Текст книги "Fortress of Eagles"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

He realized then that it was made of silver, and doubtless precious in some eyes; but silver had magical meaning as well. In Efanor’s goodwill, he was given two gifts now, a book and a piece of silver, and it struck him that such gifts were exactly such as Mauryl had once given him. Was it like the horse, and the oak, and did the semblance of Mauryl’s gifts to him create a bond of another kind, himself magically allied with Efanor? Yet he already had the silver near his heart before that thought had come to him.

“You must wear this in full view,” Efanor said, “when you go into the Quinaltine. Show everyone you can wear it. But dareyou go into the Quinaltine when the candles are lit and the gods are invoked? You were at the oath-taking. Were you there throughout?”

“Yes, sir. I was. ” He had found the place oppressive and had slipped back to the door, behind the columns, that day. But in the intent of Efanor’s question he had been there.

Efanor looked at him closely as if he were estimating his strength, or his character, or both, and with fear in his eyes. “I value that medal greatly,” Efanor said in the hush of their small area near the window. “And you would not mistreat it, nor use it in any magic, would you? I pray you not, whatever you wrought with the sword.”

“No, sir. I would never, if you ask it. Or I will give it back if you had rather.” He made to take it off and almost succeeded in returning the gift; but Efanor’s hand closed on his urgently.

“You have far more need of it. Wear it. Read the book daily. Think on the gods morning and evening. Pray for their help. There may be hope for you. I know there is good in you.” Efanor found it necessary then to amend it: “I believethere is good in you, lord of Ynefel; I wish with all my heart to believe it.”

“That is a kindness I shall remember.” Efanor, fearful, anxious, muttering entreaties to the gods he revered, had pressed on with a courage far surpassing the people of Wys, with great goodwill, even concern for his welfare and Cefwyn’s. And for that he wished the greatest good to Efanor, and counted him at least among those he loved, or wished to love, if so much fear did not stand between them. For Cefwyn’s sake he would put up the appearance Cefwyn asked for, he would do what Men did and attend the Quinalt, as resolutely and with as little joy as he would brave a battle line. But for Efanor’s sake he would venture the little book that claimed Men were evil, and he would see if there were answers in it, or if there was a hope of his making peace with the Quinalt once and for all.

“Please, sit down. Take a cup of tea, sir. If you would. Explain the manners I have to use.”

With evident relief Efanor began to expound the gods’ authority. They were deep into the question of the moon and the stars when Uwen came out of his room, distressed.

“So what arethe stars?” he had just asked, and Efanor had seemed not to know the answer. But Efanor leapt up, seeming to take the interruption for a rescue from what he feared was too difficult a question.

“Uwen Lewen’s-son,” Efanor said. “You’ll be near His Grace in services, —at least nearby.”

“Aye, Your Highness.”

“Good,” Efanor said. “Very good. Pray Your Grace keep the amulet close, and think on it, and read and study, and if Your Grace does have more questions I very earnestly urge, no, I commandYour Grace come to me, and not ask others.” This, with a look toward Uwen. “Of the gods’ mercy ask no one else. I cannot guess the damage.”

“I thank you,” Tristen said. “I thank Your Highness, very much.”

“Accept the gods’ guidance,” Efanor said, half under his breath, seeking to leave. “The gods’ will. The gods’ will, in all things. Gods attend.”

Perhaps it was his asking about the stars. Perhaps Efanor had business he had to attend. But in that state of glum anxiousness Efanor left, Tassand and the servants standing by in respect of their royal visitor. Tassand still looked worried as he fussed the empty tea service away.

Uwen, too, was distressed. “I wisht I’d known His Highness had come in. I wouldn’t have slept for the world.”

“Emuin approved it.”

“Did he, m’lord?”

“He knew, at least. I don’t think he entirely approved. But he saw no harm in it. ”

“All the same, m’lord, ye should take a great care what ye say wi’ His Highness, who trusts priests an’ talks to his, every night. Ye might scare a man wi’ your questions. Ye truly might, not intending it. And I think ye may ha’ done it.”

“I know,” Tristen said in a low voice, and showed him the little book, scarcely the size of his hand, and the medallion. “He said this would keep me safe and I must read the book. Do you think so? Dare I?”

“M’lord, I don’t know what ye dare.”

“Is it wrong for me to have?”

