Then from another quarter, from the road, appeared a handful of men on horseback, and them with well-made banners, and one of them the Tower Crowned.

Aeself was one of them, and slid down from his horse and walked forward as sleeping men began to wake to the commotion, hearing sounds in the world. Men leapt up, seizing weapons and shields, and calling out in alarm.

"Friends!" Aeself called out. "His Grace's men!"

A third time Owl called, and the Shadows all were gone. More and more men came from out of the wood, men on horseback and peasants afoot, and a scattering of banners among well-armed and lordly folk.

Aeself went to one knee, and so did the others. "The King," Aeself said, and so the others said, one voice upon the other, "the King."

"There is aking," Tristen protested, but there were more and more of them, spilling out of the trees, while the wood could in no wise have concealed all of them and he could not have been so deceived about their presence. They arrived like the Shadows, as if they had risen out of the stones and the earth, and a wind skirled through the clearing, startling the horses, lifting the banners half to life.

And Aeself rose, foremost of the rest, while Ivanim and Amefin, Imorim knights and Olmern axemen, and a scattering of Lanfarnesse rangers stood utterly dismayed, no less so than their lords.

Auld Syes arrived in their midst like a skirl of wind, fringed shawl flying like threads of cobweb, gray hair shining like the moonlight, and her daughter danced, holding her hand and skipping about her skirts.

— King in Elwynor, King Foretold: deny nothing! The aetheling has found his King, and peril to deny it!

He hoped with all his heart none of the men heard. He wished Auld Syes' aid for all of them, and by no means rejected Aeself or the Shadows… how could he turn from Andas Andas-son and Earl Haurydd or deny the outpouring of so many wishes? If Men could bind a magic, he found himself snared in it, caught in their wishes, their long, faithful struggle in what he feared was his war, always his war… but now theirs, as well.

"My name is Tristen," he said to them all as he had said to Hasufin Heltain. He said it as a charm and as the truth which anchored him in the world. "My name is Tristen. Nothing else."

"King of Elwynor!" some cried, among the living, and the Amefin cried, "Lord Sihhë'!" But he shut his ears against it, and turned away, and in doing so, met the faces he most dreaded to meet: Uwen, as Guelen as ever a man could be; and Cevulirn, steadfast in his oaths; and Crissand Adiran, Amefin, aetheling, kingof Amefel… all his friends, all with claims impossible to reconcile, one with the other.

"Lord Sihhë!" the Amefin all shouted now, and so the Elwynim took it up: "Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë! Lord Sihhë!"

Thatwas the only truth he heard. He turned again to confront Auld Syes, but in that moment's distraction the very light had changed to earliest dawn: there were no Shadows among them to answer, there was no lady and no child, only the shapes of trees and the shapes of Men still indisputably among the living. He knew what he had seen, but he could not believe that every man in the company had seen the same, and could not reconcile what he knew and what they knew, or reason out how much they had heard. They shouted for him: they wanted him with such a fervor it shook him to the heart, and yet he wanted nothing of it, nothing but Cefwyn's safety.

And in hailing him, they turned from Cefwyn. The Elwynim and the Amefin hailed another king: they made him their lord, and would hear nothing else, while the southern lords who had followed him at risk of life and honor stood dismayed, not knowing what to do at this sudden turn of loyalties on the borderlands.

Tristen held up his hands, begging silence, and it was difficult to obtain, in the dim gray light that only hinted at the dawn.

"Lord Sihhë I am," he said. "Lord Sihhë I am willing to be." The cold dark seemed to gape beneath his feet, threatening to drink him in, and yet he strained to see their faces, in that hour that stole the stars. But no more than that, he wished to say… yet all along he had listened to Auld Syes, and was not sure she was wrong.

"Cefwyn is my friend," he said, difficult as it was to speak at all. "Her Grace is my friend. Crissandis the aetheling, and Amefel has a king, the king of the bright Sun! But my name is Tristen!"

And with that he could bear nothing more, and turned away, past Crissand's reaching hand, past Cevulirn's grave face. Only Uwen went with him in his withdrawal, and his guard shadowed him until he had found a refuge at the edge of the horse pickets, where Dys and Cass stood and offered mute comfort.

He had left confusion behind him. He had left Aeself and Crissand and Cevulirn with wizardry unexplained. He had left the lords of the south with their understanding challenged. He thought he should have done better. But he could not find how.

He was aware of Owen's presence, of his new guards, Gweyl and the others, and at this moment he sorely missed Lusin, who would stand by Uwen come what might. He ached heart-deep with what he feared, and what was laid on him to do, with no choice of his: it was what he was made to do. He apprehended at least that Auld Syes was not in charge of him, nor beyond mistakes, only charged with truths as she perceived them. He could refuse.

And his heart cried out against their expectations. It was not Cefwyn's doom to fall. It was not his own to sit in a hall signing and sealing and rendering judgments, when this single judgment was so difficult.

He drew a deep breath when he knew that, as if bands had loosed about his heart. He looked up at a sky in which the stars had all perished, and at Uwen's sober, stubbled face. Love shone there, brighter than the dawn; and he opened his arms and embraced Uwen, for all that Uwen was; in his heart he embraced Crissand, and Cevulirn, and the lords of the south, too, and Aeself, who had come by no ordinary road to find him, whether or not Aeself understood what company he had had or how unnaturally he had arrived.

He heard Owl complaining of the sun. He stood still, cold to the very heart of him, as if his very next breath hung suspended between day and dark.

Lord of Shadows he could be. That, more than Lord Sihhë, he might be. He knew the gray space: it would open for him, and he could draw power out of that realm, hurl the hapless dead against the dead that Hasufin summoned until between them they laid waste to the gray space as well as the lands of Men. The last struggle had imprisoned Shadows within the walls of Ynefel and brought down the towers of Galasien. Between them, Mauryl and Hasufin, they had done that: Mauryl, wielding wizardry, and Hasufin, wielding wizardry, had not seen the consequences of the struggle. But he saw that it would not last. At the last, Mauryl had seen the wards falter, he was sure of it: Galasien had perished in vain. It did not hold.

And Efanor and a small band of priests walked a perilous Line in Guelessar, as Emuin and Ninévrisë warded the south and Ni-névrisë's father and Drusenan's Wall held the border of Amefel.

It was to keep those barriers strong that he had arrived on Mauryl's hearth.

"I dreamed," he said to Uwen, who most knew the youth who had come to Amefel. "Such, at least as I do dream… that there's something behind Hasufin, and the Sihhë-lords fought it, all those years ago."

"Lad, such as I couldn't tell."

"This is true." He could no longer bear to wait, not for the men who stood in doubt and debating among themselves what he had said, not for the disturbance in the wood where Shadows hid for the coming day. He would not be the king Auld Syes foretold. He was never suited to it: it was not—he was as sure of it as of the coming day. "Mauryl didn't Summon me to sit on a throne," he said. "Cefwyn hates it… but he's a good king. I'm not what he is. None of us is what he is."