Not a wizard: his thoughts flew back to that uncomfortable suspicion.
Even sorcerors worked a sort of wizardry. Such had been Hasufin Heltain, such he still was, if anything still survived.
But if it was within a wizard’s ability to so disturb the weather as this, it was not possible for a wizard then to ignore it as trivial, or to change his mind and change the weather to something else.
Did Emuin know that this force existed? Had Emuin known that something this swiftly-changing opposed them, and never told him?
Mauryl had failed a contest with his own student, Hasufin, and the long-ago folk of Galasien had fallen under Hasufin’s rule for a time…until Mauryl had made the long journey north to the ice, to the Hafsandyr where the Sihhë dwelled. The tales were not, as he had heard, that Mauryl had Called the Sihhë south, but that Mauryl had gone to them to persuade them south.
And what lay there, in the frozen reaches of the mountains that Mauryl must respect, but magic: and why had only five met him, five sole occupants, as legend said, of one fortress? He could all but see those walls, black and severe against the mountains and the ice.
And where were the fields and the crops, the sheep and the people in this vision?
Had the Sihhë-lords not wives and children and homes to leave?
He could not remember. He could not gather that out of the mists of memory even with effort, whether there had been women, or children, or what had sustained the Sihhë in that frozen, high keep.
Yet Men said that he was Sihhë, and he bled, and feared, and did other things that Men did.
He did things, however, that Men and wizards did not do, and saw things they did not see, and had read the Book, and knew he had written it, though it was Barrakkêth’s own hand, the first of the Sihhë-lords. It had wanted wizardry and cleverness to read that mirror written writing…wizardry, but not all wizardry; trickery such as Men used, but not all trickery: a mirror and the light of the gray space. In that much…had not he done what any wizard could do?
Nothing was simple: wizardry and sorcery and magic commingled, and two of those three depended on times and seasons; the second was the perverted use of the first; the third was innate in those who had it—
And if wizardry had a dark mirror…
Might magic have one?
Why had Mauryl gone to the north rather than speaking to the Sihhë at a distance, as he was sure Mauryl had known how to do?
And how had he gone? By roads? And if by ordinary roads, fearing the ascendancy of his enemy, why had it taken five Sihhë-lords coming back with him to overthrow the rule of one mere student of Mauryl Gestaurien—Mauryl, whom all the Men he knew called the greatest and oldest of wizards?
What indeed had Mauryl and the five Sihhë had to face in the south?
Hasufin? The might of old Galasien arrayed against Mauryl?
“Strays is apt to end in stewpots,” Uwen was saying, regarding sheep and pigs. “Even wi’ the best of soldiers…and there’s that ragtag lot that’s come ’mongst Aeself’s lads, who ain’t themselves come with wagons nor supply. It ain’t sayin’ there ain’t some Elwynim up in the hills even now, bands not wantin’ to join Aeself’s lot, not desirous of goin’ home, neither. The war’s gone one way an’ another in Elwynor, and that don’t lead all the captains to be friends of one another, nor to trust comin’ into Aeself’s camp, even if they wasn’t ever Tasmôrden’s men.”
“I don’t see any there,” Tristen murmured, for to his awareness the hills rising in the east were barren of men and sheep, the same. “The people have fled, if they were able, farther to the south. It was hungry men that came to raid Aeself’s camp, and the Lady of Emwy didn’t let them in.—But Aeself’s moved,” he said, for his awareness of the land flared dangerously wide for a moment, a lightning stroke of a wish that lit the landscape all around him. In fear he stifled that vision and made himself see the land between his horse’s ears, the road in front of him, the company on either side.
“Gods bless,” Uwen muttered. “Moved, ye say?”
“I sent Cevulirn’s men by this road,” Tristen recalled, “while we visited Aeself: I haven’t been this far toward the river since Cevulirn and I traveled this road…and all the land is empty now. The people have gone to Drusenan’s wall, or they’ve gone to the south, none toward the river, none toward the hills.”
“They wouldn’t,” Crissand said somberly. “The hills to the east are for bandits and outlaws.”
“There aren’t any of those there, now, either.”
“Taken hire wi’ Tasmôrden,” Uwen said. “There’s a sorry way t’ clean th’ land of bandits.”
“Taken hire with Tasmôrden right along with the Aswydd servants,” Crissand said. “Every outpouring of Heryn’s court is over there, and every common cutthroat from our woods. It’s our sins that wait across the river.”
“And Elwynor’s,” Tristen said, for it seemed to him that was the case…that the timid had fled and the strong had chosen sides, the strong good men being beaten time and time again and pulled this way and that by successive claimants to the Regency, until this day, that the best men were a small band in Aeself’s hands and the worst were an army sacking Ilefínian.
“And Elwynor’s,” Crissand agreed with him, and added, a moment later: “Gods save Her Grace.”