“I don’t know any harm to Your Grace’s having it,” Uwen said slowly. “But that’s a relic he give ye. That’s a holy thing. The Quinalt fathers is a flighty lot.”

“They fear me.”

“That they do.”

“ Youpray to the gods. Do they hear you?”

“I pray to the gods, on holidays. On a battlefield. Truth be known, that’s the way of most men.”

He knew that answer. He wanted more. “And do the gods talk to you, Uwen?”

Uwen laughed, of gentle startlement, Tristen thought. And shrugged. “No, m’lord, nor does I look to hear ’em.”

“Do you think priests hear?”

“I leave priests entirely to their business. And rightly you should, m’lord. The gods speakin’, m’lord, it’s just a way of sayin’ folk get notions in their heads and it seems like they come from somewheres beyond ’em.”

“Wizards cause that. The notion to leave a latch undone, a moment of forgetfulness… that is wizardry.”

“So ye warned me, m’lord. And so I take great care, and keep strongly to my habits. But that’s what folk say is the gods speakin’, too. And for the gods’ sake don’t ask a priest, m’lord. Never ask a priest.”

“I thought all along praying might be like going to the gray place.”

“Gods save us, lad, ye didn’t tell about that.”

“No. I didn’t. Not to anyone but you, who can’t go there. I thought priests might have a place, too. I’ve never met a priest there, except Emuin, who’s not to count—yet they seem to try very hard to go there. Efanor tries. I felt it once or twice, and yet I never saw him there, not truly, so I thought there might be some other place. But I dared not ask him. And Emuin never will answer me. He simply will not say.”

Uwen made that sign again. He knew he baffled Uwen, and worried him, and sometimes made him go off and think for a while without saying a word.

“Well, you was right to keep quiet about it wi’ His Highness,” Uwen said. “And I’d go on keeping quiet about it wi’ His Majesty, though I don’t think ye’d daunt himat all. I just think His Majesty’s happier sayin’ he don’t rightly know what ye do when ye just stand here starin’. If His Holiness asks, so to say.”

“Or what dothey think?”

Uwen thought about that. “They ain’t never mentioned it that I ever heard, nor could I ask a priest, so I wouldn’t know. Master Emuin might know, but I don’t. Isthere harm in the gray place?”

“Yes. But I would never let harm come out of that place, Uwen. I would never let it near you, or Cefwyn, nor even Lord Prichwarrin, who has never done me good at all. The harm isn’t always there. It isn’t there now, but it might come, and it might come seeking me, my friends and all that help me. But believe I will not allow it. I shall never allow it, Uwen. And there is no harm that I do by any magic there, except against the harm that comes at me, and that I fight with all my strength. There is all the truth about the gray place.”

“M’lord, I have no doubt. An’ if I could go to that wizard-place there and stand by ye, I would.”

“You do. You do, Uwen, simply by being by me, and with me. You lend me strength. As Cefwyn does. As Emuin does—Most of all you make me wise.”

“Oh, I hope wiser ’n that, m’lord! But what I think, it’s a good thing there’s you and master Emuin to see what they’re up to in that magic place, since it don’t seem a lot of the things there is ever up to good to us common folk. —But for gods’ sake don’t ever be hinting about that place to His Highness. Not ever. Ye was very wise not to say so. And I’d think twice and three times afore I said a careless word to him on deep matters no matter he’s a good man. There’s that priest o’ his giving His Highness advice.”

“I shall be very careful,” he promised Uwen, hoping that he had been as careful as he thought. “On penny day I shall be particularly careful. Though it doesn’t seem difficult, what they wish me to do.”

“Babes do it,” Uwen said. “Ye get blessed, ye walks by the altar, ye drops the penny, ye bows to His Holiness, ye get blessed again… ye walks down the middle aisle to the doors and out again. The king goes first, and ye stands near him and then the whole lot walks back to the Guelesfort, that’s all ye do. Ye’re supposed to be prayin’ the day long, but the most don’t. Mostly folk drinks too much and eats too much and they dance at the harvest fire till it’s down to ashes and the drums and the pipers is too tired to go on.”

“The children in Wys fear me less now. Though after all this long they still run.”

“Youngsters always run. They’re a silly, giddy lot, like sheep. Same wi’ townsfolk. They ain’t no wiser ’n Wys. But best ye stay indoors. There’s too much ale flowing at the feast. There’s some as might be fools, and then ye’d have to turn ’em to toads and that’d do fair for it all.”

