The Sum of All Men

30 Death Comes to the House of a Friend

Wind gusted from the southeast, carrying the smell of rain; dark clouds rushed behind it, covering the forest. Borenson heard distant thunder, but he could also hear neighing on the wind that afternoon, smell horses. Raj Ahten's troops were marching over the blackened hills.

It had been but half an hour since Gaborn mounted his horse, and with a nod, Borenson wished them good speed. In a moment Gaborn, Iome, and King Sylvarresta spurred up the ash-covered hill, into the shelter of the woods. A few snaps of branches and the snort of a horse announced their departure, yet the horses moved so swiftly, in a moment even those sounds faded.

Borenson also rode his warhorse to the edge of the silent woods, taking a different track. Ahead lay a line of ancient oaks and ash—many of which had the tips of branches burned to nothing.

But as he neared the tree line, Borenson noticed something that only now struck him as incredibly odd: It looked as if there were an invisible wall before him, and the trees beyond it had not caught fire. Not a brown twig had kindled, not a spider's web burned.

As if...the flames had raged before the trees, incinerating everything, until the trees had said, “These woods are ours. You can come no farther.”

Or perhaps, Borenson reasoned, the unnatural fire had turned aside for reasons of its own. An elemental had consciously directed the flames for a time, before it lost focus, faded.

Borenson halted just outside the line of trees, listening, afraid to go in. No birds sang under the trees. No mice or ferrin rustled through dead leaves under the boughs. Old man's beard hung from the hoary oaks in an odd way, like great curtains. This was an ancient forest, vast.

Borenson had hunted these haunted woods, but he'd never ridden through them alone. He knew the dangers of doing so.

No, it was not the fire that turned away, Borenson reasoned. The forest had confounded it. Old trees lived here, trees old enough to remember when the duskins first raised the Seven Stones. Ancient spirits walked here, powers that no man should face alone.

He thought he could feel them now, regarding him. A malevolent force that caused the air to weigh heavy. He looked up at the graying skies, the lowering clouds sailing in from the southeast. Wind buffeted him.

“I'm not your enemy,” Borenson whispered to the trees. “If you seek enemies, you'll find them soon enough. They come.”

Cautiously, reverently, Borenson urged his mount to walk under the dark boughs. Only a few yards, far enough so he could tie the big warhorse in a shallow ravine, then creep back to the wood's edge to watch Raj Ahten's army pass on the road below.

He did not have to wait long.

In a few moments, twenty men raced over the hills below, war dogs leaping to keep ahead. To Borenson's horror, Raj Ahten himself led them.

For a moment, Borenson feared the trackers would follow his trail, but down by the river they stopped for a long time, searching the ground at the spot where Gaborn had taken Torin's armor.

Borenson made out some muffled shouting, but did not understand the dialect of Indhopalese the men spoke. They hailed from a Southern province, but Borenson knew only a few curse words in the Northern dialect.

Raj Ahten recognized that Gaborn's party had split.

They followed Gaborn. Borenson felt terrified, wondered why Raj Ahten himself would head a party to capture Gaborn. Perhaps the Wolf Lord valued Iome and Sylvarresta more than Borenson imagined. Or perhaps he wanted Gaborn as a hostage.

Silently, he willed Gaborn to hurry, to ride hard and fast and never slow till he reached Longmont.

The trackers had hardly raced over the hills to Borenson's left when the army of the Wolf Lord came marching down the road, their golden surcoats bright in the last rays of sunlight before the oncoming storm.

Archers came first, thousands strong, marching four abreast. Mounted knights followed, a thousand. Then came Raj Ahten's counselors and magicians.

Borenson cared little for the Wolf Lord's soldiers. Instead he watched what followed next. A huge wain, encased in wood. A wagon to hold Dedicates—probably fewer than three dozen of them. The wagon was guarded closely by hundreds of Invincibles.

An arrow could not pierce its wooden walls. Borenson could see that one man alone would find it impossible to assault the wagon's occupants. No, he knew the truth.

Raj Ahten could haul only a few vectors with him, hoping no one would slaughter the hundreds of poor Dedicates in Sylvarresta's keep, or in other castles he might have taken here in the North.

When the Dedicates' wagon passed, when the cooks and armorers and camp followers and another thousand swordsmen hurried past, followed by the last thousand archers in the rear guard, Borenson grimly realized that killing Raj Ahten's vectors would be impossible.

He would have to concentrate on breaking into the Dedicates' Keep in Castle Sylvarresta. He worried at how many guards waited for him.

He sat at the edge of the wood for long hours, while the storm brewed and clouds engulfed the sky. Winds began to send dry leaves skittering from the trees. As evening neared, the clouds hurled bolts of lightning through the heavens. Rain fell thick, unrelenting.

Borenson drew a blanket over his head and wondered about Myrrima, back in Bannisferre. She had three Dedicates—her witless mother and two ugly sisters. They'd given up much to unite the family, to win their fight against poverty. Myrrima had told Borenson, on the trip to her house, how her father had died.

“My mother was raised in a manor, and had endowments of her own,” she said. “And my father was a man of wealth, at one time. He sold fine clothes in the market, made winter coats for ladies. But a fire burned his shop, and his coats burned with him. All the family gold must have burned in that fire, too, for we never found any of it.”

It was a proud way to say that her father had been murdered, killed in a robbery.

“My grandfather is still alive, but he has taken a young wife who spends more than he brings in.”

Borenson had wondered what she was getting at, until she whispered part of an old adage. “Fortune is a boat...” on a stormy sea, which rises and falls with each mountainous wave.

Myrrima, he'd realized, had been telling him that she did not trust fortune. Though their arranged marriage might seem fortunate at the moment, it was only because, for the moment, they crested the wave, and she feared that at any second her little boat would crash down deep in some trough, perhaps be submerged forever.

That was how Borenson felt now, submerged, drowning, hoping to keep afloat. The whole notion of sending one man to storm a Dedicates' Keep was a long shot. In all probability, Borenson would arrive at the keep, find it well guarded, and have to retreat.

But he knew, he knew, that even if he had only a slim chance of breaking into the keep, he'd have to take it.

When the storm passed that evening, he still sat unmoving, listening to the stealthy water dripping from trees, the creaking of branches in the wind. He smelled the leaf mold, the rich soil of the forest, the clean scent of the land. And ashes.

Murdering Dedicates did not sit well with him. Borenson tried to harden his resolve for long hours, imagining how it might be—climbing the walls in the escalade, battling guards.

Borenson imagined riding into the castle, going to the gates of the Dedicates' Keep, and riding down any defenders, then discharging his duty.

Such an attack would seem heroic, would likely get him killed. He wanted to do it, to finish this horrible task. He would have gladly made a suicide charge, if not for Myrrima.

If he tried to enter the keep during daylight, he'd jeopardize his mission. What's more, even if he gained entry into the keep and managed to slaughter the Dedicates, he'd then be forced to return to his king and report...what took place between him and Gaborn, and tell why he'd let Sylvarresta live.

Borenson could not stomach the thought. He couldn't lie to King Orden, pretend he hadn't seen Gaborn.

So he watched the sun drop in the west, spreading gold all through the clouds, even as another storm blew in.

He fetched his horse and rode to the hill south of Castle Sylvarresta.

I am not death, he told himself, though he had long trained to be a good soldier. He'd become a fine warrior, in every detail. Now he would play the assassin.

An image flashed in his mind, five years past, when Queen Orden was murdered in bed with her newborn babe. Borenson had tried to impale the fellow—a huge man who moved like a serpent, a man in black robes, face covered. But the assassin had escaped.

It hurt terribly to remember such things. It hurt worse to know that he would now go the nameless assassin one better.

As he neared, Borenson saw that few guards walked the walls of Castle Sylvarresta tonight. Sylvarresta's loyal soldiers had been decimated; Raj Ahten had left no one to guard the empty shell of a city. Borenson could not spot a single man on the walls of the Dedicates' Keep.

It saddened him. Old friends—Captain Auk, Sir Vonheis, Sir Cheatham—should have been on those walls. But if they lived, now they resided in the Dedicates' Keep. He remembered three years past, when he'd brought molasses to the hunt and had strewn it in a trail through the woods, leading to Derrow's feet, then smeared the captain's boots.

When he'd awakened to find a she-bear licking his feet, Derrow had roused the whole camp with his cry.

Borenson took out the white flask of mist, pulled the stopper, and let the fog begin to flow.

So it was that half an hour later, he laid aside his armor, and went to make a lone escalade. He climbed the Outer Wall on the west side of the city, protected by the fog that crept over with him.

Then he made his way to the inner wall, the King's Wall, and scampered over quickly. Only a single young man had walked that wall, and he'd turned his back for the moment.

Borenson reached the base of the Dedicates' Keep near midnight, warily watched it. He did not trust his eyes, worried that guards might be secreted in the King's towers. So he scaled its wall from the north, coming at it by way of the woods in the tombs, where few prying eyes might spot him.

Rain pelted the keep, making it difficult to find purchase between the stones. Borenson spent long minutes clinging to the wall before he reached the top.

There, he found that the wall-walks really were all unmanned, but as he scurried down the steps into the inner court, he spotted two city guards—young men with few endowments—huddled away from the drenching rain in the protection of the portcullis.

In a moment when lightning filled the sky, he rushed them, slaughtered them as thunder shook the keep, so that no one heard their cries.

Even as he killed the young men, Borenson wondered. Not one Invincible? Not one man to guard all these Dedicates?

It felt like a trap. Perhaps the guards hid among the Dedicates.

Borenson turned and looked at the rain-slicked stones in the keep. The lights were out in the great rooms, though a lantern still burned in the kitchens. A wild wind burst through the portcullis, swept through the bailey.

There was an art, a science to killing Dedicates. Some of the Dedicates in there, Borenson knew, would be guards themselves, men like him who had dozens of endowments of their own and long years of practice in weaponry. They might be crippled—deaf or blind, mute or without a sense of smell—but they could be dangerous still.

So, when slaughtering Dedicates, common sense dictated that you avoid such men, kill first those who served as their Dedicates, weakening the more dangerous foes.

Thus, you began by slaughtering the women, and the young. You always sought to kill the weakest first. If you killed a man who had twenty endowments, suddenly you would find that twenty Dedicates would waken, who could sound alarms or fight you themselves.

Though it might be tempting to spare one or two Dedicates, the truth was that if you did, they might call for guards. So you killed them all.

You murdered commoners who had only given endowments, never received. And you started at the bottom of the keep, blocking all exits, and worked your way to the upper stories. Unless, of course, someone in the keep was awake.

I had best begin in the kitchen, Borenson told himself. He took the dead gatekeeper's key and locked the portcullis, so no one could enter the keep or escape, then went to the kitchen. The door stood locked, but he set the prong of a warhammer in its crack. With endowments of brawn from eight men, it was no great feat to pry the door free from its hinges.

When he rushed into the kitchens, he found a lowly girl who'd been left to sweep the floor, long into the night. A young thing, perhaps ten, with straw-blond hair. He recognized the child—the serving girl who'd catered to Princess Iome last Hostenfest. Too young to have given an endowment, he'd have thought. Certainly Sylvarresta would never have taken one from her.

But Raj Ahten has been here, Borenson realized. The girl had given an endowment to him.

When she saw Borenson in the doorway, she opened her mouth to scream. Nothing came out.

A mute who had endowed Voice on her lord.

Almost, Borenson did not have the strength to carry his plan through. He felt sickened. But he was a good soldier. Had always been a good soldier. He couldn't let the little thing wriggle through the wet bars of the portcullis and summon help. Though this child would die, her sacrifice could save thousands of lives in Mystarria.

He rushed, grabbed the broom from the girl's hand. She tried to shriek, tried to yank free from his grasp. She clawed at a table, overturned a bench in her terror.

“I'm sorry!” Borenson said fiercely, then snapped her neck, not wanting to make the girl suffer.

He gently laid her corpse to the ground, heard a thumping sound in the buttery—back in the shadows thrown by the lamplight. Another young girl stood back there, black eyes shining in the darkness.

In all his heroic imaginings this day, he'd not envisioned this—an unguarded keep, where he would have to slaughter children.

Thus began the most gruesome night of Borenson's life.

31 A Time for Questions

As the horses raced through the woods, beneath the black trees, Binnesman held his staff high, shining its dim light for all to see by. Yet the very act seemed tiring, and Binnesman looked drained, old.

The trees whipped past.

Gaborn had a thousand questions, felt as many uncertainties. He wished to speak to Binnesman. But for now he held back his questions. In Mystarria it was considered rude to interrogate a stranger in the way that Gaborn wanted to question Binnesman now. Gaborn had always thought this rule of civility a mere custom, formed without reason, but now he saw that it was more.

By asking questions, one intruded on another's Invisible Domain. At the very least, you took time from him. And information often had its own value, as much value as land or gold, so that in taking it, one robbed another.

To keep from musing about the obalin and the loss of Binnesman's wylde, Gaborn concentrated on this insight, wondering how often courtly manners were rooted in man's need to respect the Domains of others. Certainly, he could see how titles and gestures of respect fit into the larger scheme.

Yet Gaborn's thoughts quickly turned away from such matters, and instead he considered what he'd seen.

Gaborn suspected that Binnesman knew far more about the dark time to come than he would say in front of Raj Ahten, perhaps far more than he could say. The study of wizards was long and arduous, and Gaborn had once heard that certain basic principles could only be understood after weeks or months of intent study.

After long minutes, Gaborn decided that there were some things one should not ask a wizard. What price had Binnesman paid to give life to the wylde? Gaborn wondered.

Now the Earth Warden turned from the road and picked his way among twisted paths here under the shadowed trees. No other scout could have made his way in such maddening darkness. Gaborn left the wizard to his work in silence, in the starlight, for an hour, until they came upon an old road. From there, Binnesman raced the horses north, until suddenly the road dropped down to a ridge overlooking the broad fields outside the village of Trott, twelve miles west of Castle Sylvarresta.

On the plain below lay hundreds of multicolored pavilions from the hordes of Southern traders who had journeyed north for Hostenfest but who had been forced to vacate the fields near Castle Sylvarresta when Raj Ahten's troops laid siege.

Binnesman called the horses to stop, gazed down over the dark fields. The grass had been burned white by the late-summer sun, so that even by starlight reflecting off the grass one could see.

“Look!” Iome whispered. Gaborn followed her pointing finger, saw something dark creeping across the fields, toward the pavilions with their horses and mules for the caravans.

Nomen were down there, eighty or a hundred, creeping toward the tents on their bellies to hunt for food. To the east, along the ridge, he saw several large boulders move, realized that a trio of Frowth giants were also prowling the edge of the forest.

Hungry. They merely hungered for meat. Raj Ahten had marched the giants and the nomen all this way, and they'd survived the battle at dawn, but now they would be hungry.

“We'll have to take care,” Gaborn said. “These horses need to graze and to rest. But until it's safe, maybe we should ride in the open fields, where we can't be surprised.” Gaborn turned his mount east, to head back toward Castle Sylvarresta. From there he could take the Durkin Hills Road south. “No, we should go west from here,” Iome said. “West?” Gaborn asked.

“The bridge at Hayworth is out. We can't run the horses through the forest, so we can't go near Boar's Ford. Besides, we don't want to run into Raj Ahten's army in the dark.”

“She's right,” Binnesman said. “Let Iome lead you.” His voice sounded tired. Gaborn wondered how much his spell-casting had drained him.

“West is the only way—over the Trummock Hills Road,” Iome said. “It's safe. The forest does not encroach on the road. My father's men cut it back.”

Binnesman let the horses rest a few moments. As one, the group dismounted, stretched their legs, adjusted the girths on their mounts.

“Come,” Binnesman said all too soon. “We have a few hours until Raj Ahten awakens. Let us make good use of them.” He urged them downhill, into the plains. Though the horses were hungry and the grass here grew high, it was also dry and without seed, worthless fodder.

They rode slowly along a dirt road for half an hour, and here at last they felt at ease enough to talk, to make plans.

“My horse will be the fastest over these roads,” Binnesman said. “If you do not mind, I will ride ahead. I will be needed at Longmont, and I hope to find my wylde there.”

“Do you think it is there?” Iome asked.

“I really can't be sure,” Binnesman answered, and seemed to want to say no more.

The company soon reached a weathered farmhouse beside a winding stream. The farm had a small orchard behind it, and a sloping barn for a few pigs. It looked as if the peasant who lived here feared attack, for a lantern had been set in a plum tree out front, another out by the door to the pig shed.

The farmer should be afraid, Gaborn realized. This hut was isolated, without benefit of neighbors for a mile. And giants and nomen were prowling the fields tonight.

Iome's father rode his steed up to the lantern, sat staring at it, mesmerized, as if he'd never seen one before.

Then Gaborn realized that the King probably never had seen one, at least not that he remembered. The whole world would seem new to him, like a vivid and fascinating dream, something he lived through but never comprehended.

Gaborn also rode up beneath the lantern, so his face could easily be seen, then called to the door. In a moment, an old turnip of a woman cracked the door enough to frown at him. She seemed frightened by so many riders.

“May we have some water and feed for the horses?” Gaborn asked. “And some food for ourselves?”

“At this time of night?” the old woman grumbled. “Not if you was the King!” She slammed the door.

Gaborn felt surprised at this, looked at Iome for a reaction. Binnesman smiled, Iome laughed softly, went up to the plum tree, then picked half a dozen of the large violet fruits. Gaborn saw movement inside the house as the woman tried to peer out the window, but she had no fine window of glass, only a piece of scraped hide, which let her see nothing but shadows.

“Leave them plums!” she shouted from inside.

“How about if we take all the plums we can carry, and leave a gold coin instead?” Gaborn called out.

Quick as a flash, the old woman was at the door again. “You have money?”

Gaborn reached into the pouch at his waist, pulled out a coin, tossed it to the woman. Her hand darted from the doorpost to catch the coin. She closed the door while she bit the coin, then cracked the door again to shout, more cordially, “There's grain in the pig shed. Good oats. Take as much as you want. And the plums.”

“A blessing on you and your tree,” Binnesman called out, “three years' good harvest.”

“Thank you,” Gaborn shouted, bowing low. He and Binnesman led the horses round back while Iome fed her father plums from the tree.

Gaborn opened the shed, found a burlap bag of oats, and began to dump them in a worn wooden trough to feed the horses. As he did, he was painfully aware that the wizard sat quietly on his horse, watching Gaborn.

“You have questions for me,” Binnesman said.

Gaborn dared not ask the most pressing questions first. So he said easily, “Your robes have gone red.”

“As I told you they would,” Binnesman answered. “In the spring of his youth, an Earth Warden must grow in his power, tend it and nurture it. In the green summer of his life, he matures and ripens. But I am in the autumn of my life, and now must bring forth my harvest.”

Gaborn asked, “And what happens in the winter?”

Binnesman smiled up at him discreetly. “We will not speak of that now.”

Gaborn picked a question that had troubled him more. “Why could Raj Ahten not see me? He thought there was a spell upon me.”

Binnesman chuckled. “In my garden, when Earth drew a rune on your forehead, it was a symbol of power that I, in my weakness, dared not try. You are invisible now, Gaborn—at least, you're invisible to your enemies. Those who serve Fire cannot see you, but see instead your love for the land. The closer they come to you, the more powerfully the spell affects them. I am amazed that Raj Ahten even knew that you were there in the glade. Fire could have given him such power. I did not realize that then, but I realize it now.”

Gaborn thought about this.

“You cannot take great security in this gift of invisibility,” Binnesman said. “Many evil men would do you harm, men who do not serve Fire. And flameweavers of great power can pierce your disguise if they get close.”

Gaborn remembered the flameweaver in Castle Sylvarresta, the way she'd looked at him in recognition, as if he were a sworn enemy.

“I see...” he whispered. “I understand why Raj Ahten could not see me. But why could I not see him?”

“What?” Binnesman said, his brows arching in surprise.

“I had seen his face before, at the castle. I know his helm, his armor. Yet tonight his face was hidden from me, as mine was from him. I looked at him and saw...multitudes of people, all bowing to worship. People in flames.”

Binnesman laughed long and hard. “Perhaps you were looking too deeply. Tell me, what were you thinking when this vision appeared?”

“I simply wanted to see him as he was, beneath all those endowments of glamour.”

“Let me tell you a tale,” Binnesman said. “Many years ago, my master was an Earth Warden who served the animals of the forest—the harts and the birds and such. They would come to him, and he would feed them or heal them as needed.

“When I asked how he knew their needs, he seemed surprised. 'You can see it in their eyes,' he said. As if that were all the answer. Then he sent me away, out of his service, for he thought me unfit to be an Earth Warden.

“You see, Gaborn, he had the gift of Earth Sight, of looking into the hearts of creatures and divining what they wanted, or needed, or loved.

“I've never had that gift. I cannot tell you how to use it, how it works. Believe me, I wish I had your gift.”

“But I don't have such a gift—” Gaborn objected. “I don't see into your heart, or Iome's.”

“Ah, but you were in a place of great earth power,” Binnesman said. “You do have the gift, though you do not know how to use it. Study it out in your mind. Practice it. It will come to you, in time.”

Gaborn wondered. Wizards often said that they needed to “study things out.”

