Fortress in the Eye of Time (85 page)

“We must advance,” Tristen said with a shake of his head, and in a voice hardly more than a whisper. “Nothing can help Tasien. The enemy is advancing. There's a Place we must meet it. But that Place could become closer, and worse for us. We must go.”

“Now?” Umanon asked sharply, and Tristen left that hazy-eyed look long enough to say,

“Emwy would help us.”

Cevulirn was frowning, Umanon no less than he; and pressing exhausted men on this advice, in the chance of catching the Elwynim at some sorcerous disadvantage—it might be their only hope. It might be their damnation. Tristen
knew
no common sense at such moments. What Tristen might do—other men might not.

“No,” Cefwyn said, then, deciding. “Weary as we are, we cannot. In the morning, before dawn, we will move, with horse and foot, as fast as we can, and still arrive fit to fight. Lady Ninévrisë will command the camp.—Tristen?”

But without a by-your-leave, Your Majesty, Tristen had simply—left, with Uwen close with him.

 

That Distance came on him, and he could not breathe. He went to his tent past startled guards and servants.

He had not reckoned that Uwen had followed him; but when he reached the shelter of his own tent, he caught his breath and wiped his eyes, and turned to find Uwen staring at him.

Trembling, he shrugged as if it had been nothing.

Then the shadow came on him again, so that he caught for the tent pole and leaned there, half-feeling Uwen's hands on him. Uwen gripped his shoulder hard and shook at him; and he saw the two boys had somehow retrieved the chair from Cefwyn's tent.

“Uwen. Ask them to go. Please.”

Silently Uwen braced an arm about him, and said to the servants what he wished him to say, in kinder terms than he could manage, and steered him for his chair. He sat down. He saw that, clever as his servants were, by whatever means they knew such things, they had his armor laid out ready for him—the suit of aged brigandine, of all that the armory had had, the one that best pleased him, because of its ease of movement. That was as it should be. And he already wore the sword he would use.

He took the sword from his belt, and sat with it in his arms.

“M'lord,” said Uwen, and knelt by him, hand on his knee.

“Uwen,” he whispered. “Go away.”

“M'lord, ye listen to me, ye listen. What am I to do wi' ye? Out wi' the army and one of your fits come on ye—what am I to do? What am I to do when some Elwynim aims for your
head and ye stand there starin' at him? Nothin' ye done has scairt me, m'lord, but this—this does scare me. I don't like ye doin' that on the field. If we go to fight tomorrow—ye can't do this.”

“It will not happen.”

“I didn't like goin' out to them ruins. I had bad feelings.”

“It will not happen.—Uwen!” Uwen had started to rise and Tristen gripped his shoulder hard enough Uwen winced. “Uwen, you will not go to Cefwyn. You will not.”

“Aye, m'lord,” Uwen muttered reluctantly, and Tristen let him go.

“Please,” he said carefully. It was so great an effort to deal with love…that, more than anything, distracted him, and caused him pain. “Please, Uwen. Believe me. Trust me that I know what I do.”

“Ye tell me what to do, m'lord, and I'll do it.”

He held the sheathed sword against him, rocking slightly, gazing into the fire as he had done at Mauryl's fireside. “When the time comes, tomorrow, I shall know very well what I must do. Never fear that.”

“And I'll take care of ye, whatever, gods help me. But, m'lord, give me the sword.”

“No.”

“M'lord, I don't like ye sittin' like that when ye hain't your right wits about ye.”

“Please,” he said, for the grayness was back and he could not deal with here and there together any longer. “Please, Uwen!”

Uwen tried all the same to take the sword from his hands, but he clenched it to him, and Uwen abandoned the effort.

Then he felt a manner of peace, a time in which his thoughts were white dreams, neither past nor future, only a sense of warmth, with, now, the consciousness of Emuin hovering near him in the grayness, a presence as safe as the shadow of Mauryl's robes, anxious as he had become about venturing into that gray space.

