A moaning sounded behind him, as if the gate had opened. He cast a look over his shoulder and saw it still shut. It might be the wind keening through some board up in the towers—if there were a wind, which there was not. He looked about again just as a stone left the railing ahead of him and dropped from the Road, for no cause that he could tell. It splashed into the water, making a plume, and it was gone, as he himself might be, without a trace, should the road give way.

He hurried feverishly, then, holding to the stones, and heard another fall of stones behind him: one, two, three splashes. He dared not waste a moment to look. It was the solid ground ahead that beckoned him, a shadowed shore where the Road went over safe earth, under deep-rooted trees, and his feet were very glad to feel that solidity under them as he left the bridge behind.

The moaning came to the trees then, making them toss their heads and whisper around him in a rush of sound he had never heard the forest make even in storm. Chill came with that wind, as leaves and fine grit went flying around him, stinging his eyes. The wind shouted aroun6 him, until twigs and then small branches flew like leaves. The whole forest seemed to shiver, and then-    Then it grew very quiet, no leaf stirring—a dank and breathless air as frightening in its lifelessness as all the previous fury of the wind. He hesitated to move at all, and when he hesitated, it seemed more difficult than before simply to move, or breathe, as if some soundless Word bade him stand still, and wait, and wait.

But, heart in his throat, he obeyed Mauryl. It seemed more important than ever to honor Mauryl’s instruction, in the failing of all substantial refuges he knew. Dark was gathering in this dank hush, a convocation of Shadows that as yet had done him no harm, but he had no defense against them here, no stone to shelter him, no Mauryl to send them away, no light against the coming dark.

—Tristen, the Shadows mocked him, calling his name in tones that Mauryl might use. But Mauryl had never trusted them and he refused.

He walked not because he knew where he was going but because that was what Mauryl had said to do. No harm had yet come to him doing what Mauryl said.

A shape glided after him, dark and silent. He felt it pass near. But when he looked straight at it, he saw nothing.

Shadows were like that, treacherous and evasive of the eye. But there was no Mauryl tonight to set a seal on his sleep, and no door, and no bed, no supper, no cup, and no means of having one—forever, so far as he knew.

The Road appeared and disappeared by turns in the dark. It seemed to meander aimlessly, but, Tristen thought, he had nowhere to go, except as his Road led him; it seemed to have no reason for itself, but then, he had none, so that seemed apt. If he had the wish of his heart all through the weary night it would be only to go back to Mauryl, and to have his room and his supper and to do forever what Mauryl told him—but it was not his wishes things obeyed, it was Mauryl’s; and without Mauryl, he had to take what came to him and do as wisely as he could.

If, he thought, if he could have read the Book Mauryl had given him, he might have prevented the ruin that had taken Mauryl from him. But he had not been able. Mauryl had known his inability. He was certain now that Mauryl had always known that he would fail in that most important task, and he was certain that that had always been Mauryl’s unhappiness with him—for Mauryl had been unhappy. He had sensed, quite strongly at times, Mauryl’s unhappiness and dissatisfaction in his mistakes, and, latest of all, Mauryl’s despair and Mauryl’s acceptance of his shortcomings. He should have been more able, he should have been quicker to understand, he should have understood Mauryl’s lessons and done better. But he had not been good enough.  Follow the Road, Mauryl had said.

But Mauryl had also warned him to be under stone when the sun set, and as this one set and the world went gray, he saw no stone to be under.

Mauryl had said avoid the Shadows, but he walked through constant shadow, and darker shadow—limped, finally, in a darkness deeper than any the fortress had held except in its blackest depths.

He was bruised through his thin shoes. His right ankle ached, and he had not remembered exactly where that pain had started, until he recalled his flight off the steps, and his fall off the edge of the step. Body as well as spirit, Mauryl had warned him, and the very hour that Mauryl had left him on his own in the keep, he had forgotten the first lesson he had ever learned, and fallen and done himself harm, exactly as Mauryl had warned him not to do.

He walked and walked, unhappy with himself, following the ancient stonework until the trees grew so close he could no longer find the next white stone to guide him.

So he had made another mistake. He had lost the Road. He was afraid, standing alone in the dark and trying to know what to do in this place where the path ran out. But it seemed to him that, if there were no white stones, still a long track stretched ahead clear of trees, and that seemed indisputably the right direction to go.

And, true enough, when he had gone quite far on that treeless track he saw something in the starlight that he deluded himself was another of the white stones.

His heart rose. He went toward it as proof that he had solved the dilemma.

But it was only a broken tree, white inside, ragged ends of wood showing pale in the night.

Then he was truly frightened, and when he looked about him he saw nothing even to tell him which way he had come. He might have made, he thought, the worst mistake of all the mistakes he had ever made and lost the Road once for all, Mauryl’s last, Mauryl’s most final instruction- beyond which he had no idea in the world what to do.

At that moment a shadow brushed his cheek, substantial enough to scare him. It settled on a branch of that dead tree, hunched up its shoulders and waited.

“Owl?” Tristen said. “Owl, is it you?”

Owl, a sullen bird, only spread his wings and ruffled his feathers with a sound very loud in the hush of the woods.

“Do you know the way?” Tristen asked him, but Owl did nothing.

“Have you come on the same Road?” Tristen asked then, since they came from the same place perhaps at the same moment, and Mauryl had set great importance on his being here. “Did Mauryl tell you to come?”

Owl gave no sign of understanding.

He had never trusted Owl. He had never been certain but what the smallest birds disappeared down Owl’s gullet, and he was all but certain about the mice.

But he felt gladder than he had ever thought he should be of Owl’s presence, simply because Owl was a living creature as well as a Shadow, and because Owl was a force whose behavior he knew—and because he was despondent and lost.

“Do you know where the Road is?” he asked Owl.

Owl spread his wide blunt wings and, Shadow that he was, flew through the darkness to another tree and perched there. Waiting, Tristen thought, and he followed Owl in desperate hope that Owl knew where he was going. Owl flew on again, which he also followed. A third time Owl took wing, and by now he had no hope else but Owl, because he had no notion as he looked back where he had come from, or where his last memory of the Road might lie.

Owl kept flying in short hops from tree to tree, never leaving his sight—and by now he feared that he might have done something Mauryl would never have approved, and trusted a bird that Mauryl had never told him was acceptable to trust. One of the pigeons he might have relied upon, never questioning its character or its intentions; but Owl was the chanciest of creatures he knew, and he knew no reason Owl should go to such great difficulty to guide him to the Road. Certainly he would have helped Owl. That was a point: creatures should help one another, and perhaps Owl was constrained once there was such calamity.