“Yet you have a greater duty now,” Binnesman said. “As Erden Geboren chose his loyal men to fight at his side, you must also begin to choose your followers. It is an awesome responsibility. Those you choose will be bound to you.”

“I know,” Gaborn said. He had heard the legends, how Erden Geboren would choose those to fight at his side, and always he knew their hearts, knew when they faced danger, so that forever after, they never fought alone.

“You must begin to choose...” Binnesman mused, looking off over the dark fields.

Gaborn studied the old man, wondering. “You never needed the gift of Earth Sight, did you? Other Earth Wardens may serve the field mice and the snakes—but Earth commanded you to serve man...in the dark time to come.”

Binnesman stiffened, glanced at Gaborn. “I beg you never speak that thought aloud. Raj Ahten is not the only lord who would seek my life if he guessed at what you know.”

“Never,” Gaborn said. “I will never tell.”

“Perhaps my old master was right,” Binnesman said. “Perhaps I do not. serve the Earth well...”

Gaborn knew that he thought of the loss of his wylde. “Is it lost to us, destroyed?”

“It is of the earth. A mere fall will not kill it. Yet, I...I worry for this creature. It will have come naked from the earth. It knows nothing, will be lost without me to teach and nourish it...And it is more powerful than anyone knows. The blood of the Earth flows in its veins.”

Gaborn asked. “Dangerous? What can it do?”

“It is a focus for my power,” Binnesman said. “Just as water wizards draw power from the sea, or as flameweavers draw it from fire, I draw strength from the earth. But some earth contains more elemental force than others. For decades I have scoured the ground for just the right soils, just the right stones. Then I called my wylde from them.”

“So...it is nothing more than dirt and stones?” Gaborn asked.

“No,” Binnesman said, “it is more than that. I cannot control it; it is as alive as you or I. The wylde chose its shape from my mind. I tried to envision a warrior to fight the reavers, a green knight like the one who served your forefathers. Yet even in that, I could not control it.”

“We will have to send word,” Gaborn said, “ask people to help us search for it.”

Binnesman smiled weakly, pulled a blade of wheat from the ground and chewed at its succulent end.

“So Raj Ahten is lost to us,” Binnesman mused. “I'd hoped for better.”

Leading her own mount out back, Iome found Gaborn and the wizard beside a trough, feeding the horses, which ate as only force horses can, chewing so rapidly she feared for them.

Iome left Gaborn and Binnesman to tend the beasts while she took her father to the creek and washed him in the clear water. He had soiled himself near the Seven Stones, and she'd never had time to care for him.

When at last Gaborn came to her, leaving the horses in Binnesman's able care, Iome had her father dried and in fresh clothes, and he lay at the edge of the orchard, using a tree root for a pillow, snoring contentedly.

It seemed an uncommon, yet peaceful sight. Iome's father was a Runelord, with several endowments of stamina, and others of brawn. Only once in her life had she known him to sleep, and then only for half an hour. Yet she wondered if from time to time he might have slept beside her mother. Certainly, Iome knew, at times he'd lain beside her mother as he pondered the kingdom's problems, long into the night.

But sleep? Almost never.

The long day must have worn her father out.

Gaborn took a seat beside Iome, both of them leaning their backs against the same tree. He took a plum from the pile near her hand, and ate.

Clouds were beginning to scud in again, darkening the sky, and the wind gusted from the south. It was like that in Heredon in the fall. Weak fronts of cloud passed overhead in bursts, with storms that rarely lasted more than an hour or three.

Binnesman brought the mounts down to the stream. The horses all quenched their thirst, then stopped drinking at Binnesman's command. Afterward, some grazed in the short grass at the edge of the stream; most just slept on their feet.

Yet Raj Ahten's great mount stood by the water, restless, matching Binnesman's mood. After a few moments, Binnesman said, “I must leave you now, but I will meet you at Longmont. Ride fast, and there is little on this earth that you need fear.”

“I am not worried,” Gaborn answered. Binnesman's uncertain look suggested that he disagreed, that he felt Gaborn should be concerned. Yet Gaborn had spoken courageously only to ease the wizard's mind.

Binnesman mounted the big warhorse that had belonged to Raj Ahten. “Try to get some rest. You can only let the animals sleep for an hour or two. By midnight, Raj Ahten will be free to come after you again—though I shall lay a spell to protect you.”

Whispering some words, Binnesman pulled a sprig of some herb from the pocket of his robe. He rode forward, dropped it on Gaborn's lap. Parsley.

He said, “Keep it. It will absorb your scent, hide it from Raj Ahten and his soldiers. And before you leave here, Gaborn, pluck a single hair from your head and tie it in seven knots. Should Raj Ahten chase you then, he'll find himself wandering in circles.”

“Thank you,” Iome and Gaborn said. Binnesman turned his great steed and galloped off in the dark, heading south.

Iome felt tired, dreadfully tired. She glanced around for a soft spot of ground to lay her head on. Gaborn reached out, took her shoulder, guided her toward him, so she could rest her head in his lap. It was a surprising gesture. Intimate.

She lay there, closed her eyes, and listened to him eat a plum. His stomach made surprising noises, and she couldn't quite feel comfortable.

Gaborn reached down, gently stroked her chin, her hair. She'd have thought his touch would feel...reassuring, right. But it didn't.

Instead it made her nervous. Partly, she feared rejection. Though he'd said he loved her, she did not believe he could love her deeply.

She was too ugly. Of all who are ugly on the earth, she thought, I am among the worst. A frightened corner of her mind whispered to her, And you deserve to be ugly.

It was the endowment, of course. Iome could never remember having felt this way before. So devoid of worth. Raj Ahten's rune of power pulled at her.

Yet when Gaborn looked at her or touched her, it seemed that some part of the spell was broken for a moment. She felt worthy. She felt that he, alone of all men, might actually love her. And she feared to lose him. It was a terrible fear. For it seemed so reasonable.

Another thing made her uneasy. She'd never been alone with a man. Now she was alone with Gaborn. She'd always had Chemoise by her side, and a Days watching her. But now here she sat with a prince, and her father slept, and it made her feel profoundly uncomfortable. Aroused.

It was not Gaborn's touch, she knew, that made her feel this way. It was the draw of his magic. She could feel the creative desires in her stirring, like an animal burrowing into her skull. She'd felt this when she was near Binnesman, but never so powerfully. Besides, Binnesman was an older man, and none too pleasing to look at.

Gaborn was different, someone who dared say he loved her.

She wanted to sleep. She had no endowments of brawn or metabolism, only a single endowment of stamina she'd gotten shortly after birth. So though she had fair endurance, she needed rest almost as much as any other person.

But now she had Gaborn's electrifying touch to contend with. This is innocent, she told herself as he stroked her cheek. Merely the touch of a friend.

Yet she craved his touch so, wanted him to move his hand down farther, along her throat. She dared not admit even to herself that she wanted him to touch her deeper.

She took hold of Gaborn's hand, so that he'd stop stroking her chin.

He responded by taking her hand, kissing it softly, letting it rest between his lips. Gently, so gently it took her breath away.

Iome opened her eyes to mere slits, looked up. The darkness had fallen so completely, it was as if the two of them lay hidden beneath a blanket.

There are trees between us and the house, Iome thought. The woman there can't see us, doesn't know who we are.

The thought made her heart pound fiercely. Certainly, Gaborn must have felt her heart pound, must have seen how she fought to keep from drawing a ragged breath.

He placed his hand beside her face, began stroking her cheek again, Iome's back arched slightly at his touch.

You can't want me, she thought. You can't want me. My face is a horror. The veins in my hand stand out like blue worms. “I wish I were still beautiful,” she whispered breathlessly.

Gaborn smiled. “You are.”

He leaned down and kissed her, full on the lips. His moist kiss smelled of plums. The touch of his lips made her dizzy; he took the back of her head in his hand, pulled her up and kissed her fervently.

Iome grabbed him round the shoulders, scooted up until she sat in his lap, and felt him trembling softly with desire. In that moment, she knew he believed it: he believed she was beautiful despite the fact that Raj Ahten had taken her glamour, felt she was beautiful though her father's kingdom lay in ruins, felt she was beautiful and wanted her as much as she wanted him.

Gaborn held some strange power over her. She wished he would kiss her roughly. He nuzzled her cheek and chin. Iome raised her neck for him, so he might kiss the hollow of her neck. He did.

Wanton. I feel wanton, Iome realized. All her life, she'd been watched, had been handled so that she would remain proper and free of desire.

Now, for the first time, she found herself alone with a man, a man whom she suddenly realized she loved fiercely.

She'd always kept such a tight rein on her emotions, she'd never have believed she could have felt so wanton. It's only his magic, she told herself, that makes me feel so.

Gaborn's lips strayed over the hollow of her throat, up to her ear.

She took his right hand in her own, brought it toward her breast. But he pulled away and would not touch it.

“Please!” she whispered. “Please. Don't be a gentleman now. Make me feel beautiful!”

Gaborn pulled his lips away from her ear, stared hard into her face.

If what he saw in the dim light displeased or repelled him, he gave no sign of it.

“I—uh,” Gaborn said weakly. “I'm afraid I can be nothing but a gentleman.” He tried to smile reassuringly. “Too many years of practice.”

He pulled away a bit, but not entirely.

Unaccountably, Iome found her eyes full of tears. He must think me brazen. He must think me wicked, a voice inside her whispered. He sees me truly now, a craven animal. She felt sickened by her own lust. “I...I'm sorry!” Iome said. “I've never done anything like that!”

“I know,” Gaborn said.

“Truly—never!” Iome said.

“Truly, I know.”

“You must think me a fool or a whore!” Or ugly.

Gaborn laughed easily. “Hardly. I'm...flattered that you could feel that way about me. I'm flattered you could want me.”

“I've never been alone with a man,” Iome said. “I've always had my maid with me, and a Days.”

“And I've never been alone with a woman,” Gaborn said. “You and I have always been watched. I've often wondered if the Days watch us only so that we will be good. No one would want to have their secret deeds recorded for all the world to see. I know some lords who are generous and decent, I believe, only because they would not want the world to know their hearts.

“But how good are we, Iome, if we are only good in public?”

Gaborn hugged her, pulled her back against his chest, but did not kiss her. Instead, it seemed an invitation to rest again, to try to sleep. But Iome could not rest now. She tried to relax.

She wondered if he meant it. Was he trying to be good, or did he secretly find her repulsive? Perhaps even in his own heart, he dared not admit the truth.

“Iome Sylvarresta,” Gaborn said, his voice distant, highly formal. “I have ridden far from my home in Mystarria to ask you a question. You told me two days ago that your answer would be no. But I wonder if you would reconsider?”

Iome's heart pounded, and she thought furiously. She had nothing to offer him. Raj Ahten was still within the borders of her country, had taken her beauty, destroyed the heart of her army. Though Gaborn claimed to love her, she feared that if Raj Ahten lived, Gaborn would never see her natural face again, but would instead be forced to gaze on this ugly mask for as long as she lived.

She had nothing to give him, except her own devotion. How could that hold him? As a princess of the Runelords, she'd never have imagined herself in this position, where she would love a man and be loved, though she had nothing but herself to offer.

“Do not ask me that,” Iome said, lips trembling, heart racing. “I...cannot consider my own desires in this matter. But, if I were your wife, I'd try to live in such a way that you would never rue the bargain. I'd never kiss another the way I just kissed you now.”

Gaborn held her, comfortably, easily, so her back was cupped against his chest. “You are my lost half, you know,” Gaborn whispered.

Iome leaned back against him, luxuriating at his touch, while his sweet breath tickled her neck. She'd never believed in the old tales which said that each person was made of but half a soul, doomed to constantly seek its companion. She felt it now, felt truth in his words.

Playfully, Gaborn whispered into her ear. “And if you will someday have me as your husband, I'll try to live in such a way that you will never think me too much a gentleman.” He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, hugged her tightly and let her lean her head back against his chest. The inside of his left wrist rested on her breast, and though she felt aroused by his touch, she no longer felt wanton or embarrassed.

This is how it should be, she thought—him owning me, me owning him. This is how we would become one.

She felt tired, dreamy. She tried to imagine what it would be like in Mystarria, in the King's Palace. She dared to dream. She'd heard tales of it, the white boats on the great gray river, floating through the canals in the city. The green hills, and smell of sea salt. The fog rolling in each dawn. The cries of gulls and endless crashing of waves.

Almost she could imagine the King's Palace, a great bed with silk sheets, the violet-colored curtains flying through the open windows, and herself naked beside Gaborn.

“Tell me of Mystarria,” Iome whispered. " 'In Mystarria lagoons lay like obsidian, among the roots of the cypress trees...' ” she quoted an old song. “Is it like that?”

Gaborn sang the tune, and though he had no lute, his voice was lovely:

“In Mystarria lagoons lay like obsidian, among the roots of the cypress trees. And pools are so black they reflect no sun, as they silently buoy the water lilies.”

Those lagoons were said to be the homes of water wizards and their daughters, the nymphs. Iome said, “Your father's wizards, I've never met them.”

“They are weak wizards. Most of them have not even grown their gills. The most powerful water wizards live out in the deep ocean, not near land.”

“But they influence your people, all the same. It's a stable country.”

“Oh yes,” Gaborn said, “we in Mystarria are always seeking equanimity. Very stable. Some might say boring.”

“Don't speak ill of it,” Iome said. “Your father is tied to the water. I can tell. He has a way of...counteracting instabilities. Did he bring one of his wizards? I'd like to meet one.”

Iome imagined that he would, that if he'd brought soldiers to parade about and display his power, he might have brought one of the water wizards. She hoped such a wizard might help fight Raj Ahten at Longmont.

“First of all, they aren't 'his' wizards, any more than Binnesman could be your wizard—”

“But did he bring one in his retinue?”

“Almost,” Gaborn said, and she could tell he wanted the wizards' help, too. Water wizards, unlike Earth Wardens, could be counted on to meddle in the affairs of mankind on a regular basis. “But it's a long journey, and there isn't much water on the plains of Fleeds...”

Gaborn began to talk to her then about his life in Mystarria, the great campus of the House of Understanding with its many Rooms spread out all over the city of Aneuve. Some Rooms were great halls, where thousands came to hear lectures and participate in discussions. Others were cozy, more like the common room in a fine inn, where scholars sat beside roaring fires in winter, like the hearthmasters of old, and taught lessons while sipping hot rum...

Iome woke with a start as Gaborn shifted his weight beneath her, shook her shoulder gently.

“Come, my love,” he whispered. “We must go. It's been nearly two hours.”

Rain drifted from the cloudy skies. Iome looked around. The tree above them provided surprisingly good shelter, but Iome marveled that no rain had spattered her or wakened her earlier. She wondered how she'd slept at all, but recognized now that Gaborn had used the power of his Voice to lull her to sleep, speaking softer and softer, in a singsong cadence.

Her father sat beside her, wide awake, reaching out to grasp at some imaginary thing. He chuckled softly.

Catching butterflies.

Iome's face, hands, body all felt numb. Her mind was waking, but not her limbs. Gaborn helped her rise, unsteadily. She wondered at how to best care for her father. Raj Ahten has turned me into an old woman, filled with worries, and my father into a child, Iome thought.

Fiercely, she suddenly wished that her father could stay this way, could hold on to the innocence and wonder that he had now. He'd always been a good man, but a worried one. In a way, Raj Ahten had given her father a freedom he'd never known.

“The horses have rested,” Gaborn said. “The roads are getting muddy, but we should make good time.”

Iome nodded, recalled how she had kissed Gaborn a few hours ago, and suddenly her mind was awake, swimming once again, and all that had happened yesterday now seemed a dream.

Gaborn stood before her a moment, then grabbed her roughly, briefly kissed her lips, convincing her she recalled everything from this evening only too well.

She felt weak and weary, but they rode through the night, let the horses run, Binnesman had left them a spare mount from Raj Ahten's men, so they stopped to change horses every hour, letting each beast take a turn at rest.

They blew through villages like the wind, and as they rode, Iome had the most vivid memory of a dream she'd dreamt as she lay in Gaborn's arms: She'd dreamed she stood on the aerie tower north of the Dedicates' Keep in her father's castle, where the graaks would land when skyriders sometimes came in summer, bearing messages from the South.

In her dream, Raj Ahten's armies moved through the Dunnwood, shaking the trees, flameweavers clothed only in robes of living fire. She could glimpse the armies only in flashes—nomen with black hides creeping in the shadows under the trees, knights in saffron and crimson surcoats riding armored chargers through the wood. And Raj Ahten stood, so proud and beautiful at the edge of the trees, gazing at her.

She'd been terrified in her dream, had watched her people, the peasants of Heredon, racing to the safety of the castle. The hills to the north, east, and west were full of them—peasants in brown tunics and thick boots, hunched and running for cover. Hefty women with babes in tow, men pushing wheelbarrows full of turnips. Boys driving calves with sticks. An old woman with sheaves of wheat tied to her back. Young lovers with dreams of immortality in their eyes.

All of them raced, seeking cover.

But Iome knew the castle could not protect her people. Its walls would never hold back Raj Ahten.

So she pursed her lips and blew with all her might, blew to the west, then to the east, then to the south. Her breath came out smelling of lavender, and it purpled the air. Every person it touched, everyone she breathed upon in all the kingdom, turned to white thistledown, white thistledown that bobbed and swirled in every small eddy of wind, then suddenly caught in a great gust and went floating high and away over the oaks and birches and alders of the Dunnwood.

Last of all, Iome breathed on herself and upon Gaborn, who stood beside her, so they too turned to thistledown and went flying high over the Dunnwood, gazing down at the autumn leaves, all golden and flame and earthy brown.

She watched as Raj Ahten's armies burst from under the trees with a shout, soldiers waving battle-axes and spears toward her castle. No one stood to oppose them.

Desolation. Raj Ahten might have hoped to win something, but all he would inherit would be desolation.

As her horse carried Iome south through the night, she felt as if she flew, leaving the world behind. Until just after midnight, when a sudden dizziness swept over her, and she looked up to see her father, too, weaving in his saddle. Grief struck her as she recognized what was happening.

At Castle Sylvarresta, someone—Borenson, she suspected—had begun to slaughter her Dedicates.

32 A High Price for Hospitality

The army of Raj Ahten came to Hayworth after midnight, as King Orden had said it would.

The innkeeper Stevedore Hark woke in his cot beside his wife to the sound of hoofbeats on the far side of the river. It was an odd trick of sound that let one hear them so clearly here on the promontory above the water. The stone cliffs on the hillside above the road caught the sounds of hoof-beats, sent them echoing down over the flood.

Stevedore Hark had taught himself years ago to wake at the sound of such hoofbeats, for more often than not, if a man was riding abroad at night, it meant Hark would have to find the traveler a bed.

His inn was small, with but two rooms, so often his guests were obliged to sleep four or five on a straw mat. A stranger coming in the middle of the night meant that Hark might have guests to waken and placate, as he stuffed a new customer in their bed—all kinds of such worries.

So when he heard hoofbeats, Stevedore Hark lay abed trying to count the number of riders. A thousand, two? his sleepy mind wondered. Which bed shall I put them in?

Then he recalled that the bridge was out, and that he'd promised King Orden to send these men south to Boar's Ford.

He jumped up, still in his bedclothes, and struggled quickly to pull on some socks, for it grew cold here at night, so near the mountains. Then he rushed from his inn, looked out over the river. He'd left a lantern posted under the eaves of his roof, just for this moment, but he did not need his own light.

The soldiers stood there, across the river. Knights in full armor, the four lead men carrying guttering torches to light their road. Torchlight reflected off brass shields, and off water. The sight of the warriors frightened him—the white wings engraved on the helms of the Invincibles, the crimson wolves on their surcoats. Mastiffs and giants and darker things could be seen, too.

“Hail, friends, what do you want?” Hark called. “The bridge is out. You cannot pass. The closest place is upstream, at the Boar's Ford. Twenty miles! Follow the trail.”

He nodded encouragingly, pointing the way. A little-used trail led up-river to the ford. The night air smelled heavy-laden of rain, and the wind swirled about Hark's head, carrying the scent of pine. The dark waters of the river lapped softly at their banks.

The soldiers studied him quietly. Tired, it seemed. Or perhaps they did not speak his tongue. Stevedore Hark knew a few words of Muyyatinish.

“Chota. Chota!” he shouted, pointing toward the ford.

Among the horsemen, a shadowy figure suddenly pushed its way forward. A small dark man with glittering eyes, and no hair. He gazed across the river toward Hark and smiled broadly, as if sharing a private joke.

He shrugged off his robe and stood naked. For one brief moment, his eyes seemed to glow; then a blue flame licked the side of his face, rising into the night.

“The darkness of a deception—I can see it in you!” the small man cried.

He raised a fist, and the blue flame shot along his arm, came skipping across the surface of the river like a stone, and bounced toward Stevedore Hark.

Hark shouted in terror as the thing touched the side of his inn. The ancient timbers screamed as if in pain, then burst into flame. The oil in the lamp posted under the eaves exploded all along the wall.

The small blue light then went racing back across the river, to rest in the small man's eyes.

Stevedore Hark shouted and rushed into his inn to fetch his wife and guests before the whole building burst into a conflagration.

By the time he'd dragged his wife and guests from their beds, the roof of the inn was afire, orange flames writhing up in great sheets.

