Brotherhood of the Wolf

1 The Voices of Mice

As King Gaborn Val Orden rode toward Castle Sylvarresta on the last day of Hostenfest, the day of the great feast, he reined in his horse and peered up the Durkin Hills Road.

Here the trees of the Dunnwood had been cleared back from the road, three miles from town. The sun was just rising, casting a sliver of silver light over the hills to the east, and the shadows of leafless oaks blotted the road ahead.

Yet in a patch of morning sun around the bend, Gaborn spotted three large hares. One hare seemed to be on guard, for it peered up the road, ears perked, while another nibbled at sweet golden melilot that grew at the margin of the road. The third just hopped about stupidly, sniffing at freshly fallen leaves of brown and gold.

Though the hares were over a hundred yards distant, the scene looked preternaturally clear to Gaborn. After having been underground in the darkness for the past three days, his senses seemed invigorated. The light appeared brighter than ever before, the early morning birdsong came clearer to his ears. Even the way the cool dawn winds swept down from the hills and played across his face seemed new and different.

“Wait,” Gaborn whispered to the wizard Binnesman. He reached behind his back, untied his bow and quiver from his saddle. He gave a warning glance to his Days, the skeletal scholar who had followed him since his childhood, bidding the Days to stay behind.

The three were alone on the road. Sir Borenson was following some distance behind them, bearing his trophy from the Hostenfest hunt, but Gaborn had been in a hurry to get home to his new wife.

Binnesman frowned. “A rabbit, sire? You’re the Earth King. What will people say?”

“Shhh,” Gaborn whispered. He reached into his quiver, pulled his last arrow, but then paused. Binnesman was right. Gaborn was the Earth King, and it seemed fitting that he should bring down a fine boar. Sir Borenson had slain a reaver mage, and was dragging its head into town.

For two thousand years, the people of Rofehavan had looked forward to the coming of an Earth King. Each year during the seventh day of Hostenfest, this last day of the celebration, the day of the great feast, served as a reminder of the promise of the Earth King who would bless his people with all “the fruits of the forest and of the field.”

Last week the Earth Spirit had crowned Gaborn, and charged him to save a seed of humanity through the dark times to come.

He’d fought long and hard these past three days, and the reaver’s head belonged as much to Gaborn and Binnesman as it did to Sir Borenson.

Still, if Gaborn brought in nothing more than a single hare for the great feast, he could imagine how the mummers and puppet-masters would ridicule him.

He braced himself for the mummers scorn and leapt lightly from his charger, whispering “Stand” to the beast. It was a force horse, his fine hunter, with runes of wit branded along its neck. It stared at him knowingly, perfectly silent, while Gaborn put the lower wing of his bow on the ground, stuck a leg between the bow and the string, then bent the bow and pulled the upper end of the string tight into its nock.

With the bow strung, he took his last arrow, inspected the gray goose quills, and then nocked the arrow.

He crept forward, staying low along the brushy side of the road. Wizard’s violet grew tall here by the roadside, its flowers a dark purple.

When he rounded the corner, the hares would be in full sunlight. So long as he stayed in the shadows, they’d not be likely to see him; if he remained silent, they’d not hear him; and while the wind blew in his face, they’d not smell him.

Glancing back, Gaborn saw that his Days and Binnesman remained on their mounts.

He began stalking down the muddy road.

Yet he felt nervous, more nervous than mere hunting jitters could account for. He sensed a vague apprehension dawning. Among the newfound powers that the Earth had granted him, Gaborn could sense danger around those people he’d Chosen.

Only a week ago; he’d felt death stalk his father, but he’d been unable to stop it. Last night, however, that same overpowering sense had enabled him to avoid disaster when the reavers staged an ambush in the Underworld.

He felt danger now, but vaguely, distantly. Death was stalking him, as surely as he stalked these rabbits.

The only weakness of this newfound power was that he could not know the source of the danger. It could be anything: a crazed vassal, a boar lurking in the underbrush.

Yet Gaborn suspected Raj Ahten, the Wolf Lord of Indhopal, the man who had slain Gaborn’s father.

Riders on force horses had brought word from Mystarria that in Gaborn’s homeland, Raj Ahten’s troops had taken three castles by subterfuge just before Hostenfest.

Gaborn’s great-uncle, Duke Paladane, had marshaled troops to contain the problem. Paladane was an old lord, a master strategist with several endowments of wit. Gaborn’s father had trusted him implicitly, and had often sent him out on campaigns to track down criminals or to humble haughty lords. Because of his success, he was called the “Huntsman” by some, the “Hound” by others. He was feared throughout Rofehavan; if any man could match wits with Raj Ahten, it was Paladane. Surely Raj Ahten could not march his troops north, risk the wights of the Dunnwood.

Yet danger approached, Gaborn felt certain. He placed his feet carefully on the dry mud of the road, moved as silently as a wraith.

But when he reached the bend in the road, the hares had left. He heard a rustling in the grass by the roadside, but it was only mice stirring, scampering about under dry leaves.

He stood a moment wondering what had happened. Ah, Earth, he said in his thoughts, addressing the Power he served. Could you not at least send a stag from the forest?

But no voice answered. None ever did.

Moments later, Binnesman and the Days came trotting up the road. The Days bore the reins of Gaborn’s dun colored mare.

“The hares are skittish today, it seems,” Binnesman said. He smiled slyly, as if pleased. The morning light accentuated the creases in the wizard’s face and brought out the russet hues of his robes. A week ago, Binnesman had given part of his life to summon a wylde, a creature strong in the earth powers. Before that, Binnesman’s hair had been brown, and his robes the green of a leaf in summer. Now his robes had changed color, and the fellow seemed to Gaborn to have aged decades in the past few days. Worse yet, the wylde he’d sought to summon had vanished.

“Aye, the hares are skittish,” Gaborn answered suspiciously. As an Earth Warden, Binnesman sought to serve the Earth, and claimed that he cared as much about mice and snakes as he did mankind. Gaborn wondered if the wizard had warned the hares off with some spell, or perhaps something as simple as a wave of the hand. “More than a little skittish, I’d say.” Gaborn swung up into his saddle but kept his bow, strung and his arrow nocked. They were close to the city, but he imagined that he still might see a stag by the roadside, some enormous old grandfather with a rack as big as his arm span, come down out of the mountains to eat one sweet apple from a farmer’s orchard before it died.

Gaborn glanced over at Binnesman. He still wore that secretive grin, yet Gaborn could not tell if it was a sly expression or a worried smile.

“You’re happy that I missed the hares?” Gaborn ventured.

“You’d not have been pleased with them, milord,” Binnesman said. “My father was an innkeeper. He used to say, ‘A man with fickle innards is never pleased.’ ”

“Meaning?” Gaborn said.

“Choose your quarry, milord,” Binnesman answered. “If you are hunting reavers, it’s silly to go chasing after hares. You wouldn’t allow your hounds to do it. Neither should you.”

“Ah,” Gaborn said, wondering if the wizard meant more than he said.

“Besides, the reavers proved a harder match than any of us had bargained for.”

Bitterly, Gaborn realized that Binnesman was right. Despite the powers of Gaborn and Binnesman combined, forty-one strong knights had died fighting the reavers. Besides Gaborn, Binnesman, and Sir Borenson, only nine others had made it from the ruins alive. It had been a bitter struggle. The nine were back with Borenson now, dragging the reaver mage’s head to town, opting to stay with their trophy.

Gaborn changed the subject. “I didn’t know that wizards had fathers,” he teased. “Tell me more about yours.”

“It was long ago,” Binnesman said. “I don’t remember him much. In fact, I think I just told you everything I recall about him.”

“Certainly you recall more than that,” Gaborn chided. “The more I know you, the more I know not to believe anything you say.” He didn’t know how many hundred years the wizard had lived, but he suspected that Binnesman must have a story or two.

“You are right, milord,” Binnesman said. “I don’t have a father. Like all Earth Wardens, I was born of the Earth. I was but a creature that someone sculpted of mud, till I formed this flesh for myself of my own will.” Binnesman arched an eyebrow mysteriously.

Gaborn glanced at the wizard, and for just a moment, he had the nagging suspicion that Binnesman spoke more truly than he pretended.

Then the moment passed and Gaborn laughed. “You are such a liar! I swear, you invented the art!”

Binnesman laughed in turn. “No, tis a fine skill, but I did not invent it. I merely seek to perfect it.”

At that moment, a force horse came thundering along the road from the south. It was a fast horse, with three or four endowments of metabolism, a white charger that flashed in the sunlight as it moved between shadows and trees. Its rider wore the livery of Mystarria, the image of the green man upon a blue field.

Gaborn reined in his horse and waited. He’d felt danger. Now he feared the courier’s news.

The messenger rode up swiftly, never slowing his mount, until Gaborn raised a hand and called out. Only then did the messenger recognize Gaborn, for the King wore nothing now but a simple gray traveling robe, stained from the road.

“Your Highness!” the messenger cried.

He reached for a leather pouch at his waist, then proffered a small scroll, its red wax seal bearing the mark of Paladane’s signet ring.

Gaborn opened the scroll. As he read, his heart sank and his breathing quickened.

“Raj Ahten has moved south into Mystarria,” he told Binnesman. “He’s toppled castles at Gorlane, Aravelle, and Tal Rimmon. This was near dawn two days ago.

“Paladane says that his men and some Knights Equitable made Raj Ahten pay. Their archers ambushed Raj Ahten’s troops. You can walk from the village of Boarshead to Gower’s Ridge on the backs of the dead.”

Gaborn dared not relate more of the horrific news. Paladane’s observations were extremely detailed and precise, noting the exact type and number of enemy casualties 36,909 men, the vast majority of whom were common troops out of Fleeds. He also noted the number of arrows spent (702,000), defenders slain (1,274), wounded (4,951), and horses slain (3,207) versus the amount of armor, gold, and horses captured. He then gave precise notes on the movements of enemy troops along with the current dispositions of his own men. Raj Ahten’s reinforcements were converging on Carris from Castles Crayden, Fells, and Tal Dur. Paladane was reinforcing Carris, convinced that Raj Ahten would seek to capture the mighty fortress rather than casually destroy it.

Gaborn read the news and shook his head in dismay. Raj Ahten had engaged in savagery. Paladane had paid him in kind. The news revolted Gaborn.

Paladane’s last words were: “Obviously, the Wolf Lord of Indhopal hopes to draw you into this conflict. He has decimated your northern border, so that you cannot come south with the hope of bringing in fresh troops of any consequence. I beg you to remain in Heredon. Let the Huntsman bring this dog to bay.”

Gaborn rolled the scroll back up, tucked it into the pocket of his robe.

This is maddening, Gaborn thought, to sit here nearly a thousand miles away and learn when my people died days after it happened.

He could do little to stop Raj Ahten—. But he could get news faster....

He glanced at the messenger, a young lad with curly brown hair and clear blue eyes. Gaborn had seen him at court on many occasions. He looked the young man in the eyes and used the Earth Sight to stare beyond his eyes, into his heart. The courier was proud, proud of his position and his riding skill. He was daring, almost eager to risk his life in his lord’s service. A dozen wenches at inns across Mystarria thought they loved him, for he tipped well and kissed even better, but the fellow was torn between his love of two women who had vastly different personalities.

Gaborn did not think particularly well of the young man, but saw no reason not to Choose him. Gaborn needed servants like this, needed messengers he could count on. Gaborn raised his left hand, stared the lad in the eyes, and whispered, “I Choose you for the Earth. Rest now, but head back for Carris today. I currently have one Chosen messenger there. If I sense danger to you both, I’ll know that Raj Ahten plans to attack the city. If ever you hear my Voice warning you in your mind, obey me.”

“I dare not rest, Your Highness,” the messenger said, “while Carris is in danger.”

To Gaborn’s satisfaction, the lad wheeled his mount to the south. In moments he was gone, only the dust hovering above the road to show that he’d, come to Heredon at all.

With a heavy heart, Gaborn considered what he should do. He would have to notify the lords in Heredon of this disturbing news.

As they rode through the dawn, Gaborn suddenly had the urge to get away. He put his heels to horseflesh, and his roan hunter raced under the shadowed trees along the road, with Binnesman’s mount easily keeping pace beside and the Days on his white mule struggling along behind. At last they reached a wide bend on a hilltop that afforded them an unobstructed view of Castle Sylvarresta.

Gaborn drew in his reins; he and the wizard halted, staring in surprise.

Castle Sylvarresta was set on a small hill at a bend in the river Wye, its high walls and towers rising like pinnacles. All around that hill squatted a walled city. Beyond the city walls, there was normally just the countryside—empty fields with a few haycocks, orchards, and farmers cottages and barns.

But over the past week, as news of the rise of an Earth King spread lords and peasants from all across Heredon and even from kingdoms beyond Heredon had begun to gather. Gaborn had a premonition of what was to come. The fields before Castle Sylvarresta had been burned black by Raj Ahten, yet already so many peasants had amassed that the grounds around the great walled city of Sylvarresta were covered by pavilions. Not all of the pavilions belonged to peasants; many tents belonged to lords and knights from around Heredon-armies that had marched when they’d heard of the invasion but had arrived too late to offer any aid. Banners of Orwynne and North Crowthen and Fleeds and various merchant princes from Lysle mingled among the hosts, and off on one hill camped thousands of merchants out of Indhopal who—after having been driven off by King Sylvarresta had hurried back to see this new wonder, this Earth King.

The fields around Castle Sylvarresta were dark, but they were no longer dark from the blackened grass. They were dark with the massed bodies of hundreds of thousands of men and animals.

“By the Powers,” Gaborn swore. “Their numbers must have quadrupled in the past three days. It will take me the better part of a week to Choose them all.”

Distantly, Gaborn could hear music drifting above the smoke of cooking fires. The sound of a jousting lance cracked across the countryside, followed immediately by cheers. Binnesman sat a horse, gazing down, just as the Days rode up. All three mounts breathed heavily after their short run.

But something caught Gaborn’s eye. In the sky above the valley, a flock of starlings flew, thousands strong, like a living cloud. They weaved one way, then another, swooped and then soared upward. It was as if they were lost, searching for a place to land but unable to find safety. Starlings often flew thus in the autumn, but these birds seemed peculiarly spooked.

Gaborn heard the honking of geese. He looked along the Wye River, which wound through the green fields like a silver thread. A hundred yards above the river, miles away, the geese flew in a V along the river course. But their voices sounded strained, crass.

Beside him, Binnesman sat upright and turned to Gaborn. “You hear it, too, don’t you? You feel it in your bones.”

“What?” Gaborn asked.

Gaborn’s Days cleared his throat as if to ask a question, but said nothing. The historian seldom spoke. Interference in the affairs of mankind was forbidden by the Time Lords that the Days served. Still, he was obviously curious.

“The Earth. The Earth is speaking to us,” Binnesman said. “It is speaking to you and to me.”

“What does it say?”

“I don’t know, yet,” Binnesman answered honestly. The wizard scratched at his beard, then frowned. “But this is the way it usually speaks to me: in the worried stirrings of rabbits and mice, in the shifting flight of a cloud of birds, in the cries of geese. Now it whispers to the Earth King, too. You are growing, Gaborn. Growing in power.”

Gaborn studied Binnesman. The wizard’s skin was oddly tinged a bit of ruddy red that almost matched his baggy robe. He smelled of the herbs that he kept in his oversized pockets, linden blossom and mint and borage and wizard’s violet and basil and a hundred other spices. He looked like little more than a jolly old man, except for the lines of wisdom in his face.

“I will check into this. We shall know more tonight,” Binnesman assured Gaborn.

But Gaborn was unable to lay aside his worries. He suspected that he would need to convene a war council, but dared not do so until he knew the nature of the threat that his Earth senses warned him against.

The three riders headed down the road into a deep fold between two hills that had been burned black last week.

There, at the base of the hill, Gaborn saw what he took to be an old woman sitting by the roadside with a blanket draped over her head.

As the horses came stamping down the road, the old woman looked up, and Gaborn saw that she was not old at all. Instead, it was a young maiden, a girl he recognized.

Gaborn had led an “army” from Castle Groverman to Longmot a week ago. The army had consisted of two hundred thousand cattle, driven by peasant men and women and children and a few aging soldiers. The dust of their passage as the herd crossed the plains had been ruse enough to dislodge the Wolf Lord Raj Ahten from his attack on Longmot.

If Raj Ahten had discovered Gaborn’s ruse, Gaborn felt sure the Wolf Lord would have cut down every woman and child in his retinue out of sheer spite. The girl at the foot of the hill had ridden in Gaborn’s army. He remembered her well. She’d carried a heavy banner in one hand and a nursing babe in the other.

She had acted bravely and selflessly. He’d been glad for the aid of people like her. Yet Gaborn was astonished to see her—a mere peasant who probably didn’t have access to a horse here at Castle Sylvarresta, more than two hundred miles north of Longmot, only a week after the battle.

“Oh, Your Highness,” the girl said, ducking her head as if to curtsy.

Gaborn realized she’d been waiting by the roadside for him to return from his hunt. He’d been gone from Castle Sylvarresta for three days. He wondered how long she’d been here.

She climbed to her feet, and Gaborn saw that the dirt of the road stained her feet. Obviously, she had walked all the way from Longmot. In her right hand she cradled her babe. As she stood, she put her hand beneath her shawl to ease her nipple from the babe’s mouth and cover herself properly.

After giving aid in a victorious battle, many a lord might have come to seek a favor. Gaborn had seldom seen a peasant do so. Yet this girl wanted something of him, wanted it badly.

Binnesman smiled and said, “Molly? Molly Drinkham? Is that you?”

The girl smiled shyly as the wizard dismounted and approached her. “Aye, it’s me.”

“Well, let me see your child.” Binnesman took the infant from her arms and held it up. The child, a dark-haired thing who could not have been more than two months old, had put its fist in its mouth and was now sucking vigorously, eyes closed. The wizard smiled beatifically. “A boy?” he asked. Molly nodded. “Oh, he’s the very image of his father,” Binnesman clucked. “Such a precious thing. Verrin would have been proud. But what are you doing here?”

“I come to see the Earth King,” Molly said.

“Well, here he is,” Binnesman said. He turned to Gaborn and introduced Molly. “Your Highness, Molly Drinkham, who was once a resident of Castle Sylvarresta.”

Molly suddenly froze, her face pale with terror, as if she could not bear the thought of speaking to a king. Or perhaps she fears only to speak to me, the Earth King, Gaborn thought.

“I beg your pardon, sire,” Molly said too shrilly. “I hope I’m not disturbing you—I know it’s early. You probably don’t remember me—”

Gaborn alighted from his horse, so that he would not be sitting high above her, and sought to put her at ease. “You’re not disturbing me,” he said softly. “You’ve walked a long way from Longmot. I remember the aid you gave me. Some great need must have driven you, and I’m eager to hear your request.”

She nodded shyly. “You see, I was thinking...”

“Go on,” Gaborn said, glancing up at his Days.

“I wasn’t always just a scullery maid for Duke Groverman, you see,” she said. “My father used to muck stables for King Sylvarresta’s men, and I lived in the castle. But I did something that shamed me, and my father sent me south.” She glanced down at her child. A bastard.

“I rode with you last week,” she continued, “and I know this: If you’re the Earth King, then you should have all of Erden Geboren’s powers. That’s what makes you an Earth King.”

“Where did you hear this?” Gaborn asked, his tone betraying his concern. He suddenly feared that she would ask some impossible task of him. Erden Geboren’s deeds were the stuff of legend.

“Binnesman himself,” Molly said. “I used to help him dry his herbs, and he would tell me stories. And if you’re the Earth King, then bad times are coming, and the Earth has given you the power to Choose, to Choose the knights who will fight beside you, and to Choose who will live under your protection and who won’t. Erden Geboren knew when his people were in danger, and he warned them in their hearts and in their minds. Surely you should be able to do the same.”

Gaborn knew what she wanted now. She wanted to live, wanted him to Choose her. Gaborn looked at her a long moment, saw more than her round face and the pleasing figure hidden beneath her dirty robes. He saw more than her long dark hair and the creases of worry lines around her blue eyes. He used his Earth Sight to stare into the depths of her soul.

He saw her love for Castle Sylvarresta and her lost innocence there, and her love for a man named Verrin, a stablemaster who had died after being kicked by a horse. He saw her dismay to find herself at Castle Groverman doing menial work. She wanted little from life. She wanted to come home, to show her babe to her mother, to return to the place where she’d felt warm and loved. He could see no deception in her, no cruelty. More than anything, she was proud of her bastard son, and she loved him fiercely.

The Earth Sight could not show Gaborn everything. He suspected that if he peered into her heart for long hours, he might get to know her better than she knew herself. But time was short, and in a few seconds he saw enough.

After a moment, Gaborn relaxed. He raised his left hand. “Molly Drinkham,” he intoned softly as he cast his spell. “I Choose you. I Choose to protect you through the dark times to come. If ever you hear my Voice in your mind or in your heart, take heed. I will come to you or lead you to safety as best I can.”

It was done. Immediately Gaborn felt the efficacy of the spell, felt the binding, the now-familiar tug in his gut that let him feel her presence, that would warn him when she was in danger.

Molly’s eyes widened as if she felt it, too, and then her face went red with embarrassment. She dropped to one knee.

“No, Your Highness, you misunderstand,” she said. She held up the infant in her arms. The boy’s fist flopped from his mouth, but the child seemed to be half-asleep, and did not mind. “I want you to Choose him, to make him one of your knights someday!”

Gaborn stared at the child and began to shiver, unnerved by the request. The woman had obviously been raised on tales of Erden Geboren’s great deeds, and so she expected much of an Earth King. But she had no comprehension of Gaborn’s limits. “You don’t understand,” he tried to explain softly. “It’s not that easy. When I Choose you, my enemies take notice. My war is not with men or with reavers, it is with the unseen Powers that move them. My Choosing you puts you in greater danger, and though I might be able to send knights to your aid, more often than not you must help yourself. My resources are far too thin, our enemies too numerous. You have to be able to help yourself, to help me get you out of danger. I—I couldn’t do that to a child. I couldn’t put him in danger. He can’t defend himself!”

“But he needs someone to protect him,” Molly said. “He doesn’t have a da.” She waited for him to speak for a moment, then begged, “Please! Please Choose him for me!”

Gaborn studied her face, and his cheeks burned with shame. He looked from side to side, from Binnesman to his Days, like a ferrin caught in a dark corner of the kitchen, hoping to escape.

“Molly, you ask that the child be allowed to grow up to become a warrior in my service,” Gaborn stammered. “But I don’t think we have that long! Dark times are coming, the darkest this world has ever seen. In months perhaps, or maybe a year, they’ll be on us in deadly earnest. Your child won’t be able to fight in battle.”

“Then Choose him anyway,” Molly said. “At least you’ll know when he’s in danger.”

Gaborn stared at her in utter horror. A week ago, he’d lost several people that he’d Chosen in the battle for Longmot: his father, Chemoise’s father, King Sylvarresta. When they’d died, he’d felt stricken to the core of his soul. He hadn’t sought to explain the sensation to himself or anyone else, but he felt as if they each had roots, and were pulled from his body, leaving dark holes that gaped and could never be filled. Losing them was like losing limbs that could never be replaced, and he was mortified by the thought that their deaths were a sign of his own personal failure. He carried the guilt as if he were a father who, through neglect, had let his own children drown in a well.

Gaborn wetted his lips with his tongue. “I’m not that strong. You don’t know what you ask of me.”

“There’s no one to protect him,” Molly said. “No father, no friends. Only me. See, he’s just a babe!”

She unwrapped the sleeping boy, held him up, and stepped in close. The child was thin, though he slept soundly and did not appear to be hungry. He had the sweet scent of a newborn on his breath.

“Come now,” Binnesman urged her. “If His Majesty says he can’t Choose the child, then he can’t Choose him.” Binnesman gently took Molly by the elbow, as if to steer her toward town.

Molly turned on Binnesman and shouted viciously, “So what would you have me do, then? Dash the little bastard’s head against a stone by the road and be done with him? Is that what you want?”

Gaborn felt dismayed, cast adrift. He glanced at his Days, and feared what might be written of his choice. He looked to Binnesman for help. “What can I do?”

The Earth Warden studied the babe, frowned. With the barest movement he shook his head. “I fear that you are correct. Choosing the child would not be wise, nor would it be kind.”

Molly’s mouth dropped in shock, and she stepped back as if she’d just recognized that Binnesman, an old friend, had become an enemy.

Binnesman tried to explain, “Molly, Gaborn has been charged by the Earth to gather the seeds of mankind, to protect those he can during the dark times to come. Yet even all that he does might not be enough. Other races have passed from the face of the earth—the Toth, the duskins. Mankind could be next.”

Binnesman did not exaggerate. When the Earth had manifested itself in Binnesman’s garden, it had said much the same thing. If anything, Binnesman was being far too gentle with Molly, holding back the truth from her.

“The Earth has promised to protect Gaborn, and he has sworn in turn to protect you as best he can. But I think it best you protect your own child.”

This was how Gaborn planned to save his people—by Choosing lords and warriors to care for their charges. Before the hunt, he’d Chosen over a hundred thousand people around Heredon, had selected as many as he could—old and young, lords and peasants. At any moment, if he considered one of those people, he could reach out in his mind, know their direction and distance. He could find them if he had to, and he knew if they were in danger. But there were so many of them! So he’d begun Choosing knights and lords to protect certain enclaves. He struggled to Choose wisely, and he dared not reject the frail, the deaf, the blind, the young, or the weak-minded. He dared not value these less than any other man, for he would not make of them human sacrifices to his own conceit. By placing a lord, or even a father and mother, in charge of the safety of his or her own charges, he relieved some of the pressure he felt. And to a great degree, he’d done exactly that. He’d been using his powers to instruct his lords, requiring them to prepare their defenses and weapons, prepare for war.

Molly paled at the thought that she would be placed in charge of her infant, looked so stricken that Gaborn feared she would faint. She wisely suspected that she could not protect it adequately.

“And I too will help protect your child,” Binnesman offered in consolation. He muttered some words under his breath, wet his finger with his tongue, and knelt by the roadside to swirl the finger in the dirt. He stood, and with muddy fingers he painstakingly began to draw a rune of protection on the child’s forehead.

Yet clearly Molly believed the wizard’s aid would not be enough. Tears coursed down her cheeks, and she stood in shock, trembling.

“If it was yours,” Molly begged Gaborn, “would you. Choose it? Would you Choose it then?”

Gaborn knew that he would. Molly must have read the answer on his face.

“I’ll give him to you then—” Molly offered. “A wedding present, if you’ll have him. I’ll give him to you, to raise as your son.”

Gaborn closed his eyes. The despair in her tone struck him like an axe.

He could hardly Choose this child. It seemed a cruel thing to do. This is madness, he thought. If I Choose it, how many thousands of other mothers might justly ask the same? Ten thousand, a hundred thousand? Yet what if I don’t Choose it and Molly is right? What if by my inaction I condemn it to die? “Does the child have a name?” Gaborn asked, for in some lands, bastards were never named.

“I call him Verrin,” Molly said, “like his father.”

Gaborn gazed at the child, looked beyond his sweet face and smooth skin, deep into his small mind. There was little to see—a life unlived, a few vague longings. The child felt relieved and grateful for his mother’s nipple and for the warmth of her body and the way she sang sweetly to get him to sleep. But Verrin did not comprehend his mother as a person, did not love her in the way that she loved him.

Gaborn stifled a sob. “Verrin Drinkham,” he said softly, raising his left hand. “I Choose you. I Choose you for the Earth. May the Earth heal you. May the Earth hide you. May the Earth make you its own.”

Gaborn felt the binding take force.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Molly said. The girl’s eyes glistened with tears. She turned and headed toward Castle Groverman, ready to walk the two hundred miles home.

But as she did, Gaborn felt a powerful sense of dread; the Earth was warning him that she was in danger. If she went south again, she’d die. Whether she’d be waylaid by a bandit or take ill from her journey or face some more dire fate, he did not know. But although he could not guess what form the danger would take, his premonition was as strong as on the day that his father had died.

Molly, Gaborn thought, that way lies death. Turn and go to Castle Sylvarresta.

She stopped in mid-stride, turned her big blue eyes on him questioningly. For half a second she hesitated, then spun and raced north up the road toward Castle Sylvarresta as if a reaver were chasing her.

Gaborn’s eyes filled with tears of gratitude at the sight.

“Good girl,” he whispered. He’d been afraid she would not hear his warning, or would be slow to heed it.

On his white mule, Gaborn’s Days glanced from Gaborn to the girl. “Did you just turn her?”

“Yes.”

“You felt danger in the south?”

“Yes,” Gaborn answered again, not wanting to express the vague fear that was creeping over him. “Danger for her, at least.”

Turning to Binnesman, Gaborn said, “I don’t know if I can keep this up. I didn’t expect it to be this way.”

“An Earth King is not asked to carry easy loads,” Binnesman said. “After the battle at Care Fail, it is said that no wounds were found on the body of Erden Geboren. Some thought he’d died of a broken heart.”

“Your words comfort me,” Gaborn said sardonically. “I want to save that child, but by Choosing it, I don’t know if I did well or ill.”

“Or perhaps nothing that any of us, does matters,” Binnesman said, as if he might resign himself to the knowledge that even their best efforts might not save mankind.

“No, I have to believe that it matters,” Gaborn countered. “I must believe that it is worth the struggle. But how can I save them all?”

“Save all of mankind?” Binnesman said. “It can’t be done.”

“Then I must figure out how to save most of them.” Gaborn looked back at his Days, the historian who had followed him since childhood.

The sense of foreboding Gaborn felt was discomforting. The Days could warn him of the source of that danger, if he would.

Far away in the north, in a monastic settlement in the islands beyond Orwynne, lived another Days—one who had given Gaborn’s Days an endowment of wit and who had received from him the same endowment in return. Thus the two Days now shared a single mind—a feat that had seldom been duplicated outside the monastery, for it led to madness.

Gaborn’s Days was called a “witness,” and he had been charged by the Time Lords to watch Gaborn and to listen to his words. His companion, the “scribe,” acted as recorder, noting Gaborn’s deeds until his death, when the book of Gaborn’s life would be published.

And because the scribes all lived in a common settlement, they shared information. Indeed, they knew all that transpired among the Runelords.

Thus Gaborn felt that the Days knew too much and imparted their wisdom too seldom. This Days had long ago given up his name, given up his own identity in service to the Time Lords. He would not speak.

Binnesman caught the accusatory stare that Gaborn shot toward the Days, and he wondered aloud: “If I were choosing seeds for next year’s garden, I do not know if I would seek to save most of them, or only the best.”

2 Strange Bedfellows

The village of Hay in the midlands of Mystarria was a blight on an otherwise unremarkable landscape, but it had an inn, and an inn was all that Roland wanted.

He rode into Hay past midnight, without waking even one of the town’s dogs. The sky to the distant southwest was the color of fire. Hours past, Roland had met one of the king’s far-seers, a man with half a dozen endowments of sight who had said that a volcano had erupted, though Roland was too far from it to hear the blast. Yet the light of its fires reflected from a column of smoke and ash. Its distant pyre added to the starlight, making everything preternaturally clear.

The village consisted of five stone cottages with thatch roofs. The innkeeper kept pigs that liked to root at his doorstep. As Roland dismounted, a couple of hogs grunted awake and staggered to their feet, sniffing the air and blinking wisely. Roland pounded at the oaken door and stared at the Hostenfest icon nailed there—a tattered wooden image of the Earth King, dressed in a new green traveling robe and wearing a crown of oak leaves. Someone had replaced the Earth King’s staff with a sprig of purple flowered thyme.

The fat innkeeper who greeted him wore an apron so dirty that he was almost indistinguishable from his swine. Roland silently swore to ride far before he breakfasted. But he wanted sleep now, so paid for a room.

Since the rooms were full up with travelers fleeing from the north, he was forced to bed with a huge fellow who smelled of grease and too much ale.

Still, the room was dry while the ground outside was not, so Roland climbed into bed with the fellow, shoved him onto his side so that he stopped snoring, and tried to sleep.

The plan went afoul. Within two minutes the big fellow rolled back over and snored loudly in Roland’s ear. While still asleep, he wrapped a leg over Roland, then groped Roland’s breast. The man had a grip so firm it could only have come from taking endowments of brawn.

Roland whispered menacingly, “Stop that, or I’ll be leaving a severed hand in this bed in the morning.”

The big man, who had a beard so bushy that squirrels could have hidden in it, squinted at Roland through the dim firelight shining through a parchment window.

“Oh, sorry!” the big fellow apologized. “Thought you were my wife.” He rolled over and immediately began to snore.

That was some comfort. Roland had heard tales of men getting buggered under such circumstances.

Roland turned aside, letting the fellow’s backside warm his buttocks, then tried to sleep. But an hour later, the big fellow was at him again, clutching Roland’s breasts. Roland gave him a sharp elbow to the chest.

“Damn you, woman!” the fellow groaned in his sleep, rolling back over with a huff. “You’re all bones.”

Roland promised himself that tomorrow night he’d sleep with the rocks in the field.

The thought had hardly crossed his mind when he woke from a deep slumber.

He was entangled in the fellow’s arms again, arms as big as logs. His bedfellow had kissed him on the forehead.

A dim morning light shone through the window. His eyes closed, the man seemed fast asleep, breathing deeply.

“Excuse me,” Roland said, catching the man by the beard and yanking this way and that. He shoved the fellow’s head back. “I admire a man who can show affection, but please refrain from showing it to me.”

The fellow opened his bloodshot eyes and gazed at Roland for half a second. Roland expected the brute to offer an embarrassed apology.

Instead, he paled in dismay. “Borenson?” he shouted, coming fully awake. He scuttled his three hundred pounds of bulk back against the wall and huddled there quivering, as if terrified that Roland might strike. “What are you doing here?”

He was an enormous man with black hair, and a good deal of gray in his beard. Roland didn’t recognize him. But I have been asleep for twenty-one years, he thought. “Do I know you?” Roland asked, begging a name.

“Know me? You nearly killed me, though I must admit that I deserved it. I was an ass back then. But I’ve repented my ways, and I’m only half an ass now. Don’t you know me? Baron Poll!”

Roland had never met the fellow. He’s confusing me with my son, Ivarian Borenson, Roland realized, a son he’d only learned about after waking from his long sleep.

“Ah, Baron Poll!” Roland said enthusiastically, waiting for the fellow to recognize his own mistake. It didn’t seem likely that Roland’s son would look so much like him, with his flaming red hair and pale complexion. The boy’s mother was fairly dark of skin. “It’s good to see you.”

“Likewise, and I’m glad you feel that way. So, our past is forgotten? You forgive me...the theft of your purse? Everything?”

“As far as I am concerned, it’s as if we’ve never met,” Roland said.

Baron Poll suddenly seemed mystified. “You’re in a generous mood...after all those beatings I gave you. I suppose it turned you into a soldier, though. One could even say that you’re in my debt. Right?”

“Ah, the beatings,” Roland echoed, still astonished that the fellow didn’t realize his mistake. Roland knew only one thing about his son: He was a captain in the King’s Guard. “That was nothing. Of course I gave as good as I got, right?”

Baron Poll stared at Roland as if he’d gone utterly mad. Roland realized that his son really hadn’t given as good as he’d gotten. “Well...” Poll ventured suspiciously, “then I’m glad we’re reconciled. But...what are you doing down here? I thought you’d gone north to Heredon?”

