I know my way now. Go back to your fountain. There’s danger here!
—Very noble, the Wind challenged him, blowing up a puff of leaves.
Elfwyn would have done that sort of thing. And see what it won him.
—Hasufin? he challenged it. If that is your name, answer me.
—Why? Are you lost? Could you be lost? Or confused? You’re certainly in the wrong place, poor lost Shaping.
The wind whirled through the brush, whipped leaves into Petelly’s face, and Petelly reared, not at all liking this presence.
Neither did Petelly’s rider. Begone! Tristen wished it, and the wind raced away, making a crooked line along the ground, raising little puffs of dust among the stones very much as the child bad done, but far, far more rapidly.
It was no natural wind, no more than the other had been. It retreated as far as an old foundation, and a heap of stones, where it blew leaves off the brush.
Then the line of disturbed dust swept back toward them. This is Death, it said. All the Sihhé in this place died, even the children, should you find that sad. Mauryl and Emuin conspired to murder us. I was a child, did you know? I was a child of Althalen. But it did not stop the Marhanen. They murdered all the children in the presence of their mothers and fathers. And Mauryl was one of them that did the murder.
Were you here.
He expected wickedness of it. Now it lied to him. Mauryl would not have killed children.
But the gray place filled with halls lit with pale sunrise fire, and children and all the people were running from the flames. They did die. They burned. They ran like living torches, their clothes set ablaze with that faded light and arrows shot them down.
A young boy lay sleeping on a bed. A man came, one thought, to rescue that child. But the man stabbed the sleeping boy, and that wan face was Emuin.
“No!”
It was wickedness. And a lie. He had pulled at Petelly’s mouth by accident, making Petelly back and turn as he cleared his eyes of dream and wished the brush and the stones back into his sight. Petelly smelled something, or heard something stilclass="underline" even after he had resumed his even grip on the reins, Petelly kept bending his neck this way and that, trying to turn, backing a step at a time, showing the whites of his eyes and flaring his nostrils; but an even hold on the reins and a firm press of his knees steadied Petelly’s heart and kept him moving.
That the enemy would lie and deceive—why should it not? What could a lie weigh against murder?
So he argued with himself, refusing to believe, having learned deception, and having used it himself.
The wind blew dust into his eyes, making him blink them shut on that gray space, but, tears running on his face, he doggedly watched the space between Petelly’s ears, refusing to start at the Shadows that urged on the edges of his sight. He saw the taunting breeze skirl along the dust. It performed wild antics in his path, it danced in the brush, and turning, blasted him with chaff and grass.
—Tristen, it said to him. Tristen, you dare not blind yourself. These are not lies. I do not lie to you. You’ve believed the Guelenfolk, and Emuin. Very foolish of you, though you might not know it. Shall I tell you what Mauryl called Emuin?
He smelled the smoke still. It seemed stronger. He saw shadow-shapes flitting to the stones and through the brush, shapes which he might have believed, except they passed the most delicate thorn-boughs without disturbing them.
—Mauryl called him weak. Mauryl called him timid. Mauryl called him many names. And you rely on him. Not wise. Not wise at all. You surely died here.
—Go away! he cried. Begone!
—Oh, but you haven’t Mauryl’s force, have you? And you should indeed listen. Mauryl was my teacher. And Emuin’s. Dear Mauryl. Do you remember how he served the Sihhé Kings? He betrayed them: they would not let him have his way—so he dealt with Guelenfolk, and conspired with the Marhanens, who were mere servants to the Sihhé. Do you know how I know? I—I was that murdered child, I was the great and fearsome enemy Mauryl dared not face alone, and all this ruin and all this death he made for me, for me, do you hear me. Because Mauryl feared me, he opened the gates to the Marhanen, he pent me in my room, and sent Emuin to do murder. Would you hear more?
—Heryn Aswydd seemed an honest man, he said, struggling to find resistance to the voice that now seemed so aggrieved, and so reasonable.
Heryn twice tried to kill us all.
—Oh, seemed, seemed. The Marhanen seems. Did Mauryl ever bid you trust the Marhanen? I think not. I know Mauryl’s advice. He sent you on the Road, but at Ynefel is your answer, Shaping. I have your answer. All you have to do is ask me.
The voice roared close and swept about him, a rush of wind along the ground. It blasted a growth of brushwood, and laid bare a slab of stone whereon something had burned.
—Oh, many of us, many of us, the Wind said. Hasufin ... said. They burned the dead. They burned the living, did your precious Marhanen.
They meant to leave no charred chip of bone to anchor us to the earth.
But I have found that anchor. Ask! Come! Temporize with your fate. Ask me all your questions! Shall we search for your Grave, Sihhé soul?
Petelly fought the rein, turning and turning, pressed back by his knees.
He saw the gray light, and the towers of Ynefel under shadow as the blackness arced across toward him.
—Then where and when was I born? be asked it, he knew not by what impulse, but it was his question, it was the question only Mauryl knew. Tell me that, or own you are ignorant and tell me nothing at all!
The Wind whipped away from him, breaking branches as it went. It poured across the sky in a scream of frustration and rage.
Then was quiet. Utter quiet. Foolish, he thought, striving to bold Petelly from a wild rush across the ruins. He was aware of another, subtle presence, so faint and so far be all but missed it. He had not driven away the danger alone. This presence had helped him. This presence had given him steadiness when he most needed it.
—Young man! it said, ever so faintly, now. Young man! Be aware. Be away ...
—Master Emuin? be asked. It felt very much like Emuin’s presence, but it was too elusive to see or to catch in this place. In that other world darkness bad enclosed the area of silver gray where he and Petelly stood—all but that place and a patch of brightness ahead of him, and he saw it glow and falter like the guttering of a candle-flame.
—Emuin? he asked, again, not certain that it was, but not daring leave his ally weak and faltering as he seemed to be.
But it was a plump, kindly-seeming man who came toward him from that guttering light, a man he did not know in life—a man who called to him and held out bands in urgency—but the winds caught him away and their reaching fingers missed before ever he thought that there might have been a chance to catch him. He was gone. The encroaching Shadows flowed like water, broke like waves against the pearl-gray of the world.
He felt—afraid, then. Bereft of help. He shook himself and tried to come away from that gray place, fearing tricks.
He sat, trembling, on a shivering horse. Petelly stood with feet braced and head up, sniffing the wind.
He might have done the right thing, he said to himself. He had set the spirit aback. It was unable to answer that simple question, who he was, and what he was—and somehow that prevented it—Hasufin—from mischief. He thought that the child had gotten away from danger. He no longer saw the flitter in the leaves that betokened her presence.
But he thought, strangely, that he knew direction—amid the vast maze of lines of mostly-buried stones that was Althalen. There was presence at the heart of it: he thought so, from time to time, but it was a presence he did not think harmful. He thought rather the contrary, now, that the old man was someone he needed to find, another who had the right and the ability to travel in that gray space.