The things in the forest have a Master; He rides along, between day and night, haunting mortal memory and imagination. There are books of folklore that speak of Him; books of faery-tales in which He appears in a dozen forms; there are books of magic that talk about Him, too- but more often than not, these three kinds of books are one and the same. Their themes are all of a Weird-power that summons Him.

It is not into some triangle marked on the ground, nor into thuribles of billowing incense that He appears; He appears in the inner recesses of the mind to those who are inspired by the secret key. The key is in the stories; the key is in the land; it is in the strange appearances and dances of the things out there, hiding behind the boughs and branches. It is the key that children are born with, and which graying adults laughingly tell them to discard. Life and death are discarded with it; Life and death are found when it is rediscovered.

Once he arrives, that old Horseman, he never disappears. He may leave, but He stays at the same time. He rides between "here" and "there". So do we, if we are the true traveling men or women- if we can travel with the secret company that slips between raindrops and snowflakes like ghosts on the wind. The Horseman is embedded in the arcane map of the land above and below. He and all his kind- His courtiers, His servants, and His Lady. They are the people of the wind, of the invisible. They are the company of the storm.

-Robin Artisson, The Traveling Man

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