Stevedore Hark raced from the inn, gasping from smoke, and looked out across the river. The dark man stood watching, smiling broadly.

He waved toward Hark with a little flourish, then turned and headed along the road—downstream, toward Power's Bridge, some thirty miles to the east. It would take Raj Ahten's army far out of their way, but the Wolf Lord's soldiers would circumvent Orden's ambush.

Stevedore Hark found his heart pounding. It was a long way for a fat old innkeeper to ride to get to Longmont, and there were no force horses in town. He couldn't warn Orden that his ambush would fail. He'd never make it riding through the woods at night.

Silently, he wished Orden well.

33 Treachery

King Mendellas Draken Orden toured the defenses of Longmont in the failing light, considering how best to defend the rock. It was an odd castle, with outer walls exceptionally tall, carved of granite from the hill Longmont squatted upon. The fortress had no secondary or tertiary walls, as one found in a larger castle, such as at Sylvarresta. It had no fine merchants' quarter, held only two defensible manors for minor barons, along with the keeps for the Duke, his soldiers, and his Dedicates.

But the walls were solid, protected by earth runes of bonding.

The tallest building in the keep was the graaks' aerie—a merely functional building on a rock pinnacle that could nest up to six of the large reptiles. One reached the aerie by means of narrow stone stairs that zigzagged along the east wall of the pinnacle. The aerie was not meant to be defended. It had no merlons archers could hide behind, no landings on the stairs where swordsmen had room to swing. It held only a wide landing field atop the pinnacle for graaks, then six circular openings in nests above the field.

The dukes of Longmont had not raised graaks here in generations. King Orden thought it a shame. A hundred and twenty years past, several harsh winters came, and here in the north the graaks had frozen from cold. During those same winters the Frowth giants had traveled from the north over the snow. But when the winters warmed and the wild graaks flew up again from the south, the kings of Heredon hadn't tamed them, as their forefathers had. When they sent messages, they trusted riders on force horses.

It seemed a shame to Orden. A rich tradition had been lost. In some small way, the nation became poorer for it.

The aeries were badly kept. Stone watering troughs lay empty. Gnawed bones lay about, leftovers from past feedings.

Over the years, Orden had sent messages north by graak, and some graaks had stopped here. No one had ever cleaned the dung from the floors; now lime liberally covered the stone. The stairs leading to the aerie were age-worn. Vines of morning glory climbed from cracks in the rock, their blue flower petals open now to the evening sun.

But Orden found that one could see well from the landing field on the aerie—even down to the roofs of the Dedicates' Keep and Duke's Keep. So he secreted six archers with steel bows there, ordering them to hide and watch, shooting only if Raj Ahten's forces made it through the gates. He added a single swordsman to guard the steps.

In the semidarkness, he waited for his body servant to light a lantern; then by its light he toured the Dedicates' Keep. From the outside, it looked to be an austere, grim keep—a round tower that could hold a thousand Dedicates. For windows, it had a handful of small slits in the stone. Orden imagined few Dedicates ever stood in the full sunlight once they gave endowments. To become a Dedicate for the Duke, one virtually had to consign one's self to a prison.

But the interior of the Dedicates' Keep was surprisingly plush. The walls were painted white, with images of blue roses or daisies stenciled along the small windowsills. Each level in the tower had its own common room, with beds arranged around the outer walls, and a fine hearth in the center. Such rooms were devised so that at night a pair of caretakers might watch over a hundred or more Dedicates at once. The rooms each had chessboards, comfortable chairs to sit in, fresh rushes mingled with lavender on the floors.

King Orden worried for his son. He still had no word of Gaborn's whereabouts. Had the boy been killed? Did he sit in Sylvarresta's keep, a Dedicate to Raj Ahten? Perhaps he rested beside a warm fire, weak as a kitten, playing chess. One could only hope. One had to hope. But Orden's hope was waning.

The Duke's Keep now cloistered less than a hundred Dedicates, all in a single room. Orden calculated that it should have held at least five hundred to serve the fortress defenders. But at least four hundred Dedicates had died in the fight to win back the castle.

The battle for freedom claimed that many victims.

Fortifications for the tower concentrated at its lowest level. With great thoroughness, Orden inspected these defenses, for he hoped to fight Raj Ahten here, where he might have some advantage.

A portcullis opened to a guardroom where a dozen pikemen might keep watch. The gears to the portcullis were kept some eighty feet back, in a separate room. A pair of guards could be housed in the gear room.

Off from the gear room lay an armory and the Duke's treasury. The armory was well stocked with arrows and ballista bolts—more than Orden would have imagined. The arrows were bound into bundles of a hundred. A quick guess told Orden that at least two hundred thousand arrows lay there, most newly fletched with gray goose feathers—as if the Duke had been vigorously preparing for the end of the world.

The Duke's armor and that of his horse were gone, taken by one of Raj Ahten's Invincibles, no doubt. Still, Raj Ahten's men had left a princely long sword—fine Heredon spring steel, honed to a razor's edge.

Orden studied its hilt. The name of Stroehorn was branded into it, an artificer of exceptional skill some fifty years past—a veritable Maker.

The Indhopalese, who'd never worn anything but leather mail in battle till fifty years ago, didn't value Northern armor or swords. In the desert, heavy ring mail or plate was too hot to fight in. So men there had worn lacquered leather armor, and instead of the heavy blades of the North fought with curved scimitars. The curved blades maximized the cutting edge of the sword, so that a single strike could slice through a man's body. Against lightly armored opponents, curved scimitars proved to be elegant, graceful weapons. But when a scimitar's edge met ring mail, the blade quickly dulled or bent.

For fighting a man in ring, one needed a thick Northern blade, with its straight edge and hard steel. These could pierce armor with a lunge, or could chop through small rings.

Seeing this fine sword abandoned here in the armory gave Orden hope. Raj Ahten marshaled a great number of troops. He might terrify, but he fought in an unfamiliar clime, with inferior Southern steel. How would his desert troops fare come winter?

Eight hundred years ago, the kings of Indhopal had sent gifts of spices, ointments, and silk, along with pet peacocks and tigers, to Orden's ancestors, in hopes of opening trade. In return, Orden's forefather sent back a gift of horses, gold, fine furs, and wool, along with Northern spices.

The kings of Indhopal spurned the gifts. The furs and wool seemed overburdensome in warm lands, the spices unsatisfactory. The horses—which they thought of inferior quality—were fit only for use as draft animals.

But they loved the gold, enough to send the caravans.

So Orden had to wonder how the Indhopalese would acclimate. Perhaps they'd not learn the value of wool or fur until half of them froze. Perhaps they'd spurn mounts bred for Northern mountains, just as they spurned Northern steel.

Last of all, Orden inspected the treasury. The Duke had stocked it with a surprising amount of gold blanks, used for striking coin. King Orden studied the stamps—which bore Sylvarresta's image on the front and the Seven Stones on the back.

It seemed odd that the Duke should be striking coins. A balancing scale sat on the floor, and Orden took a golden coin from his own pocket, placed it on one pan of the scale, then placed the Duke's blank on the other pan of the scale.

The blank was light. Whether it had been shaved too small, or whether it was light because the gold had been mixed with zinc or tin, King Orden could not tell.

But it was clear that the Duke of Longmont had been a counterfeiter before he'd turned traitor. “Scurvy-infested dog!” Orden muttered.

“Milord?” one of his captains asked.

“Go cut down the carcass of the Duke of Longmont. Cut through the intestines that keep him hanging from the keep, then fling the corpse into the moat.”

“Milord?” the captain asked. It seemed a singularly disrespectful way to treat the dead.

“Do it!” Orden said. “The man doesn't deserve another night of royal hospitality.”

“Yes, milord,” the captain answered, rushing off.

After touring the Dedicates' Keep, Orden decided not to tour the others in the castle. The manors for the Duke and his lords seemed paltry. Orden saw no sense in guarding them.

Besides, it would be better to concentrate his men on the outer walls. Longmont was so narrow that an archer on the east wall could shoot the hundred yards to the west wall, which meant that if enemy soldiers managed to breach one wall, numerous defenders could still fire on them.

Fifteen hundred men, maybe sixteen hundred. That was all King Orden had at the moment. He'd sent messengers to Groverman and Dreis, hoped for reinforcements. Perhaps Borenson would return with most of his army intact.

But they would have to get here soon. Reinforcements that did not arrive before dawn would not get in.

King Orden had finished inspecting the Dedicates' Keep when Captain Cedrick Tempest, the Duchess's aide-de-camp, came to meet him, followed by a Days, a plump woman of middle age. Captain Tempest was a stout man, with thick curly brown hair cropped close. He carried his helm in hand, a sign of respect, but did not bow on meeting King Orden. For a flicker of a second, Orden felt slighted, then realized this man was acting lord of the castle. As such, by right, he did not need to bow.

Instead, Tempest reached out to shake hands at the wrist, as an equal. “Your Highness, we are happy to receive you, and offer you and your men such comforts as we can. But I fear there may be a battle soon. Raj Ahten has an army advancing from the south.”

“I know,” Orden said. “We'd like to fight beside you. I've sent to Groverman and Dreis, begging reinforcements, but I suspect they'll hesitate to honor a request from a foreign king.”

“The Duchess also sent for reinforcements,” Tempest said. “We should soon see what it gains us.”

“Thank you,” Orden said, watching the man's eyes.

This was the worst news. If no help had come yet, it meant Dreis and Groverman, on hearing of the invasion, had chosen to fortify their own positions rather than send aid. One could hardly blame them.

After a moment Orden asked, “May we speak privately?”

Tempest nodded discreetly; together they walked into the Duke's Keep, climbed a flight of stairs. Orden's men waited outside. Only Orden's and his son's Days followed him into the room, with the matronly Days who followed Tempest at their heels.

In the great room, blood still smeared the floors from a fierce battle. Wood chairs lay in splinters; a gore-covered axe lay on the floor, along with a pair of long daggers.

The Duchess's battle had come down to knife work in here.

A pair of red hounds looked up curiously as Orden entered, thumped their tails in greeting. They'd been sleeping before the cold fireplace.

King Orden got a torch, lit it, placed it under the kindling in the fireplace. Then he took a seat by the fire, ten feet from Tempest's own chair.

Tempest looked to be in his early fifties, though it was impossible to tell. A man with endowments of metabolism would age fast. But Mendellas could often guess a warrior's age by looking in his eyes. Even with endowments of metabolism, some men maintained a look of innocence, a look of inexperience. A man's eyes stayed young—like his teeth and his mind and his heart—though his skin might become spotted and wrinkled.

But Tempest's brown eyes looked full of pain, battle, and fatigue. Orden could tell nothing by gazing into them. Tempest's eyes looked a thousand years old.

The King decided to lead to his subject tactfully. “I'm curious to know what happened. Raj Ahten obviously garrisoned soldiers here—good force soldiers. How is it that the Duchess defeated them?”

Captain Tempest said, “I—must base my report on hearsay. I myself was forced to give an endowment, and so was housed in the Dedicates' Keep when the revolt took place.”

“You say Raj Ahten 'forced' you to give an endowment?”

A strange look came over Captain Tempest, one of revulsion mingled with worship. “You must understand, I gave myself willingly. When Raj Ahten asked for my endowment, his words seemed to be daggers that pierced me. When I looked at his face, it seemed more beautiful than a rose or the sun rising over a mountain lake. He seemed beauty itself; everything else I've ever thought noble or beautiful seemed a dim forgery.

“But after I gave the endowment, after his men dragged my body down to the Dedicates' Keep, I felt as if I awoke from a dream. I realized what I'd lost, how I'd been used.”

“I see,” King Orden said, wondering idly how many endowments of glamour and Voice Raj Ahten had, that he could gain such power over men. “So, what happened here? How did the Duchess manage this coup?”

“I am not certain, for I was weak as a pup in the Dedicates' Keep, and could not stay awake. I heard only snatches of reports.

“As I understand, the Duke apparently got paid to let Raj Ahten pass through the Dunnwood. But he dared not let his wife know of the payment, and so kept it hidden in his private apartments, not daring to show it.

“After his death, when the Duchess realized that he must have been paid for his treason, she searched his private apartments and found some hundred forcibles.”

“I see,” King Orden said. “So she used the forcibles to furnish some assassins?”

“Yes,” Tempest answered. “When Raj Ahten entered the city, not all our guard was in the keep. Four young soldiers were in the wilds, investigating a report that a woodcutter in Greenton had spotted a reaver—”

“Have you had many reports of reavers hereabouts?” Orden asked, for this was important news.

“No, but last spring we tracked a trio in the Dunnwood.”

Orden thought. “How large were the tracks?”

“Twenty to thirty inches long.”

“Four-toed, or three-toed tracks?”

“Two were three-toed. The largest was four-toed.”

Orden licked his lips, found his mouth suddenly dry. “You knew what that meant, didn't you?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Captain Tempest said. “We had a mating triad.”

“And you did not kill them? You didn't find them?”

“Sylvarresta knew of it. He sent hunters after them.”

No doubt Sylvarresta would have told Orden of the reavers. We might have hunted more than boars this year, Orden thought. Yet this news bothered him, for he'd heard other troubling reports of reavers moving through the mountains along the borders of Mystarria—war bands of nines and eighty-ones. Not since his great-grandfather's day had he heard so many reports. And on his journey north, while traveling through Fleeds, Queen Herin the Red mentioned problems with reavers killing her horses. But Orden had not expected the depredations to extend so far north.

“So,” Orden said, “you had soldiers on patrol when Raj Ahten took possession...”

“Right. They stayed out of the city, until Raj Ahten left. They saw the Duke hanged, so they sent a note to the Duchess, asking her orders. She sent her facilitator into town with the forcibles, and the soldiers took endowments from whomever would grant them, until they had enough to attack.”

“So they performed an escalade?” Orden asked.

“Hardly. They entered casually enough, after Raj Ahten left. They played at being candlemakers and weavers, bringing in goods to display to the Duchess. But they hid daggers beneath the candles, and chain mail beneath folds of cloth.

“Raj Ahten had only two hundred loyal soldiers here, and those young lads—well, they handled the situation.”

“Where are they now?”

“Dead,” Captain Tempest said, “all dead. They broke into the Dedicates' Keep and killed half a dozen vectors. That's when the rest of us joined the fray. It wasn't easy.”

Orden nodded thoughtfully.

“Captain Tempest, I suppose you know why my men and I have come?” It was a delicate subject, but Orden needed to know if Tempest had captured the forcibles, moved them from Bredsfor Manor. Though he'd sent a man to find them, Orden didn't want to be kept waiting, especially if he waited only for bad news.

The captain stared up at him, incurious. “You heard we were under attack?”

“Yes,” Orden said, “but that is not why I came. All of Heredon is under attack, and I'd have preferred to bend my efforts to freeing Castle Sylvarresta. I came for the treasure.”

“Treasure?” Captain Tempest asked. His eyes widened. Almost, Orden believed the man knew nothing about it. But he didn't quite trust that response. Tempest was working too hard to control his emotions, to show no reaction.

“You know what I'm talking about?”

“What treasure?” Tempest asked, with no hint of deception in his eyes.

Had the Duchess kept the existence of the forcibles hidden even from her own aide-de-camp? Orden had expected so, had hoped so.

“You knew the Duke was a forger, didn't you?” Orden asked. He let just a little of the power of his Voice slide into the question, in a tone that would elicit guilt.

“No!” Tempest protested, but his eyes flickered, and his pupils contracted.

The dishonest, miserable cur, Orden thought. The man lies to me now. When I asked about treasure, he thought I spoke of the gold blanks in the treasury. Truly, he had not heard of Raj Ahten's forcibles. That interested Orden.

So the Duchess had not trusted Tempest. Which meant Orden could not trust him, either.

King Orden forged ahead with a half-truth. “King Sylvarresta sent a message, saying the Duchess had overthrown Raj Ahten's forces here, and she had hidden or buried a treasure here in the castle. Have you seen signs of digging hereabout? Has anyone recovered the treasure?”

Tempest shook his head, eyes wide. Orden felt sure Tempest's men would be digging within the hour.

“Who did the Duchess trust most? Who would she have had bury the treasure?”

“The chamberlain,” Tempest said quickly.

“Where is he now?”

“Gone! He left the castle shortly after the uprising. He—I haven't seen him since!” From the tone of Tempest's voice, he seemed worried that the chamberlain had made off with the treasure.

“What did he look like?”

“A thin fellow, like a willow switch, with blond hair and no beard.”

The very messenger Orden had found slain. So the Duchess had sent the message to Sylvarresta using the man who'd hidden the forcibles, then told no one else about them. Captain Tempest might be a fine soldier, capable of defending the castle, but he was obviously dishonest. Knowledge of the treasure would have tempted him, and the Duchess had not wanted to let her king get betrayed again.

This news filled King Orden with sadness, a heaviness. Such a waste, that a fine king like Sylvarresta could suffer from such disloyalty. A whole nation compromised.

If a fine man like Sylvarresta was so little loved by his lords, Orden wondered, how can I trust my own vassals?

“Thank you, Captain Tempest,” King Orden said, in a tone of dismissal.

“Oh, and Captain,” Orden added, as Tempest hesitated in the doorway, strapping on his helm, “relief will come from Groverman and Dreis, as soon as they make arrangements. I sent a message asking for aid, and I told them of the treasure. The armies of the North will gather here!”

Tempest nodded, breathed a sigh of relief, departed. The matronly Days followed him out.

Orden sat for a long hour in the darkness, in a chair carved of dark walnut, finely wrought—too finely. The chiseled emblems of feasting men on its backboard dug into his flesh. One could not rest in these chairs.

So Orden stoked the fire in the fireplace, threw in a couple of shattered chairs for fuel, then lay on a bearskin, petting the Duke's hunting hounds, who batted the floor with their tails, reveling in his affection.

His Days had been standing in a corner, forgotten. Now the man came and sat in one of the uncomfortable chairs. Gaborn's Days remained in the corner.

Orden had not lain on the floor with a dog since he was a boy. He remembered the first time he'd come to Longmont with his father. He'd been nine years old, on his way home from his first big hunt, a hundred men in his retinue. It was in the fall, at Hostenfest, of course, where he'd met a young prince with long amber hair and narrow shoulders.

Sylvarresta. Prince Mendellas Orden's first friend. His only true friend. Orden had had soldiers who schooled him in the arts of war, and he'd made alliances with fawning sons of minor nobles who might have liked him but who always seemed too much aware how their inherited stations forever separated them from a prince.

Even the other princes had treated Orden with too much deference—always aware that his realm was richer and larger than any other.

It was only Sylvarresta whom Mendellas could trust. Sylvarresta would tell him if some hat made him look stupid instead of stylish, or would laugh at him when he missed a quintain with his lance. Only Sylvarresta ever dared tell him when he was wrong.

King Orden found himself breathing hard. I am wrong now, he realized. Wrong to have sent Borenson to kill Raj Ahten's Dedicates.

What if Borenson kills Sylvarresta? Could I ever forgive myself? Or will I have to bear the scar of it for the rest of my life, as a badge of this war?

Other kings had borne such scars, Orden told himself. Others had been forced to slaughter friends. As a child, Orden had begrudged the men who killed his own grandfather. Now he knew that too often, guilt became the price of leadership.

“Days?” King Orden whispered to the man who sat at his back.

“Yes, Your Lordship,” his Days answered.

“What news have you of my son?” He had known the man all his life, had never considered the Days a friend or confidant. Yet he also admired the man as a scholar.

“To speak of it would violate my most sacred oaths, milord. We do not meddle in the affairs of state,” the Days whispered.

Of course he knew the answer. The Days were never to hinder or help. If the King were drowning two feet from shore, the Days could not grasp his hand. “Yet you could tell me,” King Orden asked. “You know the answer.”

“Yes,” the Days whispered.

“Do you not care for me? Are my feelings unimportant?” Orden asked. “Is my fate unimportant, or the fates of my people? You could help me beat Raj Ahten.”

The Days did not speak for a long moment, and Orden knew he was considering. Other Days had broken their vows, spoken to kings of great secrets. Of that, Orden felt sure. So why not this man? Why not now?

From the corner, Gaborn's Days said, “If he answers your questions, he would violate a most sacred vow. His twin would know.” A threat sounded in those words. Watchers watching the watchers. “Surely you understand, milord.”

Orden didn't really understand, could hardly comprehend such callousness. Often he'd thought the Days and their religion quaint and strange. Now he thought them hard of heart.

Yet he sought to understand them. Gaborn's Days remained here, instead of going to Gaborn. Why? Had his son died, so the Days could not follow? Or did the Days merely wait for Gaborn to come back here? Or...had his son disappeared even from the sight of the Days?

Orden pondered. His Days had called him “milord,” a title he'd never used before. The man wanted to speak, found it hard to remain a bystander. He restrained himself, but wanted to ameliorate any hard feelings in the nasty affair.

Might a Days not counsel him, even if his own life became forfeit in the process? Orden had studied history, knew that in some wars a Days had revealed secrets. But Orden had never learned the fate of such Days.

The chronicles told the deeds of kings and nations. If a Days had ever gone rogue, had become a counselor, the fate of such a Days was never mentioned.

Instead, the chronicles flowed as if a single dispassionate watcher had observed the king, studying his affairs. For a long hour, Orden wondered at this.

