Fortress of Dragons by C. J. Cherryh

reason the Unfolding happened less often now…he feared to know. He wished not to know. Men said that he was Barrakkêth, first of the warlords of the Sihhë. But he did not know it. He refused to know it. The Book of that knowledge he had burned in fire, the night before the battle at Lewen field, but the knowledge of the Book that Barrakkêth had written he had stored away as too fearsome, too inimical to all he wished to know. Waking, he tucked that away, and carefully remade his world without that knowledge, testing every part of it, renewing his ties to those he loved. He slept seldom, and waked relieved to remember he did have Uwen, who always slept near him.
    He had Emuin. Not Mauryl. Emuin…though the width of the fortress lay between them.
    He had Cefwyn, who was his friend, though the width of a province and the distrust of all the court lay between them.
    He waked by dim daylight cast from outer windows through the archway of his bedchamber. He waked in the great bed beneath the brazen dragons of Aswydd heraldry, and recalled that these things were so.
    And in rare luxury of absolute abandon he drew deep, grateful breaths into his chest, finding everything well under his roof, even given their guests, and Orien Aswydd, who would never own this bed again, and never rest where he had slept.
    This part of the world he remade, too, and made it sure in his mind, for doubt was a breach, and doubts he refused to entertain. He was safe, abed, suffering the aches of last night’s long ride.
    His servants moved about. They needed nothing from him. Out in the yard the whole fortress had waked to life without him. The garrison had begun its drills. The town had spread open its shops and gone about its trades. The camp outside had waked, stirred its fires to life, and the tavern help from inside the walls had bustled out with hot porridge to feed the men gathered there. Far across the fields, in pens they had established for the army that would gather there, stablehands tended their charges. Down by Modeyneth men set to their day’s work on a wall he had ordered restored, and as far as the Lenúalim’s banks, soldiers watched and warded the border. All these things happened this morning without his guidance, or rather, within the compass of his care but without his oversight; and the progress of those unwatched matters reassured him that the sun reliably rose and the roof under which he slept was safe even when he let his attention fall.
    He found great pleasure in unaccustomed idleness, in fact: in the small sounds of his servants laying out breakfast for him…things also happening quite without his guidance, quite pleasantly without his orders or his will. Indeed, the bulk of things that happened would go on without him, or around him, or in spite of his cautions—and he need not govern every drawing of breath as he had grown accustomed to do since Cefwyn had set him in charge of Amefel.
    He had been giving too much, and managing too much, and overseeing far too much.
    Folly, he said to himself.
    As if Uwen, who had guided him this summer, needed his guidance now.
    As if Tassand, who had come along with him to manage his small household in campaign tents and in palaces alike, could not protect this place and manage the staff without his niggling daily concern and his abundant, constant questions.
    He lay, deliciously imagining this morning what each sound meant, as he had seen them do the tasks scores of times.
    He imagined that Uwen would be in soon, and that Uwen would be in his ordinary gear and ready to go about his peaceful business. He knew the look of Uwen Lewen’s-son of a morning down to the gray of his hair and the freshly scrubbed look of his face…and when he rose and dressed, Uwen indeed had joined him in just such a condition, and declared he was going down to the stables and the camps as soon as they finished breakfast.
    So despite his guests, he drew a leisured