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

a hill. Gray haze of apple trees showed against the snow, acres of them. “These are their orchards. But the hills about here are sheep pasture … good pasture, in summer. A prosperous village, if it hadn’t lost so many men. The spring’s not far now, my lord.”
    The snow had confounded all landmarks. He knew he had ridden past this place before, but it was all strange to his eye, and no villager had stirred, here … the snow ahead of them was pure, trackless, drifted up near the rough stone walls of the orchard.
    â€œDo you hunt, my lord?” The wind picked up, and Crissand pulled up the hood of his cloak. “There’s fine hunting in the woods eastward, past the orchards. Hare and fox.”
    â€œNo,” Tristen said, flinching from the thought, the stain on the pure snow. “I prefer not.”
    None of your tallow candles, master Emuin had said. Nothing reeking of blood and slaughter. Nothing ever, if he had his way. He had seen blood enough for a lifetime.
    There was a small silence. Perhaps he had given too abrupt a refusal. Perhaps he had made Crissand ill at ease, wondering how his lord had taken offense.
    â€œYet Cook must have something for the kitchens, mustn’t she?” Tristen said, attempting to mend it. “So some will hunt. I don’t prefer it for myself.”
    â€œWhat do you favor for sport, my lord?”
    He blinked at the shifting land above Gery’s ears and tried to imagine all the fair things that filled his idle hours, a question he had asked himself when he saw laughing young men throwing dice or otherwise amusing themselves, cherishing their hounds or hawks.
    Or courting young women. He was isolate and unused to fellowship. Haplessly, foolishly, he thought of his pigeons, and the fish sleeping in the pond in the garden, and of his horses, which he valued.
    Riding was something another young man might understand, of things that pleased him.
    â€œHis Grace is apt to thinking,” Uwen said in his long silence. Uwen was wont to cover his lapses, especially when his lord had been foolish, or frightened people.
    â€œForgive me,” Tristen said on his own behalf. “I was wondering what I do favor. Riding, I think.” That was closest. So was reading, but it was rarely for pleasure, more often a quest after some troubling concept. “So long as the snow is no thicker than this, we might ride all about the hills and visit all the villages, might we not?”
    â€œSnow never comes deep before Wintertide, not in all my memory.”
    â€œAnd I had far rather wade through this than answer questions about the doors.”
    â€œAs you are lord of Amefel you may have carved what you like, and do what you like. The people do love you. So do we all, my lord, all your loyal men.”
    That rang strangely, ominously out of the air, and lightly as he knew it was meant, he felt dread grow out of it, dread of encounters, dread learned where strangers feared other strangers, and encounters were mostly unpleasant. He felt shy, and afraid of a sudden, afraid of his own power over men’s lives. He felt afraid because Crissand felt afraid of him, and it should not be so. The other lords feared him. So did the common folk. He recalled the breaking forth of Sihhë stars on doorways, the cheers in the streets. “Love?” He thought on that a moment.
    There was a small silence this time on Crissand’s side. “That you are Sihhë is no fault in their eyes.”
    â€œI am a Summoning and a Shaping,” he said with more directness of his heart than he had ever used on that matter, even with Uwen, who rode close on his other side, Crissand’s captain somewhat back in the column for a word with another man. “That I may be Sihhë seems mere afterthought to being a dead Sihhë.”
    â€œM’lord,” Uwen protested, and Crissand:
    â€œYou are our fair lord. None better. None