When Captain Stroecker returned from Bredsfor Manor, he found Orden lying before a dying fire, petting the hounds.

“Excuse me, milord,” Captain Stroecker said from the doorway.

King Orden turned over, sat up. “What did you find?”

Stroecker smiled grimly. He held a bunch of fresh turnips in his right hand; his eyes shone with what might have been anger. “These, milord. Enough turnips to feed an army.”

Intense terror struck King Orden as he realized the forcibles were gone, had been taken.

Stroecker smiled wickedly. “And these,” he said, reaching behind his back. He pulled a small bundle of forcibles from his belt.

King Orden's heart leapt in relief, so much so that he forgave the captain's jest immediately.

He jumped up, grabbed the forcibles, inspected them. The runes in each looked perfect, without dents or abrasions in the blood metal, all in the Kartish style. Orden had no facilitator here to perform the rites, but he needed none. With the wits of twenty men, and gifts of voice from fifteen, Orden could chant the spells as well as the best of them.

A weapon. He had his weapon.

“Captain Stroecker,” Orden said softly. “You and I and Borenson are the only three men who know where this treasure lies. We must keep it that way. I can't risk that the enemy find these. I can't risk that you get captured.”

“Agreed,” Stroecker said in such a tone that Orden realized the man thought Orden wanted him to make the ultimate sacrifice. In a moment, Stroecker would disembowel himself.

“Therefore, Captain,” Orden said, “I want you to tell the men that we need guards to take a great treasure back to Mystarria. Choose three men—young family men with children—to accompany you as guards. Choose them carefully, for you may be saving their lives. Then take the men and four fast horses, and fill your saddlebags with stones, and leave here, taking every effort not to get caught.”

“Milord?” Stroecker asked.

“You heard me right. A war will be fought here near dawn. I expect Raj Ahten to throw his full force against us. He anticipates the help of an army of a hundred thousand, and I—do not know what allies I might have. If this castle falls, if we all die, it will be your duty to return here and retrieve the treasure, then deliver it to Mystarria.”

“Milord, have you considered retreat?” Stroecker asked. One of the dogs stood, pushed its muzzle against the King's thigh. The dog seemed hungry, but would settle for affection.

“I think about it every moment,” Orden said, “but my son is missing in the wilderness, and, so far, I have no word of him. Until I hear word, I must consider that Raj Ahten holds him prisoner and has taken an endowment—or that he is dead.” Orden took a deep breath. For all his life, he'd sought to protect and nurture his son. His wife had borne him four children. Only Gaborn had survived. Yet his worry for Gaborn was but one of a multitude of pains. His voice faltered as he admitted, “And I have sent my most fearsome warrior to kill my best friend. If my fears prove true, Captain Stroecker—if the worst comes to pass—I won't want to live through this battle. I'm going to raise my sword against Raj Ahten. I'm going to attack him, personally. Either he will die or I will die. At dawn we will be forming a serpent ring.”

King Orden held up the forcibles.

Captain Stroecker's face paled. Creating a serpent ring was a dangerous gambit. With these forcibles, Orden could take an endowment of metabolism from a man, who would then take an endowment from another, who would take an endowment from another, so that each man became one in a long line of vectors. In the parlance of facilitators, this line of men was called a “serpent,” for the man at the head of the chain became very powerful, deadly as a poisoned serpent, and should he be destroyed, should the serpent be beheaded, the next man in line would arise, hardly diminished in power from the first.

But if a man took too many endowments of metabolism, it was sure death. He might become a great warrior for a few hours or days, but he would burn himself out like a shooting star. Desperate men had done it in the past, at times. But it would be hard to find twenty able fighters willing to form a serpent, to throw away their lives.

So Orden offered them some hope. In this case, last of all, the King would give his own endowment of metabolism to the last man in the serpent, so that every man in the serpent became vectored to another. Thus, with twenty forcibles, twenty men could all share their metabolism, forming a pool from which any one warrior could draw. Since Orden had the most endowments and the greatest skill in battle, the task of fighting Raj Ahten would fall to him. He would volunteer to act as “the serpent's head,” and so long as the other men in the ring remained inert, Orden would be able to draw upon their surplus metabolism. Many of Orden's soldiers had metabolism from one or two men. So, as the serpent's head, Orden would be able to move with the speed of thirty or forty men.

And the hope that Orden offered his men was this: that if he himself managed to survive the battle, the serpent ring would remain unbroken, and each man in the ring would thus be able to continue his life with some degree of normalcy.

But still it was a dangerous gambit. If any other man in the ring were forced into battle, that man might well draw away metabolism that Orden needed at a critical moment, sabotaging Orden's chances in the fight. Even worse, if a member of the serpent ring were slain, Orden might find himself a mere vector to another man, might suddenly fall in battle, unable to move.

No, if anyone died in this battle, it would best be the serpent's head—Orden himself. For if Orden died, if the ring broke, then the burden of. metabolism would fall to the person who had granted Orden his endowment.

This next man in line would become the new serpent's head. And he could continue to fight Raj Ahten's forces, spreading destruction.

Yet even if Orden won his battle with Raj Ahten, even if the serpent ring remained intact today, Orden was still calling upon all his men to make a terrible sacrifice. For at some time, hopefully on some distant morning, the circle would break. A man from the circle would die in some battle, or would fall prey to illness. When that happened, all other vectors would fall into the deep slumber of those who'd given metabolism, with the exception of one man, the new serpent's head, doomed to age and die in a matter of months.

Regardless of how the battle played out today, every man in the ring would be called upon to sacrifice some portion of his life.

Knowing all this, Orden felt gratified when his captain bent low at the waist, smiling, and said, “I would be pleased to serve with you, if you would have me in this ring.”

“Thank you,” Orden said, “but you'll have to miss this opportunity to waste your life. Duty calls you elsewhere.”

Captain Stroecker turned smartly and left the great hall. Orden followed him out to gather his troops for battle.

Already his captains had set men on the walls. Artillerymen had pushed the catapults out from beneath the protective enclosures in the towers above the gates, had begun firing, testing their ranges in the dark. It was a poor time for such tests, but Orden did not know if they'd ever get a chance to test the catapults in daylight.

At that moment, a horn sounded in the western hills, off toward the road from Castle Dreis.

Orden smiled grimly. So, he thought, the Earl comes at last, hoping for a share of the treasure.

34 The Running Man

In Khuram it is said that a running man with a knife can kill two thousand men in a single night. Borenson worked faster than that, but then he was a force soldier, and he carried a knife in each hand.

He did not think about what he did, did not watch the quivering of his victims or listen to the thrash of limbs or gurgle of blood. For most of the night, he hurried through the job in a mindless horror.

Three hours after he entered the Dedicates' Keep, he finished the deed. It was inevitable that some of the Dedicates woke and fought him. It was inevitable that some women he killed were beautiful, and some men were young and should have had full lives before them. It was inevitable that no matter how hard he tried to block the memories of their faces from his mind, moments would come that he knew he'd never forget: a blind woman clutching at his surcoat, begging him to wait; the smile of a drinking companion from the hunts, Captain Derrow, who bid him a final goodbye with a knowing wink.

Halfway through the deed, Borenson recognized that this was wanted of him, that Raj Ahten had left the Dedicates unguarded knowing they would be killed. He had no compassion for these people, valued them not at all.

Let friend dispose of friend, brother raise knife against brother. Let the nations of the North be torn asunder. That was what Raj Ahten wanted, and Borenson knew that even as he slaughtered these innocents, he had become a tool in Raj Ahten's hand.

Leaving the Dedicates totally unguarded was not necessary. Four or five good men could have provided some protection. Could the monster take such delight in this?

Borenson felt his mind tear open like a seeping wound, every moment became a pain. Yet it was his duty to obey his lord without question. His duty to kill these people, and even as he revolted at the slaughter, he found himself wondering time and time again, Have I killed them all? Have I fulfilled my duty? Is this all, or has Raj Ahten hidden some of them?

For if he could not reach the vectors that Raj Ahten had taken, Borenson needed to kill every Dedicate who fed Raj Ahten's power.

Thus, when he finally unlocked the portcullis to the keep, blood covered Borenson from helm to boot.

He walked into Market Street, dropped his knives to the pavement, then stood for a long time, letting rain wash over his face, letting it wash over his hands. The coldness of it felt good, but during the past hours the blood had clotted in gobbets. A little rainwater would not wash it free.

A fey mood took Borenson. He no longer wanted to be a soldier for Orden, or for any king. His helm felt too constraining, as if it would crush his head, it hurt so. He threw it to the ground so that it rattled and clattered as it rolled along the paving stones, down the street.

Then he walked out of Castle Sylvarresta.

No one stopped him. Only a pitiful guard had been set.

When he reached the city gate, the young fellow on guard took one look at his blood-covered face and fell back, crying, raising his index finger and the thumb as a ward against ghosts.

Borenson shouted a cry that rang from the walls, then ran out into the rain, across the burned fields toward the distant copse where he'd hidden his horse.

In the darkness and rain, a half-dozen nomen with long spears made the mistake of jumping him. They came rushing toward him in a little vale, leaping from the blackened earth like wild things, running forward with their longspears.

Their red eyes nearly glowed in the darkness, and their thick manes made them look somehow wolfish. They snarled and loped forward on short legs, sometimes putting a knuckle to the ground.

For a moment, Borenson considered letting them kill him.

But instantly an image of Myrrima formed in his mind: her silk dress the color of clouds, the mother-of-pearl combs in her dark hair. He recalled the smell of her, the sound of her laugh when he'd kissed her roughly outside her little cottage.

He needed her now, and saw the nomen as mere extensions of Raj Ahten. They were his agents. He'd brought them here to kill, and though Borenson's men had driven and scattered the nomen through the hills, they would become a scourge on this land for months.

It did not matter to Raj Ahten. The nomen would do his will as they sought to feed on human flesh. They would do all the killing he'd asked, but they'd take the weak first—the children from cradles, the women at their wash.

The first noman rushed Borenson, hurled its spear at close range, so that the stone blade shattered against Borenson's mail.

Quick as a snake, Borenson drew the battle-axe at his hip, began swinging.

He was a force warrior to be reckoned with. He cleaved the arm off one noman, spun and hit another full in the chest.

He began smiling as he did so, considered each move in the battle. It was not enough to kill the nomen; he wanted to do it well, to turn the battle into a dance, a work of art. When one noman rushed him, Borenson slammed his left mailed fist into its fangs, then grabbed its tongue and pulled.

Another tried to run. Borenson gauged its pace, watched the bobbing of its upright ears, and threw his axe with all his might. It was not enough to split the beast's skull; he wanted to do it perfectly, to hit the target just so, so the bone would make that splitting noise and part like a melon.

The noman went down. Only two stood, rushing him as a pair, spears ready. Without his endowments of sight, Borenson would never have been able to evade those black spears.

As the nomen lunged, Borenson simply slapped the speartips away, so the jabs went wide, then he grabbed a spear, launched himself forward and spun, impaling both beasts through the navel.

Both nomen stood in shock, pinned together.

When he finished, Borenson stepped back and observed the nomen. They knew they would die. They couldn't heal from such a wound. The creature in back fainted, dragging its companion to its knees.

Borenson walked on, considered the way he'd fought, the precise movements. His deed had been as close to poetry or dance as he could achieve.

He began laughing, chuckling a throaty rumble, for this was the way war should have been—men fighting for their lives. A good man struggling to protect home and family.

The skirmish itself somehow seemed more a balm for his troubles than the rain. Borenson retrieved his axe and helm and hurried to his horse, running through the downpour.

I will not wash these hands, he told himself. I will not wash my face, until I stand before my prince and my king again, so they can see what they have done.

Thus Borenson took horse and began racing through the darkness. Four miles down the road east of town, he found a dead knight of Orden, took the man's lance.

His mount could not equal Gaborn's fine hunter. But the road was clear, if somewhat muddy, and on a night like this, with rain to cool them, Borenson's horse could run forever.

So Borenson raced over the hills until the rain stopped and the clouds dispelled and stars shone bright and clean.

He'd planned to head to Longmont. But when the road branched both east and south, the fey mood was still on him, and he suddenly turned east, toward Bannisferre.

Dawn found him riding over green fields that held no sign of war, through vineyards twenty miles north of Bannisferre where young women stooped to fill baskets of ripe grapes.

He stopped in such a field and ate, found the grapes dripping with water from the night's rain; they tasted as succulent as the first grape must have tasted to the first man who ate it.

The river here was wide, a broad silver ribbon gleaming beneath the green fields. Borenson had thought last night to leave himself bloody, but now he did not want Myrrima to see him this way, to ever guess what he'd done.

He went down to the river and swam, naked, unmindful of the pig farmers who herded animals past on the road.

When the sun dried him, Borenson put on his armor, but threw his bloodied surcoat into the water, letting the river carry away the image of the green knight on the blue field.

Surely, he thought, Raj Ahten's troops have reached Longmont. I'm so far behind them, I'm too late to join the battle. In truth, he no longer cared. No matter what the outcome at Longmont, he planned to renounce his lord.

In assassinating innocent Dedicates, men and women who had committed no crime but that of loving a good and decent king, Borenson had done more than any master had a right to ask. So now he'd renounce his vows to Orden, become a Knight Equitable. Of his own free will he'd fight as he deemed best.

Borenson went on to a pear tree beside an abandoned farm, and climbed, taking the fattest pears from the top—same for himself, some for Myrrima and her family.

From the treetop he saw something interesting: over a rise lay deep pools with steep sides beneath a grove of willow trees, pools as blue as the sky. Yellow willow leaves had fallen into water in great drifts, floating over the surface. But also on the pools were roses bobbing, red and white.

A wizard lives there, Borenson realized, dully. A water wizard, and people have thrown roses into the water, seeking its blessings.

He climbed quickly down from the tree, ran over the rise to the still waters, and approached solemnly, hopefully. He had no roses or flowers to sweeten the wizard's water, but he had pears that it might eat.

So he went to the edge of the pool, where the willow roots twisted down a gravel bank, and there he sat on a broad black root. The crisp leaves of the trees above him blew in a small breeze, rustling, and Borenson called for long minutes, “O wizard of the water, lover of the sea, O wizard of the water, hear my plea.”

But the surface of the pool remained unperturbed, and he saw nothing in the shining pool but water striders that skated over its flat surface and a few brown newts that floated beneath, watching him from golden eyes.

In despair, he began to wonder if the wizard had died long ago, and people still sweetened the pools in hopes that someday another might come. Or if this was a haunted place, and the local girls threw roses in the water to placate someone who had drowned.

After long minutes of sitting on the willow root, and calling with no results, Borenson closed his eyes, just smelling the sweet water, thinking of home, of Mystarria, of the peaceful healing waters in the pools of Derra where madmen might go to bathe, and have their troubling thoughts and memories washed from them.

As he lay thinking of that place, he realized that a cold root was brushing his ankle, and thought to move his foot, when suddenly the root wrapped round his foot, squeezed tenderly.

He looked down. At the water's edge, just beneath the waves, was a girl of ten, skin as pale blue and flawless as ceramics, hair of silver. She stared up at him from beneath the water with eyes as wide and green as all the seas, and her eyes were unblinking, completely motionless. Only the crimson gill slits at her throat pulsed slightly as she breathed.

She withdrew her hand from his foot, instead reached underwater and grasped at the willow roots.

An undine. Too young to be of great power.

“I brought you a pear, sweet one, if you will have it,” Borenson said.

The undine did not answer, only stared up at him and through him with soulless eyes.

I killed girls your age last night, Borenson wanted to tell her, wanted to cry.

I know, her eyes said.

I will never have peace, Borenson whispered wordlessly.

I could give you peace, the undine's eyes said.

But Borenson knew she lied, that she'd pull him down into the waves, give him love, and that while she loved him, he could survive beneath the pools. But in time she'd forget about him, and he would drown. She could give him only a brief few days of pleasure before death.

I wish that, like you, I could be one with the water, and know peace, Borenson thought. He remembered the great seas of home, the white breakers rolling over a green as deep as aged copper.

The undine's eyes went wide at his memories of the sea, and a smile formed on her lips, as if grateful for the vision.

Then he took one of his golden pears, reached down to the water, gave it to the undine.

She reached for it with a wet, slender blue hand, with long nails of silver, but then grasped his wrist and pulled herself up enough so that she could kiss his lips.

The move was unexpected, quick as a fish jumping for a fly, and Borenson felt her lips brush his for only a moment.

He placed the pear in her hand and left, and for a long hour afterward he could not quite remember what pain had brought him to that pool, with roses of red and white bobbing among the golden leaves.

He managed to find his mount, then rode at leisure, letting the horse graze as it walked; soon enough he reached the little meadow outside Bannisferre where Myrrima's cottage lay among the wild daisies.

Blue smoke curled up from a cooking fire, and one of Myrrima's ugly sisters—Inette, he recalled her name—stood feeding grain to the scrawny black chickens at the front door.

As he rode up, Inette looked up at him, a smile on her ruined face. The smile quickly faded. “You all right?”

“No,” Borenson said. “Where's Myrrima?”

“A messenger came through town,” Inette said. “Troops are gathering. Lord Orden is at Longmont. She—Myrrima left last night. Many of the boys from town have gone to fight.”

All the ease of heart he'd felt for the past hour now drained from him. “To Longmont!” Borenson shouted. “Why?”

“She wants to be with you!” Inette answered.

“This—this won't be a picnic or a day at the fair!” Borenson shouted.

“She knows,” Inette whispered. “But—you're betrothed. If you live through it, she wants to live with you. And if you don't...”

Borenson hung his head, thinking furiously. Sixty miles. Nearly sixty miles to Longmont. She could not have walked there in a night, even in a pair of nights.

“Did she travel afoot?”

Inette shook her head numbly. “Some boys from town went. In a wagon...”

Too late. Too late. Borenson spun his horse, raced to catch her.

35 Between Strong Arms

Gaborn heard Iome cry out as he rode toward Longmont. Her cry was so startling that at first he feared that she'd been shot with an arrow. For hours now they had been traveling, stopping every few minutes to switch horses, and Iome had not made a single complaint. He slowed and turned in his saddle to look back.

He saw at first that King Sylvarresta sat in his saddle, head nodding. The King clutched the pom of his saddle with both hands. He wept softly, breathing in gasps. Tears streamed from his eyes.

Iome, too was hunched. “Gaborn, stop. We've got to stop!” she cried, taking the reins of her father's horse.

“What's wrong?” Gaborn asked.

“Gaagh,” King Sylvarresta said.

“Our Dedicates are dying,” Iome said. “He...I don't know if my father has the strength to go on.”

Gaborn felt an overwhelming sadness envelop him. “Borenson. I should have guessed.” He felt dazed. “I am so sorry, Iome.”

He rode up next to the King, took the King's jaw in his hand. “Can you ride? Can you stay on the horse? You have to ride! Hold on!”

Gaborn pushed the King's hands firmly to the pommel of the saddle. “Hold! Like this!”

King Sylvarresta looked into Gaborn's face, clutched the pommel.

“Do you have strength to ride?” Gaborn asked Iome.

She nodded grimly in the dark.

Gaborn let the horses canter lightly, kept a close watch on his charges.

King Sylvarresta was gazing up at the stars as they rode, or watching the lights of a town as they passed.

Five miles later, they rounded a corner, and King Sylvarresta went flying off his horse. He landed on his hip, slid in the mud and grass at the side of the road. Then just lay, sobbing.

Gaborn went and whispered soft words to him, helped King Sylvarresta back on his horse; then Gaborn rode behind, cradling King Sylvarresta between strong arms.

36 The Serpent Ring

Through the long night, King Orden waited impatiently for sign of his son. It was hard, this waiting, the hardest thing he'd ever done.

Orden's men carried all two hundred thousand arrows from the armory to their perches along the castle's battlements. On the wall-walk beneath the west tower, they set a great bonfire, a message of distress, in an effort to call aid from any who might see its light or smoke. Near that fire, his men set great cauldrons of oil to boil, so that the putrid scent of them filled the castle.

Orden commanded five men to go north three miles, to set a similar fire on the peak of Tor Loman, so everyone within twenty leagues might see it. Duke Groverman had not heeded Orden's petitions. Perhaps sight of the battle pyres would shame him into it.

Just before dawn, two thousand knights arrived from Groverman, explaining their delay. Groverman had heard of the fall of Longmont, and thought to retake it, but had sent word to Sylvarresta. Apparently his messengers never made it to the King alive. After a day of waiting, he'd sent a hundred scouts on force horses to Sylvarresta and learned that the castle had fallen.

Orden wondered which road the scouts had taken, thought it odd that his men hadn't spotted them. Which meant that the knights had taken trails through the forest.

Then the scouts had returned with the ill news of Sylvarresta's defeat, and Groverman waited still for reinforcements from distant castles.

The knights Groverman sent were good men, solid warriors. But despite his best efforts, Orden did not feel prepared. He suspected this battle would bring trials he couldn't prepare for.

The Earl of Dreis gave King Orden no comfort. The man was incompetent. He had been in the castle for less than an hour before he tried to assume command. One of his first tasks had been to order the artillerymen to push the catapults back into the shelter of the towers, foiling all the work the artillerymen had done setting the ranges.

