Текст книги "Fortress in the Eye of Time"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 43 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

Idrys came in, and had his supper; from outside came the smell of fires and cookery. Someone in the distance had a pipe, and played it quietly and well. They sat in warmth and pleasant company and discussed the day and the weather and their situation, while now and again reports came in—Gwywyn and Kerdin managed that, and Idrys, on whose shoulders a good deal of the effort of ordering the march had rested, stretched out his long legs in front of him, drank two cups of wine and relaxed. Gwywyn came in once to report that the outriders had met the returning messenger from the outpost at Emwy ruin, nearest Tasien’s camp: and, their intelligence consequently extending all the way to the river, they could state with assurance that the field beyond Emwy was clear and their line of march toward Emwy and Lewen plain was secure:

Aséyneddin had not crossed the river—and that was very good news.

That brought a third cup of wine, and there were far lighter expressions. The lady said then she was for bed, and so they all said.

“We shall break camp before light,” Cefwyn reminded them, and they were beginning to take their leave of him, and went out into the dark, Ninévrisé to the north and himself to the south.

But just then came a rider thundering down the road and, by the sound of it, to their very door. The guards shouted angrily outside, and the rider kept going past the tent, hoofbeats fading in the distance.

Cefwyn had started from his chair. Idrys had been quicker, and at the door of the tent a Guelen guardsman was on his way in.

“Your Majesty,” that man said, distraught and angry.

But in just that small interval–came another such rider thundering past, and another angry outcry from the guards, as the rider passed.

Cefwyn cursed and walked past Idrys’ questions and the guard’s attempt at explanation—and stopped still in the doorway of the tent.

Tristen came and stood at Cefwyn’s shoulder. The only oddity he could discover was his own banner, which had stood alone a short distance from the Marhanen Dragon and the Eagle of the Amefin of Henas’amef.

Two poles now stood imbedded in the earth, bearing village standards of the Amefin, at angles crossing his own black banner.

Another rider came speeding through the camp, village standard flying from the spear he held.

“Damn,” said Idrys, and would have gone out.

“No,” said Cefwyn sharply; and to his guards, “No altercation.”

That man came by and flung his spear—and another standard joined the Sihhé banner.

Came a body of men afoot, right behind him, and four more of the Amefin standards went into place about the Tower and Star. Without seeming to notice the guards or them watching, they planted their standards, troubling themselves to straighten and make firm the standards hastily set. Then they turned and walked away.

“Plague on them!” Idrys muttered; and Tristen felt cold and isolate-somehow at fault for what he understood as a shifting of allegiances of the Amefin—to his banner, which he neither wanted, nor knew what to do with. He thought that he ought to say something, to protest that he was against it, but he did not know what had caused it, and the words stuck in his throat.

“Orien,” Cefwyn said. “Damn her!” There was another rider coming.

“We should stop this,” Idrys said, and by now Gwywyn and Kerdin and a number of the Guelen guard were near the door, from their tent at the rear. But Cefwyn said, “No, damn it, let them do as they will. Do nothing! I’ll not break what unity we have!”

Cefwyn thrust past them back into the tent, and before Annas could intervene, Cefwyn poured himself more wine and flung himself down into his chair. A frown was on his face in the candle-light, and Tristen came back to stand uncertainly facing him.

“What shall I do?” Tristen asked. There was such anger and resentment in the look that Cefwyn gave him, a gnawing sort of anger, hurt and small and frightening to him. “Can I stop it? I will. I shall go and talk to them.”

A moment Cefwyn seemed unable even to speak to him, but sat with his hand clenched on his chair-arm. Then Cefwyn gave a great sigh and shook his head. “No.”

“I would go with Idrys.”

“No,” Cefwyn said again, and looked up at him with a wry expression, made strained, Tristen hoped, by the lantern-light. “This is a fact. I am Marhanen. I am not loved. And Orien Aswydd has chosen her proxy.

Quite clearly she has gotten a message out somehow, to arrange this.”

“They are Amefin, all,” Idrys said from the door. “And my lord King will recall, the bond between the Amefin and Althalen. Well that they have allegiances they will follow.”

“And may follow on the field. If they will—if they will, then well enough. I said I would as lief have you lord of Amefel.”

“There are good men of Amefel,” Tristen said tentatively, “and if the Aswyddim are gone, still–one of them would expect, would he not—?”

