Fortress in the Eye of Time (88 page)

But at the same moment a new presence impinged on his awareness, distant, desperate, and mortal, against which Hasufin strove—a distraction to him it was possible to feel as he felt the outlines of Hasufin's power unfurl within the woods, a trap for any Man who rode too far.

Pelumer, he thought. It was Pelumer, fighting for escape, in the edge of Marna.

An enemy shield was coming toward him, a Griffin blazing white. He centered his lance. A howl went up from the oncoming ranks of the Elwynim, metal lit by the illusory glamor he had sent over them. Dys' hindquarters bunched and drove with all his force. Uwen was on his left. Cefwyn was on his right as a lance raked off his shield and line met line with a thunder-crack and a shock that went up his arm.

His lance bent and exploded in splinters, a lance grated off his shield, and the riderless horse passed him as he cast the stump aside. He shielded off a blow from the following rank and ripped his sword from its leather bindings.

Guelen blades, Guelen maces hammered about him as lighter horses and lighter-armed riders and foot now struck behind the heavy cavalry, Elwynim riders that had not carried through attempted retreat and became involved in a dark mass of their own Elwynim infantry bristling with weapons and trying to defend against the Guelen horse.

He sent Dys into the midst of footsoldiers, drew the light of illusion about him and all the riders near him, harmless show—but it terrified men before him, and ranks broke.

Riders followed him…he was aware of it as he knew the whereabouts of Lanfarnesse so far lost and of the Amefin troops entering the fray behind them. Dys trampled men trying to bring pikes to bear, and never stopped, his breath coming hard, his huge shod hooves making nothing of living or dead, brush or uneven ground. Tristen laid about him with the sword, cut down men as he found them, making a path, sending Dys this way and that, to right or to left of oncoming enemies and threatening steel. His sword burned with white fire as it swung. Dys shone as if a white light were on them. The silver wrap glittered on the sword and left ghosts before his eyes.

Then they reached an astonishing vacancy in the noontime dark, confronting nothing but forest: they had come through the Elwynim's lines, and he reined Dys about to ride at the faces of men trying to flee—Aséyneddin's center had split in two, and riderless horses were bolting through the confusion, trampling light-armed men running for the woods in an unthinkable hammering of swords and axes. The wall of Amefin foot gnawed its way forward and heavy horse continued to wear at the outsides of Aséyneddin's split forces.

Wind skirled against their flank, blasting up dust. The banners of the Dragon were gouts of bright blood across a fatally bunched knot of black and white Elwynim standards, with the banner of Aséyneddin in the midst of it.

But a shadow swept over all of it as he watched, with nightmarish swiftness darkening the ground and the air itself. Cefwyn's men and the surrounded enemy alike were in danger, and the approach of the Shadow to that place was like a nightmare he was doomed to watch and not reach, across a screen of terrified enemies whose very defeat and panic made them a barrier to his advance.

He laid about him with the sword, blind to all but that patch of threatened red within his visor. Cefwyn could not by
any human means realize what menaced him—it might seem the passage of a cloud in the sky, salt sweat in the eyes, a blurring of vision in exertion.
It was
nothing Cefwyn could see, or understand.

But it was there, in this
world and
the other, an unnatural twilight that roused chill winds
to lash
at cloaks and the manes of horses. Tristen heard it taunting him. Men at last realizing their impending danger looked up, distracted from the battle. A few lifted swords or lances to challenge the cold and the dark, and the threatened Elwynim themselves looked up, afraid. The battle between Men began to dissolve in a stinging cloud of dust, the very air suddenly aboil with pieces of leaves, twigs, grass, bits of cloth, whole branches, flying banners.

—
Hasufin!
he shouted at the Wind.
Here I am! Let them be! If you have no hostages—you cannot hope to govern me! I am listening to you! I shall listen so long as you can hold my attention! Talk to me, Hasufin! I am here!

