“Well, I done what I can,” Uwen said, testing the motion of his arm. Uwen looked him in the face. “M’lord, take care of yourself today.”
“Take care for yourself,” Tristen said. “Promise to care for yourself, that is what you can do for me. You will know the time, Uwen, and you must take no shame in turning back: I know this is the most difficult order I could give you; but do not follow me too far.”
“Ain’t retreating before I get there, m’lord.”
Uwen had made up his mind not to listen. With curious abstraction, then, Tristen reached back into that place of white dreams and snared something of that blinding, peaceful light.
It took form in his hand, bluish-white, and he passed it to the other hand, tossing it back and forth, back and forth, a little illusion that whitened the floor and the canvas.
That was, he thought, illusion enough to frighten any Man, the simultaneity of Here and There which men did not ordinarily see.
For a moment the faint letters on the sword blazed bright.
He let the illusion go.
“Gods,” Uwen said.
“Uwen, believe me that I am capable of going where you dare not. Where you must not.”
“I’d still try, m’lord.”
“I know you would. I ask you not to. You could endanger me.
I would have to defend both of us.”
“Then I ask ye to come back, m’lord. Ye swear to me ye’re comin’ back or I’ll swear I’m goin’ behind ye, and I don’t break my given word.”
Yesterday he would have had no hesitation to swear what Uwen asked. But now every binding of him to one realm or the other seemed full of dangers. The small illusion he had 750
wielded to scare Uwen was no weapon potent against a wizard who had the skill of Shaping—and thereby of unShaping.
“Uwen,—no. I shall not swear that. I swear I shall try. But there may be frightening things, Uwen. There may be reasons you should retreat—believe them when you see them.”
“Horses is waiting, m’lord,” Uwen said. “I heard ’em come up.”
So Uwen chose to look past illusion as well—in his own way, the Edge that moved between.
“Uwen. I swear—I swear that you may call me, and also send me away. That power I give you, and I know that I have no safer guardian.”
It took a great deal to make Uwen show fear. Now he did. “I ain’t no priest, m’lord.”
“You’re a good man. You understand right and wrong so easily. I don’t. Mauryl always said I was a fool.”
“Of course ye understand,” Uwen said with an uncertain laugh.
“And ye’re the least like a fool that I know, m’lord.”
“But I swear I don’t understand such things. I haven’t lived in this world long enough to be wise. So I trust you with my going and coming. Call me only if you truly want me. Then I shall know at least one man wishes me alive. Then I might come back to the world. But think twice before you call me.”
“Now ye’re being foolish. And His Majesty would never send ye away.”
“Cefwyn has no knowledge what I might do. Nor does he have pure reasons. Yours I trust. Do not beg off, Uwen. I give you the calling of me. You cannot refuse. And if you should die, Uwen,—there would be no one to call me, would there? So you mustn’t die.”
“M’lord,—” Uwen opened and shut his mouth. “That were a clever, wicked trick.”
“Cefwyn taught me,” he said, and gathered up his Book and walked outside. The horses had indeed arrived, wearing their war-gear, Dys and Cass in black caparison that made them part of the dark.
“M’lord,” said Aswys, their trainer.
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“I’m ready,” he said, and tossed the Book into the heart of the fire.
“My lord!” Uwen exclaimed.
The pages glowed along the edges and began to turn brown, the ink still showing. And that, too, began to go.
“He shall not have it,” he said, “neither Book nor mirror.” He went to Dys, who was working at the bit and fretting in dangerous boredom. Dys’ face was masked in the metal chamfron, and nothing showed but the gloss of his eye, scarcely a hint of his nose. Tristen patted him under the neck, put his gauntlets on, and waited until he saw Cefwyn come out of his tent, with Idrys.
They had Kanwy waiting; and Idrys’ heavy horse, Kandyn. Cefwyn rose to the saddle, and Tristen took the reins from Aswys, then, and was not too proud to use the mounting-block as Cefwyn had, not wishing to have the girth skewing. He cleared the high cantle and settled, moving his leg to let Aswys recheck the girth, while Uwen got up on Cass.
