Fortress in the Eye of Time

CHAPTER 26

Sullen, dejected men rose from their seats near the one tent of a fireless camp to lay hands on weapons and stare as, through the deep dusk, Tristen led Petelly in, with the archers walking behind him. Besides the tent, he saw the wagon to carry it, and some number of horses grazing within the ruined wall which surrounded the small camp, a ground with pavings here or there breaking surface amid the trampled grasses: it was some former room, or hall, and of men there were thirty or so, hardly more.

“Whatʼs this?” a man confronted them to ask.

“Mʼlord,” the older of the archers said, “mʼlord, he came unarmed. He claims to be Cefwynʼs man.”

“A bedraggled sort of emissary. And no attendant? No ring, no seal? A scout, far more likely. Where did you find him?”

The archers gave a quick and slightly muddled explanation, how he had come walking up to their post, how he had not argued with the request to go with them.

The man was not convinced. “And what do you have to say for yourself?”

“Sir,” he said, “I am Cefwynʼs friend, and Iʼm fully willing to carry messages to him.” He did not add that they were strangers in Cefwynʼs land, and that, absent the weapons, he should most properly be asking them the questions about their intentions and their right to be where they were. “But I came to speak to your lord.”

The man said nothing to his offer, nothing at all, as he turned and went away into the only tent, a tent improbably pitched, its guy-ropes running to the ruined walls, and its pegs driven into earth where they had pried up paving-stones to accommodate them. The Elwynim had been at some great pains to set their tent here, when there was far softer, deeper soil just across the ruined half wall. He found it curious and significant that they had been thus determined to have it inside rather than outside the walls. Lines on the earth, Tristen thought. Someone here knew.

And if the Regent of Elwynor was camped at Althalen, he might well be the one who had killed Cefwynʼs father — and he might be the very lord of the Elwynim with whom Heryn Aswydd had conspired, which cast an even more unpleasant light on the situation.

Of all troubles he had gotten into and of all mistakes he had made, he said to himself, falling into the hands of the Elwynim might be the worst and the most costly to Cefwyn, although so far he could not complain of his treatment. By the archersʼ general behavior they were honest men, well-spoken, and not, at least, bandits who fired from hiding and without asking.

The men otherwise stared and talked among themselves and did not venture closer or threaten him. He was wearing Cefwynʼs cloak, with the Marhanen Dragon plain to see: that was one cause of the talk; and he was equally aware of the coat beneath it, which had the Sihhë arms, not plain to see at the moment, but there was no hope of pretending to be other than what he was, and he did not intend to try, thinking it could only make matters worse if he seemed to deceive them.

Finally the man came back out of the tent and beckoned him to come inside, or for someone to bring him, he was by no means certain. He went of his own volition and the archers walked behind him, into an interior warm, lit by oil lamps and partitioned by curtains, one of which was folded back.

He had expected a vigorous and powerful lord — but the two lords present were attending an elderly man who lay on a cot against the back wall of the tent: two other men stood by, guards, or servants; and a dark-haired woman was kneeling by the old manʼs side, holding his hand.

“My lady,” said the lord who had summoned him.

The woman glanced around and up. He saw painted ivory, a cloud of dark hair, a crown of violet flowers — and in the selfsame moment he saw on the cot the round, kindly-looking man who had reached for his hand through the light and the advancing shadow.

This was not a wounded leader of soldiers. This was an old man who should be safe under a roof, not out in the elements, and on the wrong side of the river.

And he had not strayed amiss in his riding. He had found the object of his search after answers — he had by no means known what he was looking for, and least of all that he was looking for the Regent of Elwynor; but he had found him all the same, and on an impulse of the heart moved toward him in this world of substance and that of Shadows.

The men behind him pulled him roughly back. The clasp at his neck parted, and the hard-used cloak came off and fell.

“Marhanen,” the young woman said angrily, and then looked up at him. “Oh, dear gods!”

It was his black coat, ruined as it was, with the Sihhë arms embroidered in silver thread.

“Sihhë,” exclaimed the man on the cot. “I hoped, I did hope.”

The old manʼs eyes had opened. The look on his face was the same he had had in the gray light, a man of such uncalculated kindness, such affable, cheerful goodness that Tristen wanted at once to take the old manʼs hand and draw him back from the dark brink that threatened him. On that thought, gray was suddenly all about them, but the soldiers moved to prevent their touching, although the old man, in this world and that other, reached out his hand.

The woman intervened, caught the old manʼs hand instead and pressed it to her. “Father. Father, do you hear me?”

“He—” the old man said, with the gray light of the other world streaming past his shoulders. Tristen could scarcely get his breath, the urgency of that request was so intense, and the shadows were forming patterns in the light, seeming like faces gathered about them, listening. “Lord of Ynefel. Who are you? Who are you?”

It was the very question Hasufin had asked him in seeking power over him. It was the central question about himself that he could not answer and that Hasufin could not answer. But he had had no fear of this man, on what evidence he did not know, but that his presence in the gray place was most like Emuin, and not at all like the enemy.

“My name is Tristen, sir. I was Maurylʼs student. And lord of Ynefel, yes, sir, I am, so Cefwyn says.”

“Cefwyn,” the daughter said, and clenched her fatherʼs hand tightly, tightly, trying to compel his hearing. “Papa, no more. Send him away. Itʼs too late for Marhanen tricks. This is no one. Look at him! Heʼs all draggled and muddy from last nightʼs rain. Heʼs just a man, Father, just a man.”

“Lord of Ynefel,” the old man echoed him, seeming to hear nothing of his daughterʼs protest. “Are you? Are you in fact Maurylʼs successor in the tower?”

“I suppose I am, sir. But Hasufin holds the tower, so far as I know.”

“Hasufin.” The old man struggled up on an elbow. “Look at me, young sir. Look at me!”

“Father.” The young woman interposed her hands. “Tasien, he mustnʼt tire himself. Take this man away from him!”

“I am still Regent,” the old man said, in a voice that trembled. “Lord of Ynefel, I know you, do I not? Did I not meet you just now?”

“He dreams,” the daughter said, but Tristen said quietly, wary of the angers and the grief running wild in the close confines, “Yes, sir. You did. You helped me. Dare I try now to help you?”

“You cannot draw me from this brink,” the man said faintly. “Far too dangerous to try. But I hoped for you. Oh, gods, I hoped — hoped you existed. I dared not believe it. I feared it gave the enemy purchase on us all.”

“My father is ill!” the daughter said bitterly. “He is in no state for this. — Father, please, send him away. These are all dreams. Theyʼre only dreams. Cefwynʼs scouts have found us, that is all this proves. We have to move from here as soon as we can.”

“No. Not dreams. Not dreams, daughter. No more than it was dreams that brought us here. Hasufinʼs tomb. Hasufinʼs burial-place. So that I do battle with him — I must not leave here. I must never leave here!”

“Hasufin is dead!” the daughter cried. “He is dead, Father, Mauryl saw to that here in this very hall. You dream, you only dream. And the Marhanen dares send us this mockery. I will not marry him, Father! I shall never marry him!”

The Regentʼs white hand lifted, trembling, and smoothed back the hair that fell about her face. “Daughter, but you see, you see, Iʼm not mad. Is it not the Star and Tower?”

“Wrapped in the Marhanen Dragon. This man is nothing but Amefin — even black Guelen, for all we know—”

“No, the rumors — the rumors — are all true. And this is their evidence. Look at him, indeed.” The Regent lay back on the pillows. “Maurylʼs student. But not only Maurylʼs heir. You are — Maurylʼs. Are you not?”

“They say so, sir. Master Emuin said—”

“Emuin the traitor,” Tasien said.

“Let him speak!” the Regent said. “Go on, my lord Sihhë. Where have you lived? Where have you hidden from us?”

“With Mauryl. Then Hasufin came and took the balconies down. He put Mauryl into the stones, sir.”

“He knows,” the Regent exclaimed. Breath was coming hard for him. His eyes wandered from one to the other face hovering near him. “You see, he does know. He was there, just now, in my dream, — were you not, Lord of Ynefel? You drove Hasufin away!”

“I think it was quite the other way, sir. He fled when you appeared.”

“He fled you, young King! I dared tread further then, to find you. Oh, gods, Iʼve found you, Majesty. I have found you!”

“Take him out!” the daughter cried, and men seized him by the arms to hasten him away, but the old man cried out, “No!” and motion ceased.

“I am Uleman Syrillas,” the old man said. “I am Regent till I die. And I have waited — I have waited all my life for my King. Are you not that King, Lord Sihhë?”

“Mauryl never said I was a king. Mauryl said I was not all he wanted.” He saw the dark closing about the man and tried to see only the gray light. He fought for it, desperately insisting to see it. “But when Hasufin came Mauryl knew I couldnʼt help him. He said I was to leave Ynefel and follow the Road. And the Road led me to Cefwyn. But I think it led me here, too.”

“Mauryl called him,” the old man said. It was scarcely a voice. “Ninévrisë, daughter, do you hear? Mauryl called him, and he has the Sihhë gift. I see him clearly in the light. I see him. He shines — look, look at him! He shines!”

“Father,” the woman said. “Father? — Tasien, please, please, take him out! Heʼs making him worse! He dreams. He doesnʼt know—”

He wished to take the old manʼs hand. He thought he could hold him. The old man was all in shadow now. He reached, and the guards held him by force.

“Heʼs fading,” the one man said, looking at the Regentʼs face; and the archer at Tristenʼs ear said in a low voice, “Just you come along, Lord Sihhë or whatever you are, sir. You come along gently, now. Weʼll find you somewhere to sit, something to drink, anything you like.”

They were afraid of him, and of their lordʼs illness, and had no choice but to do what the lady said.

“You granted her Amefel?”

It was very rare that one took Idrys entirely aback.

Cefwyn shook his head and started down the steps to the lower hall, Idrys in close accompaniment, with the other guards. “I see no other course. The lesser lords are all a tangle of Amefin allegiances we do not understand, of blood-relations, disputes of inheritance, jealousies and feuds, one district against another. Worse than a united Amefel is one fragmenting under us in civil strife, with this business on the border. The lady, of course, well knows that point.”

“Why not add Amefel to the grant of Ynefel?” Idrys muttered as they went down the stairs, banquet-bound.

“I did consider that. But Tristenʼs off chasing moonbeams and Orien asked so prettily.”

“You jest in both, I hope, Your Majesty.”

“What? That she asked politely? — A basilisk, seeing that woman, would seek thicker cover. But I have a sure hold on her. When she weds, her title in Ylesuin passes to her husband, whatever the Amefin hold to be the case. I swear if she crosses me once, Iʼll give her one whoʼll cut her throat if she crosses me or him. Sovrag, perhaps. There would be a match.”

“Take my advice and unsay this thing.”

“I am looking for any excuse, I confess it.”

They came down together into the lower corridor, and, by the back door, in among the lords gathering and milling about in the Ivory Hall. The herald required attention, the lords bowed and swept a path before him, a storm going through a field, more rapidly than recent habit — it was his dour countenance, Cefwyn thought, and, facing the lords, he tried to better that expression. He took his chair at table, in a room that smelled of food and ale waiting to be served. He still found his appetite lacking, not alone by reason of the Aswyddim: the leg was swelling again, and he looked askance at the food as pages and cooksʼ helpers carried in two of the four meat courses, braided breads, dark beer, southern wine, and strong ale. There would be six cheeses, favoring the southern provinces, summer cabbage and sausages, pickled apples, broad beans and buttered turnips, green herbs and peas and pickled eggs. He did not favor the delicate fare of the east and north. He had a peasantʼs taste for turnips and cabbage and inflicted it on the court — the King could decree such things. The Amefin lords held out for partridge stuffed with raisins and apricots — which he had ordered to please them and Umanon, who tended to such luxury; Cevulirn particularly favored the pickled apples, and figs from the southern Isles; Pelumer had a fondness for the famed partridge pies, and Sovrag for ham and sausages: cook had searched out their several weaknesses, and was under orders to keep them content.

While Efanor and his Quinalt priest dined by choice on Llymaryn beef and the locally disdained mutton; and Duke Sulriggan of Llymaryn — who had ridden in this afternoon with said priest, two cousins, six men-at-arms, twenty-nine stable-bred horses for which they had no stalls, and a useless handful of servants and grooms who had already antagonized master Hamanʼs staff — claimed distempers gained of an excess of red meat and brought his own supplies, his own cook, his own pots. Doubtless Duke Sulriggan was surprised to find Efanor not in possession of the province, and Efanorʼs brother not in disfavor, but King.