“Then let the Amefin lords exert authority to prevent it,” Cefwyn said shortly, and with a glance at the two pale-faced Amefin ladies who attended Ninévrisé “I see none of them doing so. The earls fear their own commons. —And what matter, as long as they attach themselves to a loyal man? Orien wished a rift between us, but it will work against her wishes, because I shall not be jealous and Tristen is my friend. Go, take your chairs, peaceful sleep. I shall sleep soundly, I assure you. They have answered my question, and if no Amefin earl durst step in, I shall appoint you over them. You should regard that as a threat, my friend, not a benefice. First I advise you appoint a taxman who is not a moneylender.”

“I know nothing of such things,” Tristen protested.

“So appoint men who do. You could do no worse than the Aswyddim.”

“I want no more men following me,” Tristen said. “I have enough, my lord King. I need no more.”

“Go to bed, I say.” Cefwyn moved his injured leg, and crossed his ankles before him. “I want my rest. —My gracious lady, forgive me. I am not a gentle host tonight.”

“We should go to our tents,” Ninévrisé said, and they went to the doors. Uwen gathered up their two chairs, the Amefin ladies took the others, in which Annas intervened and called a page to help them.

“Idrys,” Tristen said with trepidation, seeing Cefwyn had said he would not deal with the matter, “Idrys, how shall I deal with this?”

The man looked at him with all his usual coldness—and yet with a little change in his regard. “Make it clear to them that you are the King’s friend.”

It seemed sound advice. Tristen nodded and went outside, giving place at the door to Ninévrisé.

Nindvrisi5 looked at him, a half-shadowed look in the firelight, near the standards, and said urgently, “Lord Tristen.”  “My lady.”

Ninévrisé seemed to have changed her mind about speaking, then changed it again and came carefully closer. “Our enemy,” she began, then said, “Your enemy. Is he there tonight?”

He did not so much fear the gray space, as distrust it. And he did not look. “Doubtless he is,” he said. “He always is.”  “And at Althalen?”

“I cannot say, m’lady.” He thought then that that was what she feared: she had said not a word when they chose one of their camps as a site near Althalen, but he had seen her face in the council where they had worked out such details, seen the small nip of her lips together, clamped on an anxiousness about the notion. “But I have no sense of trouble there—or I would have said. Cefwyn did ask me.” It had not been a question aloud, but at least a look, when they had measured the distances. “I would have spoken if I thought so.”

She looked reassured, then. And it came to him that, perhaps worse than being able to see to Ynefel, if he chose, was the inability to see far at all, only to feel the threats in the gray world. She was not a strong wizard-yet, or perhaps ever. She perhaps had only enough of the sight to frighten her.

“You,” he said, “will at least feel danger if it comes. As you felt it that night. Then is the time to advise Cefwyn. And me. But I will very likely know.”

She looked at him, and put out her hand and touched his arm. “Be my friend, too,” she said. “I have this sight. I don’t know when it will come or where, and I don’t know what it will show me. I fear to sleep here-but Althalen may be worse, and I did not sleep last night—”

Tears were very close. Her lips trembled, and he touched her hand and let it fall.

A shadow had come in the doorway of the tent.

Idrys.

Tristen looked in his direction. “Sir,” Tristen said, feeling as caught in wrongdoing as ever he had with the man.

But Uwen was there, and Ninévrisé’s ladies, and Tristen made a little bow and went away into his tent, where the servants had the lantern lit, and where Uwen helped him shed the wearying mail and the servants helped him with the boots and the clothing. Uwen lay down to rest then, on the cot in his division of the tent, and soon Uwen was snoring, in honest, hard-won exhaustion; and the servants became quieter and quieter.

Tristen sat a time and tried by lantern-light and until his eyes swam, to read anything in the Book, on page after page after page, seeking any letter that offered him anything understandable.

But now and again through the night his peace was broken, with men passing the tent.

And it was plain, after he had blown out the lantern and lay abed in his tent, what was continuing to happen outside. The guards were doing nothing to prevent it, on Cefwyn’s order—because Cefwyn did not want a quarrel within the army. They had already had a nearly disastrous encounter between the two Guelen guard forces in the affair of Orien Aswydd, a confrontation which had left uneasiness between the two units that Idrys and Gwywyn had only scarcely patched. They could least of all afford a second one between Guelenmen and Amefin.