Uwen was joking with him. He was glad Uwen would. He treasured it above any silver or gold. “I think you’re right,” he said.

CHAPTER 6

The doors of houses and shops had been hung with wreaths of barley-straw for days. Now straw wreaths bedecked the ironbound oak of the Guelesfort gates, and straw covered the cobbles ahead of the court procession. The whole court walked this pathway, the king and the Regent foremost, and then Prince Efanor, Duke of Guelessar. After him came Lord Brysaulin, the Lord Chancellor, all the lords in their precedence, and attending each, their ladies and their families and their sworn men. The King’s Guard formed an aisle on either hand along the short distance from the gate to the Quinaltine precinct, and beyond them common people stood to watch.

But other common folk beyond the barrier of guardsmen bore unlikely burdens toward the square. A man had a basket of sticks on his shoulder, another a broken wheel—for the bonfire, Tristen guessed, townsfolk bringing wood, straw, all manner of fuel for the great fire that was laid and ready for the public celebration across the open square from the Quinaltine steps. The pile of wood must be very high by now– and indeed, when the line wended within sight of the square, in their view past the line of the Guard, the pile had doubled its size from yesterday. It towered in front of the Quinalt, a bonfire to burn up all the year’s scrap and chaff and prepare for Wintertide, besides taking away sins and bad memories.

So Uwen had said last night at supper… that the common folk wished for luck by building it. They wished to burn up all the bad memories and keep only the good. He meditated on that as they walked in the procession, himself in his black-and-silver holiday finery and Uwen in his finest black velvet, a lord’s man, and entitled to walk and stand among the highest in the land.

But within the courtly precedences, the fortresshold of Ynefel and the ruins of the old capital ranked—so they argued—last in the procession of the lords, behind the position that Amefel, least of the provinces of Ylesuin, would have held, had it had a lord to walk in the ceremony at all. But the order of their proceedings did not admit him as a king’s officer, though he suspected that best described the office of Lord Warden of Ynefel, a defender of the marches, a power without a province.

They could not rank him, as Ynefel, beforethe duke of Murandys; they could not rank him before any of the northern barons without ruffling their feathers; and certainly they could not admit any importance to a wizard’s tower.

But as it happened, once the column formed, Tristen found himself not utterly hindmost. Behind him came the banner-bearers of the notables of the town, the great silken billow of the red banner of the town of Guelemara, with its golden Castle. In front of him and Uwen, his banner, flew the silver Star and Tower of Althalen, and the Sihhë Star of Ynefel, remade.

The two who bore his colors now were veteran soldiers, not Lusin or his ordinary lent guards, as he had expected, but two men Lord Cevulirn had sent, Ivanim who were eager to please their duke, and, Tristen suspected, who were also glad to bear a banner for the pride of the south (scarce here) and pointedly for the honor of the field at Lewenbrook, where northernershad been very scarce.

Sulriggan’s banner was here, however, the green banner of Llymaryn preceding his nephew Edwyn, farther forward in the honors… Tristen was not so wise in the affairs of the north or the delicate points of their protocols, but he did notice that precedence, and knew that it did not please Cevulirn, nor Cefwyn, and probably did not please the middle provinces, the apple regions, as the soldiers called them.

He had learned the banners: Guelessar, quartered, the Marhanen Dragon on a red field, alternate with the bright gold Quinalt sigil on black; Elwynor: a Tower, black-and-white Checker with gold and blue; Murandys, blue field, bend or, with white below and the Quinalt sigil, or; Llymaryn, green, the Red Rose of that house: it had been a red rose crowned if Llymaryn’s grandfather had found early followers in greater number than the Marhanen—and there had actually been a crown above the Rose, a crown which had discreetly disappeared as Lanfarnesse and Murandys and other troops had all sworn to Selwyn Marhanen of Guelessar.

There was the gold Sheaf with bend and crescent of Marisal, and the blue field and blazing Sun of Marisyn; there was the blood red of Ryssand with the Fist and Sword; the pale azure of Nelefreíssan with its White Circle… besides Isin and Ursamin, Teymeryn, Carys, Panys, Sumas, and Osenan, a bright forest of banners. And after obscure Osenan, Cevulirn’s banner, the White Horse of Ivanor, the only southern banner except the two black banners of Ynefel and Althalen, Althalen no longer royal, but merely a district in Amefel.