The priest and Prince Efanor had closeted themselves in the Quinalt shrine for three hours of prayers and gods knew what excesses of mourning. Sulriggan had attached himself to the affair and there had been some sharp words between the priest and the local prelate over some niggling purchase of oil in unblessed jars.

Sulrigganʼs cook prepared separate fare for Sulriggan and his Llymarish attendants under a canvas in the courtyard: small wonder, that self-established exile, considering the ire of the spurned Amefin-bred cook. It was fear of poisons, he was certain, that underlay Sulrigganʼs pretensions of a delicate stomach, but murder all the southern lords at once? Annas was there, supervising all details, his defense in the kitchens, far more gracious than Sulriggan. Sulriggan perhaps suspected him. And did the offended Amefin aspire to poison Sulriggan and his supercilious cook and his high-handed servants — the King could willingly turn a blind eye if they only warned him of the dish involved.

The partridge pies and the bread and cheese found instant favor. So did the dark beer and the ale and two sorts of wine.

Another arrival — the King set his chin on fist, and stared with basilisk coldness of his own.

Late — and dramatic — came Her red-haired Grace, Lady Orien, not considered in the culinary selections, but, then, her tastes were wide. Her coming, with the first course served, startled the barons, who went from the pleasantry of ale and men deep in masculine converse, to stark silence, to a lower murmur in the hall, an assessment, an account-taking, even among the Amefin lords present and the servants about the edges of the hall.

She wore dark green velvet, the Amefin color, and had a bit of funereal black knotted about her right shoulder, like a man; more, she had cut her red hair shoulder-length, like a manʼs. That despoilment shocked him as nothing else Orien had done. And the mourning — which by tradition of Selwyn Marhanen no Marhanen King wore — was a direct and silent insult, worn into this hall, at this time, in Herynʼs cause.

There were two empty places, Herynʼs being one, and she went to it, an empty seat at Efanorʼs left, the place of the host province in council, court and feast-hall. Her eyes should have been downcast: they were not. She stared round at each of the lords in turn as if measuring them as she spread her skirts and took that place.

“Her Grace Orien Aswydd will swear fealty in her brotherʼs place,” Cefwyn said in a low voice. “She is my ward; her sister and her cousins will soon depart this court under my extreme displeasure. Amefel is under Crown protection, until Her Grace has a man by her. Or perhaps,” he added, looking askance at her shorn hair, “she will take up the sword in her own defense.”

“I rule,” she said in a voice startlingly level, “until I also meet the Marhanenʼs displeasure.”

“You are never far from it,” he muttered, which was doubtless heard at the nearer seats, and he hoped that it was. “Your health, my lords. Discuss no policy; Lady Orien will retire after dinner, by my order, and then we may deal among ourselves.”

There was, then, a marked scarcity of topics for conversation; it drifted, through the various courses, from a discussion of the relative merits of Amefin and Guelen wines, to the breeding of Cevulirnʼs horses versus Sulrigganʼs, and finally to the hunt, the latter discussion spirited and the gathering good-natured, until it came down to discussion of districts and game.

Then Orienʼs voice cut through, soft and high. “I wonder how the hunting might be in Lanfarnesse,” Orien said, “since you border Marna, Lord Pelumer. Do you see odd things come from there? — Where is the lord of Ynefel this evening? I had rather looked to see him.”

Cefwyn struck his cup sharply with his knife, choosing not to have the public scene Orien clearly wanted. “We have business to settle. Clear the tables. Lady Orien, your guards will conduct you. Your interests will be represented here for you.”

She did not rise. “I am competent to represent my own, Your Majesty.”

“Then I tell you bluntly that you are still under arrest, and your removal from this council now is for suspicion of your character, not your competence. Must my guards lay hands on you? They will.”

“My lord King.” She rose, pushed back her chair, dropped a deep curtsy, and strode off, her guards moving to overtake her, a long progress toward the farthest door.

Idrys closed the doors and returned to stand at Cefwynʼs shoulder.

“My lords,” Cefwyn said. “You have been patient to remain under hardship of absence from your own lands. Your grace and favor will be remembered throughout my reign. I am about to ask more of you…that you stay while the northern barons come in for their oath-giving — which means staying during harvest-season. I know the hardship. But for the stability of the realm, and in view of the foreign threat, — I ask you to stay.”

“My lord King,” murmured Umanon, “it is in our interests to remain, if that is the case.”

“But,” said Sulriggan, “will Your Majesty not return to the capital?”

“Youʼve not been informed, then.”

It was not the answer Sulriggan had wanted. It set him down. It gave him no ready point of argument.

“No, Your Majesty, I have not.”

“My father was murdered. Murdered, sir. I am not done with investigations, and by the gods, no, I do not go to the capital when the evidence is here.”

Sulriggan said, prudently, whatever the argument he had devised, “I beg Your Majestyʼs pardon.”

“But what,” Sovrag broke in, “is this Aswydd woman about? Going as a page?” Sovrag had made a joke. He elbowed his fellow Olmernman in the ribs. “Iʼd take ʼer. And ʼer sister.”

“I decline to know what Lady Aswydd does, save she risks excessively. Our patience has its limits.” He was conscious of the lesser Amefin lords at the lower table, their lordʼs head, lately removed from the south gate, rejoined to his body in the Bryalt shrine along with the remains of two earls and their relatives. Three of the remaining earls were in bitter dispute of the Aswydd kingship that went back into the aethelings of the years of Sihhë rule: he had already heard the stirrings of restless lords, and Annas, who kept careful watch over protocols, had noted new pretensions in three lately received expressions of loyalty to the Crown. Each was petitioning the Marhanen King for honors they claimed had been unjustly denied by the Aswyddim, and which Annas warned him might imply fitness to be Duke of Amefel. Granting any one of them would incite the people to believe such a move was pending. And now came this entrance into hall, a brave show from Orien Aswydd, a provocation that could not but set her brotherʼs former vassals to thinking each that he might make good those claims and take Herynʼs place if he proved a better man than Orien — as Orien evidently thought unlikely.

She was aetheling, meaning royal blood of the old Amefin line came through her. No matter the ancient claims of the earls, legitimacy came through her — for any Amefin earl who could marry her and get children; while the King of Ylesuin and all his horsemen dared not affront so sensitively poised a border province by humiliating the Amefin nobility, meaning that he dared not vent his frustration. Much as he wished to bestow Orien on Sovrag exactly as Sovrag said (and that had been a dangerous remark of Sovragʼs which thank the gods had not carried to the lower tables) he could not do so. What was now a simmering pot of intrigue would boil over in an instant.

“So,” he said, “regarding the matters we have to deal with, and the safety of lives and livestock on this border — no, I shall not return to the capital until I can bring my father home in good conscience. Prince Efanor will go to the capital if there is urgent need, but for now and until matters are settled I need him more as my right hand on this border. I shall not encourage all the court to assemble here. I shall come to the capital in good time, I hope before the winter. As for those of you remaining to defend the border, I realize your responsibilities elsewhere at this season, and wherein the Crown can assist you we shall most gladly consider your specific requests.” He snapped his fingers and Idrys obtained the charts that he had brought down. He rose as Idrys spread them on a clear space on the high table and other lords rose with a scraping of chairs to gather around.

It all but covered the beginnings of a commotion, an altercation against the very doors of the hall. It shocked the company to silence, hands reaching for dinner knives.

And it had an Olmern accent.

“Bridges,” one voice shouted, penetrating the doors. “Mʼlord sent to know, and theyʼre deckinʼ bridges. We seen ʼem up anʼ down the damn river.”

The gray light came all laced with Shadows, now, fingers and threads of darkness weaving all about the horizon, coming near the old man, try as Tristen would to chase them. Tristen sat where the guards had bidden him sit, on the low wall that surrounded the camp. The horses were eating hay at the end of that wall, Petelly among them and, nearer the tent that sat spiderlike in its web of ropes at the heart of this strange and cheerless camp, men sat on stones that lay out across the old pavings. They sat, shoulders hunched, heads bowed together, speaking in voices he could not hear.

He was aware of the sinking of the sun and the gathering of the true night in the world. Now came the dangerous time, when Shadows were strong, but he was determined to hold them until the dawn. He had discovered a power in himself to dismiss certain Shadows, although he knew no Words to speak and he had nothing but his presence and his refusal to let the Shadows have the old man. One would creep close, and he would face it in that gray place, and challenge it merely with his presence — then it would retreat. But there were very many of them, whatever they were, and so long as he was wary and quick enough he could frighten them singly back before they could combine into a broad, fast-moving Shadow that could threaten the old man.

But he was slowly losing. He knew that he was. So was the old man. There were more and more threads. It would have been easier if he could have held him, clung to his hand, made one defense of the two of them. He was tiring. His efforts raised a sweat despite the cold of the world of substance. He hoped, though, that if he could last until the dawn, if the old man seemed better—

Then someone said, very close to him,

“Here! Whatʼs he doing?”

“Heʼs been like that,” one said, and someone drew a sword, a sound that rasped through his hearing with cold familiarity. Metal touched him, a shock like a burning fire, but when he blinked and saw it, the sword had done him no harm. The man had only laid its edge along his hand.

“Mʼlord, mʼlord, be careful of ʼim. The Regent said he might be Sihhë for real and all. That he might even be the King. We was only to watch ʼim.”

“The Regent says. And what says Tasien?”

“Donʼt know, mʼlord. Some around the fire say as heʼs Lanfarnesse, but the Regent said as he is Sihhë for a fact, mʼlord, and ordered us to keep ʼim close, and we donʼt do ʼim no disrespect ʼere, mʼlord, please.”

“Some damned Quinalt praying curses on the lord Regent,” another man said. “Thatʼs what he is. A Sihhë come wrapped in a Dragonʼs cloak! Not likely, say I.”

They were all shadows to him in the dark, discussing his provenance and his purpose here, which ought to concern him — but in that gray light from which they had called him the Shadows were multiplying so quickly he dared not spare his thoughts for them: he went back. The old man was losing ground quickly. The Shadows had combined into skeins and ropes: they had grown reckless — until he faced them. Then they rapidly unwove. They became threads again, and tried new tricks to get behind him.

But now the lord Regent turned toward the attack. The old man knew a Word, and spoke it, but he could not hear it, as he had never been able to hear Maurylʼs Words when there was magic about them.

The old man was a wizard, he knew that here quite clearly, but no one else had seemed to know it. He liked the old man in that reasonless, trusting way he had liked Mauryl and Emuin. When the old man, exhausted now, beckoned him close, he longed to go — but it seemed to him that in this respite from the Shadows the old man had gained for them both, he would do better to stand and drive the Shadows back.

— Come closer, the old man said. Come closer, Majesty. Forget them. Theyʼre small threat to me now. Let me see you. Let me touch you.

— Sir, he said, I might win. Let me try, first.

— No. The old man had grown very weak, and caught his hand in a grip he might have broken. But it was not the strength of that hand that held him, it was the expression, the same gentle, kindly expression that had ensnared him when first they met.

— You are the one. You are what Mauryl promised. I doubted. Forgive my doubt.

— Sir, he said, I am not as wise as Mauryl wished, nor as strong as Mauryl wished. But I do learn. I am learning, sir.

The old man laughed through his tears, and pressed his hand, and laughed again. I warrant you are, that. And Hasufin trembles. I warrant he does. Learning! I had not expected a brave young man. I expected someone furtive, and hidden and wary. Even cruel. But, oh, there you are, there you are, my dear boy! Bright and brave as you are, whatever you will be, you are my King, you are what weʼve waited for — you are all of Maurylʼs promise.

— But what shall I do, sir? Mauryl never told me what I was to do for him. Can you teach me?

— Teach you, my King? Oh, gods, what first? — First, first and always, beware Hasufinʼs tricks. He will use your hopes as well as your fears. He will trade you dreams for dreams. Let me tell you — he came to me in my dreams, oh, years and years ago. He promised me visions, and before I could break away I saw Ynefel, and Mauryl.

— You knew Mauryl, sir?