Orden found the Earl lounging in the Duke's old quarters, letting a body servant massage his feet while he sipped warm tea.

“Why have you ordered the artillery stored?” Orden asked.

The Duke seemed to struggle to decide whether to affect an imperious tone or become defensive. “A stratagem, my dear fellow, a stratagem. You see, I realized that if we keep them hidden until the heat of battle, we can whisk them out suddenly, and the sight of them will dismay Raj Ahten's forces!”

King Orden did not know whether to laugh or weep at such stupidity. “Raj Ahten has seen many catapults,” he said simply. “He has taken a hundred castles by force. His men will not be dismayed at the sight of these.”

“Yes, but—”

“Indeed, Raj Ahten has seen these catapults, for he came here not a fortnight ago. He knows they are here.”

“Ah, of course! Point well taken!” the Earl said, shoving his masseuse away as he struggled from his chair.

“We need to put the catapults back, then let our men test the settings once again, and their ranges.”

“Well...all right,” the Earl grumbled, as if considering some other plan.

“Also,” King Orden said, “you've ordered your men to defend the castle gates, and my men to man the walls. Is there some reason for this?”

“Ah, of course!” Dreis said. “You must realize that my men are fighting for home and country. It is a matter of honor for them to defend the gates.”

“Your Lordship,” Orden tried to explain patiently, “you must understand that in the thick of this battle, all our men will be fighting for their lives. My men fight for their homes and their countries, as well as yours do. And I've brought my best force warriors, men with ten and twenty endowments each. They will fight better than commoners.”

Dreis rebutted, “Ah, your men may fight with swords and hammers, but our men will fight with heart, and with a will!”

“Your Lordship—”

Dreis raised a hand to stop him. “You forget your place, Orden,” he said fiercely. “This is Heredon, not Mystarria. I command this castle, until some greater lord takes my place.”

“Assuredly,” Orden said with a slight bow, though a bending of his back had never come harder. “I did not mean to seem presumptuous. I merely hoped that some of my better guards might fight beside yours. It would show Raj Ahten...our unity.”

“Ah, unity!” Dreis said, taking the bait. “A noble concept. A fine ideal. Yes, yes, I'll order it immediately.”

“Thank you, Your Lordship,” King Orden said with another bow, then turned to leave. He felt he had just got a handle on how Dreis' counselors must have had to work him.

“Ah,” Dreis said, “do not leave. If I might ask: I understand you are recruiting men for a serpent ring?”

“Yes, Your Lordship,” Orden answered, dreading the next question.

“I will be in it, of course. I should be the head.”

“And expose yourself to such risk?” Orden asked. " 'Tis a brave and noble sentiment, but surely we will need you to direct the battle.” He could not help but put a little whine in his tone, as Dreis' counselors must have done.

“Ah, well, I believe in teaching men correct principles, then letting them direct themselves,” Dreis countered. “I will not need to direct the battle.”

“Then, please, milord, at least consider the safety of your lands after the battle. Heredon has suffered losses enough. Should you get killed, it would be a terrible burden. Let us not have you serve as the serpent's head, but only somewhere near the head, in a place of honor.”

“Oh, no, I insist—”

“Have you ever killed a man, milord?” Orden asked.

“Why, yes, yes I have. I hanged a robber not three years back.”

Of course the Earl had not hanged the man, Orden knew. He'd have let the captain of his guard perform the feat.

“Then you know how difficult it is,” Orden said, “to sleep at nights afterward. You know how it is to look another man in the eye as you seize his very existence. Guilt. Guilt is the price we pay for leading our people.

“I killed my first man when I was twelve,” Orden added. “Some mad farmer who tried to cudgel me. I've killed some twenty men in battle since.

“My wife...grew distant over the affair, cold and unresponsive. You would think they'd love you better for it, but the women imagine that a little blood on your hands makes you grow more callous and cruel. It stains the soul, so. Of course, I am no Raj Ahten...Who knows how many men he has personally killed. Two thousand, ten?”

“Yes, the guilt...” the Earl mused. “Nasty business, that.”

Orden could see the slow wheels of the Earl's mind begin to creep, as he wakened the man's fears. Orden was not at all concerned with guilt. He needed only to remind this fool how many men had died at Raj Ahten's hands. “It does stain a man's soul.” Now the Earl had a way out of battle. He could flee it in the name of righteousness, rather than fear.

“Very well, they are your forcibles,” the Earl said. “Perhaps you should be the serpent's head.”

“Thank you, milord,” King Orden said. “I will try to serve with honor.”

“But I will be next in line.”

“Actually,” King Orden said, “I hoped to reserve that spot for another, the captain of my guard. A very formidable fighter.”

“Ah, aha!” Dreis said. Now that he was considering it, he did not seem at all certain he wanted to fight this battle. “Well, perhaps that would be best.”

“But we can reserve the spot after him for you, milord,” Orden said. He knew that he did not have to reserve a place of honor for this nincompoop. Once Dreis gave his endowment to the captain, Orden would be free to put the Duke anywhere in the serpent. Someplace close to the middle would be nice.

“Very well, then,” Dreis said in a tone of dismissal. Then he made it clear to his servants that he was not to be disturbed before dawn, for he would need his sleep.

So King Orden went back to the battlements and fretted and watched for signs of aid, signs of trouble. He put his far-seers, men with many endowments of sight, on the highest pinnacle of the graak's aerie, then sent scouts out to keep watch on the hills and roads both east and west for sign of Raj Ahten's occupying army.

But they caught no wind of it.

Instead, hour by hour, all through the night, men came riding in to give aid—three hundred more farmers from the area around Castle Dreis, all with longbows; they had no armor, but wore woolen vests that might keep out a poorly sent shaft. Borenson's regiment came racing in near dawn—eighty warriors who bore many wounds from yesterday's battle.

They told how Raj Ahten's troops never showed for the ambush at Boar's Ford. Said they'd heard no word of Gaborn.

From the west came a regiment of two hundred lancers on force horses from out of Castle Jonnick, men who'd ridden when they heard Castle Sylvarresta had fallen, then had neared it only to hear that a battle would be fought at Longmont.

From the east, Knights Equitable trickled in from freeholds, a dozen here, fifty there. Mostly they were older men who had nothing to lose, or young men still naive enough to believe that war is glorious. All of these added to the fifteen hundred knights and archers that the Earl of Dreis had brought in, and the two thousand from Groverman.

Then there were the farmers' sons and the merchants out of towns that bordered the woods. Boys with grim faces, some armed with nothing but an axe or a scythe. Young men from the cities who were dressed in finery, who bore light swords that had too much gold in the baskets of their ornate hilts.

Orden did not relish the arrival of such commoners, hardly counted them as defenders. Yet he dared not deny them the right to fight. This was their land to protect, not his.

As each little troop rode between the twin fires burning along the road before the castle gates, men on the walls would shout in triumph and blow their horns, calling “Hail Sir Freeman!” or “Hail Brave Barrows!”

Orden knew men's devices, could name most knights by glancing at their shields. But one rider who came in near dawn both mystified and excited him.

Almost last to ride in that night was a huge fellow, big as a bear, riding a black, swaybacked donkey as fast as it would trot. He bore no coat of arms, only a round shield with a huge spike in it, and he wore a squat helm from which a single cow's horn curled. He had no mail but a thick coat of pig's hide, and his only weapon, beside the dagger on his belt, was a huge axe with an iron handle some six feet long, which rested across the pommel of his saddle. With him rode fifty men as grungy as himself—men with longbows and axes. Outlaws.

The knights on Longmot's walls hesitated to name this warrior and his band, though they could not help but recognize him. Shostag the Axeman. For twenty years, Shostag and his outlaws had been a scourge to every Runelord along the Solace Mountains.

It was said that he was a Wolf Lord of the old school, that he'd taken many endowments from dogs. As Shostag neared the castle gates, King Orden watched the downs behind him, saw the fleeting gray shadows of wolves race nervously through the starlight along the hedgerows, leaping stone fences.

Shostag stopped a hundred yards from the gates with his henchmen, among the last ruins of the burned city. Even in the near-total darkness, the firelight showed his face to be dirty and unshaven, his every manner vile. He spat in the ashes, looked up to the battlements, stared Orden in the eye.

Shostag asked, “I saw your signal fires. I hear you want a Runelord dead. Are we invited to this festivity?”

Orden was not certain he trusted the man. The Axemen might well turn on him, wreaking havoc within the castle's walls at the battle's climax.

“I'd be honored to fight beside men of your...reputed skill,” King Orden answered. He could not afford to turn down any aid, even from the Axeman.

Shostag cleared his throat, hawked on the ground. “If me and my boys kill this fellow for you, I'll want a pardon.”

Orden nodded.

“I'll want a title and lands, same as any other lord.”

Orden considered. He had an estate in the dark forests on the borders of Lonnock. It was a gloomy swamp, infested with bandits and mosquitoes. The estate had lain idle now for three years, waiting for the right man. Shostag would either clear the bandits from the woods, or he'd let them join him.

“I can promise an estate in Mystarria, if King Sylvarresta cannot do better.”

“I'll take it,” Shostag grunted, waved his men in.

Two hours before dawn, Orden still had seen no sign of Gaborn or Borenson, had heard no word. Another messenger brought news that the Duke of Groverman would offer more aid from neighboring castles, but couldn't reach Longmont before dusk.

Of course, Raj Ahten will get here first, Orden realized.

Groverman did right by maintaining his own hold until he was sure it could be defended, regardless of the promise of treasure.

So it seemed that no more aid would come. Though his scouts had not yet warned him of Raj Ahten's approach, Orden expected it within an hour or two.

The very fact that he hadn't yet received word of Gaborn worried King Orden. Hour by hour, his hopes for his son's well-being dwindled, until he felt it vain to hope. Surely Raj Ahten had captured him.

And the Wolf Lord would have either killed him or taken the boy's endowments.

So Orden took his forcibles, lined up his volunteers, and let the facilitator for the Earl of Dreis sing the ancient spells that made the forcibles glow, creating ribbons of light as man after man gave up metabolism.

Last of all, Orden gave his own endowment, completing the serpent ring. It was a desperate act.

With a heavy heart and fewer than six thousand men, Orden closed his gates at dawn and waited for the gathering conflict. He'd left a few scouts outside the walls to bring advance word of any sighting of Raj Ahten's troops, but had no more hopes of reinforcements.

He gave one last speech, calling on the full powers of his Voice to cut across distance, penetrate every stone of the castle. The knights and commoners and felons on the walls all looked up at him expectantly, every man bundled in his armor.

“Men,” he said, “you've heard that Raj Ahten took Castle Sylvarresta without benefit of arms. He used nothing but glamour and Voice to disarm Sylvarresta's troops. And you know what happened to the knights in that castle afterward.”

“Well, we'll allow none of that here. If Raj Ahten seeks to use his Voice, I'll expect every man within range to fire on him the same as if he were a charging army.”

“When he leaves this field, either he'll be dead, or we'll be dead. If any of you young men succumb to the power of his Voice, my knights will throw you over the castle walls.”

“We'll not suffer children to spoil a man's fight.”

“May the Powers be with us!”

When he finished speaking, six thousand men raised their arms, chanting “Orden! Orden! Orden!”

King Orden gazed out over the walls. He knew that this warning, against Raj Ahten, given with the full power of his Voice, would have great influence over his men. He only hoped Raj Ahten would not be able to unravel the spell his words had woven.

On the horizon, over the Dunnwood, he felt cool air blowing in. It felt like snow.

But where was Gaborn?

37 Boys on the Road

Myrrima sat in the bed of a rickety wagon as the team of horses hurried down the road early that morning. The wagon swayed and creaked as it followed its rut. Once they'd moved up from the fields near Bannisferre, and crossed into the Dunnwood, the wagon had become especially uncomfortable, for large tree roots that crossed the road underground provided ample bumps.

She was but one of ten passengers from Bannisferre. The others were all young farm boys armed with nothing but their bows and spears and dreams of retribution for the murders committed against their kin during the past week.

Even the wagon did not belong to any one of them, but had only been lent by farmer Fox up the road toward town. These boys had no horses of their own to ride into war.

But they talked like the brave sons of noblemen. Ah, they could talk. “I'll kill me an Invincible, sure as I'm ugly,” said one young lad, Hobie Hollowell. He was slender and strong, with wheat-straw hair and blue eyes that shone each time he looked at Myrrima. There was a time not many weeks past when she'd have hoped for a match with him.

“Ah, you can't hit anything with that bow of yours.” Wyeth Able chortled. “All your arrows are as crooked as your aim.”

“It's not arrows I plan to kill him with.” Hobie laughed. “I plan to wait till one is scaling the castle walls, then throw your fat carcass over on him! It would flatten him sure, without any harm to your wide buttocks.”

“Hah, as if you could wrestle me over the wall,” Wyeth said, pulling off his hat and slapping Hobie. Wyeth was a stout boy, destined to be almost as wide as he was tall, and then the boys were at it, tussling and laughing in the wagon.

Myrrima smiled faintly. She knew their antics were for her, that they all competed for her attention. She'd known most of these young men all her life, yet since she'd received her endowments of glamour, their relationships had shifted dramatically. Boys who had once thought her just another waif now smiled shyly and forgot their manners, if not their own names, in her presence.

It seemed a great shame that her beauty had become a barrier to common relationships. She'd not have wished it.

Wyeth wrestled Hobie to the bottom of the wagon with little effort, then grinned up at Myrrima for approval.

She nodded kindly, smiled.

So the team of horses raced the last few miles to Longmont, over grassy hills where oaks spread their branches wide. She felt very tired after the long ride. The horses that drew the wagon were no force horses, but they were a strong team, used to working together, much like the boys in the wagon.

When they reached Longmont, saw its long, high walls and foreboding towers, Myrrima almost wished she had not come. It hurt to see the blight on the land, the charred ruins of the city before the castle, the burned farmhouses dotting the downs.

The hills and mountains to the north and northwest of Longmont were still part of the Dunnwood, covered in oak and aspen and pine. But the hills south of the castle undulated like huge, gentle waves. Grasslands, orchards, vineyards, and gardens covered these hills.

Fences made of piled stones or hedgerows of sturdy thorns divided the land into squares and rectangles, each of different colors, like the rags in a quilt.

But the land lay empty now. Wherever a farmhouse or a barn or a dovecote had stood, now there squatted only a blackened ruin, like an open sore upon the land. All the gardens and orchards had been harvested. Not a cow or horse or pig or duck could be seen in the fields.

Myrrima understood why the people of Longmont had done it, why the soldiers had burned the town, salted their own wells. They would not give succor to Heredon's enemies. So they had destroyed everything of value near the castle.

This land...looked too much like the fertile fields of Bannisferre. That was why Myrrima mourned it. Seeing the houses black, the fields empty, gave her a chill, for it seemed a portent of the future.

When the wagon reached the castle gates, the gates stood closed. The guards nervously watched the fields and hills to the west.

Seeing the men who stood on those walls, Myrrima became even more nervous. If most of those defenders were common boys like those she rode with, how could Orden hope to defend himself against Raj Ahten's Invincibles?

“Who are you? Where do you hail from?” a guard at the gate asked gruffly.

“Bannisferre,” Wyeth Able shouted, raising his bow. “We've come to avenge the deaths of our people.”

Above the gates, on the castle wall, stepped a man with a broad face, wide-set smoldering eyes. He was dressed in full armor. His fine breastplate was enameled with the image of the green knight, and he wore a cape of shimmering green samite, embroidered with gold.

King Orden.

“Can you gentlemen hit anything with those bows?” Orden asked. “Raj Ahten's soldiers move quickly.”

“I've dropped my share of pigeons,” Wyeth answered.

Orden jutted a chin at Wyeth's portly figure. “I'd say you'd dropped more than your share of pigeons. Welcome.”

Then his eyes lighted on Myrrima, and there was such admiration in them that his glance took her breath away.

“And what have we here, a swordswoman? A noble?”

Myrrima looked down at her hands folded in her lap, more from shyness than from respect.

“A friend...of your son's. I'm betrothed to one of your guard—Borenson. I came to be with him. I'm no swordswoman, but I can cook a good stew, and I can wrap bandages.”

“I see,” Orden said softly. “Borenson is a worthy man. I had not known he was betrothed.”

“Only recently,” Myrrima said.

“Milady, he has not reached the castle yet. I'd hoped he would have come by now, but I left him with an assignment at Castle Sylvarresta. I hope to see him shortly, but to tell the truth, Raj Ahten's troops will also reach us soon. I cannot say who will reach us first.”

“Oh,” Myrrima said, thinking furiously. Borenson did not expect her, and she had not imagined he would be occupied elsewhere. She had no illusions about how well this battle might go. But in the short time she'd had with Borenson, she'd grown to see how important devotion was to him. It did not occur to her to think that he might have failed his mission, that Borenson might already have died.

She wanted to be with him now, in his hour of need. For in her family, devotion to loved ones was all that had ever allowed them to survive.

Myrrima licked her lips. “I'll wait for him here, if you don't mind.”

38 The Hope

Just after dawn, Iome and Gaborn rode to the tiny village of Hobtown, twenty-two miles northwest of Longmont. Hobtown was a collection of fifteen cottages with a smithy. But on Saturdays, like today, a few farmers brought merchandise to town to exchange.

So when Gaborn, Iome, and King Sylvarresta rode into the village, a couple of people had already wakened. The horses needed food and rest.

Iome spotted a young woman, perhaps twelve, digging onions and leeks from her garden. Clover grew high next to the garden fence. Iome called out, “Excuse me, good lady. May we let our horses graze on your clover?”

The girl said, “Of course, you're welcome to...it.” She'd turned at the last moment, and froze at the sight of Iome.

“Thank you,” Gaborn said. “We'd gladly pay, if we may purchase something for breakfast.”

The girl turned, stared at Gaborn, pointedly avoiding the sight of Iome, trying to regain her composure. “I have bread from last night, and some meat,” she offered, delighted at the prospect of money. In a farming community such as this, barter was the norm, and a man could live from one season to the next without feeling the weight of a worn coin in his palm.

“Please, that would be good,” Gaborn said.

The girl dropped her onion basket, ran into the house.

Iome tried to calm herself, to forget how the girl's slight had affected her, made her feel worthless and wretched.

Iome's father had drifted to sleep in the saddle last night. Iome felt glad of it. King Sylvarresta had fallen from his horse, spent much of the night sobbing. Gaborn now held the King in the saddle in front of him, the way one might hold a child.

The mounts began to tear at the clover, ravenous.

Iome looked about. The cottages here were of stone and wood, with thatch roofs. Flowers and herbs grew from pots beneath windows made of real glass. The few people in Hobtown seemed wealthy enough.

The town occupied a lovely meadow between the oak-covered hills. Bachelor's buttons and pinks grew wild in the grass, alongside daisies. Fat cattle grazed just outside town. Rich. This town is rich in contentment, Iome thought.

If Gaborn's fears proved true, Raj Ahten's army of reinforcements would march through this town today. Something of great value would be lost, a sort of innocence.

Iome looked up, caught Gaborn smiling at her. Yet only a moment before, the girl had put her hand to her mouth in horror at the sight of Iome.

Iome feared she'd never be beautiful again. Yet when Gaborn turned his gaze on her, he made her feel that she'd never lost her glamour.

“How do you do that?” Iome said, grateful for his attention.

“Do what?”

“How do you look at me like that and make me feel beautiful?”

“Let me ask you another question,” Gaborn said. “In Internook, a woman must have flaxen hair to be beautiful, but in Fleeds she must have red hair and freckles. In Mystarria, our people have long admired women with wide hips and pendulous breasts. But here in Heredon, beautiful women must have small, pert breasts and boyish figures.”

“All over Rofehavan, women must be pale to be beautiful. But in Deyazz they must be dark and brown. Also in Deyazz, the women wear heavy golden earrings that pull down the ears. But here, such enlarged ears would seem grotesque.”

“So I ask you, who is right? Are all these women really beautiful, or are they all ugly, or are they all the same?”

Iome considered. “Perhaps physical beauty is only an illusion,” she said. “And you look beyond the illusion?”

“I do not think beauty is an illusion,” Gaborn said. “It's just so common, we often don't see it. It is like these meadows: We as travelers see the flowers, but the townsfolk probably seldom notice how handsome their lands are.”

Iome countered, “But what if our beauty is taken from us, and there is nothing left to see?”

Gaborn's horse stood next to hers, and it shifted its feet, so Gaborn's knee suddenly touched Iome's. “Then you should rejoice,” Gaborn said. “People can be beautiful on the inside, too. And when they feel most bereft of outer beauty, then they so long to be beautiful that they rearrange their hearts. And beauty springs from them, like these flowers spring from this field.”

“When I look inside you,” Gaborn said, staring at her, staring into her, “I see your people smiling. You love their smiles, above all. How can I not love what is in your heart?”

“Where did you get such strange ideas?” Iome said, wondering at his last words, wondering how he had managed to capture her love and hope for her people in so few words.

“From Hearthmaster Ibirmarle, who taught me in the Room of the Heart.”

Iome smiled. “I should like to meet him someday, and thank him. But I begin to wonder about you, Gaborn. In the House of Understanding you studied in the Room of the Heart—a strange place for a Runelord to spend his time. Why spend your time among troubadours and philosophers?”

“I studied in many places—the Room of Faces, the Room of Feet.”