Trumpets blared as they ascended the steps toward the Quinaltine. There was a general, astonished pointing toward the black Sihhë banner; onlookers along the way made signs against harm such as the villagers had once fervently made in Wys-on-Cressit.

The bells rang as Cefwyn and Ninévrisë mounted the steps and entered the shrine, Cefwyn in slight precedence. The lords with their banner-bearers trooped up between the opposing lines of the King’s Guard and the Prince’s Guard, standing on the steps, soldiers in bright Marhanen red against the upright barley sheaves and other gold and brown signs of autumn and harvest. The banners, too, following the lords, filed inside. The banner-bearers set themselves about the columned sides of the central shrine as Tristen followed the other lords through the solemn, oaken doors.

The way for the lords and their captains to walk was straight ahead, and he followed behind Cevulirn, down the main aisle of the high shrine, with the banners sweeping as a bright wall on either side. A clerestory was above, and sunlight shafted down into this smoky region of incense-burners, lamps and candles.

Uwen took his place, standing among the benches of the captains. Tristen walked on as he was obliged to do, still behind Lord Cevulirn, in a stifling cloud of incense; and as Cevulirn went aside into a row of the assembly, he followed, last on the row, nearest the aisle. Everyone remained standing. There were only two rows in front of him; and past Panys and Nelefreíssan he could see the front of the shrine. The table center-most at the head of the aisle had candles on tiers among gold plates and vessels. Altar was the Word. And on either hand and around the rim, it was decorated with oak boughs. Plates stood heaped with acorns and apples, with nuts and grain scattered about the table covering, singly and in piles.

The Patriarch arrived from the side of the place with a light sound of bells, and flung water at either point of the altar, using a silver spoon and a small vessel. The actions in a single stroke assumed a kind of sense, that all the doings here involved less the gods than the Lines on the earth.

Uwen had said there would be no magic. But the sprinkling of water was magical. The establishment of the line was magical. The altar was a focusof this effort. The Patriarch walked back and forth in his occupation, laying down a Line, quite clearly walking the principal Line in the area, if one looked at it.

But the Patriarch was not walking them as one did who meant those lines to hold fast against shadows. There were four, five, six previous established Lines, all askew from what the Patriarch was building; he could see them clearly now that the Patriarch had brought the principal one to life. They all showed in different degrees, and Tristen stood beside Cevulirn, his hands clenched on each other and his lips firmly shut against the wish to protest this folly. Immediately in front of him was the lord of Panys, and in the first row Cefwyn stood, all the court, and the captains and officers of the court, silent, respectful of this place, this very strange action.

The priests carried in a smoking brazier, and they cast in incense that rose up in stinging clouds. Tristen fought a sneeze into abeyance; some lord did sneeze, ahead of him, a shocking disturbance of a silence that rang in discord off the columns and the roof.

The Patriarch was still walking back and forth, laying down his new line athwart the old, and not in the least regarding the domain of shadows beneath the place, whether intentionally or accidentally. Immediately beside the altar the discontinuity was worst: a gateway for shadows, if one cared to make sense of the jagged overlay of lines, and Tristen averted his eyes and his perceptions, resolved not to look in this world or the other at the moment. Shadows were there, jostling one another… perhaps Selwyn Marhanen, for all he knew; he was one who might press to the fore; but Tristen made no inquiry of them. Whether all shadows had been alive at one time, he had never known nor wished to wonder at this moment. He refused to look, but he refused to shut his eyes, either, although they stung with incense. He listened to the Patriarch recounting the year’s doings, how Ynefel had fallen, and wickedness had broken out in Elwynor—the Patriarch could hardly fault Ninévrisë for that, since the wickedness named meant the rebels; but one could easily mistake it. His Holiness spoke on about the great shadow, about Lewenbrook and the struggle against darkness, and heard him explain to all the lords how there were great events afoot. They were stirring words about bravery and righteousness and doing the gods’ will.

But do you not see the shadows? Tristen wondered distractedly. Do none of you see?

The Patriarch talked about prosperity, and good harvests, and how it was clear that Ylesuin was favored by the gods above all other lands, and how the gods had only revealed their truths to the people of Ylesuin, who bore their special blessing and therefore had a special responsibility to continue those blessings by showing a giving and humble spirit. His Holiness said that as long as gifts flowed freely and abundantly to the Quinalt and as long as the people celebrated the harvest in godly ways, shunning drunkenness and licentiousness—that was a Word that stirred disturbing images—and shunned the offer of power which did not come from the gods, they would prosper.

