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"I'm less and less sure I know," Tristen said in utmost honesty, for Owl was not to be found, and had shied from him—yet he knew nothing to do but forge ahead with the plans they had. "But we have to move. There's no time to sit here."
"Late afternoon now, but men and horses well rested," Cevulirn said. "We can give the order."
"To march at night?" Umanon asked dubiously.
"To move as far up the road as we can," Tristen said. "I can wish winds on the river, but stone is stone and the hills won't move for us. We have to go closer. Tasmôrden surely won't rely only on Ryssand."
"No one should rely on Ryssand," Pelumer said.
It was true. And it was true, after all, that the hills might move, but they were stone and sluggish things and could not change precipitately. Tristen drew in a breath, suddenly apprehending a power rising out of the land and a power rising within him, different than the weary body that housed it. He felt he could scarcely move, scarcely draw breath without breaking lives and men, and yet the ones he would strike… were not in his reach. Only friends were. A shield stretched across the north and the west, subtle, and con-raining men, but it was not men. It was their enemy Tasmôrden, but Tasmôrden was not all of it.
He felt an opposing magic, felt it slip like a step on ice, one matched against the other, and like a third lightning stroke he knew he had met the enemy, met, and slid aside, unwilling to engage.
"Ilefínian," he said on a breath. " Ilefínian! That's his place of power in this world, and from it he draws his strength. The closer he is to it, the stronger he will be."
"Tasmôrden?" Pelumer asked him.
"Yes, Tasmôrden. But that's not all." He must sit down, or fall down, and groped blindly after the tent pole, but met instead Uwen's arm, and Crissand's.
"My lord," Crissand said. "What's wrong?"
Owl. Owl was in danger, winging through the woods, diving from left to right, through the trees, with something streaking after him, dark, and broad, and filling the woods.
"Sit, sit down, my lord."
He obeyed, calling Owl with all his might, and Owl heard him. Owl came, through a place of blue light and rustling wings. Owl came as he had come to the hall at wintertide, and burst back into the world again. A tilted view of tents came to him, an evening sun, and he swayed where he sat, then let go the vision.
"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.
"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 thatone?" 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. Thenhe 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 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 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.