“Alas, King Orden is dead,” Roland said solemnly. “Raj Ahten met him at Longmot. Thousands of our men fell in battle.”

“And the Prince?” Poll asked, his face pale.

“He is well, as far as I know,” Roland answered.

“As far as you know? But you’re his bodyguard!”

“That is why I’m in a hurry to get back to his side,” Roland said, climbing off the bed. He threw his new bearskin traveling robe over his shoulders, pulled on his heavy boots.

Baron Poll heaved his bulk up on the side of the bed, stared about dumbly. “Where’s your axe? Your bow? You aren’t traveling weaponless!”

“I am.” Roland was in a hurry to reach Heredon. He hadn’t taken the time yet to purchase weapons, had only learned last night that he might need them, as he began to meet refugees fleeing the north.

Baron Poll studied him as if he were daft. “You know that Castle Crayden fell six days ago, along with Castle Fells and the fortress at Tal Dur? And two days ago Raj Ahten destroyed Tal Rimmon, Gorlane, and Aravelle. Two hundred thousand of Raj Ahten’s men are marching on Carris and should reach it by dawn tomorrow. You’re heading weaponless into that kind of danger?”

Roland knew little about the lay of the land. Being illiterate, he could not read a map, and until now he had never been ten miles from his childhood home at the Courts of Tide, but he knew that castles Crayden and Fells defended the passes on Mystarria’s western border. He’d never heard of Tal Dur, but he knew of the castles that had been destroyed to the north.

“Can I reach Carris before they do?” Roland asked.

“Is your horse fast?”

Roland nodded. “It has an endowment of stamina and one of strength and metabolism.” It was a lordly animal, such as the king’s messengers rode. After being on the road for a week, Roland had met a horse trader and purchased the beast with money he’d inherited while he slept.

“You should easily make a hundred miles today, then,” Baron Poll said. “But the roads are like to be treacherous. Raj Ahten’s assassins are out in force.”

“Fine,” Roland said. He hoped that his mount would be up to the challenge. He turned to leave.

“Here now, you can’t go out like that,” Baron Poll said. “Take my arms and armor—whatever you want.” He nodded to a corner of the room. Baron Poll’s breastplate was propped against the wall, along with a huge axe, a sword as tall as a man, and a half-sword.

The breastplate was too wide for Roland by half, and he doubted he could even heft the tall sword well enough to use it in battle. Roland was a butcher by trade. The axe was no larger than the forty-pound cleavers that Roland had used for splitting beeves, but he doubted that he’d ever want such a clumsy weapon in a brawl. But there was the half-sword. It was not much larger than a good long knife. Still, Roland could not take such a gift by deception.

“Baron Poll,” Roland apologized, “I fear that you are mistaken. My name is Roland Borenson. I am not a member of the King’s Guard. You mistake me for my son.”

“What?” Baron Poll spat. “The Borenson I knew was a fatherless bastard. Everyone said so. We teased him mercilessly for it!”

“No man is fatherless,” Roland said. “I served as a Dedicate in the Blue Tower these past twenty-one years, giving metabolism in service of the King.”

“But everyone said you were dead! No. Wait...I remember the story better now: They said you were a common criminal, a killer, executed before your son was born!”

“Not executed,” Roland objected, “though perhaps my son’s mother might have wished it.”

“Ah, I remember the harpy well,” Baron Poll said. “As I recall, she often wished all men to death. Certainly she damned me enough.” Baron Poll suddenly blushed, as if embarrassed to pry any further. “I should have known,” he said. “You look too young. The Borenson I knew has endowments of metabolism himself, and has aged accordingly. In the past eight years, he would have aged more than twenty. If the two of you stood together, I think you would look like father and son now—though he would seem the father, and you the son.”

Roland nodded. “Now you have the way of it.”

Baron Poll’s brows drew together in thought. “You’re riding to see your son?”

“And to put myself into service to my king,” Roland answered.

“You’ve no endowments,” Poll pointed out. “You’re not a soldier. You’ll never make it to Heredon.”

“Probably not,” Roland agreed.

He headed for the door.

“Wait!” Baron Poll bellowed. “Kill yourself if you want, but don’t make it easy for them. At least take a weapon.”

“Thank you,” Roland said, as he took the half-sword. He had no belt to hold the scabbard, so he tucked it under his shirt.

Baron Poll snorted, displeased by his choice of weapons. “You’re welcome. Luck to you.”

Baron Poll got out of bed, shook Roland’s hand at the wrist. The man had a grip like a vise. Roland shook hard, as if he had endowments of brawn of his own. Years of knife work had left him with strong wrists and a fierce grip. Even after decades asleep his muscles were firm, his calluses still thick.

Roland hurried downstairs. The common room was full. Peasants fleeing south clustered at some tables, while squires who were heading north with their lords sat at others. These young men were sharpening blades or rubbing oil into leather or chain mail. A few of the lords, dressed oddly in tunics and hose and quilted undermail, were seated on stools along the bar.

The smells of fresh bread and meat were inviting enough to make Roland repent of his vow to leave here hungry. He took a vacant stool. Two knights were arguing vigorously about how much to feed a warhorse before charging into battle, and one of the men nodded at Roland, as if encouraging him to enter the fray. He wondered if the fellow knew him, or if he believed Roland was a lord because of the fine new bearskin cloak he wore, and his new tunic and pants and boots. Roland knew he was dressed like a noble. Soon he heard a squire whisper the name Borenson.

The innkeeper brought him some honeyed tea in a mustache mug, and he began to eat a loaf of rye bread, dipping it in a trencher of rich gravy thick with floating chunks of pork.

As Roland ate, he began to muse about the events of the past week. This was the second time in a week that he’d wakened to a kiss....

Seven days earlier, he’d felt a touch on his cheek—a gentle, tentative touch, as if a spider crawled over him and bolted awake, heart pounding.

He’d been startled to find himself in a dim room, lying abed at midday. The walls were of heavy stone, his mat of feathers and straw. He knew the place at once by the tang of sea air. Outside, terns and gulls cried as if in solitary lament, while huge ocean swells surged against battlements hewn from ancient rock at the base of the tower. As a Dedicate who gave metabolism, he’d slept fast for twenty years. Somehow, over the many years that he’d slept, Roland had felt those waves lashing during storms, making the whole keep shudder under their impact, endlessly wearing away the rock.

He was in the Blue Tower, a few miles east of the Courts of Tide in the Caroll Sea.

The small chamber he inhabited was surprisingly sparse in its decor, almost like a tomb: no table or chairs, no tapestry or rugs to cover the bare walls or floor. No wardrobe for clothes, or even a peg on the wall where one might hang a robe. It was not a room for a man to live in, only to sleep in for endless ages. Aside from the mattress and Roland, the small chamber held only a young woman who leapt back to the foot of the bed, beside a wash bucket. He saw her by a dim light cast from a salt-encrusted window. She was a sweet thing with an oval-shaped face, eyes of pale blue, and hair the color of straw. She wore a wreath of tiny dried violets in her hair. The touch of her long hair on his face was what had awakened him.

Her face reddened with embarrassment and she crouched back a bit on her haunches. “Pardon me,” she stammered. “Mistress Hetta bade me cleanse you.” She held up a wash rag defensively, as if to prove her good intentions.

Yet the moisture on his lips tasted not of some stale rag but of a girl’s kiss. Perhaps she had meant to cleanse him, but decided to seek more enticing diversion,

“I’ll get you some help,” she said, dropping her rag into the bucket. She half-turned from where she huddled.

Roland grabbed her wrist, quick as a mongoose taking a cobra. Because of his speed, he had been forced to give his, metabolism into the King’s service.

“How long have I slept?” he begged. His mouth felt terribly dry, and the words made his throat itch. “What year is it?”

“Year?” the young woman asked, barely fighting his grasp. He held her lightly. She could have broken away, but chose instead to stay. He caught the scent of her: clean, a hint of lilac water in her hair—or perhaps it was the dried violets. “It is the twenty-second year of the reign of Mendellas Draken Orden.”

The news did not surprise him; yet her words were like a blow. Twenty-one years. It has been twenty-one years since I gave my endowment of metabolism into the service of the King. Twenty-one years of sleeping on this cot while young women occasionally clean me or spoon broth down my throat and make sure that I still breathe

He’d given his metabolism to a young warrior, a sergeant named Drayden. In those twenty-one years, Drayden would have aged more than forty, while Roland slept and aged not a day.

It seemed but moments ago that Roland knelt before Drayden and young King Orden. The facilitators sang in birdlike voices, pressing their forcibles into his chest, calling the endowment from him. He’d felt the unspeakable pain of the forcibles, smelled flesh and the hairs of his chest begin to burn, felt the overwhelming fatigue as the facilitators drew forth his metabolism. He’d cried in pain and terror at the last, and seemingly had fallen forever.

Because Roland was now awake, he knew that Drayden was dead. If a man gave use of an attribute to a lord, then once that lord died, the attribute returned to the Dedicate. Whether Drayden had died in battle or abed, Roland could not know. But now that Roland was one of the Restored, it meant Drayden was certainly dead.

“I’ll go now,” the girl said, struggling just a bit.

Roland felt the soft hairs on her forearm. She had a pair of pimples on her face, but in time he imagined that she would become a beauty.

“My mouth is dry,” Roland said, still holding her.

“I’ll get water,” she promised. She quit struggling—as if by relinquishing she hoped he might let her go.

Roland released her wrist, but stared hard into her face. He was a handsome young man—with his long red hair tied back, a strong chin, piercing blue eyes, and a svelte, muscular body.

He asked, “Just now, when you were kissing me in my sleep, was it me, you wanted, or did you fantasize, about some other man?”

The girl shook with fright, looked to the small wooden door of Roland’s chamber, as if to make sure it was closed. She ducked her head shyly, and whispered, “You.”

Roland studied her face. A few freckles, a straight mouth, a delicate nose. He wanted to kiss her, just behind her small left ear.

To fill the silence, the girl began to chatter. “I’ve been washing you since I was ten. I...in that time, I’ve come to know your body well. There is kindness in your face, and cruelty; and beauty. I sometimes wonder what kind of man you are, and I hoped that you would awaken before I married. My name is Sera, Sera Crier. My father and mother and sisters all died in a mud slide when I was small, so now I serve here in the keep.”

“Do you even know my name?” Roland asked.

“Borenson. Roland Borenson. Everyone in the keep knows you. You are the father of a captain of the King’s Guard. Your son serves as bodyguard to Prince Gaborn.”

Roland wondered. He’d had no son that he’d ever heard of. But he’d had a young wife when he gave his endowment, though she would be getting old by now. He had not known when he’d given his metabolism that she carried a child.

He wondered if this girl spoke aright. He wondered why she was attracted to him. He asked, “You know my name. Do you also know that I am a murderer?”

The girl drew back in astonishment.

“I killed a man,” Roland admitted. He wondered why he told her that. But although the man had died twenty years ago, for him it had happened only hours ago, and the feel of the man’s guts in his hand was still fresh on his mind.

“I’m sure you had good reason.”

“I found him in bed with my wife. I slit him open like a fish, yet even as I did, I had to wonder why. Ours was an arranged marriage and a poor match by any measure. I did not care for the girl, and she hated me. Killing the man was a waste. I think I did it to hurt her. I don’t know.

“For years you have wondered what kind of man I am, Sera. Do you think you know?”

Sera Crier licked her lips. Now she began to tremble. “Any other man would have lost his head for such a deed. The King must have liked you well. Perhaps he too saw some kindness masked by your cruelty.”

“I see only waste and stupidity,” Roland answered.

“And beauty.” Sera leaned forward to kiss Roland’s lips. He turned his head a bit.

“I’ve given myself,” he said.

“To a woman who disavowed you and married someone else long, long ago....” Sera answered. Roland felt certain that she knew what she spoke of when she mentioned his wife. The news saddened him. The girl had been another butcher’s daughter and she’d had a wit sharper than her father’s knives. She’d thought him stupid, he’d thought her cruel.

“No,” he answered, feeling that she did not see the deeper truth. “I’m not given to my wife, but to my king.”

Roland sat up in his cot, gazed down at his feet. He was dressed in nothing but a tunic—a fine red cotton garment that would breathe in the moist air. Not the old work clothes he’d worn twenty-one years ago when he gave his endowment. They’d rotted away.

Sera fetched him some trousers and a pair of lambskin boots, then offered to help dress him, though he needed no help. He had never felt so completely rested.

Though today was the second time in a week that Roland had wakened to a kiss, Sera Crier’s lips had been far more desirable than Baron Poll’s.

As Roland ate, a young knight in splint mail came in through the front door. “Borenson!” he shouted in greeting. At the same instant, Baron Poll had just come down the stairs and stood at the landing. “And Baron Poll!” the fellow said in dismay.

Suddenly the room swirled in commotion. The two lords beside Roland dove to the floor. The knight at the door pulled his sword, ringing from its scabbard. The squires in the corner shouted variations of “Fight!”

“Blood feud!” One of the lads flipped a table over and hid behind it as a barricade. A girl who was serving the peasants threw a basket filled with bread loaves into the air and ran for the buttery shrieking, “Baron Poll and Sir Borenson are in the same room!” The innkeeper ran out from the kitchens, face pale, as if hoping to rescue his furniture.

Everywhere Roland glanced, he saw frightened faces.

Baron Poll just stood on the landing, studying the scene, an amused smile playing on his lips.

Roland enjoyed the joke. He furrowed his brow, drew the half-sword, and eyed Baron Poll menacingly. Then he chopped a loaf of bread in half and plunged the sword tip into the counter, so that it stood there quivering.

“It appears the stool beside me has been vacated, Baron Poll,” Roland said. “Perhaps you will join me for breakfast.”

“Why, thank you,” Baron Poll said courteously. He waddled over to the stool, sat down, took half the loaf, dipped it in Roland’s trencher.

The whole crowd gaped in wonder. Roland thought, They’d not look more astonished if Baron Poll and I were a pair of toads flying about the room like hummingbirds, chasing flies with long tongues.

Horrified, the young knight exclaimed, “But you’re not to be within fifty leagues of each other—by the King’s own command!”

“True, but last night, by mere happenstance, Borenson and I were thrust into the same cot,” Baron Poll replied contentedly. “And I must say, I’ve never had a more cordial bedfellow.”

“Nor I,” Roland offered. “Not many a man could warm your backside as well as Baron Poll. The man is as big as a horse and as hot as a smithy’s forge. Why, I suspect he could warm a whole village at night. You could fry fish on his feet or bake bricks on his back.”

Everyone stared at them as if they were daft, so Roland and Baron Poll loudly discussed such mundane topics as the weather, how the recent rains had aggravated the gout that Poll’s mother-in-law suffered from; the best way, to cook venison, and so on.

Everyone watched them warily, as if at any moment the truce might break, and the two men would go at it with knives.

Finally, Borenson slapped Baron Poll on the back, went outside into the early morning light. The village of Hay was aptly named. Haycocks stood everywhere in the fields, and black-eyed Susans grew huge so late in the summer. The margin of the road out of town was a riot of yellows and deep browns. The countryside was flat, and the grass had grown tall in the summer, but now was sun-bleached white and dying.

At the front of the inn, the pigs had wisely fled. A couple of red hens pecked in the dirt by Roland’s feet. Roland waited while a stableboy went to fetch his horse.

He stood looking up into the hazy sky. The air was moist with wisps of morning fog. Volcanic ash drifted in the mist like flakes of warm snow.

Baron Poll came out, stood with him a moment, staring up and stroking his beard. “There’s mischief in this volcano blowing, and powerful magic,” he predicted. “Raj Ahten has flameweavers in his retinue, I hear. I wonder if they’re mixed up in this?”

Roland thought it unlikely that the flameweavers had anything to do with the volcano. It had blown far to the south, and Raj Ahten’s soldiers were converging on Carris a hundred miles north. Still, it seemed ominous.

“What is this about the King’s command?” Roland asked. “Why are you not to get within fifty leagues of my son?”

“Ah, it’s nothing.” Baron Poll grinned with embarrassment. “Old news. I’d tell you the story, but you’ll hear some minstrel sing of it soon enough, I imagine. They get most of it right.” Baron Poll sheepishly glanced at the ground and wiped some fallen ash from his cloak. “I’ve lived in mortal terror of your boy these past ten years.” Roland wondered what his son would have done if he’d wakened in this man’s arms. “But dark times can make even the worst of enemies into friends, eh?” Baron Poll said. “And men can change, can’t they? Wish your son well for me, if you find him.”

His expression begged Roland for forgiveness, and Roland would have been happy to give it to him, but he could not speak for his son. “I’ll do so,” Roland promised.

Far down the dirt road to the south, fifty knights were racing north, the hooves of their chargers thundering over the earth.

“Perhaps your road north won’t be so dangerous after all,” Baron Poll said. “But mark my word. Beware of Carris.

“Aren’t you coming north? I thought you’d ride with me.”

“Pah,” Baron Poll spat. “I’m going the wrong way south. I have a summer estate outside Carris, so my wife wanted me to remove a few valuables before Raj Ahten’s men looted the place. I’m helping the servants guard the wagon.”

That seemed cowardly, but Roland said nothing.

“Aye,” Baron Poll said. “I know what you’re thinking. But they’ll have to fight without me at Carris. I had two endowments of metabolism until last fall when some of my Dedicates got slain. I’m feeling too old and fat for a real battle. My armor fits me no better than would my wife’s undergarments.”

Those words had come hard. The Baron did want to go north and fight.

“We could skirt this battle at Carris,” Roland suggested, “and find one more to your liking. Why don’t you come with me?”

“Hah!” Baron Poll guffawed. “Eight hundred miles to Heredon? If you’re not worried for your own health, or mine, at least you could show pity to my poor horse!”

“Let your servants haul off your treasures. They don’t need you guarding them.”

“Ah, my wife would give me such a tongue-lashing—the shrew! Better to anger Raj Ahten than her.”

A maid came out of the inn and expertly grabbed one of the hens that had been pecking in the dust. She snatched it by the neck. “You’ll be coming with me. Lord Collins-ward wants your company for breakfast.” She wrung the chicken’s neck and was already pulling off feathers when she carried the hen round back.

In moments, the knights from the south reached the village, wheeled their horses toward the stable. Apparently they hoped to rest, get some news, and care for their mounts.

When the stableboy brought Roland’s horse around, he mounted, gave the boy a small coin. The filly was well rested, frolicky. She was a huge red beast with a blaze of white on her hooves and forehead. She acted ready for a brisk run in the cool morning air. Roland took off along the road, through a field shrouded with mist that soon turned into a low fog.

Roland sniffed at the smell of volcanic ash, searching the scent for signs of danger. On the road north ahead was Raj Ahten’s army—an army said to contain sorcerers and Invincibles and frowth giants and fierce dogs of war.

He could not help think how unfair life could be. That poor chicken back at the inn hadn’t had a second’s warning before it died.

Moments later, while Roland was preoccupied with such grim thoughts, the sound of a horse riding hard startled him.

He glanced behind, worried that it might be a robber or assassin. He was riding through a thick fog, and could not see a hundred feet ahead.

Spurring his mount off the road, he reached for his halfsword just as a huge shape came thundering from the mist behind him.

Baron Poll bounced up on his horse. “Well met!” the fat knight cried, sitting precariously on his charger. The beast looked about with a terrified demeanor, eyes wide and ears back, as if afraid its master would give it a good cuffing.

“Aren’t you going south with your treasures?” Roland asked.

“Damn the treasures. The servants can abscond with them for all I care! Let them take that shrew of a wife, too!” Baron Poll bellowed. “You were right. It’s better to die young with the blood hot in your veins, than to die old and slowly of being too fat!”

“I never said that,” Roland objected.

“Pah! Your eyes said it all, lad.”

Roland sheathed his sword. “Well, now that my eyes are so eloquent, perhaps I’ll give my unruly tongue a rest” With that, he wheeled his horse into the mist.

3 Hostenfest

Myrrima woke at dawn with tears in her eyes. She wiped them away and lay wondering at the strange sense of melancholy that had overwhelmed her each dawn for the past three days. She did not know for certain why she woke crying.

She should not have felt this way. It was the last day of Hostenfest, the day of the great feast—and it should have been the happiest day of the year.

Moreover, in the past few weeks, she had won several small victories. Instead of sleeping in her shack outside Bannisferre, she had wakened in her room in the King’s Tower at Castle Sylvarresta. Over the past three days, she’d become a close friend to young Queen Iome Orden, and she’d married a knight with some wealth. Her sisters and her mother were here in the castle, living in the Dedicate’s Keep, where they would be taken care of for life.

She should have been happy. Yet she felt as if the hand of doom weighed on her.

Outside her window, she could hear the King’s facilitators chanting out in the Dedicates’ Keep. Over the past week, thousands of people had offered to dedicate their attributes into the service of the Earth King. Though Gaborn was an Oath-Bound Lord and had sworn not to take a man’s brawn or wit or stamina unless it was freely given, and those had been freely offered, he still had not taken a single endowment. Some feared that he had forsaken the practice altogether; yet he did not forbid his knights to take endowments.

King Gaborn Val Orden seemed to have an endless supply of forcibles, and for the past week, the chief facilitator had worked with his apprentices night and day, doling out endowments to Heredon’s knights, trying to rebuild the kingdom’s decimated troops. Still, the Dedicate’s Keep was only half full.

A soft knocking came from Myrrima’s door, and she rolled over on the satin sheets of her bed, glanced out through a window of the oriel. The morning light barely glowed through the stained-glass image on the window mourning doves winging through a blue sky, as seen through a screen of ivy. She realized that the low knocking had wakened her.

“Who’s there?”

“Tis I,” Borenson said.

Throwing back the sheets, she leapt up, rushed to the door, and yanked it open. He stood in the doorway, a lamp in his hands, its small flame wavering in the drafty castle. He looked huge there in the darkness, grinning like a boy with a joke to tell. His blue eyes twinkled, and his red beard fanned out from his face.

“You don’t need to knock,” she laughed. They’d been married now for four days, though he’d run off and spent the last three on a hunt. Worse, they had never consummated their marriage, and Myrrima had to wonder at him.

Sir Borenson seemed smitten enough by her, but when she’d thought to bed him on her honeymoon night, he’d merely said, “How can a man take such pleasures, while tonight he will hunt in the Dunnwood?”

Myrrima was inexperienced with men. She did not know if it was right to feel so hurt by his rejection. She’d wondered if he really was overexcited by the hunt, if that was natural, or if he had a war wound that kept him from showing affection. Perhaps Borenson had married her only because Gaborn had suggested it.

For days she had felt hurt and bewildered, and had longed for Borenson’s return. Now he was home.

“I was afraid you’d be deeply asleep,” he said.

He stepped forward, ventured a small kiss, holding the lamp far out to his side. She took the lamp from him and set it on a trunk. “Not like that,” she said. “We’re married.” She grabbed him by the beard and pulled him down, kissed him roughly, leading him toward the bed. She hoped that by now he might have settled down.

Almost immediately she regretted it. He was covered in dirt, and his ring mail was caked with mud. It would take someone hours to get her bedclothes clean.

“Ah, that will have to wait.” Borenson grinned. “But not too long, of course. Just until I get cleaned up.”

She stared up into his face. The melancholy she’d felt only moments before had dissipated completely. “Go wash, then.”

“Not quite yet,” Borenson chortled. “I’ve got something to show you.”

“You killed me a boar for Hostenfest?” she laughed.

“No boars this Hostenfest,” he answered. “The hunt didn’t go as anticipated.”

“Well, I suppose the lords at the table could make do with a rabbit,” she teased. “Though I shan’t want anything smaller. I never have developed a taste for field mice.”

Borenson smiled mysteriously. “Come on. Hurry.” He went to her wardrobe and pulled down a simple blue dress. Myrrima threw off her nightclothes, pulled on the dress, and began to tie the laces of the bodice. Borenson watched, delighted to be entertained by his new bride. She pulled on some shoes and in moments he had her rushing down the steps of the keep, trying to catch up.

“The hunt didn’t go well,” Borenson said, taking her hand. “We had some casualties.”

She wondered at that. There were still black-furred nomen prowling in the woods, and frowth giants. Raj Ahten had fled south from here more than a week ago, abandoning those troops that were too tired to flee. She wondered how the lords had been killed. “Casualties?

He nodded, unwilling to say more.

In moments they reached the cobblestone street. The morning air carried a keen cold bite, and Myrrima’s breath fogged. Borenson hurried her through the portcullis of the King’s Gate, rushing down Market Street to the city gate. There, just beyond the drawbridge, beside the moat, a huge crowd was gathering.

The fields before Castle Sylvarresta were full of bright pavilions that sprawled like a city of canvas. In the past week, another four hundred thousand peasants and nobles from Heredon and kingdoms beyond had gathered here, come to see the Earth King, Gaborn Val Orden. The fields were becoming an endless maze of tents and animals, enough so that now the tents covered nearby hills, and whole towns were springing up on the plains to the south and west.

Everywhere, merchants and vendors were setting up booths, creating impromptu markets among the host. The scent of cooking sausages hung over the throng, and because this was a feast day, hundreds of minstrels were already warming up their lutes and harps under every tree.

Four peasant boys ahead were singing so badly to pipes and lutes that Myrrima didn’t know if they were serious or if they simply mocked others’ poor efforts.

Borenson nudged aside some peasants and chased away a couple of mastiffs so that Myrrima could see what was at the crowd’s center.

What she saw revolted her: a lump of gray flesh as huge as a wagon lay on the grass, the eyeless head of a reaver. Its feelers hung like dead worms around the back of its skull, and the rows of crystalline teeth looked terrifying as they caught the morning sun. The thing was dirty, having been dragged for many miles. Yet beneath that grime, along the forehead, she could see runes tattooed into the monster’s horrible flesh—runes of power that glowed even now like dim flames. Every child in Rofehavan knew the meaning of those facial runes.

This was no common reaver. It was a mage.

Myrrima’s heart pounded as if it were trying to batter its way out of her chest. She found herself breathing hard, feeling faint. She went suddenly cold, and stood letting the heat of strangers’ bodies warm her while the mastiffs sniffed at the reaver’s head and wagged the stumps of their tails nervously.

“A reaver mage?” she asked dully. No one had killed a reaver mage in Heredon in over sixteen hundred years. She studied the thing’s head. The monster could have bitten a warhorse in half. Or a man.

Peasants tittered; children reached out to touch the horrible thing.

“We caught her in the Dunnwood, down in some old duskin ruins, far underground. She had her mates and offspring there, so we killed them all and crushed her eggs.”

“How many died?” Myrrima asked, dazed.

Borenson did not immediately answer. “Forty-one good knights,” he said at last. “They fought well. It was a fierce battle.” He added as modestly as he could, “I killed the mage myself.”

She wheeled on him, full of rage. “How could you do this?”

Surprised by her reaction, he sputtered, “It wasn’t easy, I confess. The mage gave me a hard time of it. She seemed loath to lose her head.”

Suddenly she saw it all clearly: why she had wakened every morning full of melancholy, why she could hardly sleep nights. She was terrified. She’d sought to wed a man for his wealth, and instead had fallen in love. Meanwhile, her husband seemed more interested in getting himself killed than in making love to her.

She turned and stalked off through the crowd, shoving away bystanders, pushing toward the castle gate, blinded by tears.

Borenson hurried after her, caught her at the foot of the drawbridge and turned her with one big hand. “What are you so mad about?”

The sound of his voice was so loud that it startled a fish down in the reeds of the moat. The water swirled as something large swam away. A throng of people heading into the castle made way for Borenson and Myrrima, skirting them as if they were islands in a stream.

She turned up to face him. “I’m mad because you’re leaving me.”

“Of course I’m leaving you in a few days,” he said. “But not by choice.”

Borenson had killed King Sylvarresta, and Myrrima knew that it shamed him, despite the fact that Sylvarresta had given an endowment to Raj Ahten, lending wit to the Wolf Lord. Though Sylvarresta had been a good man, one who had only given his endowment under duress, the truth was that in such a horrible war as this, friend could not spare friend. Brother could not spare brother.

By granting an endowment of wit to Raj Ahten, King Sylvarresta had made himself an enemy to every just man, and Borenson had felt bound by duty to take the life of his old friend.

Once the deed was done, the King’s daughter, Iome, was loath to punish Borenson, but neither could she forgive him. So in the name of justice she’d lain a quest upon Borenson, commanded him to perform an Act Penitent to go to the lands beyond Inkarra and find the legendary Daylan Hammer, the Sum of All Men, and bring him back here to Heredon to help fight Raj Ahten.

It seemed a fool’s quest. Though rumor said he lived, Daylan Hammer could not still be alive after sixteen centuries. Sir Borenson seemed loath to go, when he saw better ways to protect his people. Still, he was bound by honor to depart—and he’d do so soon.

“I don’t want to go,” Borenson said. “I have to.”

“It’s a long way to Inkarra. A long way for a man to travel alone. I could come with you.”

“No!” Borenson insisted. “You can’t. You’d never make it alive.”

“What makes you think you will?” Myrrima asked. She knew the answer. He was a captain in the King’s Guard, with endowments of brawn and stamina and metabolism. If any man alive could make it through the enemy territories, Borenson could.

Inkarra was a dangerous place: a strange land where northerners weren’t tolerated. Neither he nor Myrrima could blend in easily: the Inkarrans all had skin as pale as ivory, with straight hair the color of silver. Borenson and Myrrima couldn’t disguise themselves enough to hide their foreign birth.

For the most part, the Inkarrans were a nocturnal people. By day, they spent much of their time at home or in the shadowed woods so evading them would be nearly impossible. And if Borenson were captured, he’d be forced to fight in their dark arena.

In order to stay alive, he’d have to travel secretly at night, as best he could, never risking contact with the Inkarrans.

He said, “I can’t take you. You would slow me down, get us both killed.”

“I don’t like this,” Myrrima said. “I don’t like the idea of your going off alone.” A vendor pulling a handcart moved close, and Myrrima stepped from his path, dragging Borenson with her.

“Neither do I, but you can’t believe for a moment that you could help me.”

Myrrima shook her head, and a tear splashed down her cheek. “I told you about my father,” she said. He’d been a fairly wealthy merchant who had apparently been robbed and killed and then had his shop burned down around him to cover the crime. “I sometimes wonder if I could have saved him. On the night he was killed, he was not the wealthiest merchant in Bannisferre, or the most feeble. But he was alone. Perhaps if I had been with him...”

“If you had been with him, you too might be dead,” Borenson said.

“Perhaps,” she Whispered. “But sometimes I think I’d rather be dead than live without knowing if I could have been of help.” Borenson stared hard at her. “I admire your loyalty, I cherish it. But the worst day of my life came last week when I learned that you had ridden to Longmot, hoping to join me in battle. I want you to sleep by my side, not fight by my side—even though you have a warrior’s heart.” He kissed her tenderly.

For just a moment their eyes met. She held his outstretched hand. A plea.

“If I cannot come with you,” she said, “I will not be happy until you return.”

Borenson smiled and leaned his forehead against hers, kissed her nose. “Let us agree, then. Neither of us will be happy until I return.”

He held her for a long moment, letting the crowd of peasants heading for the castle stroll past.

Behind her, she heard a couple of men talking. “Chose that whore Bonny Cleads, he did, not half an hour ago! Why would the Earth King Choose someone like her?”

“He says he Chooses those what love their fellow men,” a fellow said, “and I don’t know of no one that’s loved more of ’em than she.”

Myrrima felt Borenson stiffen in her arms as his attention focused on the peasants. Though he bridled to hear such criticism of the King, he did not challenge the men.

Myrrima heard a shout and a splash, as if someone had thrown something into the moat, but paid it no mind until Borenson pulled his head back from her and turned away.

She looked to see what had caught his eye. Four young men stood on the levee, looking down into the moat, about a hundred yards upstream. They were perched on a small rise, beneath an enormous willow.

The sun was bright and the skies clear. An early morning mist rose off the dark waters. As Myrrima watched, a huge fish came up to the surface of the moat and swam about lazily. One boy hurled a spear at it, but the fish darted nimbly forward and dove again.

“Hey,” Borenson shouted as if angry. “What are you boys doing?”

One lad, a thin boy with straw for hair and a triangle for a face, said, “Catching a sturgeon for Hostenfest. Some big ones swam into the moat this morning.”

Even as he spoke, an enormous fish some six or eight feet long rose to the surface and began finning, whirling about in strange patterns. It ignored a duckling that nosed about in some nearby reeds. The huge fish did not seem to be hunting for a meal. One lad readied a spear.

“Stop—in the name of the King!” Borenson commanded. Myrrima had to smile to hear him appropriate the name of the King.

The spear-bearing lad looked at Borenson as if he were mad. “But never has such a huge fish swum into the moat,” he said.

“Go get the King—now!” Borenson commanded. “And the wizard Binnesman, too! Tell them it’s urgent, that there are some exceeding strange fish in the moat.” The boy looked longingly at the sturgeon, spear poised at his shoulder. “Do it now!” Borenson roared. “Or, I swear I’ll gut you where you stand.”

The boy glanced back and forth between Borenson and the fish, then threw down his spear and ran for the castle.

By the time. Gaborn reached the moat, holding hands with his wife Iome while the wizard Binnesman walked behind, a great crowd of peasants had gathered at its banks. They seemed both perplexed and angry to have a knight standing there protecting the enormous sturgeons that swam not twenty feet from shore. There was much grumbling about how the fish were “good enough for the King’s belly, but not for ours.”

Borenson had been gathering information about the fish for several minutes. Nine sturgeons had been spotted at dawn, swimming into the moat from the Wye River. Now all nine fish finned at the surface, just outside the castle wall, performing a strange and sinuous dance.

Iome came and stood with Myrrima, smiling radiantly to have her husband home. Gaborn’s and Iome’s Days followed at their backs.

“You look well,” Myrrima said. “In fact, you are glowing.” It was true.

Iome only smiled at the remark. In the past few days, Iome had invited Myrrima to dine with her at every meal, as if Myrrima were some woman born to the court. Myrrima felt odd and apprehensive about such behavior, as if she were merely pretending to be a gentleman’s wife, though Iome seemed in every respect to be genuinely pleased by Myrrima’s company.

Iome’s Maid of Honor, Chemoise, had departed this week to an uncle’s holding in the north. For six years, Iome and Chemoise had been constant companions. But now that Iome was married, she no longer required a Maid of Honor to constantly remain in her presence. Still, Myrrima wondered if Iome craved a woman’s company. Certainly Iome had sought to befriend her easily enough.

Iome kissed Myrrima’s cheek and smiled in greeting. “You look well, too. What is the excitement all about?”

“Big fish, I guess,” Myrrima said. “I think our lords and knights are all still boys at heart.”

“Indeed, our husbands are acting oddly today,” Iome said, and Myrrima merely laughed, for both of them had been married only four days past, and neither she nor Iome were used to speaking of “our husbands.”

In moments young King Orden knelt beside the moat, a dark-haired, blue-eyed young man squinting into the depths beside the pink water lilies. The Earth Warden Binnesman followed, wearing his wizard’s robes in shades of scarlet and russet.

When Gaborn saw the fish, he stared in frank amazement, then sat down on his haunches, watching the fish as they wheeled and dove.

“Water wizards?” Gaborn asked. “Here in the moat?”

“That’s what it looks like,” Borenson said.

