Petelly, nonetheless, snatched up a thistle or two, and a gust blew his mane and twisted it in a tangle.

Saplings bowed and shook. Three such streaks in the grass combined and a sapling bent and cracked, splintered, showing white wood.

That was more ominous. He had had no fear for himself or for Uwen in his dealing with Auld Syes, but now he began to be concerned, and wished he had gained some word of safety from the old woman, not so much for him but for anyone following him.

Crack! went weed-stalks. Crack! went another sapling, and another and another, an entire stand of young birches broken halfway up their trunks.

—Be still, he said. It was wanton destruction. It proved nothing but bad behavior. Be still, he said, and wished the young chiM to come back again. I have men behind me, good men. Don’t trouble them. They mean you no harm. Be polite. Be good to them.

It might have been a collection of old leaves that blew up then in the depth of a thicket, some distance away. It might have been, but he would have said it was the old woman herself. A single course of disturbance skipped toward it, a bent passage through the grass that tended this way and that way, that sported along a low spot and scuffed through the pebbles. And the ragged-skirted shape of leaves whisked through the thicket and dissolved again, with the little one skipping on where it had been and beyond.

Still the streaks of flattened grass appeared on the hillside, intermittent and angry, and the sun declined in the sky, making the shadows long, his and Petelly’s, on the grass.

But he had come into that vicinity where he had ridden with Cefwyn as they were coming away from the ambush someone had laid for them in the woods—he recognized the hills. They touched on shapes—not shapes arriving out of some unguessed recollection, as the servants said he remembered things, but out of the certainty that he had seen these hills, and he knew where he was. It was near Raven’s Knob, where he had seen the tracks that led around the hill, the warning they had had of men hiding in the hills.

They were near Althalen—though nothing of that Name unfolded for him: just, it was Althalen, where he had been with Cefwyn. He thought that perhaps what guided him now was a kind of Shadow, though a simple and harmless one. He did not take her companions for simple and harmless, and did not want to deal with them after dark fell. But the guide he had sported this way and that with abandon through dry leaves and green grass, and the sun turned the greens darker and more sharp edged with shadow as it inclined toward the hills.

—Do you know this place? he asked of Auld Syes, in the chance that she heard. Cefwyn thinks I should. But what should I know? Can you say?

There was no answer.

Still, there was nothing of the smothering fear he had felt when he had ridden through it before—the very dreadful presence he had felt that night, a Shadow of some kind, maybe many of them, that would keep to the deep places at the roots of wild hedges, and the depth of arches, and creep about at night, frightening and doing such harm as they could.

Mauryl had not told him how to fight against Shadows, only how to avoid them, and that was by locks and doors. He had none such here-and perhaps he was foolish for letting Syes’ child become his guide.

But he did not come now to disturb the Shadows. He came only for the truth, and rode among the old stones, following his wisp of a guide, thinking of the Name, Althalen, trying to coax more pieces of relevance to come to him. But the expectation that did come to him on the wings of that Name was an expectation of pleasant gardens—the thought of halls where elegant folk moved and laughed and met, and where children played at chasing hoops and hiding from each other, much as his guide went skipping through the stones.

He rode Petelly among the mazy foundations of what had been not a fortress like Ynefel but a community of buildings scarcely fortified at all.

It had never had walls. That certainty came to him with the Name of Althalen: it had been a peaceful place, never considering its defense-trusting folk. Gentle folk, perhaps.  Or powerful.

But everywhere about him now, as he had seen at the village, fire had blackened the remnant of windows and doors. He smelled smoke, as where had he not? It might be the smoke of old Althalen; or of yesterday’s Emwy; or perhaps the dreadful smoke of the Zeide courtyard had clung to him and Petelly even through last night’s rain—he was not certain, but he felt a loosening of his ties to the rock and stone around him, a dispossession as if something, perhaps many such things, did not accept him here, as if—smothering fear met him and just scarcely avoided him.

The world became pearly gray. The walls stood, still burned, still broken, and Petelly and he moved all in that gray place, in a shifting succession of broken walls, less substance than shadow here. The burning and the smell of smoke was true in the gray world too. Only the Fear that Emuin had named to him ... Hasufin ... rolled through his attention, and seemed to have power here, power like that tingling of Mauryl’s cures for skinned knees and bumped chins.

That tingle in the air might, he thought, be wizardry, and if it was, he reminded himself staunchly of things as they ought to be: he thought of Ynefel, and, feeling a sudden chill and a sense of dreadful presence, drew back out of that gray light.

Then a wind sported through the grass, an ominous, tree-bending sort of wind which swept in a discrete line across the ground.

—Child! he called out in warning—because that gust made him think of the wind in the courtyard, that had raised the shape of dust and leaves, and he heard the faint wail of a frightened voice, as a breeze skipped behind him, at Petelly’s tail. Be still, child, he said to it. Go back. Be safe.

I know my way now. Go back to your fountain. There’s danger here!

—Very noble, the Wind challenged him, blowing up a puff of leaves.

Elfwyn would have done that sort of thing. And see what it won him.

—Hasufin? he challenged it. If that is your name, answer me.

—Why? Are you lost? Could you be lost? Or confused? You’re certainly in the wrong place, poor lost Shaping.

The wind whirled through the brush, whipped leaves into Petelly’s face, and Petelly reared, not at all liking this presence.

Neither did Petelly’s rider. Begone! Tristen wished it, and the wind raced away, making a crooked line along the ground, raising little puffs of dust among the stones very much as the child bad done, but far, far more rapidly.

It was no natural wind, no more than the other had been. It retreated as far as an old foundation, and a heap of stones, where it blew leaves off the brush.

Then the line of disturbed dust swept back toward them. This is Death, it said. All the Sihhé in this place died, even the children, should you find that sad. Mauryl and Emuin conspired to murder us. I was a child, did you know? I was a child of Althalen. But it did not stop the Marhanen. They murdered all the children in the presence of their mothers and fathers. And Mauryl was one of them that did the murder.

Were you here.

He expected wickedness of it. Now it lied to him. Mauryl would not have killed children.

But the gray place filled with halls lit with pale sunrise fire, and children and all the people were running from the flames. They did die. They burned. They ran like living torches, their clothes set ablaze with that faded light and arrows shot them down.

A young boy lay sleeping on a bed. A man came, one thought, to rescue that child. But the man stabbed the sleeping boy, and that wan face was Emuin.

“No!”

It was wickedness. And a lie. He had pulled at Petelly’s mouth by accident, making Petelly back and turn as he cleared his eyes of dream and wished the brush and the stones back into his sight. Petelly smelled something, or heard something still: even after he had resumed his even grip on the reins, Petelly kept bending his neck this way and that, trying to turn, backing a step at a time, showing the whites of his eyes and flaring his nostrils; but an even hold on the reins and a firm press of his knees steadied Petelly’s heart and kept him moving.