Tassand brought his helm and other servants handed up his shield, while Lusin, who used a mace by preference, would ride in the second line and carry the lance for him, in their lack of mounted aides, as Syllan would carry Uwen’s. One of the boys they had acquired came bringing Uwen his gauntlets, with worship on his face—and ducked back in awed haste when Cass took a casual snap at him.
Dys usually whipped his tail about. Today it was braided and tucked for safety, and Dys moved with a flexing and rattle of the bards that protected his neck, the straps of the armor passing through the caparison. The white Star and Tower blazoned central on his black shield and barred on Uwen’s, floated in the dark, while, beyond them, Cefwyn’s Dragon banner writhed and rippled against the firelight. Further away, the Wheel and the White Horse shone out of the dark, as Umanon and Cevulirn appeared.
Ninévrisë came out of her tent, wearing her father’s mail shirt and with her father’s sword belted on; after her came her ladies, her standard-bearer, and the two Amefin lords who 752
guarded them. “Come back safely,” she said, and sent her standard-bearer to his horse.
Then she said to Cefwyn, “I would rather be on the hill. I would rather be closer.”
“If it comes this far,” Cefwyn said, “as it may, you do not fight, m’lady. You ride. My brother has excellent qualities—among them a walled town. The whole northern army will rally to him if the war goes that far.”
“You do not pass me on like a gauntlet! I shall marry you, m’lord, or ride after you!”
“The gods,” Cefwyn said, “see us all safe, m’lady.” He turned Kanwy, then, and established an easy pace down the aisle toward the edge of the camp.
“Be well,” Ninévrisë called to them as they passed. “Gods keep you! My lord of Ynefel, be safe!”
The standard-bearers, ahorse, caught up the standards, and the order established itself as the Guelen heavy horse and the Amefin fell into line, creaking of saddles, a slow, quiet thump of hooves on the trampled ground of the aisle, more and more of them as they passed their own sentries, and reached the Emwy road.
The dawn was beginning in the east; and in the west…
Even by night, that shadow was on the horizon; Tristen could see it without looking toward it in the gray world. He rode side by side with Cefwyn, westward, with only the standard-bearers in front.
With open road and a cool night, Dys wanted to move; but they had the Amefin foot to follow them—and not so far, in terms of the horses, before they should look for the Elwynim force that had crossed the bridge and rolled over Tasien’s defense.
“Aséyneddin will stay to the road,” he said to Cefwyn, when Cefwyn was about to send scouts out. “They have reason to fear Althalen—and even for Hasufin’s urging, I doubt he will risk Caswyddian’s fate. Or if he does—he will not fall on the camp without Ninévrisë knowing. Send no men by that ruin.”
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“Dare I trust all our lives on your advice? She has no defense.
Should she have no warning?”
“The camp is very well defended. The scouts you send into the ruin will not come back, m’lord. They will die if you send them. I beg you, don’t. They have no defense. We were safe.
They won’t be. The sentries are enough. Her father will protect her.”
Cefwyn drew a deep breath, started to argue, then shook his head, and sent the s
couts only to the fore, down the road. Idrys was not pleased with it. But Cefwyn did as he asked.
The next was a long ride, Dys and Kanwy walking along quietly, but Kandyn and Umanon’s horse took such exception to each other that Umanon drew off well to the side of the road.
Cass had no such animosities: he and Idrys’ horse alike were stablemates of Kanwy and Dys, and trained together. He was amiable, of his kind; but Dys, young, in his first campaign, made a constant demand for attention: he snapped and pulled at the reins, seeking to move ahead of Kanwy, which Tristen did not allow, or to the side, where he could annoy Cass. Tristen kept ahead of his intentions and refused to let him work himself into exhaustion: Dys, very much of a mind with him, seemed to sense the reason he was born was coming closer and closer, as yet unmet, untried. Dys wanted this day, too, not knowing entirely what he wanted, and keeping Dys in check kept his hands busy and his fears from having precedence: in that regard Tristen was glad of Dys’ antics, and only half-heard the converse of the other lords.