“What do you mean, ‘water wizards’?” Iome asked Gaborn. “They’re fish.”

The Earth Warden Binnesman gave Iome a patient look as he stroked his grizzled beard. “Don’t assume that one must be human to be a wizard. The Powers often favor beasts. Harts and foxes and bears often learn a few magical spells to help them hide in the woods or walk quietly. And these fish look as if they are quite powerful.”

Gaborn beamed at Iome. “You asked me just the other day if my father had brought any water wizards for our betrothal, and now Heredon surprises me with a few of its own.”

Iome grinned like a child and squeezed Myrrima’s hand.

Myrrima stared at the fish, marveling. There were rumors of ancient fish up at the headwaters of the Wye, magical fish that no man could catch. She wondered what they were doing here.

Iome asked, “But even if the Powers do favor them, what good can they do us? We can’t speak to them.”

“Perhaps we cannot communicate well,” Binnesman said. “But Gaborn can listen to them.” Gaborn glanced up at the wizard, as if surprised that the Earth Warden thought him capable of the feat. “Use the Earth Sight,” Binnesman told him. “That’s what it’s for.”

Behind them a crowd of children and onlookers gathered. Several large boys had now brought fishing nets from the banks of the river, and others had gathered spears and bows, hoping to make a meal of the sturgeons, if the King would allow it. They seemed a bit forlorn at the prospect of missing a meal.

Now that the sun had risen a bit more, slanting in, Myrrima could see the huge sturgeons easily enough, their dark blue backs. They were circling near the surface, their fins slicing through the water as they swam about in curious patterns. To a casual observer, it might have appeared that they were finning the surface like salmon, preparing to spawn.

“What has happened to the water here in the moat since this began?” Gaborn wondered aloud.

“The level of the moat is rising,” Binnesman said. “I’d say that it has come up at least a foot this morning.” He climbed down to the edge of the moat and dipped his fingers in. “And the water here has become much clearer. The sediment is settling out of it.”

One fish swam a lazy S, then dipped below the surface and rose again, just so, to put a single dot at the end, then slashed through it. Gaborn traced the pattern with his finger.

“See there,” Binnesman said, pointing at the sturgeon. “That fish is making runes of protection.”

Gaborn said, “I see it. It’s a simple water rune that my father taught me as a child. What do you think they want protection from?”

“I don’t know,” Binnesman said, staring deeply, as if to read the answer in a sturgeon’s eye. “Why don’t you ask them?”

“In a moment,” Gaborn promised. “I’ve never tried to use my Earth Sight on an animal before. Let me gather my thoughts first.”

Some deep-green dragonflies buzzed past, and Myrrima and Iome stood hand in hand for several long moments, studying the runes that the fish drew. Myrrima noticed that each sturgeon had taken an area free of reeds and lily pads.

Gaborn and Binnesman, meanwhile, discussed the meaning of the runes. One sturgeon kept tracing runes of protection next to some cattails. Gaborn said that another drew runes of purity near the center of the pond—a rune to cleanse the water. A third was sketching runes that Binnesman recognized as runes of healing. Over and over again.

Farther away, a fish was moving in the depths of the moat, tracing runes that neither Gaborn nor Binnesman had ever seen before. Even Gaborn, a king raised in the Courts of Tide where water wizards were common, could not divine the purpose for all the runes. But Binnesman ventured a guess that the rune would make the water colder.

“Do you think the water really is much colder?” Iome whispered to Myrrima.

“I’ll see,” Myrrima said. She climbed down and touched the water, too, though no one else on the shore dared. Binnesman was right. It was bitterly cold, as cold and fresh as the deepest of mountain pools. And the shoreline in the moat was indeed higher than it had been this past week.

Myrrima nodded to Iome. “It’s freezing!”

Gaborn climbed down to a huge flat rock by Myrrima, leaned out over the glassy surface of the moat and began to trace runes on the water, simple runes of protection. He was mirroring the actions of the sturgeon.

A great sturgeon swam up, just under his hand, its dark blue back close to Gaborn. Its gills expanded and contracted rhythmically as it studied him, watching his fingers as if they were something edible. The fish was tantalizingly close to Myrrima.

“That’s right. I’ll protect you if I can,” Gaborn whispered to the fish in an easy tone. “Tell me, what do you fear?”

He continued drawing the runes, stared into the fish’s eyes, and into its mind, for long minutes. He frowned as if what he saw confused him. “I see darkness in the water,” he murmured. “I see darkness, and I taste metal. I can feel...strangulation. I can taste...metal. Redness coming.”

The young King stopped speaking, almost seemed to stop breathing. His eyes lost their focus and rolled back in his head.

“King Orden,” Binnesman called, but Gaborn did not move.

Myrrima wondered if she should grab Gaborn to keep him from falling in, but Binnesman climbed down to the water’s edge and touched his shoulder.

“What?” Gaborn asked, rousing from his stupor. He leaned on the flat rock.

“What is it they fear?” Binnesman asked.

“They fear blood, I think,” Gaborn said. “They fear that the river will fill with blood.”

Binnesman drew his staff up tight against his chest and frowned, shaking his head in dismay.

“I can’t believe that. There is no sign of an army approaching, and it would take a great battle to fill the river with blood. Raj Ahten is far away. But something odd is happening,” he said. “I’ve felt it all night. The Earth is in pain. I feel the pain like pinpricks on my flesh north of here, in North Crowthen, and again far to the south. It trembles in far places, and there are slow movements even here, beneath our very feet.”

Gaborn tried to make light of it.. “Still, it comforts me to have these wizards here in our moat.” He turned and addressed the crowd of boys with their spears and bows and nets. “Let no man fish in this moat or foul its waters in any way. Let no one swim in it. These wizards will stay as our guests.”

Gaborn asked Binnesman, “Can we seal the moat off from the river?.”

Myrrima knew it should not be hard. A small diversion dam upriver let water spill into the canal that fed the moat.

“Of course,” Binnesman said. He glanced about. “You, Daffyd and Hugh, go close the raceway. And hurry.”

Two stalwart boys ran upstream, elbows and shirttails flying.

Myrrima watched the wizard draw himself to his full height, look up at the early morning sun.

She held her breath, strained to listen as Binnesman spoke. “Milord,” he said so softly that most of those nearby could not have heard. “The earth is speaking to us. It speaks sometimes in the movements of birds and animals, sometimes in the crash of stone. But it is speaking nonetheless. I do not know what it is saying, but I don’t like this business of rivers filled with blood.”

Gaborn nodded. “What would you have me do?”

“Raj Ahten had a powerful pyromancer in his retinue, before you killed her,” Binnesman said thoughtfully. “Yet I’m sure that whole forests are still being sacrificed to the powers that the flameweavers served.”

“Yes,” Gaborn said.

“I would not speak of plans that I want held secret now in open daylight. Nor would I do so before a fire, not even so much as a candle flame. Hold your councils by starlight if you must. Or better yet, in a darkened hall of stone, where the Earth can shield your words.”

Myrrima knew that powerful flameweavers sometimes claimed that if they listened to the whispering tongues of flames, they could clearly hear words spoken by others of their ilk hundreds of miles away. Yet Myrrima had never seen a flameweaver who could really perform such feats.

“All right,” Gaborn agreed. “We will hold our councils in the Great Hall, and I will have no fires lit therein throughout the winter. And I shall pass orders that no man is to discuss military strategies or secrets with another by daylight or firelight.”

“That should do,” Binnesman said.

With that, the King and Iome and their Days’ and Binnesman went over to see the reaver’s head, then walked back up to the castle. Borenson stayed behind for a few moments and posted some lads beside the moat, charging them to care for the fish.

Myrrima stood by and wondered. During the past week, much in her life had changed. But Binnesman’s warning to Gaborn hinted of dire portents. Rivers of blood. With the hundreds of thousands of people camped around the city of Sylvarresta, it seemed as if the whole earth were flocking to Heredon, to the courts of the Earth King. Whatever change was coming, she stood near the center of it all.

She climbed up the levee and stood looking out over the vast throng, over the pavilions that had risen up here in the past week. Dust was rising to the south and west, from the numerous travelers moving on the road. Last night, Myrrima had heard that merchant princes had come from as far away as Lysle.

The whole earth shall gather here, Myrrima realized. An Earth King’s powers are legendary and are given only in the darkest of times. Every person in every land who wants to live will come here. There are reavers in the Dunnwood and wizards in the moat. Soon there will be enough people to bleed rivers of blood.

That knowledge made her feel small and helpless, worried for the future. And now that Borenson was leaving, she knew she wouldn’t be able to rely on him.

I must prepare for whatever is to come, Myrrima thought.

Myrrima walked with Borenson back up to the castle. She stopped on the drawbridge for a few moments and watched the great fish finning in the moat. She felt relieved by their presence. Water wizards were strong in the arts of healing and protection.

That morning, Myrrima finished breakfast in the King’s Tower, with only King Gaborn and Queen Iome and their Days in the room. Though Myrrima was becoming friends with Iome, she still felt uncomfortable to be dining in the presence of the King.

Indeed, the meal was filled with uncomfortable silences: Gaborn and Borenson refused to discuss their hunt over the past three days, saying very little at all. Gaborn also had received disturbing news out of Mystarria, and all morning long he looked haunted, somber, withdrawn.

They were nearly finished with breakfast when the elderly Chancellor Rodderman came to the door of the dining hall, looking resplendent with his white beard combed and wearing his black coat of office. “Milord, milady,” he said. “The Duke of Groverman is waiting in the alcove and has requested an audience.”

Iome looked at Rodderman wearily. “Is it important? I haven’t seen my husband in three days.”

“I don’t know, but he’s been skulking out here for half an hour,” Rodderman said.

“Skulking?” Iome laughed. “Well, we mustn’t have him skulking.” Though Iome smiled at Rodderman’s choice of words, Myrrima sensed that she did not much care for the Duke.

Presently, the Duke entered the room. He was a short man with gangling limbs, a hatchet face, and dark eyes that were set so close he looked nothing short of ugly. In a family of warriors and nobles, he seemed out of place. Myrrima had heard it rumored that a stable mucker had sired the Duke.

In honor of Hostenfest, Groverman was wearing a gorgeous robe of black embroidered with dark green leaves. His hair was freshly combed, his graying beard expertly trimmed so that it forked from his chin. For an ugly man, he groomed and dressed well.

“Your Highnesses” the Duke smiled graciously and bowed low “I hope I did not disturb your meal?”

Myrrima realized that Groverman had asked Rodderman to wait until the King and Queen finished eating before notifying them of his presence.

“Not at all,” Gaborn said. “It was kind of you to wait so patiently.”

“Truly, I have a matter that I think is somewhat urgent,” the Duke said, “though others might not agree.” He looked pointedly at Iome. Myrrima wondered what he might mean by such a warning. Even Iome seemed baffled. “I’ve brought you a wedding gift, Your Highness—if I may be so bold.”

Over the past few days, every lord in the kingdom had been plying the new King and Queen with wedding gifts; some were expensive gifts that would hopefully curry favor. Most of the lords had brought sons or trusted retainers to help rebuild the lists of the King’s Guard. Such sons served quadruple duty: they not only rebuilt the King’s army, but they also served as a constant reminder to the King of a lord’s loyalty. A trusted son at court could seek favors for his father, or serve as his spy. Last of all, it allowed the boy himself to form new alliances with other nobles who might live in far corners of the kingdom, or even in other nations.

Over the past three days the ranks of new soldiers had filled so quickly that it looked as if Gaborn would not even have to levy his subjects for more troops, despite the fact that Raj Ahten had decimated the King’s Guard. Instead, it seemed to Myrrima that Gaborn would have problems finding posts for all of his new soldiers to fill.

“So,” Iome asked. “What gift have you brought that is so urgent?”

Groverman got to the point. “This is a somewhat delicate matter,” he said. “As you know, I’ve not been blessed with sons or daughters, else I’d offer one of them into your service. But I have brought you a gift that is just as dear to my heart.”

He clapped his hands and looked expectantly toward the dining hall’s door.

A boy came through, walking with arms outstretched. In each hand he held a yellow pup by the scruff of the neck. The pups looked about dolefully, with huge brown eyes. Myrrima was not familiar with the breed. They were not mastiffs or any form of war dog. Nor were they hounds or the type of hunters she was familiar with, or the lap dogs popular with ladies in colder climes.

They could have even been mongrels, except that both pups had a uniform color—tawny short hair on the back, and a bit of white at the throat.

The boy, a ten-year-old in heavy leather trousers, and a new coat, was as clean and well groomed as Duke Groverman. He handed a pup each to Gaborn and Iome.

One little bundle of fur smelled the grease from the morning’s sausages on Gaborn’s hand. The pup’s wet tongue began to slide over Gaborn’s fingers, and the dog nibbled at him playfully. Gaborn ruffled the pup’s ears, turned it over to see if it was male or female. It was a male. It wagged its tail fiercely and scrambled upright, as if intent on doing damage to Gaborn’s fingers. A real fighter.

He studied the creature. “Thank you,” Gaborn said, taken aback. “But I’m not familiar with this breed. What do you do with them?”

Myrrima glanced at Iome, to see the Queen’s reaction to her pup, and was astonished. There was such a glare of rage in her eyes that she could barely contain herself.

The Duke had not missed her look. “Hear me out,” he said to Gaborn. “I do not offer these pups lightly, Your Highness. You have taken endowments from men, and I know that as an Oath-Bound Lord you feel some reluctance in doing so. Indeed, though many have offered to serve as your Dedicates this past week, neither you nor the Queen has taken endowments. Yet we must prepare for whatever is to come.”

Myrrima was startled to hear Groverman repeat aloud the thought that had been preying upon her but an hour before.

“It’s a grave decision,” Gaborn agreed. His eyes were haunted, full of pain. Myrrima had agreed to take endowments of glamour and wit from her sisters and mother. She understood the price of guilt that came from committing such an atrocity.

“I will not take another man’s strength or stamina or wit lightly,” the King said. “But I have been considering whether to do it, for the welfare of the kingdom.”

“I understand,” Groverman said honestly. “But I ask milord, milady, to consider the propriety of taking endowments from a dog.”

Iome stiffened. “Duke Groverman,” she hissed, “this is an outrage!”

The Duke looked about nervously. Now Myrrima recognized the breed. Although she had never seen such pups, she had heard of them. These were pups raised for endowments—dogs strong of stamina, strong of nose.

“Is it any less of an outrage to take endowments from a man?” Groverman countered defensively. “It takes the endowments of scent from fifty men to equal one from a dog, they say. I believe that my pups’ noses are a hundred times better than a common man’s nose. So I ask you, which is better, to take endowments of scent from a hundred men, or from one dog?

“As for stamina, these pups are bred for toughness. For a thousand generations, the Wolf Lords have fought them in the pits, so that only the strongest survive. Ounce for ounce, no man alive can provide you a better source of stamina.

“Metabolism and hearing too can be gained from such dogs, though I fear my pups are too small to give brawn. And whereas a man must give an endowment willingly and therefore can often fail to transfer an attribute completely, if you feed these pups and play with them for a day or two, they will develop such an undying devotion to you that their attributes can be transferred without loss. No other animal loves man as completely, will give themselves to you as wholly as these pups.”

Iome looked so furious, she could not speak. To take endowments from a dog was considered an abomination. Some high-minded kings would have thrown the Duke into the nearest moat for suggesting that the pups be so used for endowments.

Gaborn himself was an Oath-Bound Lord, and Iome was the daughter of an Oath-Bound Lord. An Oath-Bound Lord swore only to take endowments from those vassals who gave them freely. Such vassals would be men or women who had some great attribute, such as a quick wit or tremendous stamina, but often lacked the other necessary attributes to be good warriors. Knowing that they couldn’t serve their lord as warriors, they might opt to give their wit or stamina into their lord’s use, subjecting themselves to the indignity of the forcible for the greater good of those around them.

But not all of the lords in Rofehavan were Oath-Bound Gaborn’s own father had once considered himself a “pragmatist.” Pragmatists would often purchase endowments. Many a man was willing to sell the use of his eyes or ears to his lord in return for gold, for many a man loves gold more than he loves himself. But Iome had told Myrrima that even Gaborn’s father had eventually given up his pragmatic ways, for King Orden could not always be sure of a man’s motives when selling an attribute. Often a peasant or even a minor lord who suffered from heavy debts would see no way out, and would therefore try to sell an endowment to the highest bidder.

Gaborn’s father had been confronted by the realization that his own pragmatic ways were unscrupulous—for he could never be completely certain what drove a man to sell his endowments. Was it greed? Or was it hopelessness or plain stupidity that led a man to trade his greatest asset for a few pieces of gold?

Indeed, Myrrima knew that some rapacious lords hid their lust for other’s attributes beneath a cloak of pragmatism. Such lords would gladly accept endowments in lieu of payment for taxes, and time and again, in such kingdoms, whenever a king raised the taxes, the peasants were forced to wonder what he really sought.

Worst of any lord, of course, were the Wolf Lords. Since a vassal had to be “willing” to give an endowment before an attribute could be transferred, the Wolf Lords constantly sought ways to make men more pliable. Blackmail and tortures both physical and mental were the Wolf Lords’ coin. Raj Ahten had blackmailed King Sylvarresta into giving away his wit by threatening to kill his only daughter, Iome. After King Sylvarresta complied, Raj Ahten then had forced Iome to give her own endowment of glamour, rather than to watch her witless father be tortured, her friend Chemoise be murdered, her kingdom taken from her. Raj Ahten was thus the most despicable kind of man—a Wolf Lord.

The euphemism “Wolf Lord” had been coined to name those men of such relentless rapacity that they stole attributes even from dogs. In dark times past, men had done more than take endowments of scent, stamina, or metabolism from dogs; some had taken even endowments of wit. It was said that doing so increased a man’s cunning in battle, his thirst for blood.

The very notion of taking endowments from dogs had therefore become anathema in Rofehavan. Though Raj Ahten, Gaborn’s great enemy, had never stooped to take an endowment from a dog, he was called a “Wolf Lord” still.

Now, Groverman dared affront Iome by begging her to become a Wolf Lord.

“So long as a man does not take a dog’s endowment of wit, it is not a bad practice,” Groverman said as if encouraged by the fact that no one argued with him. “A dog that has no sense of smell makes a fine pet. So long as one has a good dog handler to care for the animal, it can be well maintained. Even loved. It will give you its sense of smell, even as your children wrestle with it on the floor.

“Indeed, I have calculated the number of farmers and tanners and craftsmen and builders and clothiers that it takes to sustain a Dedicate. I figure that it takes the combined labor of twenty-four peasants to care for a single human Dedicate, and another eight for a Dedicate horse. But it only takes a single man to care for each seven Dedicate dogs. It makes for a frugal trade.

“For a king at war, fine dogs are as necessary as arms or armor. Raj Ahten has war dogs in his arsenals—mastiffs with endowments. If you will not let these pups serve as Dedicates, to your warriors, consider at least that they could give endowments to your own war dogs.”

“This is an outrage!” Iome said. “An outrage and an insult!” She looked at Gaborn pleadingly.

“It is meant as neither,” Groverman said. “I mention the possibility only to be practical. While you were dining, I stood for half an hour outside your door, and you never knew it! Had I been an assassin, I might well have set an ambush for you. But if you had an endowment of scent from a single dog, you’d have no need to see me or hear me to know that I hid outside your door.”

“I will not be called a ‘Wolf Lord,” Iome objected. She set her pup on the floor. It wandered over to Myrrima, sniffed her leg.

She scratched its ear.

Gaborn seemed not to be perturbed by the proposal. Myrrima wondered if it was because of his father’s influence. His father had always been recognized as a prudent man.

Could a man of principle be both an Oath-Bound Lord and a Wolf Lord, she asked herself.

“Your Highness,” Duke Groverman urged Gaborn, “I must beg you to consider this. It is only a matter of time before Raj Ahten sends his assassins. Neither you nor your wife is prepared to meet an Invincible, and it is already noised about that Your Highness has sworn to be an Oath-Bound Lord. I don’t know how you plan to stand against Raj Ahten. Indeed, the lords of Heredon worry about little else. But it may be that you will stand in sore need of Dedicates, if you refuse to pay men for their endowments.”

Gaborn thoughtfully stroked the fat ball of fur under its nose. The pup growled and bit hard on Gaborn’s thumb.

“Take your mongrels and get out of here,” Iome told Groverman. “I want no part of it.”

Gaborn smiled fiercely, looking from Iome to the Duke, then merely shook his head. “Personally, I have no need of endowments from dogs,” Gaborn said. Turning to Iome, he said, “And if you will not be a Wolf Lord, then so be it. We can still train the pup to bark at strangers, and keep him in your room. The pup will be your guard, and perhaps in its own way, it can save your life.”

“I’ll not have it in my sight,” Iome said. Myrrima picked up the Queen’s pup protectively. It nuzzled its head between her breasts, then just stared in her eyes.

“So our choice is made,” Gaborn said to Iome. “But as for the troops, Groverman is right. I’ll need scouts and guardsmen with strong noses to sniff out ambushes. I’ll let my men choose whether it be a compliment or curse to be called a Wolf Lord.”

Gaborn nodded acceptance of the gift to Groverman. “My thanks to you, Your Lordship.”

He turned his attention to the boy who’d brought in the pups, and Myrrima realized that the gift did not consist merely of dogs, but of the boy. He was a dark-haired lad, rangy. Like a wolf himself.

“Tell me, what is your name?” Gaborn asked.

“Kaylin,” the boy answered, dropping to one knee.

“These are fine dogs. You are their keeper, I take it?”

“I been helping.” The boy’s language was uncouth, but his sharp eyes marked his intelligence.

“You like these puppies?” Gaborn asked. The boy sniffed and blinked back a tear. He nodded.

“Why are you so sad?”

“I been watchin’ ’em since they was born. I don’t want nothin’ to happen to ’em, Yer Highness.”

Gaborn met Groverman’s eyes. The Duke smiled and nodded toward the boy.

“Then, Kaylin,” Gaborn asked, “would you be willing to stay in the castle, and help care for them for me?”

The boy’s mouth dropped in astonishment. As Myrrima had guessed, Groverman had not forewarned the child of the possibility.

Gaborn merely smiled pleasantly at the Duke. “How many of these pups can you provide me with?”

The Duke smiled. “I’ve been letting them breed at will now for four years. I smelled trouble brewing. Would a thousand suit Your Highness?”

Gaborn grinned. It was a princely wedding gift, in spite of the fact that Iome looked as if she were about to fly into a rage and tear out the Duke’s hair.

“You think we could have that many by spring?” Gaborn asked. “It seems a large number.”

“Far sooner than that,” Groverman said. “Seven hundred pups are waiting outside in wagons. The others will be ready within a few weeks.”

Autumn was not normally the best time of year to get pups, Myrrima knew. More births occurred in early spring and summer. These seven hundred had to have been born within the last sixteen weeks or so.

“My thanks,” Gaborn said. He put his pup on the floor and returned to the breakfast table as Groverman left with. Kaylin in tow.

The King’s pup came and worried at Myrrima’s shoe for a moment, trying to drag her foot from her leg, until she gave it a sausage from her plate.

Iome seemed so upset by the presence of the pups that Myrrima offered to put them out with the others. When Iome agreed, Myrrima grabbed the pups and a plate of sausages. She went outside the keep, and found Kaylin on the green, looking somewhat forlornly at a wagon of pups.

Gaborn’s new counselor, Jureem, who had served Raj Ahten until only recently, was standing next to the boy with his back turned to Myrrima, giving instructions to Kaylin. To be heard over the yapping of the creatures, Jureem spoke loudly.

“You will of course be tireless in your service,” Jureem said. “The dogs will depend on you for food and water and shelter and bathing. You must keep them strong.”

The boy Kaylin nodded vigorously. Myrrima stopped behind Jureem. She had seen Jureem instructing the household staff over the past few days, badgering a chambermaid here, a horse groom there. Now, she was curious to hear what this former slave from a far country had to say.

“A good servant gives his all to his lord,” Jureem intoned with mock exaggeration in a thick Taifan accent. “He never lets himself tire, never shirks his duty. He must never become weary of performing his tasks well. He serves his lord in every thought and every deed, administering to his lord’s needs before they are ever voiced. He gives up his own life—his dreams and pleasures—to serve his lord. Can you do that?”

“But,” the boy said, “I just want to take care of the pups.”

“When you serve them, you are serving your lord. That is the task he has chosen for you. But if he should choose a different task for you, then you must be prepared to fulfill his every command. Do you understand?”

“You mean he might take me away from the pups?” the boy whined.

“Someday, yes. If you do this job well, he will expand your duties. In addition to the kennels, he might place you in charge of his stables or ask you to train dogs for war. You might even be called upon to become a guard and bear arms for even the Dedicate dogs of the kennels might be a target for Raj Ahten’s assassins.

“Watch the King. He works for his people tirelessly. Learn from his devotion. We all live in service to one another. A man is nothing without his lord. A lord is nothing without his servants.” Jureem walked away, hurrying to fulfill some other obligation.

The boy seemed to consider the counselor’s words, then looked up at Myrrima and caught his breath. He smiled at her in that hopeful way that men did ever since she’d been endowed with glamour.

She put both pups down by her feet, and stroked them as they wolfed their sausages. Until that moment, even Myrrima had not known what she would do.

But she knew that she must prepare, and Jureem’s words convinced her that she had to begin doing so tirelessly, to anticipate the threat before it arrived.

“The pups like you,” Kaylin mused.

“You know the pups well?” Myrrima asked. “Do you know which dogs were born of which bitches?”

Kaylin nodded soberly. Of course he did. That was the only reason that Groverman had sent the boy to serve young King Orden.

“I’ll want four of them,” Myrrima said softly, lest someone overhear. She was terribly conscious of the fact that she planned to take these pups from her own king without asking. But Kaylin would never know that she was stealing. Hadn’t he just seen her dining with the King and Queen? The boy would assume that she was some lady who had a right to the pups. Myrrima hoped that if she worked hard, perhaps she could truly earn that right. “Two for stamina, one for scent, and one for metabolism. Can you pick out the best ones for me?”

Kaylin nodded vigorously.

After breakfast, Iome and Gaborn retired to their bedchamber for a moment, and closed the doors behind them, leaving their Days out in the alcove.

Iome could not feel perfectly at ease in this room. The huge bed, with its images of fools and lords carved into its posterns and the pineapples at its top, had been her mother and father’s bed a week ago. Her mother’s perfumes and cosmetics were in their case beside the oriel, where the morning light was best. Her father’s clothes were still in the wardrobes; Gaborn had brought few of his own clothes from Mystarria, but her father’s garments fit Gaborn well enough.

But more than the objects in this room, the scent of it reminded Iome of her parents. She could smell her mother’s hair on her pillow, her body oils, her perfume.

Should I tell him? she wondered. Iome was carrying Gaborn’s child, she felt certain. They’d been married for only four days, and Iome felt no nausea. She would not know for a few days yet whether she had even missed her time of month. But she did feel a strangeness to her body, and Myrrima had seen it today. She’d said that Iome was “glowing.”

But was that proof enough? Iome doubted it. She dared not speak of her hopes to Gaborn.

Iome sat on the edge of the bed, wondering if Gaborn would want her, but he merely went to the oriel and stared south for a long time, deep in thought.

“Have you decided what to do yet?” she asked. Before the wedding, he’d been in constant turmoil, wondering how he could best fight Raj Ahten, wondering where Raj Ahten would strike next. As Earth King, he was the protector of mankind, and now Gaborn shuddered at the very thought of taking a human life, even the life of an enemy. This morning’s news of Raj Ahten’s attacks had left him deeply worried.

She’d encouraged him to go on the hunt, hoping that by having a few days away; slipping into some sort of routine, he might be able to clear his mind, while at the same time it would ease concerns among his people.

“Will you take endowments? Thousands have offered themselves as your Dedicates.”

Gaborn bowed his head in thought. “I can’t,” he said. “Of that I am becoming more and more certain.”

A week ago, both of their fathers had been slain. Afterward, Gaborn had wanted to take endowments, to take the strength of a thousand men and the grace of another thousand and to take the stamina of ten thousand and the metabolism of a hundred men and use it all to slay Raj Ahten.

Yet now that deed seemed beyond him. Taking a man’s endowments was risky. A man might give them willingly enough, but there was always a danger. A man who gave brawn would find that his heart was suddenly too weak to beat, and might pass away within moments. A man who gave grace could not properly digest his food, or relax his lungs enough to let out a breath, so might fall prey to starvation or suffocation. A man who gave stamina to his lord could die from infection the next time an illness swept through the castle.

So a man who took another’s endowments could soon find himself poisoned by guilt. Worse than that, since a powerful Runelord was so nearly Invincible, only a fool would attack him directly. Instead, the Runelord’s Dedicates became the targets of his enemy’s wrath. If one were to slay a lord’s Dedicates, he would sever the magical link that raised the lord’s attributes, and in doing so, he would make the lord himself more human, more vulnerable to attack.

Borenson had slain Iome’s own Dedicates a week ago. The pain of it was astonishing. Good men and women had died. She’d wept bitterly about it night after night, for the Dedicates were often friends, people who had loved the kingdom and therefore sought to strengthen it so that they could better maintain her realm.

As Earth King, Gaborn sought to defend his people. He could lock his Dedicates in towers, guard them with his most powerful knights, provide the best physicians to care for them. Still it might not be enough.

Gaborn’s arguments against taking endowments were morally sound. Yet Iome had to wonder. He was the Earth King, the hope of the World. But how great a king could he be, if he left himself open to attack?

“Last week,” Iome said, “you swore to me that you would be an Oath-Bound Lord. Are you forsaking endowments completely? I can’t imagine why. You are a good man. If you take endowments only from your Chosen, I know that you will use them wisely, and prudently. You will be a better king because of it. And because you are the Earth King, you will know when your Dedicates are in danger, and be better able to preserve them.”

“Knowing that a man is in danger and rescuing him are entirely different matters,” Gaborn said heavily. “Even with all of my powers, I may not be able to protect them.”

“But what of Raj Ahten? What will happen when he does send his assassins? Surely he will!”

“If he sends assassins, then I will sense the danger, and we will flee.” Gaborn said. “But I will not fight another man ever again, unless I have no choice.”

Iome felt confused by such talk. She valued life, valued the lives of her people above all. But she couldn’t just turn her back on Raj Ahten. She’d never be able to forgive him for what he’d done. Iome’s mother and father were dead at his hands. Gaborn’s mother and father, too. Gaborn should have been shouting for vengeance. Even now; Raj Ahten was marching on his homeland in Mystarria. All of Gaborn’s counselors had agreed that Heredon’s forces were too weak to pursue the Wolf Lord south. They lacked the warriors and force horses to do so. Raj Ahten’s troops had stolen all of the good horses in Sylvarresta’s stables when they fled. One of the first things that Gaborn did when he reached Castle Sylvarresta was to learn from the stablemasters the names of every horse that had been taken, and the names of their Dedicates. Then he’d sent the list to Duke Groverman, where the Dedicate horses were kept, and had the Dedicates slain.

It was a desperate effort to slow Raj Ahten in his flight toward Mystarria. Raj Ahten’s knights would have been forced to ride common mounts. Perhaps because of this slaughter of Dedicate horses, hordes of Knights Equitable had been able to mount ambushes that took a toll against Raj Ahten’s Invincibles.

Gaborn had bought Duke Paladane the time he’d need to set his defenses against the Wolf Lord, and might well have made it possible to run some of Raj Ahten’s forces into the ground. Gaborn’s home country of Mystarria was the largest and richest realm in all the kingdoms of Rofehavan. A full third of all the force soldiers in the north were under the command of Paladane the Huntsman.

But Iome doubted that Paladane could stop Raj Ahten’s armies. She only hoped that Paladane could somehow hold the Wolf Lord at bay until the kings of the north could combine their armies. Gaborn had sent messengers all across Rofehavan, begging for aid.

Still, Gaborn had not sent men from Heredon to help Paladane.

“Why?” Iome asked. “Why won’t you stop Raj Ahten? You don’t have to do it yourself. Many are gathering here, lords from all over Heredon. You have men who could fight, the lords of Heredon are eager for revenge! I would fight! I hesitate to ask you this, but are you afraid of him?”

Gaborn shook his head, looked at her as if hoping she would understand. “I am not afraid of him,” Gaborn said. “Yet something holds me back.

“There is something...I feel so profoundly...and I cannot express it well. Perhaps I cannot express it at all. But...I am the Earth King, and am charged with saving a seed of mankind through the dark season to come. I don’t feel that the people of Indhopal are my enemies. I cannot harm them. I will not willingly destroy men and women. Not when I fear that the reavers are my true enemies.”

“Raj Ahten is our enemy,” Iome said. “He is as bad as any reaver.”

“He is,” Gaborn admitted, “but think of this: For each four hundred men and women alive, we have but one force soldier, one protector capable of stopping a reaver. And if that one protector dies, then it is probable that four hundred people will die because of that loss.”

It was a terrifying thought, and Iome herself had worried about little else but logistics for the past seven days as she began to consider the enormity of the problem. How many warriors could Gaborn spend fighting Raj Ahten? Was even one warrior one too many?

Time and again Gaborn hinted that he thought so. With the forty thousand forcibles that Gaborn’s father had captured at Longmot, Gaborn might equip four thousand force soldiers. It was a number ten times what Iome’s father had had. Yet it would be a small force compared to what Raj Ahten could marshal.

And there was the Wolf Lord himself to contend with. Raj Ahten had thousands of endowments of his own. Gaborn had talked about using the forcibles to make himself Raj Ahten’s equal, so that he could fight the Wolf Lord man to man.

But if Gaborn did so, if he drained endowments from even several hundred men, he worried that he Would be wasting resources. He did not know if he’d ever get another forcible again. Jureem had warned him that the blood-metal mines of Kartish were played out. These forty thousand forcibles were Gaborn’s best weapons against the reavers.

But suddenly Iome understood something that had eluded her. “Wait, are you saying that you don’t want to kill Raj Ahten?” Until this moment, she had thought that Gaborn would merely stay here in Heredon, hide behind the protective borders of the Dunnwood, and let the shades of his ancestors protect him from Raj Ahten. But Gaborn seemed nervous, and there was an intensity to him, a pleading demeanor, that made her realize that he needed to tell her something she would not want to hear.

Gaborn turned aside and looked at her from the corner of his eye, as if he could not bear to face her fully. “You have to understand my love: The people of Indhopal are not my enemies. The Earth has made me its king, and Indhopal is my realm also. I must save those I can. The people of Indhopal also need a defender.”

“You can’t go to Indhopal,” Iome said. “You can’t even be thinking such a thing. Raj Ahten’s men will kill you. Besides, you’ll be needed here.”

“I agree,” Gaborn said. “Yet Raj Ahten has the most powerful army in the world, and he is the most powerful Runelord of us all. If I fight him, we may all be destroyed. If I ignore him, I surely do so at my own peril. If I try to flee him, he will catch me. I can see only one alternative...”

“Are you saying that you would use your power to Choose him? After what he has done?” Iome could not hold back the shock and anger in her voice.

“I hope to arrange a truce,” Gaborn admitted, and she knew from his tone that his decision was final. “I have discussed the possibility with Jureem.”

“Raj Ahten will not grant you a truce,” Iome said with certainty. “Not unless you return the forcibles your father won with his own life. And that would not be a truce, that would be surrender!”