And what of Ninévrisë? What of Elwynor’s prosperity? Tristen asked himself.

And do offers of power come from the gods? he wondered. He certainly knew one offer which had not, when Hasufin Heltain had come out of the dark and led Lord Aséyneddin of Elwynor astray. Hasufin had tried to lead Mauryl himself astray, but had failed at that. Was this a god? Or a shadow?

That was a disturbing question.

Shun reckless behavior, His Holiness said. Seek godliness. Be prudent and sober.

It was enlightening, meanwhile, to hear the Holy Father talk about prosperity and victory in war… but everything the man said would have been far more convincing, Tristen thought, if he had had the least confidence the man knew that the other great Lines under the gods’ abode even existed. His Holiness talked about seeking wisdom. But meanwhile he kept walking on that single line, one that was quite unnervingly askew with the Line on the earth that a long-ago Mason had laid down true to the earth. But His Holiness went on declaring that new line sacred by his actions, his incense, and his pure water, his intentions and his assertion of presence, and most of all by its single, blue-shining disharmony with the land and the hill.

The shadows grew increasingly uneasy in this venture of Men above them, uneasy and restless, and Tristen restrained his anxiousness as the gray place increasingly, urgently cried for his attention. The air seethed with motion just at the corners of his eyes whenever he would dart a glance at the other lords or at Cefwyn and Ninévrisë. He was less and less sure it was safe for him in particular and in this place to be making wishes he did not understand, even wishes for the king’s welfare and the safety of Ylesuin, and even at the Patriarch’s behest, all the while he could not make sense of what the Patriarch was doing with his incantations. All the actions on this mistaken line, if mistaken it was, seemed to weaken, not strengthen the Lines that held back the shadows, which had begun to seep out along the glowing reds and roses and faded blues of the lesser lines, to seek along them and grow confused and baffled.

It seemed to him suddenly then that he understood what he was seeing: that Masons had laid out the lines of the Quinaltine and walked the Great Line where the walls would stand, and protected the places where doors and windows should be, and if those had been the only Lines that had ever existed here, all would have been well and safe and the shadows would have flowed along them and obeyed those doors and windows. But those latter-day Masons had for some reason laid their Lines over something that had used to stand there, some prior work of a master Mason that could not be removed, or at least had never been properly removed or reshaped. And those second Masons had done it not merely once, but many times, or falteringly. In his small experience of places on the earth he had met nothing like it; but to his understanding, it was almost certainly the source of the difficulty he had always felt with this building. The Lines on the earth were confused by the builders of the place, further confused by His Holiness, who had not the least idea what he was doing. The Guelesfort was always what it had been, so far as had ever impressed him; but the Quinaltine had had another, older beginning, and no one, no one, since its other beginning, had ever set it right.

More, years of priests kept attempting to establish yet another set of Lines by their observances, across a division in the building that had been a door, on one level, and yet had been a wall another time, and then yet a third time a wall, with doors and windows in that earliest age. Openings overlay walls all about this great hall. What should have let shadows flow entrapped them, and immured them, and created pockets of distressed souls that seethed and struggled behind the banners, behind the acorn-baskets of the table, especially where two of the previous efforts had made an unintended doorway.

He no longer saw the candlelit stone or the incense; he saw streaks of blue light, and shadows milling there in increasing violence, a darkness in motion, wailing, attempting to flow along the new, misaimed line the priest established, a line that failed to meet the ward of the vanished door on one side and that had only the slightest of barriers established there.

Foolish, he thought. So foolish. There was power here, although nothing acute, and it was no help at all to be walking back and forth, back and forth as the Patriarch was doing, with a very weak force, luring the shadows to one side and the other like hounds following a tidbit, leading them to desire their freedom and then, with a turn, frustrating them.

Perhaps the torment of the shadows had to do with the gods, who were supposed to be five in number, and somehow bright, as shadows were not—the very antithesis of shadows, as he understood from Efanor’s earnest but vague instruction; and he wished he had had the chance to ask Emuin, who had evaded him by having his door latched, which might have meant he was asleep, or might not. Emuin disapproved in general and yet refused him the excuse that might have prevented his instruction; Emuin disapproved the penny, too, he feared, or so he gathered out of that surly silence. Go ahead, Emuin seemed to be saying by this odd behavior: I disapprove in the extreme, but neither will I counterpose my will to your curiosity or Cefwyn’s insistence.

