That the enemy would lie and deceive—why should it not? What could a lie weigh against murder?

So he argued with himself, refusing to believe, having learned deception, and having used it himself.

The wind blew dust into his eyes, making him blink them shut on that gray space, but, tears running on his face, he doggedly watched the space between Petelly’s ears, refusing to start at the Shadows that urged on the edges of his sight. He saw the taunting breeze skirl along the dust. It performed wild antics in his path, it danced in the brush, and turning, blasted him with chaff and grass.

—Tristen, it said to him. Tristen, you dare not blind yourself. These are not lies. I do not lie to you. You’ve believed the Guelenfolk, and Emuin. Very foolish of you, though you might not know it. Shall I tell you what Mauryl called Emuin?

He smelled the smoke still. It seemed stronger. He saw shadow-shapes flitting to the stones and through the brush, shapes which he might have believed, except they passed the most delicate thorn-boughs without disturbing them.

—Mauryl called him weak. Mauryl called him timid. Mauryl called him many names. And you rely on him. Not wise. Not wise at all. You surely died here.

—Go away! he cried. Begone!

—Oh, but you haven’t Mauryl’s force, have you? And you should indeed listen. Mauryl was my teacher. And Emuin’s. Dear Mauryl. Do you remember how he served the Sihhé Kings? He betrayed them: they would not let him have his way—so he dealt with Guelenfolk, and conspired with the Marhanens, who were mere servants to the Sihhé. Do you know how I know? I—I was that murdered child, I was the great and fearsome enemy Mauryl dared not face alone, and all this ruin and all this death he made for me, for me, do you hear me. Because Mauryl feared me, he opened the gates to the Marhanen, he pent me in my room, and sent Emuin to do murder. Would you hear more?

—Heryn Aswydd seemed an honest man, he said, struggling to find resistance to the voice that now seemed so aggrieved, and so reasonable.

Heryn twice tried to kill us all.

—Oh, seemed, seemed. The Marhanen seems. Did Mauryl ever bid you trust the Marhanen? I think not. I know Mauryl’s advice. He sent you on the Road, but at Ynefel is your answer, Shaping. I have your answer. All you have to do is ask me.

The voice roared close and swept about him, a rush of wind along the ground. It blasted a growth of brushwood, and laid bare a slab of stone whereon something had burned.

—Oh, many of us, many of us, the Wind said. Hasufin ... said. They burned the dead. They burned the living, did your precious Marhanen.

They meant to leave no charred chip of bone to anchor us to the earth.

But I have found that anchor. Ask! Come! Temporize with your fate. Ask me all your questions! Shall we search for your Grave, Sihhé soul?

Petelly fought the rein, turning and turning, pressed back by his knees.

He saw the gray light, and the towers of Ynefel under shadow as the blackness arced across toward him.

—Then where and when was I born? be asked it, he knew not by what impulse, but it was his question, it was the question only Mauryl knew. Tell me that, or own you are ignorant and tell me nothing at all!

The Wind whipped away from him, breaking branches as it went. It poured across the sky in a scream of frustration and rage.

Then was quiet. Utter quiet. Foolish, he thought, striving to bold Petelly from a wild rush across the ruins. He was aware of another, subtle presence, so faint and so far be all but missed it. He had not driven away the danger alone. This presence had helped him. This presence had given him steadiness when he most needed it.

—Young man! it said, ever so faintly, now. Young man! Be aware. Be away ...

—Master Emuin? be asked. It felt very much like Emuin’s presence, but it was too elusive to see or to catch in this place. In that other world darkness bad enclosed the area of silver gray where he and Petelly stood—all but that place and a patch of brightness ahead of him, and he saw it glow and falter like the guttering of a candle-flame.

—Emuin? he asked, again, not certain that it was, but not daring leave his ally weak and faltering as he seemed to be.

But it was a plump, kindly-seeming man who came toward him from that guttering light, a man he did not know in life—a man who called to him and held out bands in urgency—but the winds caught him away and their reaching fingers missed before ever he thought that there might have been a chance to catch him. He was gone. The encroaching Shadows flowed like water, broke like waves against the pearl-gray of the world.

He felt—afraid, then. Bereft of help. He shook himself and tried to come away from that gray place, fearing tricks.

He sat, trembling, on a shivering horse. Petelly stood with feet braced and head up, sniffing the wind.

He might have done the right thing, he said to himself. He had set the spirit aback. It was unable to answer that simple question, who he was, and what he was—and somehow that prevented it—Hasufin—from mischief. He thought that the child had gotten away from danger. He no longer saw the flitter in the leaves that betokened her presence.

But he thought, strangely, that he knew direction—amid the vast maze of lines of mostly-buried stones that was Althalen. There was presence at the heart of it: he thought so, from time to time, but it was a presence he did not think harmful. He thought rather the contrary, now, that the old man was someone he needed to find, another who had the right and the ability to travel in that gray space.

Petelly had not liked the Shadow that had come near them, but Petelly was not quite terrified, for he had the presence of mind to snatch a thistletop, went, walking along through ripe grasses, along a line of stones that had been a wall.

Some distance he went, down a stream-course he thought might have been the same stream bent back again, perhaps tributary to the Entail, who knew?

“Hold there!” someone cried.

He looked up atop a wall, at a man with a bent bow and an arrow ready to let fly at him. It was a man in gray and brown, and another, appearing in front of him.

Woolgathering, Mauryl had used to call it, when he let his wits go wandering,

“Sirs,” he said, in the courtesy he hoped would prevent arrows flying.

“Good day.” Neither of these was the presence he had felt. He supposed they thought him quite foolish, being where he was, so unaware; or perhaps they thought him a danger.

The one man came closer. “Your sword,” that man said.

“I have none,” he said. “Nor any weapon. Have you a master, sir? I believe I’ve come to see him.”

The man on the rocks relaxed his draw and leaned on his bow. “And whose man would you be?”

“Cefwyn’s,” he said. “And you, sir?”

“Men of Uleman,” the archer said. “The lord Regent of Elwynor.”

Chapter 26  

Sullen, dejected men rose from their seats near the one tent of a fireless camp to lay hands on weapons and stare as, through the deep dusk, Tristen led Petelly in, with the archers walking behind him. Besides the tent, he saw the wagon to carry it, and some number of horses grazing within the ruined wall which surrounded the small camp, a ground with pavings here or there breaking surface amid the trampled grasses: it was some former room, or hall, and of men there were thirty or so, hardly more.

“What’s this?” a man confronted them to ask.

“M’lord,” the older of the archers said, “m’lord, he came unarmed.

He claims to be Cefwyn’s man.”

“A bedraggled sort of emissary. And no attendant? No ring, no seal? A scout, far more likely. Where did you find him?”

The archers gave a quick and slightly muddled explanation, how he had come walking up to their post, how he had not argued with the request to go with them.