“Amen to that,” Uwen said. “As she won’t have an easy reign when she has ’er kingdom.”
Crissand said nothing to that. The gray space was troubled for a moment, and troubled in the way not of a wizard thinking secret thoughts, but troubled as it grew troubled when words rang wrong. And everything Uwen had said suddenly rang wrong, out of joint with what was now in motion. Crissand had not meant gods save Her Grace as a benison, only as a commiseration, as if their positions were equivalent…it seemed, suddenly and for no reason, true.
How? Tristen asked himself. How was Crissand’s state balanced with Ninévrisë’s within things-as-they-were? That they both were bereft of fathers?
—That they both were, in a sense, heirs to thrones and kingdom, but not crowned?
Therein, perhaps, the Unity of Things that wizardry so loved and through which it found its power.
Unity of Things, Unity of Direction, Unity of Time…
The three were all met, in those two. And a piece of the world as it ought to be went into place like a sword into its scabbard, a weapon ready to his hand.
But in the beginning, Mauryl had called down five Sihhë to help him, not one.
And Mauryl had overthrown the last faint trace of a Sihhë blood dilute with generations among Men, finding in the last of them, as in the first, no model of virtue.
Mauryl had set a Man in power, the Marhanen, to bridge the gap.
But in the right season, consulting the heavens, Mauryl had called him into his study, born of fire and a wizard’s wishes—Mauryl had declared him lacking, and sent him forth into the world, all the same.
What had Mauryl calculated he would be…that he had not been?
All Mauryl’s papers and parchments had fallen prey to the elements and the vagrant winds at the last. There was no record.
And if he had been Barrakkêth, why did it not Unfold to him what that enemy was, and what it was called, and how to defeat it? He cudgeled his mind, battered at its walls, but, seeking a name for his fears, he could think of nothing at all, it was so opposed to all he understood. He could not go near it. It was as if he could grasp it, he would inevitably contain it and be changed by it, and he could not, would not accept it within himself…nameless it remained and it would not Unfold to him.
Five Sihhë, without wives, without children…without fields or flocks: it was no kingdom such as Ylesuin: it was contained in one fortress, a gathering of those with magic inborn, having nothing to do with Galasien or Mauryl, nothing at all…except Mauryl’s appeal to magic, where wizardry went awry.
And whatever might have moved the Sihhë-lords to gather their resources and come south,
abandoning all purpose but one? What lure but curiosity could move them?
Surely something greater than curiosity had drawn them south to change the world.
He tested all around the edges of that idea, to see whether there might have been more than five Sihhë, or even whether there might still be, but all that seemed in any sense to Unfold to him was a surety that five was the sum of them, that the Hafsandyr had raised a fortress against some great ill, and that there was enough of Men in the nature of the Sihhë that they had left children in the world.
But where had they gone, one by one? Had they died as Men died?
Or had they wandered across the Edge in the gray space and joined the Shadows that way, as Uleman of Elwynor had gone? Was that the darkness he recalled at the foundation of everything?
If he had ever died, the memory of death eluded him. If he had met defeat, he had never recalled it. If he had loved a woman of the race of Men, he had no memory of it. There was danger, he suspected, in slipping too far back, and remembering too much, and becoming bound to it.
Yet there was danger in not knowing, too, insofar as he had weaknesses. Of harm he had dealt with since Lewenbrook, he suspected it was Hasufin who had moved Cuthan, and Orien. It was Hasufin who had attempted to steal his way among Men, and it was surely Hasufin’s wizard-work that had moved the archivist, for more than any other thief, principally a wizard would want to know the things hinted at in Mauryl’s letters, would seek after any ragtag piece of knowledge, something that might fix only one date, one hour, to make clear all the others, and find a way into Mauryl’s workings to threaten him. Indeed, wizardry could harm him, as wizardry had Called him.
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, up-river, 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 tra
mpled 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.
And still that presence on the hill tracked them, watching not them, perhaps, but any action that might oppose them. Intruders under any strange banner would surely have met arrows flying thick and fast: Lanfarnesse rangers seldom used presence-betraying canvas—but they were there. Their Heron banner flew with the wheel of Imor and the White Horse of Ivanor and the Wolf of Olmern in the heart of the camp, announcing the presence of Pelumer with Umanon and Cevulirn and Sovrag in this gathering…welcome sight.
A man ran ahead of them, and told an officer, and that man hurried into the centermost tent as they rode up the aisle of this gathering of tents. Cevulirn came out with Umanon, and Pelumer came close behind, all cheerfully welcoming them in.
“His Grace’s banners wi’ the rest,” Uwen ordered the banner-bearers and smartly then the banner-bearers dismounted and with manful efforts drove the sharp iron heels of the banners deep into the soft earth, one after the other, until the Eagle and the several standards stood with the others, the Tower Crowned and Crissand’s among them.