But to him, what were hours and times? To him and, he thought, to all the Sihhë, the whole of the world and the life within it flowed like a river, and moved with a sure power he felt rather than knew. What he did was no matter of charts, and plans: it was like sliding on the snow, like that glorious morning when they had come out of doors and men had gone skidding on the steps. That was the feeling he had when he tried to move the weather. So many things changed at once there was no time to ask what had changed: he simply changed more of them, until for one glorious moment he had his balance… that was what it was to work a great magic. The little changes just happened, wordlessly, soundlessly, fecklessly; he shed them as he shed raindrops, and such, he feared, was his enemy.
He knew to his regret how great a fear he had evoked in master Emuin at first meeting; he knew how he must still drive Emuin to distraction… and he deeply regretted all along having made the old man’s calculations so difficult. He had never completely understood what a trial he had been. Now he did know, and knew how brave Emuin was, and how very, very skilled, to have kept him in close rein. With all his heart he wished the old man well… wished well all the company that rode behind him, continually, as the sun beat down on them and the world went on as orderly as its folk knew how, in spite of the mischief magic might do.
And of all those near him, only Crissand was completely aware of the frantic racing of his thoughts, and did not interfere or question or pursue him, was not appalled at him—only bore him up with the wings of his selfless, reckless will. It was love that made Crissand a safe companion for him, and adoration that kept Crissand staunch and unquestioning in his tumble of thoughts and this reckless exploration of the world. And that gave him courage when his own courage faltered and when that Edge seemed all too close.
—I’m here, Crissand said, when he no more than thought of him. I don’t understand all the things you say. But I’m here.
—I’ve never doubted, Tristen said. I don’t doubt you. Nor ever shall.
So he said to Crissand as the descent continued around that long hill, and in that moment they had had their first sight of the river and of the camp to the left… such as remained. Where once rows upon rows of tents had stood on that flat expanse was now a flat scar of bare, trampled earth. Where Cevulirn and the lords of the south had camped, five tents remained in that trampled desolation, with a handful of horses.
But the bridge that Tristen had last seen as a ruin spanned the dark flood of the Lenúalim with stout timbers and the substance of Cevulirn’s good work.
“Nary a soul stirrin’,” Uwen muttered at the sight, “nor any boats in sight. Which should be good.”
Beyond any doubt of his, Cevulirn had crossed the river and set up camp on that far side, a base from which they might advance north.
But whether Idrys had found one of Sovrag’s boats to carry him east was still in question.
They left the road and set out across the bare earth toward those remaining tents, but before they had reached them a handful of Ivanim came out and stood waiting to give them all courtesies.
“Is Lord Cevulirn across the river?” was Tristen’s first question, from horseback. “And have you seen the Lord Commander?”
“Our lord and the army have their camp just the other side.” the seniormost Ivanim said cheerfully, a man with a scarred chin and gray in his hair. “And the Lord Commander’s sailed on with Sovrag’s men, upriver, on account of your word, Your Grace, as we hope did come from you.”
“It did.” Idrys was a man hard to refuse, and might have given Cevulirn himself qualms in his haste to be on eastward, but that Idrys had found passage and was on his way to Cefwyn was a vast relief.
Yet the instant he said that, and thought that Idrys was safe, an uneasy feeling still ran through the gray space, the flitting of a thought that passed him in the same way he was aware of creatures in the woods and men around him. It came to him that he had not seen Owl for some time, and that they were at an edge, of a kind, here on the river shore.
Here was where the war began, and here was where he committed himself and other men to reach Cefwyn and keep his pledge to Her Grace.
Most of all… for a moment he could not draw his breath… ahead was the reason Mauryl had called him into the world, and he was sure now as at any Unfolding that a rebellious student was not the enemy that had driven Mauryl to the Hafsandyr or the Sihhë to leave their fortress in the high mountains.
He did not detect the danger as near them, nor was it the sort of threat that would have had him order shields uncased and the warhorses saddled. But danger there was. Their camp was on the other side of the river, and what he felt urged him to move on and quickly. It Unfolded to him not as a Word or a slight illumination but as a stroke of lightning across all the heavens, the ultimate reason for all Mauryl had done.
“Good day,” he remembered to say, however, recalling Men and their courtesies and their due with the same awkwardness he had felt in Cefwyn’s court. “Thank you.”
Then he turned red Gery and rode at an easy pace toward the bridge, with Uwen and Crissand close on his heels and the company falling in behind them. The banners streamed past on the right as the bearers sought to get them to the fore just before the three of them rode onto the bridge, and when they had climbed up the slanting approach and onto the rough, newly planed logs, the horses went Warily, looking askance at the broad current of the Lenúalim and the height of the span, the like of which they had not met. The wind blew unrestrained here. The thunder of so many riders behind them, even slow-moving and deliberate, drowned the rush of the river under the wooden spans.
“Never crossed the like in m’ life,” Uwen put it, “nor’s Gia. This is a grand work, this.”
“Grand work, indeed,” Crissand said.
And at the end of the bridge, before they were halfway across: a handful of men stood forth from the woods, occupying the end of the bridge, waving to them, seeing the banners and signaling them, if they had failed to ask at the camp, that it was Lord Cevulirn’s men on the far side.
“Welcome!” they said. “Well come, indeed. Go on, go on, our lord will expect you!”
They passed from that meeting into the woods, on a road long unused until the recent passage of oxen and horses. Last year’s weeds, brown and limp from melted snows, lay trampled into the mire by shod hooves and pressed into the ruts left by cart wheels. Small brush was crushed down and broken, while the new track deviated around the occasional stout sapling that had sprung up in the old roadway, and others were hacked half through at the root, bent flat, so the carts could go over them.
And at the end of that course was the first of the gray-stone hills this side of the river, wooded and brushy and guarded by some furtive presence atop it: Tristen felt it rather than saw.
“Lanfarnessemen,” he said to Uwen, directing him with a shift of his eyes, and Uwen looked up at the nearer hill. At that, the presence ebbed away, shy as any deer: it was a danger not to them, but to their enemies.
Just beyond that stony, forested outcrop, the brush gave way to brown, grassy meadow, and there white canvas had bloomed into a sizable camp, yet a discreet one, too, a surprise to come upon just past the forest and between the hills, and warded by watchers on the heights.