“To learn the ways of actors and travelers? Why not the Room of Arms, and the Room of Gold?”

Gaborn said, “I received training in arms from my father and from the palace guards, and I found the Room of Gold...boring, with all those little merchant princes watching one another with such envy.”

Iome smiled at Gaborn, bemused.

Presently the girl issued from her cottage with some scones and meat, and three fresh figs. Gaborn paid her, warned her that Raj Ahten's army might pass this way in a matter of hours, then let the horses walk for a while.

They stopped outside town, beneath a tree, and let the horses drink from a pool beside the highway. Gaborn watched Iome eat in silence. He tried to rouse the King, so he might eat too, but Iome's father remained asleep.

So Gaborn saved some bread, meat, and a fig in his pocket. Ahead of them, the mountains rose dark blue and threatening. Iome had never been so far south. She knew of Harm's Gorge, of the deep canyon just beyond the mountains, which divided much of the realm.

She'd always wanted to see it. The road, she'd been told, was very dangerous. For miles it consisted of a narrow track beside a precipice. The duskins had carved that road centuries ago, made the great bridge across Harm's River.

“I still think it odd,” Iome said, “that you spent your time schooling in the Room of the Heart. Most lords study little else but arms, or perhaps Voice.”

“I suppose,” Gaborn said, “if we Runelords only want to win battles and hold our fortresses, we need only study in the Room of Arms.

“But...I guess I don't believe in it. We seek ways to use one another all too much. It seems deplorable that the strong should dominate the weak. Why should I study that which I deplore?”

“Because it's necessary,” Iome said. “Someone must enforce the laws, protect the people.”

“Perhaps,” Gaborn said. “But Hearthmaster Ibirmarle always found it deplorable, too. He taught that not only is it wrong for the strong to bully the weak, but that it is just as vile for the wise to rob the stupid, or the patient to take advantage of another's impatience.

“These are all just ways that we harness other men to our plows. Why should I treat men as tools—or worse, as mere obstacles to my enjoyment?” Gaborn fell silent a moment, and his glance strayed northward, to Castle Sylvarresta, where Borenson had slain the Dedicates last night. Iome could see how Gaborn regretted it, how he perhaps even thought it a personal failure that he had been so naive.

He said, “Once, ages ago, an old shepherd, who was the highman of his town, sent word to my grandfather, asking him to buy his wool. The shepherd's town had long had a contract with a certain merchant from Ammendau, who carried their wool to market, but the merchant died unexpectedly. So the highman sent to the King, asking him to purchase the wool for his troops at a bargain price.

“But the highman did not know that rain in the west hills had caused a blight of wool rot on the sheep there. In all likelihood, the highman's wool would fetch triple its price, if the townsmen could get it to market.

“My grandfather, on seeing the situation, could have leapt at the chance to buy the wool cheap. If he'd listened to the merchants who schooled in the Room of Gold, he'd have done so. For they think it a virtue to buy cheap and sell high.

“Instead, Grandfather sent to the hearthmaster at the Room of Feet and arranged for a caravan to transport the wool at a fair price, cheaper than the villagers had paid before.

“He then sent to the highman and told him all that he had done. He begged the highman to sell his wool to the poor at its normal price, so that they would not go cold through the winter.”

Iome listened to the tale somewhat in awe, for she'd often thought Orden's line to be hard, cold men. Perhaps it was only Gaborn's father. Perhaps he'd grown cold, after his own father's bad end.

“I see,” Iome said. “So your grandfather won the love of the poor.”

“And the respect of the highman and his village,” Gaborn said. “That is the kind of Runelord I would want to be, one who can win a man's heart and his love. That is my hope. It is harder to storm a heart than to storm a castle. It is harder to hold a man's trust than to hold any land. That is why I studied in the Room of the Heart.”

“I see,” Iome said. “And I am sorry.”

“For what?” Gaborn asked.

“That I ever said I would turn you down, if you asked me to marry you.” She smiled at him, and spoke teasingly, but realized it was true. Gaborn was a strange and wondrous young man, and in the past day she had begun to recognize that he was much more than he seemed. She feared that at this rate, she'd fall in love with him so fiercely by the end of another day that she'd never want to separate from him again.

When the horses finished watering, Gaborn loped them for a while.

The magnificent crevasse at Harm's Gorge opened suddenly—a deep rent where a river rushed, and the trail they took snaked around its edge. According to legend, the duskins had created this place, had broken the pillars that held the Overworld.

They let their animals creep along a narrow trail beside the ledge, and Iome looked at the pillars of gray and white stone that rose up from the canyon, a marvel to see. She wondered if these were the pillars of legend or merely the roots of mountains long since eroded away.

Beside the steep sides of the canyon, huge trees clung, looking like bristles on a horse brush. A mile to the north, Harm's River churned in a waterfall and fell far into the chasm, but Iome could not see where the waters landed, for the canyon was so deep that its heart was lost in darkness, and no sound escaped from its silent depths. Enormous bats wheeled in the canyon, down where the shadows filled the endless chasm.

If a person fell from the road, it was said that you could hear his scream for a month until the sound was lost.

They took the narrow pass slowly, the idiot King Sylvarresta walking along the treacherous edge of the road, often stopping to peer into the mists so far below.

39 The Green Man

King Sylvarresta woke, and moved through a world of dream. The doors of his mind were closed. He did not remember much. No words, no names—not even his own. Yet much in the world had a vague familiarity. The horses, trees.

He woke to see a great light in the sky, the color of gold and roses. He felt certain that he had seen it somewhere before.

They rode slowly on a narrow road, with a gray earth wall to his left, a tremendous precipice to his right. He had no words for names, nor for left and right. Everything carried with it a sense of discovery. Far, far down, he could see only misty grayness. Pine trees stood far below, prickling along the edges of rock.

They reached a narrow bridge carved from a single stone, spanning the gorge. The bridge curved up into the sky, and Sylvarresta looked down into the gorge, and felt as if he hung in the air, just so.

He did not recall ever having been here before, nor having felt thus.

A few dozen soldiers were on the bridge, guardsmen in dark-blue surcoats, wearing the face of the green man on their shields—a knight whose face was surrounded by green leaves. The young man and woman that King Sylvarresta rode with greeted these soldiers joyfully. For a while, the soldiers talked to the young man of their plans for guarding the bridge; then the young man bid the soldiers farewell, leaving them behind.

King Sylvarresta, the young man, and the young woman crossed the bridge, rode high up in the pine woods toward a mountain's summit. Then the horses raced under the trees.

Huge birds, the color of sky, flitted overhead, calling among the trees, and the wind came fresh and cold. Then they reached a mountaintop and rode down from the wooded hills, to a land where fields of crops checkered the downs.

A castle loomed up from the fields, a tall edifice of gray stone. Horns began blowing on its battlements at Sylvarresta's approach, and a dimly remembered pennant flew—the midnight black with the silver boar.

Men stood on the walls of the castle by the hundreds—men with bows and helms with wide brims, men with spears and hammers. Other men wore surcoats with the image of the green man, and they bore bright shields that shone silver like water.

The men all cheered and waved as they saw him, and King Sylvarresta waved back and cheered himself, until the huge drawbridge on the castle opened, and they entered.

The horses walked up a short, steep hill, hooves clanking over cobblestones. Men shouted joyfully at him and clapped, until an odd look came over their faces.

Some pointed at him, faces pale with emotions he did not recognize—horror, shock, dismay. They shouted, “Dedicate! He's a Dedicate!”

Then his horse stopped in front of a gray building, a small keep. King Sylvarresta sat for a moment watching a reddish-brown lizard, as long as Sylvarresta's finger, sun itself on the stones in the rock garden beside the door. He could not recall having ever seen such a thing, and wondered.

Then, in all the commotion, the lizard raced up the side of the building and over its gray roof. The King knew it was alive and he began shouting and pointing.

The young man behind King Sylvarresta had dismounted, and now he helped Sylvarresta down from his horse.

Together with the young man and the ugly woman, Sylvarresta walked under the eaves of the building, up some stairs. He felt so tired. Walking the stairs hurt his legs, made them stretch uncomfortably. He wanted to rest, but the young man urged him forward, into a room thick with good smells of cooked food, where a warm fire burned.

A pair of dogs thumped their tails as King Sylvarresta approached, so that at first he did not really notice the two dozen men sitting at a table, eating things that smelled good.

Then he looked across the table and gasped. There sat a tall man, dark-haired and beautiful, with wide-set blue eyes and a square jaw beneath his beard.

Sylvarresta knew the man, knew him better than he knew anything else. A green man. In a green tunic, with a shimmering cape of green samite.

A warm sensation filled King Sylvarresta's heart, an overwhelming joy. He recalled the man's name. “Orden!”

At King Sylvarresta's side, the young man shouted, “Father, if you want this poor man dead, at least have the decency to kill him yourself!”

King Orden half rose from the table, stepped hesitantly forward. He glanced back and forth between Sylvarresta and the young man. His eyes looked pained and angry, and his hand went to the hilt of his short sword. He struggled with it, as if he could not draw it, brought it halfway out.

Then in rage he slammed the sword back into its sheath and staggered forward, threw his arms around Sylvarresta's shoulders, and began to weep.

King Orden sobbed, “My friend, my friend, what have we done? Forgive me. Forgive me!”

Sylvarresta let King Orden hold him for a long time, wondering what was wrong, until his friend's sobbing lessened.

40 An Order Rescinded

Gaborn had never seen his father cry. No tears of sadness escaped him when Gaborn's mother and infant brother were murdered. No tears of joy had ever glistened in King's Orden's eye when proposing a toast.

Now, as Gaborn's father hugged king Sylvarresta, he wept tears of joy and relief.

King Mendellas Draken Orden cried in great racking sobs. Orden's sorrow was such an embarrassing sight that the two dozen lords and dignitaries who had been breakfasting in the room now all took their leave, so that only Iome, King Sylvarresta, three Days, and Gaborn stood in the room.

For the barest moment, Gaborn glanced across the room, saw his Days and felt uncomfortable. He had been without a Days for nearly half a week, and had found it pleasant.

Now he felt like an ox waiting to be yoked. The small fellow nodded politely, and Gaborn knew he would not be left alone again for a while. Another Days in the room was a matronly woman in her forties, a woman with reddish hair going silver. She'd have been Emmadine Ot Laren's Days when the Duchess still lived. Now she nodded a greeting at Iome, perhaps all the formal introduction the woman would ever give, yet with that introduction she spoke volumes: I am assigned to you.

So the Days watched, and recorded.

Gaborn felt grateful that the Days had not had to record how King Orden murdered his best friend in his hour of greatest need. Instead, in some far day when his father died and his chronicles were penned, it would be told how Orden hugged Sylvarresta and sobbed like a child.

How odd, Gaborn thought, that he cries no tears of relief at seeing me.

Sylvarresta let King Orden hug him until he could no longer withstand the power in the King's arms, then tried to pull away. Only then did King Orden grasp Sylvarresta's biceps, feel the lack of muscle there.

“He's lost his own endowments?” Gaborn's father asked.

Iome nodded.

Gaborn added angrily, “They both have. Borenson was at Castle Sylvarresta yesterday. He stayed behind when we left. You sent him to kill them, didn't you?”

Gaborn watched his father's eyes as he considered the accusation. Gaborn had foolishly believed—when Borenson had said that he was under orders to kill Raj Ahten's Dedicates—that he spoke only in general terms. He hadn't imagined that one man alone would be sent to kill those in the Dedicates' Keep at Castle Sylvarresta.

Now his father's expression confirmed it. His father glanced down, but recovered quickly, looking sorrowful instead of guilt-ridden. Gaborn gave his father time to consider the implications. All the Dedicates in Sylvarresta's keep had died. Even if Iome and the King had become vectors for Raj Ahten, now they gave him almost nothing, only their own endowments.

“So,” Gaborn's father asked, “did Raj Ahten leave all his Dedicates behind when he fled Castle Sylvarresta?”

“Almost. He took his vectors—” Gaborn answered. His father raised a brow. “But I managed to get Iome and King Sylvarresta out.”

King Orden titled his head, considering. He must have recognized the struggle Gaborn had gone through. “I—wonder...” He cleared his throat. "...why Borenson would let these two go. I ordered him to do otherwise.”

“I countermanded your order,” Gaborn said.

His father's reaction was so swift, Gaborn had no time to react. His father lashed out and slapped Gaborn's face so hard that when spittle and blood flew from his mouth, Gaborn thought it was a tooth.

“How dare you!” King Orden said. “You may disagree with me, and belittle me, and even second-guess me. But how dare you fight me!”

Rage burned in Orden's eyes.

Then his mouth opened in a little O of grief at what he'd done. He turned away and walked to an archery slot, stood with both hands on the stones of the casement, gazing outside.

“Iome and her father were under my protection, bound by oath,” Gaborn said hastily, realizing that he'd just broken his promise to Borenson. He'd told Borenson that he'd not let his father know that they'd met. Yet, at the moment, Gaborn felt so betrayed he did not much care if he broke his word. “I'd have fought him for them. I told him that I would take the matter up with you.” He hoped these final words might appease his father.

Through a window, Gaborn could hear men cheer. More troops were coming into the castle, gathering for battle.

“Your actions are akin to treason,” King Orden muttered, back still turned. “They run against everything I've ever taught you.”

“Yet they followed precisely the desires of your own heart,” Gaborn said. “You ordered your friends' deaths with your lips, but could not consent to it in your heart.”

“How can you think to know my heart?” Orden said distantly.

“I...just do,” Gaborn said.

King Orden nodded thoughtfully, then turned and gazed at Gaborn a long moment, at war with himself. He took a deep breath, tried to sound casual. “Then I, too, rescind the order. Thank you, Gaborn, for bringing my friend back...”

Gaborn sighed in relief.

King Sylvarresta had wandered over to the breakfast table. He began eating from plates, pulling off huge chunks of ham with both fists. Gaborn's father whispered, “But I fear he is lost to me still.”

“Until Raj Ahten is dead,” Gaborn said. “Then you will win back your friend, and I will win my wife.”

Gaborn did not want to bear this news now, but he felt it was important, and he wanted his father to hear it from him, rather than hear it later from a stranger. He fully expected another blow. “Father, I told you that I took an oath to protect Iome. I am bound to her, as one Oath-Bound Lord to another.”

Gaborn's father looked off toward the hearth. His jaw clenched. He seemed dismayed by the news, but his voice cracked only the tiniest bit as he said, “Ah, I see. It was only a matter of time, I suppose.”

“You are not disappointed?” Gaborn asked.

“Disappointed, yes,” Orden said, “but not surprised. Though I cannot help but say that you picked the worst possible time to have this attack of conscience.”

“But you are not angry?”

His father suppressed a chuckle. “Angry? Hardly. Dismayed, perhaps. Saddened. But how can I be angry? My only friend is an Oath-Bound Lord.”

He stood a moment in thought, nodding his head. “But still...I feel that I've lost you.”

“Once we've beaten Raj Ahten, you will see that we've lost nothing,” Gaborn said.

“You make it sound easy.”

“With forty thousand forcibles, it should be.”

“Ah, so Borenson told you about those? Well, we have the forcibles, now we're only forty thousand people shy of the Dedicates necessary to make them worthwhile.”

“You mean you haven't begun putting them to use?” Gaborn asked.

“I have them hidden still, in the place where the Duchess hid them,” Orden said. “I've used only a handful.”

Gaborn gasped, felt his chest constricting. Without Dedicates there was only one way his father could hope to beat Raj Ahten. “A serpent? You've created a serpent? How large?”

“A serpent ring,” he answered easily, trying to soothe Gaborn. “Twenty-two men, most with at least two endowments of metabolism. Most of the same men you just saw here, leaving this room.”

A moment before, King Orden had said he felt he'd lost his son. It seemed an overreaction to Gaborn's announcement. Now Gaborn saw that in all likelihood his father was right. One way or another, they were lost to each other. In time, the serpent ring would be broken, and only then would Gaborn learn how great a sacrifice his father had made this day.

Yet his father's announcement explained why he did not grow angry when Gaborn told him of his oath. His father was withdrawing, pulling away from Gaborn.

King Orden licked his lips. “I plan to kill Raj Ahten for you, today, myself. A wedding present, let's call it. I'll make his head a wedding present for you, Gaborn. And my friend will have his wits back.”

“How? How many troops do you have?” Gaborn asked.

“Six thousand, more or less,” Orden answered. He went to the window, looked out, spoke thoughtfully. “We had riders from Groverman this morning. He refused us aid. Instead he's fortifying his own keep. Only a few men have come from him, some Knights Equitable who couldn't support him in his cowardice.

“It's too bad—we'd had high hopes. Groverman is a fine man, a sensible man, really. He's doing what I'd do, fortify my keep.”

Gaborn smiled. “Your keep is in Mystarria, twelve hundred miles from here. You would not turn your back on a friend.”

King Orden gave Gaborn a sidelong look. “I want you to take Iome and King Sylvarresta, now, and get away from here. Go to Castle Groverman. It should be well defended.”

“I think not,” Gaborn said. “I'm tired of running.”

“And if I order you to do it?” his father asked. “I'm not divided on this matter. My heart and my mind both agree.”

“No,” Gaborn said more firmly. His father had always tried to protect him. Now he saw that his father would continue to do so, even if it cost his own life. But Gaborn was a Runelord, and though his endowments were few, they were over a broad spectrum. With wit and grace and stamina, he could fight in a battle like this better than any common soldier. Besides, he'd trained a good deal in tactics and swordplay.

As the son of a king, he'd learned to defend himself, though he doubted he'd be much of a match for one of Raj Ahten's Invincibles.

Iome grabbed the sleeve of Gaborn's tunic, whispered fiercely. “Do as your father says! Take me to Groverman. When we reach him, I will order him to fight!”

With a sinking feeling, Gaborn realized she was right. Groverman's castle stood little more than thirty miles away. If he ran the horses, he could be there within a couple of hours.

“Do as she asks,” Orden said. “Perhaps it would help. Groverman has been gathering his forces. He may have ten thousand defenders on his walls by now.”

Gaborn knew he would have to do it, would have to take Iome to Groverman. Yet he'd be five hours or more at the task. He wouldn't be able to return here before noon. By then Raj Ahten's troops would have reached Longmont; their siege would be set.

If Raj Ahten's hundred thousand reinforcements arrived, Gaborn wouldn't be able to dislodge the Wolf Lord.

“Iome,” Gaborn asked, “may my father and I speak alone for a moment?”

“Of course,” Iome said, and she left. King Sylvarresta remained in the room, eating at the tables. Gaborn's and his father's Days also stayed.

Gaborn felt...strangely cognizant of their presence, embarrassed by it. Still, when Iome left, he went to his father, put his arms around the man's shoulders, and cried.

“Here now,” his father whispered, “why should a prince weep?”

“You're sending me on a fruitless mission,” Gaborn said. “I can feel it. Something...is terribly wrong.” He did not know how to speak of it, but he felt that they needed to discuss things—what should happen if one of them died. They'd spoken of this possibility many times over the years, after Gaborn's mother was murdered, other times since. Yet this time, Gaborn felt a sense of inevitability.

What he really wanted, what he needed, was to say goodbye.

“How can we know our fight is fruitless?” his father asked. “I can detain Raj Ahten until you return.

“I'll put mounted knights in the bailey, ready to issue from the castle gate. When Groverman's men come in, I want you to have them sweep in from the north side of the hill. It's a gentle slope down. It should give your lancers a great deal of benefit. Then my knights will ride out to your side, and we'll have the old monster in a vise—

“But you must promise me one thing, Gaborn. You will let me fight Raj Ahten personally. I will be the serpent's head. I alone am prepared for this fight.”

“Raj Ahten may be more dangerous than you know,” Gaborn said. “He seeks to become the Sum of All Men. He has so many endowments of stamina, you cannot kill him easily. You will need to strike for the head, take off his head.”

“I surmised as much,” King Orden said, smiling down at his son.

Gaborn looked into his father's eyes, felt his heart lightened a bit. The castle walls were growing thick with men, and this was a small castle, easily defensible. With six thousand men on those walls, his father should be able to hold this castle even against Raj Ahten's Invincibles.

His father wasn't rushing headlong to his death. He'd fight a measured battle. Already the die had been cast. As head of the serpent ring, his father would have to battle Raj Ahten. In his heart, Gaborn knew that of all the men in the castle, his father was most qualified for this task.

Yet it hurt, it hurt terribly to know what might come, to let it come without saying goodbye.

“Where is Binnesman?” Gaborn asked. “He can help protect you.”

“Sylvarresta's wizard?” Orden asked. “I haven't the slightest idea.”

“He said...he'd meet me here. He called a wylde from the earth last night, and hopes to bring it into battle. He is coming to Longmont.” Gaborn felt certain that Binnesman would come.

Gaborn hugged his father, leaned his forehead against the older man's cheek. I've been anointed to become King of this Earth, Gaborn thought. It was said that Erden Geboren had been so sensitive to the earth powers, to life, that when one of his chosen friends was in danger, he could sense that man's fear. When one of them died, he sensed the loss of that life.

Right now, Gaborn could smell danger around his father, and as he leaned against his father's face, he probed with his mind, sensed life there, like a lamp struggling to stay lit. It was an odd sensation, one he'd never imagined before, and Gaborn wondered if he only imagined it now.

