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—
Tristen! he heard Emuin call. Young fool! Come back here
!

He trusted and he went, while the Wind roared and rushed and
buffeted his back.

He went, and sometimes Owl winged before him and sometimes
behind, but he persevered… homeward. He was sure now of that
word. Home.

And the gray grew lighter before him as he saw two, no, three and
four and five and six faint shadows within a pearl gray dawn.

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He walked onto solid stone, his hair stirred by the beat of spectral
wings. About him was a corridor of gray brightening to a clear blue
light, and in those beckoning hands knew Emuin's touch, and
Ninévrisë's… even Tarien's, frightened and protective as a mother
hawk above Elfwyn's sleepy awareness: she was there. There, too,
was Paisi, the mouse in the woodwork, skittish and yet purposeful,
and brazenly brave for his size.

It was Paisi who all but shouted for his attention now, and ran
forward, to his own peril.

—
Fool! Emuin cried
.

But in that same instant another dared more than that, and forged
ahead into the burning blue. Crissand came, never mind his orders
and a wizard's will: Crissand had come, with a devotion like Uwen's,
as determined, and as brave. Owl flew as far as Crissand's hand, that
far, and hovered, and then flew past, out into the world of Men.

Crissand reached him just as Owl vanished from his sight… reaching
out to take his hand and pull him home.

—
My lord, Crissand called him, king though Crissand would yet be.

They locked hands and then embraced, and all the Lines of Hen Amas
rose up bright and strong around them. Emuin and Ninévrisë and
Paisi hovered mothlike above the fire of the mews, and Tarien, too,
with Cefwyn's wizard child
—
they all were around him; and in their
collective will, and a wall went up against the Wind, making firm the
wards
.

Tristen let go his defense then, and trusted Crissand to pull him safely into the world of Men, and there to hold him in his arms, steadying him on feet that had lost all feeling.

He was cold: it had been very cold where he had walked last, a cold almost to chill the soul, but Crissand warmed his fingers to life, and Emuin reached his heart with a steady, sure light, driving the last vestiges of the dark from him, lighting all the recesses where his deepest fears had taken hold.

"Frost," Crissand said, and indeed a rime of frost stood on his black armor. Tristen found his fingers were white and chill as ice. So he felt a stiffness about his hair, and brushed the rime from his left arm, finding cause then to laugh, a sheer joy in life.

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"A cold, empty Wind," he said to Crissand, and then cried: "Did I not say wait with Emuin?"

"I
was
with Emuin," Crissand said. "Didn't you say in that place there's no being parted? I never left him… or you, my lord! Paisi and Her Grace of Elwynor never left us. Even Tarien. Even she."

And
the babe, Cefwyn's son, her son, her fledgling she would not see harmed: Hasufin had bid for a life and now Tarien herself was his implacable enemy, the surest warder against her twin's malice. He knew that as surely as he still carried an awareness within him of the gray place: Orien Aswydd might have tried to drive him aside and make him lose his way, but Orien no longer had the advantage of the living.

Above all else Orien would not lay covetous hands on her sister's child, not while he was in his mother's arms. Tarien rested now, weary from her venture, still seething with the fight she had fought along the wards. She had become like Owl, very much like Owl, merciless in her cause, possessed of a claimant and a Place and let at liberty.

"Never trust Tarien too much," Tristen said on a breath, for he saw danger in that direction; but the danger where he had been was sufficient. "Did Owl come past?"

"Like a thunderbolt," Crissand said, aiding him to walk: Tristen found his feet had grown numb, as if he had walked for hours in deep snow. "He went somewhere in the hall. I don't know where."

"He'll come back," Tristen said, with no doubt at all, and no doubt what he had now to do. "Is it dawn?"

"Close on it," Crissand said. "All's ready. But rest a while, my lord.

Warm yourself."

"We'll ride north," Tristen said. "North now."

"My lord, never till master Emuin says you're fit." Lusin had come to lend a hand with him, and supported him on the other side in what was now the downstairs hall, alight with candles and teeming with fearful servants. Paisi was there, and stood on one foot and the other, bearing a message from Emuin, Tristen was sure.

