Текст книги "Fortress of Owls"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

His pages had indeed run and, faster than he dared hope, were coming down the stairs, four of them, utterly white-faced and out of breath, with his field helmet, his sword, and the pieces of his best body armor. “Good lads! Haste!” He stripped off the ceremonial plate and chain where he stood, heedless of hazard, and by now Isin and other lords were likewise cursing confused servants and calling for their own horses and weapons for a sally out into the Quinaltine square in his support.

“Bring Danvy!” Cefwyn shouted at a page, sending him to the stables, for a horse was a way to be seen above the heads of the crowd, and Danvy had experience in crowds and battle alike. No one expected restraint from a warhorse—and no one pushed Danvy twice.

“My lord king,” his bodyguard protested his determination.

“Get your horses or walk!” He headed back down the steps, still buckling straps, surrendered his side to his pages to do the lesser buckles as stableboys began to bring their charges through, to the peril of everything in their path.

“That’s tight enough,” he said to the trembling page, reassured the boy with a clap on the shoulder, and gratefully took a plain guardsman’s shield as the quickest available. Danvy arrived, straining at a stable-hand’s lead, throwing his head, already hot-blooded from the confusion around him. Cefwyn took the reins himself, set foot in the stirrup, rose up into the saddle.

The Prince’s Guard, too, was getting to horse, and he moved through the press of nobles and bodyguards with Isin and Nelefreissan, of all unlikely others– northerners, Ryssand’s men with their household guard, all mounted and joining him. It was not the company he would have chosen, but all but a handful of his reliable men were outside holding the square. He trusted his back to them out of necessity and ascribed their offer to honor or fear: they were in as great a danger from the drunken crowd they faced. No one was safe out there.

“Open the gates and close them hard after us!” he ordered, and guardsmen afoot used main force and the threat of pikes to press the gates outward against the stubborn few drunk enough to assail the Guelesfort gates themselves.

Free and foremost, Cefwyn rode Danvy straight at the laggard townsmen in his path, his guard a hard-riding mass at his heels as townsmen scattered from the path of the horses. Around the corner of the Quinaltine wall, into the Quinaltine square, he met little to check him; but the Quinaltine steps were beset with a crowd in the wild flux of rumor and grief, clots of confused and frightened citizens. A man ran past waving scraps of cloth soaked in red, screaming, “The Holy Father’s blood! The Holy Father’s blood!”

Cefwyn swore and maneuvered through the gap, laying about him with the flat of his sword, sent three men sprawling and one reeling aside who thought he could pass Danvy’s guard and get at the bridle. Danvy stumbled over him, came up with an effort, steel-shod feet racketing on pavings as he drove to the foot of the Quinaltine steps.

There the Dragons and the portion of the Prince’s Guard and the Guelens that had stayed to hold their pike-line were sorely pressed at the Quinalt steps. The mob wanted into the shrine: the Guard forces would not have it, and blood slicked no few faces.

“Back!” Cefwyn shouted at the crowd, striking still with the flat of his blade where it was a man’s back, the edge if a man showed a weapon… he had no idea how many such, where the Guard was all but overwhelmed. “I am your king, damn you! Back away!”

“Silence there! Silence for His Majesty!” the cry went up from some few, amongst his personal guard, and with a screen of horses and their own bodies his bodyguard in their distinctive livery made the crowd give back. ‘

“Silence that racket,” Cefwyn said peevishly. His eyes stung. Smoke wafted at him, from across the square. “Quiet that bell! No one can have his wits with that din!”

“My lord king.” Idrys had come up beside him, afoot, by Danvy’s shifting hooves. “This is too great a risk.”

“There’s fire somewhere. What’s burning?”

“The Bryalt shrine,” Idrys said.

“Damn!”

There fell a sudden hush then, a sudden numbness of the air underlying the shouts, for the bell had, on a few false strokes, ceased tolling. It was as if the riot had lost its breath, and then fallen apart into individual, frightened men.

“The Holy Father was murdered,” Cefwyn cried, lifting his sword high in the brief chance that silence gave him, and using the words that would catch the attention even of the drunken and the mad. “Within the Quinalt itself, a murder! A new Patriarch sits the gods’ throne, His Highness Efanor’s priest, Jormys, a good and saintly man, who prays you all stand aside from this lunacy! The gods do not sleep, and will avenge this blasphemy, and the blasphemy of drunken men who profane this holy precinct! Stand back, I say! Stand back and be silent!”