Gaborn nodded, stared at her evenly.

“Don’t you see it?” Iome said. “It wouldn’t even be surrender with honor, for once you give the forcibles back, Raj Ahten would use them against you. I know my cousin. I know him. He will not leave you alone. The fact that Earth has given you dominion over mankind does not mean Raj Ahten will concede the honor.”

Gaborn gritted his teeth, looked as if he would turn away. She could see the anguish in his features. She knew that he loved his people, that he sought to protect them as best he knew how, and that right now he could see no way to bring Raj Ahten down.

“Still, I must ask for a truce,” Gaborn answered. “And if a truce cannot be won, then...I must ask for honorable conditions of surrender. Only if such conditions cannot be met, will I be forced to fight.”

“There can be no surrender,” Iome said. “My father surrendered, and once he did, Raj Ahten changed the terms to fit his whim. You cannot be Raj Ahten’s Dedicate and the Earth King!”

“I fear you are right,” Gaborn said with a heavy sigh, and he came and sat on the bed next to Iome, took her hand. But it was cold comfort.

“Why can’t you just kill him and be done with it?” Iome asked.

“Raj Ahten has perhaps ten thousand force warriors in his service,” Gaborn said. “Even if I defeated him roundly, and lost half as many men, would it be worth the price? Think of it, four and a half million children, women! Could I knowingly throw away the life of even one? And who is to say that it would stop there? With so many warriors lost, would it even be possible anymore to stop the reavers?”

Gaborn paused. After a moment, he held a finger up to his lips, motioning for Iome to keep quiet, and went over to King Sylvarresta’s old writing table. He drew out a small book from the top drawer, and began pulling out papers hidden in its bindings.

He brought them to Iome and whispered, “In the House of Understanding, in the Room of Dreams, the Days are taught thus about the nature of good and evil,” Gaborn said. This surprised Iome. The teachings of the Days were hidden from Runelords. Now she knew why he whispered. The Days were right outside their doorway.

Gaborn showed her a diagram he had scribed out on parchment.

“Every man sees himself as a lord,” Gaborn said, “and he rules over three domains: the Domain Invisible, the Domain Communal, and the Domain Visible.

“Each domain can have many parts. A man’s time, his body space, his free will, are all part of his Domain Invisible, while all of the things he owns, all of the things he can easily see, are part of his Domain Visible.

“Now, whenever someone violates our domain, we call him evil: If he seeks to take our land or our spouse, if he seeks to destroy our community or our good name, if he abuses our time or tries to deny us our free will, we will hate him for it.

“But if another enlarges your domain, you call him good. If he praises you to others, enlarging your stature in the community, you love him for it. If he gives you money or honor, you love him for it.

“Iome, there is something I feel so deeply, and I can only express it this way: the lives of all men, their fates, are all here, a part of my domain!”

He pointed to the drawing, waving vaguely toward the Domain Communal and the Domain Invisible. Iome looked up into his eyes, and she thought she understood She’d been a Runelord all her life, had been entrusted in small ways with the affairs of state. She had accepted the hopes and dreams and fates of her people as part of her domain.

“I see,” Iome whispered.

“I know you do, in part,” Gaborn breathed, “but not in full. I feel...I feel the cataclysm approaching. The Earth is warning me. Danger is coming. Not just danger for you and for me, but for every man, woman, and child I’ve Chosen.

“I must do what I can to protect them—everything I can to protect them, even if I am doomed to failure.

“I must seek alliance with Raj Ahten.”

Iome noted the vehemence in his demeanor, and knew that he was not just stating his resolution. He was soliciting her approval.

“And where do I fit in your circles?” Iome asked, waving to the drawing in Gaborn’s lap.

“You are all of it,” Gaborn said. “Don’t you understand? This is not my bed or your bed. This is our bed.” He waved at himself. “This is not my body or your body, it is our body. Your fate is my fate, and my fate is yours. Your hopes are my hopes, and my hopes need to be yours. I don’t want walls or divisions between us. If there are any, then we are not truly married. We are not truly one.”

Iome nodded. She understood. She’d seen couples before, seen how over time they’d shared so much, become so close, that they’d picked up even one another’s oddest habits and notions.

Iome craved such union.

“You think you’re so wise,” she said, “quoting forbidden teachings. But I’ve heard something from the Room of Dreams, too.

“In the House of Understanding, in the Room of Dreams, it is said that a man is born crying. He cries to his mother for her breast. He cries to his mother when he falls. He cries for warmth and love. As he grows older, he learns to differentiate his wants. I want food! he cries. I want warmth. I want daylight to come. And when a mother soothes her child, her own words are but a lament: I want joy for you.'

“As we learn to speak, nearly all of our utterances are merely cries better defined. Listen to every word a man speaks to you and you can learn to hear the pleas embedded beneath every notion he expresses. I want love. I want comfort. I want freedom.'”

Iome paused for a moment, for effect, and in that profound and sudden silence, she knew that she had his full attention.

Then she voiced her plea. “Gaborn, never surrender to Raj Ahten. As you love me—as you love your life and your people—never surrender to evil.”

“So long as I have the choice,” Gaborn said, at last listening to reason.

She pushed his book to the floor and took Gaborn’s chin in her hand, kissed him firmly, and drew him down to the bed.

Two hours later, guards atop the castle wall called out in dismay and pointed to the Wye River, where it snaked among the verdant fields. The river upstream had turned red, red as blood.

But the flood of red washing downstream bore the strong mineral smells of copper and sulfur. It was only mud and silt thick enough to foul the waters, to clog the gills of fish and slowly suffocate them.

Gaborn took his wizard to investigate. Binnesman stood knee-deep in the water, experimentally dipped his hand in and tasted it, then made a sour face. “Mud from the deep earth.”

“How did it get in the river?” Gaborn wondered. He stayed on the riverbank, not liking the smell of the fouled water.

“The headwaters of the Wye,” Binnesman said, “spring up from deep underground. The mud is coming from there.”

“Could an earthquake cause this?” Gaborn asked.

“A shift in the earth could cause it,” Binnesman mused. “But I fear it didn’t. The ruins where we slew the reaver mage are near the source of the water. My guess is that reavers are tunneling there. Perhaps we didn’t kill them all.”

Because so many lords had gathered outside Castle Sylvarresta for the celebration of Hostenfest, it was not hard to gather some worthy men quickly and ride the thirty miles into the mountains. Six hours later in the early afternoon, a full five hundred warriors reached the ancient duskin ruins, with Gaborn and Binnesman leading the way.

The ruins looked exactly as they had the night before, when Binnesman, Gaborn, and Borenson had emerged. The gnarled roots of a great oak on a hill half hid the entrance. The men lit their torches and made their way down an ancient broken stairway, where the earth held a thick mineral smell. Gaborn could tell that the scent had changed since yesterday.

The entrance to the ancient duskin city was a perfect half-circle some twenty feet in diameter. The stones along the walls were enormous, and each was perfectly carved and fitted, so that even after thousands of years, they still held solid.

For the first quarter mile, there was a myriad of side tunnels and chambers, houses and shops where duskins had once lived, now overgrown with the strange subterranean fauna of the Underworld, dark rubbery leaves of man’s ear and spongy mats of foliage that clung to the wall. The place had been picked clean of any duskin artifacts ages ago, and now was the abode of glowing newts and blindcrabs and other denizens of the Underworld.

The troops had not gone half a mile down the winding stairs when it ended abruptly.

The path ahead had recently been shorn away. Where the stair should have been leading down miles and miles to the Idymean Sea, instead a vast tunnel crossed the path.

Binnesman edged close to the bottom stair, but the rock cracked and shifted under his feet and he leapt back. He held a lantern high, peering down.

The tunnel opening there was a huge circle, at least two hundred yards across, and had been hewn through thick dirt and debris. The bottom was a mess of sludge and stone. No human could have dug this passage. No reaver, either, for that matter.

Binnesman stared down, stroking his beard. Then he picked up a stone and dropped it. “So, I did feel something stirring beneath my feet,” he mused aloud. “The Earth is in pain.”

Just then, a flock of small dark creatures flew through the black tunnel below, creatures of the Underworld that could not easily abide the light of day. They made shrieking sounds of pain, then wheeled away from the lanterns.

Nervously, Borenson broke the silence. “What could have burrowed such a tunnel?”

“Only one thing,” Binnesman answered, “though my bestiary of the Underworld describes it as a creature only witnessed once before by a single man, and therefore describes it as a thing of legend. Such a passage could only have been dug by a hujmoth, a world worm.”

4 The Reavers

“Skyrider Averan,” the beast master Brand said, “you are needed.”

Averan turned to look at him in the predawn light, but not too quickly. In the huge shadowy loft of the graak’s aerie, she located Brand more by the sound of his footsteps than by sight. She was feeding some fledgling graaks and dared not look away from the reptiles. The graaks stood fourteen feet at the shoulder and could easily swallow a child like Averan whole. Though the graaks adored her and she’d been feeding them since they first clawed their way out of their leathery eggs, the graaks were likely to snap when hungry. Sometimes they would try to hook meat from her hand with a long wing claw. Averan did not want to lose an arm, as Brand had done so long ago.

Skyrider, she thought. He called me “skyrider.” Not “beast handler.” At nine years of age, Averan was too big, too old, to be a skyrider. She hadn’t been allowed to fly in two years.

Brand stood in the doorway to the aerie, the dim morning light casting a halo around him. The haunch of a young lamb was tied to his belt with a coil of rope, a lure for the graaks. He squinted and stroked his gray beard with his left hand.

She wondered if he’d had too much new wine last night, had forgotten how old she was. “Are you—”

“Sure? Yes.” Brand grunted, and his words were clipped, strained. She suddenly realized that he was shaking. “And we must hurry.” He turned then, and headed for the lofts.

In the dim light, Averan and Brand climbed stairs chiseled in stone, into the upper aerie. The nests up here smelled fetid. The older graaks carried a scent not unlike that of a snake, and after centuries of habitation, that odor permeated the very rock of the aerie. Averan had learned to like the smell long ago, just as some people were said to enjoy the stench of horse sweat or the odor of dogs.

The stairs opened into a wide chamber with a single narrow entrance chiseled in the east side of the hill. In the dim light, Averan could see that the chamber was empty. The graaks were out for their morning hunt. The cool autumn weather tended to make them restless and hungry.

Averan followed Brand onto the landing. He stood for a moment, took the haunch of lamb from his belt, and made sure that the rope was tied snugly between a ligament and the bone at the joint. Then he stood swinging the huge clumsy lure. It took a full-grown man to swing the graak bait like that.

“Leatherneck!” he called. “Leatherneck.”

The graak was trained to respond to his name. The lamb would serve as a reward for the monster’s obedience, when he came.

Averan searched the morning sky. The reptile was nowhere in sight. Leatherneck was old and large, a beast of great stamina, but not much speed. He was seldom used as a mount anymore. Over the past summer, he’d taken to hunting farther and farther afield.

To the west, the Hest Mountains rose, their sheer peaks white from last night’s dusting of snow. On the mountainside below the aerie, Keep Haberd rose—five stone towers, its walls spanning both sides of the narrow pass that led into the mountains. People were running about within the castle walls, shouting. Some still bore torches. Their voices sounded dim and distant. Women and children were climbing onto wagons down on the green, seeking to escape.

Only then did Averan realize that something was terribly wrong. “What’s happening?”

Brand set down the haunch of lamb as if weary, measured her with a gaze. “A squire just rode in with news out of the hills of Morenshire. A volcano erupted in the Alcair Mountains last night, spewing ash. Reavers are approaching in its wake. The rider estimates that among the reavers are some eighty thousand blade-bearers, and another thousand lesser mages with a fell mage. A cloud of gree flies above them, blackening the skies. You must get the news to Duke Paladane at Carris.”

Averan struggled to understand the implications of what Brand had just said. Morenshire was a region in the farthest west of Mystarria, bordering the juncture of the Hest and Alcair mountains. The citadel here, Keep Haberd, the nearest fortress, was old and stalwart. It served as a refuge for travelers in the mountains, and the soldiers here mostly kept the trails safe against robbers and reavers and other vermin. But the fortress would never hold out against a force like the one that Brand described. The reavers would overrun the walls in an hour, and they wouldn’t take prisoners.

Duke Paladane was the King’s strategist. If anyone could defeat the reavers, Paladane could. But Paladane had his hands full. Raj Ahten’s men had taken or destroyed several castles on the borders, and lords and peasants alike were fleeing from the north.

“Our lord thinks that the volcanic eruption has flushed the reavers from their lairs,” Brand went on. “It happened once that way, in my grandfather’s time. The volcano filled their burrows with lava and all the monsters fled in its wake. But this eruption will bring greater misery than that one did. The reavers have been breeding unchecked in those hills for far too long.” He rubbed his whiskers.

“What about you?” Averan asked. “What will you do?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Brand said. “I’ll take them on with one hand, if I must.” He wiggled the stump of his right arm and laughed painfully at his own joke.

But she could see the terror in his eyes.

“Don’t worry about me. You just take old Leatherneck,” Brand said. “You’ll fly without benefit of saddle or food or water to keep your weight down.”

“What of Derwin?” Averan asked. “Shouldn’t he take the message to Duke Paladane?” Derwin was younger. At the age of five, he was the official skyrider for Keep Haberd.

“I sent him off late last night on another errand,” Brand answered, gazing off to the south, searching for his beast. Then he muttered bitterly, “Our fool of a lord sending skyriders to fetch letters to his mistress.”

Averan already knew that. Years ago, she’d often carried letters and roses from her Lord Haberd to Lady Chetham in Arrowshire. In return, the lady would send notes of her own with lockets of her hair or a perfumed handkerchief. Lord Haberd apparently believed that he could hide his adulterous affair more easily if he used children for messengers rather than one of his older soldiers.

The fertile plains to the east were shrouded in morning fog that turned a dim gold as the sun’s first rays touched upon it. Here and there, a green hill rose like an emerald island from the mist. Averan watched among the valleys for sign of the graak. Leatherneck would be there, searching for something slow and fat to eat.

“How soon will the reavers be here?” Averan asked.

“Two hours,” Brand answered. “At the most.”

Hardly time to mount a defense. If Lord Haberd called for aid from the nearest fortress, it would take a day, even for knights riding force horses. She wondered if the men here could hold out so long.

Brand put his hand to his mouth, called again. In the far distance, Averan saw a winged speck rise from the mist, tan-colored flesh aglow with the morning light Leatherneck answering the summons.

“Leatherneck is old,” Brand said. “You’ll have to stop and rest him frequently.”

Averan nodded.

“Fly above the woods to the north, then cut across the ridges to the Brace Mountains. It’s only two hundred and forty miles—not far. You can reach Carris by nightfall.”

“Won’t resting slow me?” Averan asked. “Maybe I should just fly on through.”

“This is safer,” Brand said. “No need to kill the beast in your hurry.”

What could he mean? she wondered. Of course she had to hurry—and the death of her mount was nothing compared with the deaths of the men.

She realized the truth then. Keep Haberd was isolated. Nothing that she did would make any difference. No help could arrive in time. Lord Haberd had probably already sent out messengers riding force horses. And the horses would make better time than she could. Her top speed was forty miles per hour, and flying north at this time of the year, she might have to battle headwinds. A fast horse, one with enough endowments of metabolism and strength and stamina, could easily run eighty.

“You’re not sending me out to carry a message,” Averan said. Her voice felt tight in her throat, and her heart was pounding.

Brand glanced down at her, smiled fondly. “Of course not. I’m saving your life, child,” he admitted. “Take the message to Duke Paladane if you want. There’s always a chance that the horsemen won’t get through.”

He leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, “But if you take my advice, I wouldn’t stop there. The palace at Carris is a death trap. If the reavers head that way, they could take it in a fortnight, and there’s no guarantee that Paladane will let you ride out on the beast you flew in on. Tell Paladane that you’ve been instructed to carry a message of warning farther north, to our lord’s second cousin at Montalfer. Paladane wouldn’t dare hold you back then.”

Leatherneck was laboriously winging his way up from the foggy downs, carrying some shepherd’s ewe in his great maw. He flew eagerly, his small golden eyes gazing all around.

The beast dropped to the landing, flapping his great wings so that the air whipped Averan’s hair. Leatherneck took a clumsy bounce, then gently laid the sheep’s carcass at Brand’s feet, as if he were some giant cat making a present to his master of a dead mouse. The graak stood panting, the folds of skin at his throat jiggling, as he sought to catch his breath.

He leaned forward, nuzzled Brand’s chest.

Brand smiled wistfully, reached out with his one good hand and patted the brute’s nose, pried a chunk of meat out from between Leatherneck’s saberlike teeth.

“I’m going to miss you, old lizard,” Brand said. He tossed the haunch of lamb up into the air as high as he could. Leatherneck snagged it before it could touch ground.

To Averan, Brand said, “I used to ride him as a lad, you know, forty years back—as did King Orden. This is a kingly mount you’ll ride.”

Leatherneck was one of the oldest graaks in the aerie, not the one she’d have chosen to take. But he was well trained, and Brand had always held a special affection for the monster. “I’ll take good care of him,” Averan said.

Brand made a fist, palm down, and the great reptile leaned forward, crouching so that Averan could mount. She ran a step and leapt onto its back. Like all skyriders, she had an endowment of stamina and of brawn. She had more strength and endurance than any commoner, and with her small size she was easily able to leap up and scramble over the monster’s back. Beyond those endowments, she had one of wit, and could therefore recount verbatim almost any message her lord ever wanted her to deliver. Such endowments set her apart from other children. She was only nine, but had learned much in that time.

Averan settled in before the first horny plate on the beast’s neck. She scratched the graak’s leathery hide.

“Never fall,” Brand said. It was the first rule a skyrider was taught as a child. It was also a farewell among the skyriders, an invocation to begin every journey.

“I never shall,” Averan answered. He tossed her a small bag that clanked when she grabbed it, the sound of coins. His life’s savings, she imagined.

She clasped her legs around the graak’s neck, felt his muscles tense and ripple as he awaited her command.

She wished that she had more time to say goodbye to Brand. A part of her could not quite imagine that the reavers were really coming. The keep this morning looked the same as on any other autumn day. Here on the landing, high above the castle, maidenhair ferns and a few morning glories trailed up the rock, their purple flowers opening wide. The air was still and peaceful. The smell of cooking fires wafted up from the strongholds down below.

Her mind rebelled at the thought of leaving. Normally she would feed her graak better before such a long flight. She wished now that she could allow Leatherneck to eat more, but the beast would hardly be able to bear her weight and that of a full belly.

Averan’s throat felt dry. Bitter tears stung her eyes. She sniffed, and asked, one last time, “And what of you, Brand? What will you do? Will you leave the castle? Will you promise to hide, if not for yourself, for me?”

“It would be death to run before the reavers,” Brand said. “They’d cut me in half like a sausage. And I fear that in my current condition, I’d make a poor bowman to man the walls.”

“Hide for me, then,” Averan begged. Brand was everything to her, father, brother, friend. She had no family. Her father had died in a skirmish with reavers before she was born, and her mother perished from a fall when Averan was a toddler—a fall from a chair while lighting a lantern in the lord’s keep. Averan had seen her mother fall but had never quite accepted that someone could die so easily from a fall. She herself had dropped fifteen feet on more than one occasion when her reptile jarred her free on landing, but Averan had taken no harm from it.

“I promise that I’ll hide, if hiding will do any good,” Brand said.

She studied his eyes to try to see if he was lying. But Averan had always been terrible at seeing behind other people’s eyes. What other people really thought, what they meant, often seemed an unfathomable mystery.

So she had to satisfy herself with the hope that Brand would hide, or run, or somehow escape the reavers.

Brand had been staring at her, but suddenly his eyes focused on something behind her, and he caught his breath.

She turned. On a far hill up the canyon, she suddenly saw them, the reavers scurrying forward on their six legs. Their leathery hides were pale gray in the morning, and at this distance, one could not make out how many runes were tattooed into their skins. One could see only their blades flashing in the sunlight, and the gleam of fiery staves. From a distance, the six-legged creatures looked only like some strange insects, scurrying from beneath a rock. But Averan knew that every one of those fell beasts was three times the height of a man.

A dark cloud flew up behind, the gree swarming out in alarming numbers. The gree were smaller than bats, larger than June bugs. They flew out of caves sometimes. Averan had never seen so many that they darkened the sky.

“Go, now!” Brand said. The reavers would not be here in two hours. At the speed they ran, they would be swarming the walls in five minutes.

“Up,” Averan shouted.

The graak turned and leapt off the cliff. Averan felt nauseous for a moment when the lizard fell. She looked down over his neck to the jumbled rocks hundreds of feet below.

For a moment, she forgot about the reavers. Many a young skyrider had fallen to those rocks over the centuries. Averan had watched little Kylis fall last year, had heard the girl’s death scream. Now for one eternal moment Averan feared that Leatherneck would not be able to bear her weight, that she would carry them both to their deaths.

Then the graak’s wings caught on the air, and she soared.

She glanced back. Brand waved at her from the rocky perch of the graak’s aerie, as the morning sun glanced off his face. Then he walked manfully back inside the upper lofts.

It looked to Averan as if the mountain swallowed him. She felt half-tempted to circle the city for a few moments, to see what the coming of the reavers might bring, but knew that she did not want such memories to haunt her in years to come.

So with little nudges of her feet and spoken commands, Averan steered Leatherneck north, above the roiling fog that glistened like the waves of the sea. She wiped bitter tears from her eyes as Leatherneck bore her away.

5 Bear Stories

“So then your son throws his javelin at the old tusker,” Baron Poll chortled at Roland, “and he thinks himself a marksman, aims right between the eyes. But that old boar must have had a skull as thick as the King’s fool’s head, for the javelin hits the skull and merely grazes the beast!”

Baron Poll smiled at the memory, and Roland looked up the road. They were still half a day from Carris, riding slowly in the mid afternoon, letting the mounts catch their breath.

“So the old tusker is mad, and he lowers his snout and paws the ground, blood flowing down over his tusks. Now you know that the boars of the Dunnwood are as tall as a horse and all as shaggy-haired as a yak. And your son, being only thirteen at the time, sees that this tusker is about to charge and hasn’t the wit to do what any man should.”

“Which is?” Roland asked. He’d never hunted boars in the Dunnwood.

“Why, turn his mount and run!” Baron Poll shouted. “No, your son sits there looking at the beast, making a fine target of his horse, and no doubt he’s peed his breeches about now.

“Well, that old boar charges and catches his mount right under the belly with a good upper thrust that disembowels the horse and throws your son about four feet in the air.

“Now, as I said, it was about an hour past that we’d lost the hounds, and we’d been riding to find them. We could hear them yapping off in the hills, you see.

“So your son comes down off his horse, and it’s sort of limping away, and the boar sees your lad standing there, and your son takes off running so fast, I swear by the Powers I thought he’d taken flight!”

Baron Poll’s eyes were wide with delight at telling the story. It sounded as if he’d told this one many a time before, and he’d honed it well.

“So then young Squire Borenson, upon hearing the hounds yapping, thinks to himself—as we later found out—run to the dogs! They’ll protect me!

“And so he takes off running through the bracken, with that boar right behind him.

“Now, at the time, your son had just taken two endowments of metabolism—so you can imagine how fast he’s running. He’s sprinting along at thirty miles an hour, shouting ‘Murder! Bloody murder!’—as if he’s raising the hue and cry—and every time he slows, that boar puts the fear of death into him.

“Now, he’s run about half a mile, all uphill, and I start to thinking it’s about time to save his life, so I go charging up on my own mount, right behind him and the boar. But they’re running so fast through the underbrush that I keep having to weave around them, looking for a clearer course, and so I never can quite get within throwing distance of that boar.

“And then your son reaches the dogs. They’re all sitting down at the base of this big rowan tree, their tongues hanging out, and every once in a while one of the hounds would howl as if to have something to do to pass the time, and your son thinks, Ah, I’ll climb that tree, and the dogs will promptly save me.

“Your son leaps into the tree, and all the hounds jump up expectantly, looking at him and wagging the stumps of their tails, and young Borenson shinnies up about twenty feet.

“And then the boar leaps in amid the thick of the dogs.

Now this old tusker had been around, it seemed, and it loved the dogs no better than it did your son, and seeing that the dogs were all fagged out and a bit astonished to find a fifteen-hundred-pound monster in their midst, the tusker lowers its snout and throws the first dog it sees about forty feet in the air and slices another two open before they can even get to their feet.

“So the rest of the hounds—there were only about five or six of them in this little pack—decide that it’s time to tuck what’s left of their tails between their legs and head for the nearest pub. Then Squire Borenson starts screaming for me ‘Help—you son of a whore! Help!’

“Well, I think to myself, that’s no way to address someone you’re asking to save your miserable life, such as it is. So since I can see that he’s safely up a tree, I proceed to slow my horse, as if giving it a breather.

“And just then, I hear this most peculiar sound—this deafening roar! And I look up, and see why your son is screaming. It turns out that the tree he’d climbed had bears in it! Three big bears! The hounds had treed them!”

Baron Poll laughed so hard at the memory that he roared himself, and by now he was nearly weeping.

“Now your son is stuck in this tree, and the bears are none too happy to have him there, and the boar is down underneath it all, and I start laughing so hard I can hardly sit in my saddle.

“He curses me soundly—we were never friends, you know—and orders me to come rescue him. Well, I’m two years his elder, and at fifteen I figured I’d rather be damned than ordered about by a boy who’d been twelve two weeks before. Keeping a goodly distance from the tree, I shout, ‘Did you call me a son of a whore?’

“And your son cries, ‘I did!’

“Well, it didn’t matter that he spoke the truth,” Baron Poll continued. “I was not about to be so cursed by a thirteen-year-old. So I shouted up at him, ‘Call me “sirrah”, or you can save yourself!’ ”

Baron Poll fell silent, became thoughtful.

“What happened then?” Roland asked.

“Your son’s face became dark with rage. We’d never been friends, as I said, but I never had guessed how much he hated me. You see, I’d always ridden him mercilessly when he was a child, damning him for a bastard, and I think he saw through me. He knew I was of low parentage, so he thought I should treat him better than the other boys did not worse. So I deserved his hatred, I guess, but I never knew a boy could hate so much. He said, ‘When you’re dead, if you die with honor, then I’ll call you ‘sirrah! But not a moment before!’

“Then he drew his knife,” Baron Poll added more soberly, “and climbed farther up that tree and started laughing and going at the bears himself.”

“With nothing but a knife?”

“Aye,” Baron Poll said. “He had endowments of brawn and stamina in his favor, but he was still not much more than a boy in stature. The bears had climbed out onto some big limbs, and I don’t know a man in his right mind who would have fought them thus. But your boy went after them, maybe just to prove to me that he could do it.

“I think he would have killed them, too. But the bears saw him coming and jumped first. So when the boar saw bears dropping like plums from the tree, he decided to give up on your son and go hunt acorns, instead....” Baron Poll chuckled at the memory.

“That was when I first realized that young Squire Borenson would someday become captain of the King’s Guard,” Baron Poll continued. “Either that or he’d get himself killed. Maybe both”

“Both?” Roland studied Baron Poll’s face now. The man was enormous—three hundred pounds of fat, all covered with hair as dark as night. But his expression was thoughtful.

“Men who become captain of the King’s Guard seldom keep the post long. You know that King Orden’s family was attacked by assassins three times in the past eight years?”

Three attacks in eight years seemed like a lot. In recent history, Roland had never heard of anything like it. When he’d given his endowment of metabolism into the King’s service, he’d never quite imagined that he would waken to such dark times—his own king dead, the whole kingdom of Mystarria under attack from invaders.

“I hadn’t known,” Roland said. Having been asleep for twenty years, he hadn’t really had a chance to catch up on recent history. He wondered if Orden had had any local troubles—neighbors who might have wanted him dead. “Who sent the assassins?”

“Raj Ahten, of course,” Baron Poll said. “We could never prove it, but we’ve always suspected him.”

“You should have sent an assassin down to waylay him,” Roland replied, seething with righteous indignation.

“We did—dozens of them. Among all the kingdoms of Rofehavan, we’ve sent hundreds, maybe even thousands. We’ve tried to kill him and his heirs, wipe out his Dedicates and his allies. And the Knights Equitable spent their own forces, as well. Damn it, this is no little border skirmish we’re engaged in.”

It was astonishing that one Wolf Lord could repel so many attacks and still be as powerful as Raj Ahten was rumored to be.

Yet evidence of it was everywhere. All this afternoon, as Roland and Poll had been riding, they’d met peasants fleeing from the north. Men and women pulling carts loaded with bundles of clothes, some scraps of food, and the few valuable possessions they had to their name. They also saw signs of recent movements of armies—Mystarria’s warriors heading north into battle.

Roland fell silent.

“Uh-oh,” Baron Poll muttered. “What do we have here?”

They rounded a bend and looked down a rise. On the road ahead, a horse was down. Broken leg by the looks of it. The beast had its head up, looking around weakly, and its rider was trapped half underneath it. The man was dressed in the garb of a king’s messenger—a leather helm and green cloak, a midnight-blue vest with the image of the green knight on its chest.

The messenger had passed them not an hour before, shouting for them to get out of his way. Now the fellow wasn’t moving.

Roland and Baron Poll raced forward. The low spot in the road was muddy from rains two days past—not so muddy that you’d notice it right off, but Roland could see where the horse had slid as it rounded the bend, skidding a hundred yards. After skidding, the horse had apparently twisted its leg and gone over. Riding a force horse at full speed—one with three endowments of metabolism could be dangerous. A horse that tried rounding a bend at sixty miles an hour could misplace a foot, charge full speed into a tree.

The messenger obviously was dead. The man’s head rested at an unsightly angle, his eyes were glazed. Flies danced in the air around his tongue.

Roland hopped down, grabbed the fellow’s message case from within his tunic, a long round scroll pouch made of green lacquered leather. The injured horse looked up at Roland, uttered a cry of pain. Roland had seldom heard that sound from a horse.

“Show the beast some mercy,” Baron Poll said.

Roland took out his short sword, and when the horse looked away, he gave it a killing stroke.

Roland opened the message case, pulled out the scroll, and studied it for half a second. He did not know how to read or write more than a few words, but he thought he might recognize the wax seal. He didn’t.

“Well, open it up,” Baron Poll said. “At the very least, we must find out where it should go.”

Roland broke the wax seal, opened the scroll, found a hastily penned missive. He recognized some of the words: “the,”

“a,”

“and.” But Roland couldn’t figure out the larger words no matter how hard he squinted.

“Well, out with it, damn you!” Poll cried.

Roland gritted his teeth. He wasn’t a stupid man, but he wasn’t educated, either. He hurled the message at Baron Poll. “I can’t read.”

“Oh.” Baron Poll apologized, taking the scroll. He appeared to read it all in a glance.

“By the Powers!” he shouted. “Keep Haberd was overwhelmed at dawn by reavers—thousands of them: They sent news to Carris!”

“I doubt that Duke Paladane will rejoice to hear more bad news,” Roland said.

Baron Poll bit his lower lip, thinking. He looked south, then north, obviously worried about which way to go. “Paladane is the King’s great-uncle,” he said, as if Roland might have forgotten over the past twenty years. “He rules now as regent in the King’s stead. But if he’s put under siege at Carris, as seems likely, there will be damned little that he can do about the reavers. Someone should take this news back south to the Courts of Tide, to the counselors there, and to the King.”

“Surely more than one rider was sent,” Roland said.

“We can hope,” Baron Poll said.

Roland made to mount his horse, but Baron Poll cleared his throat loudly, nodded toward the dead messenger. “Best grab that man’s purse. No need to let it go to the scavengers.”

Roland felt queasy robbing a dead man, but he knew that Baron Poll was right. If they didn’t get the fellow’s purse, the next man on the road would. Besides, he told himself, if he was going to deliver the King’s message, he ought to get a messenger’s pay.

He cut the purse loose, found it to be heavier than expected. The man was probably carrying his life savings.

Roland shook his head. This was twice in one week that he’d found himself in possession of a small fortune. He wondered if it were some sort of sign that this war would go well for him.

He leapt onto his horse and shouted to Baron Poll, “I’ll race you!”

Then he put his heels to horseflesh and they rode like a storm in its fury. Baron Poll had the faster mount, but Roland knew that the fat man’s beast would tire sooner.

On a hillside a dozen miles north from where Roland and Baron Poll had found the dead messenger, Akhoular the far-seer stood in the crook of the branches of a tall white oak. He leaned his head against one limb and watched two men race north along a muddy road in the early afternoon.

These were not peasants, he knew, fleeing the battle to come at Carris. Nor were they mounted soldiers riding to war.

They did not appear to be king’s messengers, for they were not wearing the proper livery. Yet Akhoular had to wonder....

His men had killed several couriers in the past week, disposed of the bodies along the roadsides. Perhaps the king’s messengers were becoming wiser, traveling in disguise.

Akhoular had five endowments of sight. Even from a mile away, he could make out the men’s determined faces. The younger fellow, a big man on a fleet-footed horse, bore a dark green leather message case on his wrist. The fat fellow was well armed.

Yes, the messengers were getting wiser. They were riding now without the king’s colors, and this one had a knight to guard him.

Akhoular whistled to the camp at the base of the tree. He was growing short on men. He’d lost three assassins this week. Yet he called a young man, a Master in the Brotherhood of Silent Ones.

“Bessahan, two riders! They carry a message,” he said. He pointed toward the road, though the assassin below him would not be able to see through the forest.

Akhoular said, “They ride fast toward Carris. You must kill them.”

“They shall not reach Carris,” Bessahan assured the far-seer. The Silent One leapt onto his force horse and drew his dirty brown hood low over his face. With one hand, he reached back behind the saddle and checked to make sure that his hornbow was still tied to his saddlebags.

He spurred his horse and raced down the mountainside.

6 Among the Petty Lords

“Here now, that’s much better,” Sir Hoswell said. Myrrima watched her arrow arc into the air and hit its target eighty yards distant. Her shot fell a foot low of where she wanted, but it was the third time in a row that she’d hit within the red circle of cloth pinned to the haycock, and she felt proud.

“Good, milady,” Sir Hoswell said. “Now if you do that ten thousand more times, you will internalize it. Learn to shoot that distance, and then learn to shoot farther and farther. Soon you’ll shoot with your gut, not your head or hands.”

“I’ll have to raise my aim,” she corrected. The thought of shooting ten thousand more times worried her. Already her fingers and arms were sore from the labor. “That shot wouldn’t have stopped an Invincible.”

“Pah,” Sir Hoswell said. “Maybe you wouldn’t have killed him, but you would have made an eunuch of him. And if stopping him from rape was your aim, he’d definitely walk with a limp in more appendages than one.”

Myrrima glanced sideways at him. Sir Hoswell smiled broadly. He was a wiry man with a bushy moustache, a thin beard, and the heavily lidded eyes of a lizard as it lies half-asleep on a warm stone. His smile would have been pleasant if his teeth hadn’t been so crooked.

Sir Hoswell stood close, too close. Myrrima could not help but feel uncomfortable. They were in a glade in a narrow valley not far from the tents put up by petty lords of Heredon. Yesterday hundreds of boys had been practicing archery here, but today was the day of the great feast. Trees hunched close within fifty yards on either side of her, and Myrrima could not help but feel alone and vulnerable.