But he knew from what he did hear that, behind them, at all the speed they could safely manage, the Amefin troops were marching behind the Amefin Eagle, footsoldiers fewer in numbers than they had planned and lacking the support of archers they had planned to have, both by reason of Pelumer’s absence. And they could not go more quickly than they did for the sake of the Amefin.
The wagons would not follow today: Ninévrisë, in command of the camp since their change in plans, would 754
stand ready to strike the tents and advance to Lewenside, just the other side of Emwy, if they drove Aséyneddin in retreat—or to order the baggage burned, the horses and oxen driven off, and save herself and the men in camp if the battle went the other way and it looked as if Aséyneddin might take it. Messengers were already designated from their army to make the ride back to her, once they knew the situation that developed at the army’s approach to Emwy.
The sun was well into the sky, all the same, a gray sky, when they came near that series of ridges that preceded the turn toward Emwy-Arys.
Then in the distance a saddled horse turned up, grazing beside the road, no one in evidence. It looked up as they came, still chewing its mouthful of grass.
“One of ours,” Idrys said. “Pelanny’s horse.”
Of the rider, one of their Guelen scouts, there was no sign.
“Dead or taken,” Uwen said quietly. The horse, its master fallen, had run for its pastures, but running out its first fear, had stopped, and would wander home, Tristen thought, perhaps over days. One of their outriders, light-armed, rode over and caught the horse, freed it of the reins that might entangle it, and sent it on to their rear.
Past the next ridge, the wind picked up out of the west, into the horses’ faces. The woods came into view, lying across that small series of hills that he so well remembered. That was the woods where he had met Auld Syes. The woods of the fountain.
And the Shadow was there, plain to his eyes.
“That,” Tristen said with a chill. “That place. That’s where.”
“A place fit for ambush,” Idrys said. “I’d thought of it. If we don’t go overland, we’re bound to go through it. That’s what they plan. And overland is a maze, forest and hills. I rode through it.”
There was discussion back and forth. Umanon and Cevulirn moved their horses closer. No one wanted to venture that green shadow without sending scouts. Some argued to go 755
overland, toward Emwy, but Idrys said no, it was too rugged and made for ambush by lesser forces.
“Of which they may have several,” Cefwyn said. “Earl Aséyneddin is well served by the Sâendel.”
“Bandits,” Umanon said. “Bandits and thieves.”
“Well-armed ones,” Idrys said.
But, Tristen thought, fighting Dys’ attempt to move forward—but there was no sense in debate. There was no question, none, that it was hostile. It was fatal, if they sent a man into that. It was a risk to venture that gray place, but look he did, and it was eerie to know it vacant, very, very vacant. They had now to go forward. The lords debated other ways, but they had no choice but fight or go back to Althalen, where they were far safer for a camp under attack.
And something masked itself in that gray vacancy—as it masked something else in that distant woods. Something in the gray place was both shadow—and gray like mist, moving about where it would. Mauryl had not stopped it. Emuin had not. It was insubstance. It manifested as the wind.
That which waited in the woods—was substance, and thick beneath the leaves.
“Tristen?” he heard Cefwyn ask. But it was not a voice in the gray place, it was here, and Cefwyn’s voice held concern.
“Tristen, do you hear me?”
Something shadowy leapt at him in his distraction. Not a small something. Something that wanted to hold him, seize him, weaponless, and carry him off to Ynefel. He jumped back from it, heart pounding against his ribs, and in the world of substance, Dys kicked and pulled to be free.
All trespass into illusion had peril now. The Shadow had advanced this close, and that said to him that they would find their enemies in this world closer, too: Aséyneddin was there.
“It’s another of his fits,” said Uwen.
“No,” Tristen said, trying to shut out what was still trying to take him, holding to this place, the solid mass of horse under him. He kept his eyes open, burning the light of the world’s sky and the shadow-shapes of hills and woods into 756
his vision. Cefwyn and Uwen and Idrys were close at hand.
They willed no harm to him.
