ’er Cook, which is what she likes to be. The boy, he’s her nephew, truth be told, but son he is to me, and good as, ain’t he?”
“A good boy, Cadun is,” Cook agreed. “A hard worker. Another bowl, young lad?”
“Otter. Otter is my name. And just the tea, please, good mistress.”
“Oh, courtly, ’e is,” Cook said, setting her hands on her hips. “And well -
spoke, and wanderin’ in the woods in the dead o’ winter.”
“And callin’ on names we know,” Uwen said. “Gran an’ Paisi’s boy, he is.
Ain’t that what ye said?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I am. I came to see Lord Tristen, if you please.”
“And that ye shall,” Uwen said, “when m’lord calls ye, when he calls ye, but meantime ye’re fed, an’ your horse is fed, and ye can sleep right by the warm fire if ye like. Belike ye could do with warm sleep.”
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He wanted to see Lord Tristen. He had come all this way, at such hard-ship, and wanted what he had come for, immediately, if he possibly could.
But when Uwen offered a hand to help him up, and with the warmth of the room and the weight of the food and drink in his stomach, he suddenly found it was all he could do to step over the bench end and totter to the fi reside.
The boy had come in from tending the horse, meanwhile. Cook chided him to shut the door and bring the cloak over, and Uwen spread two thick blankets by the fireside. Otter sank down, and Uwen spread his cloak over him, horsey as it still was, and still chill from outside. In a moment more the fireward side of it was warm, and Otter shut his eyes.
Another blanket came atop him, heavy and pressing him down, down and down where it was safe and the storm could never reach.
iii
he stirred from time to time during the night, confused momentarily not to be at home at Gran’s, in his own bed, or asleep under the carved - wood ceiling of the Guelesfort, or freezing under snowy branches. But there was the homey fire to tell him where he was, and from time to time Uwen, in his shirt, came and put another small log on, just to keep it going through the cold of the night.
After a time the wind stopped howling, like a dog that had given up bad behavior, and the beams of the house popped and creaked in the cold, but Otter rested snug where he was, and slept, and slept, until all the aches melted out of him.
He began to be aware in the morning that the house had begun to stir, that, in fact, Cook was up. She had her hair in a long gray braid. She cleaned the table and set out bowls, then swung the pothook out and poured in cracked grain and a small kettle of water right at Otter’s feet.
“Not so’s ye need stir out,” she said, swinging it back over the heat. “Water’s set to boil. Sleep a bit more.”
He did. And waked again when Uwen’s son lifted the pot off with a wooden hook and carried it to the table.
“Porridge is in the pot,” Cook announced. “Go get Uwen.”
The boy went outside, and Otter sat up and raked his hair into something like order, still in his clothes, and finding the air warm and his bones bruised slightly from the fireplace stones, which he knew intimately, down 1 9 7
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to the one that jutted up a little, right where his shoulder wanted to be. But oh, he had slept, and he had been warm.
It was a wonderful place to be, and still felt as if he had waked inside a dream. The porridge went into bowls, there was honey for it, and he scrambled up and folded up the cloak and the blankets, to clear space around the fi re.
“Yesterday’s bread,” Cook said. “An’ today’s porridge. And blackberry honey, which goes right well.” Uwen came through the door, snowy - booted, with the boy coming after. “Sit down, sit down, all.”
“Horses is fed,” Uwen remarked, taking his place on the bench. Otter slipped onto the end of the bench, not to take up more than his share of room, and not knowing which side of the table he should use. “Ain’t heard from m’lord this mornin’. He don’t always stir out. He’ll send when he takes a notion. Or maybe he’ll drop in for breakfast, who knows?”
“Does he know I’m here, sir?”
“Likely. Likely he does.” Uwen held his bowl as Cook dropped honey in.
“Thank ye, wife.”
Cook went about her business, feeding them all, and there was tea, and all the porridge they could possibly eat, and a great deal left over. Uwen said:
“Never you mind about what’s left. The horses’ll be right happy to clean it up.”
The cottage was tidy, though pots and horse harness and farm tools hung from the rafters, along with herbs and dried flowers, though there was not a straight beam in the place, and there no few patches in the daub— it was a lot like Gran’s place, except the harness and except a rack that held a soldier’s armor. A sword and shield stood in the shadows on the other side, in the corner, and his heart thumped when he saw it— a black shield with the white Sihhë Star in the center, arms still hung as a banner in the hall at Henas’amef. But here it wasn’t a dusty banner. It was what Uwen Lewen’s -
son had carried in war. It, as nothing else, seized Otter’s attention and held it, in little glances sideways, as if it, and all it stood for, would van
ish from the mortal world at any moment. It couldn’t be part of the world any longer. It couldn’t go where ordinary people lived their lives. It was exactly as Paisi told him in stories, but the last trace of it in the world of Men was that banner in Lord Crissand’s hall, that no one ever carried in the festivals and processions.
He finished his porridge. He offered, as he did at home with Gran, to wash the dishes.
“I do for Gran,” he said.
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“Aye, well,” Cook said, “d’ye hear that, Cadun? Here’s a guest offerin’ to wash the dishes, an’ is that right?”
“No,” Cadun said, well taught, “no, it ain’t, aunt.”
“Well, so, get to it. An’ our guest may sit, or walk about as he will.”
He wasn’t sure what to do with himself. “I’ll go see to my horse,” he said.
That at least was his to do, and no one objected, so he got up, put on his cloak, and slipped out the door.
The snow had drifted deep in a curving line across the courtyard, a ridge waist high, distant. The brown tops of dead flowers stuck above the snow where it had blown thin, right along the cottage wall. A row of horses stood snug in their stalls, with a line of snow behind them where it had drifted against rolls of straw.
And above all, undeniable, the dark mass of the fortress rose up and up, towered and cracked and showing jagged edges here and there where there should have been more of a roof. He looked, and realized there was a face in the masonry of the nearer tower, a face that seemed to stare right at him.
But that was a trick of his cold - stung eyes. He blinked, and when his eyes cleared, its eyes were shut.
The whole world was quiet, quiet enough that he could hear the rush of air when a shadow passed him, the wind of blunt wings brushing his hair.
Owl swept upward then, into the morning sun, up and up until he had to squint to follow him.
When he looked down again, a set of footsteps led from his own feet to a small set of steps, and a humble side door to the keep, as if he had walked that way, when he had never moved.