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"Good lovin' gods!" Uwen said, for Owl flew through the door in a buffet of wings, dived past Cevulirn, and hit the canvas wall in a flapping lump that slid to the floor.

Owl gathered himself immediately and fluffed his feathers into order.

A narrow escape, Tristen said to himself, and offered his arm. Owl ducked his head, gave a great flap of blunt wings, and managed to reach him, to settle on his arm, ruffling and settling his feathers.

There was silence all around. Tristen looked up at a circle of dismayed faces.

" 'E all right?" Uwen asked, in that deep silence of the lords of the south.

"He's well." Tristen stroked Owl's breast feathers, and caught a resentful look of two marigold eyes at close range that held his gaze.

He knew what Owl had fled, yet had no idea in what words to tell the rest of these men, even Uwen.

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"Let him rest," Crissand said.

"Break camp," Tristen said. He saw Uwen's unhappy look, saw the worry on Crissand's face and others'. "There's no rest here."

"Then we break camp," Cevulirn said. "Do as he says." To an-other man, one of his guards, Cevulirn said, "Food and drink for all these men, and Lord Tristen, whatever we can provide until we get to horse."

"Is it a fight comin'?" Sovrag asked, perplexed as the rest. "Give me what'll yield to an axe, an' I'm ready."

"There's a great deal that will yield to it," Tristen assured him, and reached out for all the rest of them. "I may not ride with you all the way. I don't know. If I can't be there when the time comes, I set Cevulirn in charge. Our enemy won't make the mistake with me he made at Lewenbrook. What comes won't be just at us. It's not one enemy."

"Is it
that
one?" Cevulirn asked in dismay. "The ghost at Lewen field?"

"More than that," Tristen said, uneasy in naming entirely what Unfolded to him, as if by never saying it he could dispell it. Yet he must say it. "It wasn't only Hasufin who brought down Ynefel. And it wasn't only Hasufin who drove Mauryl north to find the Sihhë-lords."

Even as he said it he saw icy mountains and a wizard much younger in those days, riding through trackless snow. He saw a great black height, and a fortress of dark stone, and a hall without servants. He felt the cold, and recalled the clean sting of the north wind on his face and the icy stone through the soles of his boots.

He had known the battlements, and all the chambers under his feet; and he had known before Mauryl came what Mauryl would say… all these things, all at once. He longed for Mauryl's face, the word, the kindness… he watched that lonely figure leaning on the wind beneath his walls, and yearned with all his heart to give the old man at once what he had come to find.

But that was now.
Then
he had foreknown the quest itself, and the middle-aged wizard at his gates.

He knew the peace of the ice, and the company of his fellows. They
were only five, five who bore the gift and the curse of magic, and
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foreknew this wizard's seeking them.

He drew a deep, ice-edged breath, and saw through the years.

" 'Ere, m'lord." Uwen had his arm.

"Ale," Sovrag said. "The lad's seen a haunt, is what."

He was no longer in that place of black stone. He sat beneath a canvas roof, with canvas under him and the lords of the south serving him with their own hands. Uwen set his hands on his shoulders, saying, "Brace up, m'lord, there's a lad, come, take a sip, take a breath."

"I saw the Hafsandyr," Tristen said in the breath of a voice he commanded. "I saw the Fortress of Mists." He did not know how he knew its name, but that was the fortress the Sihhë had held in the far northern mountains, the Qenes, in the language they shared with Mauryl, far, far from Elwynor. He found Unfolding to him a host of things nameless and thoughts unthinkable in the language of Ylesuin and Elwynor, things his hand had written in that small Book he had given to the fire, the night before Lewenbrook.

As now… he recalled the north, and the black peaks crowned with ice, and the rap of a wizard's staff against the gates.

Once.

Twice.

Magical thrice.

He ceased to breathe, and then must, and saw all the faces of his friends as strangers' faces, perhaps enemies' faces, even Uwen's.

Had he known these folk? Had he foreseen them?

Then he was mortally afraid, and reached for Uwen's hand and gripped it as Uwen gripped his, until bone ached and flesh turned white-edge. He looked into Uwen's grizzled face and dark eyes and saw a Man, and a good man, and the one above all others whose voice could Call him.