Yet Gaborn had ridden all last night. In that time, he'd seen the world more clearly than ever before. The eyebright still affected him, long after he thought its effects would diminish. Perhaps it always would affect him.

It was but one change in him. Something more wondrous was happening. He suspected that if he only tried, he could see much farther, much deeper now. He could use the Earth Sight. He hugged his father tight, and closed his eyes, and with his heart, he sought to peer into King Orden.

For a long moment, he saw nothing, and he wondered if he really had seen into Raj Ahten's heart last night.

Then, as if at a great distance, a strange collage of sights and smells and sounds assaulted Gaborn. First he saw the sea, the blue waves of the ocean rolling proud and strong under clear skies, the whitecaps rolling toward shore. Gaborn's own mother and sisters and even himself rode in those waves, bobbing like seals in the water, and King Sylvarresta rode those waves, too. Yet Gaborn's mother was larger than all the rest, as if she were a great walrus, while the others were mere harbor seals. Gaborn tasted fresh pumpkin bread in his mouth, all covered with sunflower seeds, then washed it down with apple wine. Distantly he heard the horns of the hunt. As he listened, he sensed the motion of a horse running beneath him, then his chest seemed to swell wide in exultation as he looked out over the rooftops of the castle in Mystarria and heard the swell of people chanting “Orden, Orden, Orden.”

A tremendous swelling sensation rose in Gaborn's chest, a sense of love and warmth, as if all the tender feelings he'd ever felt rolled into one great burst.

Gaborn could see more clearly today than ever before. He could see into his father's heart, and these were the things his father loved: the sea, his family, pumpkin bread and apple wine, the hunt, and to please his people.

At this insight, Gaborn pulled back, suddenly feeling guilty. Why am I doing this? he wondered. Looking into his father's soul was somehow embarrassing, an act of voyeurism.

Clearly, Gaborn recalled his duty, remembered the tales of what Erden Geboren had done when choosing warriors. Gaborn feared for his father, wished to do all that he could to protect him in this, his darkest hour.

You will fight today, Gaborn whispered within himself, but I will fight beside you.

41 Selecting a Sacrifice

The race from the Seven Stones to meet up with his army was long and hard, even for Raj Ahten. A Runelord with endowments of stamina and metabolism can run faster than other men, and far longer, but it requires energy. Even a Runelord cannot run forever.

So it was that Raj Ahten reached his army well before dawn, but the toll was heavy. In jogging well over a hundred miles in armor, with no food, he lost some twenty pounds of fat. The sweat stormed off him in waves, so that even though he stopped frequently to drink from streams and puddles, he'd lost another ten pounds of water. The pounding to his kidneys and bones left him weakened. It was not the condition he would have chosen to fight in.

As Raj Ahten traveled, he found signs that his army, which had forged ahead, was faltering. Dozens of horses had fallen by the roadside, still in their armor. Another dozen foot soldiers had succumbed during the march. He found Frowth giants and mastiffs lying senseless by pools, wheezing, overheated from their run.

When he reached his troops, he did not mind that his men had been delayed by the ruined bridge at Hayworth, for the delay had cost them but four hours. Four hours he spent resting and eating as he rode the remainder of the way to Longmont.

All the way, he worried. Jureem's betrayal and running off into the night, the portents at the Seven Stones—both weighed on him. Yet Raj Ahten discounted them. He wanted but one thing from Longmont: his forcibles. Once he had them, he would have time to consider other matters.

His men made such good time that he called a halt for an hour, in the city of Martin Cross, so his men could rummage through the houses and barns for food.

Shortly after dawn, thirty miles from Longmont, his outriders reported that a contingent of several hundred knights was fleeing before their army, men riding under a dozen banners. Knights Equitable from Castle Dreis and estates thereabouts.

Raj Ahten felt tempted to give chase in earnest, but knew that his men were now ill equipped for a race.

So he took his time riding to Longmont, resting on the way. At ten in the morning, he rounded the big bend in the hills and spotted Castle Longmont on its promontory, some two miles distant.

His outriders climbed a hill to get a clearer view, then called down a report. “General Vishtimnu hasn't arrived yet, O Great Light.”

Raj Ahten did not worry. With over six thousand men and giants, he could hold Longmont until reinforcements arrived. In fact, he could set up the siege engines and begin pounding the castle within hours, while waiting for Vishtimnu's advent.

Orden had not bothered to raise Longmot's hoardings—timber frames that could protect the castle's roofs from missiles. With Raj Ahten's flame-weavers, the hoardings would have simply become fuel for a grand blaze.

So the bombardment would begin soon. If Raj Ahten had to wait a day for reinforcements, his men could begin working on mantelets and shelters, siege towers and belfries. There were plenty of stone fences around that could be dismantled, either to help fortify entrenchments or to hurl as missiles. But Raj Ahten did not want to try to build a city here at the foot of Longmont while waiting out some elaborate siege. The longer he camped here, regardless of what fortifications he managed to erect, the longer the kings of Rofehavan would have to mount a counterattack. No, he'd not set a great siege.

Not when he had so many Invincibles, so many weapons magical and mundane that he could employ.

Damn your meddling ways, King Orden, Raj Ahten thought. I will roust you from your burrow by tomorrow dawn!

So his men overturned some wagons as temporary shelters and erected Pavilions on the hill south of Longmont, began setting the siege. Watchmen were posted on every road to the castle. Three thousand archers and knights took positions in the field. Another five hundred men and giants went under the trees on the western hills to cut tall pines for use in building siege ladders and battering rams.

Raj Ahten brought his spy balloon out, tied its basket to a stout tree, and set a flameweaver to heating the air for it.

Then the Wolf Lord let the remainder of his men eat and relax. Raj Ahten himself rested in the shade of the single huge oak tree on the hill, thirty feet from his Dedicates' wagon. He sat on pillows covered in purple silk, and ate dates and rice while he studied Longmot's defenses.

He counted only some four thousand men on the walls—a haphazard collection of nobles, young boys, and ruffians. The wizard Binnesman was not with them. Nor did Raj Ahten see Jureem.

“A king is coming, a king who can destroy you!” The words rang through

Raj Ahten's memory. King Orden was all shimmering in green samite, with his gold shield.

The king of one of the world's most powerful nations. It gave him pause. The men here on the walls would fight like berserkers for such a king. This was the kind of battle songs were made of. And if Raj Ahten was right, Orden was the Earth King.

Raj Ahten's Invincibles would normally take such a castle with relative ease. Yet, today, he felt uncertain.

Though he did not tremble at the sight of the warriors on the wall, something about their positioning bothered him—a wrongness that left him unbalanced. He studied the men, checking their spacing, armaments, armor, and expressions. He could see worry in their faces, saw that those who had no armor were evenly spaced between those who did. The men were clustered in fighting groups—pikemen and swordsmen together, archers at their backs.

Nothing he saw explained the worry that gnawed him.

The moat around the castle was brackish and foul this time of year, a breeding ground for mosquitoes and disease. A corpse floated in the moat. Despite the fact that the water was stagnant, Raj Ahten knew from his own measurements that it was quite deep—some forty feet. Too deep to let sappers easily dig at the castle's founding stones.

There had been a city here last week, a small city of five thousand souls. Over generations, the walls of the city had crept within bowshot of the castle. One could have moved siege engines up behind those homes, tossed rocks over the battlements. But Orden's soldiers had wisely burned the city, cleared the ground of cover in preparation for battle.

No, this castle could not easily be taken, not with four or five thousand men on the walls, others waiting in the baileys and towers. The castle's armaments were well stocked. He'd seen arrows piled in the armory not a week ago.

He sighed. If Raj Ahten laid siege to the castle through the winter, Orden's men might be forced to burn some of those arrows just to stay warm. But, of course, this siege would not last so long.

An hour before noon, General Vishtimnu still had not arrived, and the first six catapults were built. Raj Ahten's men fashioned a hundred crude siege ladders and brought them to the hill, laid them out, ready for battle.

The far-seers in the balloon could spot few men inside the castle—most held the walls, though several hundred knights waited on their mounts in the inner bailey. None of the inhabitants from the city were inside the gates. The only exception was possibly the Dedicates' Keep, where two hundred of Orden's elite guard watched the keep. Perhaps Orden had drained some of the people of this city for endowments, and hundreds of Dedicates secreted in the keep. Yet the keep could not hold many.

This was good news. Though Orden had captured the forcibles, he did not have forty thousand or even four thousand people here who could have granted endowments.

It meant that the vast majority of the forcibles might still be within the castle, unused.

Raj Ahten had four hundred forcibles remaining in his possession from the hoard he'd taken to Castle Sylvarresta.

He called his facilitators and studied his assets. Most of the forcibles were worthless to him. The irons bore only runes of the senses. He had no use for more endowments of hearing or smell or touch.

He'd used most of the forcibles for taking major endowments in subduing Sylvarresta. None in his hoard bore runes of strength or grace. He had many of wit.

To his surprise, he found only twelve forcibles that bore the runes of metabolism.

He wished now that he'd brought more. A cold uncertainty took him as he pondered. His pyromancer had gazed into the future, warned him that a king in Heredon could slay him. He'd already humbled Sylvarresta. So it was Orden.

And Orden had surely taken endowments of metabolism. A Runelord of his stature would not need more grace or brawn in battle. He would not need more wit. Stamina would be of some help. But the only attribute that would let him defeat Raj Ahten would be metabolism.

But how much had Orden taken? Twenty endowments? Orden was chronologically in his mid-thirties, but if he had taken the customary endowment of metabolism after rearing his family, he'd have a physiological age close to forty-five. Even a dozen endowments of stamina could not completely ameliorate the effects of his advancing age. So he'd have endowments of brawn, grace, stamina, and wit to counteract his aging.

Raj Ahten's spies had told him that as of a year ago, Orden had had over a hundred endowments to his reckoning. How many over a hundred, Raj Ahten could not guess.

At any event, Orden would be a worthy adversary. So how many endowments of metabolism had he taken? Five? No, that would be too few. Fifty? If so, he'd have taken his death. He would age and wither within a year. Raj Ahten would not even need to fight today. He could simply withdraw his troops for the winter, and Orden would age. By spring he'd be a dotard.

It was said that in the days of Harridan the Great, the messenger Marcoriaus had so needed speed to deliver news of the impending battle at Polypolus that he'd taken a hundred endowments of metabolism—enough so that he ran barefoot across the Caroll Sea, relying only on the surface tension of the water to keep him aloft. Marcoriaus had died within three months, of course.

But the idea of such phenomenal speed attracted some men. Yet, such speed could be a great danger. A Runelord who moved too suddenly, too sharply, could snap a leg. The force of an object seeking to remain at rest was too great. It took a great deal of wit and grace to learn how to move with control.

Orden had that wit and grace, and now he might have the metabolism to go with it.

So, King Orden would have taken between ten and twenty endowments of metabolism, Raj Ahten decided.

He would need to match him.

Or, I could take endowments of metabolism, then kill my own Dedicates afterward.

He had used the tactic before. However, in order to maintain the proper fighting spirit among his men, he'd made certain that he left no witnesses.

“Call to me the twelve Invincibles who have great endowments of metabolism,” Raj Ahten told Hepolus, his chief facilitator. “I need them.”

The facilitators left the tent, hurried back a few minutes later, bringing the desired Invincibles—elite guards and assassins who each had at least three endowments of metabolism. They were all big men, strong of bone, so that they could handle the stress of great brawn and metabolism. And they were strong in wit and grace. He would sorely miss any one of them.

Raj Ahten knew his men well. The man he least valued was Salim al Daub, an old household guard who had been elevated in status several times, despite the fact that Salim had failed him as an assassin. Twice he'd gone to kill Prince Orden, and twice he'd returned a failure, with only the ears of women and children.

“Thank you for coming, my friends,” Raj Ahten said when he'd decided. “You have all served me valiantly for many years. I ask now that you serve me once again, for I need your metabolism. You, my friend Salim, will have the honor to serve as vector.”

The words slid from Raj Ahten's tongue as sweetly as candied dates. The men could not resist the power of his Voice. The facilitators drew out the forcibles.

A cold wind blew from the south, rippling the silk walls of Raj Ahten's Pavilion.

42 A Cold Wind

Faintly, across the battlefield, from the huge purple royal tent that Raj Ahten had entered, Orden heard the chants of facilitators borne on the cold wind. The sound came dimly, so dimly that few men on the walls could have discerned it. Orden could hear it only because he focused, detected it beneath the song of the wind rushing through the leaves of grass along the hills, a sound so much like the waves of the ocean back home.

“What's taking them so long?” an archer on the castle walls asked, a farm boy who knew nothing of war. They'd been waiting an hour. In that time, Raj Ahten's men had not sought to parlay. They did not seem to want to attack.

King Orden began to pace the walls, past men who stood shoulder to shoulder, four deep. He watched with mounting nervousness as Raj Ahten set his forces, laid his siege.

“I do not like that chanting,” Captain Holmon said softly in Orden's ear. “Raj Ahten has endowments enough without it. We would be better off if we got this battle under way, before their reinforcements arrive.”

“How?” Orden asked. “Mount a charge?”

“We can goad the old dog into battle.”

Orden nodded to Captain Holmon. “Sound your horn, then. Call Raj Ahten to a parlay. I want him out here, within bowshot.”

43 The Spark

The facilitators had just finished granting endowments of metabolism from nine of Raj Ahten's men to Salim when the horns sounded, calling for a parlay.

The facilitators looked at Raj Ahten, curiously.

“Finish it,” Raj Ahten said to his chief facilitator. He'd stripped from his armor, and sat on a cushion, awaiting the endowment.

He listened with rising excitement as the facilitator sang the familiar words to the chants. Salim shrieked in pain while the forcible burned his flesh, adding to the scent of charred fat and burning hair that filled the Pavilion.

To take an endowment, to feel the kiss of the forcibles, gave profound delight. It was like making love to a beautiful woman. But to take an endowment from someone who already had received many endowments, to combine that euphoria over and over again—that gave unspeakable ecstasy. By the time Salim had taken his endowments from eleven men—men who had all received endowments of their own—he had combined nearly forty endowments of metabolism, all waiting to burst free into Raj Ahten at once.

Seldom did Raj Ahten receive such great pleasure.

He was sweating with anticipation by the time the facilitator drew the forcible away from Salim, held its glowing tip high, and danced across the room, painting the air inside the tent with ribbons of sulfurous light.

When the tip of the forcible touched the skin beneath Raj Ahten's nipple, the Wolf Lord shuddered with such unspeakable ecstasy that he could barely contain it. He fell to the floor, his body racked by waves of pure pleasure, and he cried out as if in orgasm. Only his many endowments of stamina allowed him to survive the pleasure. For several moments, he blacked out.

When he woke, the facilitators knelt over him nervously. Raj Ahten's sweaty skin shivered. He looked up at his men.

“My lord, are you well?” Facilitator Hepolus asked. The words slurred, as if he spoke very slowly. The whole world seemed strange and exotic, as if in some liquid dream. The men around him moved slowly, and the air felt heavy, thick.

Raj Ahten wiped the sweat from his body, took care not to leap up too quickly.

Long ago, he'd learned that when one takes an endowment of metabolism, it affects the hearing. Not only do people around you speak and move very slowly, but the entire way that sound is perceived is affected. High pitches become lower, while low pitches become almost inaudible. To reply to a question in a manner that others could understand required both patience and great control of Voice.

“I am well,” Raj Ahten answered with care.

The facilitators glanced around meaningfully, moving with such seeming deliberation they looked like old, old men.

Raj Ahten waved at Salim, lying on the carpets within the tent. “Move my vector to the Dedicates' wagon. Place guards to watch these others.”

Raj Ahten currently had forty-two endowments of metabolism. With so many, if he tried to walk at an average pace, he'd travel at over a hundred and forty miles per hour. If the air stood still, his movement alone would make it feel as if he pressed through a hurricane.

With forced slowness he pulled on his scale mail, donned his helm. He accidentally moved too fast while fastening his helm, so that his left pinky finger snapped under unexpected pressure. It healed instantly in a crooked position.

Raj Ahten broke it again, pulled it straight, let it heal.

He ambled slowly outside the tent, tried to appear as natural as ever.

On the battlements of Castle Longmont, above the gate, King Orden's men waved the green flag of parlay.

Between a pair of giants who stood like a wall, eleven Invincibles had already mounted imperial horses, prepared to act as Raj Ahten's honor guard. A footman held the twelfth horse for him.

Raj Ahten ambled to his horse, nodded toward his flameweavers, giving them their signal.

Then he forced himself to sit very still as the horse galloped toward Longmot's gates.

It was an odd situation. As the horse ran, Raj Ahten often found himself momentarily thrust into the air, but those moments stretched out interminably, so that for half of the short ride, it seemed he was airborne, just floating above the ground.

He had not gone far when a shimmering nimbus took shape above his head, courtesy of the flameweavers, a scintillating golden light that emitted brief sparks of titanium white.

In the glimmering light he gazed steadfastly at the wide eyes of the defenders on the castle walls.

The knights were grim men, skeptical. Not the soft city folk he'd seen at Castle Sylvarresta. Many of them clutched their weapons fiercely, and it seemed a thousand bowmen on the walls nocked their bows, drew arrows full. Their eyes shone with calculation.

“People of Longmont,” Raj Ahten called, modulating so that he spoke slowly, sliding all the power of his Voice into the words, so that he'd seem like a man of peace and reason.

On the castle walls, Orden clenched his fists, calling, “Shoot!”

In slow motion, the hail of arrows descended, a black wall of arrows and bolts from steel longbows and ballistas.

Raj Ahten tried to sit still in his saddle, tried not to overreact as bolts sped toward him. He could dodge them or push them aside, as needed.

The arrows hurtled toward him in a deadly rain, and Raj Ahten glanced to each side. The knights in his honor guard were raising their shields, dismayed by this act of premeditated butchery.

He did not have time to save them.

As the first arrow sped to him, he grabbed for it, thinking to knock it from the air. But when his mailed fist slapped the arrow, such was the velocity and momentum at which both his hand and the arrow traveled, that the wooden shaft snapped in two. The head of the arrow veered toward his chest, and Raj Ahten had to grab for it again quickly, catch it in his hand.

At that moment, the deadly rain of arrows slammed into his knights, their mounts.

A huge iron ballista bolt unseated the knight next to him, and the Wolf Lord was forced to raise his small shield, knock away more arrows that sang through the air toward him.

A shaft struck between the plates of his horse's armor, sliding into its ribs, and the mount began to stagger. It stepped on a caltrop and let its feet give way.

Suddenly Raj Ahten found himself flying through the air, seemingly in slow motion, unhorsed, grabbing and kicking arrows from his path, twisting so that a shaft broke against his vambrace rather than pierced his scale mail.

He was a strong man, but even Raj Ahten could not break the fundamental laws of motion.

The momentum of the horse's fall threw him somersaulting headfirst over the beast's shoulder.

He knew that if the force of his landing did not crack his skull, the weight of the armored horse rolling over him afterward might crush him.

Raj Ahten managed to reach out, push himself slowly off the ground as he moved toward it, then tuck, so that he rolled cleanly over the grass, away from his charger.

But that maneuver cost him, for as he came around, a vividly painted red arrow lodged in his collarbone just above the line of his mail, and another bit into his thigh.

Raj Ahten crawled away from his falling horse, looked up at the grim soldiers on the castle walls.

He grabbed the arrow in his thigh, pulled it free, and hurled it back at his attackers.

But when he grasped the red shaft in his collarbone, it snapped in two.

He held it up, astonished, for he'd taken it gingerly. It should not have broken under so slight a pressure.

The shaft broke, he now saw, because the arrow had been hollowed and notched. The shaft was meant to break away. Raj Ahten guessed the reason behind this even before he felt the fiery poison creeping toward his heart. He stared hard at the castle wall, saw one soldier a hundred feet above him—a tall fellow with a thin face and yellow teeth, a tunic made of pig hide. The fellow threw his longbow in the air, shouting in triumph at having killed the Wolf Lord of Indhopal.

As this first volley of arrows finished landing, a quiet moment followed where the skies remained relatively free of missiles.

Raj Ahten pulled his dagger from its sheath. The wound in his collar hurt fiercely. The poison rushed through his bloodstream so fast, Raj Ahten did not know if even his thousands of endowments of stamina could save him.

The skin on his collarbone had already healed over the wound, sealing the arrowhead beneath. With a quick shove, Raj Ahten slammed his dagger into his collar, cutting it open, and pulled out the arrowhead.

With deadly accuracy, he then hurled the dagger at the jubilant archer.

He turned and began slowly running before more arrows fell, not even bothering to watch the archer on the castle wall take the dagger through the forehead, fall back under the force of the blow.

It was enough to hear the man's death scream.

Raj Ahten ran a hundred yards over the grass. The poison made him weary, made it hard to raise one foot, then the next. His breath came slow and labored. He feared that the poison would asphyxiate him. The arrow had fallen close to his lungs, deep in his chest, and the poison had not been able to bleed out before the skin healed over the wound.

He struggled for each step, collapsed from fatigue. The wound in his shoulder hurt like death, and he could feel the poison clutching at his heart, holding it like a mighty fist.