— Never in the flesh. And not before this. But I knew him, the way one knows things in dreams. I saw Mauryl old and alone, tired and powerless. It troubled me for days. I feared to go back, and I could not, in the end, forbear listening to Hasufin disparage my hopes, and warn me of my own lords, and tell me true things — mark you, true things about their plots — which I think now he engendered. I began to doubt the goodness of the men I ruled, and my doubts changed them. I asked myself whether there was any hope of a King and whether I should not take the crown for myself and forestall the plotters against the Regency. My doubts, my precautions, estranged the very people who should have stood by me. That was how Hasufin found purchase on my life. That was how he pried apart the allegiances that supported me. I became unjust in my own heart. Donʼt disbelieve your friends, young King. Never go dream-wandering with him. You dare not. And I know that he will invite you.

— I hear you, sir. I do hear. But you withstood Hasufin. You fought him.

— Oh, yes. But came the time I would not follow down his trail of questions and doubts. I said to myself — no, I need no more visions: my foresters would go to Ynefel and see what was the truth. But my foresters lost themselves in Marna and never came back. So after all I had only my doubts to keep me company; and I bartered with Hasufin. I said — take a year of my life, Iʼd see Ynefel again — if he would let me ask Mauryl two questions. He showed me the tower. I thought I was so clever. I asked Mauryl in this dream: Lord Wizard, when will you keep your promise? And Mauryl was angry, because he knew at once how and with what help I had come there. He told me the price was far too dear. But I asked my question, all the same: I asked him when heʼd keep his promise, and I asked him how I should recover my faith; and he said only, I shall keep it when I will, and when I must, no sooner. As for your faith, it matters not to me. After that the dream stopped. All the dreams stopped. But after all that, I was never sure even of that answer, you see, because it was Hasufinʼs magic that had taken me there, and Hasufinʼs voice that whispered ever afterward in my dreams. I lost all certainty, that was what it did to me. Mauryl was right, that my faith was my affair. My faith was that you would not come in my lifetime, no more than in my fatherʼs. My faith was that I should die sonless — and I shall; Hasufin foretold to me that Elwynor should be thrown into civil war when I die — and I had faith in that. So two of my lords have raised armies, and now a third bids to do so — all demanding my daughter so that they dare claim my place. In desperation I sent even to the Marhanen, as my last hope to secure my daughterʼs safety and to preserve the realm against a Marhanen conquest by arms. I hoped — I hoped — he would come here—

The Regentʼs voice faded. — Sir? Tristen called to him, and took a firmer grip on his hand, which became like gossamer in his, and impossible to feel. Lord Regent, what will you? What shall I do for you?

— I must not become a bridge for Hasufin to any other place. I listened to him too long, you understand, and I fear — I fear he will lay hold on me. For that reason I came here. I must be buried here in Althalen, where Hasufin is buried. I came here to fight him — on ground sacred to him. Make them understand. Make my daughter understand—

— Sir! The old man slipped from his hold. He reached out, and the old man caught his hand again, but oh, so weakly.

Then it seemed to him he saw Althalen standing as it had once stood, and that years reeled past them, or that they spun together through the years.

— Listen now, the old man said, compelling his attention. Listen. In my fatherʼs time, in the reign of the Last Kingʼs father, an infant died; and came alive again when they came to bury him. Do you know that story?

— No, lord Regent. Shadow had wrapped close about them both and the old man seemed dimmed by it, sent into grays — but his own hands blazed bright.

— Hasufin could not do for himself what Mauryl did for you. Hasufin could only steal the helpless, infant dead, and grow as a child grows — but you — you are a marvelous piece of work, a theft from Death itself, flesh and bone long since gone to dust — Oh, gods! Oh, gods! — Oh, gods protect us! I know you! You are not that lost, dead prince — you are not. I do guess what Mauryl has called!

— What is my name, sir? Who was I? — Tell me! Donʼt leave!

But the old man broke free of his hold and the Shadows drew back in turmoil. The old man blazed bright, held his hand uplifted and said a Name he could not hear, a Name that went echoing out into echoes the sounds of which he could not untangle, and for an instant he feared the old man had deceived him about his strength: the old man was fearsome, and blinding bright.

— Most of all—the old man said, do not fail in justice, lord King! Love as you can, forgive as you can, but justice and vision are a kingʼs great duties! Never forget it!

The Shadows began to circle in like birds, alighting about them, thicker and thicker — bad behavior, he would chide his pigeons in the loft. He would chase them like pigeons — he would call on Owl and rescue the old man—

“You!” someone said, and seized his arm and shook him. “You! — This is wizardry! Stop him! Someone for the godsʼ sake stop him!”

He looked up, startled, exchanging the rush of Shadows for surrounding night and a murmur of angry voices about him. “Guard the old man!” he called out to anyone who would hear. “Heʼs in danger! Help him!”

He could not tell if they understood at all. He heard voices declaring he had worked some harm on their lord, and some spoke for killing him.

Lines on the earth, Mauryl had said. Spirits had to respect them.

Windows, Mauryl had said to him, windows and doors were special places. Mauryl had spoken of secrets that masons knew. And masons had built these ruins. When he looked for other lines, those lines showed themselves, still bright in the gray space, clear as clear could be, glowing brighter and brighter to his searching for them. He saw one crossing beneath him as he began to follow the tracery they offered, lines far more potent than the hasty circle unskilled Men had made, lines of masons offering him a path along them, to doors and windows that masons had laid.

But search as he would through this maze, he could not find the old man. There were abundant Shadows, flitting about in confusion, and he could see nothing but the lines, nothing of company in his vicinity. He had never asked the old man what the Shadows were, and it seemed now a grievous omission. He called out again, Lord Regent! Do you hear me?

He heard a murmur then like the sound of voices. He looked back in the direction from which he had come and did not see the place he had left until he looked for it to be there. And in the blink of an eye — he was overwhelmed and buffeted with voices, and tried to know where the old man was, here, as well as in the gray place.

— Where is the lord Regent? he asked, and there came to him, echoing like the axe blows off the walls, the answer: Dead, dead, dead.

“Wizard!” Voices came through the dark. “He killed him! He bewitched him!”

Then one shouted,

“Send Cefwynʼs man with the lord Regent!”

“Hold!” someone cried then, and silence fell.

It was the man called Tasien, with two other lords.

“He killed the Regent!” a man said. “Ye didnʼt see ʼis eyes, mʼlord. He was sittinʼ and sittinʼ and starinʼ like to turn a man to stone. Heʼs cursed him. Kill ʼim before he kills us all!”

“The lord Regent is scant moments dead,” Tasien said. “For the godsʼ good grace, do your lady the courtesy of awaiting her orders.”

“Wrapped in Marhanen arms,” one of the lords said. “A wizard, besides, and have we not suffered enough from wizards? Strike off his head! This is no king of ours. Itʼs a Marhanen trick!”

It was clearly his head in question, and he knew he must do something desperate if it came to that, but Tasien — Tasien, who did not like him — said, “Wait for the ladyʼs word. Keep this man safe, I say, or answer to me.”

Tasien and two other men went away toward the tent, and left him in the care of the others in the starlight. He only knew individuals by the edges of their clothing and their gear. They had no faces to him. They spoke to him in quieter, more respectful terms: “Lord,” they called him, and said, “You sit there, lord wizard,” directing him to sit again on a section of the old wall, under their watch.

He saw no gain in arguing with them. He had had experience of guards who had orders, and he avoided looking at them — nor did he venture into the gray place: he only remained subtly aware of it.

But the Shadows had gotten their comeuppance, that was one of Uwenʼs words: he felt that the old man was safe in some unassailable way, and had crossed a threshold of some Line invisible to him and unreachable. The old man had not lost. And perhaps, he thought, this time with a tingle of his skin and an inrush of breath, perhaps Mauryl had not.

Perhaps he had come where he had to be, and perhaps he had not failed, either. He no more knew where to go from here, and how to persuade the Regentʼs men — nor dared he think that the Shadows of Althalen were powerless to do harm to him or to Maurylʼs intentions. Hasufin marshaled and commanded the Shadows in this place — but it seemed to be the Regentʼs purpose to contest him. The old man had been fighting Maurylʼs fight for years. And waiting for him. His King, the old man had called him. What was he to do with that? Clearly these men had no such notion.

More, there were dangers attached to this place, both in the gray place, and in the world of substance. Uwen he was certain was looking for him, and in the dark, and with their distress over the loss of the lord Regent, the archers might not restrain themselves for an ordinary-looking soldier and a band of Cefwynʼs guard. The lady might prevent disaster, if she would listen, but she was refusing to see what the old man had seen — she had been refusing steadfastly, trying to hold him in life and to keep him with her, and, wrong though that had been, it was not as wrong as other things she might decide to do. Removing the lord Regent from this Place, if he understood what the lord Regent had tried to tell him, would free Hasufin to act as he pleased and work whatever harm he pleased without whatever hindrance the lord Regent might have been to him. These men must not listen to Hasufin. She must not.

Cefwynʼs Ninévrisë. That was the other matter. Somehow and suddenly there were too many Kings.

He had ridden out to listen to the world and not the clamor of voices. He had ridden out hoping to understand answers — but another world opened under his feet, and purposes he had never guessed turned out to involve him.

I shall not harm Cefwyn, he had sworn to himself. I shall not harm Uwen.

And even that simple, desperate promise came back to him tangled and changed.

Bridges, for certain: with decking in one case hidden near them on the Elwynim side of the river, and with new timbers stained dark and with smith-work cleverly concealed along the stone of the old bridges, making a bed ready to receive decking. That meant the bridges which looked stripped of surface and unusable could become a highroad into Amefel within hours of the engineers setting to work, and which of several bridgeheads the Elwynim might use could be settled in strategy at the very last hour it was possible for them to move troops into position.

It settled the question of Elwynim preparation for war in Cefwynʼs mind. It did not say where they might strike — perhaps, which the Olmernmen had not had time to investigate, not into Amefel at all, but to the north. The Elwynim had the flexibility to do anything, to challenge Ylesuin at its weakest point, or to feint and strike in several attacks.

Grim news. Arys-Emwyʼs bridge was definitely involved, and others, and very suspect was another bridgehead lying within the haunted bounds of Marna Wood, of which neither Olmernmen nor Elwynim were as cautious as other venturers — where, in fact, Olmernmen had lately had Maurylʼs leave to be: it had been no surprise to him, certainly, Sovragʼs admission of trade with Ynefel, and he would not be surprised at all to find Elwynim rangers and engineers venturing into Marna. If there were, it cast still a darker hint of Elwynorʼs allies in their actions — and on Tristenʼs flight. Cefwyn did not want to think ill in that regard — but the thought was there: he could not help it.

The extent and advanced progress of the matter advised him that he had been complacent in assuming his spies were loyal and well-paid enough; and in assuming they were receiving valid information. More — the concealment and the extent of the preparations indicated affairs some months in organization under a firm hand, at a time when he had been receiving marriage-offers and taking them as possibly sincere.

Fool, a small voice was saying to him, and urging that in some way he might have managed this province more wisely — that, if he had, his father might then not have died, though gods knew his father had not done wisely, either.

“We should have men up there and break those stoneworks down,” was Efanorʼs conclusion, and Cefwyn did not agree, on several accounts; but he said only, “That is certainly one thing we might do,” to avoid starting a public argument with Efanor before the wounds of the last unfortunately well-witnessed dispute had healed, and before his own thoughts were in order. Wine was involved. One could obtain consent of the lords on a matter not requiring debate under such conditions. He did not want to discuss this news until there were clear heads and straighter thinking.

But perhaps he should not even have hinted of contrary thoughts. Efanor went glum and stared at him, and spoke quietly with the priest. Clearly Efanorʼs pride was still getting before his reason — one certainly saw who stood high in Efanorʼs personal council, and it truly threatened to annoy him.

Cefwyn let the page refill his cup again, and ordered Sovragʼs two scouts set at table and served with the rest: it had been a far trip for two exhausted travelers, and plague take the skittish Amefin diners lowermost at the tables, who were far enough in their cups to be fearful of piracy — at the tables, did they think? Two weary rivermen were going to make off with the Aswyddsʼ gold dinner-plates?

They served enough ale and wine to make the company merry — except Efanor and his priest. The Olmern scouts fell asleep not quite in the gravy, and Sovrag sent men to carry the lads away, while the lordly Imorim were discussing gods-knew-what with Sulriggan. Cefwyn had yet one more cup, and vowed to himself he would go to bed forthwith, on half of it. Efanor was withdrawing, with his priest, doubtless to godly and sober contemplation.

