Текст книги "Fortress of Eagles"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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FORTRESS OF EAGLES

C.J. CHERRYH

the second Fortress book

PRELUDE

Ages ago, before the time of Men, a place named Galasien grew to rule as far and wide as any records tell. Mauryl Gestaurien came from that time and that place. So did Hasufin Heltain, who may have been a prince of Galasien. Assuredly he was a wizard, as was Mauryl. Hasufin attempted a kind of magic that defied law and time and death, and would have ruled with absolute power, if not for Mauryl, who opposed him, and who at last visited the lands far to the north, whence he brought back five strangers to aid him. These were the Sihhë-lords, who wielded not wizardry but magic. In the struggle that followed, Hasufin fell, and with him fell Galasien, the citadel of which became the fortress known to the next age as Ynefel.

The five lords and their halfling offspring comprised a dynasty whose fortress was Ynefel and whose peaceful unwalled capital was Althalen. They conquered the lands of Men, had Men living freely among them, and for a golden age lasting centuries they built and learned and brought comforts and prosperity to the land.

But as Sihhë blood was running thin and a halfling, Elfwyn, sat the throne in Althalen, a prince was born, and died, and lived again, a circumstance which alarmed the wizards, the more so when other princes died one by one. By that means Hasufin crept back into influence among the living, bidding fair to succeed gentle Elfwyn and reestablish the dynasty of lost Galasien.

Mauryl led a conspiracy of wizards to prevent that succession, and had for an ally a lord of Men, namely Elfwyn’s chief general, Selwyn Marhanen, who seized power, burned the capital and killed every last bearer of royal Sihhë blood he could find.

But some of the bloodline survived in the peasantry of Amefel, and in a few of the lineage who dwelt across the river Lenúalim in the district of Elwynor. Elwynor refused to join the rebellion, and loyal Men there established the Regency, believing some claimant to the throne would arise to defeat the Marhanen lord.

It was not an unwarrantable hope in those days, for indeed every duke in the realm of Men on the other side of the river attempted to seize power. Only Selwyn proved more ruthless than any of his rivals, and established the Marhanen dynasty in Guelessar. From that time on the name of the kingdom was Ylesuin, and it ruled from Amefel eastward and north and south. Selwyn’s son Inéreddrin succeeded him; Uleman Syrillas continually reigned as Regent in Elwynor, and the old capital of Althalen became a place of ruins within Ylesuin’s backward province of Amefel, a province despised for its unorthodoxy, given to know far more of witchery and wizardry than the dominant sect of Ylesuin, the godly Quinalt, liked.

Mauryl, however, had no part in the wars of Men. Kingmaker, they called him; but he would not settle the quarrels of Men, ally himself to either side of the dispute, or set aside either Uleman’s claims or Selwyn’s to a united kingdom. Elwynor chose Ilefínian as its capital; Ylesuin chose Guelemara, heart of Guelessar, as the seat of the Marhanen kings, and Mauryl retreated to the shattered citadel of Ynefel to brood or study or do whatever a wizard did who had survived age after age of the world. Selwyn had appointed him Warden of Ynefel, and no one knew what Mauryl did, but one supposed that the world of Men was safer because ungodly Mauryl sat in his tower and kept away whatever ill might come from that place.

But Mauryl was not immortal, despite the rumors. The years sat heavily on him. His studies took their toll. And his enemy, Hasufin Heltain, was not quite banished. On a certain night in a certain spring in the reign of Inéreddrin Marhanen, beset by Hasufin’s threat and working with the last of his strength, Mauryl Gestaurien worked what he knew would be his last great spell, a Summoning, to be precise, and a Shaping.

Perhaps he flinched, perhaps he doubted his intention. He had expected something rather more formidable than what he found before him. The result was a gray-eyed youth: Tristen, who arrived without the least understanding even how to protect himself… a young man far from any understanding of wizardry.

The youth’s understanding of Mauryl, however, grew apace, and by late spring Tristen clambered about the old fortress at Ynefel with a childish curiosity about all the world, taming the pigeons of the loft, even exploring the walled-off end where Owl held sway. Ynefel was a curious place, and faces appeared in its walls, faces that on certain nights and in certain light seemed to take on life and move. But Tristen seldom saw them at it. Every night he took the potion Mauryl gave, every night slept soundly… every night except one. And on that night Tristen began to understand there was danger in the world. On that night, perhaps, only perhaps, Hasufin found a chink in the wall that otherwise was warded.