He did not know what he should do. It seemed he had not done what he should have, on any account. It was well possible that the enemy was already reaching out to push and pull things—just little things—to make them fail; and he did not know how to stop the desertions that threatened Cefwyn ... or the constant accumulation of followers of his own, that terrified and distracted him on every side.

In the morning as the first light touched the camp, forty or more of the village banners made a tight cluster about the Sihhé standard.

But the Dragon of the Marhanen did not stand alone either, for the unit pennons of the Guelen guard had been moved by their own men, and stood ranged about Cefwyn’s red and gold banner, defiance and challenge of the Amefin. Tristen knew what he saw, coming out of his tent at the first stirring about; and, “Well,” Cefwyn muttered, seeing that sight from the doorway of his own tent, and seemed greatly touched.

“Break camp!” Idrys ordered, and tents began, in that area, to come down, as they had already come down in the row next to them, in that dim light. Very quickly their guy-ropes and pegs formed a bundle on their several tents which became a bundle, and they were among the first laid out along the lane the wagons would travel picking them up. Cefwyn stood in the chill morning wind, and Tristen stood beside him. The grooms brought their horses to them, but Cefwyn did not offer to mount yet, so no one else did.

Eventually there were only men and horses standing where there had been tents, as far as the eye could see. They were behind their scheduled departure. They stood, and went on standing, and as it became evident to everyone that they were standing there on the King’s will, and waiting for the King’s order, there fell an unnatural quiet, on their personal guards first, and at last over all the camp.

“Guelen!” Idrys shouted, then, and there was a movement forward, the Guelen camped around the command tents, who massed toward their standards all in confusion. Idrys shouted angry orders; the standard-bearers took their standards to their respective units, and the Guelen fell into order.

52O

Then, unbidden, but in rivalry, perhaps, not to be left behind, came a tide of Amefin surging forward, who noisily possessed their own standards, but they did not take any orderly form. There was shouting, there was pushing, and a fight broke out as men surged forward and began trying to rescue their standards, and as the Guelen shoved them and made space for the King and his company.

Tristen stared helplessly for that instant, then—understanding the symbol of what these men were struggling for—he knew the only thing the Amefin and Guelen in that press might all see. He seized the Sihhé banner from Andas, who had moved to protect it, and carried it himself to the front of Cefwyn’s tent. The pole had a sharp end; and with a great thrust he planted it in the earth beside Cefwyn’s Dragon, aslant, as it settled the poles touching.

A murmur went up, and the fighting stopped. He was not capable of speech. He went to Cefwyn and they embraced before the army. A cheer went up around them, and Cefwyn laughed and grinned broadly, and embraced him again.

There was a cleaner feeling in the air. Tristen hugged Cefwyn a third time for gladness of that feeling, and Cefwyn’s eyes sparkled with tears, his lips drawn tight.

“To horse!” Idrys shouted, waving his sword. “Districts by order!

Move! We are late, sirs! Move, move, move!”

It seemed to mean everyone. Cefwyn went toward his horse, and he went quickly to the groom that held Petelly, took the reins and swung up. The wagon had not been able to get through. Now it was coming, as men ran for their appropriate places, and Andas reclaimed the Sihhé standard, as the standard-bearers of the Dragon and the Regent’s Tower took up their own.

A breeze lifted them. The morning sun streamed gold through light cloud. The King moved out and Ninévrisé joined him as their standard-bearers got to horse and moved out ahead. Tristen rode to join them and Andas took the Sihhé banner out to the left, where it belonged. Their guards mounted up, the Amefin lords came next, and before they had left the camp grounds, the Guelen Guard, both rival regiments and the regulars, had started up the same marching-song, shouting it out and going along at a brisk pace.

In no little time there was another song from the Amefin ranks behind, and that was the way the troops contended with each other.

He felt quite cheered. He had won something, he saw that, things seemed mended that had been broken, and Cefwyn laughed and joked with him and with Idrys and the lady. The morning lay like a sheen over the road, making their shadows long as they marched toward the west, casting that early-morning glamor on things that made ordinary colors seem different, and more magical. This morning they could do nothing wrong.

But then his eyes lifted to the horizon, toward the north and east, and the morning seemed not so bright there—he was tempted to look with the vision he did have, terribly tempted; but he thought it was exactly what he should not do.

They rode in that direction on a road that could not lose sight of that shadow, and it was impossible to forget it. It distracted him from the light mood the others set, and his distraction seemed at times to make them anxious. But they asked no questions, perhaps fearing the answer he might give.