"Speak to me," he begged Uwen. "Say anything at all."

"Ye're me dear lad," Uwen said. "An' my lord, and I'll have no other.

Steady. Take a breath. There's a lad."

"I'm here," he said, for those threads bound him to safety and let him fortress of dragons.html

draw breath. "I am here."

He knew Uwen would do his best to make sense of half answers, and he fought to leave that other place, to be unequivocally in the world of Men. He wished to make Uwen at least understand, and then Uwen would tell the others.

But another hand took his arm, and a faith as clear as the morning sun shone in that face, and out of those eyes.

"My lord," Crissand said, the aetheling, the foretold, and the long-remembered.

"I know he'll strike at Cefwyn," Tristen warned him. "And he'll strike at you."

"Tasmôrden?"

"Tasmôrden?" For a moment, the name was only sound, a sound bearing no relation to his fears, and once the name did achieve meaning, he shook his head in denial. Then on the next breath he realized: "Possibly. It's well possible, if Hasufin had his way about it, isn't it? Hasufin moved Tasmôrden so long as Hasufin was enough to move him. Whatever houses our enemy… it might be Tasmôrden, but more likely… more likely our enemy has no Shape in this world.

Hasufin dealt with him. Hasufin brought him to Ynefel… but such Place in the world as he's claimed now, is never far from Ilefínian.

Uleman didn't know the enemy's presence there. He only saw the rebels that rose against him. Orien didn't know he was speaking to her. She only heard Hasufin. I didn't know what brought down Ynefel. I only heard the Wind, as I heard it behind Hasufin, when he killed one of the birds; I only saw the Dark, when it rolled down on Lewen field."

"So we all saw the Dark," Uwen said. "Gods save us, this Wind and the Dark… Is that ahead of us?"

"It may be. It may. But Hasufin is a shell for it. He's all hollow, behind. Mauryl knew what Hasufin had listened to. That's why he called down the Sihhë to deal with it…"

"What d' ye say, lad?" Uwen had his hand on his shoulder, and pressed it hard, that voice, above all voices, commanding him to make clear the things he saw.

He struggled with words. But he found several. "Old. Very old.

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Hasufin listened to it in Galasien the way Orien listened to Hasufin in Henas'amef, with no better result."

"Summat
else
, ye say."

"Before Mauryl. Before Galasien's towers stood." He was aware of his gaze fixed on nothing, on darkness and deep, on the depths of Ynefel's foundations, the work of the master Builders, and the Masons who had laid the Lines. "They weren't content to observe the seasons, these old ones. They shaped Lines to master the Shadows, and make Seemings stand in the light of day." It too aptly described
him
. He was not unaware of the irony of his struggle against this darkness that Mauryl had fought. He had ridden so far and set all this in motion, mustered all these men, and now that he was called to ride for the very purpose of Mauryl's Summoning him, did he fall down in trembling and weakness? He was angry with himself, and afraid for the outcome for these men he loved, and took one deep breath after another until the shapes of the world came clear to his eyes, at least as far as a huddle of pale gray that hovered about him.

He clung to that sight. He sought to leave the reckoning of things insubstantial and the maze of gray that wanted his attention, and to shape that maze in substance, of lords of Men who stood for powers on the earth, and men-at-arms of flesh and bone who stood for the earthier, more common magic of hearth and fence and field.

Men
ruled the earth now, and the Shadows obeyed the stones that Masons laid in rows on the land.

"I must face him," he said, for
him
was as apt as any word. It thought.

It moved. It wished and worked and willed, and the Qenes stood
against
its wishing and working. He was sure of that. The Qenes, the work of master Masons, the home of Shadows and the fortress of the Shadow-lords: there all the powers within the earth held a Line that must not be broken.

He drew a calmer breath. Shadow-lord.
That
was the thing he was.

That was
who
he was. The knowledge was no blazing noon of clear understanding. It was a moonrise in a still, cold night, gathering shadows into shapes, and Shadows into power.

—
Auld Syes, he said to the Queen of Shadows. Faithful lady. Cross
the water. I need you. Come
.