She’d known Sir Hoswell nearly all her life—he was from Bannisferre, after all—yet somehow today she did not trust him. It was growing late in the afternoon, and she wondered if she should head back to the castle.

The oak trees on the hills here formed a natural barrier that shielded them from view. Myrrima had no other witness present. She knew that being alone with a man other than her husband might seem scandalous, but now that she’d decided to prepare herself for war, she did not want to attract Borenson’s attention. If her husband guessed her intent, she feared he’d forbid her. She needed someone to teach her martial skills.

Sir Hoswell had been a friend to her father, and he was a fine bowman. When she’d found him here practicing his skills, she’d asked him to give her lessons for the afternoon, and he’d agreed. With the endowment of wit her mother had granted her two weeks past, Myrrima found that she was learning the basic skills of archery much faster than she’d thought possible.

“Try again,” Sir Hoswell urged her. “And this time, pull that bow back harder. You need to hit him firm, to get deep penetration.”

Myrrima drew an arrow from her quiver, glanced at it quickly. The fletcher had done a hasty job. One of the white goose feathers wasn’t glued and tied properly. She wetted her finger with her tongue and smoothed the feather into place, then took the arrow firmly between her fingers, placed its notch on the bowstring, and drew the arrow back to her ear.

“Wait,” Sir Hoswell said. “You need to work on a firmer stance.”

He stepped up behind her, and she felt the warmth of his body, the warmth of his breath on her neck. “Straighten your back, and turn your body a little more to the sidelike this.”

He reached up and took hold of her left breast, adjusted her stance by half an inch, and stood there holding her, quivering. The man’s legs shook.

She felt her face redden with embarrassment. But in her mind, she heard the voice of Gaborn, the Earth King, warn her, “Run. You are in danger. Run.”

Myrrima was suddenly so frightened that she loosed the arrow by accident. But Sir Hoswell did not release her breast.

As swiftly as she could, so that even with his endowments of metabolism he could not avoid it, she twisted around and brought her knee up into his groin.

Sir Hoswell half-collapsed, but he had her blouse in his hand, and he tried to pull her down with him.

Gaborn’s voice came a second time. “Run!”

She punched at his Adam’s apple. He tried to draw back, and in doing so let go of her blouse enough so that after she landed the blow, she broke free.

She turned to run.

He grabbed her ankle, tripping her. Myrrima shouted “Rape!,” turned and kicked at him as she fell.

Then he was on her.

“Damn you, you bitch!” he hissed, slapping a hand over her face. “Shut your yap, or I’ll shut it good.”

He twisted his hand, putting his palm against her chin and pushing with incredible force so that her neck arced backward painfully. Then he adjusted his fingers, pinching her nostrils closed. With his palm over her mouth, she could not breathe With the weight of his body on her, she could not escape. She tried to fight him off—rammed her thumbnail into his right eye so hard that blood gushed from the socket.

“Damn you!” he cursed. “Must I kill you!”

He punched hard in her guts, knocking the air from her, making the gorge rise in her throat. For a long moment she struggled silently, fighting only to get a breath as he worked to untie his belt with his free hand. Her lungs burned with the need for air, and her vision went red. Her head began to spin, as if she were falling.

Then she heard a snapping sound, and all the air went out of Sir Hoswell. He rolled from atop her. Someone had kicked him—kicked him hard enough to break ribs.

Myrrima gasped for fresh air, felt her lungs fill and fill again, yet still she could not get, enough air.

“Here now, what’s going on?” a voice asked. It was a woman’s voice, and the accent was so thick that at first Myrrima did not recognize that the woman spoke Rofehavanish.

Myrrima looked up. The woman standing over her had blue eyes and wavy black hair that fell in ringlets about her shoulders. She looked to be twenty years old. Her broad shoulders hinted of more strength than even a working drudge might have. She wore a plain brown robe over a shirt of stout ring mail, and she had a heavy axe in her hand. Behind her stood a mousy woman in scholar’s robes, a Days.

Myrrima glanced over at Sir Hoswell, and she half-wondered if the woman had dealt him a deathblow with the axe. This was no commoner. She was a Horsewoman of Fleeds, a warrior with enough endowments of brawn and grace that she’d likely be a match even for Hoswell.

But Sir Hoswell was still alive, holding his ribs, hunched over like a whipped cur. Blood flowed down his face. Yet he snarled, “Stay out of this, you Fleeds bitch.”

“Och, I would not be addressing a girl so harsh like, especially when she’s wielding an axe and you’ve had no proper introduction.” The woman smiled in mockery of a lady’s courtly manners. Yet her smile was full of malice.

She studied him for half a moment, then frowned. “Och, if Heredon doesn’t breed better warriors than this,” she mused, “I’ll never get bedded.”

Myrrima was gasping, terrified by all that had happened.

The woman’s words barely registered, but Myrrima understood it as a joke. The Horselords of Fleeds had bred horses for a thousand generations, bred them for strength and beauty and intelligence.

In the same way, noblewomen of Fleeds bred themselves to get children. A highborn woman might ask a dozen worthy men to sire children on her during her lifetime, she might even marry a man, but a husband would never rule her. Women alone carried the right to title, since in Fleeds it was believed that “No child can know its father.” The women of Fleeds laughed at the queer notion that men should rule. Thus, in Fleeds a “king” was only a man who had married a queen. And if she chose to dispose of him and choose another mate, then he would lose his title.

“I—ah,” Myrrima stammered. Hoswell held his bleeding forehead, then half-dropped, as if weary.

“You ah, what?” the woman asked.

“I’m sorry,” Myrrima said. “I only asked him to teach me to use a bow.”

The woman spat at Hoswell. “You’d think your northern lords would want to teach women to fight, what with Raj Ahten knocking down your castles.”

Myrrima couldn’t argue. She knelt over Hoswell. He coughed and began feebly trying to crawl to his knees. She tried to help him up, but Hoswell slapped her hands away. “Leave me, you Mystarrian whore! I should have known you’d be trouble.”

He made it to his knees, then got up and lurched away, swaying from side to side.

Myrrima didn’t know quite how to feel. She was stung by his words: “Mystarrian whore.” She’d been born and raised here in Heredon. Hoswell knew her. Did he dare call her a whore for marrying a man from Mystarria?

The woman of Fleeds said, “Don’t make any sad faces for that one. I know his kind. At dinner, he’ll be telling them all that he had his way with you, then tripped and hit his face on a rock.”

“We should go get a physic,” Myrrima said. “I’m not sure he can make it back to camp.”

“It will just lead to a fight,” the horsewoman said. “If you want to avenge your honor, just put an arrow into the fellow’s back now.”

“No,” Myrrima said. “Then leave him.”

Myrrima frowned. She didn’t think herself a paragon of virtue, but she’d never thought she’d leave a wounded man to fend for himself.

I should be mad as hell at that blackguard, not feeling sympathy for him, she thought.

Myrrima hardened her jaw. If she were going to go to war, she’d see worse than some man staggering around with a knot above his nose.

“Thank you,” Myrrima said to the horsewoman. “I’m lucky that you happened by.”

“Oh, I didn’t happen by,” the Fleeds woman said. “I was around the spur of that hill, and the Earth King said someone here needed help.”

“Oh,” Myrrima said, surprised.

The horsewoman studied Myrrima frankly. “You’re a pretty thing. What endowments do you have?”

“Two of glamour, one of wit,” Myrrima said.

“What are you? Highborn, or a wealthy whore? Though I don’t see much difference between the two.”

“Highborn...” Myrrima said, then hesitated, for it was a lie. “Sort of. My name is Myrrima. My husband is in the King’s Guard.”

“Have him teach you the bow,” the woman said, not hiding her disgust at northerners and their dullards ways. She turned as if to march up into the trees.

“Wait!” Myrrima begged.

The woman turned.

“Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” Myrrima thought her manners sounded far too dainty, too refined for such a rough woman.

“Erin, Erin of Clan Connal.”

She was a princess, daughter of the High Queen Herin the Red.

“I’m sorry for your father,” Myrrima said, for she could think of nothing else to say. Word had reached Heredon several days past that Raj Ahten had captured the High King Connal, and fed him alive to frowth giants.

Lady Connal merely nodded, her blue eyes flashing. She could have said something deprecatory about her father, demeaned his prowess in war. Such deprecations passed for humility in her land. She could have given some sign that she loved him. A child’s love for her father was also a worthy emotion. She did neither. “Many warriors died,” was all she said. “Men and women. The dead ones are the lucky ones. Some things are worse than death.”

Erin reached down and picked up Myrrima’s bow and quiver. She nocked an arrow and drew the shaft full, then let it fly. The arrow struck the center of the target on the haycock.

She’s showing off, Myrrima realized. She wants me to respect her.

Raj Ahten had impelled thirty thousand warriors of Fleeds to join his army. The Wolf Lord had so many endowments of glamour and of Voice that few could withstand his persuasive powers.

Myrrima suddenly understood Erin Connal. She was proud of her father, proud to have him dead rather than converted.

Half a moment before, Myrrima would have been afraid to beg a boon from this lady. But on seeing Erin’s own embarrassment, Myrrima could also see the woman’s humanity. We are no different, she realized.

“Princess Connal, can you teach me?” Myrrima asked.

“If you can learn,” Connal said. “But the first thing you’ll have to learn is not to call me ‘Princess, or ‘Lady, or any of your courtly titles. I’ll not be spoken to as if I was some man’s pet. And in my own land, a woman becomes High Lord of the Clans by working for it, not being born to it, so I’ve little right to your titles. You’ll call me Connal, or if you want a title, call me ‘horsesister, or just ‘sister, for short.”

Myrrima nodded numbly.

Sir Hoswell had just rounded the bend, passing through a screen of trees. Sister Connal said, “Let’s get out of here, before that weasel finds some friends and comes back.”

Myrrima took her bow and arrows, and Sister Connal led her up through the woods, with Connal’s Days walking discreetly behind. The grass in the fields felt dry to the touch,, but once they got under the trees, the rains from two nights past had softened the grass stalks and the fallen leaves, so that it felt as if they walked upon a soggy carpet.

They climbed through the oak forest, and Sister Connal watched Myrrima disapprovingly from the corner of her eye. “You’ll have to work on your stance. The problem with being a woman archer is that your breasts get in the way. And you’ve got more than most. You could use a rag, to help tie them down. Better yet, I’ve seen some women just wear a leather vest.”

Myrrima grimaced. She’d always been proud of her breasts, and didn’t fancy the notion of tying them down or covering them in leather.

They reached the top of the knoll and stood a moment. Here, beside the old Durkin Hills Road, the lords had set their camp, and from the top of the knoll, Myrrima could see down over the pavilions to the lands all around the castle.

The fields before Castle Sylvarresta were a sea of canvas and silk. Here by the roadside camped the petty lords, men and women who could claim to be genteel only from a single line or two, people whose fathers or grandfathers had been knighted and thus raised in stature above the common peasants. A high lord would normally be knighted on all four lines, and his ancestors had won the honor generation after generation, confirming his noble blood. But as far as Myrrima was concerned, knighthood was no great honor. Any brute could win it on a good day. Most men among the petty lords had ancestors who were knighted only because their skill with a weapon matched a rude temperament and nasty disposition. For instance, “Sir” Gylmichal in the tent below her was from Myrrima’s home in Bannisferre. The man had been spawned by a foul-mouthed drunkard who somehow discovered that he could find both righteous anger and courage in a mug of whiskey. His father, upon hearing that some bandit had attacked a traveler, would drink himself into a blind rage, usually late after midnight, and then take his hunting dogs and go murder the bandit in his sleep. For that, the peasants would have to bow and scrape the floor with their hats to his descendants for generations to come.

Gylmichal was thus a petty lord, a man with a title but without the breeding or status to rub shoulders with the major lords, whose larger and more ornate pavilions were pitched off to the east side of Castle Sylvarresta.

To the west of the castle, and at its front, peasants had pitched a few shabby tents—or slept with nothing better than the sky as a roof for their heads.

Even farther to the west stood a few bright silk pavilions pitched by the merchants out of Indhopal.

Sister Connal stood atop the knoll for a moment, gazing out over the multitude of tents. “That’s my pavilion,” she said, pointing down to a dirt-stained canvas tent. Whereas the pavilions of Heredon were always pegged at four corners, and numerous poles held up the roof, Connal’s tent was round, with a single pole at its center, in the inelegant style used by the Horselords.

Directly below Myrrima, at the center of the pavilions pitched by the petty lords, was a muddy tournament field, surrounded by posterns with rails atop them, so that spectators could watch the proceedings. Some of the rails were hung with colorful tapestries, to protect the spectators fine clothing from spattering mud. Vendors of pastries and roasted hazelnuts milled through the crowd, calling out their wares.

The sides of the knoll where Erin and Myrrima stood were so steep and filled with brush and rock that no one bothered to stand here to watch the performance below. Still, Myrrima found that it was almost a perfect spot to see over the crowds into the arena, and the sound carried remarkably well. She gazed down over the crowd some eighty feet below, clinging to the rough bark of an oak, and watched the game with Erin Connal and her Days.

Jousting was considered a game for boys in Rofehavan—young men still in training for war. Among Runelords, who were made powerful with endowments of brawn, even a casual blow from a lance could be devastating. So a time came in a warrior’s life when he quit jousting.

In the tournament field, two young men in full armor were mounted on chargers. The boy on the west side of the field looked to be of fairly common stock. He wore tournament armor, which consisted of an extremely heavy helm and a breastplate that was customarily thicker on the right side where a lance was more likely to strike with any degree of force than on the left. It looked to be old armor cobbled together from mismatching outfits borrowed from other knights. His only decorations were a horse’s tail, dyed a vivid purple, stuck into the helm, along with his lady’s favor, a yellow silk scarf, tied to the shaft of his lance. Myrrima’s heart went out to the lad.

The boy on the other side of the field was wealthier. His tournament armor was new, and had obviously been a year in the making. The matching breastplate, helm, pauldrons, and gauntlets were made of burnished silver covered in red enamel, showing an image of three fighting mastiffs. He wore a cape of cloth-of-gold, with bleached peacock feathers in his cap.

The Lord of the Games, Baron Wellensby, sat in a special pavilion off to one side with his three fat daughters and enormous wife. The Baron was ridiculously accoutred in a bright purple houppelande with arms so baggy that children could have hidden in them. Over this he wore a white hat with a wide brim that fell low enough over his face so that he obviously thought no one would notice if he slept through the tournament. His wife, who was no paragon of fashion, wore an emerald-colored cotehardie with gorgeously embroidered floating sleeves. She kept her hands tucked into the slit pockets in front of her, petting a small dog that was peeking out of her pockets just enough to bark when the knights came charging by. During a moment of silence from the crowd, her few shouts of encouragement to the warriors sounded curiously like the dog’s bark.

This was obviously but one pass of many that these boys had taken. Their names had been heralded already, and if they fought for any particular honor, then the terms of the fight had been named and the conditions set.

Now, Baron Wellensby dropped his lance. At this signal, the young men on chargers dropped their own lances into a couched position and shouted, digging their heels into their mounts ribs.

The warhorses responded by shaking their heads and charging forward, their armor clanging, hooves thundering in the mud. The young man who wore the cape of cloth-of-gold had tied dozens of silver bells to the mane and tail of his mount, so that the horse made music as it ran.

Behind the Baron’s pavilion, a gaggle of minstrels sat playing a quick riff on the horns and pipes and drums, providing climactic music for a charge that likely would end with nothing more than a couple of shattered lances. The lances, after all, had been hollowed so that the warriors wouldn’t actually skewer one another, but only knock their opponent from his horse. Upon impact against a warrior, the lances would shatter with a cracking sound that could be heard for miles. The audience was sure to applaud.

Yet Myrrima could not resist the thrill of the battle. Men did get hurt in these affairs. Even a poor blow with a lance could leave a man badly bruised, and a knight who faltered in the way he handled his lance could rip a tendon. A lance could take a man through the visor and thus lodge in his brain, or a fall from a horse could snap a person’s neck.

Mounts sometimes fell in the combat, too, rolling over and crushing their riders. It was a rare festival that didn’t end with at least a couple of deaths, and the spectacle was all the more visceral because the contenders were known to the spectators. One of the knights was bound to be someone that you knew and admired or envied or hated or loved.

The horns pealed and the drums rolled and the chargers raced together with the sound of bells and jangling armor and through it all Myrrima held her breath.

These were force horses, each with one endowment of metabolism, so that they raced toward one another with blinding speed, hooves moving so swiftly that they blurred. Goose bumps thrilled up her spine.

“The poor boy on the left will win,” Connal said, disinterested. “He’s got the stance.”

Myrrima doubted it would happen soon. A jousting match might require the combatants to make twenty or thirty passes before a victory could be won. These young men looked weary and muddied. They’d already made several passes.

The warriors met, and the air filled with the sound of splitting lances and the screams of horses. The rich lad went down, bowled over backward by a lance that took him full in the gorget and snapped his head backward. He tried to hold on to the heavy reins, but they snapped under his weight.

The audience cheered and thundered its approval, while those who’d bet against the fallen knight hurled insults.

“Ah, the lad dirtied those nice white peacock feathers,” Myrrima whined in mock sympathy.

Sister Connal chuckled. “They’ll need a hammer and tongs to get that helm off him.”

But the lad got up from his fall quickly and bowed to assure the crowd that he was all right. He hobbled from the field and squires rushed forward and began stripping off his armor, casting it into a pile to become the prize for the victor. Myrrima felt glad for the poor knight.

The smell of freshly roasted hazelnuts cooked in butter and cinnamon rose from vendors among the crowd, making her hungry. She wanted to go join the celebration.

“Could you beat that knight?” Myrrima asked as the victor circled the field with his broken lance held high.

“Aw, sure,” Sister Connal said. “But where’s the sport in it?”

Myrrima wondered. The Horselords of Fleeds were fearsome warriors who honored a leader’s strength more than her bloodline. Sister Connal was likely among the toughest of the lot, and she’d have the endowments of brawn and stamina and grace to take on any warrior.

As the wounded knight left the field, heralds came forward to shout the names of the next contestants. As the first herald approached, there was a sudden dull roar, a tittering of excitement. From up here, over the myriad cries, Myrrima missed hearing the name of the warrior that the herald announced, yet immediately she realized that this was not a common fight. The herald who spoke from the far side of the field was no boy, but a grizzled old veteran warrior with a horribly scarred face. He wore no king’s tunic emblazoned with the device of the lord he served, so Myrrima took him to be a Knight Equitable, sworn only to fight against evil.

At the far end of the field a knight rode out on a huge black mount, a monster of a horse with so many runes of power branded into it that it no longer seemed to be a creature of flesh and bone. It moved with surety and power, like some creature of iron come to life.

The man mounted on that beast seemed no less a monster. This fellow had to stand head and shoulders taller than any man Myrrima had ever seen, as if he had giant’s blood flowing through his veins.

He was a huge man, dark and brooding. He bore the blank shield of a Knight Equitable, but he wore armor in a strange foreign style. The shield itself was shaped like a winged eagle, with a single spike issuing from the eagle’s eye. His helm had horns on it, in the style of warriors out of Internook, and his chain mail was unusually long. It would have hung down to his ankles when he stood, and covered his feet in the stirrups. The sleeves of the coat came down to the wrist.

But he was not wearing tournament plate for mail. His chain mail, no matter how well made, would be punctured by a lance as easily as a needle pierces cloth.

This would be no ordinary match. Among powerful Runelords who rode force horses, any blow with a lance could shatter bones or turn a man’s innards to jelly: Plate mail could not be made thick enough to protect a man and still let him ride a horse. So among powerful lords the art of the joust had evolved into a new kind of contest.. Such lords could not trade blows, nor could armor do much to protect them.

Instead, Runelords had to use grace and wit and speed to avoid or deflect blows. A man’s defensive prowess became his surest armor, in effect, his only real armor. Hence, few Runelords ever wore plate that would inhibit their full range of motion, and instead wore ring mail or scale mail over thick layers of leather and cloth that would help deflect blows. When Runelords fought in tournaments, the spectacle was thrilling, with lords charging on fast force horses and clashing at a hundred miles per hour. Men would leap from their horses to avoid blows, or cling to their horses from the belly, or perform other phenomenal stunts. It was high entertainment.

It was also a deadly contest, not to be undertaken lightly.

The lord in the arena was not wearing tournament plate. This monster had not come to fight for wealth or glory, he had come to take a life or lose his own.

“Here now, what is this?” Sister Connal said. “This looks interesting.”

“Who is it?” Myrrima asked. “Who’s fighting?”

“The High Marshal, Skalbairn.”

“The High Marshal is here, in Heredon?” she asked numbly. She’d never seen the man before, had never heard that he’d even crossed the border. He normally wintered in Beldinook, three kingdoms to the east.

But of course he’d come, she realized, as soon as he heard that an Earth King had arisen. The whole world is coming to Heredon. And he rode so swiftly that no messenger could ride ahead to announce him.

Now he was here, the leader of the Knights Equitable. Myrrima felt astonished. Among the Knights Equitable, there were no lords. A common boy who joined their ranks might climb in station as quickly as a prince might. They were sworn to one thing only: destroying Wolf Lords and bandits, fighting for justice.

No man held the title of “lord” among the Knights Equitable, but there were ranks—squires, knights, and marshals. High Marshal Skalbairn was the leader of them all. In his own way, he held nearly as much power as did any king in Rofehavan.

And one did not gain the rank of High Marshal without shedding blood. Myrrima had never seen the man. Skalbairn was said to be a madman, a berserker who fought like one who wished himself dead.

But she recognized the herald who came out on the near side of the field. The stout Duke Mardon strode round from the back of the main pavilion, dressed in his best finery. He held his hands high, to silence the crowd.

“Duke Mardon,” Myrrima whispered in awe. If a duke was acting as herald for the warriors, then this was no petty bout. It meant that some great nobleman was about to fight, perhaps even a king, and Myrrima had a flight of fancy in which she imagined briefly that young Gaborn would do battle.

Yet if a nobleman were to fight, Myrrima wondered, why would he fight here? The high lords had another arena up on the castle green, and this bout should have been fought there. Unless the high lords wanted to keep this match a secret from someone at court until it was over.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Duke Mardon bellowed in a voice that carried across the fields. Then his voice was lost to the surge of cheers and premature applause, and Myrrima could not hear anything until he bellowed louder. “...slew a reaver mage in the Dunnwood only yesterday... Sir Borenson the Kingslayer!”

Myrrima’s heart beat so loudly, she was sure Sister Connal could hear it.

The cheers and screams that arose from the crowd below were deafening. Some cheered for her husband, others called for his death. Angry peasants shouted, “Fool!”

“Bastard!”

“Whoreson!”

“Kingslayer!”

In the pandemonium that broke out, people came rushing from nearby tents, swelling the audience alarmingly.

Now Myrrima thought she understood why this battle would be fought here. Her husband had slain King Sylvarresta, slain him upon the orders of King Orden after the battle of Longmot. And though King Sylvarresta had given an endowment of wit to Raj Ahten, and was therefore nothing more than a pawn in the hands of an enemy, he had been a good king in his time, and was beloved by his people. As a punishment for his crimes, Iome Sylvarresta had sentenced Myrrima’s husband to commit an Act Penitent. But apparently that wasn’t enough for the High Marshal. He would want blood to atone for blood, and so he had challenged Sir Borenson. Young King Gaborn Val Orden would never have sanctioned such a combat. He’d not have allowed it to be fought in the high arena. So they battled here among the petty lords and the cockfighters and bear baiters.

“By the Powers,” Sister Connal swore lightly. “The only man in this kingdom I’d want between my legs, and here he’s fighting a death match!”

Myrrima glanced up into the horsewoman’s face, astonished by the insult, until she realized that Sister Connal could not know that Sir Borenson was her husband.

Then Borenson rode out onto the west end of the field. He sat upon a gray charger, wearing his own splint-mail armor, carrying a simple round shield that had been blanked. His long red hair flowed down his back, his blue eyes smiled. He studied his opponent, gauging the thickness of the man’s arms, his size.

A knight wearing the colors of King Sylvarresta rushed forward with a heavy war helm, and Borenson donned it.

Myrrima was appalled. She was astonished that her husband was in the arena preparing to fight without having spoken a word about it to her.

Knights came rushing out, bearing lances. These were no brightly painted parti-colored pieces of hollow wood. They were sturdy war lances of polished ash, bound with iron rings and tipped with steel. The steel tips were blackened with pitch, so that they would not slide across a man’s shield or armor on impact but instead bore straight through. Each lance had to weigh in excess of a hundred and fifty pounds, and was tapered at the base to a diameter of eight inches. Once a man was skewered, the lance would wedge apart his flesh and bones, creating a huge gaping wound from which no man, even with endowments of stamina, could ever recover. These lances were weapons of murder. The High Marshal bore a black lance, a color that symbolized vengeance. Borenson bore a red one, the color of innocent blood. Tied to its haft was Myrrima’s red silk scarf.

The minstrels began playing a clamorous melody before the charge.

“I must go,” Myrrima said, feeling ill to her stomach. She looked around desperately, searching for a way down from the knoll. The steep ground was covered with big rocks, and small oaks thrust up between them.

“Where?” Sister Connal asked.

Myrrima groaned and pointed. “Down there. That’s my husband!”

The look of astonishment on Sister Connal’s face was a relief to behold. Myrrima had begun to think the woman a stoic, and Myrrima’s own emotions—the shock and horror of all that she’d been through today made her feel weak and volatile in comparison.

Myrrima turned away and began racing down the steep hill as fast as she was able. By the time she made it to the bottom and crossed the Durkin Hills Road, the mob was thick around the tournament field.

She tried to force her way through the throng, and couldn’t, until Sister Connal began shouting, “Out of our way!” and shoving people aside.

Myrrima looked up to thank her. Sister Connal apologized for her earlier remark, saying simply, “I didn’t know he was your husband.”

By the time they fought their way through the crowds close enough to see well, the horses Were already charging.

This would not be a boys tournament battle, twenty-five passes with the lance, with the loser suffering nothing more than bruised ribs.

The wild shouting of the crowd was deafening. Myrrima glanced at the taut, giddy faces of those nearby. They were hoping for blood.

Both warriors had chosen odd stances. Sir Borenson rose in his stirrups and leaned far to his right, as only a warrior with many endowments of brawn could do. Furthermore, he did not hold his lance in the couched position, but instead held it overhead as lightly as if it were a javelin.

The High Marshal on the other hand leaned far forward on his black charger, trying to make his enormous bulk into a smaller target. On seeing Borenson’s stance, he muscled his lance out and held it side-armed, in a position that Myrrima had never seen a warrior use. Furthermore, he chose not to carry a shield in his other hand. Instead, he bore a short sword.

It appeared that Borenson meant to jab down into the High Marshal’s visor from above, while perhaps the High Marshal hoped to pierce Borenson’s armpit, where the lack of armor left the flesh exposed.

Yet as they met in midfield, both men swirled into furious motion.

The two horses streaked toward one another. The men atop them blurred as each sought the advantage, taking various defensive stances: Myrrima watched Borenson rise up, then crouch, then sweep his shield down in an effort to drive Skalbairn’s lance tip aside.

As for Skalbairn, she could not really watch him and her husband at the same time, but she saw him roll to the left, perhaps even dropping to the ground for half a second in an effort to avoid Borenson’s lance and then leaping back on his horse.

The men met, a vicious, seething blur.

Myrrima heard the clash of arms and armor. Someone cried out in pain while the audience cheered and horns blared. Borenson’s shield swiped up brutally while Skalbairn hacked with his short sword.

Metal flashed, and a helm went flying. Sir Borenson tumbled backward on his horse.

For one eternal moment, Myrrima thought that her husband had been decapitated. A scream of terror escaped her lips as the silver helm arced up, then tumbled to the earth. The musicians blared their trumpets at the sign of a kill, and the crowd cheered wildly.

Myrrima felt faint, grabbed for Horsesister Connal’s shoulder.

In the next instant she realized that both men had fallen—and both still lived!

They struggled with supernatural swiftness in the muddy field, roaring and beating at one another with mailed fists as they sought to disentangle.

Borenson leapt up first, jumping back a pace. Even with his armor on, he moved lightly, for he had seven endowments of brawn, and thus had the strength of eight men. Blood flowed down the side of his face. The audience jeered.

Borenson reached to his belt, pulled a morningstar, and whipped the thing about expertly, the heavy balls becoming a blur at the ends of their chains. He crabbed sideways to regain his shield.

The air smelled of mud and blood.

But the giant Skalbairn gained his feet just as easily, raced across the field to his horse. He pulled a huge axe from a horseman’s scabbard. He whirled it and advanced easily standing a foot and a half taller than Sir Borenson.

Only then did the crowd fall silent long enough for Myrrima to hear if the warriors spoke. Her husband was laughing, uttering the mad battle chuckle for which he was noted.

Borenson swung his morningstar, aiming for the High Marshal’s head, a warning blow meant to drive the monster back.

The High Marshal pivoted to his right and dodged. A moment later they exchanged a flurry of blows so fast that Myrrima could not see, with no man the clear victor. Yet when Borenson stepped back a pace to catch his breath, she glimpsed the blood still streaming from his brow.

Again they lunged at one another. The High Marshal aimed a vicious swing with the axe. Borenson tried to parry, but the axe cleaved through his shield’s steel exterior and shattered the wooden braces underneath. The shield came apart on Borenson’s arm while he swung his morningstar, aiming a blow at the High Marshal’s face. The spikes on the steel balls grazed the High Marshal’s chin, but the main force of the blow was deflected by his sturdy helm.

With his defenses crumbling, Borenson leapt in the air and swung down full force, seeking a quick strike.

Once again the men’s actions became a blur. Myrrima sensed more than saw the High Marshal duck away from the attack and bring his ante up, entangling the weighted balls of the morningstar.

Then fists flew, men groaned. A kick from Skalbairn swept Borenson’s legs from beneath him.

Borenson went down, tried to climb back up, and Skalbairn drove a mailed fist into Borenson’s face.

Stunned, Borenson slumped to his back, momentarily unconscious.

Skalbairn drew his long dagger and leapt to the ground, pressing its blade under Borenson’s chin. Myrrima tried to climb over the railing, for she feared that the High Marshal would shove the dagger into her husband’s throat, but Sister Connal caught her by the shoulder and shouted in Myrrima’s ear, “Stay out of it!”

“Do you yield? Do you yield?” the big man Skalbairn began roaring.

From the crowd came scattered applause for the High Marshal, along with curses. “Kill him!”

“Kill the whoreson blackguard!”

“Kingslayer!”

Such curses were normally only reserved for the worst cowards or oafs. Myrrima was dismayed by the vehemence of the insults. Her husband had killed a reaver mage and brought its head to the gates of the city. He should have been hailed as a hero.

But the people here would not forget that her husband had slain King Sylvarresta. Myrrima began to realize that they would never forget her husband’s deed, nor forgive it.

“Mystarrian whore,” Sir Hoswell had called her. “Kingslayer,” the crowd shouted at her husband. She glanced at those nearby, saw their faces flushed with excitement. Nothing would give them more joy than to see her husband killed.

She had hardly noticed the minstrels playing all during the charge, but now the drum rolled and a single horn blared the high, curdling call for the death stroke.

It sickened Myrrima, sickened her to the core. He’s better than any one of you, she wanted to shout. He’s better than the whole lot of you put together!

The crowd hushed to hear Borenson’s response above the drum roll.

And there, lying in the muddy field while an angry giant held a dagger to his jugular vein, Borenson responded by laughing uproariously, laughing so heartily that Myrrima wondered if the fight had been staged for the benefit of the petty lords.

Perhaps this was not a death match after all, Myrrima hoped. Two skilled warriors, feigning a deadly grudge just to thrill a crowd. It had been done before.

“Do you yield?” High Marshal Skalbairn roared again, and the tone of his voice made it clear that this was no jest.

“I yield,” Sir Borenson laughed, and he made as if to get up. “By the Powers, I’ve never met a man who could handle me like that.”

But the High Marshal snarled viciously and shoved Sir Borenson’s head down, poking the long knife harder against his throat.

Under the rules of formal combat, Sir Borenson put his life into the High Marshal’s hands by yielding. His life belonged to Skalbairn now, and he could be slain or allowed to live, according to Skalbairn’s whim.

But the formal code of chivalry observed on the battlefield was seldom taken seriously here in the arena. A defeated knight might be asked to pay a ransom of arms or armor, sometimes even money or land. But he was never slain outright.

“You’ll not get off so handily!” the High Marshal bellowed like a bull. “Your life is mine, you scurvy bastard, and I intend to take it!”

Sir Borenson lay back, astonished by the High Marshal’s battle fury.

Another man might have fought on, hoping to save himself. But true to his word, Borenson lay back and taunted his opponent. “I said ‘I yield. If it’s my life you want, take it!”

The High Marshal smiled savagely, and the giant hunched over him, as if eager to dig the knife blade into Borenson’s throat.

“First, a question,” the High Marshal demanded, “and you must answer honestly, or it’s your life.”

Sir Borenson nodded, his pale blue eyes going hard as stone.

“Tell me,” the High Marshal bellowed, “is Gaborn Val Orden truly the Earth King?”

Now Myrrima understood that the High Marshal did not want her husband’s life, only information. And he’d wanted that information so badly, he’d been willing to risk his own life for it.

A knight who yielded on the battlefield was bound by honor to speak truly. Borenson would answer truly now, so long as his answer did not betray his lord.

The High Marshal had shouted so that the entire field hushed to hear the answer. Speaking in a voice that brooked no argument, Borenson said, “He is truly the Earth King.”

“I wonder...” the High Marshal said. “In South Crowthen I heard strange rumors. It’s said that in the House of Understanding, your king studied in the Room of Faces and in the Room of the Heart he studied mimicry and motives in a place where a dishonest man might better learn to deceive. And then when he announced himself to be Earth King, on that very day, his first act was to perform an elaborate ruse to drive Raj Ahten from his lands! Some think it an odd coincidence that Young Orden happens to become the Earth King just when Heredon needs him most. It seems a too convenient tale, one to rouse a peasant’s hopes. So I ask you once again, is he truly the Earth King—or is he a fakir?”

“On my honor and my life, he is the Earth King.”

“Some call him a cur, without natural affection,” the High Marshal growled. “Some wonder why he fled Longmot, leaving his men and his father to die at the hand of Raj Ahten. Surely if he is the Earth King, he could have withstood even Raj Ahten. But you’ve known the boy for ages raised him from a pup. What say you?”

Borenson’s voice shook with rage. “Kill me now, you lousy knave, for I’ll not listen to poisonous lies spread by that fool King Anders!”

There was a whispered hush, and many in the crowd glanced to the far end of the field from whence Sir Skalbairn had ridden. There at the gate stood a tall man in a fine robe. He had wispy blond hair, a hatchet face, and a grim demeanor. He looked to be thirty, but if he had endowments of metabolism, he might have been far younger than that. Myrrima had not seen him before, would not have noticed him in a crowd, but now people whispered, “Prince Celinor.”

“Anders’s son.”

The giant smiled grimly and looked up at Prince Celinor as if seeking his approval. The Prince nodded, he appeared satisfied.

So, Myrrima realized. King Anders’s boy was behind all of this. But did he demand to know whether Gaborn was the Earth King because he sought confirmation, or did he do so because he wanted to plant doubts in the minds of the peasants? If it was for the latter reason, he could not have chosen a better venue for this spectacle than here among the petty lords.