But on a peal of thunder Idrys, who had been at the doors, came down the narrow aisle between the chairs and the wall, and bent beside Cefwynʼs chair to say, in the quietest voice that would carry:

“Master grayfrockʼs at the gates, mʼlord. Itʼs a storm wind tonight, blowing in all manner of wrack and flotsam.”

“Would it had blown Tristen in with him,” he muttered in ill humor. He had drunk rather too much since the scouts had come in. He was not in a mood, in this collapse of things he had hoped were safe, to face his old tutor, the arbiter of his greener judgment, the rescuer of his less well-thought adventures — and to inform Emuin that, no, he had not outstandingly succeeded in his charge to keep Tristen out of difficulty.

But Emuin had been conspicuously absent in his advice as well as his presence, and had fled for clerkly shelter when he remotely comprehended the potential for hazard in the visitor Emuin counseled him keep — and love.

So he swore under his breath, and arose as he had already intended, to take his leave. There was a clap of thunder. Men looked for omen in such things. “Give you good night and good rest, gentlemen. It sounds as if heavy weather has moved in. A good night to be in a warm hall with friends. Drink at your pleasure and respect my guards and the premises, sirs. I shall hope for clear heads by midday, and good counsel. Good night, good night.”

Cevulirn rose to excuse himself as well, early and sober, though his lieutenant would remain; Sovrag and his lieutenants would tax the staffʼs good humor, and Umanon and Pelumer were drinking in quiet consultation on the far side of the room with glances in Sovragʼs direction, while Sulriggan and his man were likewise departing. They gathered themselves to order and rose and bowed, on their way to the door.

The King cared little. The King had his old tutor to deal with, and withdrew to a private door that led to a hall that led again to the main corridor, in the convolute way of this largest of the Zeideʼs halls of state. Idrys followed him; so did his guard — not to the stairway which led to his apartments, where he would have received most visitors, but down the corridor to the outer west doors, which, before they reached them, opened to the night and the rain, and a gray-frocked trio of rain-drenched religious.

One of them was Emuin, white beard and hair pouring water onto his shoulders, cloak sodden, standing like a common mendicant.

“Mʼlord,” Emuin said, and to the doubtful servants, who arrived from their stations, began giving orders. “Find somewhere for the good brothers. Take them to the kitchen. Feed them. Theyʼre famished.”

“High time you came,” Cefwyn said, in the rumble of thunder aloft. Idrys said nothing at all.

“High time,” Emuin echoed him, wiping dripping hair out of his eyes, and followed as Idrys led the way to the secluded passage. “I came,” Emuin said, “as fast as old bones could bear, mʼlord.”

“Since which of my messages?” He was temperous and felt the wine impede his speech. Emuin had not yet acknowledged him as King: he did not miss that small point.

“With all speed, my lord. As it was I came without escort.”

“Tristen left without escort. He took to the road. He eluded all my guards. Heʼs gone toward the west.”

“The ladʼs doing what he sees fit,” Emuin said. “The lad is in deep and dangerous trouble. I could not prevent it, either.”

“Did I call you here only to hear that, master grayfrock? We need more advice!”

“I gave my advice,” Emuin said. “Did anyone regard it? Did he? I am not an oracle, young King. I never was.”

Young King. There was, finally, the acknowledgment. With the young, setting them again in the old relationship: it vastly nettled him.

“And what shall we do now?” Idrys asked. “Is there advice, sir — or only lamentation?”

“Advice,” Emuin said. “Advice. Everyone wants it once the string is loosed, not when the bow is bent. Advice I have, mʼlord, advice for him if I can lay hands on him, gods send they find him before matters grow desperate.”

“What, they? Who should find him?” Cefwyn asked, and Emuin:

“The men you sent. Who else? Who else should be looking for Maurylʼs handiwork — besides an enemy he cannot deal with and men too desperate for better sense? The Regent is dead, mʼlord King, and our Shaping is standing at this hour amid more than he knows how to cipher, by all I can determine.”

“How, determine?”

“By slipping about the edges of the matter, by means I do not want to discuss and you, my lord King, do not want to know. Ask me again for advice, by the godsʼ good grace. No one yet has heeded the advice I have given, but I give it nonetheless — Maurylʼs spell is still Summoning, still working, and gods know what more it may do. I cannot rule him.”

“You came all the way here to tell me that?”

“Find him for me. Bring him here. Then I have hope to reason with him. But he is not what I first thought. He is—”

“What, master grayfrock? He is Sihhë? We have no doubt of that! That he is the King-to-Come of the Elwynim? We know it.”

“More than that, mʼlord King.” Emuinʼs face was rain-chilled and pale. Perhaps it was only that. But the man seemed to have aged a dozen years in the time he had been gone. His mouth trembled. When had it ever done that? “I fear what else he is. So should we all — fear — what he is.”

Men went into the tent, and Tristen watched their shadows on the canvas walls. He saw the ladyʼs shadow, as she sat in a chair, and bowed her face momentarily into her hands before she sat back and dealt with the men who came to speak with her. He was sorry to eavesdrop on such a private moment; but all who came and went became shadows against that wall, as the night had been full of Shadows, and was still full of them: the movements of men through the camp; the play of light and dark against the canvas; and, always, the prowling of the greater, more ominous Shadows beyond their encampment, of which he was constantly aware. So far, these had stayed at bay, perhaps weary from the struggle that had ended in the Regentʼs death, perhaps satisfied, or perhaps restricted from entering this place by the Lines that still, though glowing more and more faintly, defined the walls — he was not certain. He knew far less than he ought of the gray realm and things that had effect there — he chased his surmises, seeking them to unfold like a Word, but they eluded him. Hasufin had said he himself was buried here — curious thought, and yet, in the way of Words, he would have thought if that was so, he should at least be able to find that place — as his place. But perhaps he did not understand such things. Perhaps something very terrible would befall him if he did find it.

Yet through such a connection Hasufin claimed Althalen and through such a connection the old man intended to contest him for possession of it. So there was ownership he should have if that were the case and if he knew what to do. And had he not fought the Shadows? Had he not done well at that?

— Emuin, he said, wishing to be both there and here. Emuin, I have found someone you should have known. Perhaps you did know him. I need you. I need to know things.

But he found no echo of Emuin, either, only a small furtive presence in the grayness, a presence that deliberately eluded him.

And quite suddenly he met those ill-meaning Shadows that circled and circled the perimeter of the walls, like birds looking for a place to light. He retreated. He held his Place and tried to ignore them in theirs.

Silhouettes against the light within the tent, men filed out again, silent and grieving Men. He could see in the play of shadows against that canvas wall how each man bowed and took the hand of the old manʼs daughter, who sat beside the light, and that they then passed into a confusion of images where the old man lay. This momentary distinction and subsequent confusion was very much what he had met in the gray realm, and he feared unwitting connection, one with the other: he feared resolution of images here and in the gray place, that might carry something of danger.

Men outside the spider-tent gathered in small sad knots, angers subdued in uncertainty as cloud rolled in above the brush and the ruins, taking even the starlight. The night had turned cold. His cloak was in the tent. He worked chilled hands, and could not feel his own fingers; but the velvet-covered mail pressing the damp padding and shirt against his body were some protection, so long as the wind stayed still. He was as weary as if he had walked all the distance he had traveled in the gray space, and as if he had grappled with substance, not Shadow.

He did not know what to do, except to wait. And that had its own dangers.

Then, the cap on all their discomfort, a cold mist began to fall. Men shifted off the stones in the midst of camp and clustered by a taller section of the ruined wall, looking at him or toward the tent and talking together in words he could not quite hear. They had come ill-prepared for anyoneʼs comfort but the old manʼs, he thought. There should have been more tents. He had the feeling, he knew not where he had gotten it — perhaps from the old man — that they had been encamped here for some time, and he wondered what had already befallen them, whether they had been escaping something as he had, in his own lack of preparation; he wondered how they had lived, and thought that Emwy village might have helped them with some things — but Emwy was burned, now.

Things had surely changed for the worse for them with that. He wondered whether the men who attacked the King had known they were here, or what it had meant to them; and he wondered whether the men Idrys had out had simply missed this place, being afraid of it as men were, or whether the Regent, himself a wizard, had sent searchers astray.

But there were no answers in chance things he overheard, only curses of the weather and from a few, talk of whether they might go home now.

No, one said shortly. It seemed they might die. Or something dire would happen.

At last two men came to say the lady had sent for him. He rose from his place on the wall and went with them, trailed by a draggle of unhappy and suspicious men as far as the door.

He ducked his head and went inside, where the lady sat. Ninévrisë wore a coat of mail which compressed her slender shape. She wore the Regentʼs crown, at least he supposed it was the same thin band holding her dark cloud of hair. Armed men stood beside her, among them, Lord Tasien.

At the other side of the tent, beyond a wall, the old man lay still and pale, with lamps at his head and his feet.

“They say you killed my father,” Ninévrisë said. “They say you bewitched him.”

“No, lady, no such thing. I tried to help him.”

“Why? Why should you help him?”

“He seemed kind,” he said, in all honesty, but it seemed not at all the answer that Ninévrisë had expected. Overcome, she clenched her fist and rested her mouth against it, her elbow on the chair arm and her face averted, while tears spilled down her face.

“I believe nothing that the Guelen prince sent,” said the man beside Tasien. “We should go back across the river tomorrow and seek a peace with the rebels as best we can.”

“I shall die before I go to Aséyneddin.” Ninévrisë brought her arm down hard against the chair and hardened her face, tear-damp as it was, as she looked back to Tristen. “You, sir! Are you another prospective bridegroom? Why should my father listen to you? Why, except that lie the Marhanen bade you wear, should my father hail you King? The Sihhë arms, wrapped in a Marhanen cloak? Give me grace, the gods did not make me so gullible! Someone knows where our camp is. Someone told you.”

“The cloak is Cefwynʼs, my lady. I was cold. He lent it to me, thatʼs all.”

“Lent it to you. And sent you to my father? The Tower and Star are outlawed, sir, by the Marhanen. And how dare you?”

“Cefwyn didnʼt send me.”

“Do not play the simpleton, sir. Whence the arms you wear? Is this Prince Cefwynʼs joke? Does he think us fools? Or what does he wish?”

“Cefwyn said I should be lord of Ynefel, because it was in his grant to give.”

“Ynefel? In the prince of Ylesuinʼs grant?”

“The King of Ylesuin, lady, since his father died. But he was prince when he gave it.”

“Ináreddrin is dead?” The lady and her men alike seemed shaken.

“Near Emwy village.” These were not the men that had attacked Cefwynʼs father, he was certain of it. The Regent certainly would not have done it; and he grew convinced they would not have done it without the old man knowing. “A day ago. I think it was a day. The time is so muddled…”

“How did he die?”

“Men killed him before any of us could reach him. Cefwyn believes that they were Elwynim. But he killed Lord Heryn for it. Heryn sent the message that brought the King there.”

He had not wanted to say the last: he thought that it might make trouble. But it seemed best to deal in the truth throughout, and not to have it come out later.

“Aséyneddin,” one man said.

“Or Caswyddian,” Tasien said, and Tristen, hearing that name, felt a coldness that might have been a breath of wind from the open vent. Ninévrisë seemed to feel it, too. She folded her arms and frowned.

“You may tell King Cefwyn, from me,” Ninévrisë said, “granted we send you to him at all, that we had no knowledge of Caswyddianʼs act. The Earl of Lower Saissonnd has dealt with Lord Heryn in the past. Heryn conspired with him and with Aséyneddin alike — and they drove my father out of Elwynor.”

That was not entirely so. The old man had said it otherwise; but he ignored that.

“I think you should go to Cefwyn,” he said. “I think he would wish to speak with you at length.”

“To speak with us? He killed our messengers!”

“No.” He knew he had no perfect knowledge of doings in Henasʼamef, but he did not believe that. “No. He did no such thing.” He was not entirely clear on his reasons for believing so. And not everything fit in words, where it regarded the gray place, but something he did know, one certainty that the lady needed to know in regard to Cefwyn and the Regent: “Your father came here hoping to talk to him. But your father could not leave this place.”

That also disturbed them.

“My father is dead of this place,” Ninévrisë said. “He was in ill health. This ill-omened place — the running and the hiding…he was not able. I grant, it took no wizardry to kill him. I know that. But your being here — brought it sooner. And I have held dear every hour of his life. I will have you to know that. Do not try my patience.”