Puddles and raindrops, circle-patterns, and the scudding
clouds…Pigeons and straw and the rustle of a hundred wings…Candle-light and warmth and the clatter of pottery at suppertime
…

The dusty creak of stairs and balconies, gargoyle-faces, and, seen through the horn window, golden sun
…

“Silver,” he murmured, coming back from that Place, remembering the black threads and the silver mirror. He wondered where he should find silver other than that—then put a hand to his chest, where the chain and the amulet lay, which Emuin had worn, before he gave it to Cefwyn and Cefwyn had given it to him.

He took it off, silver and belonging to two people who had wished him well, one of them not unskilled in wishing. He eased the sword from its sheath.

“My lord,” Uwen said in a hushed and anxious voice, and stirred from his chair. “What in the gods' good name are ye doin', there?”

He could not spare the thought to explain. He took the Teranthine circlet on its chain and held it in his hand while he passed the blade of the sword through it. He saw no way to anchor it but to bend it, and he bent the circlet until it met on either side of the hilt—with all the strength of his fingers he bent it, and shaped it, and bound the chain around it.

When he looked up at Uwen then, Uwen was watching in mingled curiosity and fear. “Silver. And what beast would be ye hunting wi' such a thing, m'lord?”

He had no idea
why
silver should have effect—only that in that Place the dark threads evaded it.

And it shone. It soothed. It felt right. Mauryl had done such odd things. The pigeons had known. The old mice in the walls had known. He had known. Could living things not feel, smell, breathe, sense such things when they were right? He would ask Emuin how that was, but Emuin had faded away into distance, having, perhaps, prompted him: the touch had been that slight.

He fingered the worn leather hilt, the iron pommel. It was an old hilt, but a new and strong blade, so the armorer had
declared; and so he felt with his hands and his sense of what should be: it was a blade forged in fire for honor, carried in stealth for murder and taken for defense of a dead king and a living one, by a man himself neither dead nor alive. There was enough improbable about it to satisfy whatever oddness he could think of, and whatever demand there was in attacking a Shadow without substance.

“Uwen. You have that little harness knife.”

“Aye, m'lord,” Uwen said, and pulled it from his belt and gave it to him, a very small blade. And with that sharp point, as if it were a pen on parchment, he began to work on the surface of the blade while Uwen watched over his shoulder.

Designs: letters. On one side he scratched laboriously the flowing letters of Stellyrhas, that was Illusion; and on the other face he wrote, in severe characters, Merhas, that was Truth. What speech it was, he did not immediately know, but in one world or the other it had meaning. It was hard to make any scoring on the metal. The knife grew blunted. His fingers ached. But he persisted, while sweat started on his face.

Then he began to work, slowly, painstakingly, to widen those letters, though scarcely could the eye see them.

Uwen watched in silence, perhaps fearing to interrupt him, although he would not have objected to interruption now: it was only a task; his thoughts were at peace. Sweat ran on his face and he wiped at it with the back of his hand and worked on what had now become elaboration in the design, for beauty's sake, because he did nothing haphazardly, on what became determination, because he would not abandon the small idea he had of what he faced, in substance and in insubstance.

Perhaps Uwen expected some magic. After a long time Uwen gave up and sat down on his cot.

“You should go to sleep,” he said to Uwen. “You should rest.”

“Are you going to do something, m'lord?”

“Not tonight,” he said. He rubbed the design with his hand. Marks on the metal wove in and out, and it at last seemed right to him.

—
Finished?
Emuin asked him, at cost, and from two days away. He had known Emuin was there—or at least knew Emuin had come close for the last several moments. The letters shone under his fingers, bridging here and there, as though he could thread one within the other
.

—
Am I right?
he asked Emuin.
Or am I foolish?—I was afraid today, master Emuin. I saw Ynefel. I was almost there. I fell into his trap, and I had no weapon—I could not take it there
.

—
The edge too has a name
, Emuin whispered to him, ignoring his question. Emuin's presence in the grayness very quickly became drawn thin, scarcely palpable, and desperate.
He will know. An old Galasieni conundrum. The edge is the answer. I cannot help you further. You are Galasien's last illusion, Man of the Edge, and, it may be, its noblest. I hope for what Mauryl did. I hope—Boy,—boy. Did he show you—did he show you—?