Came the hollow rush of winds and the thin shriek of men and horses caught in its path as that blurring in the world turned toward him. Some Men stood to fight, and it rolled over them. Some Men fled, and it rolled over them the same.

In the shadow now was a white light behind which were only the trees of the forest and the black shapes of the fallen. In its path were still living Men—Cefwyn's men; and to turn it from Cefwyn he could only taunt it, call it ahead, to roll over men he knew, men who had laughed with him, shared their provisions with him. Brogi was one, trying valiantly to reach his King. Kerdin Qwyll's-son was another, and his man with him.

—
Come ahead!
he called to the Wind, making himself heartless. Dys shivered under him and tried to turn from the blast as he had turned from no mortal enemy, but Tristen pressed him with heels and knees, making him face it, drawing the presence down on him—for now he could feel it—as willingly, as unresistingly, as he drew the light to his hands
.

From behind him his own black banner flashed past him and to the fore of him. Andas Andas'-son was riding for the
very heart of the Shadow, the Sihhë banner braced in his left hand, sword in his right. But he could not reach it. The black standard skewed back and aside on a blast of the wind, all but carrying Andas'-son from the saddle, and Andas'-son fought to hold it. His horse went down. The Shadow hesitated above him, and Andas'-son, rising, struck with his sword at empty air.

—
Keep coming!
Tristen shouted at it, taunted it, pleaded with it.
Coward! Come to me!

Andas'-son, his horse and all went into a glare of white as if the world had torn like fabric and white nothingness shone through, pervisible, through a rip grown wider and closer. Numbing cold howled out of it as it grew. Horses reared up at the edge of it and fled in panic, trampling the dying and the dead as they escaped. Men left afoot cast down shields and weapons and ran until it passed over them and they lay dead
.

“M'lord!” Uwen cried close behind him, and knowing Uwen was in its path, Tristen's heart went cold—for he was staring now directly into the rippling light-through-water burning at the very center of the rift. He was deafened by the roar of the winds. Dys, refusing to go, came up on his hind legs
.

He gripped his sword and for the first time truly used the spurs, sending Dys forward as Dys himself seemed then to take his madness and go with a will, into the burning heart of the light
.

It was like passing through water. Things beyond that limit were distorted, but in perfect clarity within the compass of it, he saw the bodies of men and horses lying on the ground. Debris of the forest buffeted him, flying in the wind, but he clung to the silver-wrapped sword, and the light, no illusion here, blazed from the silver until his glove smoked. The letters on the blade shone with white light: Truth, and Illusion
.

Around him were ragged shapes that whirled like torn rags, that shrieked with terrified voices, and whipped away on the winds. He and Dys were the only creatures alive within the compass of the light
.

Then—then the wind stopped. Then a silence. A stillness. A hush, as if hearing failed. A loneliness, a white light, with no other living creatures
.

—
Why, there you are
, the Shadow said to him in that quiet, and the tones embraced, caressed, as the wind slid around him and beneath Dys, caressing and gentle.
There you are, my prince. And here I am. Take my allegiance. I give it. I ask nothing else of you. I can show you your heart's desire. Ask me any favor and I am yours
.

Time stopped, and slipped sidelong. All the world seemed extended about him, and he struggled out of that burning light into grayness again, clinging to the illusion that was himself, on the truth that was a field near Emwy
.

But that place fell away from him in dizzy depth. He was elsewhere
.

Came a distant sibilance like the whispering of leaves before a storm. Ynefel loomed up through a veil of mist and he stood on a promontory facing it, though he knew the fortress stood alone
.

Came a rumbling in the earth, and the rock under him began to crumble in a rushing of winds and water. He had a sword—but it was useless against his enemy in this place
.

Came a wind through woods, as, on the white stones of the Road, he saw himself asleep among the trees, against a stream-bank. And the Book was there
.

—
Tristen of Ynefel
. Came a whisper through the dark and came a light through the leaves.
Tristen, I do not in any fashion oppose you. I never did. Leave this intention against me, and go through the light. Be with Mauryl. You can find him again. You have that power
.

