his face contorted with rage and fear. He seemed to Lancelot to be frozen in place, motionless, his foot thrust forward in a long stride he would never complete.
Lancelot looked at Leyse, clad in white beside him, but he said nothing.
Another time it seemed to him that he heard the sound of horses rushing toward them, very near. He spun, shielding her reflexively, but he saw no one at all riding past, whether friend or foe. He could tell though, from the turning of her gaze, that she did see a company riding there, riding right through the two of them perhaps, lost as well, in a different way, amid the mists of Daniloth.
He released his grip on her arm. He apologized. She shook her head, with a sadness that went into him like a blade.
She said, “This land was always dangerous to anyone other than our kind, even before Lathen Mistweaver’s time, when these shadows came down. Those men were horsemen from before the Bael Rangat, and they are lost. There is nothing we can do for them. They are in no time we know, to be spoken to or saved. Had we space for the telling, I might spin you the tale of Revor, who risked that fate in the service of Light a thousand years ago.”
“Had we space for the telling,” he said, “I would take pleasure in that.”
She seemed about to say something more, but then her eyes—they were a pale, quiet blue now, much like the last of the flowers they had passed—looked beyond his face, and he turned.
West of them lay a thicket of trees. The leaves of the trees were of many colors even in midsummer, and the woods were very beautiful, offering a promise of peace, of quiet shade, of a place where the sunlight might slant down through the leaves, with a brook murmuring not far away.
Above the southernmost of the trees of that small wood, at the very edge of Daniloth, an owl hung suspended, wings spread wide and motionless in the clear morning air.
Lancelot looked, and he saw the sheath of a dagger held in the owl’s mouth glint with a streak of blue in the mild light. He turned back to the woman beside him. Her eyes had changed color. They were dark, looking upon the owl that hung in the air before them.
“Not this one,” she said, before he could speak. He heard the fear, the denial in her voice. “Oh, my lord, surely not this one?”
He said, “This is the child I have been sent to follow and to guard.”
“Can you not see the evil within him?” Leyse cried. Her voice was loud in the quiet of that place. There was music in it still, but strained now, and overlaid by many things.
“I know it is there,” he said. “I know also that there is a yearning after light. Both are part of his road.”
“Then let the road end here,” she said. It was a plea. She turned to him. “My lord, there is too much darkness in this one. I can feel it even from where we stand.”
She was a Child of Light, and she stood in Daniloth. Her certainty planted a momentary doubt in his own heart. It never took root; he had his own certainties.
He said, “There is darkness everywhere now. We cannot avoid it; only break through, and not easily. In the danger of this might lie our hope of passage.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “Who is he?” she asked finally.
He had been hoping she would not ask, for many reasons. But when the question came, he did not turn away. “Guinevere’s child,” he said levelly, though it cost him something. “And Rakoth Maugrim’s. He took her by force in Starkadh. And therein lies the evil you see, and the hope of light beyond.”
There was pain now, overlying the fear in her eyes.
And under both of those things, at bedrock, was love. He had seen it before, too many times.
She said, “And you think she will prove stronger?” Music in her voice again, distant but very clear.
“It is a hope,” he replied, gravely honest. “No more than that.”
“And you would act and have me act upon that hope?” Music still.
“She has asked me to guard him,” he said quietly. “To see him through to the choice he has to make. I can do no more than ask you. I have only the request.”