"Tasmôrden?" Crissand asked, and he realized he had lost the thread fortress of dragons.html

of speech. "Is it Tasmôrden you mean, my lord? Or is it something less substantial we face?"

"Tasmôrden, if we can reach him in time. And Ryssand. Ryssand will be the hands and the feet of this attack. Should Cefwyn die, the army would break apart and fight each other, Maudyn against Corswyndam and Prichwarrin, on Elwynim soil. What then could we win?" Owl spread his wings, rowed against the air, settled again on his wrist.

"But others must stop Ryssand. Idrys must stop him." And with that realization, the acknowledgment that he could not be in both places, the fatigue settled in full. "I'll sleep an hour, until we ride. Is there a place?"

"Here." The lords might regard him with misgivings, the one who had summoned them who now nodded like a man with too much ale, and after speaking nonsense, began to slip toward dreams. But one quiet, sure voice drew him with its slight wizard-gift, and gained his wide-wandering attention. "Rest. I'll attend the breaking of camp."

"Sir." He knew the name, then, in his distance from the world: Cevulirn would watch over all that had to be done and Uwen and Crissand would care for him, and so he let the two of them draw him to his feet and guide him.

"He ain't taken ill," Sovrag said in troubled tones. "He ain't fevered nor any such."

"Tired," Uwen said out of the gray mist in which the world of Men proceeded. "An' hearin' summat we don't hear. He's a'ready fightin'

the fight we ain't come to, your lordship, an' scoutin' ahead of us, don't take it for aught less, beggin' your pardon."

"Gods bless," Umanon said solemnly, but seemed not to condemn him; and Pelumer's presence flitted close and offered comfort and a sense of stealth that Unfolded in all its skill.

…
Like Emuin, who studied at his charts in Henas'amef, in his
tower… subtle, and present without even paying close attention to
him. Emuin was always doing something else, but he did many things
constantly. It was very hard to evade him
.

Ninévrisë was a whisper in the gray space, listening, Tristen thought,
and wary of what was within her, and wary of that third presence,
and the fourth, and the fifth and sixth, Tar ten's son, and Tarien, and
her sister Orien pacing the Lines of her confinement, as their brother
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continually attempted the greater Line of the lower hall.

The Aswydds would take any alliance that opposed their confinement.

They would steal Elfwyn away with them if they could: that was
always a risk, for as long as Tarien lived she had that tie to him… but
Elfwyn seemed protected, loved, held.

In seething confusion the living mingled with the Shadows, all
through the fortress at Hen Amas. Far to the west, within the Lines of
Althalen, another Power quietly knew his daughter's presence in the
land, knew, and welcomed, and waked to the growing danger of his
people.

"My lord!" It was Crissand, returned from the rows of tents and men, aware of his drifting at the edge of the gray space. Crissand's concern flared brightly in the mists. Uwen was there to caution him, however, and Cevulirn steadied him, and the flame that burned so dangerously bright slowly ebbed to a flickering candle.

There was a guide, should he need one, a guide who could fly through any confusion.

…
Owl swept close, a shadow across his sky, and winged past him,
directing his attention northward. Here, Owl seemed to say. This
way
!

And with the crack of Mauryl's staff, he heard: Pay attention, boy!

Ilefínian… there was his battle. Owl drew him there, to where the
enemy waited, urged him to leave the battle of Men to men, and
abandon Cefwyn to his fate.

And in that mere wisp of an outcry against that notion Tristen knew
he exposed his weakness to his enemy, and showed that enemy most
clearly the way to his heart, if ever it had doubted it.

It was folly to have followed Owl here, utter, dangerous folly. He
drew back from that place, to that flickering candle that was
Crissand's presence. He refused Owl's urging
—
for the first time in
his presence in the world refused what his guide asked of him
.

No purpose of wizards was worth Cefwyn's life. Nothing in the world
was more precious to him than that. Cefwyn had banished him,
severed him from the court, but entrusted him with all that was most
precious to him: never had they been closer friends than now.

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And could he knowingly ignore Cefwyn's peril? He could shake the
mountains and the hills and will them to future courses… but he
could not gain Cefwyn's attention, could not warn him, could not
reach him, not with magic enough to shake the earth.