"A good thing," he said desperately. His heart was hammering against his ribs. He breathed as if he had run a race. He had met the enemy. Crissand and Cevulirn gazed at him with alarm.

But he looked to the horizon, where trees met meadow… where still more stragglers, peasants and battered men-at-arms, survivors of lost battles and defeated lords, came to join their march. They had flowed to him since last night with the currents moving in the world, and after what he had seen, he knew that all things opposed to what sat in Ilefínian must flow to his banner… all that was Elwynim, all that was the south, whoever would, be could not deny them now. Auld Syes was the voice that spoke for them, but the summoning magic ran through the land and the woods and hour by hour the rocks gave up fugitives such as Aeself and his men… he felt pres-ences far and wide; he felt their moving through the land though to the east he was blind… a veil he himself drew over that one force his heart yearned to see, with all that was wrong in it.

"The Sihhë ruled for hundreds of years," he said, thinking of Cefwyn and Ryssand. "They never fought each other."

"It's not recorded that they did," Cevulirn said to him, and, perhaps thinking of the same conflict: "Wiser than we, it seems."

Restraint ran between the lines of all that Barrakketh had written in his Book… he remembered. Line after Line Unfolded to him, not alone the nature of magic, but the Shape of the world, the restraint that let the world Unfold in its own time.

He had burned that Book to keep it from other hands, and now it seemed to him that he might have possessed and destroyed that for which the junior archivist had murdered his senior: that not only Men had yearned to find among those mundane letters and requests for potions the very thing he had had… and destroyed.

Knowledge of the enemy was there.

The fount of those words was in himself, but now that he inquired of it, he found of all the words that Barrakketh had ever poured onto parchment, the two true ones were written on opposite sides of his sword: Truth, and Illusion.

"They never fought each other," he said aloud.

And the truest thing of all was the Edge between the two, the dividing line, the line of creation and destruction, dream and disillusion. There had to be both, for there to be movement at all in the world.

In his heart he could all but hear Mauryl's voice saying, Boy! Boy, listen to me! Pay attention, now! This is the crux of the lesson!

"Ye're woolgatherin'," Uwen observed. "Lad, are ye with us?"

He drew a deep breath. He smiled at Uwen, who alone of them could wake him to the ordinary world.

"You still have that power," he said to Uwen.

"What power, m'lord?"

"To call my name." He glanced solemnly aside at Crissand and Cevulirn on the other side. "I obey Uwen's voice as no other," he said, "and I gave him the calling of me. It's a magic he can do. Wherever I wander, Uwen can always find me."

"As I'd follow ye to hell, m'lord," Uwen said. "Ye know that."

"I'd rather you called me out of it," he said. He had no true knowledge what the Quinalt meant by it, but he knew where he had fared when he faced Hasufin Heltain.

He knew where he would go now when he faced the enemy.

"Guard Uwen," he said to Crissand and Cevulirn. "Make sure he's safe."

"That's the wrong way about, m'lord, them guardin' me."

"Yet that's His Grace's word," Crissand said.

"A Man," Tristen said. "And my friend, and wise as wizards."

"Oh, that I ain't!" Uwen cried.

"Trust Uwen," Tristen said to his friends, and in his mind's eye he saw Barrakkëth's Book, its pages curling as it burned.

When he had cast the Book into the fire he had been armed as now, ready to ride against Hasufin: so he was now, astride Dys and armed and with Uwen beside him.

He used great care when he let anything in that Book well up out of the dark: its answers informed him there was much of illusion in what he loved.

Past and present and time to come mingled in the old mews, and in Ynefel, and in those other places: had been and might yet be were interchangeable in those places: they were the easiest path for magic, and his enemy had found a toehold in each and every one.

He found the meadows and woods gone dim around him, and the light gone to brass.

He saw a child dancing across the dry gold grass before them. A wind blew the grass and followed that child, and that wind suddenly smelled of storm.

"That's odd," Uwen said. "Smells like rain an' the sun's shinin' and the sky is blue. An' I swear that's a cloud just come above the ridge."

"I wish it mayn't rain," Tristen said, but spent little strength to wish it. He still saw the child, but no one else did, not even Crissand or Cevulirn.

Troops of Shadows seemed now to follow the child, Auld Syes' daughter, who had lived once, he was sure, and danced in the meadows, a long, long time ago: as there had been nothing ordinary about Emwy village, where Auld Syes had seemed to be in authority. Men had died, and thereafter Emwy village had perished, lost, perhaps not for the first time.

In magic, time itself came unhinged, and Emuin's Great Year governed the progress of the world only so far as to say that strange appearances were easier than at other times.

Mauryl had brought the Sihhë from the north. But who had Summoned them? And out of what?

He looked at the sky, looked at the bare trees and at the sun on Dys' black mane. The world was so beautiful, and there was so much of it: he could gaze forever at the wonder of leaves and not see them all: could inhale the wind and not smell all its scents, hear the sounds of men and horses and not hear all the sounds of the woods, and taste the thousand flavors in stale water and still find it wonderful… because it was not darkness.

The darkest night in the darkest room in the world was not that darkness which was behind his first memory of Mauryl's fireside. And that was not the worst that might befall.

He would fight to live. He knew that now. He would fight to keep these things, aside from all reasons Mauryl had Summoned him. He had gathered his own reasons, and was not, now, Mauryl's creature.

Barrakkëth, some said, even his dearest friends.

But he said Tristen, and he said it with every breath he drew.

The dagger rested concealed in Cefwyn's boot, for if Idrys had come by stealth, Cefwyn thought it wise to keep the secret, and hid that weapon which some eyes might recognize. He rode Danvy at the head of the Dragon Guard. Anwyll's contingent being newly joined to the main body, Anwyll was close by him; and he ordered the Guelens to bring up the rear and the Prince's Guard to hold a place at the middle of their line of march, lest any surprise attack should try to split the column of less experienced provincials.

The land was roughest here, so the maps had indicated and so it was. Rocks encroached from the left and the trees spilled down off the heights and across the road. Weeds had grown here during more than one summer, legacy of Elwynor's civil conflicts.

It was the third day, and from Ryssand and his allies as yet he had had no dissent, possibly the longest period of peace with Ryssand he had known since he had come to his capital. Knowing that Ryssand was about to be a traitor was a distinct relief from wondering what Ryssand was about.

But now there was more worry, which had arrived with the dagger and the message.

A traitor near him. A traitor to whom he might have confided all his plans, when plans were hard come by, and hard to change.