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Wind skirled against their flank, blasting up dust. The ba
But a shadow swept over all of it as he watched, with nightmarish swiftness darkening the ground and the air itself. Cefwyn’s men and the surrounded enemy alike were in danger, and the approach of the Shadow to that place was like a nightmare he was doomed to watch and not reach, across a screen of terrified enemies whose very defeat and panic made them a barrier to his advance.
He laid about him with the sword, blind to all but that patch of threatened red within his visor. Cefwyn could not by any human means realize what menaced him—it might seem the passage of a cloud in the sky, salt sweat in the eyes, a blurring of vision in exertion. It was nothing Cefwyn could see, or understand.
But it was there, in this world and the other, an u
—Hasufin! he shouted at the Wind. Here I am! Let them be! If you have no hostages—you ca
I shall listen so long as you can bold my attention! Talk to me, Hasufin!
I am here!
Came the hollow rush of winds and the thin shriek of men and horses caught in its path as that blurring in the world turned toward him. Some Men stood to fight, and it rolled over them. Some Men fled, and it rolled over them the same.
In the shadow now was a white light behind which were only the trees of the forest and the black shapes of the fallen. In its path were still living Men—Cefwyn’s men; and to turn it from Cefwyn he could only taunt it, call it ahead, to roll over men he knew, men who had laughed with him, shared their provisions with him. Brogi was one, trying valiantly to reach his King. Kerdin Qwyll’s-son was another, and his man with him.
—Come ahead! he called to the Wind, making himself heartless. Dys shivered under him and tried to turn from the blast as he had turned from no mortal enemy, but Tristen pressed him with heels and knees, making him face it, drawing the presence down on him—for now he could feel it—as willingly, as unresistingly, as he drew the light to his hands.
From behind him his own black ba
—Keep coming! Tristen shouted at it, taunted it, pleaded with it. Coward! Come to me!
Andas’-son, his horse and all went into a glare of white as if the world had torn like fabric and white nothingness shone through, pervisible, through a rip grown wider and closer. Numbing cold howled out of it as it grew. Horses reared up at the edge of it and fled in panic, trampling the dying and the dead as they escaped. Men left afoot cast down shields and weapons and ran until it passed over them and they lay dead.
“M’lord!” Uwen cried close behind him, and knowing Uwen was in its path, Tristen’s heart went cold—for he was staring now directly into the rippling light-through-water burning at the very center of the rift. He was deafened by the roar of the winds. Dys, refusing to go, came up on his hind legs.
He gripped his sword and for the first time truly used the spurs, sending Dys forward as Dys himself seemed then to take his madness and go with a will, into the burning heart of the light.
It was like passing through water. Things beyond that limit were distorted, but in perfect clarity within the compass of it, he saw the bodies of men and horses lying on the ground. Debris of the forest buffeted him, flying in the wind, but he clung to the silver-wrapped sword, and the light, no illusion here, blazed from the silver until his glove smoked. The letters on the blade shone with white light: Truth, and Illusion.
Around him were ragged shapes that whirled like torn rags, that shrieked with terrified voices, and whipped away on the winds. He and Dys were the only creatures alive within the compass of the light.
Then—then the wind stopped. Then a silence. A stillness. A hush, as if hearing failed. A loneliness, a white light, with no other living creatures.
—Why, there you are, the Shadow said to him in that quiet, and the tones embraced, caressed, as the wind slid around him and beneath Dys, caressing and gentle. There you are, my prince. And here I am. Take my allegiance. I give it. I ask nothing else of you. I can show you your heart’s desire. Ask me any favor and I am yours.
Time stopped, and slipped sidelong. All the world seemed extended about him, and he struggled out of that burning light into grayness again, clinging to the illusion that was himself, on the truth that was a field near
Emwy.
But that place fell away from him in dizzy depth. He was elsewhere.
Came a distant sibilance like the whispering of leaves before a storm.
Ynefel loomed up through a veil of mist and he stood on a promontory facing it, though he knew the fortress stood alone.
Came a rumbling in the earth, and the rock under him began to crumble in a rushing of winds and water. He had a sword—but it was useless against his enemy in this place.
Came a wind through woods, as, on the white stones of the Road, he saw himself asleep among the trees, against a stream-bank. And the Book was there.
—Tristen of Ynefel. Came a whisper through the dark and came a light through the leaves. Tristen, I do not in any fashion oppose you. I never did. Leave this intention against me, and go through the light. Be with Mauryl. You can find him again. You have that power.
He remembered leaves in the courtyard, leaves that whirled and rose up with the dust of the ground into the shape of a man. He remembered that Time was one time, and that Place was one place.
He sat, still on Dys, in the paved courtyard. He saw a young man new sitting on the step, trying to read a Book. He saw Mauryl’s face looking clown from the wall, the youth all unseeing of his danger. And the Book was there, on the young man’s knees, perilously within Hasufin’s reach.
Rapidly the shadow of the walls joined the shadow of the tower, and grew long across the courtyard stones. It touched the walls, complete across the courtyard, now, and he knew that on any ordinary day he should be inside and off the parapets and out of the courtyard ....
But he was thinking as that young man. The enemy was waiting for him. And for the Book the young man held.
—Take it up, the Wind said to him. Or shall I?
The wind suddenly picked up, skirled up the dead leaves from a corner of the wall, and those leaves rose higher and higher, dancing down the paving stones toward the tower—toward the youth, who shivered, with the Book folded in his hands, his hands between his knees as the wind danced back again. The faces set in the walls looked down in apprehension, in desperation, saying, with a voice as great as the winds, Look up, look up, young fool, and runt
The youth looked up then at the walls above his head—and recoiled from off the step. Mauryl’s face loomed above him, stone like the others, wide-mouthed and angry.