Fly, he wished Owl, for what stirred northward was aware of him, now, and turned attention toward him.

Well and good. Best it come to him. He wishedit to turn to him, see him, assess what he was, with all the dangers inherent in the encounter. He abandoned stealth. He challenged the Shadow to the north, taunted it, all the while with fear in his heart… for in that way he had learned there were things older than himself, this was, indeed, older.

This wasHasufin, but it was more.

It was the Wind, and a dark Wind, and it had carried Hasufin and carried his soul still, but it was more than that: it had always lurked behind the veil, and now stood naked to the dark, the very heart of menace.

For a long, long while, his heart beating hard, he stared into that dark, having lost all reckoning of Owl.

But then something flew very near, and Owl called him urgently, reft him away as the thin sound broke the threads of the dream.

He plummeted to earth, aware of his own body again, and Drum-man and Uwen sleeping beside him.

But on his other side Crissand was awake, at the very threshold of the gray space. Crissand had felt the danger, and tried to oppose it.

— My lord? Crissand whispered.

— Be still, he said. Be very quiet. Something's looking this way.

— What? Crissand wanted to know, and then turned his face toward the danger.

— Back! Tristen ordered him, and snatched them both from the gray winds before it could come near.

"A wizard," Crissand said in a low and tremulous voice.

"I'm not sure," Tristen said, knowing in his heart it was nothing so ordinary, that long ago something had entangled itself with Hasufin Heltain, as Hasufin had attempted to ensnare Orien Aswydd, and Aséyneddin in Elwynor.

Then it Unfolded to him with shattering force that this was indeed so, and that Mauryl himself had feared it.

This… thiswas in Hasufin's heart.

It was not dispelled at Lewenbrook. It had not been dispelled in hundreds of years. It had only retreated. It was in the depths of the Quinal-tine. It was in every deep, dark place the Galasieni themselves had warded, and Hasufin had bargained with it, listened to it, welcomed it in his folly.

He had no choice but draw its attention to himself, now, for Cefwyn's only defense was his blindness to magic and wizardry alike… and blindness was not enough, not against something with such ready purchase in Ryssand's heart.

"I wish Idrys may hurry," Tristen whispered into the dark, hearing Owl call again, and a third time, magical three. "I wish the winds behind him, and I wish he may come in time."

"So all of us wish," Crissand said, and fear touched his voice. "I saw a Shadow. Does it threaten the king?"

"It threatens everything," Tristen said, and could not bid Crissand avoid it: could not bid any one of his friends avoid it. It was why they had come, why they pressed forward, why they had gone to war at all, and everything was at risk. "But sleep. Sleep now, while we dare sleep at all."

BOOK THREE

INTERLUDE

Morning came gray and pale across hills not so different than Elwynor. Maids stirred about the fireplace, made tea, presented a breakfast of which Ninévrisë only wished a little bread, no honey in the tea. Afterward she sat in the warm middle of the room gazing at the pale light of the window, asking herself whether the bread had been wise at all.

Perhaps, instead, it was fear that churned inside her—fear and the wish never to have left her husband… not a wise wish, to be back with him, but the wish of her heart, all the same.

She was aware, on that level far beyond awareness of the hills and the tea and unwanted breakfast, of Emuin, half-asleep in his tower bed, an old man and increasingly frail; and of the boy Paisi, who made Emuin's breakfast.

Paisi was worried, too, worried for the old man: lovedhim, an unaccustomed thing for Paisi, and more than a little surprising to the boy, who had loved few things and fewer people. He was not sure what to call those feelings, but Paisi was a fiercely protective soul, and set all his gifts to caring for the old man who had roused them in him.

He was suddenly aware of her eavesdropping on him—gifted in that way to an amazing extent, and not knowing anything he could properly do with that ability, either—and stopped and looked her direction in the gray space like any boy caught at anything. He truly disliked to be stared at or made conspicuous in any way, met such stares with hostility—but he regarded her differently, not with the unthought respect of a commoner for a lady, but a far more personal sense of connection.

He hurried about his last morning duties for Emuin, waked the old man, saw him safely seated at his breakfast, and then slipped out of the tower room and down the stairs from the tower to the lower hall.

Up, then, the central stairs.

She knew when he would arrive, knew that he suffered a sudden blush of awkwardness just outside her doors, his brash, common effrontery brought to an adamant halt by her guards.

Why had he come? He pursued his own curiosity, his own sense of duty. He had come to find her and to learn what she meant to that other concern of his, who slept with his mother in yet another room, with a baby's untaught awareness.

She rose, went to her door, and opened it to find a gangling boy with wide dark eyes, face flushed with the vehemence of his argument with her guards.

"Lady," he said, never once abashed, but with a quick bow.

"This is my ally," she said to the guards. "He doesn't know it yet, but he is." She swept the boy inside, and the guards shut the door. All her attention was for a boy her heart told her defended a sleeping baby, for reasons unclear to the boy himself, and defended him even against the babe's own Aswydd mother. It seemed to his loyal heart that the baby had had no defenders; and he had grown up with none but an old woman, and so he took it as his duty, himself, when no one else cared, to care for Tarien's baby. All of that passion was in him, all at once, and for the babe's sake.

In Tristen's absence, he was here at her door—no accident.

And no boyish curiosity had brought him to her, but a wizard's lively attachment to all the world around him: she felt it as she had felt her father's curiosity about the world and never known it was uncommon: Paisi had the same tone of mind and heart, as if she were in the heart of her family again. They faced one another, and at the far remove of his tower, Emuin had stopped his breakfast, and had stopped it for a full several breaths, now, slowly grown present enough that they both knew.

" 'E ain't sayin' anything," Paisi said faintly. " 'E ain't upset wi' me, but 'e knows. The old man knows ever'thin' 'at goes on."

"A very great wizard," Ninévrisë said, "as I never shall be." All her little wizardry had been bent to the north, in earnest hope of a whisper in the gray space, and now this boy distracted her from her watch and made her aware how constant it had been. It both gave her second thoughts, this potent distraction the boy posed, and made her question her own wisdom and her own fate in this war of powers.

It was a small fate, it might be; or a greater one. She had always thought of it as herfate—but seemingly now her fate had become wrapped about the child, her child, Cefwyn's child. She had been proud, had commanded in the field, come close to power, and seen all her power over her fate unexpectedly involved in this union with Cefwyn. Now she saw it devolving upon their child, changed in direction and inevitable as the stoop of a hawk—to that extent she knew she had failed of all she purposed, and had failed in it even if she should rule in Elwynor. Neither Cefwyn's rule nor hers, she foresaw, would suffice to settle the border or make a lasting peace. They became forerunners of one who might.