“Do you see any shadowing on that horizon?” he asked of Uwen when they stopped for rest. He hoped that it might be some natural thing. If autumn could surprise him, then other things still might, and Words might arise he had never met.

But Uwen looked where he looked and said only that he saw a hint of cloud, but that it was not all that black.

He went to Ninévrisé while they were paused, and said, looking at the grass at their feet, “M’lady, if it comes to you today to have a look into that other place, resist it. Resist it with all your might.”

“Why?” Ninévrisé asked in alarm. “What do you see?”

“Nothing imminent,” he said. “Only be prudent.”

Natural men could not see it; and Cefwyn could not; and even Ninévrisé failed. So he rode with the knowledge to himself, alone, as slowly, subtly, to his eyes, a line of shadow began to reach along the horizon, like a smudge of smoke, a presentiment of night.  It seemed, to his eye, closer, and wider.

They met the contingents of four more villages. They were, Cefwyn said, approaching an end of Amefel where villages had been once, but where now were far fewer—where forest rimmed the horizon and where roads ran more scarcely.

By Cefwyn’s reckonings they should have begun to pick up the southern lords this morning. And they had not; the levity with which they had begun diminished through the day, and when they saw the sun pass mid-afternoon and they were neither at their campsite nor seeing any sign of their allies either ahead of them or to the south or behind them, concern began to work among them, and Cefwyn and Idrys cast frequent, anxious looks toward the south as he did to the west.

“We might wait a day for them,” Idrys said. “We might well, m’lord King.”

But Ninévrisé said, “Lord Tasien cannot wait,” and Tristen added,

“We dare not,” because that was the truth he could not doubt.

Chapter 33  

All about them now were meadows and forest-crowned hills, low rolls of the land that rose toward Althalen—treacherous land, which, like that around Raven’s Knob, could mask an entire army. They had had that message last night that their way was clear—but that condition could have changed ahead at any hour an Elwynim army appeared on the riverside.

Cefwyn shifted his weight in Danvy’s saddle both to ease the throb of his healing wound, and to see whether, by standing a handspan higher, he could see significantly more. They were behind their schedule. He did not want to order the column stopped prematurely, short of their planned camp; but he was beginning to ask himself was it wise not to stop sooner, and whether they had not overestimated their rate of march altogether, which would affect their ability to meet their other contingents and which might turn very serious indeed, if their army was going to move more slowly than their plan all along the march. The heavy horsemen rode today with their shields and weapons, but not in their full battle armor, and the heavy horses all traveled under saddle, in the hands of their grooms, though they as yet carried no riders and did not carry their full armor or caparison. That had been the plan they had made, that once they passed beyond the first encampment and especially as they rode in the vicinity of Althalen, they would count themselves in hostile if not imminently threatening territory. The light horse had carried riders all day, the destriers at least a slight weight all day; the infantry had marched with shields and spears since noon rest instead of having them transported in the baggage—and they might have to revise that plan to make the speed they needed. But going without defense was increasingly a risk, in territory uneasy in more than the sense of Althalen’s haunted precinct. In the rolling land not only was the rear of the train out of sight in the distance, hours behind the front ranks, simply because of the length of the column, but even nearer ranks were often lost to view in the rolls and windings of the road. The wagons for baggage and supply had a small rear guard and the whole line of march, foot as well, was interspersed with horsemen who could ride for help in the event of attack, which could otherwise have cut off the tail of the army without the head even aware an attack was in progress.

If the enemy could cut them off from their equipment, their tents, their supply—they would be in a very grave situation, in which many of them would never survive retreat and regrouping near Henas’amef. It was not a risk to run lightly, to have the men lighter-armed, because there had been incursions such as Caswyddian’s, and the Regent had camped at Althalen completely unknown to men searching the hills. It was rough land out there. Tristen warned that Aséyneddin did know their intent and their schedule, and they were racing with all the skill and strength they had against an enemy doing the same with the help of Tristen’s mysterious enemy, an enemy capable of killing Mauryl Gestaurien, chilling thought.

They had to start earlier tomorrow morning. They had to reach Lord Tasien’s encampment at Emwy Bridge in order to hold Aséyneddin in Elwynor; at very least, if they were too late, they had to do something to keep from meeting As6yneddin on ground As6yneddin or his wizardly ally chose.