High Marshal Skalbairn sheathed his knife, then offered Sir Borenson his hand. He said, “Arise, then, Sir Borenson. I would see this boy king myself.”

In moments, the arena filled with young boys and minor nobles who rushed up to see the High Marshal, the man who had bested Sir Borenson. Some went to retrieve his lance, others to bring him his horse.

Borenson got up shakily, and no one came to offer him comfort or congratulate him on a good fight. Instead, he went to his cracked lance and knelt to untie Myrrima’s red scarf from it, the sign of her favor.

Myrrima climbed over a rail of the arena, found herself in the thick mud, looking for an easy path to her husband. She struggled through the deep mud, and when she reached Borenson, she found herself shaking, unsure of what she should say to him.

He’d gotten the scarf untied, and stood with his back to her, wrapping it around his own neck. He tried to tie it while wearing his gauntlets, but the thick leather and ring mail left him fumbling.

Myrrima went around to the front of him, tied the damned thing for him, and found that her own hands were trembling so badly that she was as clumsy as he was. She looked at his face. His hair was smeared with mud, and blood was thickening from a deep gouge above his right eye.

“You saw?” he asked.

Myrrima nodded wordlessly, finished tying the scarf. She could not see it anymore. Tears were filling her eyes.

“Damn you, I could be tying this around your corpse right now.”

Borenson laughed, a short nervous bark.

“Do you think so little of me that you didn’t even tell me?” She thought now that he must have fought here so that she wouldn’t see.

“I tried to find you,” Borenson explained. “But you weren’t at the King’s feast, and you weren’t at the royal games. No one had seen you since this morning. Sir Skalbairn called me to task, demanding battle before sundown. It was a matter of honor!”

Myrrima realized why no one had seen her. She’d been careful not to let anyone know that she’d gone to practice the bow. “You could have waited. Do you love me less than your own honor?”

She had not spoken to him before of love. Gaborn had arranged their marriage. In all, she’d not known Borenson for a week. Yet in spite of their short time together, she knew that she was in love. She wanted to hear Borenson admit the same.

“Of course not,” Borenson said. “But what is a life without honor? You could never grow fond of me if I were any less of a man.”

At that moment, Borenson looked over Myrrima’s shoulder, and Myrrima glanced back to see the object of his attention. It was Horsesister Connal, bringing Myrrima her bow and quiver. Myrrima had dropped them on the knoll outside the arena. Borenson smiled at the horsewoman.

“Milady,” Horsesister Connal said. “You dropped these.”

Myrrima took them in one hand.

“Erin Connal, well met!” Borenson said in greeting. “I hadn’t heard that you were in camp.”

“I’ve been here since yesterday.” Horsesister Connal said, “with nothing better to do than stare at that rotting reaver head you dragged in at dawn.”

“You two have met?” Myrrima asked.

“A couple of times,” Borenson said hesitantly. “Old King Orden was a friend of her mother’s, so he usually stopped at her palace when he rode through Fleeds.”

“Good to see you,” Erin said, ducking her head like a shy lady.

Myrrima didn’t like this. Didn’t like the idea that they knew each other, that Connal was, attracted to her husband. She asked her husband bluntly. “Did you know that she wants to have your babies?”

Borenson snorted in surprise and his face turned red. “Well, of course she wants to have my children, what Horsewoman wouldn’t?” He spoke as if to a crowd of drinking companions. Then he faltered as if he realized that he’d spoken too soon, and added jokingly, “But, of course, we won’t sell her any of our precious offspring, will we, my pet?”

Myrrima smiled with tight lips, hardly placated.

7 The High Marshal

Borenson turned aside, wishing he could run, from his wife. He dared not ask her what she was doing with a bow, or why she was in the company of Erin Connal.

Fortunately, he had to clear his gear from the field for the next challengers, so he went to his horse, led his mount and the women toward the High Marshal.

The High Marshal was deep in whispered conversation with the Prince. But of course Borenson had two endowments of hearing and caught the tail of it. “Tell your father he can keep his damned money,” the High Marshal whispered. “I’ll not winter my armies in Crowthen if this boy is the Earth King. I’ll send them where needed.”

“Of course, of course,” Celinor said in almost a pleading tone. Then he looked up and saw Borenson coming.

Borenson smiled and called across the short distance, “Prince Celinor, Sir Skalbairn, may I present my wife.”

The High Marshal nodded in greeting, and Prince Celinor merely let his gaze sweep appreciatively from Myrrima’s head to her feet.

“I’ll get my horse,” Celinor said, turning aside. As he passed, Borenson smelled the stench of alcohol strong on him. Celinor headed through the throng at the north end of the field.

“What was that all about?” Borenson asked the High Marshal, looking up into the big man’s face. Skalbairn lumbered above him like a bear. “What is this about wintering in Crowthen?”

The High Marshal studied Borenson, as if gauging just how much to tell him. Obviously, what he had to say was not anything King Anders of South Crowthen would want spoken in public. But the High Marshal was a tough man, and he seemed not to care what effect the truth might have. “Word reached me in Beldinook of Raj Ahten’s attack here about four days ago. But King Anders’s messengers, who begged that I bring the Righteous Horde of the Knight Equitable to South Crowthen, carried the word. And they brought money to pay for our travel. There’s too much money by half. It smelled of a bribe to me.”

“He wants to bribe the Knights Equitable?”

“I could understand Anders’s distress,” the High Marshal continued. “What king wouldn’t want the Knights Equitable camped in their realm with Raj Ahten’s armies moving about. Indeed, it seemed a logical move. Instead, we drove Raj Ahten into the mountains and I ordered my men to hound him.

“But when I reached Crowthen last night, I found that Anders still wants my armies to stay in Crowthen, ignoring the greater threat to Mystarria. His son just pressed me to hold to their bargain, at least for now.”

“What will you do?”

“Anders will be furious. I’m sending back his gold—at least most of it.”

“Anders sounds craven,” Borenson said.

At that, the High Marshal’s black eyes glittered dangerously. “Don’t underestimate him. I fear he’s worse than a coward.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wants my troops, and he wants them badly. A coward would want them for protection. But as I rode to Crowthen, I was thinking, what if he is not afraid of Raj Ahten? What if he really fears the Earth King?”

“Gaborn?” Borenson said in astonishment, for he could not imagine that Anders would fear the lad.

“I got proof of it at the border. King Anders had troops stationed at the road, and he’s forbade any peasants and even merchants from entering Heredon. His troops proclaim Gaborn a fraud and say that it is a waste of men’s time to come see him, and harmful to Anders’s interests.”

“If Anders had no interest in learning the truth himself,” Borenson said, “that would be one thing. But to forbid his people from coming? That’s evil.”

“Look at it from his point of view,” Skalbairn said. “There has not been an Earth King in over two thousand years. In Erden Geboren’s day, he was honored as the one and only true king of all Rofehavan. But since then, lesser men have been called kings, and the lands have been divided and squabbled over.

“What will happen to Anders if the people rise up and offer to serve House Orden? Will he be relegated to the status of a petty lord? Or will he be asked to bow and scrape the knee like some common peasant?

“You and the commoners may think it is a fine thing to have an Earth King, but mark my words: if Anders could kill the boy now, he’d do so. And he’s not the only lord in Rofehavan who will feel that way.”

“Damn,” Borenson whispered. He glanced back. Myrrima and the horsewoman were close enough to have heard everything the High Marshal had said.

“My mother says that if ever an Earth King were to rise in our day, he would come out of House Orden,” Horsewoman Connal said. “She’s asked me to verify whether Gaborn is the Earth King, and if he is, to offer the clans to back him up.”

“As will I,” the High Marshal said, “if he is the Earth King.”

“He is,” Myrrima said forcefully. “Ten thousand men at Longmot saw the ghost of Erden Geboren crown him. And I myself have heard Gaborn shout his commands into my mind.”

“I met him this morning,” Erin told Skalbairn, “and learned the truth of it. I’ll be backing him.”

“Yet King Anders ridicules the tale of his coronation as the babbling of a spooked army,” High Marshal Skalbairn objected. “He points out that the Earth Warden Binnesman was present, and that the old wizard may have had a hand in some fakery.”

“That’s a vile thing to say,” Myrrima objected.

“Yet Anders may believe it is true,” Skalbairn said. “He points out that his own line is every bit as true as Orden’s, and that the Earth King could as easily come from his own loins.”

“He would name Prince Celinor the Earth King?” Horsesister Connal said. “Celinor the sot? I’ve heard too many sad tales about him.”

“Of course not,” the High Marshal whispered: “Why should Anders bother to put his son forward, when he so loves himself?”

Borenson laughed scornfully.

“I think,” the High Marshal said, “that his son is no more than a pawn. The boy has come ostensibly to pledge his sword into the King’s Guard, like some petty lord’s son. But he talks more like a spy, on his father’s errand. Just listen to him when he returns!”

“So, tell me,” Borenson asked the High Marshal. “If the Earth King summoned your men to battle, how many could you bring?”

The High Marshal grunted, and his flinty eyes flickered. “If we brought everyone? Our numbers are down. The Righteous Horde numbers some thousand mounted cavalry, and another eight thousand archers, six thousand lancers, five hundred artillery men, and of course another fifty thousand squires and camp followers.”

In giving these numbers, the High Marshal did not bother to mention the quality of his troops. His thousand cavalry were worth more than any ten thousand mounted by any other lord, while many of his “archers” were seasoned assassins who often went into dangerous territory to ambush whole armies.

“Shhh...” Myrrima whispered.

Prince Celinor led his mount near, while his Days followed a few paces behind. Though his was a force horse, the beast had drooping ears, and looked as if it would need a good meal in the king’s stables after riding a hundred and fifty miles since daybreak.

Prince Celinor smiled innocently. “Shall we go?” he asked. Borenson began to lead them all through the throng. The streets were crowded this evening, with peasants from the camps all going from one table or tournament to another. Celinor weaved through the crowd deftly, but with rubbery legs. He seemed pretty far into his cups.

No one spoke, leaving Prince Celinor to fill the clumsy silence, which he accomplished quite handily by babbling, “I find all of this incredible. I mean, I knew Gaborn. I went with him to the House of Understanding, but I did not speak to him much. I seldom saw him. He did not spend much time in the alehouses.”

Horsewoman Connal said, “And of course we couldn’t expect you to truly befriend someone who doesn’t spend all his spare time in alehouses.”

Celinor ignored the jibe. “I meant that he was an odd lad. Since he studied in the Room of Faces and in the Room of the Heart, he did not study arms or tactics. So of course I did not know him well.”

“Perhaps you speak poorly of him because you are jealous,” Connal said.

“Jealous?” Celinor asked. “I could never be the Earth King. And I mean no disrespect toward Orden. But when I was a child, I sometimes dreamed that an Earth King would be born in my lifetime. And I always imagined someone bigger than me, and older—someone with a look of profound wisdom dripping from his brow, with the strength of a whole army bulging in his chest, someone of legendary stature. But what do I get? Gaborn Val Orden!”

Myrrima had to wonder at Prince Celinor’s words. The young man sounded innocent enough, like a carefree lad just babbling, but was it innocent babble? Everything he said seemed calculated to engender doubt in others.

“Gaborn serves his people,” Borenson told Celinor. “He serves them more truly than anyone I’ve ever met. Perhaps that is why the Earth has chosen Gaborn, made him our supreme defender.”

“Perhaps,” Celinor said. He smiled in a cold, superior way, and inclined his head to the side as if in thought.

When Borenson reached the Great Hall, with Prince Celinor, High Marshal Skalbairn, and Horsewoman Connal in tow, dozens of lords and barons were busily feasting around tables that circled the room. At the center of the tables, minstrels sat on cushions and played softly, while serving children scurried back and forth between the kitchen and buttery, bringing food and drink as it was wanted, then clearing the tables.

At the far end of the Great Hall, Gaborn smiled and stood in greeting as Borenson entered the doorway, with the others crowding behind him.

Gaborn called “Sir Borenson, Lady Borenson, Prince Celinor, and Lady Connal, welcome. Let the servants bring you chairs and plates.” Then he looked up at the High Marshal and asked, “And who do we have here?”

The minstrels left off at playing their lutes, tambours, and drums. Gaborn stared hard at Skalbairn.

“Your Highness, may I present High Marshal Skalbairn, Master of the Knights Equitable.”

Borenson expected Skalbairn to nod curtly and study Gaborn from afar. Instead, the High Marshal acted without hesitation. He said gruffly, “Milord, some claim that you are the Earth King. Is it true?”

The question astonished Borenson, for he’d thought the man convinced. But he realized belatedly that the High Marshal had only been convinced that Borenson believed Gaborn to be the Earth King.

“I am,” Gaborn said.

The High Marshall said, “It is said that Erden Geboren looked into the hearts of men and named some to be his protectors. If you have that power, then I beg you, look into my heart and choose me, for I would serve the Earth King with my life. I bring with me the Righteous Horde of the Knights Equitable, thousands of warriors who fight beside me.”

He drew his sword and stepped forward to the King’s table, then knelt and drove the blade into the floor, resting his hands upon the hilt.

Borenson immediately felt embarrassed. This was not an honor that one demanded of the Earth King in public. But Gaborn did not seem taken aback by the High Marshal’s blunt manners.

Around the King’s tables, lords began to murmur in astonishment. Some questioned the man’s upbringing, but the High Marshal was a renowned warrior, one of the greatest in all Rofehavan, and they knew he could bring tens of thousands of warriors to swell the Earth King’s armies. This would be a great boon. So no one dared to criticize openly.

Moreover, no High Marshal had ever offered to swear fealty to a king.

Until now.

Gaborn leaned forward across the table, placing his hands on either side of his silver platter, and looked down steadily into the High Marshal’s eyes for a long moment.

High Marshal Skalbairn stared back with eyes as black as obsidian.

Gaborn’s face went slack, as it did when he performed the Choosing. He gazed deeply into the High Marshal’s eyes and raised his left arm to the square, as if to perform the ceremony.

Then he dropped his hand and stared in shock, trembling.

“Get out!” Gaborn said, his face going pale. “Get out, you foul...thing! Get out of my castle. Get away from my lands!”

Shocked, Borenson recalled the people Gaborn had Chosen this past week paupers and fools and old women who couldn’t bear a dagger in their own defense, much less a sword.

Now one of the greatest warriors of the age knelt before him, and Gaborn wanted to cast the man away!

The High Marshal smiled in secret triumph. “Why, my lord?” he asked casually. “Why would you send me away?”

“Must I speak it?” Gaborn asked. “I see your guilt written in your heart. Must I speak it, to your eternal shame?”

“Please do,” the High Marshal answered. “Name my sin, and I will know that you are the Earth King.”

“No, I will not speak it,” Gaborn raged, as if the very notion sickened him. “There are women present, and we are feasting. I’ll not speak of it now or ever. But I refuse your service. Begone.”

“Only the true Earth King would know that I am unworthy to live,” the High Marshal said, “and only a true gentleman would refuse to name my sin. My offer still stands. I give myself into your service.”

“And I reject you still,” Gaborn answered.

“If I cannot live in your service,” Skalbairn said, “then still I will die in your service.”

“Perhaps that is best,” Gaborn said.

High Marshal Skalbairn stood and sheathed his sword. “You know of course that Raj Ahten is driving south, into the heart of your own Mystarria. You will have to engage him—and soon. Your enemies would like to see him defeat you.”

“I know,” Gaborn said.

“The Righteous Horde is moving south. I will fight beside them, though you hate me.”

There was utter silence in the crowded room as the High Marshal turned and strode from Heredon.

Borenson marked the look upon Prince Celinor’s face. The Prince only cocked his head to the side, watching the whole spectacle with a calculating gaze.

Borenson noted that young Celinor did not dare to offer his own sword in public.

8 The Green Woman

As Averan flew, she kept watching behind her, gazing in the distance toward the fortress and the beast master Brand for any sign that things might have changed. She expected to see the smoke of burning buildings or to hear the peal of doom.

But the fortress merely gleamed in the morning sun, the white stone of its towers sparkling as always, until it receded from her view, its few towers becoming a distant speck on the horizon. Then it was swallowed completely as the clouds began to rise from lowlands. Even if Averan had had the eyes of a far-seer, she’d have lost the castle in the mist.

She remained aloft for hours. The world flowed beneath the wings of her mount. Cool air beat upon her face, and the sun warmed her side and back. As the clouds continued to rise from the lowlands, some of them extended up into the air, became crystalline pillars, weird sculptures. Flying into them was always a mistake, Averan knew. They were filled with fragments of windblown ice, and the air currents around them could be dangerous.

Even to get close to them was to feel their cold bite.

Averan wished that she still had her leather riding gloves to keep her hands warm.

She hunched low to the neck of her mount, to feel the heat of Leatherneck’s body and to listen to the subtle rhythms of his breathing so that she could learn when he began to tire.

Twice during the day, she let Leatherneck drop below the mists and rest for short times on the ground. He was an old graak, old and easily tired. She feared that if she rode him too hard, his heart would give out.

As they traveled, the mountains of Alcair receded from sight until they were lost in a haze. The mountains of Brace rose up from the clouds off to her left and spurred to a point ahead. Averan knew every peak by name. She was rapidly approaching Carris just beyond a saddleback ridge seventy miles ahead. She doubted that she’d reach the city by dark, and hoped only that the cloud cover was thin enough so that she could see the city’s lights from above.

So it was that in the near dusk, Averan rode with stomach tight from hunger, her mouth dry from thirst: She had not stopped to eat or drink, not wanting to make her mount bear any more than he was able. She was lying against his neck, listening to the steady thump-ump, thump-ump, thump-ump; of his heart, wondering if she should let him rest again.

Thus she was distracted at the single most important moment of her life. For just at dusk, the green woman plummeted like a comet from a cloudless sky.

Averan heard a wordless shout—a piercing wail—and looked up.

The sky above was the perfect blue of a robin’s egg.

And a green woman fell.

Averan spotted her two hundred yards off. The woman tumbled head over heels, naked as a newborn babe. She was tall, thin of build, her ribs showing plainly beneath her small breasts. The hair of her head and the dark V between her legs was the color of pine needles, while her skin was a more muted shade, almost flesh in tone.

Averan could make out few other details.

She glanced skyward, to see if the woman could have fallen from some vehicle. Flameweavers sometimes rode in hot-air balloons, and it was said that the Sky Lords traveled in ships of cloud, though Averan had never seen one.

Neither cloud nor balloon was above her, or anywhere near.

In that moment, Averan felt the cold wind numbing her hands, blowing through cracks in her robe and on her face. She could see clearly. Could hear the woman’s cry.

Something in Averan broke.

She’d seen her mother fall from a chair and dash her head on the paving stones at the foot of a fireplace. She’d seen her five-year-old playmate Kylis tumble from the landing of the aerie, drop to the cliff base far below.

She could not idly watch another person fall to her death.

Without a thought of her mission to carry a message to Duke Paladane at Carris, she leaned back, clasped Leatherneck tightly with her legs, and cried, “Down! Fast!”

The graak folded his wings in close, shot after the green woman like a hawk diving for a mouse.

For a moment, the woman stared up at Averan, hands outstretched, pleading for aid. Her mouth was a round O of horror, fangs bared, her long green fingernails extended like claws.

Not human, Averan realized. This woman was not human. It did not matter. She seemed close to human, though it was hard to tell. In seconds she plummeted into the clouds, and was lost from sight.

Averan followed her into the mist. Drops of moisture beaded on her skin.

Leatherneck flapped his wings and slowed, refused to dive blindly into the fog. From below came the snapping sound of cracking wood, and the green woman’s shriek was stilled.

When the great-reptile emerged beneath a low ceiling of cloud, Averan saw the green woman at once.

She’d dropped into an orchard, among a trio of crabapple trees. One tree had snapped under the impact; a slash of white where its uppermost branches had ripped away.

The graak glided over the orchard. Averan’s mind seemed to go numb as she urged Leatherneck to the ground. The great reptile flapped his wings, and Averan leapt to the ground almost before the beast touched down.

In seconds she was at the green woman’s side.

The woman lay slightly askew, her right hand over her head, her legs spread. She’d impacted so hard onto the moist ground that her body now rested in a mild depression.

Averan could see no overt sign of broken bones. Nothing poked through the green woman’s flesh. Yet she saw blood, so dark green and oily it was almost black, smeared across the woman’s left breast.

Averan had seldom seen a naked woman—had never seen one like this. The green woman was not merely handsome; she was beautiful, unearthly, like some fine Runelord’s lady, gifted with so many endowments of glamour that a common woman could only look at such a creature and despair.

Yet even with the perfect features of her face, her flawless skin, the green woman was obviously not human. Her long fingers ended in claws that looked as sharp as fishhooks. Her mouth, faintly open, dribbled green blood and showed canines longer than those on a bear. Her ears were...somehow wrong. They were dainty and graceful, yet tilted forward a bit, like the ears of a doe.

The green woman was not breathing.

Averan put her head to the woman’s chest, listened for a heartbeat. She heard it, beating softly, deeply, as if the green woman rested in slumber.

Averan felt the green woman’s arms and legs, searching for wounds. She wiped away some green blood near the woman’s neck, found what looked like a puncture wound from the woman’s own nails. Wiping away the blood from the woman’s lips, she checked in her mouth.

She’d bitten her tongue in the fall, and it was bleeding badly. Averan twisted the woman’s head to the side, afraid that the blood flowing freely into her throat might choke her.

The green woman growled, low in her throat, like a dog disturbed by dreams of the hunt.

Averan suddenly leapt back, afraid for the first time that this woman might be some animal. Feral. Deadly.

A dog began baying.

Averan looked up.

She was at the edge of a farm. A cottage stood not far off, a hut made of fieldstones and covered with a roof of thatch. A fierce wolfhound barked by the edge of the rail fence, but dared not approach the graak. For its part, the graak merely studied the dog hungrily, as if it hoped the hound would lunge.

The green woman opened her eyes to slits, and grasped Averan’s throat.

Averan fought to scream.

9 The Rescue

Roland and Baron Poll had been riding hard all day, having traveled a pace that would kill a normal horse, when they heard the snarling and yelping of a hound, accompanied by a child’s scream.

They had just rounded past a village near the base of the Brace Mountains and Roland’s horse had slowed, winded. The sky was overcast, and with the hills so close, the night’s shadows were already beginning to thicken.

When Roland heard the shriek, he was nearing a small farm with an orchard of woodpear and crabapple trees behind it.

A quick glance showed him a graak in the orchard, lunging and snapping at a huge wolfhound, while under the shade of a tree, a girl was shrieking in terror.

“By the Powers, it’s a wild graak!” Baron Poll shouted, spurring his charger. Wild graaks often attacked peasants’ animals out here, so close to the mountains. Yet it was rarer for them to eat humans.

Roland’s heart raced.

Baron Poll reached behind him, drew his horseman’s axe, and spurred his mount past the cottage, frightening some nervous ducklings that milled about by the front door. Then his horse jumped the rail fence. The hound, emboldened by Baron Poll’s presence, leapt after him and charged toward the graak.

Roland’s horse suddenly leapt over the fence, and Roland realized that he too had charged the graak without thought. He reached into his tunic for his half-sword, though it would do little good against such a large lizard.

The whole world seemed to narrow to that moment. Roland could hear the child shrieking farther back in the orchard, could see the great beast rise up and spread its wings. Baron Poll’s charger reared back and pawed the air.

It was an old lizard, by the look of it, huge. Teeth like daggers, its golden eyes blazing.

The hound leapt in at it, and the graak snapped down, catching the hound in its long jaws. It gave the dog a vicious shake, snapping its bones.

At that moment, while the lizard was distracted, Baron Poll raised the axe in both hands and hurled with all his might, catching the reptile cleanly between the eyes.

“Hah, take that, foul creature!” the Baron shouted as if in parody of some great hero.

The graak jerked back its head, as if stricken by surprise. Blood welled from the horrible blow that Baron Poll had dealt. The graak batted its wings once, then pitched to the side and collapsed.

Roland sat in his saddle for half a second, feeling exuberantly victorious, stupidly clutching his own sword.

Still, the child screamed.

As the body of the graak settled to the ground, Roland saw the child better, for she’d been momentarily hidden behind its wings—a girl of seven or eight years kneeling beside the trees. The girl had half turned toward him. Piercing green eyes and wavy hair, the same red as Roland’s.

She wore a hooded cloak of midnight-blue with the king’s coat of arms on it—the image, of the green man, a face circled by oak leaves. Above it a graak was sewn in red.

A skyrider. The blood drained from Roland’s face. We’ve killed a mount for the King’s messenger, he realized. All the gold he had would never repay the new King.

The child screamed again, and Roland realized something else. The crabapple tree that the child sat beneath was broken, as if struck by a bolt of lightning. And in the tall brown grass beneath the tree was something green.

One of its claws was hooked in the skyrider’s cloak.

The child had not been attacked by a graak at all. Something else had her in its grip.

“Helllp!” the child wailed.

Roland rushed forward a few paces for a better look, suddenly cautious, until he had a full view of the green woman lying there in a pool of blood of the deepest green.

He had never seen anything like this monster. The green woman was beautiful and strange beyond anything that Roland had imagined. She held the child’s robe firmly in her claws, merely held it, staring at the sigil emblazoned on the girl’s chest. Mesmerized, she moved the girl this way and that, gazing at the colored threads that made up the image of the green man.

Roland felt confused. “Get away from that thing, child,” he whispered. “Stop screaming, and let the beast have your robe.”

The girl turned to him, her face an ashen white. She quit screaming but began to whimper as she shrugged out of, the robe, tried to disentangle herself.

Meanwhile, Baron Poll had dismounted, and came huffing toward them, having recovered his axe.

Roland leapt from his own horse, sword at the ready.

The green woman almost did not notice the two men, until the girl tried to move back. Then it lashed out and grasped her forearm, studied her from eyes as dark green as her own blood.

“Let her go!” Roland shouted, stepping forward, brandishing the halfsword. Baron Poll stepped up beside him.

The green woman turned on them, stared at Roland and through him. She tossed the child aside like a rag doll, then rose to a crouch, sniffing the air like some animal, her small breasts swaying as she shifted from side to side. She caught a scent, peered fixedly at Baron Poll.

Roland’s heart was pounding in fear.

“That’s right,” Baron Poll said. “I’m the one you’re after. I’m the one you want. You smell blood? You want some? Come and get it.”

The green woman leapt at Poll, covered sixty feet in three bounds. Roland prepared for her charge. He set his feet, raised his sword, and timed his swing so that it would lop off the green woman’s head.

With a mighty shout he whirled the blade, just as the green woman reached Baron Poll.

Roland threw his full weight into the blow, brought the sword down on the green woman’s neck, and felt as if he’d struck the blade against stone. The blade clanged into her, bounced off her neck and slapped Roland’s left wrist.

The pain of it stung him; left his sword arm throbbing.

Then the green woman had Baron Poll. He’d fallen backward, too astonished to swing, and she crouched over him, grasping the handle of his axe.

Baron Poll struggled to move the blade from side to side, but even with his endowments of brawn, he could hardly budge it.

She held the axe, studying it. She sniffed the graak’s blood, then with a long sensual tongue, experimentally licked the gore from the blade.

Roland fell back a pace as the monster closed her eyes, relishing the taste of blood.

The girl child was still whimpering. Blood pounded in Roland’s ears and sweat poured down the front of his tunic. It seemed obvious that the green woman craved blood as a drowning man craves his next breath.

“By the Powers, get her away from me!” Baron Poll said, grunting in terror. He held the axe, tried to tear it away, as the green woman began to lick the blade clean.

Roland had never seen anything like this, had never heard of anything like this green woman. She had to be a summoned being, perhaps some fell monster drawn from the netherworld. Dark green blood flowed from a couple of small wounds. Green, like green flames, he thought.

Nearby, the King’s skyrider still whimpered. Roland called to her softly, “Get out of here, child. Walk slowly. Do not run.” He backed away himself, knowing that he could be of no use to Baron Poll.

The green woman stopped licking the axe blade, turned and watched Roland, then repeated in a soft voice, matching his every tone and inflection, “Get out of here, child. Walk slowly. Do not run.”

Roland did not know if the beast sought to command him or was merely repeating his words. He backed away a step, his feet crunching in the dry brown grass. A twig snapped beneath his heel.

The green woman licked the axe blade and shouted at Baron Poll, “I’m the one you’re after. I’m the one you want. You smell blood? You want some? Come and get it.”

Baron Poll nodded as she licked the blade clean, let the axe go in her hand. “Blood,” he whispered. “Blood.”

The green woman stopped licking, stared at him. “Blood,” she said, running her tongue over the blade. “Blood.”

Roland had backed up a dozen paces by now, wondered if he should turn and run. You never run from a dog, he knew, or a bear. The movement of your legs only enticed the animals. He decided that he should not run from the green woman, either.

He backed away and turned. In half a heartbeat, the green woman pounced, caught him from behind.

“Blood!” she said, hefting him in the air. She sniffed his wrist, where he had scraped himself only moments before, inhaled deeply the scent of his blood.

“No!” he cried as she set him down, shoved him onto his side. Dirt entered his mouth, and he smelled the bitter scent of wild carrots, the fragrant mold upon the wild barley that grew about.

Then there was a burning pain as the green woman shoved one long claw into his wrist. He struggled to escape, tried to kick at her face. She held him, ran her tongue over his left wrist, savoring his life’s blood.

He kicked her ankles. Though she looked delicate as a dancer, every muscle in those legs seemed to be a cord of steel. His struggling availed him nothing. She held him tighter, crushing his arm.

He gasped in pain.

The green woman sucked at his wound, pulling out his vital juices with a soft slurping sound. He cried out, fought for his very life, fearing that at any moment she would bite into his throat.

“Help!” Roland shouted, looking for Baron Poll. But the fat knight had gotten up shakily, and stared at Roland in helpless horror.

By the Powers, he thought. Asleep for twenty years, and I wake up only to die after the first week.

Suddenly, the child raced to Baron Poll, grabbed his axe, and leapt toward them. “No! No!” Roland cried.

The girl swung the axe blade down on the green woman, and there was a dull thud.

The green woman stopped, loosed her grip a little.

The woman stared at the child. She shouted, “No! No!”

Then the green woman let him go completely, and Roland was free. He tried to scramble through the grass, but tripped and fell three paces off.

The green woman eyed him hungrily.

“No,” the child repeated. “Not him.” She swung the axe down a second time, hitting the green woman in the skull. The green woman crouched on the ground. She looked up at the child, parroted, “No.”

The girl dropped the axe. She’d put a notch in the green woman’s skin, just the barest of cuts. Dark blood oozed from it.

The child reached down and stroked the woman’s hair at the front of her scalp. The green woman arched her back, as if pleased by the attention.

“When training a dangerous animal,” the girl said softly to Roland and Baron Poll, “you must reward it for good behavior, and punish it for bad.”

Roland nodded. Of course the girl would know about the training of beasts. She was a skyrider, after all, and would have to tend the graaks.

Roland had been the King’s butcher. As a child, one of his first duties had been to carry bones and scraps of offal to the kennels, so that beast master Hamrickson could train the King’s war dogs. He thought he knew what she was asking of him.

He backed off carefully, to avoid drawing the green woman’s attention, then painfully limped toward the dead graak.

“No, I’ll do it,” the girl said. “She should think of me as her master.”

She hurried past him, circled the lizard. Her eyes seemed blank with pain as she looked at the reptile. Then she leaned over and pulled the hound’s carcass from its jaws. It was not a small feat. The wolfhound was a huge dog that easily weighed a hundred pounds, yet the child hefted its carcass easily.

I am a fool, Roland thought. The girl is a skyrider, with at least one endowment of brawn. Despite her small size, she is stronger than I am. I had thought to save her, and instead the child saved me.

She brought the hound back, laid it at the feet of the green woman. “Blood,” she whispered. “For you.”

The green woman sniffed the hound, began licking blood from its pelt. When she seemed assured that no one would take the thing from her, she tore into the carcass and ripped into its back and haunches.

“Good girl,” the child said. “Very good.”

The green woman looked up at the child. Blood foamed at her mouth as she parroted, “Good girl.”

“You’re a smart one, too,” the child said. She pointed to herself and whispered, “Averan, Averan.” The green woman repeated her name. She pointed to Roland, and he gave his own name. Baron Poll finally came close, gave his own name. Then Averan pointed to the green woman.

The green woman stopped eating and stared blankly.

10 The Gem

Tears of rage and pain threatened to blind Averan as she worked, rage and pain that came from seeing her graak dead. She didn’t want to seem a child, didn’t want to act like a child. But she found it nearly impossible to keep up a façade of indifference.

So after Roland and Baron Poll introduced themselves, she busied herself tending Roland’s wound, moving about numbly as if in a dream. The green woman’s fall from the sky, the shock of seeing Leatherneck dead, the horrors that she knew had occurred at Keep Haberd, all left her feeling dazed and wrung out. She wanted to scream.

Instead, she bit her lip and worked.

Averan knew that the wound in Roland’s wrist stung like a hornet when she washed it. The wound was deep, ragged, and it bled badly. She went to a well beside the cottage for a bucket of water, then poured it over him and blotted the wound. He stifled a cry, and the green woman drew near eagerly, like a dog begging for scraps.

“No,” Averan warned the green woman. “This one’s not for you.” Baron Poll grabbed the axe. The fat knight shook it threateningly. The green woman backed off.

Roland laughed miserably. “Thank you, child, for not feeding me to your pet.” Averan finished wiping the water away: Her lightest scrubbing had opened the wound again, and she used part of Roland’s tunic as a compress, holding the wound closed.

“She’s not my pet,” Averan objected, trying to hold in her own pain.

“Try telling her that,” Baron Poll said. “In half an hour she’ll be rolling over for you and trying to nose her way into your bed.”

Averan knew that they were right. The green woman had accepted her, had accepted her from the moment that she woke to find Averan kneeling over her. She was like a baby graak that way, new from its egg. But just because the Baron was right didn’t mean she had to like him. He was the oaf who had killed Leatherneck, after all.

The green woman thinks I’m her mother, Averan realized. Averan shook her head. She didn’t know what to do with the beast.

“Did you summon the creature?” Baron Poll asked.

“Summon her?” Averan asked.

“Well, it’s not a natural creature, is it?” Baron Poll said, eyeing the green woman warily. “I’ve never heard of its like. So it must have been summoned.”

Averan shrugged. Baron Poll’s question was beyond her, beyond any of them. She knew nothing of magic, aside from what one might hear from an occasional hedge wizard. Keep Haberd had seldom entertained anyone with power.

“It’s the green of fire,” Roland said. “Flames can be green. Do you have any power over fire?”

The green woman got off her haunches, went to the dead body of Leatherneck, and began to feed. Averan winced and looked away.

“No,” Averan said mechanically. “I sometimes light the fire in the hearth at our aerie; it’s all I can do to keep one going. I’m no flameweaver.”

Averan wiped the last of the blood from Roland’s wound with a corner of Roland’s tunic. “The earth can be green, too,” she said. “As is water.” She blinked a tear from her eye.

Roland didn’t answer, but Baron Poll did. “You’re right, girl, but the summoner’s, art is practiced by flameweavers, not by earth magicians or water wizards.”

“She fell from the sky,” Averan said. “That’s all I know. I saw her drop out of the air in front of me. I was above the clouds. Maybe she’s a creature of the air.”

