Hasufinhad learned of Mauryl, before he turned to self-will and attempted to overthrow nature. Mauryl was a wizard. What he could teach was wizardry: all Mauryl's charts, all Emuin's, all those notes, calculations and records… that was wizardry.

This, he began to fear… this negligent, careless force… was not.

They moved through a last descent of hills toward the river, wending down a last terrace of that gray stone so frequent in the district, and then the road tended generally down a pitch that, around a hill, would bring them to the site of what they had used to call Anwyll's camp, on the river.

They were in the district of Anas Mallorn. And of that village and of all the villages of the district, they saw occasional traces as they rode, the droppings of sheep, the stray bit of wool at the edge of a thicket, but they never caught sight of flocks or shepherds: Tristen had noticed that fact and had pondered it even before Uwen remarked on the vacancy of the land.

"Not a sheep from here to the river," Uwen said. "So's the shepherds has the smell o' war, an' ain't havin' their flocks for soldiers' suppers, no. They've seen too much comin' an' goin' of armies hereabouts in recent years."

And Crissand, whose own lands depended primarily on the herding of sheep, nodded. "They'll be high in the hills," he said, lifting his eyes toward the rugged land to the east, that obdurate rock that had no easy passage except the river… and how even the Lenúalim had won its passage down to the sea was a distracting wonder.

Had the mountain split for it?

Had ancient magic made a way… or Efanor's hitherto silent gods commanded it?

His mind even at this time of urgency hared off onto such tracks, and followed then a forbidden course, wondering how Idrys fared.

That, he would not wonder, not when he had been thinking of their enemy.

The gray space risked too much. What came and went there flitted, skipped, was there and gone again. The gray clouds that had appeared tore to wisps in the heavens and went to nothing with disquieting swiftness. The men noticed, and pointed aloft.

Not a wizard: his thoughts flew back to that uncomfortable suspicion.

Even sorcerors worked a sort of wizardry. Such had been Hasufin Heltain, such he still was, if anything still survived.

But if it was within a wizard's ability to so disturb the weather as this, it was not possible for a wizard then to ignore it as trivial, or to change his mind and change the weather to something else.

Did Emuin know that this force existed? Had Emuin known that something this swiftly-changing opposed them, and never told him?

Maurylhad failed a contest with his own student, Hasufin, and the long-ago folk of Galasien had fallen under Hasufin's rule for a time… until Mauryl had made the long journey north to the ice, to the Hafsandyr where the Sihhë dwelled. The tales were not, as he had heard, that Mauryl had Called the Sihhë south, but that Mauryl had gone to them to persuade them south.

And what lay there, in the frozen reaches of the mountains that Mauryl must respect, but magic: and why had only five met him, five sole occupants, as legend said, of one fortress? He could all but see those walls, black and severe against the mountains and the ice.

And where were the fields and the crops, the sheep and the people in this vision?

Had the Sihhë-lords not wives and children and homes to leave?

He could not remember. He could not gather that out of the mists of memory even with effort, whether there had been women, or children, or what had sustained the Sihhë in that frozen, high keep.

Yet Men said that hewas Sihhë, and he bled, and feared, and did other things that Men did.

He did things, however, that Men and wizards did not do, and saw things they did not see, and had read the Book, and knew he had written it, though it was Barrakketh's own hand, the first of the Sihhë-lords. It had wanted wizardry and cleverness to read that mirror-written writing… wizardry, but not all wizardry; trickery such as Men used, but not all trickery: a mirror and the light of the gray space. In that much… had not he done what any wizard could do?

Nothing was simple: wizardry and sorcery and magic commingled, and two of those three depended on times and seasons; the second was the perverted use of the first; the third was innate in those who had it—

And if wizardry had a dark mirror…

Might magichave one?

Why had Mauryl goneto the north rather than speaking to the Sihhë at a distance, as he was sure Mauryl had known how to do?

And how had he gone? By roads? And if by ordinary roads, fearing the ascendancy of his enemy, whyhad it taken five Sihhë-lords coming back with him to overthrow the rule of one mere student of Mauryl Gestaurien—Mauryl, whom all the Men he knew called the greatest and oldest of wizards?

What indeed had Mauryl and the five Sihhë had to face in the south?

Hasufin? The might of old Galasien arrayed against Mauryl?

"Strays is apt to end in stewpots," Uwen was saying, regarding sheep and pigs. "Even wi' the best of soldiers… and there's that ragtag lot that's come 'mongst Aeself's lads, who ain't themselves come with wagons nor supply. It ain't sayin' there ain't some Elwynim up in the hills even now, bands not wantin' to join Aeself's lot, not desirous of goin' home, neither. The war's gone one way an another in Elwynor, and that don't lead all the captains to be friends of one another, nor to trust comin' into Aeself's camp, even if they wasn't ever Tasmôrden's men."

"I don't see any there," Tristen murmured, for to his awareness the hills rising in the east were barren of men and sheep, the same. "The people have fled, if they were able, farther to the south. It was hungry men that came to raid Aeself's camp, and the Lady of Emwy didn't let them in.—But Aeself's moved," he said, for his awareness of the land flared dangerously wide for a moment, a lightning stroke of a wish that lit the landscape all around him. In fear he stifled that vision and made himself see the land between his horse's ears, the road in front of him, the company on either side.

"Gods bless," Uwen muttered. "Moved, ye say?"

"I sent Cevulirn's men by this road," Tristen recalled, "while we visited Aeself: I haven't been this far toward the river since Cevulirn and I traveled this road… and all the land is empty now. The people have gone to Drusenan's wall, or they've gone to the south, none toward the river, none toward the hills."

"They wouldn't," Crissand said somberly. "The hills to the east are for bandits and outlaws."

"There aren't any of those there, now, either."

"Taken hire wi' Tasmôrden," Uwen said. " There's asorry way't' clean th' land of bandits."

"Taken hire with Tasmôrden right along with the Aswydd servants," Crissand said. "Every outpouring of Heryn's court is over there, and every common cutthroat from our woods. It's our sins that wait across the river."

"And Elwynor's," Tristen said, for it seemed to him that was the case… that the timid had fled and the strong had chosen sides, the strong good men being beaten time and time again and pulled this way and that by successive claimants to the Regency, until this day, that the best men were a small band in Aeself's hands and the worst were an army sacking Ilefínian.

"And Elwynor's," Crissand agreed with him, and added, a moment later: "Gods save Her Grace."

"Amen to that," Uwen said. "As she won't have an easy reign when she has 'er kingdom."

Crissand said nothing to that. The gray space was troubled for a moment, and troubled in the way not of a wizard thinking secret thoughts, but troubled as it grew troubled when words rang wrong. And everything Uwen had said suddenly rang wrong, out of joint with what was now in motion. Crissand had not meant gods save Her Graceas a benison, only as a commiseration, as if their positions were equivalent… it seemed, suddenly and for no reason, true.