Wizardry. Sorcery, rather. It was the first time he had ever used that word advisedly; if it ever applied, that dark art which Emuin had named in the necessary lessons of a prince of a land with such a history, it should apply to this ghost, this—whatever it was that Tristen feared.

But they faced mortal enemies too, and it would be fatal to panic, to tire his forces, or wear down either the horses the heavy horsemen used for travel, or the warhorses who would, over much shorter distance and under all the weight of their armor, carry them into battle. Nor dared he have wagons and draft teams broken down under rushed and imprudent handling: that would be as fatal as losing them to the enemy.

He looked across at Tristen to ask what he thought.., and saw that Tristen gazed as often he did toward the west, toward Marna.

Toward Ynefel, Cefwyn thought. Now the nature of Tristen’s lapses seemed transparent, which they had never been to this degree before, with walls to mask their direction.

“If it will satisfy you,” Cefwyn said to him, fearing that attention of his to the west, “once we have settled with the Elwynim matter, next spring, I shall agree we must concern ourselves with Ynefel. So I plead with you, my friend, as you swore to be my friend, delay what you can  delay. Sovrag’s boats can provide you and what forces you need a safe way to Ynefel, if go you must. No walking that end of Marna. You may have done it once under Mauryl’s protection, but never think of going there alone. Never think of leaving us. I shall stand by you at your need—but now I have need of you. You are my eyes toward that enemy.

If you fail me I am blind. Do you understand that?”

Tristen looked at him, lifted his hand to the northwest, between forest edge and plains. “He will meet us before Emwy.”

It was possible Tristen had heard nothing of what he said. “Are you certain?” he asked Tristen.

“Yes,” Tristen said distantly. Then: “Yes. I have feared so all day. Now I know. I wish not.’

It meant Tasien’s annihilation, almost certainly. Cefwyn’s heart sank, and he glanced aside to see who rode in hearing of them. Idrys was.

Ninévrisé was speaking with one the Guelen guards he had assigned to guard her, and could not have heard. “More of Mauryl’s visions?”

Tristen shook his head. “Mine, sir.”

“Is Lord Tasien fallen, then?”

“I think he is, sir. I feel it certain. I have feared it for hours.”

The news was maddening. He did not want to believe it. “Then Aséyneddin has crossed the river. That is what you are saying.”  “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t say it to Her Grace, and don’t say it to anyone yet. Even Uwen.

Not until I say so.”  “Yes, sir.”

“Across the river —Then, damn it. —” He looked where the scouts had ridden over the hills to the south. “Where is Lord Cevulirn? —And when will we find him?” he asked, with his father’s irreverence for visions and, still, a hope that wizardry would fail or find exception.

“Vision me that vision and save my scouts the hazard.”

Tristen gave a visible shiver, a drawing in of the shoulders. “No. I would not venture to say, lord King. I don’t see them. But I do see a shadow on the land.., westward and north, that is not good. That is not at all good.”

“A shadow. Wizardry, you mean.”

“It is, sir. But it’s all the same a Shadow.”

Cefwyn scanned the western horizon and saw nothing. “You can see bad news but not good? Is that it? Or what do you see?”

“Things that a wizard touches. My enemy is with Aséyneddin. He is at Ynefel.”

“One’s at the bridge, one’s in the heart of Marna! How can he be two places at once?”

“I don’t think he’s at Althalen. I hope, sir, I do hope for Althalen to be safe. If it isn’t—”

“If it isn’t, we’re destined to camp there tonight. We rely on camping there and passing that place without being engaged. If there was a possibility of this, you might have told me before now!”

“I would have told you, sir, if I thought he was there. I don’t think so.

And going overland is far slower. —But where Lord Cevulirn is, I don’t know.”

Wizards. It was enough to give a man pause. And when Tristen was rapt in thought he forgot all instructions of protocols, all agreements, all that was between them—he simply told what he believed; and increasingly he did believe it. He had a sudden vision of himself, a man of practical Marhanen blood, pursuing Tristen’s will-o’-the-wisp enemies across two provinces of ancient superstitions, elder gods, and demonstrable wizardry.

Scratch an Amefin and wizard blood bled forth. And if he fought for Amefel against what tried to claim its ancient soil—it was most reasonably a war of wizards. By his own choice, a Sihhé standard, black and ominous, fluttered beside the Marhanen Dragon. By his own choices the Amefin rural folk, emboldened by the fall of the Aswydds and the impotence of their own lords, had flocked to Tristen’s standard. He could bear with that.

