Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03 by Fortress of Owls Read Free Book Online Page B

blinding white blanket on gables of the high frontages, and that glorious sight gave no room for worry.
    Traffic had worn off the snow in the streets to a little edge of soiled ice, and the brown cobbles ran with disappointingly ugly melt down that trace of sunlight, but above, about the eaves, all was glorious. The houses grown familiar to Tristen’s eye from the summer were all frosted with snow and hung with icicles, and the sunlight danced and shone on them as they rode, shutters dislodging small falls of snow and breakage of ice as they opened for townsmen to see. The cheer in the company spread to the onlookers, who waved happily at this first sight of their new lord Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
    outside the fortress walls, and in company with Amefin. Already they had encouraged high spirits.
    And, oh, the icicles… small ones, large ones, and a prodigious great one at the gable of the baker’s shop, on a street as familiar to Tristen’s sight as his own hallway atop the hill… familiar, yet he had never noticed that gable, never noticed half the nooks and crannies and overhangs of the high buildings that carried such sun-touched jewelry today.
    It seemed wondrous to him, even here in the close streets. He turned to look behind them, gazing past the ranks of ill-assorted guardsmen and cheering townsfolk as dogs yapped and gave chase. It gave him the unexpected view of the high walls and iron gates of the Zeide, all jeweled and shining as if enchantment had touched them.
    Lord Sihhë ! someone shouted out then, at which he glanced forward in dismay. Others called it out from the windows, Lord
    Sihhë and Meiden ! in high good cheer. The sound racketed through the town, and people shouted it from the street.
    Lord Sihhë indeed. That, he had not wished. The Holy Father in Guelessar would never approve that title the people gave him; and the local Quinalt patriarch, before whom he had to maintain a good appearance, was sure to get the rumor of what the people shouted. Feckless as he had been, he had learned the price words cost, and he wished he could hush those particular cries… but they did it of love, nothing ill meant, and it was all up and down the street. The old blood might be anathema to the Guelen Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
    Quinalt; but among Amefin folk, who were Bryaltines, it was honor they paid him. They shouted it in delight: Lord Sihhë and
    Meiden ! as Crissand waved happily at the onlookers, the partnership of the oldest of Amefin houses with the banner of Althalen, as it had been a 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 Fortress of Owls - C.J. Cherryh - Fortress 03
    sheep-hedges made no more than ridges.
    But while those