On a day not too long after, Hasufin advantaged himself of that opening. Mauryl fell at last… himself immured in the dreadful walls. And on that day Tristen found himself bereft of everything, left alone to face a world he had never seen or imagined.

He set out on the Road through Marna Wood, guided by Owl, in possession of a silver mirror and a book he could not read, not knowing where he was going, but that Mauryl had said someday he would walk that Road.

He came to the town of Henas’amef, principal city of Amefel, and into the hands of Prince Cefwyn, viceroy of that uneasy province. Cefwyn was heir to the Marhanen throne, and through Cefwyn Tristen came to the tutelage of Emuin, once Mauryl’s student himself.

But in short order Tristen so frightened Emuin that the old man fled the court, seeking sanctuary elsewhere—for Emuin realized what Mauryl had done and set into his hands. “Win his love,” was Emuin’s parting advice to Cefwyn, and Cefwyn, bored, isolate amid Amefel’s rustic lords, now realized he had a somewhat dangerous guest… and attempted to entertain the strange young man.

Therein a prince who had no friends discovered one… and saved his own life, for Hasufin Heltain, the ancient spirit that had destroyed Ynefel and Mauryl, had failed to overcome Tristen, and had come whispering to any ally he might find to bring him back to power… the enemies of the lord of the Elwynim, and also the lord of Amefel, Cefwyn’s host, Lord Heryn Aswydd, who himself had Sihhë blood.

Cefwyn might have died in ambush. But Tristen, finding a horse under him and a sword in his hand, discovered gifts he did not know he possessed… and Cefwyn began to be sure that what Mauryl had Summoned was, in his captain’s parlance, no lad from lost Elfwyn’s scullery, no halfling, even, but one of the vanished Sihhë-lords, perhaps Barrakkêth himself, the first, and the most feared.

Meanwhile the plot Hasufin engendered reached to the king… who fell to ambush. Cefwyn, crowned, challenged the traitor, Lord Heryn. But not only the Marhanen king had perished. As Uleman of Elwynor was old and weak, disputations regarding that succession had arisen, and Uleman was hounded to his death by rebels pursuing him even into Cefwyn’s kingdom.

At the Regent’s death, Cefwyn met Ninévrisë, the new Lady Regent, face-to-face… and knew he had met his bride.

But Orien, Lord Heryn’s sister, was not disposed to forgive her brother’s death or to cede Cefwyn to a foreigner; and Hasufin had now a sorcerous and angry woman to do his work. Cefwyn’s brother also opposed a foreign bride. And the Elwynim Lord who had hoped to claim Uleman’s daughter and the kingdom was open to persuasion… and to sorcery.

Orien’s attempt on Cefwyn’s life failed. And to set Ninévrisë on her father’s throne and to marry his way to a unified Ylesuin, Cefwyn summoned all the lords of the south to war, to prevent the intrusion of Elwynim rebels into Amefel… and win his bride her throne. But he faced more than the rebel leader: he faced a shadow building and building along that frontier, one Tristen understood, and knew for a greater threat than Cefwyn could possibly understand. Cefwyn was moving exactly where that shadow wished him to move, and Tristen had no choice but to take up arms as the army of the south of Ylesuin marched to Lewenbrook. Wizardry had allied itself with those rebels, wizardry which had brought down one Marhanen king, Cefwyn’s father, and now bid fair to set its own pawn on the throne of a new kingdom.

Tristen, however, found within the book the mastery of magic, his own heritage, which had eluded him. He rode to war as lord of Althalen and Ynefel, under a banner counted anathema by the holy Quinalt, but cheered by the Amefin commons. At the last he and his man Uwen Lewen’s-son rode against the Shadow that had loomed over Marna Wood in an hour when men were falling left and right to a power no sword could fight.

But Tristen rode with a sword graven with magical words of Truthand Illusion, cleaving one from the other, and wielded that weapon against the Shadow of shadows. He found himself at Ynefel, then hurled into shadow, lost to Men forever…

Except that fearing that his power might grow too great and overwhelm him, and draw him out of the world of Men, he had given his shieldman, Uwen Lewen’s-son, power over him. He made a common soldier his judge, whether to call him back or to let him vanish from the world as too great and too dark a danger.

