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Mauryl had brought the Sihhë from the north. But who had Summoned them? And out of what?

He looked at the sky, looked at the bare trees and at the sun on Dys'

black mane. The world was so beautiful, and there was so much of it: he could gaze forever at the wonder of leaves and not see them all: could inhale the wind and not smell all its scents, hear the sounds of men and horses and not hear all the sounds of the woods, and taste the thousand flavors in stale water and still find it wonderful…

because it was not darkness.

The darkest night in the darkest room in the world was not that darkness which was behind his first memory of Mauryl's fireside.

And that was not the worst that might befall.

He would fight to live. He knew that now. He would fight to keep these things, aside from all reasons Mauryl had Summoned him. He had gathered his own reasons, and was not, now, Mauryl's creature.

Barrakkëth, some said, even his dearest friends.

But he said
Tristen
, and he said it with every breath he drew.

The dagger rested concealed in Cefwyn's boot, for if Idrys had come by stealth, Cefwyn thought it wise to keep the secret, and hid that weapon which some eyes might recognize. He rode Danvy at the head of the Dragon Guard. Anwyll's contingent being newly joined to the main body, Anwyll was close by him; and he ordered the Guelens to bring up the rear and the Prince's Guard to hold a place at the middle of their line of march, lest any surprise attack should try to split the column of less experienced provincials.

The land was roughest here, so the maps had indicated and so it was.

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Rocks encroached from the left and the trees spilled down off the heights and across the road. Weeds had grown here during more than one summer, legacy of Elwynor's civil conflicts.

It was the third day, and from Ryssand and his allies as yet he had had no dissent, possibly the longest period of peace with Ryssand he had known since he had come to his capital. Knowing that Ryssand was about to be a traitor was a distinct relief from wondering what Ryssand was about.

But now there was more worry, which had arrived with the dagger and the message.

A traitor near him. A traitor to whom he might have confided all his plans, when plans were hard come by, and hard to change.

Unfair, he said to Idrys, scanning the trees and the rocks and wondering whether Idrys watched the column from that rough outcrop or from the depths of the woods. He was vexed with Idrys, not an uncommon thing in dealing with the Lord Commander, but no signal he could give would order Idrys in.

He needed advice on a matter far more important than Ryssand's treason and Ryssand's conspiring with someone he trusted.

We have a war to fight, have you noticed, perchance, master crow?

Should I care that one more of my barons would put a dagger in my
back? I am not destined to be a well-loved king, but thus far and
somewhat by my own wits I am a live one. Come in! Stop this
skulking in the bushes… it ill behooves a commander of the king's
armies.

Damn, he said to himself as birds flew up, startled from a thicket.

He found he was anticipating attack, not attack from one of his barons, but attack out of the woods that were no more than a thin screen between them and the ridge… not enough to prevent archery lofted over and down, if Tasmôrden were so enterprising. He had sent his scouts ahead to investigate the heights he had sent a squad to occupy, indeed, but the essential trouble with scouts was that they had to come back to report what they saw. A man with critical information might not be able to come back, might be lying dead with a dozen arrows in him.

So might Idrys, if he went poking and prying into the woods ahead, if fortress of dragons.html

he had his attention all for the barons and none spared for the enemy.

And which of the barons, or which of the officers, was a traitor to him?

He refused to suspect Maudyn or Maudyn's sons: Sulriggan's turning on him would be no news and no loss. He had never been sure of Osanan.

He led the rest, not reckoning any one of them a potent threat, not reckoning Murandys would dare cross him: that alliance of Murandys with Ryssand was lately frayed; and Murandys was not a man to take rash and independent action.

Anwyll was never suspect, either. Complicity could not possibly lie in that face, in those forthright blue eyes. There was never a man less given to conspiracy: Anwyll always expected honesty of the world, was indignant when he found otherwise; and for the rest of the officers, they had served Ylesuin in his father's reign and served with honor, no marks against any of them.

An owl called by daylight, and drew alarm from the men nearest.

Maudyn laid a hand on his sword. But then a true owl took to the air and flew off across their path, so Maudyn laughed, and no few of the men did.