A handful raised their voices against him, but the majority hushed them in fearful haste; and he caught the breath of a further silence.

“Jormys, I say, is the new Patriarch, whom the council of priests will confirm. And he will ferret out the murderer, among whom I expect to find traces leading to enemies of the Crown, of the peace, and of this land!”

“Death to the Elwynim!” a drunken voice shouted, as generations of Guelenmen had shouted.

“Elwynim are across the river!” Cefwyn shouted at the limit of his breath. “It’s Guelen traitors among you!” It was blood he called for and knew he did it. “Down with traitors! Gods save Ylesuin!”

“Gods save Ylesuin!” Everyone could shout that, and did, in the wildness of their fear, and kept shouting, filling up the silence so there was no more anyone could say. A priest, up on the steps, raised his arms and tried to quiet them, with some success, a situation still full of hazard.

“Gods save Ylesuin indeed,” Idrys said, at Danvy’s shoulder. The Lord Commander was blood-spattered, a fine dew on his armor and his grim face. “Go to safety. Let your guard deal with it. They’ve seen you’re not afraid, my lord king. It’s enough.”

“They’ll continue to see it,” Cefwyn said harshly, for now that terror had given way, anger rushed up hand in hand with it. They had threatened his kingdom. They had threatened, and men in the crowd had cried against the Crown and all it stood for. He would not go back and cower in the Guelesfort, waiting for the Guard to make the streets of his capital safe for him to show his face.

Idrys could not prevent him, and the persistent sting of smoke provided a goal in the confusion: it was no small fire, and if there was a siege and a burning at the other side of the square, he meant to stop it.

But when he drew near the farside he saw it was the Bryaltine shrine afire, a black-robed corpse dangling from a rope cast to the rooftree of the Bryalt shrine. Beneath the body a pile of books smoldered, all of a library in that blackened heap.

The mob, seeking foreigners in their midst, had hanged poor Father Benwyn.

Chapter 5

The lords had eaten and drunk their fill on the evening of their arrival, fallen asleep and rested late, even down in the tents, and out into the town. Tristen, too, took his time rising, advised that all his guests were asleep. For days they had struggled to reach here, and now all the lords who had been at the welcoming feast in the Lesser Hall either slept late or nursed last night’s folly behind drawn drapes.

Tristen himself fed his pigeons, and sat by the fire, and did the little directing he had to do. He could not persuade himself to sleep so late. He was jealous for every hour his guests were sleeping, unavailable to him, unprecedented anticipation, and his thoughts flitted and buzzed like bees.

The time felt auspicious, if any time had. His dream of the southern lords had come to life around him, and Emuin had not disapproved last night, rather had grown merry and cheerful. The lords had laughed together: Crissand got along famously with Cevulirn, and Pelumer and Umanon had sat talking with Sovrag despite old grudges.

Had ever he dreamed so much could go so well, when the stars were so chancy?

And even before the sun was a glimmering in the east the kitchens had gone into their ultimate frenzy before the feast, ovens hot, the smells of baking and roasting meat wafting everywhere about the yard… not a lord stirred forth except Cevulirn, down the hill to see to his horses before the sun was well up.

By noon the last stragglers had come out of their quarters, and by midafternoon, now, the smells of food were all but irresistible: Cook had prepared small loaves to fend off hunger, and that was the fare they had.

But there was good converse all the afternoon, and a small venture out to see the pastures and the campgrounds, of which all the lords more than approved.

There was a moment, standing facing those pastures, and unheard by any but the foxes and the passing hawk, when Tristen explained the situation at Modeyneth and Althalen. It was a curious place for a conference, with the horses cropping the brown winter grass and the wind blowing a brisk, dry chill.

“It’s only a village,” Tristen said. “And some make a great deal of it, and some think I’ve fulfilled some prophecy, but that’s not so, not to my thinking.” He added, honestly, “But Emuin bids me be careful.”

“Yet Your Grace is loyal to the king,” Umanon said.

“He’s my dear friend,” Tristen said. “And always will be.”

“So His Grace has us all to swear,” said Crissand. “And has us to believe His Majesty has our good at heart.”

“So he does,” said Cevulirn, “and to that I swear, too. King Cefwyn’s never been false to us, never forgotten Lewenbrook—he trusts us toomuch and doesn’t say so: all his attention is for the ones he can’t trust. But a true king, that he is.”

“That’s so,” Tristen said. “That’s very much so. He hasn’t time for everyone. He has to tend the things that aren’t going well.”

