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

interest in the business of mares and foals and all the disturbing questions of life beginning—but this summer, Uwen said, and this summer remained gray to him, without detail or shape or substance. He felt afraid when he thought of it—he felt guilty at treading into that gray space that waited there—guilty at any use of the Sight he did have. Emuin had forbiden it.
    True, Ylesuin would surely have gone down to defeat by sorcery if he had not been on Lewen field at Cefwyn’s side, and if the other lords of Ylesuin preferred not to acknowledge that fact as yet, he knew in his heart that the danger to the realm was not done. Sorcery might not rear up again into the threat they had faced at the end of summer, when shadows had gathered thick and threatening under the leaves of Marna Wood. The enemies they faced in Elwynor now were only Men, not shadows, but they were still fierce enemies who might at any moment resort to wizardry to prevent a Guelen incursion into Elwynor, and the uneasiness that had assailed him on the hilltop nagged at him like a stealthy movement at the edge of his sight.
    Such ventures, free of Emuin’s witness, were rare and brief. He worried at the gray space with some furtive sense of need, for if he was distracted by the men around him now, the town toward which he was riding all but blinded him. With its noise and its strangeness, its textures, its smells, its clatter and its truths and its pretenses, it posed a barrier surer than Emuin’s prohibitions.
    He had been afraid on the hilltop. He asked himself now was there a reason for the fear, or was it only the realization of so many questions, so many, many questions about the world which would never find an answer if this year was all he was to have, and if all of the days he did have left were to be spent either sitting in his room or taking brief rides in the company of these men, on permitted roads?
    He longed for a wider freedom. In his earliest days in the world he could lose himself in the contemplation of the textures of common dust, and in such uncommon sights as Petelly’s mane, in which a yellow leaf had just now lodged. But nowadays he had questions not so much of what he saw before him as of what he did not see, or seeing, failed to comprehend. This festival to celebrate the death of the year was one. The constant company of guards against threats he knew dared not assail him was another: while what he most feared they could not so much as imagine—not the king’s men, not even Uwen, whose honesty he never doubted and who had ridden with him into the heart of shadows. Uwen’s this summer was part of it. But not all.
    Still, in this province of Guelessar he did what pleased the king and did his best to comfort his detractors. He emulated the other lords at court in speech and manners. He feigned boredom when he was near them, but he knew he never did it well…Cefwyn had told him from the beginning that he was very bad at lying. From his side, he found their malice tiresome and tedious, while he still found wonders to stare at in the sparkle of glass or the color of a lady’s skirt—and dared not.
    Ask questions of them? He dared not that, either…as, today, he would, if he dared, ask any man the same questions that he had asked Emuin, and still worried at, still unanswered: how long will this autumn last? How long will winter be? How long until the spring? And could Uwen imagine tomorrow…or next year…so easily? A man who was not a Man in the ordinary sense was by no means sure of such matters when wizards talked about the wanderings of the sun. There was so much else, so very much else that Men took for granted and seemed to foresee with such clear assurance, while that gray space Men could not reach was always waiting to draw him in, more real and more truthful than he found comfortable.
    The year, the true Year, by which Men reckoned time, would begin on Midwinter Night.