Baron Poll half-turned to look down at her. “Summoned,” he said thoughtfully, sure of himself.

Averan frowned. She had an endowment of wit, and so was a quick learner. But she was only nine years old, and she’d never studied the magical arts. “You think I am the summoner? You’re daft.”

Baron Poll was the oldest, and even Roland looked to him for counsel. He said, “Maybe so, but I’ve heard it said that the Powers have their own reasons for doing what they do. Perhaps you didn’t summon it; it may have been sent.”

That seemed just as unlikely. Roland’s bleeding had finally stopped, and the wound looked clean enough.

Averan noticed that some of the green woman’s blood was on her fingers. She dipped them in the bucket and tried to scrub the blood off, but the green stuff had already soaked into her skin, staining her hands as if she’d spilled ink, leaving irregular blotches. She supposed it would wear off.

“I’m sorry about your graak,” Baron Poll said for the third time since he’d introduced himself. “Can you forgive me?”

Averan fought back bitter tears. Leatherneck was not my graak, she told herself. It was the King’s, or Brand’s, more than it belonged to anyone else.

Still she had fed the beast for years, had groomed it and scraped its teeth and filed its claws. She’d loved the old lizard.

She’d known he was old, that he’d only had another summer or two left, at most.

She knew that she should not blame Baron Poll for killing it. Brand had always said, “Never punish a beast for having a good heart. Even the kindest brutes will sometimes nip you by mistake.”

The same was true with men, she supposed. Even fat old knights who should have known better. Tears flooded her eyes.

“It is forgotten, Sir Paunch,” Averan said, trying to make light of it, trying to keep the pain from her voice.

“Go ahead, child, hurl insults if it will make you feel better,” the old knight said. “You can do better than that!”

Averan wanted to hold her tongue, but it hurt too much to keep the pain in. Still, she dared not be too rude to a lord. “If it pleases you, Sir Breadbasket, Sir Greasebarrel, Sir Broadbutt.”

“That’s better, child,” Poll said with a sullen expression.

“Though he is a baron,” Roland corrected the girl, “and should more properly be called Baron Broadbutt.”

Averan smiled weakly, sniffed and wiped her tears away, satisfied with the name-calling, at least for now.

Baron Poll asked, “Where were you going? Are you carrying an important message?”

Averan considered. It was the most important message that she’d ever carried: news of an impending invasion. “Paladane has heard by now,” Averan said truthfully. “Reavers were coming down to Keep Haberd from the mountains. By now, Haberd has fallen. I was to bear a message to Duke Paladane, but riders on force horses were also sent. Master Brand had me fly out only to save my life.”

“We found your messenger,” Baron Poll said, “earlier today. He’d had a bad fall, so I suppose that Paladane has yet to learn your news. Tis bitter tidings these days. The King dead, Raj Ahten advancing on Carris—all of it! Now the reavers.”

“We’re going north to Heredon,” Roland said as he sat up. “We’ll bear your news to Paladane in Carris and then to the King, too.”

Baron Poll added, “We can drop you off in Carris.”

She remembered Brand’s warning that she should head north for safety. “I don’t want to go to Carris,” she said. “I’m going to Heredon, with you!”

“Heredon?” Baron Poll said. “I don’t think so. It’s bound to be a dangerous trip, what with Raj Ahten on the move. There’s no need for you to go. We’ll carry the message.”

“I know the way to Heredon,” Averan offered. “I know the roads, and the mountains, and I know faster ways for a man on a good horse to travel. I could guide you.”

“Have you flown there?” Baron Poll asked.

“Yes, twice,” Averan lied. She’d seen the maps, memorized the lay of the land. But she’d never even flown as far as Fleeds.

The men looked at one another meaningfully. They could use a guide.

“No, we’ve only got two horses,” Roland said. “We’ll drop you off somewhere safe.”

“I could ride with you,” Averan said to Roland. Given Baron Poll’s stomach, she could not sit double with him on a horse. “I’m small, and I’ve an endowment of strength and stamina. If your horse tires, I can get down and run.”

This was important, she knew. She wanted to get to Heredon now; she had an unreasoned and unreasonable craving to do so. Her message to Paladane was important, but her need was even more compelling. Her whole body shook with the desire. In fact, she knew almost exactly where she wanted to go. She closed her eyes, and recalled the maps: In the middle of Heredon, almost nine hundred miles north of here, beyond the Durkin Hills. Castle Sylvarresta. In her mind’s eye, she saw something that resembled a green glowing gem.

“Do you have family in Heredon?” Baron Poll asked.

“No,” she admitted. “Not really.” Yet it was important that she get there.

“Then why are you so determined to go?” Roland asked. Averan knew that because she was small, because she was a child, others expected her to act like a child, prone to tantrums and unreasonable fits. But Averan was not like other children; she never had been. Brand had said that he chose her from among all of the orphans in Mystarria because when he looked in her eyes, he saw an old woman there. During her short life, she had lived more than others had.

“That is where I was heading,” she lied, “after I gave Duke Paladane the message. My master Brand has a sister there at Castle Sylvarresta. He hoped she would take me in. He gave me a letter for her, and money for my keep.” She jingled the purse tied to her belt.

Roland did not ask to see the letter. Words on paper were obviously above him. And Baron Poll was a lazy man. He didn’t want to bother reading letters. Averan hoped that the lure of money might hook them.

“And what of your pet?” Baron Poll asked, nodding toward the green woman. “Will she follow us, do you think?”

“We’ll leave her,” Averan answered, though something inside warned against it. What if Baron Poll was right? What if one of the Powers had summoned the creature for her? It would be wasteful to abandon it, perhaps even dangerous. Still, Averan did not see how they could bring the creature with them.

Baron Poll considered thoughtfully. In a tone that brooked no argument, he said, “We dare not take you far. I’ll drop you off somewhere safe, north of Carris if you like. I’ve got a cousin in a small town north of there. She could help arrange for your care.”

Averan was used to dealing with lords. They were often inconsiderate and never liked being told that they were wrong. Baron Poll’s tone warned her that she could expect nothing better from him.

But in her heart she vowed, If you leave me, I’ll run behind you if I must, and follow you every step of the way.

Averan ran and fetched Roland’s piebald filly, along with Baron Poll’s dun stallion, and they prepared to depart. The sun had nearly set, yet the owner of the cottage had still not come home.

Baron Poll picked a few woodpears and crabapples from the small orchard, then grabbed some turnips and onions from a garden behind the cottage. A few scrawny ducks, hatched in the past eight weeks, waddled around the front of the house. Baron Poll left them.

Averan wondered who might live here. An old woodcutter she imagined, for the orchard was too small to provide a living for even one person and the hills were wooded to the south. She wondered what he would think when he discovered his dog dead, and a graak lying beside it in his backyard. She opened the purse that Brand had given her, found that it contained not only some northern coins, but also a couple of golden trade rings like those used by merchants from Indhopal. The rings were as precisely weighted as any coin, and were struck with the symbols of Muyyatin, but could be worn on the fingers or toes, or on a string about the neck, and therefore were not as easily lost as a northern coin.

After selecting a single piece of silver, Averan laid it atop the body of the dog.

Then she sat before Roland on his mount, and she and Baron Poll and Roland raced away from the cottage, up a winding road toward the forests of the Brace Mountains.

When they left the cottage, the green woman was still feeding on Leatherneck’s corpse. She did not even look up, except to cast an unconcerned glance in Averan’s direction.

A mile farther on, the road began to climb the hills in earnest. The highway was lined with alders, their leaves going golden in the early autumn. Higher up, a few pines also marched along the hill.

The road here became a lonely place, the hillside windswept. In some places, boulders had rolled down the mountain and blocked parts of the road, so that Roland maneuvered the horse around them. This highway had been well tended a dozen years ago, but the bandits in these hills were so thick that the king’s men didn’t bother to maintain the trail any longer.

It was an hour after sunset, and Bessahan had been riding hard all afternoon, trying to catch the King’s messengers. But his horse had thrown a shoe in the woods, and he’d had to stop and fix it, wasting nearly an hour.

Bessahan found the graak by the roadside almost by chance. Near a cottage beside the road, a hefty woman stood with a battered lantern, staring at the dead reptile in her orchard. The lantern was hooded with a cloudy ceramic that did not let out much light. In the darkness, the woman mistook Bessahan for someone else.

“Eh, Koby, is that you?”

Bessahan had a limited command of the Rofehavanish tongue. He dared not let her hear his accent, so he merely grunted in return.

“Did you see this? Someone killed this graak right here by the house, split its head clean open. There’s tracks here from a pair of horses. Was it you who did it?”

Bessahan shook his head no.

“And the damned monster killed my dog, too.” The fat, woman shook her head in disgust. She was an old thing with stringy hair and a greasy apron. Bessahan had taken endowments of scent from two dogs. He could smell lye soap on her, even at fifty paces. A dirty woman who washed clothes for others.

“Whoever killed it did me no favors,” the old woman groaned. “If they’d have said to me, ‘Kitty, you want us to kill that monster in your backyard?’ I’d have answered, ‘No. You leave it alone. Killing it won’t bring Dog back to life and you can let it have my worthless ducks, too.’ But would anyone ever listen to me? Nooo!”

Bessahan’s opinion of the woman lowered even more. She was not only fat and greasy, she talked much while thinking little.

“Well,” she asked, “will you help me get rid of it? The carcass will only draw wolves. In fact, it looks as if one has already been after it. It’s all ripped apart.”

Bessahan looked up the road. The messengers had probably gone that way; into the mountains, into the dark. But night was falling, and he wondered if they would risk the mountain trails by night. No, it would be wiser to stay nearby. They could be camped anywhere—in the orchard, up the hill.

And rain was coming. He could smell it on the wind. It might be hard to track them by scent.

He rode his horse up to the old woman in the dim lamplight. She looked up at him through hooded eyes, suddenly wary.

“Hey, you’re not Koby!” she accused.

“No, I am sorry,” Bessahan answered in his thick accent. “I am not your Koby. My name is Bessahan.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked, backing up a step, suddenly defensive.

“I am searching for the men who killed the graak,” Bessahan answered.

“What for?” the old woman demanded. Bessahan let his horse step closer.

“Bessahan?” she asked,, suddenly frightened. “What kind of name is that!”

She had obviously not seen the men, had no further information of any value. So he told her the truth.

“It is not a name, so much as a title. In my country, my name means ‘Hunter of Men.’ ”

The old woman put her hand on her mouth, as if to keep from crying out.

Bessahan leaned over quickly, grabbed the old woman by the hair with his right hand, and drew his khivar, a longbladed assassin’s knife, with his left.

He slashed hard with his knife, so that the blade snicked through bone, and the old woman’s body tumbled into the dry grass at his horse’s feet. He cut off a single ear, then tossed her head beside the body.

She had died without a cry.

Bessahan put the ear in a coin pouch, then leapt from his horse and picked up the lantern. He cleaned his blade and circled the carcass of the graak. He caught the scent of a young man in a cotton tunic, and an old man whose sweat was more like a boar’s scent. All of these northerners ate too much cheese and drank too much ale. Their very skin smelled bad to Bessahan, like curdled milk. And they were dirty besides.

But he smelled something else—a girl’s scent on the beast’s neck. This was no wild graak, he suddenly realized. He held the lantern near, saw where the scales of the graak’s neck had been polished smooth by young legs there near the base of the graak’s shoulders. A skyrider had been on that beast!

So, she had joined with the king’s messengers.

The prints of hooves near the graak’s carcass showed that two mounts had indeed headed north on horseback.

Bessahan removed the hood from the lantern, then blew out the wick and left it on the grass. He preferred that the old woman’s body not be found until morning.

In the darkness, he stretched his back and looked up. A ragged hole in the clouds showed stars gleaming like a thousand diamonds in a perfect sky.

A beautiful night, with just a touch of cold. On such a night back home, he would have taken a pair of girls to his room to keep him warm. He had been without a woman for too long.

He let the hood fall back from over his head, shook his long dark hair out in the starlight, and sniffed the air in consternation.

He smelled something odd, something...unlike anything he had ever encountered. Rich, earthy. Like freshly turned soil or like moss, yet sweeter.

I am in a northern forest, he reminded himself, far from home. Of course there are plants here that I have never smelled before.

Yet something bothered him. He could sniff the air, taste the scent, but he could not locate the source of the smell itself. It was as if some strange animal had passed this way.

Bessahan got on his mount and rode into the night.

11 Polished Stones

Iome and Gaborn stood atop the King’s Keep, gazing down on the fields below Castle Sylvarresta. It was the last evening of Hostenfest, and the great feast was over, though Gaborn had not eaten a handful of food all day. Now, by tradition, was a time of song.

For a thousand years or more, the end of Hostenfest had been celebrated in song as families gathered round the hearth and cast handfuls of fragrant dried leaves and flower petals upon the firerose and jasmine, lavender or mint.

Then they had sung together, in hope of the new King.

Two hundred thousand tents and pavilions covered the fields before Castle Sylvarresta, and each one shone from the lanterns within it, so that the light shining through made the edifices glow in colors of gold and silver, iridescent blues and vivid greens. Moreover, the people of Heredon stood before their tents and held aloft small oil lamps. The essence of flower petals filled the air, and the light of the lamps reflected from their faces.

Every kind of man stood upon that field: lords and ladies in their finery, peasant farmers by the drab hundreds of thousands, scholars and fools, minstrels and laborers, whores and healers, merchants and huntsmen. The sick, the healthy, the lame, the dying. The astonished, the joyous, the skeptical, the true believers, the terrified.

The people were giddy and wild-eyed. It was the last day of Hostenfest, the celebration of the Earth King. The people celebrated, but even in their celebration there was an undertone of terror.

Together the people sang an ancient hymn.

As the people sang, Iome looked down in wonder, for beside the opalescent lights shining from the pavilions and lamps around the castle, a strange sapphire light glowed in the moat.

The great sturgeons swam wildly, drawing runes of protection about the castle, as if they too offered support to the Earth King.

When the song ended, horns began to trumpet upon the walls of Castle Sylvarresta and throughout the vast horde. Hundreds of thousands of voices united in shouting, “All hail the new Earth King! All hail the Earth King.”

Their voices echoed among the hills and reverberated from the castle walls. Men, women, and children raised their fists as they cried out in wonder. Many an animal bucked wildly at the shouting and began to run through the camps. A throng of at least five hundred thousand people began racing forward to kneel with their weapons proffered in support of Gaborn. Men shouted and women cried, the horns kept blaring. Upon the castle walls boys wildly waved the banners of Sylvarresta.

Iome had never imagined such a noise or tumult. A chill coursed down her spine.

This is only the beginning, Iome realized. People remember the legends. Every man, woman, and child who desires to live knows that he must serve the Earth King, gain his protection.

Millions upon millions of people are coming. The whole world will gather here.

Thus Gaborn Val Orden stood on the walls of Castle Sylvarresta in triumph.

Iome looked to his face to see his reaction. Gaborn stood rigid, and peered to the south as if listening to a distant trumpet.

Iome looked off at the edge of the forest, could see nothing beyond the dark trees. Yet Gaborn trembled as he gazed beyond the southern hills with a faraway look in his eye.

“What’s wrong?” Iome asked.

He breathed heavily. “Iome, I feel a warning like never before! The Earth’s warning. The fields here are black. My death is coming! The death of us all is coming!”

“What do you mean?” Iome asked.

“We must prepare to flee,” he said. He offered no further explanation. Instead he gripped her hand as he turned and raced from the top of the King’s Tower, through the open hatch, down, the stairs, descending six stories until he reached the old cellars where no man had lived in Iome’s lifetime.

Gaborn’s and Iome’s Days raced to keep up.

Iome was vaguely aware that the Earth Warden Binnesman had converted this dirty hole into his den, since Raj Ahten’s flameweavers had burned his cottage in the garden, but when Gaborn threw open the door, she was not at all prepared for what she saw.

The wizard Binnesman stood in the cellar, whose scent of mildew, sulfur, and ash was made tolerable only by the bundles of herbs tied to the rafters. Binnesman had no candles or lamps of any kind lit in that room. Yet half-buried in the dirt on the floor lay a Seer’s Stone. It was an enormous round stone, a polished agate of purest white. Other, smaller crystals were laid around it, pointing inward toward this vast stone, and the wizard had drawn magic runes in the dirt around the entire assembly. The crystals and the great polished agate were all glowing with their own light.

Binnesman stood leaning on his staff and staring down at the glowing stone, watching an image. As Iome looked at the stone, she could see four mountains spouting smoke and ash and fire. Distantly thunder rumbled, seeming to shake the floor beneath her. The stone revealed an image of volcanoes erupting.

Or at least that is what she thought at first. For these were not common volcanoes. Instead, they were but small domes, where lava gushed like water, and reavers by the tens of thousands boiled out of the ground.

Nor did the Seer’s Stone convey the image alone. Iome realized that the odor of sulfur and ash in the air issued from the stone, and the heat radiated by the Seer’s Stone warmed the room like a baker’s oven. Indeed, she could smell and feel and hear and see everything, just as if she were watching the volcanoes from afar.

Yet Iome had never heard that Binnesman dabbled with Seer’s Stones. In fact, he’d denied ever having done so when confronted by Raj Ahten.

Iome stared at the image in the stone, astonished.

“Reavers have surfaced in North Crowthen,” the wizard said matter-of-factly. “Others are coming to ground farther south, along the Alcair Mountains. Your keep at Haberd is toppled. Raj Ahten’s defenses in Kartish are faring no better.

Even as he said it, the whole of Castle Sylvarresta suddenly trembled as the earth shook. At first Iome thought it was a residual effect from the Seer’s Stones arranged on the floor, but the wizard stared up at the walls of the castle, concerned. “It is but a minor tremor,” the wizard said. “The Earth is in pain.”

Iome glanced at the pair of Days who had taken sanctuary in the dark corner behind her. With their minds paired to those of their fellows, they knew more about the affairs of the Earth than anyone in this room, including the wizard Binnesman. What she saw worried her. Gaborn’s Days stared at the scene in horror, mouth gaping.

“What is Raj Ahten doing, attacking me at a time like this?” Gaborn demanded. “Does he even know the danger?”

“I doubt that he sees the calamity yet,” the wizard answered. “Last I saw, his troops were marching toward Carris, it seemed. At least, they were a few hours ago.”

“Where are they now?” Gaborn asked.

Binnesman bowed his head and closed his eyes, as if too weary to continue. Ever since he’d raised his wylde and lost it, he’d suffered from fatigue. “It has been a long day. But I’ll try.”

The wizard reached down to the dirt floor and rubbed fresh soil upon his palms and on his face. Then he picked up a few crystals, moved them about the edge of the Seer’s Stone, pulling some back, moving others left or right, his face a study in concentration.

The process took several minutes, for the wizard had first to locate Raj Ahten’s troops, as if seen from a distant mountain, then progressively move to better vantage points.

Yet what Iome eventually saw made the hair stand up on her arms: Raj Ahten’s troops were massed about a village, a hundred stone houses with thatch roofs. A low wall of stone surrounded the village, one that a knight mounted on a good force horse could easily overleap.

There were no watchmen on the walls, no distant sound of barking dogs. It appeared that the town was unaware of the approaching threat.

“I know that place,” Gaborn said. “That is the village of Twynhaven.”

The frowth giants in Raj Ahten’s army raised their muzzles and sniffed the air hungrily, as if trying to catch the scent of fresh blood. The knights in the retinue held their lances and war axes ready.

But it was Raj Ahten’s sorcerers who took the lead.

Three flameweavers spread out in a line, just outside the village wall, and began to chant, soft and reedy. Iome could hear them plainly, yet she could not make out their words, for their chant was a song of fire and consumption, the flickering sounds of flames, the crackle of a log.

Around each of them, grass and bushes suddenly erupted. Green flames shot skyward, and the flameweavers were engulfed. Iome smelled ash, felt the heat of their flame. They began stalking toward the village, climbed the low stone wall.

Suddenly; the dogs in the town caught sight of them and several began to bay. A horse whinnied nervously.

Still, no voice was raised in alarm.

The flameweavers leapt over the wall, and by now the fires behind them had grown substantial, so that Iome watched the sorcerers from beyond a screen of flame.

Around the village wall, the late summer sun had bleached the grass, sucked all the moisture from it. The flameweaver to the far left pointed to his left, and a tendril of flame shot from his hand and raced around the wall faster than a good horse could run. The flameweaver to the right did the same. In seconds, the two bolts of flame met at the far end of the city, and it was circled in fire.

Then the fire leapt skyward and began to rush toward the center of the circle.

A woman screamed and ran from her house at the edge of the village, gaping in dismay. Others began to follow her from their homes—children and mothers. Some horses knocked down a corral, raced round the town, bucking wildly.

The flameweavers advanced on the village now. The rising inferno was feeding them, giving them energy. One flameweaver pointed at a large barn; and the thatch of its roof caught fire, seemed almost to explode.

Seconds later, one of his fellows approached a house, sent a rope of flame twisting toward it, so that its roof and all its timbers inside were consumed at once. The heat of it fairly smote Iome.

People screamed within the house, and a burly townsman raced from it, his hair and clothes afire. A woman and her son raced out, the boy bearing a shield. His armor and his eyes reflected the flames. Firelit smoke made the scene bright.

The smell of smoke came strong to Iome’s nostrils.

The whole town suddenly erupted into an inferno, and the flames whirled high into the air, a hundred, two hundred yards. The flameweavers began chanting louder as they walked into that inferno, and they themselves became glowing worms of light, writhing beside the townspeople who died.

“They’re sacrificing those people to the Power they serve,” Binnesman said in horror, and the wizard turned away from his Seer’s Stone. “This is a black summoning.”

“This is the source of my terror,” Gaborn said.

The flames encompassing the village slowly turned green, the several fires within it coalescing into some strange wonderland of otherworldly shadows. Within moments, the rock walls of the cottages and the stone fences all began to dissolve into molten puddles.

It happened quickly, Iome thought. The town was soon leveled; the bones of every carcass, both of man and animal, were licked clean by flames.

It did not take the normal hours of teasing and coaxing that Iome thought would be required to perform a summoning. Perhaps the sacrifice strengthened the flameweavers’ spell. The flameweavers sang and danced like living flames.

Within an hour, a green glowing portal appeared on the ground, and the flameweavers stood before it, calling in the tongues of flames and ashes.

Nothing came forth, until one flameweaver walked to the portal and disappeared into the netherworld.

Almost instantly, the flames around the city diminished, puffed out into utter blackness. Only an occasional coal in the blackness still burned.

For a long moment, Iome held her breath, believing that a flameweaver had died, that he’d disappeared into the netherworld, never to return.

Then, among the ashes, she saw two forms take shape, writhing like wrestlers, she thought at first. But no, she decided, they were writhing like men who have struggled to crawl the last few yards of a long and difficult journey.

One was the dark shape of the flameweaver, half-covered with ashes.

Beside him was a larger form, like that of a dark man with a shaggy mane of long curly hair. But he glowed with a pure blue light, as if he were made of crystal. Flames rippled and played on his flesh.

The lumbering fellow staggered to his feet, and fanned wide his resplendent wings. Lightning seemed to flicker across his brow, and it glowed fiercely in his eyes.

Everywhere, among the ranks of Raj Ahten’s troops, hardened soldiers cried out in astonishment, while war dogs backed away and snarled in terror.

“By the Powers,” Gaborn said, “he’s summoned a Glory!”

But what kind of Glory? Iome wondered. For in the ages past, it was said that at the battle of Vaderlee’s Gorge, the Earth King Erden Geboren once fought with one Glory on his right hand and another on his left. They were said to be irrepressible opponents. She’d thought them to be the beneficiaries of mankind.

Yet this youth had a fell look in his eye as he wrapped his wings about his shoulders, and the light streaming from him became the blackest abyss.

“Do not be misled,” Binnesman said. “He is not like the Glories revered in ancient tales. He is a Darkling Glory. This creature comes to slay an Earth King, not to save one.”

“How soon?” Gaborn asked. “When will it come?” Binnesman went to a small table and retrieved a large tome, an illuminated manuscript that depicted various creatures of the Earth. He flipped through his bestiary, to the pages that dealt with creatures of the netherworld. The notations for a Darkling Glory were scant, and lacked even a crude drawing. Obviously, even among the wise, this beast was the stuff of mere legend. “It is a creature of air and darkness,” Binnesman said: “It will fly to you, and most likely it will wait to attack until night. I think it is too far away to reach us today. But tomorrow night, or the night after, it will surely come.”

“What should I do?” Gaborn asked.

Binnesman didn’t answer, merely frowned as he read the entry on Darkling Glories. Iome realized that he had no answer.

“That fool, Raj Ahten,” the wizard muttered, “to loose, such a monster now.”

Binnesman knelt by his crystals, nudged one a hairsbreadth, and shifted his view so that he could better see Raj Ahten’s army.

For a long moment he stared, then he spoke to Gaborn. “I don’t see Raj Ahten himself. Where could he be?”

Gaborn studied the image, too. “It’s dark there. Maybe he’s in the shadows, near the rear.”

“No,” Binnesman said. “He would be at the forefront, to greet his new ambassador. He’s gone. He’s split off from his main army for some reason.”

“But why?” Gaborn asked. “Can you find him?”

Binnesman shook his head and frowned. “I doubt it. An army, a volcano—these are easy to spot. But one man, riding in the night? It could take me days, and I’m at the end of my strength.”

Binnesman turned away from the Seer’s Stone, and the image faded altogether, though the glowing crystals still provided some small light for the room. In that light, the wizard looked ill-used. Only a week before, his robes had been green, the color of leaves in high summer. But then he’d tried to summon a wylde, a creature of the Earth that would strengthen his powers. Unfortunately, the wylde had been lost, and Binnesman was now weary and weakened.

“I have been studying the volcanoes,” he said glumly, “trying to figure out the reavers’ plan of attack.

“I must admit that it makes little sense to me. The reavers are surfacing in places that are far apart from one another, and most of them are far from any human habitation.

“But one thing I have noticed. They arise in places where there is already an old volcano nearby, or regions filled with hot springs or geysers.”

“Which means?” Gaborn asked.

“There is a realm of fire at the heart of the earth,”

Binnesman said, “as you yourself saw when we reached the Idymean Sea.

“I think,” Binnesman continued, “that in some places, this realm of fire comes closer to the earth’s surface than in others. That is where hot springs form, and volcanoes arise. Now I wonder if perhaps the heat is driving the reavers to the surface.”

Gaborn changed the subject. “It is of more immediate concern that Raj Ahten is preparing to attack Mystarria in earnest. I’ll need to convene a council with my war leaders.”

“War with Raj Ahten?” Binnesman asked. “Are you sure that is wise, with so many reavers surfacing?”

Gaborn sighed heavily. “No. But if I do not at least give some sign that I will fight him, Raj Ahten may do more damage. I can only hope that once he learns of the danger in his own lands he will retreat to Indhopal and look after his own defense. I may even be able to negotiate a truce.”

The wizard studied Gaborn thoughtfully. “You may try to reclaim Raj Ahten if you want,” Binnesman said. “But I don’t know if even you can save him. Remember that I cursed him a week ago. Such curses take time to reach their full effect, but I suspect that now you cannot help him.”

“For the sake of my people, I must try,” Gaborn said.

Binnesman peered up at him from beneath a bushy brow. “And for the sake of your people, I must warn you: Raj Ahten is not likely to take counsel from an enemy. You will be placing yourself in grave danger when you go before him. It may be that he is even trying to draw you into battle, for he knows that he cannot attack you here, so close to the Dunnwood, where the wights protect you.”

“I know,” Gaborn said uneasily. “Will you come with me, then?”

“You know that I have no strength in war,” Binnesman said, “but I may follow in a day or two and offer what help I can. As for now, I must prepare to face the Darkling Glory, and I must meet it alone.”

“You?” Gaborn asked: “Alone, without a wylde? I can marshal fifty thousand knights to fight at your side.”

“And they would avail you nothing—merely get themselves killed,” Binnesman said.

“What weapons can you muster?” Gaborn asked.

“I...don’t know yet,” Binnesman said. “I’ll have to think of something. As for you, convene your war council. Your men know how to fight better than I do. At dawn, warn the people to flee Castle Sylvarresta. Certainly you feel the approaching danger. And now, I must rest.”

With no more preamble than that, he staggered toward a corner and lay down on some thick loam. The loam could not have been here long, Iome realized. The floor of the cellar was paved with a few flagstones thrown over hardened dirt. The wizard must have obtained that soil himself; Earth Wardens often administered healing soils to the sick. Iome wondered if the soil he slept in now had any special properties. He pulled handfuls of dirt close to him, and sprinkled some over him, and soon was sleeping peacefully.

Iome looked around. Now the room smelled only faintly of mildew and the clean scents of the wizard’s herbs. She could feel earth power here, that strange tingling sensation she got whenever Gaborn or the wizard drew near. Only here it was stronger. Unbidden, the blessing that she’d heard so often lately from Gaborn came to mind. “May the Earth hide you. May the Earth heal you. May the Earth make you its own.” This was a place surrounded by Earth.

“Let’s go,” Gaborn said.

12 In the King’s Council

Sir Borenson woke Myrrima with only a little shaking, and told her his news: Gaborn had requested her attendance at a council meeting.

“Are you certain that he wants me?” Myrrima asked, bewildered. She’d come after dinner to lie on the bed and had fallen asleep in her clothes. She sat up stiffly.

“I’m sure,” Borenson said.

“If he wants to know which autumn flowers will look best in the Great Hall,” Myrrima said, “I could counsel him till dawn. But I know nothing of war.”

“Gabon likes you,” Borenson said, somewhat at a loss himself. She had no skill at war, and Borenson suspected that Gaborn had invited Myrrima as a mere courtesy to him, so that he could spend more time with his new bride before leaving for Inkarra. But he dared not hurt his wife’s feelings by telling her so. “Did he not say when he first met you that he wanted you in his court? He respects your opinion.”

“But...I feel as if I’m an imposter.”

“I’m sure the King feels the same Way himself,” Borenson ventured. “A week ago, his greatest worry was whether or not to wear a feather in his cap when he came before Iome to ask for her hand. Now his father is dead, and he must plan a war. A week ago, I am sure that Iome worried most about what color thread to use in her embroidery, but she’ll be at the council, too.”

“It sounds as if he has invited everyone in the kingdom to his council!” Myrrima said in surprise.

“Not everyone. Chancellor Rodderman and Jureem will attend, as will Erin Connal, King Orwynne, High Marshal Skalbairn, and Lord Ingris of Lysle.”

Frowning thoughtfully, Myrrima rose from the bed, glanced in a mirror, and began combing out her long dark hair. Borenson felt unsure of his own place at this council. He was now, after all, a blank shield by avowal.

A few days ago, he had promised to give himself two weeks to prepare for his journey to Inkarra. He’d wanted time to say goodbye to his homeland and to his wife. He’d thought he’d have that time. But then Borenson had also believed that Raj Ahten would flee home to Indhopal for the winter. Instead, the Wolf Lord was driving south, straight into the heart of Mystarria, giving Gaborn no respite. Now Gaborn was stuck up here in Heredon, all but severed from his own realm and from his counselors.

So Borenson had not been able to bring himself to head south on his quest to Inkarra. Not while his friend still needed counsel. Though as a Knight Equitable, Borenson was free to leave, until tonight, he’d chosen to stay.

But he knew that if Gaborn rode south to Mystarria, Borenson would ride, too. And once he set his back to Heredon, and to his wife, he would not return until his quest ended.

“What of the herbalist Binnesman? Won’t he be at the council?” Myrrima asked.

“He’s asleep” Borenson said, “and cannot be disturbed.” Of all those missing from the council, Borenson wondered most about Binnesman. He’d offered to put a boot to the wizard’s ribs and roust him from bed, but Gaborn had forbidden it.

“Then what of Prince Celinor,” she inquired, “or the other merchant princes of Lysle?”

Borenson frowned. Everyone present at court these last few hours had heard how the merchant princes had come to town and set up camp, then bade Gaborn come to their pavilions and Choose them, as if he were their servant rather than the Earth King.

Borenson would have damned the lot of them, but to everyone’s surprise, Gaborn had complied, Choosing several of the uppity lords.

“I suspect that the King does not fully trust Celinor,” Borenson answered. “And though Gaborn has invited Lord Ingris, he apparently thinks that the other merchant princes would be of as much help as a gaggle of geese.”

“It seems to me that other lords could be in camp by now,” Myrrima said. “What of North Crowthen, or Beldinook?”

“We’ve had no word out of North Crowthen,” Borenson said. “The Iron King never liked Sylvarresta, and it may be that like his cousin King Anders, he has no interest in the Earth King. Or it may be that he faces problems of his own. Reavers are surfacing in North Crowthen tonight. Gaborn has already sent messengers to the Iron King, offering aid.

“As for Beldinook, King Lowicker is frail...” Borenson did not know what more to say. Lowicker had always been a friend to House Orden, but Borenson did not trust the man. It seemed to him that Lowicker used his frailty as an excuse for inaction whenever it came in handy. Still, Borenson parroted Gaborn’s assessment of the situation. “Lowicker had to contend with Raj Ahten marching through his lands on his way to Mystarria, after all. It is no wonder that he has not yet sent emissaries.”

When Myrrima had combed her hair, she stood for a moment studying her reflection by candlelight. She looked beautiful and desirable.

Borenson offered his hand, and escorted his wife downstairs to the Great Hall. They found Gaborn sitting in darkness at a table with his back to the wall. No candles or lamps lit the room, no fire warmed the hearth. The room had but one open window, to let in a little starlight. The rest of the windows remained shuttered.

In the darkness, King Orwynne had taken a place to Gaborn’s left. Iome sat away from the table, at Gaborn’s back. To Gaborn’s immediate right was the popinjay Lord Ingris—a gracefully aging fellow in a tritipped maroon felt hat adorned with an enormous dyed ostrich feather. His silk blouse glowed pearl-white in the darkness, and rings and necklaces and buckles sparkled even in the wan light. Jureem sat next to him, his southern attire for once outmatched in gaudiness. Gaborn motioned for Borenson to sit next to Jureem.

Myrrima went to the back wall and seated herself beside Iome, taking the Queen’s hand. Borenson watched his wife. Iome clutched Myrrima as if seeking support. The Queen’s face was limned by starlight. Borenson could see from the set of her jaw that Iome was terrified.

Borenson glanced at Gaborn. In the starlight he could see the sheen of sweat on the King’s brow. They’re both frightened, Borenson realized. This would indeed be no ordinary council.

A few moments later, Erin Connal entered the room and took a seat at the far end of the table from Gaborn, next to Chancellor Rodderman. The Days all lined up against a wall behind the lords.

“We searched the camp for the High Marshal,” Rodderman said, “but there’s no sign of him. He’s already gone.”

“I feared as much,” Gaborn said.

“You gave him little choice,” Borenson said, not bothering to hide the challenge in his tone. He thought Gaborn had been wrong to reject the High Marshal’s offer of service, and by the Powers, though no one else would ever dare chastise the Earth King for his error, Borenson would not hide his feelings.

“Are we to speak here in the dark?” Lord Ingris asked in an effeminate tone, trying to head off an argument.

“Yes,” Gaborn said. “No flames. I’ve had a servant extinguish even the coals of the hearth. No one must repeat what is spoken here—in daylight, or before an open flame.”

