Recent Reading: Of Owls and Things
Fortress in The Eye of Time, C J Cherryh
Mauryl the Wizard, Mauryl Gestaurien, Mauryl the Kingmaker, has outlived two civilizations, but is nearing the end of his long life, and has one task yet undone. So Mauryl opts for a desperate measure, a summoning, a shaping, pulling from the mists of history the one man who can complete his task for him. And he fails. What he gets is Tristen, a man full grown, but a tabula rasa, with language, but not knowing even that flame is hot. So Mauryl starts to teach Tristen, in his solitary exile in the old keep of Ynefel, at the heart of Marna Wood, but that task yet undone was the defeat of Hasufin, once a pupil, now a sorceror, and his lifelong opponent. A century ago Mauryl banished Hasufin from his latest host body, but Hasufin is unquiet even as a spirit, knocking on the windows of the keep, and Mauryl is weaker than he was, and far weaker in the aftermath of summoning Tristen. Mauryl gives Tristen a season or so of instruction, and occasionally Words will unfold for Tristen, spilling a complex of concepts into his mind, but then Hasufin prevails, and Tristen finds himself outside the keep with only the indecipherable book Mauryl kept enjoining him to read, the company of Owl, who roosted in the attic, and instructions to follow the road that leads from Ynefel.
A road which leads him to Henas'Amef, where Crown Prince Cefwyn Marhanen, grandson of the man Mauryl raised to the Crown by destroying the last of the Sihhe dynasty, down to the last babe, reigns over Amefin, a restive frontier province with more religious ties to the Elwynnim across the river, who wait under a Lord Regent for the promised return of the Sihhe kings, than to the rest of the Guelen realm. Tristen is a literal newborn in the palace politics that surround Cefwyn, but the one thing Cefwyn needs most is a man who will be honest with him, and Tristen has never learnt to lie. Cefwyn's advisers, Idrys, captain and bodyguard, and Emuin, tutor, wise counsel, priest of a minor religion, but once, scandalously, Mauryl's pupil, are horrified. Idrys for the risk Tristen's, and Mauryl's, unknown motives represent; Emuin, for the risk of summoning back a life he thought he had fled. So Emuin flees to a monastery, and Idrys has Tristen's every move watched, assigning his care to Uwen, a grizzled and thoroughly sensible old soldier. And meanwhile the pot of Amefin politics simmers, stirred with a thorough self-interest by Heryn Aswydd, Earl of Amefin, and his twin sisters Orien and Tarien, who have connived their way into Cefwyn's bed.
But then comes rumour of incursions near Marna Wood, and Cefwyn and Tristen find themselves at the focus of a plot that brings Cefwyn's father, his thoroughly religious brother Efanor, the Elwynnim Lord Regent, and his daughter Ninevrise all bearing down on them, with war hard on their heels. Because Heryn Aswydd may think he is pulling the strings, but Hasufin is pulling his. And ultimately the safety of the realm will come down to a single question, who, really, is Tristen, and is he yet ready to unfold?
Imagine a combination of both Cherryh's Cyteen, and her Foreigner series, morphed into a fantasy setting and with Tristen playing the roles of both AE2 and Bren Cameron, and you will have the essence of the Fortress series. Tristen is an innocent, but with a history that is anything but innocent, while Cefwyn is a desperately lonely ruler who needs a friend outside of politics, and they are thrown together in Mauryl's civilizations-long struggle with Hasufin, with Tristen struggling to understand his nature, and Cefwyn to navigate the perils of political forces that predate his kingdom, never mind his reign. It's a long book (560 pages), but thoroughly worthwhile.