“Ryssand,” Crissand interjected.

“At the head of the list,” Cevulirn said. “Gods save the king.”

So they said, and so they finished their ride with the sun strongly westering, having ridden up an appetite.

Meanwhile Cook had outdone herself, and as the sky dimmed in the west, the kitchen poured forth platters of food, even enough to fill Sovrag’s belly, at least in prospect.

Then the lords made themselves scarce, and buckets of water and servants were in short supply as all the guests wanted baths and attention to their dressing. There was shouting, there were harried servants pelting this way and that and out, in one instance, to a tailor shop—but no one was late downstairs, to the processional Tassand had arranged, with trumpets and banners.

They filed into the great hall in all ceremony, and all who could possibly find an invitation and a place at table were in that processional, the benches fiercely crowded at their lower stations. Emuin came—was simply there, when before that he had missed Emuin in the line.

The piper and the drummer lost no time after the fanfares, and swung into cheerful tunes, one after the other… for there would be dancing. Tristen loved to watch it, and was especially glad to see so many ladies at the tables, all in fine cloth and wearing jewels. He knew Crissand’s mother and Durell’s pretty daughter both by sight; and he recalled the two very young girls from Merishadd who put their heads together and giggled at every turn. They seemed to want his attention, but they were only children.

“Your Grace should welcome them,” Tassand said close to his ear, helping him as Tassand had agreed to do. “Then ask the priests to pray.”

Tristen stood up somewhat abashed and looked around him; he had to wait for silence.

“I wanted you to come,” he said when there was sufficient silence. “I need all your good advice. And I’ve missed you very much. I’m glad to see you. Be welcome.”

There was applause to that. “Here’s to the Sihhë-lord!” Sovrag roared out, that word that he hoped never to hear, but there was no restraining Sovrag at all. “Gods bless ’im, say I!”

He was supposed to invite the priests. Emuin stood up, to the rescue, splendid in his new robe. Teranthine gray he wore, and he wore the Teranthine sigil, standing forth as a cleric, tonight.

“Father,” Emuin said with a wave of his hand toward the other end of the high table, where the Teranthine father and the Bryaltine abbot sat in close company. “If you’ll do the honors.”

“Delighted,” said the Teranthine, shook back his voluminous sleeves from his forearms like a workman preparing to work, and gave a prayer so rapid and so authoritative the soldiers present all but came to attention. “Gods bless this gathering,” the Teranthine concluded, passing the matter to the Bryaltine, who rose with his cup and tipped out a few drops onto the stone floor.

“Honor to the earth,” the abbot said, “honor to the dead in the passing of the year; honor to the living, in the coming of the new. A Great Year passes tonight. A new one begins. Let the good that is old continue and let the rest perish. Gods save the lord of Amefel.”

It pleased some: Tristen thought it should please him, but he was less certain about the matter of perishing… and if ever there should be a moment the gray space should come alive, on this night, with these two honest priests and Emuin, now it should… but it failed without the flicker of a presence, not even Emuin’s closely held one.

And what should he do now? Tristen asked himself, for there was a ritual aspect to this feast, this gathering of close friends—as if Men wished to be sure where all they loved was when the world changed. And was that enough, and had they raised enough godliness in this gathering?

But just then the servants paraded out with another course, the fabled pies, so there was an end to the speeches and the gods-blessing and all speculation on the new year. There was laughter, and Midwinter Eve, that had loomed so ominous through Emuin’s year, turned to high good spirits and the praise of Cook’s pastries.

Midwinter Eve had been imagining, and planning, all these things… and now the very night assumed a solidity and a scent and a sound all around him: it progressed, and the famous pies which, baked over the last sevenday, came out steaming, in great abundance. There was course after course besides, and music and laughter. There was nothing terrible, nothing to dread. Friends were like armor about the heart, and nothing could daunt him.

Then Sovrag called out that a good Midwinter Eve wanted tale-telling, and he had heard of the business with Ryssand’s son, but he wanted a full recitation for the wider hall.

A small silence fell—Sovrag was several cups past sober and meant no harm at all, but it was no good story, and Cevulirn, with that still, dignified calm that hushed all around him, refused.

“It’s too recent, and I’d rather Lord Pelumer. He has a winter story.”

“Which?” asked Pelumer.

“Why, when you were young, Lanfarnesse. The deer in the treetops.”