Emuin must have known about the Lines. Emuin spoke about gods, and salvation, and Emuin must have known about the Lines. Could both things be true, this blind show, and could the gods still exist?

Back and forth, back and forth paced the Holy Father in what Tristen knew now was folly. But he judged the temper of the Lines and their jagged traps and knew that, frustrated as they were, and angry, the shadows were far from breaking loose. Most of them were weak, and had no power to do real harm even if they did break free… certainly none could do so by daylight, when they had less power. It was the sheer mass of their accumulated anger that was daunting, and it vexed him that Cefwyn stood unseeing in front of this thing. Whether Ninévrisè, who was able to enter the gray place, might be aware or not… he doubted it. But his mere thought leapt suddenly to her thoughts: he felt her confusion and the oppression of the shadows around them, and was awareof her presence as a point of light amid the demishadows of others.

He felt another presence, too.

It was behind him. He felt three or four, enlivened points of light. Not shadows, but wizard-fire, the sort that ordinary men never saw, and fear leapt up in him so high that he clutched the rail in front of him. He was almost aware of Cevulirn… he had never known there was wizard-talent in Cevulirn. Not even Lewenbrook had provoked it. And in being aware of that very dimmest fire, he saw Ninévrisë like a blue-white star—and Efanor with ever so faint a spark. He was aware of Emuin, high aloft and some distance removed; and of six or seven very dim presences out among the guards, or the people, and one among the banner-bearers along the sides, also in the shrine.

What was it? he asked himself. Could he have failed to see what glowed softly in Cevulirn, or had the danger at Lewenbrook, so strong, so thunderously dark, blinded him? Or had the Patriarch’s folly encouraged the faintest sparks in two in particular he knew were not the Patriarch’s followers? Was it a defense their hearts raised? And if that was so, how must heseem, to anyone with eyes to see him in the gray space?

You burn, Emuin had told him once.

He was trembling as the Patriarch finished and took up the box that he hoped would hold the pennies and give them their escape. The Patriarch lifted it on high, then held it before him. The singing of women rose high and full, echoing around the hall. The sunlight speared through a heavy pall of incense, and oh, at last! the ceremony was ending. First Cefwyn, then Efanor, then Ninévrisë filed past and dropped a coin into the box as the lines of the assembled nobility began the recessional. Lord Brysaulin passed and dropped in his penny as the row emptied and Cefwyn led the procession out to the fanfare of trumpets. The Dragon banner of Ylesuin swept in from the side, the Prince’s personal standard, the black-and-white Checker and Tower of the Regency in Elwynor and the standard of Guelessar moved close upon them, the various king’s officers yet to come, and then the barons. The second rank of nobles joined the file past the Holy Father and now the column went out the door.

Then the next row was moving, last but his. How should he find Uwen? It seemed in this arrangement that the lords’ captains had to follow as best they could; and he feared making a mistake and calling attention to himself, or breaking one of those weak patterns. He was far from sure the Holy Father would know it if he nudged something magical by mischance, but certainly if it had been intentional wizard-work, a misstep would draw attention.

Cevulirn was moving now, so it was time for him. He drew a deep, anxious breath, wished nothing ill to happen… but Emuin had warned him to wish very little. He thought very hard of being as harmless as he could be and of burning very, very dimly in the gray space as he followed Cevulirn: he wished to show no more fire than Cevulirn himself, and wished to do no more harm than Cevulirn did. He had the penny, the metal warm in his hand. He followed Cevulirn’s example and dropped his gift into the slot, not looking into the Patriarch’s face as he let it fall. It hit others inside with a metallic sound, and he turned away, seeing the bright sunlight of the high arched doors as refuge toward which he walked.

He followed Cevulirn’s gray cloak out toward what had become dimmed sunlight, with the smoke overhead a haze above the door, a stinging haze stirred by the passage of the great banners. The White Horse of Ivanor swept in from the side. His own banners flowed in before him, a black transparent veil against the daylight in the doors, and preceded him as he walked out and down the steps. He was glad to breathe the clear, cold wind, glad to be away from the shadows seething at his back.