But in Guelessar and the northern provinces were honest and good and loyal men who would shrink in horror from what their King had allied with, even if their King won.

If their King lost a province—and retreated into the heartland of Ylesuin, with sorcery let loose in Amefel and the Elwynim in its employ—he would have failed his oath to his own people. The wailing of slain children had haunted his grandfather to his dying hour. In the gods’ good name—what might haunt him hereafter?

“A rider,” Tristen said, and he saw it at the same moment: a scout coming back full tilt down the hills toward them.

More bad news? he asked himself. He braced himself for it. Idrys swung closer, clearly seeing it. Gwywyn and Ninévrisé came near.

The man—of the Prince’s Guard, as all their scouts were of that regiment-slid to a walk alongside them. “Your Majesty,” the scout breathed, while his horse panted and blew. “Your Majesty, —dust on the south—all along the south, m’lord. My companion rode ahead to see.”

“Fall back and find Qwyll’s-son. Have him inform the ranks. Pass it back by rider.”

“Yes, m’lord.” The man drew rein and fell back in the line.

“It may be Cevulirn,” Cefwyn said. “That would be very good news.”

“Certainly better than such sightings on our north,” Idrys muttered.

Idrys had been close on Tristen’s other side, close enough to have heard his exchange with Tristen. And Idrys believed bad news before good.

Always.

“Coming from the south, they must be ours,” Ninévrisé said.

Tristen said, solemnly, “They are ours, my lady. But we are to their north. Best they be certain who we are.”

Tristen said such a thing. Something else had clearly unfolded to him, in only so few days.

Possibilities unfolded to the Marhanen King, too.

What if it were the writer of the Art of War Mauryl had brought back?

His mentor of that long-ago text, riding unguessed beside him?

It was too cursed poetic. And, no, Tashfinen was an engineer and a strategist.

He recalled their last council before the barons had left. He said to himself as they rode side by side looking for that encounter, Tristen knows strategy– Certainly he knows the sword. Uwen says he knows the lance, that he will ride Dys, and that he has no doubts of him. The Sihhé brought the heavy horses with them to the land: how should he not know them?

Tristen counseled us no earthen walls. He spoke out against fortifications. Everyone will die, Tristen said, and we didn’t heed him—when he was counseling us, damn it, on the one answer I could never find in Tashfinen’s book, the one question I most wanted to know, and I didn’t hear what he was saying.

Tashfinen didn’t write it in his book because the Sihhé of his age knew that answer. It was the art of siege Tashfinen invented—against enemies who used other Sihhé tactics as a matter of course. Tashfinen had all prior lore—books burned at Althalen—and why should he write down the use of magic innate in his kind? Other texts would have held that-whatever a man’s born with, there’s always a cleverer way to use it: that would have been his object in writing: what he wrote down was the new thing, not the old. Why should we expect a Sihhé or any man to write down the obvious?

What held me from hearing Tristen?

Are we all so blind? Or is it another blow his enemy has struck us, through Orien Aswydd?

What did one do, he went on asking himself, without that knowledge innate (Emuin had said it) in Tristen’s kind?

Strike at flesh and blood? That he could do. The other possibilities-he did not even see. And in his blindly following a Sihhé text, he had not regarded Tristen’s warning—he had seen only the dangers of Tristen confronting him in council; and in his infatuation with Sihhé skill in war, he had sent men to an untenable, fatal position against wizardry.

He had let his bride’s kinsman make a deadly mistake. Tasien had acted the best he knew against his enemy, in the absence of any trust of Guelen kings. But as King, he certainly could have argued with Tasien with more force, rather than accept Tasien’s plan as he had done and (gods forgive him) embroider it with his own boyhood fancies.

Trenches in the herb garden. Good blessed gods, why had he not used his wits?

But without sending Emuin, or Tristen, neither of which was possible-what could he have done against a wizardous attack? What could he do against the one he knew was coming at them all?

And how did he break the news of Tasien to Ninévrisé?

In a plume of sunlit dust the remaining scout from the south came riding up over the swell of land. “The Ivanim!” that man called out as he came near. “I saw their banners, and the sun on their helms!”

Even as that rider came, the sun was picking up color in the west, and they all could see a second plume of dust on that horizon, farther away, behind the first.