That caught interest even from the drunken, and Pelumer needed no pleading. He told of the year the Lenúalim froze so deep carts could cross it, and how the ice had lasted into spring. He told how the snow had drifted so high up the trees the deer browsed the high branches.

Then it was so cold a man carrying wood had his fingers break off, and it was so cold an ox team turned up frozen in their yoke, still standing.

Tristen thought that part very sad.

“A man could walk to Elwynor from here,” Pelumer went on, “since the river was a highroad, white and smooth as glass. I saw it. I was a boy of seven years, and I walked from Lanfarnesse into Marna and back, chasing the deer and seeing what I could see. Marna was all asparkle with ice. The High King sat in Althalen, and the High King’s rangers kept the woods. But no one dared kill the deer in Marna Wood. And no one went to Mauryl’s tower, either.

“Yet I saw it through the trees, and knew then how far I’d come. I turned back, walking the river home, not wishing even in those days to have the sun set before I’d cleared that part of those woods. Down and down went the sun, and the ice went from bright to gray. Then I walked as fast as I could, and began to run, with the clearest notion there was something right at my shoulders. I ran and I ran and I ran, until a shadow rose up right in front of me.

“It was a King’s Ranger,” Pelumer concluded, to the relief of the young girls from Merishadd, who had leaned closer and closer together, and all but jumped. “And he said it was very well I never looked back, for those who did never came out again.”

There were delicious shivers. But Tristen knew better, and so did Sovrag, surely, who leaned back in his chair, and began his own tale of river-faring, less eloquent than Pelumer, involving his own first trip up to Marna, with his father’s crew, even then trading with Mauryl.

“We went to the old tower, right up where the water meets the stones, and the old man’d come and never bargain, but say what he’d pay. That was his habit. And me da was careful about the hour, that’s so. By sundown we cleared that wood—and was raidin’ the shore by Lanfarnesse after that…” This with a wink at Pelumer. “But we’re honest men, now, an’ sittin’ in a warm hall, with clear water an’ the wind turned out of the north this evenin’. That’s the breath of the hoary old north wind, as blows the boats home. Mother South Wind, she’s blowed us here, and old man North Wind, he’s chasin’ us home—can’t ask for better. Wizard-luck, that is for us, ’specially if it blows us back with the next load.”

“Wizard-luck, indeed,” Emuin said somberly, from Tristen’s right, next Crissand at the table. “Luck andwizardry.”

“Was it you?” Sovrag asked—respecting the cloth and the wizard, as it seemed, for there was a caution in Sovrag whenever he spoke to Emuin. “Uncommon lack o’ snow, there is.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Emuin said, not the admission Sovrag courted, and it left Sovrag with not a thing to say on that subject. Tristen took quick note of the tactic, seeing it turned on someone other than him.

But Sovrag was rarely without something to say. “An’ no ice in the river, master wizard, not this year. Boats, boats can run free an’ badluck to Tasmôrden, say I! Here’s to wizard-luck an’ Ilefínian—an’ to hell with that blackguard Tasmôrden!”

“So’t is!” Uwen said, from Tristen’s left. “But there’s tomorrow for that.” It was a valiant effort for a shy man to speak out and stem the flood of war talk– but his effort failed, for Lord Durell was drunk enough to propose they should make a foray against the enemy immediately.

“Deck the bridge at the Guelen camp and have the blackguard’s head within the week!” Durell cried, lifting his cup. “To hell with ’im!”

“I doubt it will be so easy,” Cevulirn said.

And Crissand, who was no more drunk than Cevulirn, which was to say, not at all, said, “On any cold, clear morning, with a will, we’re ready.”

“Damn Tasmôrden,” said Lord Azant, and Drumman: “Long live Lord Tristen!”

Then Emuin, who had had more than one cup himself, and who had blunted Sovrag’s first foray, lifted a hand. “Inappropriate for me to curse,” Emuin said. “And His Majesty has demanded patience of us. And no talk of war tonight.”

There was a muttering at that.

“Which,” Emuin said above the protest, “the stars declare is wise! There would be no good outcome of a venture planned this side of midnight. Say no more of it!”

“And after?” Sovrag asked,

“Tonight is not for war,” Tristen said, for Emuin’s warning had struck a certain chill into him, and he foresaw that very soon they would be saying things he had as lief not have laid before every visitor to the hall tonight… the Teranthirie father was there, and the Bryalt abbot, with the two nuns, the thanes and squires of villages, and the ealdormen, not mentioning their wives, and the guards and servants besides. Any one of them might spread news that might not serve them… whether it reached Ilefínian—or Guelessar and the north.

