Fortress of Eagles by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page A

set by for harvesttide. I shall serve it up tonight, just the few of us.”
    â€œSeducer,” said his bride. Fingers touched fingers. Oh, very gladly would he have touched more.
    It was an intrigue. Everything must be, in these day of his new accession and the making of an Elwynim alliance-by-marriage.
    And she saw very clearly that it was Tristen he wished to speak to, involving neither pigeons nor the census nor the desperation that, indeed, sent him here for refuge. He saw the wolves closing on him in this latest folly and he had interests to defend.
    But it was, besides a necessity arrived upon him, also an opportunity grown all too rare, that he gather around him the truest hearts in the court. In the press and clatter of his father’s courtiers attempting to assure their influence and those who had been in less favor with his father attempting to gain from him what his father never would have given them, he had lost the peace that he had not valued when he had had it. Yes, the king would have a live wizard and a reputedly dead Sihhë-lord at his table tonight.
    The king should have things entirely to his liking at least now and again.
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    A fox traversed the hillside, a quick whisk of red and buff: Lusin noticed it first, and called Tristen’s attention to it, with the remark that all such creatures were uncommonly fine-furred this year. But that was a moment’s distraction. Uwen and the men, Lusin and the rest, had fallen to discussing Liss, the chestnut mare Uwen rode for the day. The stables had her up for sale, at a high price—and Uwen could not, would not. He refused such an extravagance on principle.
    â€œYou should buy her,” Tristen said for the hundredth time, and Uwen, who slipped Liss apples right along with those he brought for his regular mount Gia and his heavy horse Cass, said, for the hundredth time, “It’s too high, m’lord. Too high by far,—not for the mare, but for me to be spending…”
    â€œI say you should,” Tristen objected.
    â€œIt’s very good in ye, m’lord, but ’at’s household money, which I ain’t for spendin’.”
    â€œYou need another horse.”
    â€œIf I need another horse, it’s a good stout-legged gelding I’d be usin’ next spring an’ not bring Gia across the river. An’ I can wait for a foal of hers when things settle. ’T is pure folly to be buying any forty-silver mare, m’lord, the likes of me—”
    â€œA captain.”
    â€œAs ye say, m’lord, but a poor ’un.”
    â€œYou like her,” Tristen said, and true, Uwen’s hand had stolen to Liss’s neck, and his hands said yes while his look argued glum refusal.
    â€œAin’t practical,” was Uwen’s word on it. “Ain’t in the least practical.”
    The argument always came to that.
    â€œShe moves well,” Lusin said.
    â€œAye,” Uwen said, sighing, “but too fine for me.”
    And so it usually went. Uwen fell to discussing a foal from his bay mare, and her fine points, and the mileposts came. Tristen, distracted, let the conversation slip past him.
    It was not that the world in general had taken on that hollow grayness of wizardry at work. He felt no insistence of ghosts, and his perceptions stayed anchored easily and solidly to the road while the men talked of horses. All signs assured him that the world was in good order. Yet since his flight on the hilltop, his furtive peek from moment to moment into Amefel, he kept slipping just slightly toward that grayness both he and wizards could reach.
    He had begun to look for something, he knew not what, searching with an awareness dulled by doubts and distracted by colors and movement and the occasionally puzzling discussion of foal-getting around him. That gray place was wizardry, or something like it, and he was reluctant to use it. Emuin strongly warned him against it. He ought to take