The other thing would unmake him—if it could not use him against those he least wanted to harm. Against all Mauryl’s work in the world. It wanted that undone, the barriers to its will all removed.
“Tristen.”
“No, my lord, forgive me.” It was hard to speak against the weight that crushed him, and he must hold Dys, for the horse felt the tension trembling in his legs and in his hands, and was fighting him continuously to move. Do not leave us, Cefwyn had begged him. Do not leave us. And he tried not to. He did try to keep his wits about him in this world.
“Aséyneddin is there, m’lord King. In the woods. I have no doubt.”
A shiver came over him then. He slipped into that risky place, and felt thunder in the air, like storm.
He twitched as he escaped there to here in a shock that rang through the world, but the two lords by him had never felt it: they talked on of strategy and ambush while he felt ambush in the very roots of the hills. He felt the Shadows all stir beneath the leaves of Marna Wood, but the lords talked of whether his warning meant mortal enemies, and whether they could draw attack out to them and not risk the woods.
“If they stay in that woods,” Idrys said, “they risk having it fired around them. Your grandfather would not have stuck at it.”
“These are my lady’s people,” Cefwyn said, rejecting that. “Not all of them may even be here by choice. We carry her banner with our own, master crow. No fire.”
“They are rebels,” Idrys said.
“No fire, master crow. I’ll not make war after that fashion.”
“Against wizardry, m’lord? What will our enemy stick at?
We’ll not venture in there. We’ll have them out, if they are there.”
“They are there,” Cefwyn said.
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“Tristen is here,” Idrys said. “That indeed is our certainty, m’lord King. And I do believe his warnings. It’s the advice I doubt. This haste to go blind into that.”
“He is not blind,” Cefwyn said.
Came a rush of air just above their heads. A shadow swooped over them. The horses snorted and threw their heads in startlement. But Tristen knew it with a leap of his heart.
“Owl!” he called to the wide sky. “Owl, where are you? ”
“Gods!” Uwen gasped, and men about them swore.
“Devils,” some said.
But Tristen lifted his hand to the sky an
d Owl settled on his fist, bated his great blunt wings a moment and flew again, a Shadow indeed, by broad daylight.
“Gods save us,” Cefwyn said, and Idrys muttered in his hearing. “Gods save us indeed, my lord King, but—this is our ally.”
“Well he were our ally,” Cefwyn said. “It harmed you none at all. Did it? Did it, master crow? Did it, any of us?”
“Follow Owl!” Tristen said, for Owl’s path was clear to him, as Owl’s warning was clear as a blaze across the sky: as, discovered in its ambush, a darkness of men and horses began to stream out of that line of woods ahead of them. It spread out, moving first to fill the road, and then to spread out wings beyond it, like some vast creature taking to flight.
“Aséyneddin has sprung his trap!” Umanon shouted out. “Attend the flanks, Your Majesty! He’ll want the hills!”
Likewise they needed room to spread wide—needed the flat and the hills on either side in front of that stretch of woods, and they did not yet, by reason of the trees, know how many that army was.
Kanwy struggled to be loosed. Dys pulled at the bit. All about, there was a shifting in their own ranks as a wind out of the west ripped at the standards. The standard-bearers, Cefwyn’s, his, Ninévrisë’s, all three in the center, and Umanon and Cevulirn on either hand, were advancing; but the hills had taken on an unnatural quality in the pearl-skyed noon,
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distinct in their edges, seeming cut from velvet, the trees still breathing with secrets.
“My lord!” Tristen said, reining Dys back with difficulty. “They are already in the hills, my lord—they’re there, left and right of us, where we must pass!”
Cefwyn did not question. “Cevulirn!” he said, and waved the lord of the Ivanim and his light horse toward the hills on their left. “Umanon!” Him he sent to the right flank; and dispatched a messenger to the Amefin lords at their backs. “Follow my banner,” his word to the Amefin was; and to messengers dispatched on the heels of Umanon and Cevulirn: “Sweep them east, away from the woods! We shall break their center! Do not let them close behind us!”
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