And Vwen called him.

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER 1

The path, slanting up through young forest to gray rock and old trees, became a hollow, leaf-filled track at its end. When Tristen reined in and stepped down from the saddle, ankle-deep in autumn, the silence on that hill was so great he could hear the individual fall of leaves as soft, distinct impacts… until Petelly tugged at the rein, impatient of good behavior, and leaves cracked and rustled under his massive feet.

Guelessar’s forested hilltops had shown bright red and sunny gold above the fields not a fortnight ago. They had cast off much of that color in the wild winds of recent days, the result of which had piled up in ditches and against fences all along the roads. The trees on this height stood all but bare, more exposed to the winds than those lower down the trail, and Tristen scuffed through ridges of brown and gold as he led Petelly along.

He had ridden out for pleasure on this late-autumn day in this first year of his life and this first year of king Cefwyn’s reign. He had come into the world as a wizard’s Summoning in the soft, whispering green of spring, and he had discovered the world of Men in a summer of full-voiced leaves. He had come to his present maturity by his first autumn, with his duty to the wizard Mauryl all done, and with Mauryl immured in the ruins of Ynefel. He was, amid dreadful battles, sworn to a king who called him his dearest friend and declared him Lord Warden of Ynefel and Lord Marshal of Althalen to honor him—but the lands the king had granted him held no inhabitants, only shadows more or less quiescent and benign. He was lord of mice and owls, as His Majesty’s captain was wont to say.

And what did king Cefwyn intend him to be, or do, now that he had finished Mauryl’s purposes? He knew that least of all.

The leaves that had fallen earliest in the season were wet from old rains. The newest leaves, fallen atop them, left a fine, pale dust on Tristen’s boots, and the brown, wet depths of the drifts streaked that dust as his walking disturbed unguessed colors: a dazzling yellow, a vivid, jewel red. Spying a particularly large dry oak leaf, he picked it up for a particular treasure and carried it with him as he walked to his usual vantage at the edge of this hilltop woods, the sheer, wooded cliff from which he could reliably look down and see his guards watering their horses at the forest spring just below.

But unexpected sunlight shone through the trees to his right as he approached the edge; and a glance showed him a distant grassy meadow and a succession of forest-crowned hills marching in endless order in the east.

He had never noticed that view before. He was amazed as he moved branches aside to reach a new vantage—even while it Unfolded to him, as strange new things would do, that this new barrenness of the woods, these revelations of unseen hills, were but one more sign of the season. The grayness of the trees in that moment of magic evoked memories (and he had so few memories) of a place all but forgotten, and then known again, yes, not here, but there. The deepest woods of Marna, where he had begun his life, had been gray like this in springtime. For a moment he could deceive his own heart with the sight and think he was there and then, where Marna’s trees had stood so thick and dark they shut out the sun.

But here… here and now, the bright Guelen sunlight very easily reached him through the branches and cast all the other hills, all the low-lying meadows and hazy forested crests, in glorious gray and gold as far as he could see.

In the joy of the sight he released the captive leaf, letting it enjoy a second, unlooked-for life before it wafted down, down, to settle lower on the hill next a lichen-mottled outcrop of rock. There another gust caught it and the leaf, not yet defeated, explored the changed world on the very winds that had once robbed it of safety. Thoughtless of the act a moment before, he suddenly longed for the leaf to live, fly back to spring and become green again. He longed for all the woods to be green and the wind to sigh with the mysterious voices of his first days.

He longed to know this province of Guelessar as he had known the surrounds of Ynefel.

He longed for a thousand things, all of them dangerous.

Petelly meanwhile had trailed off at his own direction, doubtless crushing a score of remarkable leaves underfoot as he wandered nose down, sniffing under the autumn piles for whatever might prove edible underneath. He was a practical horse. Long hairs abounded in Petelly’s bay coat, making him appear stockier than he was, a disgrace among the highbred horses of the guard, and Petelly’s jaw, never fine, was thick and massive with beard that riffled in the wind. All the horses and the cattle in the fields had been growing shaggier by the day. The guards said the coats on the cattle, the vast chevrons of birds skeining across the skies, all were signs that foretold a bitter winter, with snow likely before the full moon. The servants in the king’s household were unpacking quilts and woolen clothes and airing them where they could, foreseeing the same, and Tristen looked forward to that event with mingled curiosity and trepidation. Once the snow began in earnest, so he had heard, it would lie deep and white all winter, killing the fields, putting the trees to sleep.

