“M’lord,” Aswys came to ask, “will it be Petelly this morning?”

“Yes,” he said, watching all the activity of men from the side of the steps, wrapped in a warm cloak Tassand had put about him.

Is it winter, now? he would ask Emuin, who was probably warm in a nest he would not leave until later in the day. Has it begun?

And what will it mean to the wagons, if snow follows the ice?

A slight drover’s boy struggled and slid past, scarcely managing to keep upright with his arms full of harness. But Tristen kept quietly to the side of the yard. Ice, in all the colors of white came to him with disquieting force, the deeper Unfolding of a Word, Ice lying in sheets and jagged shards.

The Sihhë-lords had come down from the north, had he not read it?

At some moments he hoped with all his heart that he was the creation of scattered elements, whatever Mauryl had flung together by magic, a new creature, and innocent of past sins. But at other times he had to believe what Idrys had said of him: that he was a revenant, that he was that lord named Barrakkêth… and if that was so, should it surprise him that he found ice and winter touched his heart? He had known Barrakkêth’s writings by heart before he read them. So ought it to be a wonder that Ice began to unfold to him, and winter began to settle into his knowledge in all its white strength?

He thought of Efanor’s little book, which he carried next his shirt, and despaired of gods, despaired of other advice that would replace Emuin’s, and Cefwyn’s, and Idrys’.

Oh, come, he wished Uwen desperately, speak to me, prevent worse things Unfolding.

“M’lord,” Uwen said, an immediate intrusion which frightened him as much as the thoughts inside him. “M’lord, the horses is comin’.”

Mundane matter, mundane advisement. Uwen had needed to speak to him. And the sun, the safe and ordinary sun, was a glow in the east, discernible, now. Breath steamed, men and horses enjoying this edge of dawn. His knees felt weak from the fright, and he stood still, watched the drivers move the teams in, and saw the standard-bearers with their horses near the gate. Saw, as Uwen had said, Aswys and his helpers bringing Petelly and Gia.

“A skittish morning, m’lord,” Aswys ventured to say.

“So it seems.” His knees still lacked strength. He had fallen in fits before this when something so potent came on him. He feared it would happen now, and his heart was beating as if he had been running as he took the reins. Petelly’s hide was as cold as the saddle as he mounted up, and he spread his cloak about him and Petelly, to warm them both.

I cannot wait, he thought. I could not have lingered. If Emuin had wished me to wait, I would have heard him.

Do you hear me, master Emuin? There is Ice, there is Ice all around, master Emuin, and I know its nature, master Emuin… do you not hear?

The men opened the gates. The sun had just broken above the horizon, and sent out a flood of light on a land rimed and hazed with ice. Rime was on the grass stems along the road, on the stones, on the smallest pebbles, and the rising sun hazed it into delicate morning shades. The puddle near the gate had gained a crinkled coating of ice. Even the ridges of common mud at the edges of yesterday’s unsightly puddle had a white coating, and their column of horses and men went out in pale orange clouds of their own breath.

How could he have dreaded such a sight? Everything was touched with dawn, and common things had become wonderful as common things had once been to him. He was on his way. A balance had ripped, around sunrise, and he was on the Road again, where he had business, and urgent business, at that.

For a moment he imagined Ynefel, in such rime-ice and dawn.

Mauryl, he would say. Mauryl, have you seen the stones?

Mauryl, look at the sun above the trees! Look at the light!

And for a moment Mauryl would forget whatever troubled him and his old eyes would gaze at what he found marvelous. And for a moment Mauryl would find wonder in it, too, and tell him the Name of it, and remind him of the thousand things he had forgotten to do, in his distraction of the hour.

He could be distracted, still, by beauty, by the wonder of a stroke of sunlight. Perhaps at such times he made himself open to wizardry—or conversely, was as warded and safe at such moments as Ynefel at its strongest. Perhaps threats simply slid past his attention and he made himself immune. He knew that he wielded magic as well as iron, and yet looked away from it, and made himself fables to explain his own presence in the world, and sought gods who might be more powerful than himself. It would be very comfortable if there were someone more powerful than himself, on this Road, on this particular morning, someone to guide him, even someone to blame: Hasufin Heltain had been a comfort, in that sense, a voice, an answer, where otherwise was only gray and shifting cloud. A few days ago he could not imagine the spring; now he imagined ruling Amefel. Last night he had quit the gray place in fear that there was someone and this morning he thought with regret of his enemy. Last night he had feared an Edge and this morning in a tentative probe of the place he could not find no limit to contain him.

Last night Emuin had been there. This morning Emuin was not, a circumstance which meant nothing more, he told himself, than the very mundane truth of the mortal world, that Emuin was still asleep, and that he would have no thanks for pressing harder and gaining Emuin’s attention on a mere whim.

What would he say in this now glorious dawn?

—Forgive me, master Emuin, but I grew afraid…

—Comfort me, master Emuin: I miss Cefwyn. I have missed him from before we rode out of Amefel together, and this morning, for no good cause, I doubted…

—Forgive me, master Emuin, that this morning I sought gods. Now I have no master but my oath to Cefwyn.

—On the hilltop where I have arrived, I can see all the things I have ever known. I fly free as a leaf on the wind.

—But there are places beyond the hills, and days beyond this one, master Emuin, and there are Shadows where the sun has no power. Do all Men walk as blind as I?

He dared not press harder with his thoughts. It was so easy to slip deeper and deeper into the gray place, where he feared they were no longer alone. The presence last night ran through his thoughts like an escaping dream. Had he dreamed it, thus at the edge of sleep? Was it a memory, or had it truly happened?

That it fled recollection troubled him.

Might Ninévrisë indeed have reached out?

Might she—or Cefwyn—be in difficulty? Had the barons set about some new mischief, and did Cefwyn need him to come back?

If there was any answer from Emuin, the hills hid it from him, while to his backward glance the column had grown behind him, continuing to form inside the monastery walls like a balled string extending itself, and that unwinding was almost done now. They were well and truly on their way to Amefel.

The magic of the frost grew thinner as the sun climbed, as the frost left the eastern side of hills, then the west, persisted only in the shadows, and at last vanished altogether.

By noon the sun had brought a warmth to their backs, an easy warmth. Even toes in boots grew warm, and Petelly, who had shown an uncommon keenness to frolic this morning had settled down to the general pace.

Master Emuin, Tristen was vaguely aware, was decidedly awake now, had made not quite such an early start, and ached in his joints with the bouncing of the wagon. It was not a good beginning, this trailing along the countryside for miles and days, and he was sorry to leave master Emuin further behind, but what more could he do? he posed the peevish question.

He had no more answer than before, and at their noon rest, weary of worry, fretting in Emuin’s protracted and maddening silence, he had Dys brought up in the line and rode him for the rest of the afternoon, a lively contest of wills, since Dys had not worked in a month. Uwen had called up Cassam, his own heavy horse, at the same time, and the two horses being stablemates, and both needing to have a little room around them, they rode at times beside the column, at times ahead.