Кэролайн Черри - Fortress in the Eye of Time

“Aséyneddin will stay to the road,” he said to Cefwyn, when Cefwyn was about to send scouts out. “They have reason to fear Althalen — and even for Hasufinʼs urging, I doubt he will risk Caswyddianʼs fate. Or if he does — he will not fall on the camp without Ninévrisë knowing. Send no men by that ruin.”

“Dare I trust all our lives on your advice? She has no defense. Should she have no warning?”

“The camp is very well defended. The scouts you send into the ruin will not come back, mʼlord. They will die if you send them. I beg you, donʼt. They have no defense. We were safe. They wonʼt be. The sentries are enough. Her father will protect her.”

Cefwyn drew a deep breath, started to argue, then shook his head, and sent the scouts only to the fore, down the road. Idrys was not pleased with it. But Cefwyn did as he asked.

The next was a long ride, Dys and Kanwy walking along quietly, but Kandyn and Umanonʼs horse took such exception to each other that Umanon drew off well to the side of the road.

Cass had no such animosities: he and Idrysʼ horse alike were stablemates of Kanwy and Dys, and trained together. He was amiable, of his kind; but Dys, young, in his first campaign, made a constant demand for attention: he snapped and pulled at the reins, seeking to move ahead of Kanwy, which Tristen did not allow, or to the side, where he could annoy Cass. Tristen kept ahead of his intentions and refused to let him work himself into exhaustion: Dys, very much of a mind with him, seemed to sense the reason he was born was coming closer and closer, as yet unmet, untried. Dys wanted this day, too, not knowing entirely what he wanted, and keeping Dys in check kept his hands busy and his fears from having precedence: in that regard Tristen was glad of Dysʼ antics, and only half-heard the converse of the other lords.

But he knew from what he did hear that, behind them, at all the speed they could safely manage, the Amefin troops were marching behind the Amefin Eagle, footsoldiers fewer in numbers than they had planned and lacking the support of archers they had planned to have, both by reason of Pelumerʼs absence. And they could not go more quickly than they did for the sake of the Amefin.

The sun was well into the sky, all the same, a gray sky, when they came near that series of ridges that preceded the turn toward Emwy-Arys.

Then in the distance a saddled horse turned up, grazing beside the road, no one in evidence. It looked up as they came, still chewing its mouthful of grass.

“One of ours,” Idrys said. “Pelannyʼs horse.”

Of the rider, one of their Guelen scouts, there was no sign.

“Dead or taken,” Uwen said quietly. The horse, its master fallen, had run for its pastures, but running out its first fear, had stopped, and would wander home, Tristen thought, perhaps over days. One of their outriders, light-armed, rode over and caught the horse, freed it of the reins that might entangle it, and sent it on to their rear.

Past the next ridge, the wind picked up out of the west, into the horsesʼ faces. The woods came into view, lying across that small series of hills that he so well remembered. That was the woods where he had met Auld Syes. The woods of the fountain. And the Shadow was there, plain to his eyes.

“That,” Tristen said with a chill. “That place. Thatʼs where.”

“A place fit for ambush,” Idrys said. “Iʼd thought of it. If we donʼt go overland, weʼre bound to go through it. Thatʼs what they plan. And overland is a maze, forest and hills. I rode through it.”

There was discussion back and forth. Umanon and Cevulirn moved their horses closer. No one wanted to venture that green shadow without sending scouts. Some argued to go overland, toward Emwy, but Idrys said no, it was too rugged and made for ambush by lesser forces.

“Of which they may have several,” Cefwyn said. “Earl Aséyneddin is well served by the Sâendel.”

“Bandits,” Umanon said. “Bandits and thieves.”

“Well-armed ones,” Idrys said.

But, Tristen thought, fighting Dysʼ attempt to move forward — but there was no sense in debate. There was no question, none, that it was hostile. It was fatal, if they sent a man into that. It was a risk to venture that gray place, but look he did, and it was eerie to know it vacant, very, very vacant. They had now to go forward. The lords debated other ways, but they had no choice but fight or go back to Althalen, where they were far safer for a camp under attack.

And something masked itself in that gray vacancy — as it masked something else in that distant woods. Something in the gray place was both shadow — and gray like mist, moving about where it would. Mauryl had not stopped it. Emuin had not. It was insubstance. It manifested as the wind.

That which waited in the woods — was substance, and thick beneath the leaves.

“Tristen?” he heard Cefwyn ask. But it was not a voice in the gray place, it was here, and Cefwynʼs voice held concern. “Tristen, do you hear me?”

Something shadowy leapt at him in his distraction. Not a small something. Something that wanted to hold him, seize him, weaponless, and carry him off to Ynefel. He jumped back from it, heart pounding against his ribs, and in the world of substance, Dys kicked and pulled to be free.

All trespass into illusion had peril now. The Shadow had advanced this close, and that said to him that they would find their enemies in this world closer, too: Aséyneddin was there.

“Itʼs another of his fits,” said Uwen.

“No,” Tristen said, trying to shut out what was still trying to take him, holding to this place, the solid mass of horse under him. He kept his eyes open, burning the light of the worldʼs sky and the shadow-shapes of hills and woods into his vision. Cefwyn and Uwen and Idrys were close at hand. They willed no harm to him.

The other thing would unmake him — if it could not use him against those he least wanted to harm. Against all Maurylʼs work in the world. It wanted that undone, the barriers to its will all removed.

“Tristen.”

“No, my lord, forgive me.” It was hard to speak against the weight that crushed him, and he must hold Dys, for the horse felt the tension trembling in his legs and in his hands, and was fighting him continuously to move. Do not leave us, Cefwyn had begged him. Do not leave us. And he tried not to. He did try to keep his wits about him in this world.

“Aséyneddin is there, mʼlord King. In the woods. I have no doubt.”

A shiver came over him then. He slipped into that risky place, and felt thunder in the air, like storm.

He twitched as he escaped there to here in a shock that rang through the world, but the two lords by him had never felt it: they talked on of strategy and ambush while he felt ambush in the very roots of the hills. He felt the Shadows all stir beneath the leaves of Marna Wood, but the lords talked of whether his warning meant mortal enemies, and whether they could draw attack out to them and not risk the woods.

“If they stay in that woods,” Idrys said, “they risk having it fired around them. Your grandfather would not have stuck at it.”

“These are my ladyʼs people,” Cefwyn said, rejecting that. “Not all of them may even be here by choice. We carry her banner with our own, master crow. No fire.”

“They are rebels,” Idrys said.

“No fire, master crow. Iʼll not make war after that fashion.”

“Against wizardry, mʼlord? What will our enemy stick at? Weʼll not venture in there. Weʼll have them out, if they are there.”

“They are there,” Cefwyn said.

“Tristen is here,” Idrys said. “That indeed is our certainty, mʼlord King. And I do believe his warnings. Itʼs the advice I doubt. This haste to go blind into that.”