He remembered leaves in the courtyard, leaves that whirled and rose up with the dust of the ground into the shape of a man. He remembered that Time was one time, and that Place was one place.

He sat, still on Dys, in the paved courtyard. He saw a young man sitting on the step, trying to read a Book. He saw Mauryl's face looking down from the wall, the youth all
unseeing of his danger. And the Book was there, on the young man's knees, perilously within Hasufin's reach
.

Rapidly the shadow of the walls joined the shadow of the tower, and grew long across the courtyard stones. It touched the walls, complete across the courtyard, now, and he knew that on any ordinary day he should be inside and off the parapets and out of the courtyard…

But he was thinking as that young man. The enemy was waiting for him. And for the Book the young man held
.

—
Take it up
, the Wind said to him.
Or shall I?

The wind suddenly picked up, skirled up the dead leaves from a corner of the wall, and those leaves rose higher and higher, dancing down the paving stones toward the tower—toward the youth, who shivered, with the Book folded in his hands, his hands between his knees as the wind danced back again. The faces set in the walls looked down in apprehension, in desperation, saying, with a voice as great as the winds,
Look up, look up, young fool, and run!

The youth looked up then at the walls above his head—and recoiled from off the step. Mauryl's face loomed above him, stone like the others, wide-mouthed and angry
.

The youth stumbled off the middle step, fell on the bottom one and picked himself up, staring at the face—retreated farther and farther across the stones, carrying the Book as he fled
.

Came a strangely human sound, that began like the wind and ended in the choked sobs of someone in grief, but distant, as if cast up and echoed from some deep. It might have been in the real world. It might have been the youth making that sound. It might have been himself.

—
Tristen
, the Wind said to him,
Ynefel is your proper place, this is your home, Sihhë soul, and I am your own kind—well, let us be honest: at least more hospitable than Men. The world outside offers nothing worth the having—not for the likes of us. Be reasonable. Save this young man the bother—and the grief. Would you look ahead? Ahead might persuade you
.

—
I am not your kind
, Tristen returned angrily—and yet
the niggling doubt was there, the doubt that wondered—But what else am I? And what shall I be?

—
A weapon. That's all. That's all you ever were, my prince. Mauryl used you. Men use you,—and unwisely, at that. You always had questions. Ask me. I'll answer.—Or change things. With the Book, if you take it up, you can do that. You can be anywhere you've ever been. Only the future changes. Would you free Mauryl? You can. I'm certain I don't care, if he'll mend his manners. But you can change that. I'm sure you can
.

He saw light…light as he had seen at the beginning of everything. The other side of that light was Mauryl's fireside. He could step right through the firelight. He would be there, that first of the safest nights, most kindly nights of his life, welcomed by Mauryl's voice and warmed by Mauryl's cloak
.

He would be there. Mauryl would be alive again, Summoning him out of the fire
.

He could think of the library, the warm colors of faded tapestry, the many wooden balconies and the scaffolding. He could think of Mauryl's wrinkled face and white beard
.

He could think of Mauryl at his ciphering, the tip of the quill working and the dry scratch of Mauryl's pen on parchment, as real as if he stood there at Mauryl's shoulder. He could step through. He could stand in the study. He could be at that very moment Mauryl Called him. He saw the firelight like a curtain before him. He could all but hear Mauryl's voice. It was that moment. He could have it all again
.

Forever
.

—
You see?
said the Wind.
Seemings are all alterable. Restore what was? You are of the West, not the East. Never fear what you were. Glory in it. Look to the dawn of reason. Look to the dawn of our kind. Your name
—

“
My name
,” he shouted at it
,—

—“is Tristen, Tristen,
Tristen!
”

Wings—he was certain it was Owl—clove the air in front of him. And he—
he
moved them all through Time, following Owl, chasing Owl back to where Owl belonged.