Yet there were doors within the Pattern: it Unfolded to him that within the weaving there was such an access as existed in the Zeide… and had always been.
He could go through that portal and reach Ynefel.
Another path led to the Zeide's lower hall.
A third ran to a place somewhere to the north and east, one as easily within his reach as the other two, but of great periclass="underline" a place of muddled sound and strange shapes, yet familiar to him in the way many things he had never seen seemed familiar, and Unfolded to him.
"M'lord."
He could reach that third place. And he could reach Ynefel. And he could take one step and be in the old mews, from which he could walk straight into the lower hall of the Zeide.
And beyond that, from the Zeide's portal, to still other places, places unvisited in very long…
"M'lord, will ye hear? The wind's takin' on fit to blow the roof off."
A shape came out of the gray, a woman of grays and gold, gowned in cobweb lace. It was Auld Syes, and the small Shadow of her daughter went after her, skipping and flitting.
But after them ran an entire troop of shadows, less comely, and less dangerous than these two.
He wished them not to cause any harm in Aeself's camp.
Owl came swooping by, and on the edge of his wings the light glowed white, white that blinded.
He blinked, still dazed, and was aware of Uwen in the dark. Through a seam in the curtain, he saw the banked fire that had broken forth into flame where wood jutted from the ash. A gust of wind must have wakened it.
The wind outside moaned around the eaves.
"What a blow!" Uwen said, "It's woke the fire up. Gods!—D' ye see somethin', lad, where ye're lookin'?"
He shook his head, hearing the murmur of the guardsmen wakened from their sleep. He was still dazed from the vision of other places, convinced he could reach the Zeide from here as easily as wishing: he could walk through the old mews; he could stand in Ynefel's ruined hall between one blink and the next, and truly bethere, and touch and be touched.
Had he fallen asleep within such a place as the mews in the Zeide, and not known it?
Or was it within his dream that such possibilities existed?
And suddenly his waking mind made sense of the memory of that third place he had seen in his vision, which was the Quinaltine, beside the Guelesfort—and his heart beat fast to think that he could come that near Cefwyn.
It beat faster still to feel the trouble he felt in that place, and to know danger moved in it, danger which Cefwyn might not see. He himself had stood in the Quinaltine before the altar. He had seen the tangled shadows mill behind the Lines the Patriarch had drawn— he had pitied them, unhappy, angry shadows, Quinalt souls laid to rest above Bryaltine and Teranthine, all jumbled together, all within walls raised contrary to the Lines earlier masons had made. The Patriarch had seemed utterly unaware of what screamed and strained at the barriers: it was all silent to him. It was utterly outside the priests' awareness how later masons had laid down contrary Lines, blind to the proper Lines of the earth, blind to what earlier ma-sonwork had stood there—these later builders, Quinalt builders, for whatever reason, had laid their own structure over that place and crossed the Lines in impossible tangles, pockets, dead ends, traps, from which the anguished souls could not escape.
Oh, there was power there, but it was not any power Efanor's little book described as godly power. It was a terrible place, like the hell of Efanor's book.
And far from curing it, the priests before that altar had walked one principal Line, over and over, deaf to the pain and anguish which roiled just behind it, souls in torment, imprisoned for all eternity in spaces too small for their smallest longings.
That was the place that third passage went.
And with a breath and a wish he might cross that distance tonight and find Cefwyn.
But disturbance among the priests would not serve Cefwyn: he foresaw panic among them if he stepped out of the stonework, by magic, in the place these men called holy. He feared to do it, and was unsure, moreover, what he might disturb there.
It was a chance. A risk. It was nothing to undertake inconsiderately.
"It's eased way off," Uwen said with a sigh, meaning the wind.
"At least the roof is stayin'.—Are ye all right, m'lord? Ye wasn't havin' a dream, like?"
"Somewhat of a dream," he said faintly, but he did not say what he had learned, not even to Uwen. He doubted it would reassure Men in the least to know that their wards both intersected Althalen and reached to Henas'amef, though they were leagues apart. He saw possibilities in it. He saw a way he dared not take yet.
He ought to ask Emuin, among other matters he had discovered here.
A blast of wind made the wooden beams groan, and woke the fire to full life in the heart.
"Damn," he heard one of his guards say, and knew honest men were afraid of the violence in the dark. More, he knew in himself the power to mend that fear, and he knew it was time to mend it.
Calm, he wished the heavens. Be calm.
And in his own heart he was sure now, sure that it was time to move the war against Tasmôrden, sure that he must move, even if it made things more difficult for Cefwyn to explain to the other lords… and sure now, reaching out through the maze of the wards, that he could reach not one, but three Places and perhaps others.
He had seen the Lady walking the hills hereabouts, and knew the secret traces between the wards: walls were no barrier to the Old Power. She had asked admittance to the wards of Henas'amef, and he had granted it—to the good, he was sure now, for now the Old Power ran as it had been accustomed to run, between here and there, between here and Guelemara, until the priests' Line dammed it—on purpose or otherwise.
He had said he ruled in Henas'amef, and in Althalen, and on that hill above the river, where stood ruined Ynefeclass="underline" and now, having laid his head on the stones of Althalen, having dreamed here, he had found the Lines as apt to his hands as the reins of his horse. He drew in a deep, deep breath, sitting disheveled in the dark, amid his blankets, knowing all these wards at once, all the work of Masons and all the Lines on the earth, all the lives of common folk at their work and all the nobles and wizards who had ever ruled—
And these Lines, often walked over the generations of Men, often worked, these graven paths of habit and deed… all were his. They were not his by Cefwyn's grant, although that had confirmed his lordship for Men; they were not even his because Mauryl had meant him to rule them, though that was so, too.
They were his because they obeyed him. And they did, now. It seemed that the power in them ran through his veins, and stood the hairs on his arms and the hair on his head on end. He could have lived without breathing, for the power that ran through him needed no such thing.
But breath was what he chose, and the solidity of the lives around him. He strove to make out some detail of Uwen's presence in the dark, desperate for it of a sudden, for he had strayed that far, that remote from Men. And when his eyes had searched out the least hint of Uwen's shape, and his hand had found Uwen's solid, strong arm, then he told his heart it could beat again.
"Go back to sleep," he said to Uwen.