“But it was wizardry that killed him, lady. He knew it would. Hasufin has Ynefel. He has this place. He tried to harm your father. He was Maurylʼs enemy, he is mine and he is Cefwynʼs, and he was your fatherʼs enemy all his life. Thatʼs why your father came here, to be here, to remain and hold Hasufin, not to escape any of your lords.”

Ninévrisë was silent a moment. Her face had grown suddenly frightened and still. Then: “Tasien, leave me with him.”

“No, my lady,” Tasien said. “Not for any asking.”

Ninévrisë bit her lip, defied by her own men. Her face showed as pale as that ivory portrait.

“Then, sir, what do you know of my fatherʼs dealings?” she asked. “Go on. Tell me more wonders my father told you.”

“That he dealt with Hasufin — for which he was very sorry. — That he visited Mauryl in a dream.”

“Leave me, I say!” Ninévrisëʼs fist struck the chair arm, and she cast a baleful look about her.

“My lady,—”

“I say go out! Go stand by the door. I have private questions to ask him.”

“Such as we could hear, we have already heard,” Tasien said. “Do we credit it, my lady, as the truth? Do you know anything of your lord fatherʼs dealings with Mauryl?”

“It is true,” Ninévrisë said, and her voice trembled. “My father told his dream to me, but to none other, that I know, except my mother. And this Hasufin — where did you learn that name?”

“From before your father told me. Perhaps from Mauryl.”

“And where and when did my father bestow such confidences on you?”

“In that gray place.”

“My fatherʼs dreaming. My fatherʼs fond wishes. My father knew no magic!”

He felt a slippage of a sudden, toward that Place, but did not go. He did not know who or what might have called him, but something certainly had. The Place was troubled, rife with struggle.

“My father dreamed of Hasufin and Mauryl. He dreamed, I say! He never met them in his life! How can you know the things you claim? Youʼve been here. My father never left his bed.”

“Lady, your father wanted to be here. He fought Hasufin. He wishes—” In the unsettling of that Place, it became overwhelmingly important to say, “He wishes very much to be buried here. He said to me that Hasufinʼs grave was here, and his must be.”

“I shall not bury him in this wretched place!” Ninévrisë cried. “I shall not!”

“I think — I think he means to oppose Hasufin, in this place. I think he is not done with fighting.”

“He says what serves his master,” one lord said harshly. “And the gods know who or what his master is.”

“My master,” Tristen said, “was Mauryl. He sent me to Cefwyn. And I think Mauryl also sent me here. — Your father is not gone, lady. I canʼt reach him where he is, but the Shadows did not defeat him. Only if you take him away — then he would have lost all he struggled for.”

It was enough, only thinking about the old man. The gray place opened wide, and the light came around him. He could see faint stars, which hung in front of his face where the men stood — he could see the gray shape of Ninévrisë herself, growing brighter, and a cluster of stars around about, which he suddenly thought were men outside and near the tent. The darkness to dread was a vast, abrupt edge in one direction.

The walls, he thought then, made that abrupt edge, and he saw the lines on the earth glowing very dimly, one running right past the tent, which was the wall to which the ropes ran. Shadows leapt at that wall. Shadows prowled desperately, just the other side of that line, trying to gain entry.

— Gods!

It was Ninévrisëʼs voice, fearful and shaking.

— Lady. He reached out an offering of safety, amazed that Ninévrisë alone of all of them had followed him. She was overcome with fright as he caught her hand, a warm and solid touch, not the gossamer of her fatherʼs hand. Around them, just across the wall, was threat gathering: Shadows leapt at that barrier, seeking to get in. But the lady looked at him.

— This, she said, wide-eyed, this is what he saw!

He could not answer her: he did not know what she saw, but he knew she was afraid and he knew how to guide her back to safety. It was only a thought. It was that quick.

He found himself on his feet holding her hand, as startled as she. She drew back her hand in consternation and the men around her seemed not to know whether to lay hands on him or draw weapons. But she signaled them otherwise, unable, it seemed, to utter a word. “No,” she said, belatedly, and caught a breath. “No. Oh, merciful gods.” She pressed a fist against her lips and waved her other hand, as if seeking room to breathe. “Tasien, Father knew, Father knew! There is another place. I was just there, and he—he was there, too!”

“Wizardry,” Tasien said. “Would our King come bringing Marhanen promises? Or bid us go to the Marhanen? Let him prove he comes from Mauryl — and not from this wizardous enemy he claims your father came here to fight.”

It was, Tristen thought, a very wise question to ask, as Tasien seemed a wise man. He wished he knew how to prove himself.

“What do you say?” the lady challenged him.

“That you should do as your father asked.” That was the wisest answer he could think of, and it seemed to strike home with the lady in particular.

“To bury him where he wished?”

“I donʼt know that it will stop Hasufin. But your father thought it would prevent him taking this place.”

“So he says,” Tasien echoed scornfully, as if it was as much as he could bear. “And what care if some dead wizard takes this heap of stones?”

“Itʼs a dangerous place.” Tasienʼs irreverence dismayed him. He saw things that had no Words, no breath, no outlet, and he couldnʼt warn them. “Itʼs where Hasufin died.”

“And can stay dead,” Tasien said.

“But he hasnʼt, sir. He can reach here and perhaps not to other places, at least not so easily as this. The lord Regent knew that. He said that Hasufin could reach him wherever he was. He wished to be here.”

“My lady,” Tasien said, “Iʼd ask some better proof than this manʼs word.”

“What can we prove? And what choice have I, my lord? Go back to Elwynor? To Aséyneddin?”

“The lords in Elwynor would many of them rally to the Regentʼs banner, my lady, — as they would have rallied to your lord father if he had stood fast and declared a rallying-point and not — not this war against ghosts, in hostile territory, without tents — without — hope. Lady, your lord father, whom I bore in all reverence, for whom I would have laid down my life, would not hear me. All of us that left our lands came here to die with him, or at least to prevent him from falling into hostile hands, but if youʼll only hear me, we can do more than that, by your will, and I beg you listen. Aséyneddin and his rebels do not have the other lordsʼ trust or their acceptance. Caswyddian has already raised another rebellion, against him. Elwynor will tear itself in pieces and Ylesuin will pick the bones if you do not go back, now. You are his invested heir. You have a duty, mʼlady.”

“Two lords in rebellion. And what can we bring to counter it? Thirty-three men? Thirty-three men who followed my father however strange his folly? An investiture only you and these men witnessed? Answer me this, Tasien! How many of the lords will follow me without demanding marriage to themselves or their sons? And how will that sit with their brother lords? I divide the realm only by existing.”

There was brief silence.

Then one said, “How many will follow you if you ally yourself with the Marhanen?”

“Will you desert me? Will you, Haurydd? Or you, Ysdan?”

“No,” one and the other said.

“But,” the lady said, “can you make me lord Regent, and raise the standard in Elwynor, and make men rally to me without each seeking to be my husband? Here are three of you, all driven from your lands, all with wives and children at great risk. Where is my choice, mʼlords? Tasien, you carried me on your back when I was little. Where can you carry me now?”

“My gracious lady,” Tasien said, and gave a shake of his head. “Wherever you wish. You are the Regent. I would take you to a safe place, in Elwynor. I would send to reliable men. I would not see you risk the Marhanenʼs land another day — let alone ask him for refuge. Choose a consort from among like-minded men, and we will go back into Elwynor and fight any rebels that come against you, to the last of us. Aséyneddin cannot hold his alliances together if we return.”

“And if Aséyneddin found us? And if anyone betrayed our whereabouts? Men die, who supported my father. Houses burn. Sheep are poisoned. You may be too high-placed for that, so far, but act against him and he will move against you. That is what he can do. But — more than that. There is this man — this visitor of ours, my lords,—”

“You cannot believe him.”

“No. No, Tasien, — I cannot deny my fatherʼs witness. I cannot deny what Iʼve seen. I cannot deny that there is magic in this place. I cannot say now that I should be Regent…or that there should be a Regency any longer at all. If my regency denies the King weʼve waited for, then—”

“My lady, you cannot accept his claim. A man cannot ride up to us, rain-bedraggled, and claim to be the King.”

“How else must he come, then?” Ninévrisë asked. “Ride out of Marna, with armies and trumpets? Rise out of the ground of Althalen? I donʼt know, I donʼt know! My father never told me how to know him. My father only told us in plain words that this is the King and he recognized him. I have just been to that magic place Father claimed. I have just seen this man look as he looked to me. What other sign am I supposed to expect? How am I supposed to decide? I need time — I need to know the truth! And if there is a chance in the Marhanen, I will try that chance before I leave this land.”

“Are you,” lord Tasien asked him bluntly, “the King we look for?”

“Sir, I never heard so from Mauryl,” he said truthfully, and did not add to their confusion the fact that he did not want to be a king, nor that Cefwyn, who had given him title to Ynefel, knew a great deal more of kings and claims to kingship. But he did not think that Cefwynʼs belief in him would allay their suspicions, rescue him, or move them all to a point of safety. An unbearable feeling of danger had begun to press on him, in their dispute, a smothering fear more acute than he had felt since Marna Wood, and he wanted their argument over, with whatever issue, and the old man settled safe under stone — under stone! — where he wished to be. He wanted them away, as soon as they might.

“We shall bury my father,” Ninévrisë said, “as he wished. Then we shall go to the Marhanen and ask for a treaty — by marriage if need be. By oath, if we can secure it.”

“His father has just died,” Tasien cried, “at the hands of Elwynim!”

“So has mine!” Ninévrisë said sharply, “at the hands of gods know what, in this land of his, because of the same rebels who killed his father, and I will ride to the Marhanen and have a treaty or a fight of it! Does not the godsʼ law protect messengers? I am my fatherʼs messenger from his deathbed, and I shall have the answer to my suit or I shall have war, sirs!”

“Gods save us, then,” Tasien said.

“The Marhanen will see me. He will deal fairly with me. My lord of Ynefel swears that he will. Does he not?”

“I shall ask him to,” Tristen said. “He is my friend.”

“And of course this is our King,” Tasien said, “who cedes Ynefel to his master the King of Ylesuin and takes it back again in fief — gods have mercy, mʼlady! A friend of the Marhanen? This is a man owing homage to the Marhanen! Ask him!”

“Are you?” Ninévrisë asked, looking at Tristen. “Have you sworn homage to him?”

“I swore to defend Cefwyn and to be his friend.”

There was heavy silence in the tent. The men were not at all pleased, and did not intend to accept him, he was certain; but he would not lie to the lady, who would know the truth in that gray place — he at least had no skill to deceive her.

“Gentle lords,” Ninévrisë said, “at least let us try. Shall we sit here until they find us?”

“This is madness,” Tasien said.

“So you called my father mad,” Ninévrisë said, “yet you loved him with all your hearts. You came here to die for him notwithstanding your own lands, your own wives, your own children. I shall not lead you all back to Elwynor only to die, mʼlords. I have another choice. I can seek alliance…”

“With the Marhanen! Gods save us, my lady.”

“I will not see your heads on Ilefínianʼs gates, sirs! Nor will I marry Aséyneddin! You cannot ask that of me!”

“Will you marry this wandering fool and beg the lords of Elwynor swear oaths to the Marhanen? That is what they seem to suggest!”

“Have respect!” Ninévrisë said. “Have respect for my father, Tasien, if not for me. Lower your voices! Is the whole camp to hear?”

“Lord Tasien,” Tristen said quietly, overwhelmed with anxiety, though he feared that his suggesting anything at the moment was a cause for them to oppose it. “Sir, we are under threat, of wizardry if you call it that. This place feels worse and worse to me. — Lady, if your lord father can do anything, I think we should do exactly what he said, and soon.”

“Do we speak of wizardry?” the lord called Haurydd asked. “Is that what we have to hope for?”

“Yes, sir. So did the lord Regent hope for it. And if we wait we may lose all the hope he had. We should bury him and leave here.”

“My father,” Ninévrisë said, “warned us against going outside these walls after dark.”

“Yes, if there were safety to be had inside. But this place is losing its safety, as Ynefel became unsafe. I do feel so. We should go. Leave the wagon. There is no way to take it. There are men searching for me. There must be. We can find them on the road and they will protect us.”

“Run like thieves, you mean. To Marhanen men.”

“Sir, this is very serious. You should do what the Regent asked. There is danger.”

“Read me no lessons in my lordʼs service. And we can afford the decency of daylight,” Tasien said angrily, “for a man who, if you are our King, may have kept your throne safe, sir, little though you may love me for saying it and little though I think there is any likelihood.”

