Fortress of Dragons by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online

the child in the summer, and no one know?”
    â€œDamn sure she did,” Uwen said somberly, “an’ all that time, and her bein’ a witch an’ all, I’d about wager she knew right well, m’lord, that I would.”
    His thoughts grew vague and frightened and darted here and there in distracted fashion as he walked. His shoulders had felt the burden of armor for hours, as his cloak and his boots were soaked through with snowmelt. He had been scant of sleep for far too long, had walked, letting Tarien ride on the way home—and he thought now, after a month of striving and wrestling with Amefel’s danger and Ylesuin’s, now that he had done something so irretrievably foolish as this, he might rest…he might finally rest, as if he had done what folly his restlessness had aimed toward, and as he faced the stairs upward all the remaining strength was flowing out of him like blood from a wound.
    Tarien knew about the child, he kept thinking to himself. When she went to Anwyfar, she knew. When they dealt with Hasufin Heltain, and bargained with him— Orien knew .
    â€œM’lord?” Uwen asked, for he had faltered on the first step. All the accumulated hard days and wakeful nights came down on his shoulders at once, and he found he could not set his foot to the step.
    â€œAre ye hurt, m’lord?”
    Uwen’s arm came about him, bearing him up, and with that help he essayed the first step. Another arm caught him from the right, Lusin, he thought, and he made the next, telling himself that he must, and that rest was at the top of the stairs, just a little distance down the hall.
    â€œAre ye hurt?” Uwen insisted to know.
    â€œNo,” he said. “Tired. Very tired, Uwen.”
    â€œâ€™At’s good, then, m’lord. Just walk.”
    He climbed up and up the right-hand steps, those that ascended above the great hall, leaning on two good friends…and there he paused, drawn to turn and look down on that staircase, on that lower hall lit as it was from a mere handful of sconces. There burned but a single candle in each at this dim hour.
    He had come up this stairs from the great hall the one night he had come very close to believing Orien and falling into her hands…and then, too, Uwen had seen him home.
    He had run these steps the night Parsynan had murdered Crissand’s men…and the shadows of those men haunted the whole lower hall, all but palpable at this hour.
    He had gone down these steps toward the great hall as a new-made lord, and there faced a haunt that now was all but under his feet, the old mews, out of which Owl had come.
    And did it stir, tonight, that power, knowing these twin sisters had come home?
    He willed not . Trembling in the support of two strong men, he willed strength into the wards that kept the fortress safe. He willed that nothing within these walls, no spirit and no living soul, should obey Lady Orien, accustomed as this house might have been to her commands.
    He did all that on three breaths, and was at his weakest, but he was sure then that the haunt below in the mews had not broken out or answered to Orien’s presence, and that most of all reassured him, for of all dangers in the fortress, it was the chanciest and the greatest.
    â€œShall we take him on up, then?” Lusin asked, tightening his arm about his ribs, clearly supposing his lord had lost his way.
    â€œâ€™E’s stopped on ’is own,” Uwen said pragmatically, against the other side, and shifted his grip on his wrist and about his waist. “An’ ’e’ll start on ’is own. ’Is Grace is thinkin’ on somethin’ worth ’is time, and I ain’t askin’ what till he’s through.”
    â€œI’m very well,” Tristen said then, although for the life in him he could not think of what he had just been doing.
    â€œLean on me, lad,” Uwen said then—neither Uwen nor Lusin