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

hundred years ago, when Meiden was the friend of the Sihhë… was it that they thought of?
    Past the crossing at midtown, they gathered speed on the relatively clear cobbles and jogged briskly downhill past a last few side streets and the last few shops and trades, down to the rougher, more temporary buildings near the walls. The town’s lower gates stood open: they ordinarily did so by broad daylight; and consequently there was no delay at all to their riding out, no more concern for townsfolk and titles or the determined town dogs. The wide snowy expanse beyond the dark stone arch was freedom for a day.
    He found himself lord of a changed land as he rode out … white, white, where the brown of autumn had been, and before that, the green and gold of enchanted summer … all gone, all buried and blanketed and tucked away for the winter.
    All the knotty questions of armies and rivalries and titles and entitlements of lords fell away in broad, bright wonder, for if breath-blurred windows had shown him the surrounding fields and orchards as hazy white, the utter expanse of it had until now escaped him. There just was no cease of it. Boundaries that all summer and fall had said here is one field and here another, here a meadow, there a field … all were overlain until stone fences and sheep-hedges made no more than ridges.
    But while those grand lines had blurred, he had never, at the distance of his windows, imagined the wealth of details written in the new snow, the record of farmers’ traffic that told where men and beasts had walked hours, even days ago. The landing of a bird left traces, like marks on parchment.
    Shadows of birds, too, passed on the snow, prompting him to look up, and then to smile, for his birds flew above them, outward bound, his silly, beloved pigeons, faring out on their business, as by evening they would fly home to the towers and ledges of the fortress, looking for bread and their perches. They circled over once, and flew out ahead, seeming to have urgent business in mind … a barn, perhaps the spill of a granary door: the woods never suited them. The woods were Owl’s domain.
    â€œAre they the ones from the tower?” Crissand asked, himself looking up.
    â€œI think they are.”
    â€œDo they follow you?” Crissand asked.
    â€œThey go where they like. I don’t govern them.”
    Did his birds fly sometimes far afield, and did they sometimes meet the pigeons that nested at Ynefel?
    He was not sure, indeed, that anything lived at Ynefel. He saw them sweep a turn toward the west, indeed, away, away toward the river … and equally toward the stony hills around ruined Althalen. Ruins suited them well: they liked ledges and stonework. Certainly birds that dared nest at Ynefel, if they were the same birds, would never fear Althalen.
    â€œNothing of omen,” Crissand wondered in some anxiousness.
    â€œNo,” he said as they rode, “only birds.”
    A cloud came, passed. Many clouds came and went, and fields blazed white after shadow. Snow on bare gray apple branches made lacework of the eastern view. Moving shadows grayed the hills, and the sky was an amazing clear blue with fat wandering clouds, while the morning’s fall cast a winter glamour on common stones and roadside broom. The horses’ nostrils flared wide, their ears pricked forward in the bracing air. Their steps were willingly quick and light.
    â€œIs it the South Road we use all the way?” he asked Crissand at a certain point. He had looked at maps; but the hills were a maze of small trails, some missing from the charts, he much suspected, and he was very willing to use a shortcut and go up into the wonderful hills if Crissand knew one.
    â€œYes, my lord, south an hour,” Crissand said, “to Padys Spring. There’s an old shrine, and the village track to Levey comes in there, only over the ridge. We’ll leave the main road there.”
    Padys