“Tasien!” the lady said.

“My lady, I do not respect him. I do not respect a soft-handed man who bears every insult. He agrees to everything. He has no authority but his orders to bring us into ambush. Perhaps there is some sort of protection in this ruin. He certainly urges us away as hard as he can!”

“We must go, sir.” Arguments could easily confuse him. Words betrayed him. And danger was coming closer, a threat that distracted him, a threat changing and growing by the moment, as if the venture of himself and the lady into that gray place had attracted unwelcome attention, and now it had turned toward them and come to do them harm. Besides the prowling of the Shadows, there had arisen a sound, a thumping in the earth that reminded him most of horses. “For all our sakes, Lord Tasien.”

“Tasien,” the lady said, “we shall go. We shall bury my father, and we shall go as he says, to speak to Cefwyn Marhanen.”

“This man will not fight your enemies!” Tasien said. “Is this a king? Is this the King we have waited for?”

“Sir.” Tristen looked Lord Tasien square in the face. “I am not afraid of you. I do fear for you.”

Tasien stared back at him, and the anger seemed to desert him for a different expression — almost. “If we go, then we shall have you for a Hostage, lord of Ynefel. If Cefwyn does not respect a Truce, and attacks our lady, I will kill you myself.”

The Words made sense, and offered a way out of this place, both practical and frightening. “If it pleases you, Lord Tasien, and if it please the lady, and if we can leave this place, I have no fear of giving you such a promise.”

“I thought,” Emuin said, his fist firmly about a cup of mulled wine. “I have thought about it and thought about it, mʼlord King, and, though in my earliest youth I saw all the royal house of the Sihhë and knew their faces, and, more, knew them in ways a wizard knows — I had no impression I knew the lad. It worried me that night I first saw him and realized what he was: I told myself that of all the dead souls at Althalen Mauryl might have chosen, he could well have chosen Elfwynʼs true brother Aswyn, who died at birth — as a natural restraint upon the one who had that body…”

“We know that story,” Cefwyn said impatiently. They were upstairs in his apartments. Idrys stood with his shoulder against the door, making certain there were no eavesdroppers even among the trusted guards. “This is not Elfwyn. Nor any stillborn babe. He is skilled in the sword and horsemanship, which I do not think comes in the cradle. The name, old master. Favor me with the name, no other, no explanations, no long narrative.”

“Plainly, — Barrakkêth, mʼlord Prince. — Mʼlord King.” Emuin was more disturbed than he had ever seen the old man. “The founder of his line. Or one of his cousins. I do believe so.”

“A fair guess,” Idrys said from across the room. “A name that can be written. You could have spared a messenger to say so before now.”

“Peace, sirs.” Cefwyn grew more than impatient. “We knew at Emwy he was no scholar-king. But whence this? Tristen is not cold hearted, nor self-seeking, nor a wanton killer. Barrakkêth was. Why Barrakkêth?”

“Mauryl did not like your grandfather.”

It was like the turns of Tristenʼs speech: it startled him into laughter. “None of us liked my grandfather. My grandmother never liked my grandfather. Tell me something more dire than that, sir! Where is your proof? Prove to me your notion!”

“To Mauryl, the Marhanen as successors to the Sihhë were a choice of chance, at best. The Marhanen were there to take advantage of the situation, but your grandfather was very uneasy with Mauryl. Remember that Mauryl was not of this age, not of whatever blood men share. He had no loyalties even to the Galasieni, who were supposedly his people. Elfwynʼs father had besought — call it the gods, the gods some Sihhë worshipped if they worshipped any at all — to raise his stillborn son. The blood had run very thin by that time, and Elfwynʼs father certainly couldnʼt have raised the dead. Except — he opened a door. As ʼt were. To a dead wizard.”

“Hasufin Heltain,” Idrys supplied, and Emuin cast him a troubled look.

“We have had to seek our own answers,” Cefwyn said. His leg was paining him, acutely, he was peevish, and trying to be patient. “Many of which, it seems, are on the mark, master Emuin. Go on, sir, donʼt dole it out like alms. Give me your reasoning. Tell me what you fear happened at Althalen, and why this is Barrakkêth.”

“Young King, Mauryl fought this wizard in Galasien. Mauryl chose in Barrakkêth and his cousins an agency of destruction so ruthless — so ruthless — there is a Galasite word for it…so lacking in attachment. Yet honest. Mauryl did call him honest. He contended with wizards by magic — magic, not wizardry, mark you — and with men with the sword. I donʼt know why. Mauryl said they were not Men as we understand Men to be. The true Sihhë had an innate, untaught power that would not be deterred. What the true Sihhë willed, so I understand, and am beginning to fear, wizardry does not easily prevent.”

“A god,” Idrys said dryly, arms folded, and walked back to stand at the tableside. “You describe a god, master grayfrock.”

“Something very like.” Emuinʼs voice was hoarse. He had a large gulp of the heated wine. “Something far too like, for my taste. And the Quinalt and its witch-hunting have been too thorough in their hunt for wizards. There are few wizards left worth the name, mʼlord King. There is no one to contain either Hasufin or Barrakkêth.”

“Oh, come now,” Cefwyn said. He had until then been concerned, but drew a longer and easier breath, and massaged the fevered wound in his upper leg. “Our Tristen? A ravening monster? I think not.”

“Ask Barrakkêthʼs enemies.”

“Idrys tracked a Hasufin Heltain through generations of musty chronicles. And found a Hasufin in the royal family. So what did become of him? Is he still alive? Or haunting Althalen — or what?”

“My lord, I killed that child, I, myself, at Maurylʼs behest. I killed Hasufinʼs last mortal shape.” The old man rocked to and fro in discomfort and had another large drink, the last. “Do you suppose, mʼlord King, there is anything left in the pot?”

Emuin—kill a child? “Idrys,” Cefwyn said, feeling a chill himself, and Idrys looked, filled another goblet, poured more wine into the pot and swung it further out over the fire to warm.

Emuin took a sip, seeming as glad to warm his hands as his insides. He looked frail tonight. His skin was pale and thin, his lately drenched hair and beard were drying in wisps of white. His shoulders had grown very thin.

I dare not lose him, Cefwyn thought. I dare not. “And what,” he asked Emuin, determined to unravel the matter, “what, precisely, was Maurylʼs judgment on Elfwyn? Was it his fatherʼs sin? Was it retribution?”

“It was simple fear, my lord King. Fear not only of Hasufin, dreadful enough, but the union of Hasufinʼs very great wizardry and the innate Sihhë magic, dilute as it had grown by that day. No one could predict what would happen — with a wizard potent enough to bring himself back from death, joined to a Sihhë body. One simply didnʼt know.”

“One thought you priests knew such things to a fare-thee-well,” Idrys said.

“My lord King, I will not bear with his humor. I do not think I have deserved this. This is difficult enough to explain.”

“You might have been here,” Idrys said sharply.

Emuin clamped his lips tight. “Aye, that I might, and added my bit to the brew. You might have been very sorry, Lord Commander, if I had swayed to the left or the right the force that Mauryl had set on course. His spell was still Summoning, still is, sir. I warned you of it, and I would not to this day put my meager working in the path of that force, no more than I would tamper with a river in flood without knowing what lay downstream — which is the difference between myself and those that meddle with things they do not understand, sir, as is the habit of some people I could name!”

“Peace, peace, good gods, I had forgot the sound of you both under one roof.” Cefwyn poured his own wine from a pitcher on the table, unmulled and untampered-with, and hoped for surcease of the ache in his leg that now beat in time with the ache in his skull. “So you donʼt know, in sum, what we are dealing with.”

“I have had years to think on it.”

“More years than most, as a matter of curiosity,” Idrys said.

“Peace! Damn you, Idrys, let us have his account undiverted.”

“Tristen is at Althalen,” Emuin said.

“You are certain of that.”

“I am certain. So, in a wizardly sense, is Hasufin. And something — let loose as a consequence of his dealing. I donʼt like to think of it. Quickly! Ask me another question!”

“The same question! What did Mauryl intend? What are we dealing with? Why Barrakkêth?”

“The same answer, my lord King: the Sihhë were Maurylʼs choice to succeed the folk of Galasien, nine hundred years ago. Mauryl loosed Barrakkêth on the south, from what Mauryl claimed to be his origins up far in the Hafsandyr. No one knew more than that. Barrakkêth arrived well-versed in arms, he subdued what is now Amefel and Elwynor and Lanfarnesse with brutal thoroughness. He would not go among Men, but ruled as High King from Ynefel, which was in its present gruesome state: he ordered the building of Althalen and its pleasures, but he rarely stirred from Ynefel except for war, and, save once, he left the begetting of heirs to the handful of Sihhë that arrived with him — who amply attended that duty.”

“He enchanted those faces into the walls?” Cefwyn asked. “I take it, then, that those rumors are true.”

“They are true. They are most awfully true, and contribute to the strength of the place. All I know is what Mauryl said: that the walls of Ynefel became what they are during the battle between Barrakkêth and Hasufin Heltain.”

“And Mauryl.”

“And Mauryl.”

“Who seems to have been a damned busy man. Why should he care what this Hasufin did? He was old. He was dying.”

“My lord king. He is dead. I do not know that he was dying.”

“Meaning?”

“He lost, mʼlord. He lost to his enemy. Now we have Hasufin to deal with. But Mauryl was not a man to go down without revenge. We also have Tristen.”

“Revenge on whom?”

“That is the question. What did Mauryl promise the Marhanen when he stopped Hasufin the second time? To rule forever? I think not. Mauryl promised the Elwynim a King. And was it for love of them — or for some sort of balance with the Sihhë themselves? Far less did he love your grandfather, or your father, or care to leave Ynefel long enough to inquire what manner of King you would be. Was this the man they called Mauryl the Kingmaker, who, surrendering all power to the Marhanen and a regency in Elwynor, locked himself away from worldly power and said nothing for eighty years? Was this the action of the man who ruled behind the thrones of two kingdoms? I donʼt believe he went down without arranging something to settle accounts.”

There was no love wasted between Emuin and Mauryl. He saw that, too. And possibly it colored all Emuin said.

“He could have sent a plague on my grandfather. None of us would have cared. He sent us a gentle and reasonable young man.”

“So I apprehended. Mauryl took no oath to your father, neither of homage nor even of fealty. Little it would have mattered to him.”

“Tristen has. He swore to defend me. Knowledgeably. He did swear, Emuin.”

“I am aware. Perhaps that is the test Mauryl set you: to deal with young Barrakkêth.”

“Like lessons? Like that? Guess the reason? Guess the purpose?”

“My old student does remember.”

“Damned right I remember, old master. But is that all your theory?”

“Itʼs my most hopeful one. And direst magic may have an escape, however improbable. Therefore I said, Win his love. We wizards are cranky, impatient sorts. We live long — unless we abandon our practice — and we grow damned impatient with fools. That is the worst thing about living long. One sees so many mistakes repeated, over and over and over. It makes one a little mad and desperately angry. Mauryl — was a master wizard. A Man, I have always thought, in the sense that he was not Sihhë himself. But one never knew his loyalties.”

“One never knew,” Idrys echoed him. “And what master do you serve? ‘Win his love, mʼlord Prince.ʼ ‘Win his good willʼ—all the while telling us nothing of his nature. It is damned late, sir priest, to come to us with your advice!”

“Now you understand me. Not then. Now youʼve dealt with him. I see fear, sir, that may still destroy you; but I see respect for what is by no means like yourself. You are dealing with your greatest enemy. His good will is still your best hope.”

“I said he was a wizard,” Idrys muttered, and paced away again, rubbing the back of his neck.

“He is not a wizard,” Emuin muttered under his breath.

“This man,” Cefwyn said, “whatever he is, this man you advised me to win, this friend, this sworn friend of mine, is nothing evil — a plague on your suspicious, Emuin. I do not believe he is my enemy. I refuse to believe it.”

“That might be best,” Emuin said. “All along, that might be best.”

“Donʼt read me such lessons! You think something else, sir. Out with it.”

“That wizardry at its highest is not cattle-curses. That what the Sihhë are, wizards struggle to be. Hasufin was not a greater wizard than Mauryl. But prone to cheat. Too willing to work in the physical realm, that was what Mauryl said. An assassination here, a tweak of wizardry there — Mauryl despised him. Heʼd brought Hasufin very far along before Hasufinʼs nature became clear to him, is what I very much suspect. Wizardry requires a man search himself very deeply and face all his most secret faults — lest they work the spells, that was what Mauryl used to say: that there comes a point when one realizes one has power, and the faults work the wizard as the wizard works the spells.”

