Yet Drusenan’s men had long carried on a secret commerce with Elwynor.
A challenge came down to them as they reached the gates, a sharp, “Who goes there?”
“His Grace of Amefel!” Crissand shouted up. “Meiden and Lord Drumman! Open up!”
“Open the gates!” came down from above them.
Then a second voice, Drusenan’s: “Welcome, my lord, to our wall! Welcome to the defense of Amefel!”
There was a brisk rub for the horses, and a welcome cup and pallets for a nap for the men, but for the lords, no rest—it was straight to a close council in the restored gatehouse of the wall, warm and lit with a small, double-wicked oil lamp.
In that place they took their cups of ale, declined food, for that they had already had, and spread out the map they brought from Henas’amef.
“The men you sent went through, never stopping but to say you were coming,” Drusenan said, “which is as much as we know, my lord.”
“Was a tall man with them?”
“A grim fellow, yes, my lord.”
“And left with them.”
“Went with them, my lord, and all of them pressing hard. And they had the bands, every man of them.”
There was no more, then, that he could do, and they nursed their cups of ale over small matters of supply and intent until the bottom of the cup, and then a brief, a desperate attempt at sleep and rest.
But Owl was abroad, still, and when Tristen shut his eyes he found himself in dizzying flight, wheeling above the darkened river, where a bridge stood completed, and men crossed by night.
Owl flew farther, and skimmed almost to the water, and up again, where the rocks rose sheer above the river.
Then back again, where a boat traveled under sail, and a dark man looked out from the prow, restless and worried. He traveled alone, that man, having left the guard behind. He was bidden rest on deck, but he could not sleep, and scanned the dark and rugged shore as the face of an enemy.
It was very far for Idrys to travel, even yet.
Owl flew on, and on, and swept his vision past hills to east and north, and Cefwyn’s camp was there, hundreds of tents, all set in orderly rows. He wished Owl to turn and show him Cefwyn, Owl veered off across the land, far, far, far, toward the east, Tristen thought, where the Quinaltine stood, where Efanor kept watch.
Of a sudden Owl turned, veered back again in a course so rapid the stars blurred and the world became dark, became the river, dark water, and cold.
Something was abroad in the night. Owl fled it, and that was never Owl’s inclination. For a long time Tristen had nothing in his sight but the ragged, raw cliffs and stony upthrusts of the hills, and then the gentler land of shepherds and orchards, laid bare of snow. The enemy hunted, hunted, pursued.
Fly, he wished Owl, for what stirred northward was aware of him, now, and turned attention toward him.
Well and good. Best it come to him. He wished it to turn to him, see him, assess what he was, with all the dangers inherent in the encounter. He abandoned stealth. He challenged the Shadow to the north, taunted it, all the while with fear in his heart… for in that way he had learned there were things older than himself, this was, indeed, older.
This was Hasufin, but it was more.
It was the Wind, and a dark Wind, and it had carried Hasufin and carried his soul still, but it was more than that: it had always lurked behind the veil, and now stood naked to the dark, the very heart of menace.
For a long, long while, his heart beating hard, he stared into that dark, having lost all reckoning of Owl.
But then something flew very near, and Owl called him urgently, reft him away as the thin sound broke the threads of the dream.
He plummeted to earth, aware of his own body again, and Drum-man and Uwen sleeping beside him.
But on his other side Crissand was awake, at the very threshold of the gray space. Crissand had felt the danger, and tried to oppose it.
—My lord? Crissand whispered.
—Be still, he said. Be very quiet. Something’s looking this way.
—What? Crissand wanted to know, and then turned his face toward the danger.
—Back! Tristen ordered him, and snatched them both from the gray winds before it could come near.
“A wizard,” Crissand said in a low and tremulous voice.
“I’m not sure,” Tristen said, knowing in his heart it was nothing so ordinary, that long ago something had entangled itself with Hasufin Heltain, as Hasufin had attempted to ensnare Orien Aswydd, and Aséyneddin in Elwynor.
Then it Unfolded to him with shattering force that this was indeed so, and that Mauryl himself had feared it.
This… this was in Hasufin’s heart.
It was not dispelled at Lewenbrook. It had not been dispelled in hundreds of years. It had only retreated. It was in the depths of the Quinal-tine. It was in every deep, dark place the Galasieni themselves had warded, and Hasufin had bargained with it, listened to it, welcomed it in his folly.
He had no choice but draw its attention to himself, now, for Cefwyn’s only defense was his blindness to magic and wizardry alike… and blindness was not enough, not against something with such ready purchase in Ryssand’s heart.
“I wish Idrys may hurry,” Tristen whispered into the dark, hearing Owl call again, and a third time, magical three. “I wish the winds behind him, and I wish he may come in time.”
“So all of us wish,” Crissand said, and fear touched his voice. “I saw a Shadow. Does it threaten the king?”
“It threatens everything,” Tristen said, and could not bid Crissand avoid it: could not bid any one of his friends avoid it. It was why they had come, why they pressed forward, why they had gone to war at all, and everything was at risk. “But sleep. Sleep now, while we dare sleep at all.”
BOOK THREE
INTERLUDE
Morning came gray and pale across hills not so different than Elwynor. Maids stirred about the fireplace, made tea, presented a breakfast of which Ninévrisë only wished a little bread, no honey in the tea. Afterward she sat in the warm middle of the room gazing at the pale light of the window, asking herself whether the bread had been wise at all.
Perhaps, instead, it was fear that churned inside her—fear and the wish never to have left her husband… not a wise wish, to be back with him, but the wish of her heart, all the same.
She was aware, on that level far beyond awareness of the hills and the tea and unwanted breakfast, of Emuin, half-asleep in his tower bed, an old man and increasingly frail; and of the boy Paisi, who made Emuin’s breakfast.
Paisi was worried, too, worried for the old man: loved him, an unaccustomed thing for Paisi, and more than a little surprising to the boy, who had loved few things and fewer people. He was not sure what to call those feelings, but Paisi was a fiercely protective soul, and set all his gifts to caring for the old man who had roused them in him.
He was suddenly aware of her eavesdropping on him—gifted in that way to an amazing extent, and not knowing anything he could properly do with that ability, either—and stopped and looked her direction in the gray space like any boy caught at anything. He truly disliked to be stared at or made conspicuous in any way, met such stares with hostility—but he regarded her differently, not with the unthought respect of a commoner for a lady, but a far more personal sense of connection.
He hurried about his last morning duties for Emuin, waked the old man, saw him safely seated at his breakfast, and then slipped out of the tower room and down the stairs from the tower to the lower hall.