“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 masons’ 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, m’lord 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. He’s 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, m’lord 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 Emuin’s judgment far less.”
“Do you think Emuin is deceiving himself?”
“Not that we have all the truth out of Emuin, nor shall ever have.”
Idrys’ 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 m’lord 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. I’d 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, m’lord. None of our evening’s 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 Tristen’s 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 didn’t 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 lady’s, the walls and the traces of foundations of this arm of the ruins showed still wanly glowing, the masons’ 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. “They’ve 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.