“So with kings,” Cefwyn said, feeling they had wandered far from the subject.

“So with Tristen, too. This is the trap Mauryl set you and me and the Elwynim all in one.”

“Youʼve lost me.”

“To live life without him, my lord, or to bring back the reign of magic over the world of Men by our own choice. The Quinalt, with its holy abhorrence of wizardry, has left us all but unarmed against that boyʼs lightest wish, and hope to the powerless gods we find better help. Mauryl has left me the last, the last teacher of the higher wizardry that stands any chance of denying that young man what he wishes.”

“To all I know,” Cefwyn said, feeling a most unaccustomed and angry moisture in his eyes, “what Tristen most wishes is my happiness. What are we saying? Tristen named us an enemy! And yet weʼre speaking of Tristen as the danger!”

“All the same,” Idrys said, “all the same, I hear what Emuin is saying, my lord King. And it disturbs me. What both of you say — disturbs me profoundly.”

He cast a frowning look at Idrys, and knew that there was yet another danger that Emuin did not reckon of: Idrysʼ loyalty, and Idrysʼ perception. Idrys had taken oaths of homage to him. Of fealty to him. But in the challenge to the Marhanen that those oaths had never anticipated, he found himself without sure knowledge what Idrysʼ attachment was: to him, as King; to the realm; to whatever man Idrys served — or to his own unexpressed sense of honor. Idrys measured things by some scheme that had never yet diverged from his personal welfare.

He had, in that light, to ask himself what that welfare was, or might become, and what Tristenʼs was, or might become.

Tristen was now at Althalen, Emuin said. With this Hasufin.

How in hell did Emuin know? How did wizards know?

But Emuin said, Tristen was not a wizard; and presumably did not use wizardry — whatever that fine mincing of words meant. He was no longer certain he knew, and he was sitting at table with a man slipping fast toward wine-drowsiness who was the one and did the other.

In a small alcove of the ruin, a section of the wall with several such arches still standing, the Elwynim made a grave for the lord Regent, piling up loose stone from nearby rubble, in the dark and the misting rain. They had brought out one of the lamps from the tent. One man sheltered it with an upheld arm and his cloak, while others labored by that scant light to make their wall solid and to make the lord Regent a secure resting place.

The lady stood beside Tasien and the other two lords, a quiet, small figure in mail and a manʼs heavy, hooded cloak, her fatherʼs, Tristen thought, as the crown was her fatherʼs and the mail shirt was doubtless her fatherʼs, worn over her gown and halfway to her knees.

She was not a tall woman: she would never tower over anyone — but she wielded force of will and wit. She was very young, and was accustomed but not acquiescent to Lord Tasien making decisions, as Lord Tasien had grown accustomed to giving orders, probably, Tristen judged, in the lord Regentʼs decline and sickness. And Tasien seemed a good and faithful man, even if Tasien doubted his honesty and his intentions. Tasien was trying to protect the lady, considering that she was young, while taking as many of her opinions as he dared, because she was her fatherʼs successor.

And honestly seen, that Tasien wished to prevent the lady rushing off into the dark on a strangerʼs advice was only sensible — unless Tasien were aware of the threat piling up more and more urgently around the ruin.

Ninévrisë was aware. Tristen felt it. Having found that gray space — she kept worrying at it, and was too reckless, and very much in danger.

The old lines of the masons held against the Shadows thus far. The horses had begun to grow restive—they knew, and the men who had gone to saddle them and have them ready for departure were having difficulty with them.

There was no preparation to take the wagon: Tasien had sensibly agreed with him, saying they would be able to come back for it and all it contained if all went well, and that if things went badly, they would need nothing at all. But Tasien had ordered certain things taken from the tent, among them the banners, and various small boxes and at least some of the ladyʼs personal goods, the latter packed onto the backs of the two horses that ordinarily pulled the wagon. All that was going on while the burial proceeded.

But if his help had been at all welcome, Tristen thought, he would have taken up stones and put them in place himself. The men were building at a frighteningly deliberate pace, each one a measured clink of stone on stone as they first formed an arch and then, after the Regentʼs body was laid inside, sealed up the opening — stone by stone, while in the awareness he snatched out of the dark around them the lines on the earth were weakening, disturbed by the breaking of an old pattern, and something — some presence coming up on them was pressing more and more insistently, searching, as he thought. It was not alone wizardry, but men, many men.

For such eyes, the lantern-light by which they worked was a beacon. The place was overgrown round about, concealing them, but it equally concealed danger that moved against them as well, at least in the world of substance.

He dared not reach too often, too far into the gray, lest he guide trouble to them more quickly than he knew it was coming. But it had direction, now. He stood as respectfully, as quietly as the others stood, but he felt his flesh crawling with apprehension, a threat very strong in the same direction as the men taking down the rubble of that other arch to build this one. Stone after stone they brought, and the threat shivered in the air, out of the north, very definitely now from the north. He thought of warning the lady — but his welcome with them was already scant: he feared giving them cause to do something less wise than they were doing.

And possibly she felt it for herself, though awareness of that gray place had not come to him all at once. Reaching far off came with knowing one could do it. She did reach out at times, but he thought that that was an accident: she wanted her father — and that was a danger. She was a burning light in that other Place. She was angry and she was loyal to the old man, and that came through very surely.

But out there in the rainy dark was more than one presence, he thought. He perceived two subtly different sources, now, one wide and diffuse with distance and one terrifyingly, stiflingly close. One, elusive and strong and clever, was pulling the diffuse one, which he could feel only faintly — and which he could only see as a haze in the gray place, defined against the gray place itself. The elusive one was very, very close to them, very difficult to see, a presence tingling in the air, clinging to the stones, as if it possessed all the walls that protected them, and he had not felt it before they began to work.

Wind gusted. Trees down a little removed from the wind sighed and roared with it. The feeling of harm was very strong. Wind pulled at cloaks, seized edges, whipped them free, and the owners struggled to hold them. He had Cefwynʼs cloak about him again, and the wind pressed it against him and rocked him on his feet. A horse called out, a warning cutting through the dark and the spitting rain, and in a distant play of shadows men fought to hold it still.

But by now there remained only a small opening at the crest of the sealing wall they had built and the feeling was worse and worse. Tasien placed a large stone, and the lady came and placed one, and a second: the last. She pressed her brow against the rubble, then, speaking to her father, Tristen thought: he could feel that disturbance in the gray realm, as loud as the panicked horse a moment ago. He was thinking, too, Hurry, oh, lady, hurry, and let us go. Can you not feel it?

He thought she heard him. She turned with a frightened look. The sound of the trees down the slope from them, leaves blowing in the wind, all but overwhelmed the thunder.

But another sound had begun, not in the air, but in the earth, a thumping like horses running, louder and louder.

“Riders!” she exclaimed, and a man near them who had been pulling stones from the wall of the other arch leapt back as, with a rattle of stone and for no evident reason a section of wall crumbled.

Pale bones were in the rubble that fell out, bones sticking up among the tumbled stones. It was another burial they had disturbed, in their meddling with the stones. It had lain unguessed in the walls that protected them, and the feeling that came with that disturbance broke about them in a smothering fear.

The man protecting the lamp lost his battle to a watery gust of wind. The light failed. The wind sent something noisy skittering across the pavings, and in the gray world the lines of blue all faltered and began to fade.

“Lady!” he warned her.

“Let us go!” Ninévrisë cried, and Tasien seized her arm and hurried her toward the horses, the men running with panic just under their movements.

Tristen went, too, all but running among the others, biting his lip on pleas for haste for fear of another debate or anything to delay them. Petelly was in the number of mounts waiting, rolling his eyes so that the white showed. He took the reins from the man who was managing four of the horses at once, and in his ears and in his heart alike he heard the arrival of riders through the brush to their north.

“Caswyddian!” he heard a man say, and Tasien: “Hold them off, sergeant! Hold them long enough — and join us as you can! The Regent has to live!”

“Aye, mʼlord!” a man said, and rattled off the names of others to stay behind as Ninévrisë protested the order.

“There is no choice, mʼlady! Ride! Ride!”

The lords, the lady, and two of the men rode for safety, and Tristen turned Petellyʼs head and rode with them, to the south of the enclosure, where a doorway in the ruined hall provided them a way out. A number of the men overtook them, but not all: at least half the soldiers had stayed.

They had no hope, Tristen thought. It was impossible against what was coming. He might help them — but he had no weapon, they feared him as much as they feared their enemy, and the lady, Cefwynʼs lady, had to be safe. He knew where the road was—he could see the lines glowing in the dark, marking obstacles for the horses, and Tasien could not. He abandoned care for the men behind and sent Petelly forward as fast as Petelly could run, shouldering horses around him until he reached the fore.

“I can see the path!” he called out and, Tasien willing or not, he took the lead and stayed there, leading them by a twisting path along old walls, through ruined doors, and sharply around an old cistern that gaped in their path. The wind was blasting into their faces. Rain spattered him, stung his eyes. He heard — in one realm or the other — the clash of weapons, horses running over stone — shouts and outcries of men fighting for their lives behind them while the earthly wind shrieked like a multitude of voices. He felt all his senses assaulted at once, and Petelly shied under him, trying to bolt, just when a wall loomed up ahead.

He did not know himself how he made the jump. They lost two men. The horses came past him riderless. But the rest were with him, and Petelly threw his head, fighting to see in the gusts that flared in their faces.

He rode continually south. He encouraged Petelly with his hands and his knees as he saw masonsʼ lines ahead of them and turned instead down a brushy slope where there was only darkness — south again, as the wind wailed with voices in his ears, and Shadows streamed about them.

“Where is he?” he heard someone call out in fear.

“This way!” he called out, heard a man swear, and waited at the bottom of the slope, with Petelly trembling and panting for breath.

Tasien and the lady came down. Lightning flickers showed others coming down behind them as quickly as they could. He knew he had to do better. He had to keep their company together, not let them fall behind and not let the Shadows take them. He was certain that, of all who might pursue them, those in the gray world were the deadliest and the ones hardest to outrun.

Then came the sound of horsemen passing above the bank, and all of theirs were here. That was, he thought, pursuit narrowly missing them or their own riders trying to rejoin them. His companions reined in, their horses wild, panting for breath, and all of them alike looked up in fear, trying to find the source of that sound, but the brush and the storm hid whatever riders were up there, heading for the blind end he had led his company away from.

“Follow me!” he said to them. And they did.

Emuin had gone off to bed, in the numbness of the air that had followed such dread confidences. Limping, hurting this evening to the point of outrageous temper, Cefwyn paced the length of the room and back again, goading himself to an outburst he had no moral courage to make otherwise, and Idrys must sense it, since Idrys did not remind him he had warned him.

“So?” he challenged Idrys. “Tell me I was wrong.”

“Lord Tristen saved your life,” Idrys said. “I do not forget it, nor shall.”

Twice over Idrys eluded him. And cheated him now of a fit he wanted to loose on someone able to defend himself.

“Emuin fears him,” Idrys said, “perhaps too much. You, not enough.”

“And you have it right, do you?”

“I make no such claim. I think Emuin was right and I was wrong, how to deal with him — at the first. Not now.”

Three times eluded him. “Then what? What are you saying? Damn it, Idrys, I am unsubtle tonight. The wound aches like very hell. Be clear.”

“I am saying, mʼlord King, that I know precious little of wizardry, but if Emuin speaks half the truth, whether this Shaping lodged in Elwynor or in Ylesuin, he would have his own way. Am I mishearing? Your Majesty did study with Emuin.”

“Emuin is full of contradictions. I am half of a mind to send him back to the monks. Heʼs been too little with practical men. What in hell am I to do? Did you hear practical advice tonight? I did not. Nothing workable. Nothing that brings peace to this border. What Emuin promises seems rather other than that, did it seem so to you?”

“It has always been other than that, mʼlord King. And I will not advise we sit idle, but—” Idrys had walked to the window and stared outward, a shadow against the glistening black glass. The window was spattered with rain. Lightning lit edges for a moment and thunder muttered to the west. “I do not trust the lord of Ynefel. But I trust Emuinʼs judgment far less.”

“Do you think Emuin is deceiving himself?”