Gaborn took a deep breath. “We are going to battle. The Earth has warned me that we are in grave danger, and tonight the Wizard Binnesman used Seer’s Stones to show me our enemies. Right now, reavers are surfacing in North Crowthen.”

“What?” Lord Ingris said. “When do we march?”

“We don’t—at least not against the reavers,” Gaborn said. “The Iron King has refused to answer any correspondence in the past week, and I do not know if he would welcome our troops in North Crowthen even now.

“Nor do I believe that King Anders will allow us to march through his realm.

“So, half an hour past, I sent Duke Mardon north to Donyeis with reinforcements, should the reavers strike in our direction, and I have sent both King Anders and the Iron King offers of aid. I shall do nothing more.”

“Then,” Lord Ingris asked, “you think the reavers contained?”

“Not at all,” Gaborn said. “Reavers have destroyed Keep Haberd in Mystarria. Others are in Kartish. And there may be more outbreaks still.”

In the darkness, the lords looked at one another. One swarm of reavers to the north was disquieting. But Gaborn’s mention of multiple outbreaks to the south aroused solemn terror. This bespoke no isolated incident.

It bespoke the beginning of a wholesale invasion.

Borenson had heard about the outbreaks only moments before the meeting, but could hardly imagine any worse news. All his life, reavers had rarely trod the earth’s surface. Yet ancient tales warned that it had not always been so, and everyone feared that someday reavers would surface by the tens of thousands.

“So we are facing a serious threat,” Gaborn continued, “one that for the moment we can do nothing about. But there is a second threat just as dire, for while the reavers nibble at our borders, Raj Ahten strikes at our heart.

“For the past week, Raj Ahten’s troops have fled south. Weariness and the Knights Equitable have taken a terrible toll on the Wolf Lord’s forces. He left Fleeds with over forty thousand men. Duke Paladane’s scouts estimate that Raj Ahten now has but four thousand troops marching with him—only half of which are Invincibles—along with some few archers, frowth giants, war dogs, and sorcerers.”

“It sounds as if his forces are foundering,” Lord Ingris said hopefully. “They can’t run forever.”

“It’s true that Raj Ahten’s men are exhausted,” Gaborn said, “and the mounts he picked up in Fleeds are outworn. He has left behind a ghastly trail of fallen giants, war dogs, and common soldiers, all too weary to match his pace.

“Yet at the moment—Raj Ahten himself eludes us. He has left those four thousand men behind, eighty miles north of Carris. Chancellor Rodderman and I have consulted the maps, and it may be that he himself has gone to rendezvous with his troops at the fortress at Tal Dur, though he may be heading to Castle Crayden or Castle Fells.”

“He won’t run to Fells,” Erin Connal said. “I got news an hour ago. One of our scouts says that Raj Ahten’s troops have all but abandoned Castle Fells. The majority of them seem to be moving toward Carris—over a hundred thousand men out of Fells alone, most of them common soldiers. Raj Ahten will join up with them. Your ‘Huntsman’ Paladane is about to become the hunted!”

Borenson himself had warned Gaborn of this probability. He could not imagine the Wolf Lord retreating to some hill fort like Tal Dur when the mighty Castle Carris beckoned.

Horsesister Connal said, “My mother has ordered the Bayburn Clan to take Fells back for Mystarria.”

Connal’s news obviously surprised Gaborn, for Borenson heard him catch his breath.

“That is well done!” King Orwynne said, while Lord Ingris clapped his hands.

In his mind’s eye, Borenson imagined how Raj Ahten’s troops must be converging. Carris was the strongest fortress in western Mystarria, and of great value, but Raj Ahten had used his Voice to destroy Longmot. Perhaps now he would do the same at Carris. Borenson could only hope he did not.

“If Raj Ahten succeeds in taking Carris,” Borenson warned, “half of Mystarria will fall this winter. We must stop him.”

Jureem folded his hands, elbows on the table; and put his fists under his pudgy chin. Speaking in his thick Taifan accent, he said to Gaborn, “Borenson is right, but I would be cautious, O Great One. Like a wolf, Raj Ahten hopes to strike at your soft underbelly, and that underbelly is Mystarria. He hopes to draw the Earth King into battle, force him to leave the Dunnwood. He will attack Carris.”

Gaborn said softly, “I know, and that fear has preyed much upon my mind. But there is one more threat that Binnesman showed me. Tonight, Raj Ahten’s flameweavers summoned a Darkling Glory from the netherworld.”

Lord Ingris gasped in surprise, while the others took the news quietly. Borenson felt uncertain how to react to such news. He had heard of Glories, of course, creatures of light and goodness that inhabited the netherworld. And he knew vaguely that they had enemies, creatures of darkness with arcane powers. But he knew nothing more about them.

“We have feared assassins,” Chancellor Rodderman said. “It seems inevitable that Raj Ahten will strike at the Earth King. Will the Darkling Glory come here?”

“No,” Jureem ventured. “I think Raj Ahten will use it against Mystarria, against Paladane at Carris.”

“You’re wrong,” Gaborn said. “The Darkling Glory is coming. The Earth has warned me.”

“So be it.” Jureem nodded in acquiescence. “A week ago, I knew Raj Ahten’s strategies, but now the game has changed.”

“We’ll need to fight this creature,” King Orwynne said.

Gaborn shook his head. “No. I’ll have the people flee.”

“Then we’ll notify them at once,” King Orwynne said.

Gaborn shook his head. “If word of this leaks out tonight, there will be blind panic. The plains are dark and full of horses and oxen—and children who would be crushed under their hooves. Half the men camped out there are drunk after Hostenfest. No, as hard as it is to bear, I will wait until first light to issue the warning. The danger is profound, but still distant.”

Erin Connal abruptly asked Gaborn, “Your Highness, can you be sure that the Darkling Glory comes for you, and not against someone else—even Fleeds?” Borenson thought her prudent to be considering her own lands first.

“After I Chose my father,” Gaborn said, “I felt danger around him, a suffocating aura, like a black cloud. He died within hours. Ever since this morning, I have felt that aura growing around each person in this room-indeed, around everyone here at Castle Sylvarresta. For the past week, we have feared that Raj Ahten would send an accomplished assassin to our camp. Now I believe an assassin is coming, although it is something far more fell than any Invincible. And all of us here at Castle Sylvarresta are its targets. Vas, says that I Chose at Longmot—and those on the road north are in little danger. But every one among us here must be on our guard.”

“If you feel our danger,” Lord Ingris said, “then can you not sense Mystarria’s danger, or Lysle’s? Perhaps you could tell us where Raj Ahten plans to strike next?”

Gaborn shook his head sadly. “Until I see a man, I cannot Choose him. And this power is new to me. Aside from a few of my messengers who have been sent to Carris and the Courts of Tide, I haven’t yet Chosen anyone in Mystarria or Lysle, so that I might gauge what is to come. We must therefore consider a plan of action, find a way to defend ourselves against Raj Ahten.”

“You should know,” Lord Ingris said, “that other lords have already moved against Raj Ahten. Upon first hearing of the invasion of Mystarria, we merchant princes struck against him—and we are not alone.”

“How so?” King Orwynne asked.

“While you defend yourselves with arms and men,” Lord Ingris said, “in Lysle our best defense has always been our wealth. We hire mercenaries to fortify our own borders and we pay tribute to our neighbors. Upon hearing of the attack, we sent messages to certain lords in Inkarra, offering bribes if they would send their assassins to slay Raj Ahten’s Dedicates in the Southern Provinces, where he will least expect it.”

“Well done!” King Orwynne said. “I’ve a thousand good force soldiers in Orwynne who can attack from the north!”

Ingris smiled broadly. “The warlords of Toom may beat you to it, from all that I hear...”

Sir Borenson sat and listened in dismay. He himself had slaughtered Raj Ahten’s Dedicates here in, Castle Sylvarresta, in the Dedicates’ Keep not two hundred yards up the road. It had been a grisly deed, one that broke his heart. Though he told himself that he had acted under orders, and it was needful, he could hardly bear to sit here and listen to more talk of such blatant butchery.

He was about to speak when Gaborn himself cried “No!” and looked hard at Ingris and Orwynne. “I reject such a plan!”

“Why?” Ingris asked. He pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket, dabbed at his nose, and tossed the soiled kerchief to the floor.

“The price is too high,” Gaborn said. “I battle not against Raj Ahten, but for mankind. To send our warriors against one another is folly!”

Lord Ingris said matter-of-factly, “The arrows have already flown. It may be that you cannot save Raj Ahten from his doom.”

Surely, Borenson thought, the man is overconfident. After all, we have been sending assassins for years. But to Borenson’s surprise, Gaborn looked very distraught. Gaborn asked, “Tell me, when did you reach this decision, to hire assassins from Inkarra?”

Lord Ingris considered “It was in the afternoon, about a week ago. The day your father died.”

Gaborn stared hard at Lord Ingris. “On that very afternoon, the wizard Binnesman cursed Raj Ahten to death. Like you, he fears that the curse cannot be recalled. I cannot help but wonder at the timing. You may have been an instrument in the Earth’s hands.”

Lord Ingris chuckled as if rejecting an unearned compliment: “I doubt it. If Raj Ahten dies, it will be my gold and the Inkarrans’ greed that killed him, not the curse of some Earth Warden.”

From behind Gaborn’s chair, Iome spoke up. “And where did your gold come from,” she asked, “if not from the Earth?”

In the silence that followed, Borenson had to wonder was it really possible for a few assassins to strike so great a blow.

He doubted it. Raj Ahten had far too many Dedicates strewn across too vast a kingdom, and they were well guarded. Though Raj Ahten might be wounded, Borenson knew that he could not easily be killed.

Raj Ahten would have to lose certain key endowments first. If he lost stamina, for example, he might retain his strength yet still fall to a particularly nasty blow. Or if he lost metabolism, he might slow enough so that even the most mundane warrior could slice off his head

Under the right circumstances, a few assassins could have a devastating impact on the Wolf Lord.

Gaborn shook his head and said, “In good conscience, I cannot wish any man’s demise. I certainly cannot condone the killing of innocent men, women, and children whose only crime is that they allowed themselves to grant an endowment to Raj Ahten. I will stand up to him if I must, but for now, I wish only to stop him—or, better yet, turn him if I can.”

“Damn your fool pardon,” King Orwynne grumbled, half rising from his chair; “but I knew you would say that!”

“You object to our lord’s wisdom?” Jureem asked.

King Orwynne’s face hardened. “Forgive me, Your Lordship,” he said, struggling to control his wrath. “You cannot risk allowing Raj Ahten to live. It would be more than imprudent, it would be foolish.”

“I do not make this choice because it is cunning,” Gaborn said. “I make it because I feel that it is the right thing to do.

“You are a young man, full of noble-sounding ideals, and you have the Earth Powers to aid you,” Lord Ingris said to Gaborn. “You may hope to turn Raj Ahten but how, may I ask, do you propose to do it?”

“I captured forty thousand forcibles at Longmot,” Gaborn said evenly.

King Orwynne, Lord Ingris, and Erin Connal all started in surprise.

“I’ve already used five thousand to renew Heredon’s army and rebuild its cavalry,” Gaborn continued. “The remaining forcibles are enough to grant endowments for a small army—or enough to create a single lord as great as Raj Ahten.

“Last week, after the battle of Longmot, I’d thought I would do just that, become a lord equal to Raj Ahten, and then try to best him. Like you, I want to fight.

“But I am loath to call even Raj Ahten my enemy, though he has attacked my people. I am going to propose a truce.”

King Orwynne was flabbergasted. “He has carried his battle to us,” he said, speaking too loudly. “We can’t just walk away from him.”

“He’s right,” Jureem said. “My old master will not grant you a truce—unless you yourself were to give him an endowment. He will want your wit or your brawn, something to cripple you so that you can never rise against him.”

“Perhaps,” Gaborn said. “But I will propose a truce just the same. I will send a messenger bearing these words: ‘Though I hate my own cousin, the enemy of my cousin is my enemy.’ By the time that message reaches him, he will have heard of the fall of Keep Haberd, and perhaps even of his own troubles in Kartish. I will remind him of the threat of reavers, and inform him that I am now his cousin through marriage. To seal the peace, instead of my endowment, I will offer him twenty thousand forcibles. He knows that without them, I will be crippled enough. But I’ll give the forcibles to him only on the condition that he agree to leave Rofehavan.”

Borenson licked his lips. Raj Ahten was not likely to listen to reason, but at the same time, he could hardly turn away from twenty thousand forcibles.

“Other men have borne such appeals,” Jureem warned. “He will not buy what he believes he can take by force. I suspect that he will not listen. He might even kill your messenger.”

“Perhaps,” Gaborn said. “But what if the petition were borne by one of his own people, one whom he loved and could not easily dismiss?” Gaborn leaned to his right, gazing hard at Jureem. “Jureem, you told me a few days ago that Raj Ahten has hundreds of wives secreted at the Palace of Concubines in Obran. You say that no man is allowed to see them, upon penalty of death. Which is his favorite wife? Would she hear my plea? Would she bear my petition?”

“Saffira is her name, milord,” Jureem said, stroking his goatee. “The daughter of Emir Owatt, of Tuulistan. She is the prize of his harem.”

“I know her father by reputation. The Emir is a good man,” Gaborn said. “Surely his daughter shares some of his goodness and strength.”

“Perhaps,” Jureem said. “But I have never seen her. Once a wife enters the palace, she does not come out.”

“Raj Ahten is a vain man,” Iome said. “I can think of only one reason why he would hide the women of his harem away from his own people. How many endowments of glamour has he lavished upon his favorite wife?”

Jureem considered. “You guess wisely, milady. It is his custom to grant an endowment of glamour to his wife each time he lies with her, so that on his next visit she will be even more beautiful than he remembers. Saffira has been his favorite for five years. She must have more than three hundred endowments by now.”

Borenson sat back in astonishment. A woman with a dozen endowments of glamour left men dizzy with desire. He could not imagine how a woman with hundreds of such endowments might affect him. Perhaps Gaborn’s plot could work.

But Borenson still felt uneasy. “I can’t believe that no one has considered using her as a weapon.”

“I was my lord’s most trusted servant,” Jureem said. “It was my duty to provide baubles and endowments for the concubines. Aside from two or three others, no man has been allowed to know the extent of the harem.”

Gaborn’s gaze shifted to each of the others. “What do you say? I propose to send a message to Saffira, and let her carry it to Raj Ahten.”

“It could work,” Jureem said doubtfully. “But I hesitate to believe that Raj Ahten would take her counsel. She is, after all, only his wife.”

Borenson wondered. In many parts of Indhopal, it was considered unmanly to listen to the counsel of a woman.

“It could work,” Iome said more hopefully. “Binnesman suggested that Raj Ahten has gone mad simply because he has been listening to his own Voice. She might persuade him.

“And what if I were to give her another thousand endowments of glamour and Voice,” Gaborn asked, “as a token of my goodwill, so that even Raj Ahten could not resist her?”

“There are facilitators at Obran who are skilled at giving such endowments,” Jureem admitted.

“And we have the forcibles to do it with,” Chancellor Rodderman cut in. “But it might take a day or two to find women who would serve as Dedicates.”

“I’d offer my glamour,” Myrrima said.

She glanced nervously toward Borenson, as if afraid of his reaction. She’d used that beauty to try to lure him into marriage. She had to know that it was unfair to offer to give it away now. Yet Borenson admired her all the more for making the offer.

“There are already women at Obran,” Jureem said. “Raj Ahten has many concubines, all of whom have been endowed with glamour or Voice. Some of them have suffered greatly because of this long war. They too hope for peace, and I suspect that some of them, perhaps many of them, would act as vectors...”

“You would be taking a great risk,” King Orwynne said. “We don’t know this woman-nor do we know how such power might affect her. What if she too turns against you?”

“We must try,” Gaborn said. “Raj Ahten is not our greatest enemy. I need his strength. I want him to fight the reavers.”

It seemed a slim chance, one that Borenson would not have considered himself.

“Perhaps,” Erin Connal said. “But we should move forward with a doe’s caution. You say that you feel an aura of great danger around us. Even if you send riders tonight, it will take days to reach Indhopal—”

“Not with the right horse,” Jureem countered. “The fortress at Obran is in the northern provinces, just south of Deyazz, barely seven hundred miles from here.”

Borenson said, “I’ve never heard of Obran. But if it’s that close, then with a king’s mount and a little luck, I could take the Raven’s Pass out of Fleeds and be there by early afternoon tomorrow. If she consents, Saffira could deliver the message to Raj Ahten the following night.”

He spoke the words without considering the matter. It sounded like a fool’s quest. He wondered at his own reasons for wanting to go. In part, he wanted to do it because he knew that he was a good man for the job. He’d performed dozens of dangerous missions in the past.

He could also see that this would give him the opportunity to spy on Indhopal’s defenses and study the movements of enemy troops along the border. And as he did so, he would be heading far south, toward Inkarra.

Thus he would begin the quest Iome had set for him.

But a small part of him knew that he wanted something far more: He wanted redemption.

Both Lord Ingress and King Orwynne spoke casually of killing Dedicates, of holding to the endless tradition of butchery that had defined the battle strategies of Runelords in the past. Their strategies were so horrific in part because they were reliable.

But Borenson had little stomach for it now. Gaborn’s plan, no matter how poorly conceived, offered some slim hope that Indhopal and Rofehavan could reach an accord, put an end to the madness.

And it was the only such plan on the table.

Borenson had the blood of over two thousand men, women, and children on his hands. Perhaps if he could bring this off, he reasoned, he might someday feel clean again.

“I would not put all of my hopes on this one throw of the bones, Your Highness,” King Orwynne said. “You must look to your own defenses.

“Saffira may not be able or willing to do as you ask, and you would not have called this council if you did not plan to bestir yourself, and ride to the defense of Mystarria. You need to prepare to battle Raj Ahten in person, if need be....

“Or you could select a champion. I have a nephew—a lion of a man—Sir Langley. He’s here in the camps.”

“It’s all very well to send a champion,” Horsesister Connal urged Gaborn, “but you should not let Orwynne or Heredon fight alone. Raj Ahten may fear Duke Paladane, but if you ride from the north, he’ll fear you more. And it would rally every man in the north to fight beside you. The horse clans would ride with you.”

Gaborn sat pondering the proposals of his supporters.

The idealistic lad actually hopes to get out of this without fighting Raj Ahten, Borenson realized. But he suspected that Gaborn would never pull it off. A war with Raj Ahten was coming whether Gaborn or any of them willed it or not.

“What will you do?” Borenson pressed him.

Gaborn reflected for another half a second, nodded. “The fate of the world rests upon our decision. I would not make such a decision hastily, and in truth I have thought about little else for the past week.

“My people cannot hide from Raj Ahten, and I cannot drive him away. I would fight him, if I believed that in fighting we could prevail. But I don’t believe that. So I must hope to turn him, however slim that hope might be.”

Gaborn looked at Borenson. “You’ll take my horse and leave within the hour.”

Borenson slapped the table with a fist and rose from his chair, eager to be away, but found himself lingering momentarily as a courtesy.

Gaborn turned to King Orwynne. “I’ve met Sir Langley. He has a good heart. I’ll give you two thousand forcibles, to equip him as he wishes.”

“You are most generous,” King Orwynne said, seemingly astonished that the Earth King would grant such a boon Even ten years ago, when blood metal was amply available, the whole kingdom of Orwynne had probably not seen two thousand forcibles in a single year.

Last of all Gaborn turned to Connal. “You’re right. If I march at the head of our armies, Raj Ahten cannot ignore me. I’ll ride south, and Fleeds will have two thousand forcibles, too.”

Connal grunted in wonder. Her poor realm had probably, never seen two thousand forcibles in any five years.

With that, the meeting ended. The lords pushed their chairs back from the table, began to rise. Gaborn reached into the pocket of his vest, drew out the keys for the King’s treasury, and tossed them to Borenson.

“Milord,” Jureem said, “May I suggest that you have him take seven hundred of glamour, three hundred of voice?”

Gaborn nodded. “As he says.”

Borenson left the room, headed for the treasury in the Dedicates’ Keep. Myrrima followed behind, and once they were outside, she accompanied him along the stone wall a couple of steps.

She grabbed his hand. “Wait!”

He turned to look at her in the starlight. The night was a bit chill, but had no teeth that bit. Myrrima stared up at him with worry in her eyes. Even in the starlight, she was gorgeous. The sinuous curve of her waist and the gleaming sheen of her hair tempted him.

“You won’t be back, will you?” she said.

Borenson shook his head. “No. Carris is nine hundred miles south of here. I can reach the northern border of Inkarra only three hundred miles farther on. I’ll head south.”

She studied him. “Do you even plan to say goodbye?”

Borenson could see that she wasn’t going to make this easy. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her. He wanted to stay. But duty called him elsewhere, and he had ever been loyal to his duty. “There’s not much time.”

“There’s time,” she said. “You’ve had all week. Why did you even remain in Heredon, if not to say goodbye?”

She was right, of course. He’d chosen to stay in order to say goodbye to her, to all of Rofehavan, perhaps to his own life. Yet he’d not had the strength to speak of it.

He kissed her lips, tenderly, and whispered, “Goodbye.”

He began to turn away, but she grabbed his arm again. “Do you really love me?” she asked.

“As best I know how.”

“Then why have you not bedded me? You’ve wanted me. I’ve seen it in your eyes.”

Borenson had not wanted to broach the subject, but he answered her now as honestly as he could. “Because to do so would risk siring a child—”

“And you don’t want me to carry your child?”

“—and bringing a child into the world requires one to accept certain responsibilities—”

“You think I’m not ready for such responsibilities!” Myrrima said too loudly.

“If I should die, I would not want my child called a bastard!” Borenson raged. “Or the son of a kingslayer! Or worse!”

The blood came hot to his face, and Borenson found himself trembling with rage.

But despite his rage he was able to detach himself—as if he were viewing himself from somewhere outside his own body—while he mused about past and present. Ah, it’s funny how the old pains can still hurt, he thought. Here he was, kingslayer, reaver slayer, guardian to the Earth King, one of the most feared warriors in all of Rofehavan—and rightfully so. Yet deep inside he was still just a child running through the stucco-walled alleys on the Isle of Thwynn while other boys hurled insults and mud and sharp stones.

Borenson had always felt the need to prove himself. It had driven him to become one of the mightiest warriors of his time. Now he did not really fear any other man on earth.

Yet the notion that a child of his might be hurt as he himself had been hurt seemed unbearable.

He still feared the tauntings of little boys.

“Love me!” Myrrima demanded, trying to pull him close.

But Borenson pointed a finger in her face and said more firmly, “Responsibility.”

“Love me,” she pleaded.

He shook her hand from his sleeve and said, “Can’t you see? This is how you show love. And should I die—as seems likely—you’ll have my name, my wealth...”

“I’ve heard it said that you’re a lusty man,” Myrrima accused. “Have you never bedded a woman?”

Angry now, Borenson sought to control himself. He could not express in words his own self-loathing, his desire to unmake his own past. “If I have, it was a mistake,” he said, “for I never imagined that I would meet someone like you.”

“It’s not responsibility that drives you from my bed,” Myrrima accused. “You’re punishing yourself: You think you’re punishing yourself, but when you do, you’re also punishing me—and I don’t deserve this!”

She sounded so certain of herself, so sure. Borenson had no reply to her accusation, only the solid belief that ultimately she would come to see that he acted in her best interest.

He squeezed her hand, then left.

Myrrima felt cheated as she watched him turn to go. The ching, ching of his mail echoed between the stone towers.

In a moment he reached the portcullis to the Dedicates’ Keep, and was swallowed beneath its shadows. She stood for a moment, watching how the starlight washed the paving stones here in the bailey.

She knew that he thought he was right. Loving someone meant taking responsibility for that person.

But as he went off to fetch his forcibles, Myrrima began to fume. Borenson would not allow this to work both ways.

A few minutes later he came back out of the keep, bearing a leather bag filled with forcibles. He saw her but turned and headed for the stables, as if to avoid her.

She said, “I have one word for you: ‘responsibility.’” Borenson stopped and gazed at her half a second. “Why do you insist on being responsible for me, but I cannot be responsible for you?”

“You’re not coming with me,” Borenson said.

“Do you think I’m less capable of love than you are?”

“You’re less capable of staying alive,” he answered.

“But—”

“And even if you weren’t, there’s not a horse in Heredon that can keep pace with the mount I’ll be riding tonight.” He looked toward the stable.

She thought he’d leave then, but to Myrrima’s astonishment, Borenson returned to her, put one huge hand behind her neck, and kissed her passionately. He stood for a long time afterward with his forehead against hers, just staring into her eyes. No gleam of starlight reflected from his paleblue eyes. They seemed just empty wells in the night.

But still he had a fierceness to him. She could see it in his will to live, to fight, to return. She could feel it in the way that his powerful hands cupped the back of her head. At last he said evenly, “When I come back, I will love you as you wish—as you deserve.”

Then he turned and hurried off. With his endowments of metabolism, his pace surprised her. She stood for a long moment, still smelling him, still tasting his lips on hers. She thought to follow him into the King’s stable across the green, but as she gathered her wits and took a few paces, he hurriedly saddled Gaborn’s horse and then came riding out like a gale, shouting for the guards to open the gates.

She folded her arms, to fight the night’s chill, and watched him go.

As soon as her husband left, Myrrima fetched a lantern and went to the kennels where the boy Kaylin had caged her pups. She’d only been able to sneak away twice to see them today, yet as soon as they caught her scent, the pups began to yap and wag their tails, and soon dozens of pups were yelping for attention.

The boy Kaylin was at the back of the kennel, lying asleep on a bed of straw with at least twenty pups around him, and nothing else to keep him warm.

Myrrima laid her cloak over the boy, then went to the cage that held her pups. She lifted the latch.

She’d brought a few scraps from the table, and she gave these to the pups, spoke to them and made cooing noises, until at last they settled down enough so that she could get them in her arms. “Yes, little ones,” she whispered. “You’ll sleep with me tonight.”

She managed to get two pups in each arm, and went to the kennel door. As she was juggling the door latch, it opened wide.

Iome Sylvarresta stood there with a servant at her back, and her Days behind. Only the stars winging through the heavens lit them.

Myrrima felt sure that Iome had followed her in an effort to catch her stealing the pups. “Why, Your Highness;” she said, “what a surprise!”

Iome glanced down at the pups, looked back toward the keep, as if just as dismayed at having been found out herself.

Then she suddenly set her jaw and looked stern.

“Is the boy Kaylin sleeping here?”

Pups ran out and circled the Queen, leaping up at the hem of her dress, whining and yapping for attention.

“Yes, he’s here,” Myrrima said.

Iome did not apologize for what she planned to do. Even as a princess, she had refused to take endowments from another person, to risk a human life.

“I’ll need some of those, too,” Iome said stiffly. “If I’m to be of any help to you.”

Late that night, after the lords had left, Gaborn stood awake in Sylvarresta’s old study on the fourth floor of the King’s Keep, gazing southwest across the hills. The floor had recently been strewn with dry meadowsweet, and so his passage across the planking as he crushed the golden flowers had infused the room with a delightful, pleasant scent.

Borenson had left the keep nearly three hours past. Iome had gone to her room hours ago, though Gaborn did not imagine that she would sleep. They were newlyweds, after all, and he imagined that she would be awake, worrying, as he worried.

But perhaps not. He hoped that she slept. A week past, when Borenson had slain her Dedicates, Iome had lost all of her endowments of stamina. She needed sleep now, as much as any commoner did. But Gaborn still had his endowments of stamina and brawn. He did not sleep much at all in times of stress, but instead preferred to rest on his feet, sometimes letting his mind retreat to a waking dream.

He hoped that Iome would not wait up for him. He wanted solitude this night.

Part of the Queen’s garden was back there beneath the study. A pair of frogs sang in the water of a reflecting pool. A ratlike ferrin wearing scraps of cloth came and drank at the pool. The frogs went quiet as the creature gazed about with bright eyes. Gaborn tasted the scent of fresh air flowing from the open Window, looked out in the starlight.

The camps below town were dark now, and the people huddled in a mass. Gaborn could still feel danger about them, could feel it closing in, like a noose around his own neck. The Darkling Glory was coming. Gaborn could feel the danger rising as it flew steadily north.

Half a million people, all under his protection—along with their horses and cattle—asleep and unaware.

“May the Earth hide you. May the Earth heal you. May the Earth make you its own,” Gaborn whispered, reciting the ancient blessing:

He dreaded what he had to do. At dawn he would leave his people, head south to war. He could only hope that they would escape the wrath of the Darkling Glory.

So many people depended upon him, and he wanted to save them all, to do everything in his power. Yet though he was the Earth King, his powers were still new to him, and they were growing. He felt clumsy. Incompetent.

If any of us survive these dark times, he thought, I will have to live with the memories of those I let down. For the sake of my own conscience, I dare let no one down.

For a long time he pondered some words from the small book written by the Emir Owatt of Tuulistan—not the forbidden words from the House of Understanding, but a silly poem about self-definition. He had not committed it to memory, could only recall two lines.

Love and lovers may not always sustain,

But I choose to love still.

Though heart might fail me and the battle be lost,

I choose to strive still.

As did the Emir, Gaborn saw wisdom in the struggle. The universe was a powerful foe. In time death overtakes all men. But while he breathed, Gaborn was free to choose the kind of man he would become. It was essential that he remain the kind of man he could live with.

He thought of Emir Owatt of Tuulistan. The little book he’d sent to King Sylvarresta intrigued Gaborn. The Emir was obviously a jewel among men. And now Gaborn was placing great hopes on his daughter Saffira.

A flicker of ghost fire caught his eyes up on the hill at the edge of the Dunnwood just at the tree line, a shimmering gray light.

A wight sat there, on its ghostly mount in the darkness, staring toward the castle at the huddled masses.

He’s watching over my people, Gaborn realized, just as I commanded him to do. Like a shepherd on a hill, watching his flocks by night.

Gaborn could not see from so far away who it might be. He imagined that it was the spirit of Erden Geboren himself, or perhaps his own father.

Gaborn missed his father’s counsel now.

He wondered idly if the wights would be able to fight the Darkling Glory. He doubted it. A wight’s cold touch could kill a mortal man, but wights dissipated when in light A campfire would drive them off. Sunlight banished them. And if the Darkling Glory came from the Realms of Fire in the netherworld, it would surely have some control over that element.

At the back of the room, Gaborn’s Days coughed.

Gaborn turned and looked at the man in the shadows, wondered what he knew.

“Tell me,” Gaborn said in an easy tone. “What think you of our plans? Did I do well or ill today?”

“That, I cannot say,” the Days answered in a tone that told Gaborn precisely nothing.

Gaborn asked rhetorically, for he knew the answer, “If I were drowning in deep water, a foot from shore, would you save me?”

“I would note in my records the moment that you went under for the last time,” his Days said amused by the game.

“And if mankind sank with me?” Gaborn asked.

“It would be a sad day for the books,” the Days said soberly.

“Where is Raj Ahten? What does he plan?”

“Everything in its own time,” the Days said. “You will know all too soon.”

Gaborn wondered. Had Raj Ahten sped north, too? Could he be coming with the Darkling Glory? Or did he have more dire plans in mind?

“Your Highness, may I ask you a question?” the Days said.

“Of course.”

“Have you considered the fate of the Days? Have you considered whether you will Choose me—or any other Days?”

Seizing the moment, Gaborn stared the man in the eyes, gazed beyond them, into the Days’ hopes and dreams.

Gaborn had looked into his father’s heart, and it had been clear. He’d looked into the heart of Molly Drinkham’s child and seen that it loved nothing, was only grateful for its mother’s nipple and for the warmth of her body and the way she sang sweetly to get him to sleep.

Yet even that child, with its vague longings, seemed clearer, more comprehensible, to Gaborn than did the Days.

Through the Earth Sight, he saw not a man, but a man and a woman, a woman with a quill and parchment, a woman with wheat-colored hair and emerald-green eyes.

Gaborn had never guessed that the scribe to his witness would be a woman. Now he saw that the two loved one another, that for them sharing a mind was a joy and an intimacy that Gaborn had never quite imagined.

He looked deeper still, and saw that they shared something more than that: a love of old tales and deeds and songs, a childlike joy that came from merely watching events unfold, the way that an old gardener loves to watch the first crocuses of spring spread wide their white petals, or seeds sprout green from a newly planted field. For them, the study of history was a constant delight, an ever-present joy.

And neither of them wanted anything more than to simply watch. They did not want to better the world or lessen another’s pain. They sought no gain.

They were content to watch.

Gaborn could not fathom it, he was amazed. He had never quite imagined that any man’s heart could be as odd as what he saw beating within the historian.

Gaborn considered. He’d told Iome that he wanted much the same kind of unity earlier in the day, that his domain and hers were one, and that he wanted to grow together with her. Yet so long as they remained two creatures apart, perhaps that could never be achieved. But the Days had seen a possibility, away to unite two people so that they became of one mind and one heart, and they had followed that path.

Gaborn almost envied them. He would have spoken to Iome of the possibility, but it was too late for them. She’d already granted an endowment of glamour to Raj Ahten’s vector, and though the vector was dead and Iome’s beauty had returned to her, the fact that she had given an endowment now made it impossible for her to ever give another.

She and Gaborn could never share such intimacy.

“I will consider the possibility,” Gaborn answered.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” the Days said.

Gaborn resumed looking out the window, letting the fresh night air blow into his face as he listened to the frogs. For long hours, he sat taking his rest as Runelords do, eyes awake, wandering through a realm of dream.

In his dream, he was a young man, riding a stallion through a dark chasm along a narrow mountain road he’d once ridden with his father.

He knew this place, knew this bleak landscape. Last week he had asked his Days why the Days were once called the “Guardians of Dreams.” His Days had said that someday soon, in his sleep, he would visit this place: this land in his dreamscape where all of his terrors lay hidden. He’d told Gaborn to seek out that place.

Only in this dream, he was alone and spiderwebs as strong as bands of steel barred his way. In crevasses among the dark rock, he could see spiders larger than crabs scuttling in the shadows, eyes glittering like bright crystals.

Now, Gaborn looked up the dark ravine, thick with cobwebs. His heart pounded with terror, and his chest was tight. Sweat beaded on his brow. He drew his saber and cut through the strong strands, so that they snapped like lute strings. He urged his mount forward.

He missed a strand, and it hit his forehead, slashed his face before it broke. Gaborn rode on with blood running down the bridge of his nose, into his clenched lips.

This is the land of fears, he realized. This is where my terrors reside. He raced now to face them.

He ducked low and rode hard up the narrow ravine, fearing death, hoping instead to find his father there, or his mother, or some other proper reward.

But ahead the crevasse turned and twisted. It splayed into a wide passage where a dim light shone.

There, above him, tall upon a dark horse, sat his Days. His narrow skull was a dark V, his close-cropped hair unkempt. He looked almost skeletal, merely bones wrapped in a bundle of cloth. He held a wavering green light in his palm, like the flame of a wind-blown lantern, though the light did not issue from any device.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the Days said, holding up the thin light, as if to pass it into Gaborn’s hand

“I know,” Gaborn answered. “I’ll try not to disappoint you.” Gaborn reached to take the light. “What is this?” he asked as it touched his palm.

“The hope of the world and all its dreams,” the Days said, thin lips pulling into a ghastly smile.

Gaborn trembled to see how small the light was; his hand shook so that the flame dropped and fell toward the stony ground.