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 didn’t 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.
“King’s business!” a voice called out. “Who goes?”
His heart leapt. He knew that voice. “Uwen, don’t 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!” Uwen’s voice called out. “All of ye, hold!
Let ’em pass! This is m’lord Tristen. I don’t know who them with ’im is-just brace up. We got others comin’ we don’t 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 Tristen’s back, at his side, under Petelly’s 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 child’s voice. Seddiwy’s 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!”
“M’lord, 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 chasin’ 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 weren’t, and then, damn! m’lord, but we was smellin’ fire and being rained on at the same time—your pardon.”
Ninévrisé 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, m’lord,” Uwen said, “looking for you. Blesset a long chase you run us. I’d draw back, m’lord. It don’t 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.
“M’lord of Ynefel!” a voice came out of that dark, from among shadowy horsemen. “Who is that with you?”
“The lord Regent’s 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 hilclass="underline" “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 King’s 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 in Henas’amef. 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,” Ninévrisé 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 Uwen’s 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, m’lord, 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 didn’t want you to. I’ve treated you very badly.”
“Oh, I knew when ye didn’t come upstairs,” Uwen said, “that you was off somewheres. I just thank the good gods it weren’t 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, m’lord?” 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 I’d come downstairs sooner.”