That
C.J. Cherryh, winner of multiple Hugo awards, should make her
home in so prosaic a place as Oklahoma seems incredible. Certainly the
woman who can create such beautifully true worlds as the one in Fortress in the
Eye of Time must live on an ethereal cusp between universes, or
some such. Yet here she resides, as real as you or me, wielding a
formidable talent that lets her imagine some of the best works the genre
has seen.
A ruined, shadowed fortress lies deep in the heart of the Marna Wood:
Ynefel, once the life-filled stronghold of the Sihhe kings, now a crumbling
castle inhabited by one man. Mauryl, centuries-old wizard, after helping the
bloody Marhanen depose the Sihhe kings, retreated to self-imposed solitude
within the walls of Ynefel, where the faces of the dead are set uneasily
in stone. It is at Ynefel that Mauryl has been fighting a battle of which
none except for one last wizard-turned-priest in all of Ylesuin is aware.
Mauryl is the last line of defense against his old student, the murdered
rogue-wizard Hasufin. Mauryl grows old and weak; Hasufin is gathering
up otherworldly strength for a final, definitive assault on the world.
Mauryl's best hope is to call forth a Shaping -- a being drawn from
air and shadow, a soul called back from death. Mauryl is a great wizard,
but cannot escape his own doubt in the last instant of the calling. Because
of his doubt, the Shaping is flawed, likely incapable of rising to the
task for which it has been called: to defeat Hasufin. So it is that
the lad called Tristen comes into the world, a young man sprung into
being in the course of a night. He knows nothing but that he wishes to
please the old man, an old man keenly aware of the shortcomings in the
most important work of his life.
Mauryl teaches Tristen -- reading, writing, the merits of staying out
of the rain and staying clothed. The ancient wizard gives the lad a
Book, bidding him read it -- only Tristen's reading the book, Mauryl
says, can forestall Mauryl leaving. No matter; Tristen cannot, for all
he tries, read the writing in the Book, and what Mauryl has said comes
to pass. Of a night, a purposeful Wind sweeps the towers of Ynefel,
the old enemy come to do battle one last time with Mauryl. Tristen's
mentor disappears, becoming another blind face in Ynefel's stone walls.
Tristen runs, following the Road as Mauryl had warned him to do. Through
Marna Wood, with only the shadow-bird Owl to keep him company on a flight
that takes him far from the only home he knows, Tristen flees.
Obediently, Tristen follows the Road. It leads him straight to the
gates of Hanas'amef, the Amefin stronghold where the royal heir of Ylesuin
is spending a year of administrative trial. The less-favored of the king's
two sons, Cefwyn has his hands quite full untangling the knotty mess
the Asswyd family has made of their accounts. The folk of Amefin bear
more goodwill to the Elwynim on their border than to the royalty of Ylesuin,
and it shows in the stonewalling the prince has encountered. Adding to
his difficulties is the sudden appearance of this enchantingly innocent
young Tristen, who is at the same time dangerously, mysteriously connected
to the wizardous Sihhe of Ylesuin's past.
Tristen and Cefwyn grow close, a problem given the current conservative
nature of the most powerful religious sect in Ylesuin. It's a problem,
too, given that the Elwynim, in whom a trace of Sihhe blood still runs,
wait for the promised return of a Sihhe king, and that the Elwynim Regent,
sonless, has offered Cefwyn the hand of his daughter in marriage to
prevent civil war in Elwynor. The Marhanen have always been suspicious
of one another, and an act of Amefin treachery brings the king to ambush in Emwy
village in Amefin. Crowned on the battlefield, grieving his father, Cefwyn
vows to find the king's murderers. As Tristen's warnings of Hasufin's
ability to move that which wants to move in the world become more clearly
true, Cefwyn will challenge tradition and orthodoxy to ally with the
Elwynim Regent against Hasufin's rebel Elwynim agents. As the world
teeters on the edge of falling to an ambitious, long-dead wizard, Tristen
will find out the truth and horror of who he really is, winning the battle
only if he can reconcile himself with that truth.
C.J. Cherryh is indisputably a fantasy master. If character is story,
Cherryh is the queen of story, for her people are believable, knowable,
and true. Once again, Cherryh portrays the almost impermeable solitude of the
individual, drawn with chilling loneliness in the earliest parts of the
novel. At once ancient and childlike, Tristen is perhaps Cherryh's most
skillfully drawn character yet. Fortress in the Eye of Time
is a triumph; what a thrill to expect more of the same from its author.