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

brigandine’s metal joinings scarred the chair, and the padding beneath it was much too warm.
    He must have assented. Drys knelt and began to undo buckles about his person, and two others helped him from the boots. He stood, then, with Uwen’s help, and shed the brigandine, piece by piece. It was light armor, and lighter still the padding beneath, but the very absence of its weight was enough to send him asleep on his feet.
    â€œâ€™Ere, m’lord,” Uwen said. “You ain’t stayin’ awake. Best ye go on to your bed an’ sleep. The ladies is under guard an’ dawn’s comin’ afore ye know it. Ain’t a thing in the wide world ye can do else for anyone, but to sleep.”
    He was defeated. Drys set a cup of mulled wine in his hand, and the mere pungent smell of it sent his thoughts reeling toward the pillows and the warmed soft covers. Whatever he had tried to think of before he stood up to shed the armor went fleeting into the dark.
    â€œâ€™At’s good,” he heard Uwen say, realized he was abed, and felt Uwen draw the coverlet up over his shoulder.
    Mauryl had used to do that small kindness for him. Uwen had done it most nights, from the time Uwen had begun his service…only this summer. So quickly he had sped from youth to manhood—and missed so much, never having the ordinary things a man might know. Summer seemed long ago, an autumn ago, a winter ago. He was wiser now, and knew there were dangers in the world he had never reckoned in the summer.
    But he was not unguarded. He had Uwen. Owl was somewhere about. Emuin was awake and wary. Even knowing the quality of the guests he had brought beneath his roof he could draw himself smaller and smaller and smaller, until he could finally wrap himself up in a small dark ball of awareness, and gather to him his hard-won memories.
    For memories he did have now, not many, but vivid ones that spread themselves like shadowy curtains. He saw visions of battlefields and forest, he smelled the stone of Ynefel’s rain-swept tower, and faced Mauryl’s rain-soaked indignation.
    He met Uwen’s gray-stubbled face by evening candlelight, saying to him, “Lad, ye mean well. ’At’s worth somethin’.”
    And Emuin’s face, gray-streaked beard gone whiter and whiter at the roots, and eyes sunk deep in wells of shadow: “ Mean well, young lord? Do well, there’s the challenge!”
    He saw Owl, sitting in a leafless, ghostly tree in Marna Wood. Owl dived away and flew before him through the night, his self-appointed guide, above a white stone path that was the Road into the world.
    He saw Owl, shining with wizard-light, fly before him through an unnatural night of sorcery, amid the clash of iron and the cries of dying men.
    He saw Cefwyn, standing by a tattered banner, saying to him, “We’ve won!” as if it were true for all time.
    He curled tight against the dark, holding fast to these things that bounded the spring and summer of his single year of life, too weary to be as afraid as he ought.
    He sank so deep he saw the dark before him.
    Then, not in fear, but in sober realization of his danger, he began to travel away from that Edge, resolute instead on reaching the world, determinedly gathering up his resources. He bent all his will on opening his eyes, and on being alive.
    He lay still a moment, counting what he had brought back with him, for his dreams were not like Uwen’s dreams. Where he went in his dreams was not, perhaps, memory: he had begun to fear so, at least. He remembered not dreams, but efforts; and what he remembered of his ventures told him things.
    It told him that all the books in the archive of Henas’amef, all the accumulated wisdom of the kings and dukes of Amefel arrayed on those dusty shelves, was less knowledge of time past than what he could draw to the surface, if the Unfolding came on him again.
    But he resisted it. Perhaps that was the