Outside, now, however, all was cold, in the breath of winter, and the threat of coming snow.
Outside was a life within that shadow, but not quite as fragile a life as seemed.
“M’lord?” Uwen asked him, porridge standing on his spoon. Someone was coming, Tristen was well sure, now.
And up in the heights of Ynefel keep, in the loft where dust and old feathers blew in the winds, Owl opened his eyes and turned his head about as Owl could.
Go, Tristen told Owl silently, and Owl, that recalcitrant bird, spread blunt, broad wings and with two great flaps and a tilt of his wings, went out through the gap in the boards.
ii
THE DAY HAD BEEN HALF-KIND, HALF-CRUEL—A LITTLE WARMTH IN the morning, but by afternoon a wicked wind kicked up, rattled through the bare, black branches, and suddenly, with a whirl of old snow off the limbs of Marna’s trees, bit to the bone. Otter kept his hands inside his cloak as much as he could, except as now, when he had to get off Feiny’s back and lead him over uncertain ground, down the slope of a little hillock and around a deadfall too big to move and too bristly to jump.
He had exhausted the grain, and Gran’s provisions. He had spent two cold, cold nights in this treacherous place, but he persevered, calmly, surely. Paisi had always told him the woods had its tricky ways, and that it would mislead a traveler if he tried to turn around and get out. So he refused to change his mind and refused to be scared back, no matter the sounds in the dark, no matter the solitude of the place. He was sure he had come about in a circle once—but he was not to be caught by the old woods again: he had taken careful note of certain trees and looked at their shapes from more than one side, the way Paisi had taught him, so he could not be tricked unless the trees themselves changed shape.
But with the wind rising and the snow sifting down like a veil, he found it harder and harder to be sure what he saw, and once the dark began to come down, he had no choice but to stop and wrap himself in his cloak. He had brought himself and the horse up against an icy lump of an outcrop, with icicle-dripping rock between them and the gusts, to wait through the spate of snow. There was not a thing to eat. In that fact, he was more than worried.
Something pale sailed through the falling snow, sailed, and turned, and settled on a branch overhead. He looked up at it.
“Who?” it asked him; and he knew it was no natural bird. He got up on cold-stiff legs, and it flew off a little distance.
“Who?” it asked again.
Otter trembled, knowing the reputation of that bird, and whence it came—Paisi had said so, and Gran had nodded, confirming the story. He could see the fireside that night, when Paisi had told him how that creature had come into the Zeide and stayed with Lord Tristen. “It weren’t no bird as ever was,” Paisi had said. “An’ it weren’t friendly. It’d bite soon as look at ye. But it turned up where he did.”
“My name is Otter!” he called out to the woods, the owl, and any listener. “I’ve come to see Lord Tristen!”
The owl spread its wings and flew to another, farther tree, veiled in snowfall.
Otter took the reins and clambered up on a rock to get to Feiny’s saddle, fearful that the owl would move again and vanish into the woods. He urged Feiny onward, and the owl took wing, never minding that brush barred his way, and he had to fight past low, clawing branches.
“Owl,” he called to it, “good Owl. Be patient. Stay for me.”
“Who?” it asked, and perversely took flight.
The brush was too thick. He had to get down and lead the horse, tugged him along when the horse had as soon stopped altogether, finally having to take him close by the bit to keep him moving at all, and going near hip deep through a drift.
“Who?” Owl said, mocking him, and flew on through the snow, vanishing almost—but it seemed a bluish light outlined his wings and ran after him, like troubled water. Otter stared into the falling snow, his very eyes chilled, and kept going. Breath hissed between his teeth as he tried to warm it before taking it down. At times he lost Owl altogether, but then a passing shape brushed his hair and startled the horse as Owl winged ahead of him, glowing in the overcast.
His feet were already numb. That numbness crept from his feet to his legs and made him stumble in the snow as they left all semblance of a trail and followed a weaving course through a darker and darker forest. Feiny stumbled, and went down to his knees, and Otter pulled on the bridle, trying to help the horse up, all the while keeping his eyes on Owl, who vanished among the dark trunks and snowy branches.
Feiny gained his feet and followed, as numb and as miserable as he, Otter was sure, and Owl showing no mercy at all. He had sped through the darkest of the woods, where there was no light to be seen. The horse struggled and stumbled on hidden roots, and Otter feared he would go down and not get up: he had brought the heavy caparison, but even that was not enough. He took off his own cloak and flung it over the horse, saddle and all. Wind cut like a knife.
“Owl?” he called out desperately, casting about.
A pale shape sailed over his head and on through the trees, and he followed, stumbling, himself, on the uneven ground, and leading Feiny carefully, trying to keep them both on their feet. Ahead, a seam of twilight opened up between the trees, and Owl flew into it. They went after, passing under a network of bare branches, seeing that seam widen. It became a path, and, it seemed, a bridge, on the end post of which Owl sat, turning his face away.
Otter tugged at the bridle and brought Feiny along.
Owl spread his wings and flew as they passed the last screen of branches.
A fortress sat across that bridge, a place so overgrown and age-eaten it seemed a part of the rocks. The fortress gate cut off all view beyond the wall, except a little scrap of river and the top of a ruined tower.
Owl sailed up and up over that wall, and toward that ruined height, and vanished.
He had no choice now. He trusted himself to the old stones and the timbers and led Feiny across what might be a rubble pile or a bridge, on timbers with no few gaps. The ancient gates rose higher and higher, until they blotted out the sky. He stood and hammered them with his fist, which made little sound at all.
“Lord Tristen!” he called out to the heights. “Lord Tristen, can you hear me?”
Even his voice seemed lost, swallowed by the deep sound of the moving river under him, and he stood alone in the dark, beyond shivering in the cold. Twice more he shouted out and beat at the gate, waiting each time, in fading hope of an answer.
He had been a fool, he thought. He had come uninvited. He might die out here, no one knowing until spring and snowmelt.
Then a door opened and shut, somewhere beyond the wall, and he called out again, desperately: “Lord Tristen! It’s Otter! Gran and Paisi’s Otter! Can you hear me?”
Footsteps came, faintly in the distance beyond the gate, and then closer and closer, muffled by new snow, crunch, crunch, crunch. An inner bar grated and thumped back, and the gate swung and creaked inward, just enough to let him and the horse pass through.
He eased through the gap, seeing first a snowy courtyard, and the black bulk of the keep, and then, right by him, a grim man in a cloak and gloves.
“Sir,” he said respectfully, though he knew this thickset man could not be the lord himself, and he found his teeth chattering when he did it. “I’ve come, I’ve come—”
“Ye’re here,” the man said. “Ye’ll come in and have a warm bowl and a cup o’ tea.” The man took the reins from his fingers and patted Feiny’s snowy neck. “A horse in a cloak, is it? My son’ll see to ’im. Ye’ll come along.”
“You’re Uwen Lewen’s-son.”
“That I am,” the man said, and led him and the horse toward a low, ramshackle, and snowy cottage, with a long stable beside it, and other horses. That pricked Feiny’s interest, and drew a soft, low grunt, and an answering restlessness from the stable.