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Yet Mauryl had doubted that he would read the Book?
Mauryl had doubted him and doubted his ability, but all else, including very difficult things for him to do, Mauryl had seemed so certain of.
He no longer knew what Mauryl had thought of him, or what Mauryl had expected.
So he tucked his Book away fearfully and kept walking; and when the sun was at its highest overhead, he sat down on a fallen log in a patch of sunlight, took out his Book and tried again to read, tried, mindful of Mauryl’s doubt, tried until his eyes ached and until his own doubt and his despair began to gray the woods around him.
But then the sun, which had faded around him, shone brightly and clearly in a new place farther down the Road.
So it seemed to him that the sun might be saying, as Owl had said, Follow the Road, and he rose up, tucked away his Book, and walked further, relying on the sun, relying on Owl, and hoping very much for an end of this place.
Came another nightfall, and the sky turned mostly gray again and the woods went back to their darkness. Tristen was growing more than tired, he was growing weak and dizzy and wandering in his steps.
He had begun, however faintly, to promise himself that at the end of the Road might lie a place like Ynefel, a place with walls of strong stone, and, he imagined, there might be a fireplace, and there might be a warm small room where he could sleep safe at night—that was what he hoped for, perhaps because he could imagine nothing else outside of this woods, and he wanted the woods to end.
Perhaps, in this place he imagined, there would be someone like Mauryl, since there surely would be someone to keep things in order.
There would be someone like Mauryl, who would be kind to him and teach him the things he needed to know.
“Why did you go?” he asked that grayness inside him, speaking aloud and hoping faintly that Mauryl might be simply waiting for a question.
“What am I to do, Mauryl? Where are you sending me?”
But nothing answered him, not even the wind.
“Owl?” he asked at last, since Owl at least had been visible. It occurred to him that he had not seen Owl in a very long time, and he would at least like Owl’s company, however surly Owl could be.
But Owl might be sleeping still, despite the dark that had fallen. Owl also failed to arrive.
So he followed his faintly visible path of fitted stones, which disappeared under forest earth, which reappeared under a black carpet of rotten leaves, which found ways along hillsides and threatened to disappear under earth and leaves altogether and forever. He was afraid. He kept imagining that Place like Ynefel. He kept thinking.., of that fireside and a snug room where the candles never went out.
The Road lost itself altogether in nightbound undergrowth, where trees had grown and dislodged the stones.
“To-who?” a voice inquired above him.
“There you are,” Tristen exclaimed.
“Who?” said Owl, and flew up the hill.
He followed, trying to run as Owl sped ahead, but he had not the strength to keep his feet. He slipped at the very top, among the trees, and tumbled downhill to the Road again, right down to the leaf-covered stones.
“To-who?” said Owl.
He brushed leaf mold from his fall-stung hands and his aching knees.
He was cold, and sat there shaking from weakness.
“Are you different than the other Shadows?” he asked Owl. “Are you
Mauryl’s? —Or are you something else?”
“To-who?” quoth Owl. And leapt out into the dark.
“Wait for me!” Now he was angry as well as afraid. He scrambled to his knees and to his feet, and followed as he could.
But always Owl moved on. He had caught a stitch in his side, but he followed, sometimes losing Owl, sometimes hearing his mocking question far in the distance.
His foot turned in a hole in the stones, and he landed on his hand and an elbow, quite painfully. He could not catch breath enough to stand for two or three painful tries, and then succeeded in setting his knee under him, and rose and walked very much more slowly.
“Who?” Owl called in the distance. The fall had driven the anger out of him and left him only the struggle to keep walking. But he could do no more than he was doing. He hurt more than he had ever hurt in Ynefel, but that seemed the way of this dreary woods: pain, and exhaustion. He walked on until he had hardly the strength to set one foot in front of another.
But as he reached that point of exhaustion, and thought of sitting down and waiting for the dawn to come, whatever the hazards and in spite of Mauryl’s warnings, he rounded the shoulder of a hill and heard Owl calling. And in sca
It looked to be a Bridge like that at Ynefel. His spirits were too low by now for extravagant hope, but it was a faint hope, all the same, that he had come to some Place in the dark. A lightless, cheerless Place it might be, but it was surely stone, and the arched structure offered shelter of a kind Mauryl had told him made the dark safe.
So he walked, wavering and shaking as he was, as far as let his eyes tell him the arch let through not into a building but into utter dark—and reaching the second arch, and seeing planks between, he could see that the dark to the other side of the rail was no longer the woods but the glistening darkness of water.
A Bridge for certain, he thought. An arch and a Bridge had begun his journey; and now, with a lifting of his heart, he remembered Mauryl saying that Lenfialim was at the start of his journey and that Lenfialim should meet him on the far side of Marna Wood. Amefel was beyond, and Amefel was a Word of green, and safety.
He pressed forward to reach that span, and when he stood on it, beneath the arch, he saw faint starlight shining on the water beyond the stone rail, and saw to his astonishment a living creature leap and fall with a pale splash in the darkness.
“Who?” said Owl, somewhere above him.
This bridge was not so ruined as the one at Ynefel. The second arch, looking stronger than the first, stood above the edge of the shore where the reflective surface of the water gave way to the utter dark of forest on the far side. He stood beneath the first arch with his knees shaking, and with all that water near at hand—and was acutely thirsty. He could see the stars—truly see the stars for the first time in his life, for there were neither clouds nor treetops between him and the sky. He saw the Moon riding among them—a knife-sharp sliver. He had seen it only by day, in its changes. Its glory at night was unexpected and wonderful, a light that watched over him.
He did not leave the Road to go down beside the river. He sat down where he stood, his legs folding under him. He leaned against the stone.
He knew it was not wise to leave the Road where he was, even to venture clown to the river he could see. In the limited way the starlight showed it to him, it looked broad, and uncertain at the edges. Fool, Mauryl would say to him, if he fell in, after all this, and had not the strength to get out again.
Owl came and perched on the stone rail of the bridge. Owl came and went from there, and once brought back something which he swallowed with some effort. Tristen had no idea what it was nor wanted to know.
Owl was a fierce creature, but Owl was all he had, so he tried not to think ill of him.
Chapter 7
Te water was brownish green and fast-ru
Owl had left him at some time last night and he had no guide in this crossing. But no stones fell. That heartened him. And oh, the other side of the river beckoned him, greener than Marna and lit in dawn sun. He was shaky with hunger, but he wanted to run, to rush whole-heartedly toward that green, bright place. Instead, he proceeded as carefully as he was certain Mauryl would advise him, all the way to the endmost span.