But he looked at all his guests, his friends– Crissand, Cevulirn, Sovrag and Pelumer and Umanon, Merishadd and Azant and the earls, and he saw around him, willing and earnest, all the power of the south, all on the verge of motion.

He saw the ladies, all in their finery, and the meal ended. But not the evening.

It was Midwinter Eve, the night the heavens shifted… and he felt an equal disturbance in the gray place, between one deep breath and the next, as all the hall hung momentarily silent, awaiting the next move.

“Play,” he said to the piper, ending all discussion. “Move the tables back.”

Servants hurried to obey, and in high good cheer. For a moment thereafter everyone was disarranged and the squeal of wood on stone and the laughter of well-sated guests alike underlay the music.

The shriek seemed to go on, shooting through stone, into the earth, wounding the ear.

Hinge of the year, Emuin had said, hinge of the Great Year and the Year of Years. Shriek by shriek, tables and benches moved, the arrangement of things undone, set aside, drawn back to clear the floor. It was so common a sound. But the gray space roiled of a sudden, and the very air turned to liquid silver.

Lewenbrook itself was a heartbeat away. So was Ynefel. There was suddenly so much chance and harm flying in the wind that Tristen found no quick counter to its malice.

And when the moving of tables was done, and before the couples took the floor:

“I wish our happiness and the king’s,” he said, standing, lifting high the cup he held. And wish he did, with all his might. “ I wish happiness for all of us, when the world is turning round and the new year is coming!”

“And happiness to you, sir,” said Pelumer, lifting his cup, and so did they all. “To all our lands, happiness and good outcome.”

“And happiness to the king in Guelessar,” Crissand cried in that moment of warm extravagance, not base flattery, but the outpouring of a generous heart. “Happiness to him for sending us our lord! Gods bless His Guelen Majesty!”

“The Guelen king’s health!” said Merishadd, and Azant lifted his cup, and all the rest in a body as Azant added, “And our lord’s!”

“Hear him,” said Pelumer. “Health to our host, Lord Tristen! Long may he prosper in Amefel.”

“Long may we all prosper!” said Umanon.

Tristen drew a breath, feeling steadier, as if in such a great number of good wishes from those he counted friends the dark of midnight had passed and the currents of the new year had begun to find a direction.

How could one do better for a beginning, he thought, than in wishing one another well?

How could he have any more profound a shift in the currents than for Amefin lords and southerners to drink the health of the Guelen king? He could wish– and so could Crissand, who had set wizardry behind that generosity.

The piper played, and a handful of the younger folk moved to the floor, eager to dance.

But one lady in attendance came from the shadows by a column, all in gray and gold, a wisp of a woman gray of hair and hung about with cords and stones and charms.

The incipient dance paused. Guards moved, and hesitated in doubt. Emuin stood forward, but not far, and the priests rallied uncertainly to Emuin as the woman came. ,

But only Uwen set himself directly in her path, as the music died.

The woman’s gown seemed old fabric and strange, like cobwebs over lace, like gold cloth dimmed by dust. The ornaments, that she wore were perhaps costly, perhaps not. She was neither old nor young, and she made a low and graceful bow, sinking into her gold-touched skirts and rising from them like gray smoke from embers. It seemed a music played, but none that the pipers made, a gentle, eldritch air like the stirring of broken glass.

With a nod and a quizzical look, the woman held out her hand, invitation to the dance. And still Uwen barred the way.

But on a breath and accepting a challenge, Tristen moved past him, reached out, took dry, cool fingers, moved in stately paces, turned as the woman turned, all to that strange, distant music.

Within the murmur of consternation the piper took up a wavering tune, the same that filled the air, and the drummer found the hum and thump of a rhythm different than the tune they had played, haunting, majestic measures.

It was Auld Syes, whose eyes sparkled and whose whole bearing held the dignity of a queen.

“Lady,” Tristen said, when the measures brought them close, eye-to-eye, and her gaze was dark and deep. “Welcome.”

But while the musicians played on Auld Syes stopped the dance and stood, breathless and aglow.

“Lord,” she said then, and made another deep bow, rising again to face him. “Lord of Althalen, of Meliseriedd, of Ynefel! High King and lord of all the middle lands! Beware your enemy!”

