Free Fortress of Owls by C. J. Cherryh

conversational peace, and the world was incredibly fair and bright despite the grim talk of recent moments. Sunlight through the scudding, gray-bottomed clouds cast sparkling detail where it touched, random grains of snow shining like dust of pale jewels to left and to right of an untrodden road, and every hill and every copse of trees offered new beauty. Creature of a single year, he had imagined winter when it came would be deathly still, and instead he discovered it full of sparkle and motion and wonder around him, and he was warmed by unquestioning love.
    Could there be a snare in too much beauty? Could there be too much expectation of good, and too much faith?
    Could ever there be too much love?
    And could love require lies?
    He asked himself that. He had drawn Crissand once into the gray space himself, though he doubted Crissand had since ventured it on his own. He doubted, too, that Crissand had any least notion what had happened to him in that moment, or how he had found himself confronted while absent and, coatless and desperate, sent out into the snow.
    He could teach Crissand, he thought, how to reach that place where concealment was very difficult. He was sure Crissand’s gift was strong enough. But to set Crissand at liberty in that place… there were dangers in it, dangers in the gift, dangers in the wandering. Dared he believe Crissand would never venture it on his own?
    But Crissand’s attention was suddenly for a snowy ridge. He pointed to it and said, with a whitened barleyfield on the one hand and a bare-limbed apple orchard on the other, that they were coming to the crossroads.
    â€œThere is Padys Ridge, and the shrine and the spring just below it.”
    A very old oak, winter-bare, fronted that ancient outcrop, sole wild representative of his kind in an otherwise tame land of orchards and small, pruned trees. Just beyond it, still within the reach of its limbs, snow-covered, was the slight evidence of a road.
    â€œThere’s our turn to Levey, my lord.”
    â€œBanners!” Uwen ordered, as they turned onto that track beside the oak, and the banners, dark and bright, unfurled.
    Crissand had said there was a shrine of sorts. Indeed, with the scouring of the morning’s wind, a small pile of man-set stones was peeping out from its snow blanket. It recalled one near Emwy village far to the west. That had been summer. The spring here was frozen where it flowed out of the natural rock, and had made a glorious mass of icicles.
    â€œPadys Spring and the shrine, my lord. One of the last of the old places. The king’s men overthrew most, wherever they found them. I ask you’ll keep it. The village sets great store by it.”
    â€œA shrine of the Bryalt?” he asked, largely ignorant of gods, study as he would in Efanor’s little book.
    â€œPerhaps older, my lord. Though Bryalt offerings may turn up here, the king’s law and the Quinalt notwithstanding.” Crissand spoke in the hearing of Guelenmen, in Uwen’s hearing most of all, and was surely aware it. “We go uphill from here, a clear, smooth road, as I recall it, no ditches or pits to fear on either side.”
    No track disturbing the snow since the last snowfall, either, but the blanket sank down considerably in a long line through the ridge, showing where the road was, and the stone sheep walls on either side, visible ahead of them, confirmed it. They rode past old stones, and many of the Guelenmen made a small sign against harm.
    â€œThe farmer folk are staunch Bryaltine,” Crissand began to say as they rode past.
    But just as they passed under the spreading branches of the oak a fierce gust of wind blew past them, driving the banners sideways and startling the horses with a pelting of snow from laden branches.

CHAPTER 2
    G ods!” Crissand said in dismay, and reined up sharply … for an old woman stood by the shrine, so gray and brown in her shawl and skirts she might have been