Paisi pressed something like a coin into his gloved hand. "Master Emuin says carry this and ride tonight."

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"He's not fit!" Crissand protested, but Emuin's charge was all Tristen needed to reinforce his own sense of urgency.

"I'll be well when the sun touches me," he said, and took his weight to himself, unsteady as he was. "And Uwen expects me. I know him.

He'll ride back, never mind my orders to wait at the river. He'll ride all the way back to town if I don't meet him." He found his stride and gathered his wind, seeing the stable-court stairs. "Is Dys saddled?"

" 'E will be," Paisi said, and sped ahead of him, small herald of a desperate, wizardous purpose.

"My lord," Crissand argued with him still.

"They'll kill Cefwyn," Tristen said to all the company around him. "If he falls, Ylesuin won't see the summer and Amefel itself won't stand." It was clearer to him than anything near at hand: all of that was in flux, but the great currents had their directions, clear to anyone who could dip in and drink—and did not Hasufin know these things?

Surely Hasufin knew, Hasufin who was older than he and canny and difficult to trap: he could no longer be sure of Hasufin in any particular, but what he could do, he had to guess that Hasufin could do as well—shadow and substance, they mirrored one another, and Hasufin tried to make that mirroring perfect, and tried to name him his name, and tried to make him all that Hasufin remembered him to be.

Foresight had advantages, he said to himself as he essayed the west stairs, above Orien's walled-up tomb. Foresight was a great advantage, but expecting everything to be as it had been… that was the trap, the disadvantage, in Hasufin's centuries of knowledge.

"Mauryl Summoned me," he said to those on either hand, "but it went amiss. Or did it? Was his wizardry not greater than his working? And didn't things go as he wished, in spite of his wishes?"

"I don't know these things, my lord," Crissand said, at his right hand, and Lusin, at his left. "Nor meself, m'lord. And ye ain't in any case to be ridin'."

"I can. I will." They were in the open air, now, and he knew Emuin had heard what he had surmised.

—
As he wished, in spite of his wishes… all of that, you are, young
lord. You're the substance of his wishes, and the sum of his courage.

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He let you free. He didn't Shape you. He left that to the world and
this age. He left you to Shape yourself, young lord, and
Tristen
he
named you, and Tristen you are. Think of it. Think of it, where you
go. Never let that go
.

"M'lord's horse!" Syllan called out, and Lusin shouted: "Rouse and rise, there! Rouse out! Horses!"

Haman's lads appeared out of nowhere, and hard on that, Lusin sent a man to the barracks, and another to the gate-guards, and ordered the bell rung that would rouse all the troops.

Arm and out! the bell seemed to say, and within moments men appeared from the barracks, and horses were led out under saddle.

Crissand's men reached the gates, and a boy brought the three standards, the black ones of Ynefel and Althalen, and the blood red standard of Amefel, in a light that began to supplant the light of the torches.

Arm and out! Arm and out
! came from the bells, and Crissand's captain rode a thick-legged gray into the half-light of the yard, carrying a furled dark standard to the steps where they stood.

Crissand came to the edge of the steps and took it in his hand, looking up.

"My lord! This one, for the lord of Althalen and Ynefel! This one, with the others!"

"Unfurl it," he said, knowing which standard it was, and in the wind that began with dawn Crissand unfurled the Star and Crown of the Sihhë Kings, the banner Tasmôrden had tried to claim, and now would see carried against him.

One more Tawwys brought and saw spread against the wind, the Tower and Checker of the Lady Regent, until the standards that should go before a great army flew and cracked on the wind.
She
was with him, as she had helped draw him out of the gray space: she sat now by her fireside, wrapped in her own efforts, which were for the wards of the fortress, and for the watch Efanor had undertaken. With Emuin's sure aid she settled herself to watch all the accesses of the place, and nothing might pursue its occupants here, nothing might pass her awareness. She was the Tower, and she prepared to stand siege.

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Paisi appeared at the top of the steps, smallish and wide-eyed, and scampering down the steps to the alarm of the horses.