“I am no king!” he said doggedly. But Auld Syes backed away from him bowing yet a third time. The candles blew sideways, threatening darkness, and a small shadow skipped around Auld Syes and him alike, then nipped after a tray of honeycakes at the side of the room. A sudden whirlwind ran the circuit of the room, blowing up skirts. The guests cried out in alarm, but the whirlwind ran toward the doors with a laughter like harp strings, a wind spinning and turning and dancing with a mad, fey lightness.

For a moment in the gray space, pipes sounded, and a woman ran lightly over a ghostly meadow of gray almost green, a child chasing in her footsteps.

Auld Syes had left the hall, and as she did the massive doors of the hall burst open, and the doors of the inner hall all at once banged wide with echoes down the corridor outside, one after another.

Winds swept through, riffling all the candles, then snuffing them, every one, leaving all there in utter dark.

A smell of evergreen attended.

“Light!” Emuin cried furiously, over the cries from the guests. “Gods bless! Give us light!”

Men were blind in the darkness, blind and afraid, and still the wind blew. Yet it needed nothing but the wish to see, to draw the gray, bright light out of that place and touch the candles with it, and Tristen did that, obedient to Emuin’s wish to lend light. His wish lit the hall not with the warm golden glow those candles should bear, but the icy silver of the gray place, every candle aglow, but casting little light abroad. The candle-sconces all became islands of scant luminance, and the hall outside the open doors appeared as a place of darkness similarly lit, every candle in the hall aglow but doing little good.

The guests were cast into strange, small groups in that pale gray light,

Lord Umanon and Lord Cevulirn both had found their swords.

Of Auld Syes there was no sight nor sound.

Beware your enemy, Auld Syes had said, but if there was an enemy he had to fear, it was not the darkness.

But suddenly something reached through his source of light, through the gray space itself, and threat streamed like poison through the light he had gathered and set atop the candles.

That was not the enemy, either. It remained out of his reach. He sent challenge back through the gray: he was in a Place, had his feet set, and would fight for these lives if it came.

“Lord!” a man cried from the open doors, and in starkest urgency: “ Lord! The hall! The light, in the hall!”

The way Auld Syes had trod here had not sealed itself. When the man cried that, all the gray space bid fair to spill in upon them—not baneful in itself, but a cascade too much, too swift, too terrible a knowledge, from every candle in the hall. He steadied it back.

And neither was that the source of the danger, for danger had followed Auld Syes like a hound on a scent. It sought a Place in the fortress; and now he felt the widening of a rift—a breach in the wards at that place he had never trusted.

It was from that place the poison came, from that place the lights were threatened; and from out of that gulf the wind buffeted them. It was that spot in the hall, that one most haunted place.

“Uwen!” Tristen cried as he began to run toward the doors of the great hall, for no other man would he have as a shieldman, and no man else in the world would he trust to beware the Edge.

In the next instant a hand caught his sleeve, and stayed him long enough for a sword hilt to find his hand. A buffet on his shoulder sent him on.

“Go, lad!” he heard Uwen say, so run he did. He was the defense Uwen had, the defense any Man of his guests had, and he plunged into the corridor where conditions were the same: the candles there streamed the same silvery gray toward him, spots of light in a dark where Shadows ran, dark small streamers along all the mortar.

He flung up his hand, called the wards all to life, threatening all that broke the Pattern of the stones, the ancient masonwork.

At his summoning, a blue glow intruded into the gray sheen of the candles, and a glow ran along the base of the walls, up over doorways… every Line of the old fortress glowed, walls and doorways made firm and real. Shadows that flowed moved along those Lines, obedient, until they began to race toward that Place, that foreignness in the hall.

Beyond a doubt he knew Auld Syes herself was in danger, as if a thread of her being had come through this doorway, and now, retreating, stretched thinner and thinner within.

He was aware of the great mass of the ancient stone around him, and of the presence of friends at his back: he reached the old mews, that most haunted place, the place where the wards were least firm—and in and out of which the winds rushed.

He settled a tighter grip oh the borrowed sword, felt with a sweep of his left arm for Uwen’s presence where Uwen would always stand. He was there. He felt Cevulirn and Crissand likewise near him, wizardous and detectable in the gray space, more than the others. Emuin, too, was there, reaching toward him a strong and determined power, in an attempt to hold the wards…

But the blue light grew, source of the winds that battered and buffeted them.

There, there within the old structure, the Lines were almost overwhelmed, and there if dark could glow, this did. Shortly before the struggle at Lewenbrook, he had stared into a vacancy and faced the rousing of countless ghostly wings.