Winter when it came was a last season before the full circle of a year… the very last season.

New to the land, he had once thought summer the mature and natural state of the world, and seen every hill as Unfolding new secrets to him forever. Then autumn had shown him nothing was forever. It brought him the bitter, dusty smell of fallen leaves, the moldy pungency of willow leaves strung in ropes, slender and yellow along the edge of the spring at the bottom of this hill. Lastly it showed him this view of hills, the secrets of all the hills of Guelessar unveiled.

But what would winter bring him? Snow and ice, yes. But now that he saw the year not as extending forever forward but as turning back upon itself, he saw life coming a circle, like a horse running, discovering itself not free, but pent in and bound to repeat its course again and again and again. What he thought he had left behind might come again. What he had thought done might come undone. And spring, when all things should come new… spring, in which most men looked for new life… he had cause to fear.

He came back to his edge, his reliable little cliff. He looked down on the four men the king had lent him, and on Uwen Lewen’s-son, a gray-haired soldier whom the king had appointed to be his friend, his constant companion, his adviser in the world. He knew he should go down now and not put them to the trouble of riding up this narrow trail to find him.

But he continued to be disturbed, having found things on the hilltop not what he had expected, having thought thoughts he had never planned, and he knew Uwen and the other men rarely objected to time to sit and talk amongst themselves, which they were doing quite happily at the moment.

So he left Petelly to his search for bits of green, sure he would not stray far, or that if he did, Uwen would intercept him below. He waded through brush and ducked through thickets to the south and west of the hill… snagged his hair doing it, hair as black and thick and long as Petelly’s mane, and by now, like Petelly’s mane, stuck through with twigs and leaves. He was not willfully inconvenient to those who watched over him. But he was chasing the vision of Amefin hills, a sight and a knowledge that mattered to him in ways he could not explain. If he could but achieve that vantage before his guards lost patience, if he could come just a little to the side and past a rocky shoulder of the hill—if he could know he was not that far from his beginnings and fix the territory of his memories as a place, not a state of mind…

Then perhaps he could dream forward and not constantly back toward the lost things he remembered. Making peace with that, he could perhaps begin to see things as vividly ahead of him, instead of the gray space that seemed to occupy all his future…

Oh, indeed, he saw more hills westward, gray and brown with barren trees that he imagined might be the very edge of Amefel. And from this hill, on this day of leaf fall at the end of autumn, he imagined that he looked back all along the course he had come.

Foolish pursuit, perhaps. It was, after all, nothing but hills and gray trees like the other views from this place. It was his heart that saw the rolling hills, the land of his summer and his innocence, the land where he had met Cefwyn, the land which had taught him so much and which had nothing to do with this autumn, these trees, this hill in Guelessar. He hung a moment with his arms on a thick, low branch, the wind cold on his face, the sights of summer in his eyes, and with a sigh and a thought, he saw all the way to spring, to Ynefel. He heard the kiss of the river Lenúalim on the tower’s foundations. He looked down from the high tower of Ynefel over the tops of storm-tossed trees, and out over the Road from the half-ruined roof of the loft where Owl had lived.

The narrow, rickety steps to his room came to him, too, exactly so. The study and the fireside flitted through his thoughts, warm and cozy. Ynefel was so much smallera place than the high-walled Guelesfort, or even Amefel’s Zeide, which hove up above Henas’amef and housed hundreds of people.

Mauryl’s forest-girt tower had been so very much smaller, so much plainer in all respects, he knew that now, yet it had been so full of memorable things… as for instance he could recall in sharp detail every twist of grain in the weathered wood of the sill in his bedroom; he could conjure every detail and imperfection of the horn-paned window of his room, whereupon the rains and the lightning had written mysterious patterns in the night. Ynefel seemed far larger in his memory than such a small place should reasonably be, as if by some enchantment it held more life, or had been more substantial than ordinary buildings.

He remembered the loft, oh, the loft, the silky, gray-brown dust, and the pigeons on the rafters there, each and every nameless one, and he remembered the day he had discovered Owl.

Ynefel was in ruins now. Mauryl was gone. He had seen Owl last at Lewenbrook, before the banners fell, before so many died. On that day, too, the world had had a terrible wealth of detail, and every rock and every tree had found edges. Every shadow had been alive and rolling down like midnight on embattled armies.