Then a horseman came from around the bend of the road and toward them at breakneck speed.

Attack came: there was no question—and they had not reached the chosen battlefield. Cefwyn's heart leapt and plummeted, seeing the guardsman rode perilous in balance, the dark stain of blood on his red surcoat, an arrow jutting from his back.

"Form the line!" Cefwyn shouted, and already the banner-bearers halted and spread out across the meadow: they wanted all the open land they could take, the devil and Tasmôrden take the woods where heavy horse could not have effect.

They might have met the ambush attack of some bandit, some startled peasant farmer; or it might herald the presence of an enemy whose surprise was spoiled.

The scout came riding up, scarcely staying in the saddle, and managed his report:

"Enemies in the valley next, a line, a camp…" The man had used all fortress of dragons.html

the wind he had, and sank across his horse's neck.

"Tend this man!" Cefwyn ordered, and shouted orders next for the banners to advance and compact the army again into a marching line spearheaded by heavy cavalry. "Panys!" he shouted at Lord Maudyn.

"Take the left as we come through." They had a barrier of woods yet to pass to reach that place the scout described, which by the condition of the scout might mean hidden archers on either side of the road.

"Shields! Lances!"

Here was the battle he had come for. Tasmôrden
had
come out of his walled town, fearing, perhaps, that its surviving population was too hostile, its secrets were too well reported; and so they were: Ninévrisë had told them to him in great detail, and swore, too, that such townsmen as still lived could never love this lord, of all others.

The sun was shining, the hour toward noon: there was no impediment to the fight they had come for… and Tasmôrden came out to fight, relying most on traitors to do their work.

So Cefwyn instructed his Guard: "Watch my back!" They knew from whom to guard it; and there was no more time for musing. A page brought his shield and another his lance, young men themselves armed and well mounted, young men whose duty now was to ride with messages, and so he dispatched them down the line to advise the hindmost to arm and prepare, and the baggage train to draw up and bar the road with the carts, save only a gap through which they might retreat if they had to ride back through the woods: an untidy battle if it came to that, but the saving of some if the encounter went badly, the saving of part of an army that might come home to Ylesuin, to Efanor's command… if it came to that.

He took the precautions, but he had no intention of losing. His grooms brought Kanwy up, his heavy horse, and with the groom's help he dismounted from Danvy and mounted up on a destrier's solid force, settled his shield, looked on the descent of a low hill and the strand of woods that ran from the road to the left slope, screening all the land in that direction, away from the ridge: they had climbed gradually for two days. Beyond this, his maps told him there was one great long slope before they reached the end of the ridge, a long ride down to the valley where he most expected Tasmôrden to meet him, beside what his best map, Ninévrisë's map, warned him was wooded land.

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He had fought in worse land, on the borders. They had come downhill out of the brush into a Chomaggari picket barrier, and had had to climb over it. Such hours came back to him, and with the high beating of his heart, the confidence that the Elwynim, aside from their bandit allies, were not disposed to such ambushes: it was heavy horse they were bound to meet ahead, lines that mirrored their lines: the shock of encounter and the skill of riders to carry through.

The king of Ylesuin, however, did not carry the center of the charge, not today.

Leave that to Ryssand and Murandys.

CHAPTER 6

One moment Tristen's company crossed a wide meadowland in the bright sunlight; and in the next, slate gray ribbons of cloud raced across the heavens, broader and broader, until, rapid as the drawing of a canopy, the sun gave up a last few shafts.

"Gods!" Crissand said, for it was not only the gray space which changed so easily, but the world itself which had shifted, and Men and horses faltered in their march, dismayed. From the confidence of a world that could change but slowly, they had entered a territory where magic met magic and the sun itself was overwhelmed.

A sudden gale buffeted the foremost ranks, and lightning cracked and sheeted across the hills. From ranks behind them came wails of dismay: seasoned veterans and country lads who had run to the banners of the High King met hostile magic and wavered in their courage as the lightnings gathered alarmingly above their heads.

Tristen flung up his hand and willed the lightning elsewhere. It took a tree on the wooded ridge to their left: splinters flew in a burst of fire.

