And in hailing him, they turned from Cefwyn. The Elwynim and the Amefin hailed another king: they made him their lord, and would hear nothing else, while the southern lords who had followed him at risk of life and honor stood dismayed, not knowing what to do at this sudden turn of loyalties on the borderlands.
Tristen held up his hands, begging silence, and it was difficult to obtain, in the dim gray light that only hinted at the dawn.
“Lord Sihhë I am,” he said. “Lord Sihhë I am willing to be.” The cold dark seemed to gape beneath his feet, threatening to drink him in, and yet he strained to see their faces, in that hour that stole the stars. But no more than that, he wished to say… yet all along he had listened to Auld Syes, and was not sure she was wrong.
“Cefwyn is my friend,” he said, difficult as it was to speak at all. “Her Grace is my friend. Crissand is the aetheling, and Amefel has a king, the king of the bright Sun! But my name is Tristen!”
And with that he could bear nothing more, and turned away, past Crissand’s reaching hand, past Cevulirn’s grave face. Only Uwen went with him in his withdrawal, and his guard shadowed him until he had found a refuge at the edge of the horse pickets, where Dys and Cass stood and offered mute comfort.
He had left confusion behind him. He had left Aeself and Crissand and Cevulirn with wizardry unexplained. He had left the lords of the south with their understanding challenged. He thought he should have done better. But he could not find how.
He was aware of Owen’s presence, of his new guards, Gweyl and the others, and at this moment he sorely missed Lusin, who would stand by Uwen come what might. He ached heart-deep with what he feared, and what was laid on him to do, with no choice of his: it was what he was made to do. He apprehended at least that Auld Syes was not in charge of him, nor beyond mistakes, only charged with truths as she perceived them. He could refuse.
And his heart cried out against their expectations. It was not Cefwyn’s doom to fall. It was not his own to sit in a hall signing and sealing and rendering judgments, when this single judgment was so difficult.
He drew a deep breath when he knew that, as if bands had loosed about his heart. He looked up at a sky in which the stars had all perished, and at Uwen’s sober, stubbled face. Love shone there, brighter than the dawn; and he opened his arms and embraced Uwen, for all that Uwen was; in his heart he embraced Crissand, and Cevulirn, and the lords of the south, too, and Aeself, who had come by no ordinary road to find him, whether or not Aeself understood what company he had had or how unnaturally he had arrived.
He heard Owl complaining of the sun. He stood still, cold to the very heart of him, as if his very next breath hung suspended between day and dark.
Lord of Shadows he could be. That, more than Lord Sihhë, he might be. He knew the gray space: it would open for him, and he could draw power out of that realm, hurl the hapless dead against the dead that Hasufin summoned until between them they laid waste to the gray space as well as the lands of Men. The last struggle had imprisoned Shadows within the walls of Ynefel and brought down the towers of Galasien. Between them, Mauryl and Hasufin, they had done that: Mauryl, wielding wizardry, and Hasufin, wielding wizardry, had not seen the consequences of the struggle. But he saw that it would not last. At the last, Mauryl had seen the wards falter, he was sure of it: Galasien had perished in vain. It did not hold.
And Efanor and a small band of priests walked a perilous Line in Guelessar, as Emuin and Ninévrisë warded the south and Ni-névrisë’s father and Drusenan’s Wall held the border of Amefel.
It was to keep those barriers strong that he had arrived on Mauryl’s hearth.
“I dreamed,” he said to Uwen, who most knew the youth who had come to Amefel. “Such, at least as I do dream… that there’s something behind Hasufin, and the Sihhë-lords fought it, all those years ago.”
“Lad, such as I couldn’t tell.”
“This is true.” He could no longer bear to wait, not for the men who stood in doubt and debating among themselves what he had said, not for the disturbance in the wood where Shadows hid for the coming day. He would not be the king Auld Syes foretold. He was never suited to it: it was not—he was as sure of it as of the coming day. “Mauryl didn’t Summon me to sit on a throne,” he said. “Cefwyn hates it… but he’s a good king. I’m not what he is. None of us is what he is.”
Uwen was silent, in what mind he could not read.
“You don’t ask me what I am,” he said, curious, for curiosity was always his fault, and he could never understand the lack of it.
“Ye don’t rightly know, do ye?” Uwen answered him with a wry smile. “Nor me. Nor do I need to. Ye’re my good lad.”
“Uwen is what you are,” he said, “and the captain of my guard, and my right hand.” He reached out to Uwen’s leather-guarded shoulder, as much to feel his solid strength as to reassure Uwen. “Set us to horse. Make these men move. Cefwyn needs me. That’s what I know.”
“Aye, m’lord,” Uwen said with relief.
That was Uwen’s answer.
And for his own, when he went back to Cevulirn and Crissand, he took their hands, and embraced them in the murmurous hush of the army. He embraced Sovrag’s huge shoulders, and Umanon’s stiff back, and Pelumer’s thin and aged frame: he opened his arms to Aeself, when Aeself would have cast himself to his knees, and made him stand and have that, and not a lord to worship.
“My lord,” Aeself whispered.
“You can’t make me King,” Tristen whispered back. “Mauryl didn’t, and you can’t. But Sihhë, yes, as the five were, that I do fear I am.” Ice came to him, as strong a vision as if it had Unfolded for the first time, ice, and the fortress of the Qenes, a dizzying long view, a dizzying long remembrance, for memory it might be. He did not know where he had begun, but he knew what the boundaries of the world should be.
“Yet,” Aeself said, “others will join us, my lord, if only they see there’s hope: they’ll come as these men have come—not for me, not even for my cousin, gods save her: they’ll come to the name of the King.”
“Then believe there is such a King,” he said, for he drew that certainty out of his heart, breathless with the urgency with which he knew it. “He’ll be born: Ninévrisë’s child, and Cefwyn’s. And Cris-sand aetheling will sit the throne in Amefel. But my banner is not the High King’s.”
Loyalty that so yearned to bestow itself somewhere worth its hopes shone in Aeself’s eyes. “Then whatever that banner is, I am your man, and so are the rest of us. The forest brought us here. The earth poured us out. I don’t know how we came, but we’ve come here, and nothing frights us after this.”
“Auld Syes brought you. She may bring others. Until there is a King, I can say what is and what’s to be, and I set you in charge of all the Elwynim that come to my banner.”
“I am no experienced man—”
“I say what is.”
“Yes, my lord.” So Aeself said, and Tristen turned to a clearing filled with men and horses, and more men and horses within the trees. Their company had become an army, between dark and dawn.