Fortress in the Eye of Time

There was enough improbable about it to satisfy whatever oddness he could think of, and whatever demand there was in attacking a Shadow without substance.

“Uwen. You have that little harness knife.”

“Aye, m’lord,” Uwen said, and pulled it from his belt and gave it to him, a very small blade. And with that sharp point, as if it were a pen on parchment, he began to work on the surface of the blade while Uwen watched over his shoulder.

Designs: letters. On one side he scratched laboriously the flowing letters of Stellyrhas, that was Illusion; and on the other face he wrote, in severe characters, Merhas, that was Truth. What speech it was, he did not immediately know, but in one world or the other it had meaning. It was hard to make any scoring on the metal. The knife grew blunted. His fingers ached. But he persisted, while sweat started on his face.

Then he began to work, slowly, painstakingly, to widen those letters, though scarcely could the eye see them.

Uwen watched in silence, perhaps fearing to interrupt him, although he would not have objected to interruption now: it was only a task; his thoughts were at peace. Sweat ran on his face and he wiped at it with the back of his hand and worked on what had now become elaboration in the design, for beauty’s sake, because he did nothing haphazardly, on what became determination, because he would not abandon the small idea he had of what he faced, in substance and in insubstance.

Perhaps Uwen expected some magic. After a long time Uwen gave up and sat down on his cot.

“You should go to sleep,” he said to Uwen. “You should rest.”

“Are you going to do something, m’lord?”

“Not tonight,” he said. He rubbed the design with his hand. Marks on the metal wove in and out, and it at last seemed right to him.

—Finished? Emuin asked him, at cost, and from two days away. He had known Emuin was there—or at least knew Emuin had come close for the last several moments. The letters shone under his fingers, bridging here and there, as though he could thread one within the other.

—Am I right? he asked Emuin. Or am I foolish? —I was afraid today, master Emuin. I saw Ynefel. I was almost there. I fell into his trap, and I had no weapon—I could not take it there.

—The edge too has a name, Emuin whispered to him, ignoring his question. Emuin’s presence in the grayness very quickly became drawn thin, scarcely palpable, and desperate. He will know. An old Galasieni conundrum. The edge is the answer. I ca

—What, sir?

g/bat should be bare shown megEmuin began to say. He thought so, at least. But the presence had gone.

Deeply, finally, the weak threads of communion with Henas’amef were pulling apart, the fabric unweaving in little rips and gaps. He could not reach it now. He tried, and was back at that lattice-work of Lines and light that was Althalen. It answered to him. But Emuin did not.

Not dead, he thought. But at the end of what strength Emuin had mustered for himself. He feared for the old man, who, not brave, had found courage to fight not for his own health, but for Cefwyn’s. He feared for all of them—and he did not know what Emuin meant—or even how he had come here, except that Henas’amef still stood untroubled, and that Althalen had become safe, sheltering all of them within its reach. It was Althalen that gave him respite from the Shadow and rest from his struggle.

It was Althalen that would keep Ninévrisé safe tomorrow. It was Althalen that had taken the messenger to its rest.

But he himself could not hide in it. Resting here was not why Mauryl had Summoned him into the world.

He drew a deep breath. He plunged his face into his hands and wiped his eyes, then flung his head back, exhausted, not knowing, save from Althalen, where he was to get the strength—not the courage, for tomorrow, but simply the strength to get on a horse and go, knowing that Cefwyn relied on him, that Emuin relied on him, that the lady relied on him—and that, in a different and far more personal way, Uwen did.

Uwen was sleeping—Uwen dropped off so easily, and slept so i

But he had hours to spend before the dawn, and if he could do more than he had done, he had to try. He had Althalen, if he knew how to use it, if he dared another vision such as he had had on the brink of the ruin.

He knew of himself that he was not good—or had not been, once and long ago.

He knew of himself that such as Ynefel was, he was responsible for it being.

He knew of himself that he had more than killed his enemy, he had used the i

Or—he thought that he knew these things. He had no map to lead him through the gray place. He had no Words written there to say, this is Truth, and this is Illusion.

Here he had made a sword to divide them. Here he had Mauryl’s Book, and Mauryl’s mirror—though only the sword seemed of use to him, he did not think it was Mauryl’s intention. It was not, it occurred to him, Mauryl’s gift.

He had a few hours yet. He had not failed until those hours were gone.

So while Uwen slept, while the servants slept, and even his guards drowsed, he moved his chair closer to the tent-pole, where the lamp shed its light.

He sat down with his Book, then, and opened it to the place the little mirror held—blinked at the flash of bright, reflected light, and moved the mirror so that it did not reflect the lamp above him, but the opposing page.

The letters were backward in the reflection—no better seen in that direction than the other, though it seemed to him a small magic in itself.

He wondered if all letters did that in all mirrors, or whether it was a special mirror, or whether, after all, just to reflect his face.

It was a changed face the mirror cast back to him. A worried face. A leaner face, not so pale as before. His hair he never had cut, and it fell past his shoulders, now. He had not realized it had grown so long. He had not known his face showed such expressions. He knew all the shifts of Uwen’s expression—while his own were strange to him. That seemed—like inspecting his elbow—an inconvenient arrangement.

Silly boy, Mauryl would say. There’s so little time. Don’t wool-gather.

Reflection in the rain-barrel. Light coming past his shoulders. Reflection of sky. The shadow of a boy who was not a boy. He had not known how to see himself, then. He had not had the power.

He wondered what he was in the gray space. And as quick as thinking it, he saw—he saw—  Light.

He shut his eyes and came back, his heart pounding in his chest. It was so bright, so bright it burned, and burned his hand.

It was hard to hold the mirror. But he could call the light into it. He could see his own face, blinding-bright, and frightening in its brightness.

He could take the silver mirror into that Place.

He wondered if he could take the Book—or reflect it there—and when he wondered, a light from the mirror fell, a patch of brilliance, like sun off metal, onto the page of the Book.

Moving the mirror into the gray place, and calling the light back onto the page was the first magic he had ever worked that succeeded, just to move light and the reflection of light from place to place.

So he did know something now that he had not known before; and he tried, though it was hard, to manage both Places at once, the one hand with the Book, the other with the mirror, until, out of the gray world the mirror drew into the world of substance, and looking only at the mirror, and reaching into the gray place, he saw the Book appear in the reflection the mirror held.