He remembered the cold and the dark of that hour, and a shadow become substance. He felt the bitter chill of sorcery and felt—was it only memory?—a perilous slippage in place and time.

Then he knew he had gone not forward but back into memories he wished only to escape. He began hastily to retrace his steps in all senses, retreating from the sight, fleeing from the unwardened west, back toward Petelly.

The urgency grew less immediately as he left that side of the hill. It was only a hillside. Only a hillside in Guelessar, so great a relief he might have laughed at his own foolish fears. It was autumn, again, among the leaves, the opposite end of autumn, at that, from the battle at Lewenbrook, and as he reached Petelly he saw that Petelly had no concern whatsoever… had not even interrupted his browsing. So he had been completely foolish, he thought, to have feared anything. Shaken, he patted a winter-coated shoulder and caught Petelly’s reins, leading Petelly along toward the trail and a meek and dutiful return to his guards.

Petelly was in no hurry to go, however, and with a great, unbalancing jerk on the reins stopped and lowered his head among the leaves, sure he had smelled some tidbit he favored. It was just as easy to let him finish his search as quarrel with him.

There, close by, was the most curious log, shelved with velvet fungus.

Now here was a wonder of the woods, marvelous in its smoothness: Tristen abandoned the discipline of his horse, knelt to touch and found the velvety shelves unexpectedly tough, resisting his inquisitive, ungloved fingers.

The wood, peeling in patches, was gray and weathered beneath, long dead. This growth, on the other hand, was alive, out of that death. Was it not a miracle?

Or did spring hide in apparent death, and was spring lying hidden in winter, as signs of winter had hidden these last few days in autumn?

Were the seeds of next things always there, in the circle of the year, and was that how the world worked its miracles? The wellspring out of which things Unfolded to him said yes, yes, the life did not wholly die. Even in utter ruin and winter to come, there was hope. Even in a dead log were miracles waiting.

And had this particular, velvety, curious growth any virtue in wizard-craft, he wondered in a practical vein, hunkering down for a very much closer look and tucking his cloak about his knees to protect it from the damp? Would Emuin like it? He had no wish to spoil what was curious and wonderful if Emuin had no use for it, but it did look like something a wizard would admire… and something that might be useful, a point of change and regrowth that might have potency. He brought Emuin birds’ eggs fallen in the wind—like the dry one he had in his purse just now, along with a curious oak gall from a grove near a sheep fence at Dury.

Had he feared the sight of distant woods, a mere moment ago? There was no fear in him now. At times he was well aware how he skipped from serious thoughts to thoughts other folk saw as quite frivolous, and he suspected on his own that this might be one of those moments, but the thought he had fled was past and the sight that had led him to that thought was hidden now by the hill. His guards had not yet grown annoyed with him, and he knew he was safe on this hilltop. He had also spent his short life with wizards, who as a type observed a different sense of priorities and set a different importance on strange objects than ordinary folk.

Had the fungus been there in the summer? Or did it appear when a tree died? Or did it appear only seasonally as another sign of winter?

The latter was the kind of question he would have asked Mauryl more than Emuin, Mauryl being far more inclined to far-ranging questions.

But Mauryl was gone with Ynefel, and all such questions of the natural world went unanswered these days. Emuin was far more likely to tell him the use of a fungus than the behavior of it—when he could gain Emuin’s attention at all.

No, there was probably no use in bringing it with him. He could by no means bring all of it, and bringing less than that would spoil it. He meanwhile had the bird’s egg, which was pretty, speckled finely brown on white, and he knew Emuin would admire it. He stood up, tugged at Petelly’s reins, seeking the trail through a maze of leafless branches on what should have been a shorter route. But it proved choked with thorns. He stopped, stood, looked for a way through the maze.

In truth, the world in general had become much more familiar to him, less a-jumble with new things and unguessed words, so that in the close confines of the Guelesfort an entire fortnight might pass without his finding something new. But outside its walls, he gathered wonders and set himself in predicaments his guards indulged with kind patience… this might be one. He came to this hilltop for the silence and the sound of the trees, only to think without the sounds of five men and horses about him, and for a moment, so engaged, and perplexed about his path, he might almost hear Mauryl’s voice saying, “Boy? Boy, where areyou now? What have you gotten into, lad?”

