Certainly he would have learned that others existed, and learned how to reach for them, before he had learned restraint.
By all he knew, Emuin had taken him in hand out of utter desperation… had shown him the gray place in great trepidation, marveling only that he had never found it for himself—and then Emuin had immediately retreated to the peace of Anwyfar, distant enough in Guelessar to watch him unseen. Baffling and painful as Emuin’s desertion had seemed to him at the time, now he understood how Emuin’s close presence would have tempted him into more and more dangerous exploration. The world of Men had been his distraction, discovery after discovery unsettling his understanding, leading him by small degrees, not great ones, and keeping him always uncertain of his balance.
Flesh as well as spirit.
The world of spirit had always been easier for him to explore— easier, but infinitely more dangerous and less confined. Watch his feet, Mauryl had tried to teach him. Learn caution in a realm where the rules were simple, where if one stepped off the cliff edge, one fell to a predictable death—
Caution had been Emuin’s wish and Emuin’s hope for him… when he set free one who might know no bounds.
Win his friendship, Emuin had said to Cefwyn, regarding him, and on this ride it came to him what two things Emuin had wished to do in giving Cefwyn that advice: first to disarm him of the danger he posed to Cefwyn, to set any random wishes he might make to Cefwyn’s good, not his ill; and secondly, to distract him with the questions of Cefwyn’s material world and keep him occupied with that, out of the gray space.
The gray space might have been quieter before he came. It was certainly more silent in those days when Emuin had been at Anwyfar: the Aswydds had surely been aware of him and cannily held themselves remote.
Remote as Hasufin, too, had kept himself remote: Hasufin had shown no desire, past that first encounter at Lewenbrook, to come at close quarters with him.
Wizards of all different sorts had kept their distance, wary of his ignorance, wary of his disposition, wary of his power, but mostly, he believed now, wary of his lack of wizardry… not his lack of power, but his lack of the most basic rules wizards knew.
Wizards depended on those rules to work their magic; he did not.
Wizards planned all they did according to those rules.
He had none. He learned the art only to know what his friends and his enemies might do, or expect. But at the last, he did not find it of use.
In the world of Men, he traveled now to be where Cefwyn appointed him to be, assured that that was the one rule it was wise to follow, but constrained by the rules of the realm of Men as he was not constrained in the gray realm. His options were limited: Tasmôr-den could anticipate his moves and guard against them, using the constraints of the land.
But that wizards could not similarly predict his options had made his greater enemy lie quiet, waiting, perhaps, for him to reveal his limitations… or his intentions.
More unsettling to their wishing ways, they could not wish him to move in certain ways.
Mauryl had indeed despaired of him; Emuin had dealt with him only at safe distance; Hasufin had attempted to use Aséyneddin and his entire army, but then abandoned that hope, and still lost. Hasufin had hoped again in Tarien’s child; but Tarien had come home to him to bear Cefwyn’s son, come to return the Aswydds to their Place in the world. As good fling a stone into the sky: down it would come. Back the Aswyddim had come, even to perish and join the Shadows in the Zeide’s stones, and the whole world sighed with the release of a condition that could not have persisted, the separation of the Aswydds from Hen Amas… were there not other needs that strained at the fabric of the world, and was not one Crissand, riding with him? And was not one Orien, within her tomb?
And was not one another wizard, born in Amefel?
He had advised Cefwyn to cast the Aswydds out; and so it had served, for the hour of Hasufin’s assault at Lewen field, but only for that hour. After Lewenbrook, it was possible Hasufin had wanted them apart from him, as much as he wanted them away from Henas’amef—until Hasufin had taken Cefwyn’s son… but the Place itself had its conditions, stronger, it appeared, than those of Hasufin or himself, and by one means and another, the stone fell to earth, water ran downhill, birds came to their nest, and the Aswydds came back to their hall.
He, however, had no such Place, at least, that he had yet discovered: he only had persons. He had Crissand; he had Cefwyn; he had Ninévrisë of Elwynor and now Cefwyn’s two sons.
But he himself felt no inclination to rush to earth. He found no downhill course. He had no direction, other than the needs of those he loved.
Was he himself a hill down which those who knew him, who trusted him, must flow?
And was that the danger inherent in him? That when stones did fall, when water did run downhill, they might wreak havoc in the world?
He was not like Crissand, not like Cefwyn, nor Ninévrisë, nor like Mauryl nor yet like Emuin, and he was not like Uwen, or Idrys. Nothing like him existed or had existed—not even his enemy.
The Lanfarnessemen had not remarked on the banner among the other banners: it was not their place to remark on it, but surely they knew what it signified, and perhaps even knew how they had come by it—Pelumer’s men, though camping to themselves in scattered bands, had uncommonly thorough knowledge of what had happened in Henas’amef and elsewhere.
Without doubt, they knew why it flew.
Tasmôrden would know.
How northern men would see it he could well guess.
Prudence would have bidden Crissand furl it, or better yet, not to bring it at all; but it would go. Like the Aswydds returning to Henas’amef, that banner would go with him—it belonged to him. Cefwyn had known, had given him the arms, less the crown, even when he himself failed to know it was, should be, must be—his.
It was not a territory of land that banner claimed; but the rights of the land; it was not a town or a capital it represented, but a Place. A Place for him to exist… a Place that was himself.
He was as he was, in a year which had turned to a new Year, in a land wherein spring much resembled autumn, brown grass, bare trees, a welter of mud, hillside springs gushing full into gullies and turning any low spot to bog.
He had come full circle, but everything was changed. And he was changed. Owl, that mysterious haunt of last year, flitted sometimes in view and came and went in the patchy trees… guiding him, confirming him in his choices, no longer ambiguous, but no prophet, either, of the outcome.
And for very long they went, he and Crissand and Uwen, in the silence of men who had exhausted every thought but the purpose for which they went: sharing that, they had no need for words, only the solidity of each other’s company, from the ranks forward. They discussed the condition of gear, the change about of horses, the disposition of a water flask, those things that regarded where things were and how they were, but not where they were going or what might happen there: the one they knew and the other no one could speculate.
It was toward late afternoon when they reached Modeyneth and when they saw the traces of many men in the muddy fields, and the safety of the houses as assured as before, they were glad of the sight, and men began to talk hopefully of a cup of something before they moved on.