“Not that we have all the truth out of Emuin, nor shall ever have.” Idrysʼ shoulders lifted, as if he had caught a chill, and he looked back. “I told Emuin before he left that he served you ill. He denied it. And I said to mʼlord Tristen that if he harmed you I would be his enemy. He knows that. But I foresaw nothing of this bolt toward Althalen, I confess, and I find fault with myself for that — at least for not instructing the guards, who saw only his favor with you.”

“I would I had seen it too. But maybe natural cautions had nothing to do with it. Wizards. Seeing clear to Althalen. — Emuin never told me he could do such things. I never read that they could do such things. Tristen told us the truth. He was feckless toward wizard-secrets, too — and were it not for him I swear I would not believe Emuin now. Iʼd swear his warnings came of some other source. — And damn him, he ignored my messages.”

“We believe now the dead do walk. Should we stick at this? I greatly fear for our men up by Emwy, mʼlord. None of our eveningʼs messengers have arrived, from any direction. It may simply be the rain. But master Emuin did not want to discuss Althalen. That doubly worries me.”

Men would have gone in search of those missing reports by now, up the road, to find the messengers if the causes were the weather, or a horse gone lame. If they did not meet them they would ride all the way to the borders to find out the conditions and come back again, while a third set of messengers took to the roads outbound. It was a new arrangement he had ordered, precisely to have nightly reports on that uneasy border, and it was already in disarray. He hoped it was initial confusion, some misunderstanding in the orders, possibly the weather, indeed, bridges out, torrents between — such common things, and nothing worse.

“Damn him,” he said again. And meant Emuin.

“Master grayfrock is very worried,” Idrys said. “And will not discuss Tristenʼs actions. Or Althalen. He drank more than I have ever seen him drink. He did not want to return here. He sees a danger, and he may have named it very honestly tonight.”

“This Hasufin? This dead wizard at Althalen?”

“Lord King, he said it in this chamber tonight, and you didnʼt hear him. When he rebuked me with his fears — they regarded Tristen.”

The way ahead was a maze of trees and overgrown walls, forgotten foundations hidden in the dark and the rain, and Tristen dared not set the company to running here. To his eyes, perhaps to the ladyʼs, the walls and the traces of foundations of this arm of the ruins showed still wanly glowing, the masonsʼ long-ago defenses yet holding, however weakly, as he led along the old courses of the ruins.

He might have gone faster. It risked losing the men, especially the soldiers, who with their armor weighing on the horses were riding slower and slower, and who could not take another jump. It had become a curious kind of chase, keeping the horses to the fastest pace they could — for despite the misdirection at the height, they could not for an instant trust that their pursuers, Men or otherwise, were not following on guidance better than his and more familiar with these ruins. Hasufin could do such things, and the gray space seethed with Shadows.

Now, nightmare smell, came the faint stench of smoke, and then, between two blinks of rain-blinded eyes, the apparition of fire touching the brush, setting the shadows to leaping. “Theyʼve fired the brush!” a man said, and the lords drew rein in confusion, refusing to ride further, gathering their men about them.

Whether it was burning in the real world or not, it seemed to Tristen that the tops of real walls did reflect red, that the sky had lightened to gray beneath the spitting clouds, and that firelit stakes lifted figures above the tops of the walls, a ring like a dreadful forest, at which he did not wish to look twice.

With the lady and her men gathered about him — some swearing they smelled smoke and others denying they saw any fire — Lord Haurydd demanded of him in a frightened voice to know the way out, while Tasien called him a liar. “Find the path, sir,” the lady demanded in a thin, high voice, cutting through their confusion. “These are haunts, specters. The place is known for them. Keep going.”

He urged Petelly away, then, trusting they would follow. Petelly snorted, breathing hard, and of two ways clear he chose the right-hand way, at random in the first choice and then with a clear conviction that it was the right way, the way he had to lead them. A spatter of rain rode the wind into their faces. He blinked water from his eyes, feeling Petelly struggling for footing on wet leaves. A horse slid as they went downhill, and took down another, downed riders and horses struggling to untangle themselves from among the trees and get up. He delayed an instant for their sakes — saw the first horse and rider afoot and then rode, sensing safety so near them.

Uwen, he became sure: Uwen was out there. He didnʼt know how far ahead that was, but he tried to press more speed out of Petelly and the riders behind him, fearing they were bringing enemies to Uwen, and were out of strength themselves. Petelly was laboring as they cleared the edge of the ruins, and he flung a glance over his shoulder at the others still following as best they could.

“Hold there!” someone shouted from ahead of them.

He reined in, reaching fearfully into the dark and the gray to know who hailed them as the other riders came in around him.

“Who goes?” Tasien shouted.

“Kingʼs business!” a voice called out. “Who goes?”

His heart leapt. He knew that voice. “Uwen, donʼt harm them!” he called out on what breath he could gather, and on a second, shouted out loud and clear: “Beware men behind us, Uwen!”

“Hold, hold, hold there!” Uwenʼs voice called out. “All of ye, hold! Let ʼem pass! This is mʼlord Tristen. I donʼt know who them with ʼim is — just brace up. We got others cominʼ we donʼt want!”

Tristen could scarcely see the riders on the hillside for the misting rain — the horses were blowing and panting around him, as he let Petelly move forward. The rain-laden gale blasted along the dell, blew up under the bellies of the horses and startled them, exhausted as they were.

Then a wayward breeze blew soft and warm all about Petelly, at Tristenʼs back, at his side, under Petellyʼs chin and around again.

The bad men, he heard wafting on the wind. The bad men is coming, the wicked, wicked men. Run, run, run! Mama, run!

It was a childʼs voice. Seddiwyʼs voice. Child! he cried after her.

But the shadow-shape of a child ran implike back through the company, waving her arms, startling the horses one after another.

After that, what came was dark and angry. The sapling at his right went crack! and broke. Others did, white wounds in the dark thicket.

From the hill and the ruin behind them also came the cracking of brush, then the screams of men overcome by fear. The Elwynim with him looked about them in alarm — but no more trees broke in their vicinity. The presence — a great many presences — had followed the child, back along their trail. Tristen tried to see them, but they were all darkness in the gray, darkness that walled off all Althalen.

In a moment more there was only the ordinary wind, and the rumble of thunder.

Then a rider was coming down the slope, braving all that was unnatural, and Tristen knew that manner and that posture even in the dark.

“Uwen!”

“Mʼlord, what is it back there?” Uwen was plainly ready to fight whatever threatened them; and the Elwynim had turned about to face that crashing of brush and the gusting of wind behind them, drawing swords and setting the lady to their backs.

But the enemy who should have overtaken them by now — was up on that hill, where now there was nothing to see but the night and the rain.

“We come chasinʼ all about this damn ruin,” Uwen was saying, at his left, breathless, sword in hand as he looked uphill. “Sometimes we was on a path and then again we werenʼt, and then, damn! mʼlord, but we was smellinʼ fire and being rained on at the same time — your pardon.”

Ninévrisë and Tasien had drawn back close to them, Tasien with sword in hand.

“These are your men?” Tasien asked.

“Uwen is mine,” Tristen said. “Who are they, Uwen?”

“Ivanim, mʼlord,” Uwen said, “looking for you. Blesset a long chase you run us. Iʼd draw back, mʼlord. It donʼt feel good up there.”

It seemed good advice. Even the Elwynim accepted it, and drew away with them up the hill, toward the waiting men.

“Mʼlord of Ynefel!” a voice came out of that dark, from among shadowy horsemen. “Who is that with you?”

“The lord Regentʼs daughter, sir, his heir, three of her lords and—” He looked back, unsure of numbers; there were only a handful of soldiers, no threat to anyone. And the valiant packhorse, that one man led, that had somehow stayed with them. “The lady Regent, her men, half a score of her guard. To see King Cefwyn, sir!”

Tasien shouted toward the hill: “We ask safe conduct for Her Most Honorable Grace, the Regent of Elwynor and her escort, sir: Tasien Earl of Cassissan, His Grace Haurydd Earl of Upper Saissonnd, and His Grace Ysdan of Ormadzaran. The lord of Ynefel has agreed to be our hostage against your Kingʼs safe conduct!”

“Lord Tristen of Ynefel,” the shout came down to them. “What will you?”

The wind was still blowing back on the hill. A new sound had begun in the ruins up there. It sounded as if stones were falling and clattering, as if walls were coming down in the anger of the Shadows — Shadows, he thought, not of the dead of Althalen, but of Emwy — that was where the child had come from. And only the child had guarded them.

“I agree to what he wishes, sir. I think we should go to the road as soon as we can!”

“Gods hope.” The Ivanim rode downhill and met them and Uwen in the dark. “Captain Geisleyn of Toj Embrel, at your service, Your Lordship. How many are there, asking safe conduct?”

“Scarcely fifteen,” the lady said on her own behalf. Lightnings flickered, showing a sheen of wet leather, wet horse, wet metal about all of them. “Captain, please take us to His Majesty of Ylesuin, if he is Henasʼamef. And then we wish ourselves and our men given safe conduct back to the river.”

“Brave lady,” Geisleyn said. “His Majesty himself must say for your return — but on my life, you and yours will reach him without any difficulty.”

“That is agreeable,” Ninévrisë said.

“And if any of Your Lordships,” Geisleyn said then, somewhat sheepishly, “has a notion where the road is, we might all be there the sooner.”

“Follow me,” Tristen said, for he had no doubt at all.

And perhaps, as Uwen said as they rode away in that direction, some wizardry had been acting on Uwenʼs side and on his to have gotten them this far and to have brought them together. “We was going one way,” Uwen put it, “and then we was going another, and we had no idea how, but there you was, mʼlord, and, gods! I was glad to see you.”

“I was glad, too,” Tristen said. “I wish I had done better by you, Uwen, I swear I wish so. I knew you would follow me. I didnʼt want you to. Iʼve treated you very badly.”

“Oh, I knew when ye didnʼt come upstairs,” Uwen said, “that you was off somewheres. I just thank the good gods it werenʼt the tower.”

“You were entirely right about the tower,” he said with a feeling of cold. “It would have been very foolish to go there. I could not have matched him.”

“Who, mʼlord?” He had puzzled Uwen. But it was not an answer he wanted Uwen to deal with, ever.

Uwen said, after they had ridden a distance, “I wish Iʼd come downstairs sooner.”

“It was very good you came when you did.” He asked himself if he had said that, or thanked Uwen. He could not remember. “I am grateful. Petelly couldnʼt have run further. But, Uwen, be ever so careful when an idea comes into your head to do something you know really is not the safest thing to do. Ideas come to me sometimes, very strongly. I donʼt know if they do to you. But I think some ideas come from wizards. And some come from my enemy.”

Uwen made a sign above his heart. It was rare that Uwen did that — or, at least, other men did so more frequently at moments when he discussed things in absolute honesty. “Thatʼs certainly a thought,” Uwen said. “That is a thought to keep a man awake aʼ nights, mʼlord.”

“I think itʼs wiser not to think a great deal on the tower, at least, or on this place, either. I donʼt know if ordinary folk have a gray place they can go to when they think about it, but itʼs become very dangerous.”

“A gray place.”

“Do you?”

Uwen scratched his nose. “I guess summat of one if I just shut my eyes. But it fills up with dreams and such.”

“Mine is shadows,” he said, and Uwen made that sign a second time. He thought he should not say more to Uwen than he had, or make Uwen wonder about something maybe he never had wondered about before. And he could not himself answer all those questions — what Shadows were and why they were, except — except he might be one himself, and that was a thought he did not want to pursue.

The old man had wanted to be buried there because it gave him some special power: maybe their moving the stones had made new lines of which the old man was now part — but they had disturbed something else in doing so, and dislodged other bones. He did not know whose, but he hazarded a frightened guess.

— Emuin, he said, touching that grayness. Master Emuin, Iʼm safe now. We are all safe. I met Uwen and some of Cevulirnʼs men. Thereʼs a lady whose picture Cefwyn has, and she will come to see him. I hope thatʼs not a mistake. Advise me, sir. I do very much need advice.

But no answer came to him, not even that fleeting sense of Emuinʼs presence he had had earlier in the day. Toward Althalen he did not wish to venture. Toward Ynefel he least of all wanted to inquire.

At least the Shadows stayed at distance, the ones that belonged to Althalen and the ones that belonged to Emwy, Shadows which, he suspected, down to the witchʼs child, had fought for them tonight, for whatever reason.