"Careful there," Lusin chided him, and set a heavy hand on Paisi's shoulder, staying him short of the last dive in among the milling horses.

"Master wishes ye know he's watchin'!" Paisi shouted out. "An' bids ye sleep o' nights!"

Tristen waved at him, understanding, but coming no closer, for the men afoot and the horses being brought filled the smallish yard, and those of them that were mounted had to move to give the others room enough. His guard had mounted up, staying close with him, and new men, all of Meiden, carried the standards.

Dys and Cass would join them outside the walls, among the remounts, and Uwen was off on Liss. It was only Gery that awaited them here, and Tristen mounted up and took up his shield from Aran's hands, the red one, with Amefel's black Eagle. But he did not ride alone: Crissand joined him, on a thick-legged, sturdy gray, while his house guard under his captain waited just outside the Zeide gate, where there was room.

"Let us go," Tristen said, and Gweyl, in Uwen's place until they had regained him and Gedd, relayed the order to send the banner-bearers out before them.

They rode out under the menace of the gate into the chill, clear dawn, out into the town. The bell tolled above them, signal to all the town, and it waked every sleeper and brought shutters open and shadowy bundled figures to the streets.

Lord Sihhë
! the people shouted, gathering everywhere along the main street of the town, some wrapped in blankets, straight from their beds and into the chill that frosted breath. All the way to the lower gates the townsfolk stood and shouted out,
Lord Sihhë and Meiden
!

So they shouted out for the other lords of Amefel as they, too, turned out with their house guards, joining them from side streets, and so a handful of enterprising boys shouted from the top of the town's main gate as they rode out, a last salute of high, boyish voices:
The High
King! The High King
!

So they had shouted. Was it now or then? The High King and the king
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of Hen Amas!

The banner then seemed green, Aswydd green, and the dragons
reared in defiance and threat as they had loomed above him in the
hall.

"Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë for Amefel and Meiden!"

So the shouts faded, and, beyond the town gate, they turned first on the west road past the stables. They rode over the traces of other riders, past emptied camps. They were not the first, but the last of the army to ride out.

But with them came the signal for all the lords to move, to force war on Tasmôrden from the south—and to save the king.

CHAPTER 7

The army of Amefel moved at the brisk pace of the horses, so that they had progressed well out from Henas'amef before the sun rose above the hills—while signal fires lit on those hills advised all the outlying lands they were called to arms and must converge on the riverside by country trails and back roads and whatever served.

The whole land was now in movement. All the baggage that might have delayed them, even the equipage of the heavy horses, with the tents, all of that had gone to the river, the last of it following Cevulirn's passage, they needed no shelter with Modeyneth's hospitality halfway, and that left the Amefin nothing to do but make speed.

And sure enough, as the sun stood at noon, two riders appeared out of the distance and the folding of the hills.

Tristen had no doubt who it was. He knew Uwen by his riding and Gedd by his company. They came up on one another with all deliberate speed, and as they met, Uwen swung in close with him and Crissand.

"The Lord Commander's on 'is way," Uwen said first, "an' sent us back before he got to the river, but we told 'im all what he was set to fortress of dragons.html

hear, an' we come back fast as fast."

"The fires are lit," Tristen said. "I've taken precautions and left Emuin and Her Grace in charge, with Lusin. The Amefin that will march are marching."

"No delays as I can see, m'lord. I rode as far as Modeyneth. Lord Drusenan's gone to the wall, and roused out a good lot of archers to riverside, as ain't been needed yet, thank the gods, nor will be, if Lord Cevulirn's across."

"Good news," Tristen said, for Drusenan had promised archers, and if Cefwyn pressed too hard and fast from the east or if the enemy came south from the beginning without that encouragement, then archers on the southern bridges might serve them well.

But wizardry had now a third place to attack, and that was Idrys, riding hard toward the river… while Cefwyn, blind and deaf to magic, knew to watch Ryssand but not men closer to him. Still, the advantages wizardry had in Cefwyn's direction were all too attractive—for it was to protect Cefwyn that Tristen found himself constrained to take actions he would not of his own will take, when his heart told him to cast everything to the winds and follow Idrys to Cefwyn's camp.