“I see it,” she said, holding her hands clasped at her lips. “I do see!”
“What, Lord Warden?” a guardsman asked; but Uwen said, quietly,
“What m’lord sees ain’t bad, whatever it is. Just wait. He’s workin’.”
“No,” Tristen said, for the men’s comfort. “It’s not bad. It’s safe. It’s very safe here.”
The Lines, as they had that night, showed him what Althalen had been, bright as a beacon, now, advising him here had been a street, here had stood walls, here was a way through the maze, though brush had grown up and choked the open ground.
And when he thought of that, a Name the old man had not been able to tell him seemed to sound in the air, unheard, that Question to which the old man had known the answer resounded through the grayness, and Lines on the earth rose into ghostly walls and arches, halls full of people who walked in beautiful garments, and ate delicate food, and laughed and moved in gardens and a river ran near that had boats sailing on it, boats with colored sails and with the figures of beasts and birds on their bows. He did not know whether he could say it as the old man did—but he had almost heard it ringing through the world.
Not Althalen, he thought, then, aware he was slipping very rapidly toward the gray space—but not—suddenly—at Althalen.
There was a murky river. He knew where that river ran—he was in sudden danger. He had risen into the gray space—and gone badly astray, trapped, by an enemy old and clever, and still able to have his way.
He met the attack. He set himself to the fore of Ninévrisé, approaching the enemy on his own, hut not taking the enemy’s vision- When he thought that, immediately he found a vantage he knew, outside, on the parapet of Ynefel, in the sunset. He knew his loft, the high point of a vast hall across the courtyard, highest point in the keep.
He could see his own window, with the horn panes glowing with light in the twilight, as if he were there himself, reading by candlelight—but with the shutters inside open. That was wrong, and dangerous.
It was his window, and it was his home, and he knew the study below, in which he kept his books, many, many of them—not Mauryl’s books, but his own books. He was puzzled, and thought, That was never true.
The height of Ynefel rang with a Word, then, which he could hear, but not hear, in the curious barriers of this dream; and at that Word, all of this glorious building trembled and fell quiet.
He stood on the very parapet, where he had gone—or would go-naked in the rain.
He watched all the buildings from there—the illusion of a living city widespread about Ynefel’s skirts, streets busy as the streets of Henas’amef.
But it had not been Ynefel on that day. It had had another Name. So had he. And he had come there with Mauryl’s help to cast all that citadel down.
He was angry, he knew not why or at what. That anger grew in him, and as it reached the point that he must loose it or die, he let it loose.
In that loosing, a wind swept the halls, swept up the men in their elegant clothing, and the women in their bright gowns, and the children, alike, with their toys, and whirled them all about the towers, tumbling one over the other, out of the bright world and into that gray space where they hurtled, lost and afraid.
Some, more determined and more powerful, found their way back to their former home, and peered out of its walls, frozen in the stone.
Some became Shadows, angry ones, or fearful ones, or simply lost ones, wailing on the winds that carried them through that gray light, until darker Shadows hunted them down, one by one, and ate their dreams and their hopes and their substance.
But all such shadows as came to him for refuge he breathed in and breathed them out again with his will, and by them he mastered the anger that threatened his reason. By them he learned.., better things.
A young man in gray had stood by him, but that man was gone. He possessed securely the walls, the woods, the river, in all the vacancy he had made.
He had done this. All the City was gone. He remained. The Tower of Ynefel remained.
The faces watched from the walls, and the lives flowed through him with a heat like too much wine. He was trembling now. He wanted to know—who had done such a thing, and could it possibly be himself who had begun it?
But of his own countenance and his own reasons he could discern nothing.
He had lived—or would live—in that small room with the horn-paned window. He had come at Mauryl’s asking, and he knew at once his enemy was the man who had stood beside him, the young man in gray, against whom he had fought with all the resources at his disposal—even binding the lives of the people of Ynefel to his effort.
He wanted to know who he was. He wanted to see the face of the one who would have drunk up all the world only to cast out the man in gray.
He had asked Mauryl—or would ask one day—whether Mauryl could see his own face. He thought it clever of himself to wonder that in this dream, a trick by which he could make the dream reveal itself—and him.
But in this dream he had no mirror, nor were there any such, until, still in this dream, suddenly standing within his own room—or what would be his room—he found on the bedside table a small silver mirror.
Threads of shadow formed about it, resisting, strands clung to it as be picked it up, and shriveled when be would not be deterred.
He bad been clever. He bad gained in this dream the mirror Mauryl bad given him; but once be bad found it, be was back in the courtyard by the kitchen door and the rain-barrel. Daylight was behind him and even with the mirror be could see no more than be had seen in the rain-barrel that day, only his own outline, an outline with a shadowed face.
So the dream bad tricked him, and would not at any trick be could play unfold more than be bad seen.
He was sitting on Petelly’s back again. He had his hands locked before his lips. He was aware of the men watching him. He had come all that distance through the past, alone of those living, and alone of the dead-but he knew nothing. Nothing.
He had found reason to fear—and out of his fear, and in revulsion at Hasufin’s cruelty, he thought now, had flowed his terrible anger.
And when his anger broke loose—at least in the dream—he had used lives for the stones and anger for the mortar of his fortress.
It might be illusion. Mauryl had said not to fear dreams, that there was not always truth in them. He thought that Mauryl had had a part in what had happened.
The old man had said—Hasufin would use even his dreams.
The old man had proposed to hold Althalen, and everywhere around him, now that he had broken with Ynefel, was the evidence of the old man’s power. Surely Hasufin could not make something seem so fair-more—feel so fair, and so safe, and so familiar.
But the faces of Ynefel lately in his memory were a truth he could not deny.
They moved on certain nights—or seemed to, when the wind blew, the balconies creaked, and candle flame wavered in the drafts.
Ynefel, which held always a warm, homelike feeling for him—was a terrible place, where he—he!—had done something unthinkable and destructive.
“M’lord,’ Uwen said, moving his horse close. “M’lord?”
He could not move. He could not look aside from that structure of glowing lines, feeling always less than he needed to be, less wise, less kind, less—able to create something like this, so fair and so bright in the gray world.
His handiwork—was other than this.
Men feared him. All men did well to fear him.
Uwen took the reins somehow, and turned Petelly about, and once they were faced the other way he realized that Ninévrisé was close beside him on one hand, and the guardsmen had gathered about them, hands on weapons and yet with no enemy against which they could defend him.
He put his hands on Petelly’s neck, and patted his neck. “I can n age, Uwen,” he said as steadily as he could.