—
What, sir? What should he have shown me?

Emuin began to say. He thought so, at least. But the presence had gone. Deeply, finally, the weak threads of communion with Henas'amef were pulling apart, the fabric unweaving in little rips and gaps. He could not reach it now. He tried, and was back at that lattice-work of Lines and light that was Althalen. It answered to him. But Emuin did not
.

Not dead, he thought. But at the end of what strength Emuin had mustered for himself. He feared for the old man, who, not brave, had found courage to fight not for his own health, but for Cefwyn's. He feared for all of them—and he did not know what Emuin meant—or even how he had come here, except that Henas'amef still stood untroubled, and that Althalen had become safe, sheltering all of them within its reach
—

It was Althalen that gave him respite from the Shadow and rest from his struggle
.

It was Althalen that would keep Ninévrisë safe tomorrow. It was Althalen that had taken the messenger to its rest
.

But he himself could not hide in it. Resting here was not why Mauryl had Summoned him into the world
.

He drew a deep breath. He plunged his face into his hands and wiped his eyes, then flung his head back, exhausted, not knowing, save from Althalen, where he was to get the strength—not the courage, for tomorrow, but simply the strength to get on a horse and go, knowing that Cefwyn relied on him, that Emuin relied on him, that the lady relied on him—and that, in a different and far more personal way, Uwen did.

Uwen was sleeping—Uwen dropped off so easily, and slept so innocently: he envied that ability, only to sleep, and not to find the night another journey, to worse and stranger places than the day, and another struggle, that did not give him rest.

But he had hours to spend before the dawn, and if he could do more than he had done, he had to try. He
had
Althalen, if he knew how to use it, if he dared another vision such as he had had on the brink of the ruin.

He knew of himself that he was not good—or had not been, once and long ago.

He knew of himself that such as Ynefel was, he was responsible for it being.

He knew of himself that he had more than killed his enemy, he had used the innocent.

Or—he thought that he knew these things. He had no map to lead him through the gray place. He had no Words written there to say, this is Truth, and this is Illusion.

Here he had made a sword to divide them. Here he had Mauryl's Book, and Mauryl's mirror—though only the sword seemed of use to him, he did not think it was Mauryl's intention. It was not, it occurred to him, Mauryl's gift.

He had a few hours yet. He had not failed until those hours were gone. So while Uwen slept, while the servants slept, and even his guards drowsed, he moved his chair closer to the tent-pole, where the lamp shed its light.

He sat down with his Book, then, and opened it to the place the little mirror held—blinked at the flash of bright,
reflected light, and moved the mirror so that it did not reflect the lamp above him, but the opposing page.

The letters were backward in the reflection—no better seen in that direction than the other, though it seemed to him a small magic in itself. He wondered if all letters did that in all mirrors, or whether it was a special mirror, or whether, after all, just to reflect his face.

It was a changed face the mirror cast back to him. A worried face. A leaner face, not so pale as before. His hair he never had cut, and it fell past his shoulders, now. He had not realized it had grown so long. He had not known his face showed such expressions. He knew all the shifts of Uwen's expression—while his own were strange to him. That seemed—like inspecting his elbow—an inconvenient arrangement.

Silly boy, Mauryl would say. There's so little time. Don't wool-gather.

Reflection in the rain-barrel. Light coming past his shoulders. Reflection of sky. The shadow of a boy who was not a boy. He had not known how to see himself, then. He had not had the power.

He wondered what he was in the gray space. And as quick as thinking it, he saw—he saw
—

Light.

He shut his eyes and came back, his heart pounding in his chest. It was so bright, so bright it burned, and burned his hand.

It was hard to hold the mirror. But he could call the light into it. He could see his own face, blinding-bright, and frightening in its brightness. He could take the silver mirror into that Place
.

He wondered if he could take the Book—or reflect it there—and when he wondered, a light from the mirror fell, a patch of brilliance, like sun off metal, onto the page of the Book
.