Owl came winging to him, and swung a broad, self-satisfied circle, on a light breeze.

—
Well, well, said the Wind. We are quick to seize the advantage, are
we not? And confident
?

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—
Owl! Tristen would not distract himself in debate with his enemy.

He let Owl settle on his fist, and sent out one burning message
through the gray space to all he loved and trusted, nothing reserved
now: Ward yourselves! Let nothing in or out
!

"Damn!" Uwen said on the heels of the lightning strike. "That were close!"

"Do you hear it?" Tristen asked him, and then thought, foolishly, no, of course not. Crissand and Cevulirn might have heard the Wind speak. But Uwen did not. The army stood in ignorance, blind to its real danger, its confidence shaken by the lightning.

One rider came up from the ranks in haste: Aeself drew his frantic horse to a halt and pointed to the horizon ahead.

"Ilefínian!" Aeself said. "Just beyond the hill, my lord! The end of the ridge!"

"Then move ahead!" Tristen said, for when he ventured to know what Aeself said was there, he felt the truth of the threat in the gray space, a tightly warded opposition, so wrapped about with magic it was hard to see at all as that near him. He set Dys in motion, and reached out in the gray space for Crissand and Cevulirn both, settling his own protection on the likeliest targets of hostile magic. Such as they knew how, they warded him, and Uwen, too, while Owl lofted himself again and flew outward and back, a long gliding passage that ended on Tristen's outreaching hand as they crested the hill.

Here the stony ridge ended in a long, forest-girt plain, and a last outrider of that ridge, a hill rose within the valley. On that hill, towers and town walls rose from skirts of winter-bare pasturage and fields.

Lightning sheeted across the sky, a wall of brilliant light, west to east, and against it that distant fortress stood clearly to be seen, above its strong town walls. It was a Place as Ynefel was a Place, ancient and deep-rooted, and in the fire across the heavens it unveiled itself in all its power. Tristen felt it and shivered in the crash of thunder.

Far to the south, the Lady Regent herself knew they had come to her capital.

To the west, Efanor, at his prayers, knew.

And in the ranks, the Elwynim behind them knew, and raised a shout that drowned the thunder.

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"The king!" someone cried, and other voices shouted it: "The High King and Elwynor!"

But others shouted, "
Lord Sihhë
!"

And clearer to him than all the voices was a sense of foreboding presence beyond the ridge that pointed like a spearhead toward Ilefínian, the knowledge of lives at risk the moment Men and horses set themselves in motion.

Cefwyn was in danger, Tristen thought in anguish. He had brought his army where he wished, to the end of the ridge, and in sudden clarity he knew Cefwyn was on the other side, he knew the enemy lay in wait, where he could come at them from behind, but he could not turn aside. Cefwyn was in reach of Tasmôrden's forces, in peril from his own men… but worse—he was within reach of Ilefínian, where the danger was wrapped not in iron edges, but in an ageless, malevolent will.

"It has to fall!" he shouted to those nearest, to Uwen and Crissand and Cevulirn, and pointed toward the fortress on its hill. "We cannot go to the east! We have to break the wards of that place, or Cefwyn will die. They all will die!"

The carts went into place, a line between the rocks and the woods, men hauling gear off the carts in feverish haste—casting anxious looks at the heavens, for a pall of cloud flowed from over the ridge, west to east, and all across the horizon what had seemed hazed blue sky proved to be gray. Lightning raced across the heavens and thunder boomed from off the heights, and now men looked up from their work in fear.

"Form the line!" Cefwyn ordered his forces as lightning cast white light over all of them, once, twice, thrice. "Form the line, Ylesuin!

We've beaten wizards before!
Forward, the banners'
."

He let Kanwys have rein, wary of the woods that fringed the road on the right… on the right, where shields were on the left. Those woods slanted away rapidly toward the right as he moved past the trees into meadow, and there the hill arched away downward, while on the left the ridge descended with it in a tumble of rocks the size of peasant huts. He knew his maps: this was the dizzyingly long, broad downslope which both his grandfather's maps and Ninévrisë's warning had told him was a long, long highland… but gods! All the fortress of dragons.html