A rising wind whispered through dry branches. It almost seemed he did hear that voice, that he was in some secret hiding place where it was not Mauryl who was lost, but himself, and only for a moment. He would turn around, and he would see Mauryl standing there, his plain brown robes blending with this gray autumn woods, his hand about that staff of his, his white hair and beard alike flying in the gentle whim of the breezes.

“So what have you found?” Mauryl would say, if he was in a patient humor, and Mauryl would come have a look at his log and tell him the name of the fungus and whether he should bring it in pieces back to the hall to join the vast collection of strange and curious things Mauryl treasured. Mauryl’s robes, never reputable or fine, and always smudged with the dust of the old fortress, would surely acquire tags of leaf mold and dirt just as his cloak had, Mauryl’s hair would have just such unseemly detritus of leaves, and his face would take on that look of concentration that was Mauryl at his kindest.

Petelly’s nose met his shoulders and shoved. Tristen drew in a breath rough-edged with the smell of oak and earth and autumn, and knew that Mauryl would not be there, not at distant Ynefel, certainly not on this hilltop in Guelessar, and that he had well and truly overstayed his time, since he heard the jingling of men and horses coming up the road. His guards had grown concerned, or curiosity had moved them, and leading Petelly toward the trail to meet them, he saw to his chagrin that they had all come.

Uwen was in the lead as they came up the turn, then Lusin, Syllan, Aran, and Tawwys, armed and armored, the lot of them—as of course he was, or more or less so. He had let Petelly carry his sword, which he had stowed behind the saddle, but he conscientiously carried a dagger on his person as Uwen advised him he should, and beneath his brown ordinary cloak and leather coat, he wore the mail the king and the king’s captain commanded he wear, even though he considered it very little likely that enemies would cross the Lenúalim and tramp across a good deal of Guelessar to invade this hunting preserve and climb this very hilltop. In all truth, most Men had rather not face him with or without that sword, and he suspected that the guards the king assigned him generally served him better in deterring the approach of the unwary than in fending off hazards.

He pulled and scraped his way past berry bushes as his guards arrived, jingling and breathing and thumping and creaking, four men in the red of the King’s Dragon Guard, with his sworn man Uwen in plain brown. Uwen wore only the smallest black badge of Althalen over his heart, the same as he wore himself. The others, being king’s men, wore the gold Marhanen Dragon and red coats.

“So what ha’ ye found?” Uwen asked him amiably from horseback, with no reproach at all, while four riders fanned out among the trees to turn around, the trail being just wide enough for one horse. The hindmost of his guards was very steeply on the slope, even so. “And should we be riding back soon, m’lord?” Uwen asked. “This’d be our turning, here below, to go back by way of Cressitbrook, if ye’d rather a different road going home. As we should now.”

“We should,” he agreed shamefacedly. He saw his guards looking warily about for curiosities, for chills and shadows and other such events of his company, but without a word he climbed up on Petelly and eased him past the other horse’s nose. Uwen turned next. The king’s men turned about in the woods and followed.

The wind, an entirely natural wind, blew dust up and sent leaves across the path as they left the hilltop. Petelly danced and skipped through the insubstantial obstacle. The men rode after him in haste, and for a moment they went pell-mell down the chancy turn, over ground buried in leaves. Tristen knew the footing, and so did they all. There were no roots, stones, or holes; but he knew that there was no threat above to give any reason for haste, either, so he pulled Petelly down to a reasonable pace past the spring. They all came safely to the lower road again, sheltered from chill breezes and wayward memories by the looming, forested hills on either hand.

“No shadows,” Uwen said, having overtaken him.

“No shadows,” he assured Uwen. “Not a one. I was listening to the wind up there. Looking at the hills.” For some reason, perhaps because it was a matter for wizards and not for soldiers, he was reticent about confessing his looking out toward Amefel. “There was a fungus I had never seen.”

“A fungus, ye say.”

“On a dead trunk.”

“Oh, them things.” Uwen seemed both relieved and amused, and it was as he expected. Uwen ventured not a ghost of a guess what the growths were named, or what their virtue was. “Ye don’t eat ’em, least I for certain wouldn’t. Mushrooms is done for the year.”

“To come back in spring?” So many things were promised to return in the spring. And some things would Unfold to him the moment he asked a question, but some things would not. “Or in the fall?”