He reached toward his men, begging aid, begging for healers. He had physics to care for him, herbalists and surgeons. Yet he was living so quickly, a minute to him now seemed like the better part of an hour. He feared he'd succumb long before an herbalist could arrive.

His heart beat sporadically, pumping hard. Raj Ahten gasped for each breath. With his endowments of hearing, Raj Ahten could hear every surge and gurgle of his failing heart. With his head pressed against the ground, he could hear worms stirring in the earth beneath him.

Then his heart stopped.

In the sudden silence, the sound of worms beneath the ground came louder, as if it were all the sound in the world.

Raj Ahten willed his heart to beat again, willed it to start. Beat, damn you. Beat...

He struggled for air, gasped. He slapped his own mailed chest in frustration.

His heart beat, weakly, once. Then it began to stutter, jerking spastically.

Raj Ahten concentrated. Felt his heart beat once, strongly. A second later, it came again. He gasped air that felt black in his lungs.

Silently, he cried out, willed his facilitators in far lands to give him more stamina, so that he might withstand this. “A king is coming,” he heard the words echoing through his memory. “A king who can kill you!”

Not like this, he begged the powers. Not so ignoble a death.

Suddenly the clutching in his heart eased. It began pumping furiously, and Raj Ahten peed in his armor like an old man with no control over his bladder. He felt some relief as his body rid itself of poison.

As he lay on the grass, the pain receded. He'd been lying on the ground for what seemed to him minutes, though the archers on the wall must have felt only seconds fly by.

He fought to his feet once again, staggered to his line of troops, fell to his knees behind a Frowth giant that he used as a shield.

He glanced back, saw some of his honor guard still struggling to rise under the onslaught of arrows, shields high. But bowmen on the walls were riddling them with shafts.

Rage threatened to take him, a blind and burning rage. Raj Ahten fought it down. Destroying these men would gain him nothing.

Out of bowshot, Raj Ahten stood, panting, and shouted at the castle, “Brave knights, dishonorable lords: I come as a friend and ally in these harsh times. Not as your enemy!”

He let the full power of his Voice flavor the words. Surely these men could see he was the injured party here. Eleven of his finest warriors lay dying on the battlefield.

Though he was far away, too far for his glamour to take full effect, his Voice alone might sway the men.

“Come, King Orden,” he shouted reasonably. “Let us counsel together. Surely you know I have a great army in the wings. Perhaps you can see them now from your vantage point?”

He hoped Vishtimnu was coming. Perhaps such a sighting had prodded Orden to this dastardly deed. With all the sweetness he could muster, he said soothingly, “You cannot defeat me, and I bear you no malice. Throw down your weapons.

“Throw open your gates. Serve me. I will be your king, and you will be my people!” He waited for surrender expectantly, as he had at Castle Sylvarresta.

It seemed he waited for a full minute for any reaction at all. When it came, it was not what he had hoped.

Only a couple dozen of the younger men tossed weapons over the walls, so that spears and bows clattered against the battlements, splashed into the moat.

But as quickly as the weapons fell, so did their bearers—for the hardened warriors on the wall tossed their weak-willed companions to their deaths. The bodies bounced down along the sloped walls of the castle.

A great, greasy-looking bear of a man stood directly above the gates, and he spat as far as he could, so that a wad of spittle hit Raj Ahten's dying knights. Orden's men burst into laughter and shook their weapons.

Raj Ahten sat in the cool wind, gritted his teeth. He had not spoken any better at Castle Sylvarresta, but the effect had been profoundly different.

It might have been that with his increased metabolism, he had not spoken the words as slowly as he'd hoped, enunciated them with the proper intonation. Each time one took endowments of metabolism, one had to learn the arts of speaking and hearing all over again.

Or perhaps it was the endowments of glamour, he told himself. I've lost glamour since Castle Sylvarresta. He'd felt it when the Duchess of Longmont had died, taking her endowments of glamour with her.

“Very well!” Raj Ahten shouted. “We shall do this the hard way!” If Orden had been seeking for some goad to spark Raj Ahten's anger, he'd found it.

Raj Ahten struggled for control, found himself seething. He knew it would be hard for those men in the castle. It would have been quicker for all concerned if they had surrendered. Raj Ahten had taken a hundred castles, many as stout as this, until it was a practiced art. I'll make an example of haughty King Orden, he vowed.

He stood before his battle lines, raised his warhammer high, then dropped it with a cutting motion.

The first volley of stones lofted from his catapults. Some smaller stones disappeared over the walls, while heavier loads slammed lower on the battlements. Two of Orden's cutthroats dropped under the weight of the stones.

Orden countered with artillery from the city walls—six catapults, and four ballistas. The catapults hurled small iron shot that fell like a deadly hail—five yards short of his men. Orden would have done better with some lighter shot.

The ballistas were another matter. In all the South, Raj Ahten had never seen a ballista made with Heredon's spring steel. In cities like Bannisferre and Ironton, artificers—earth wizards who had mastered secret arts of metallurgy and artifice—had labored long to make such steel. Raj Ahten was unprepared when bolts flashed from the walls in a dark blur, striking through the ranks of his men.

One ballista bolt, like a huge arrow cast of iron, flashed toward him. He leaned away from it, only to hear the bolt plummet into someone behind with a sickly thud.

He turned to see a flameweaver sit roughly to the ground, a hole the size of a grapefruit through his navel.

The young man's saffron robes suddenly burst into white flame, as his power raged out of control.

“Retreat!” Raj Ahten called for his men to take cover. They needed little urging.

Raj Ahten raced over the hill as the flameweaver erupted—the massive form of the elemental that had coiled like a worm at the center of his soul suddenly escaping.

A lean, bald man took form, a hundred feet tall, sitting on the ground. Flames licked at his skull and swirled at his fingertips. He gazed at Longmont with a troubled expression.

Raj Ahten watched. Such an elemental could wreak havoc, blast the stone walls to oblivion, burn the gate, fry the inhabitants of the castle like maggots on a griddle. Just as the elemental had done at Castle Sylvarresta.

Yet Raj Ahten felt disappointed. For years he'd nurtured these flame-weavers. Now two had already been slaughtered in this campaign. It was a damnable waste of resources.

There was nothing to do for it but wait, watch the elemental do its work, then clean up after.

The elemental became a raging inferno that set the grass at his feet burning. The air roared like a furnace, and heat smote Raj Ahten, searing his lungs with each breath.

The hot-air balloon still hovered five hundred feet over the battlefield. Raj Ahten's men pulled it away before the elemental's heat made its silk burst into a ball of fire.

The elemental pointed itself toward the city, began striding across the battlefield.

Men on the walls of Longmont fired bows in terror. The tiny arrows flew toward the monster like stars that burst into flame in the night sky before they were consumed. The arrows could not defeat the elemental, only feed it.

The elemental reached for the nearest wood, its fingers extending in a twisting green flame that caressed the drawbridge of Longmont. The sounds of crackling wood and splintering beams filled the air. The soldiers atop the walls rushed to escape as a fiery blast slammed against the castle.

A cheer now rose from the throats of Raj Ahten's men, though Raj Ahten only smiled grimly.

Suddenly, water began gushing from the walls over the arch, flowing in runnels from the mouths of the gargoyles above the gate, wept from the castle's stone everywhere in great waves, so that the gray walls glistened.

Everywhere, water was rushing up the stone battlements from the moat, forming a wall. The great elemental turned to steam at its touch, began to shrink and dissipate.

Raj Ahten seethed, wondering.

One of his flameweavers shouted, “A water wizard's ward!” It seemed the castle had some unanticipated magical protection. Yet there were no water wizards here in Heredon that Raj Ahten had ever heard of.

Raj Ahten wondered. Such wards could not last out a year and required a magical emblem to be placed on the castle gate. He'd seen no such emblem or rune four days past.

Then he looked above the gate: Orden stood on the arch, holding his golden shield against the castle wall. The ward had been built into his shield, and by laying the shield against the castle wall, the entire castle, by extension, became shielded.

Raj Ahten's face twisted in rage as he watched his elemental shrivel amid the water's onslaught. It cringed and huddled like a lonely child, then became a common fire burning in the grass. In half a moment, even that was smothered.

Raj Ahten felt impotent, maddened.

Then the wizard Binnesman appeared on Raj Ahten's own horse, racing down from the wooded hills to the west, to put himself between the Wolf Lord's army and the castle.

44 The Wizard Binnesman

King Orden pulled his golden shield up to his chest. He'd brought it as a gift to Sylvarresta, to celebrate their children's betrothal. The ward on the shield was to have protected Castle Sylvarresta. Now it had saved Longmont.

But the shield had become worthless, save as a target for arrows, drained of all its water spells.

Silently, Orden cursed himself. When he'd seen Raj Ahten fall from the arrow, he'd hesitated. He could have gone then, rushed down to attack the Wolf Lord and lopped off his head. Instead, he'd let his hopes soar, had thought for one breathtaking moment that the Wolf Lord would succumb from the poison. Then the opportunity to strike was gone.

Now this.

Orden studied the herbalist as he rode across the green grass on a great force horse, felt bemused. Earth Wardens seldom meddled in the affairs of men. But this one, it appeared, was fool enough to try to stop a war.

Though Orden had not seen Binnesman in a year, the old wizard had changed much. He wore robes in the colors of autumn forest—scarlets with bits of tan and gold. His brown hair had turned the color of ice. But his back was unbowed. He looked older, yet vigorous.

On the battlefield before him stood Raj Ahten's Invincibles, archers by the thousands, giants in armor, and mastiffs with leather helms and fierce collars.

Binnesman rode his mount before the castle gates.

Orden felt strange, expectant, filled with vast reserves of energy. Twenty-one warriors hid in various cellars, closets, and rooms throughout Castle Longmont. Each man, bearing arms and armor, was curled in a ball, waiting for the moment when Orden would draw upon their metabolism. Orden could feel their energy course through him. His blood seemed to burn, as if he were a pot ready to boil.

Across the battlefield, Raj Ahten's men stood under the trees, bristling at the way the battle had gone. Raj Ahten strode toward Binnesman, his motions almost a blur.

“Raj Ahten,” the old wizard grumbled, straightening his back to gaze at the Wolf Lord from beneath bushy brows, “why do you insist on attacking these people?”

Raj Ahten answered calmly, “It is no concern to you, Earth Warden.”

Binnesman said, “Oh, but it is my concern. I've spent the night riding through the Dunnwood, listening to the talk of trees and birds. Do you know what I've learned? I have news that pertains to you.”

Raj Ahten had moved forward a hundred yards—still out of easy bowshot, yet once again he stood before his army.

“Orden has my forcibles,” Raj Ahten said in answer to Binnesman's earlier query. “I want them back!” The sound carried well over the fields. Orden could hardly believe Raj Ahten spoke from so far away.

The old wizard smiled, leaned back in his saddle, as if to rest. On the green across the field, Raj Ahten's three remaining flameweavers stood. Each began giving their bodies to fire, so that their clothes burst into flame and tendrils flared out from them, yellow, red, and blue.

“Why is it,” Binnesman asked, “that every forcible on earth must be yours?”

“They came from my mines,” Raj Ahten said, striding forward, his face alight with seductive beauty. “My slaves dug the ore.”

“As I recall, the Sultan of Hadwar owned those mines—until you slit his throat. As for the slaves, they were someone's sons and daughters before you took them. Even the blood metal you cannot claim—for it is only the crusty remains of your ancestors who died long ago in a great slaughter.”

“Yet I claim it as mine,” Raj Ahten said softly, “and no man can stop me.”

“By what right?” Binnesman called. “You claim the whole earth as your own, but you are a mere mortal. Must death force you to release all that you claim before you recognize that you own nothing? You own nothing. The earth nourishes you from day to day, from breath to breath! You are chained to it, as surely as your slaves are chained to the walls of your mines. Acknowledge its power over you!”

Binnesman sighed, glanced up to Orden on the castle wall. “What of it, King Orden? You strike me as a fair-minded man. Will you give these forcibles to Raj Ahten, so that you two may finish with this squabbling?” Binnesman's eyes smiled, as if he expected Orden to laugh.

“No,” Orden said. “I'll not give them. If he wants them, he must come against me!”

Binnesman clucked his tongue as if he were an old woman, scolding a child. “You hear, Raj Ahten? Here is a man who dares defy you. And I suspect he will win...”

“He has no chance against me,” Raj Ahten said with dignity, though his face seemed livid with rage. “You lie.”

“Do I?” Binnesman asked. “For what purpose do I lie?”

“You seek to twist us all, to do your own bidding.”

“Is that how you see it? Life is precious—yours, mine, your enemy's. I cherish life. Am I 'twisting' you to save your miserable life?”

Raj Ahten did not answer, but only studied Binnesman with subdued rage.

Binnesman said, “I've come before you twice now. I warn you one last time, Raj Ahten: Give up this foolhardy war!”

“You had best move from my way,” Raj Ahten said. “You can't stop me.”

Binnesman smiled. “No, I can't stop you. But others can stop you. The new King of the Earth has been ordained. You cannot prevail against him.

“I see hope for House Orden, but none for you. I did not come here to beg you yet again to join my cause,” Binnesman said. “I know you will not join me.”

“But hear me well: I speak now in the name of the Power I serve: Raj Ahten, the Earth that gave you birth, the Earth that nurtured you as a mother and father, now rejects you! No longer will it nourish or protect you.”

“I curse the ground you walk upon, that it will no longer give you sustenance! The stones of the earth shall trouble you. Accursed be your flesh, your bone, your sinew. Let your arms be weakened. Cursed be the fruit of your loins, that you leave no issue. Cursed be those who band themselves with you, that they too shall suffer your lot!”

“I warn you: Leave this land!”

The Earth Warden spoke with such force that Orden expected some sign—the ground to sway and tremble or swallow Raj Ahten, or for stones to drop from the sky.

But the downs looked the same as ever, the sun still shone bright.

Earth does not kill, Orden knew. It does not destroy. And Orden could see that Binnesman had no wylde to back him, no power to effect some astonishing curse.

Or perhaps, in time, the effects of the wizard's curse would be seen. Such curses were never given lightly, and old wives' tales warned that they were the most potent form of magic. If that were true, Orden almost pitied Raj Ahten.

Yet, for the moment, nothing happened. Orden shouted a warning. “Binnesman, leave this battle. You can do nothing more.”

Binnesman turned up and looked at Orden, and there was such a look of anger there in the wizard's eyes that Orden stepped back a pace.

As if Binnesman, too, suddenly recognized the danger, he turned his mount west, toward the Dunnwood, and fled.

45 The Caviling Cavalier

Castle Groverman lay on a shallow, sandy mound on Mangon's Heath, just where Wind River made a slow turn. It was not the stoutest castle in Heredon, nor the largest, but as Iome rode across the plains that morning, it seemed the most beautiful, with its sprawling grounds, its palatial towers, and its vast gates. The morning sun shone golden on the heather and on the yellow sandstone of the castle, so it gleamed like something molten.

Iome, her father, Gaborn, and the three Days swept over the heather, racing past herds of half-wild horses and cattle that startled away each time they crossed a line of hills.

Iome knew this place only from maps and tomes and conversations. Groverman came to her father's castle for the Council of Lords each fall and winter, but she'd never seen his home. For centuries the lords of Groverman had governed this land, supplying Heredon with force horses and beef. Iome's father did not keep large stables in his own castle—not like the extensive stables at Groverman. Here, on the green banks of Wind River, the horses grew fat and frolicked, until the lord's horsemen brought them to the King's stables and introduced the foals to the herd leaders.

The herd leaders were spirited. A herd leader, once given endowments of strength and metabolism, would dominate any wild horse. The wild foals were used as Dedicates, for these horses stood most in awe of the herd stallions, and could therefore best be counted on to provide attributes.

Thus Castle Groverman had grown to be an important fortress, for this was the Dedicates' Keep for the horses that supplied Sylvarresta's messengers and soldiers.

But this late in the fall, it was also a busy center for commerce. The local vassals and villeins herded cattle in for the fall slaughter. Tomorrow was the first day of Hostenfest, a time of celebration before the last of the fall labors. A week from today, when the feasting ended, the fatted beeves would be driven all across Heredon for slaughter on Tolfest, in the twenty-fifth day of the Month of Leaves, before the winter snows set in.

With the beef came horsemen, driving in the summer's foals. The fields around Castle Groverman had thus become a maze of stockyards and tents.

On seeing it, Iome's heart sank.

She'd been outraged to learn that Duke Groverman refused aid to Longmont. It had seemed a small and evil gesture, not in keeping with the graciousness and courage expected from the lords of Heredon.

But now Iome saw that Groverman might not go to Longmont, with good reason. Outside the castle, people and animals crowded the grounds—the horsemen and cattlemen, merchants for the festival, refugees from Longmont, plus some refugees who'd left their own unprotected villages.

The refugees from Longmont broke tome's heart. They huddled on the banks of Wind River—women, babes, men. For most of them, only blankets slung over poles would shelter them from the snows this winter. Groverman had generously allowed the refugees to camp near the castle walls, protected from the winds that swept these plains.

Still, it looked as if a town of rags had sprung up by the river, a town inhabited by ragged people. Silver-haired men puttered aimlessly, as if only waiting for winter so they could freeze. Women wrapped their babes in thick woolen blankets and kept them tucked under their arms, having nothing better than their bodies and cloth to warm the children.

From the sounds of coughing as she passed through this crowd, it looked as if plagues would soon sweep the camp.

Iome estimated that between refugees, the inhabitants of Castle Groverman, and those who had come for the fair, some thirty thousand people had gathered. A vast throng, not easily protected.

And Groverman's walls, for some reason, were not as thick with knights as Iome would have expected. So Groverman must be exerting all his influence to care for his people.

All this Iome saw as she rode past corrals filled with red cattle, through the broad streets. Everyone stared at Gaborn as he entered the city. Groverman was not used to entertaining soldiers who wore the livery of the green knight. The trio of Days who rode behind signaled that this was an important procession, regardless of how ragged Iome and her father looked.

At the castle gate, four guards stopped them. “You have another message for milord?” one guard asked Gaborn, ignoring Iome and her father.

“Yes,” Gaborn said softly, “please tell His Lordship that Prince Gaborn Val Orden begs his audience, and that he has come in company with King Jas Laren Sylvarresta, and the Princess Iome.”

The guards gaped at the news, stood staring at Iome's mud-stained robes. King Sylvarresta did not look kingly, not with his endowments stripped. In fact, Iome imagined she and her father were the saddest-looking pair on the road.

So Iome tried to sit all the more proudly, high in the saddle. It cost her dearly, for she could ill bear the stares of the guards.

Behold the horror of your princess, a sad voice whispered in her mind. She desired to cringe and hide her face, as some Dedicates did after giving glamour. Yet Iome steeled herself for the guards' inspection, still fighting the power of the rune Raj Ahten's men had branded into her flesh.

The guards studied the three Days who rode, as if to verify his claim. Two men bumped into each other in their rush to fetch Duke Groverman.

The Duke hurried into the broad courtyard of his estate, his richly embroidered robes flapping in the wind. Azurite and pearls were bound into the leather trim of his ocher cloak. His Days hurried behind.

“Here now! What's this? What's going on?” Groverman cried, pulling his cloak tighter about his neck. The morning was growing cold; gray clouds raced in from the south.

He stopped a dozen yards off, gawking back and forth between Gaborn, Iome, and the King.

“Good morning, sir,” Iome said softly, without dismounting, proffering her hand so that he could kiss her ring. “Though it has been but four months since last you visited Castle Sylvarresta, I fear much about my appearance has changed.”

It was understatement, of course. As for her father, he looked but a shadow of his former self. Stripped of glamour, his face seemed a worn mockery of the handsome figure he had cut. Shorn of his brawn, he slumped wearily in his saddle. Without wit, Lord Sylvarresta gaped about stupidly, enamored of the cattle.

“Princess Iome?” Groverman asked, as if unconvinced.

“Yes.”

Groverman stepped forward, took her hand, and unashamedly sniffed it.

Groverman was an odd man. Some might have called him a Wolf Lord, for he'd taken endowments from dogs, but unlike men who took such endowments only to satisfy a rapacious hunger for power, Groverman had once argued with Iome's father long into the night, suggesting that it was more morally correct to take endowments from animals than from men. “Which is more benevolent, to garner fifty endowments of scent from a man, or to take one endowment of scent from a tracking dog?”

So Duke Groverman had several endowments from dogs, yet he was a kind leader, well-liked by his people.

He had a narrow face, and dark-blue, close-set eyes. He looked nothing like King Sylvarresta. No one who saw them together would have ventured that the Duke hailed from the same family.

Satisfied with her scent, the Duke kissed her ring. “Welcome, welcome to my home.” With a wave of his hand, Duke Groverman bid Iome dismount, come into the courtyard.

“We have urgent matters to discuss,” Gaborn said, as if to get to the point. He was in such a hurry to get back to his father, he did not even want to dismount.

“Assuredly,” Groverman said, still waving Iome toward his palace.

“We are in a hurry,” Iome said. Almost, she wanted to shout at Groverman that she had no time for formalities, that he needed to call his warriors, send them to battle.

Iome suspected Groverman would resist her will, would try to dissuade her or placate her with lesser offers of aid. She did not want to listen to his caviling and his dodges.

“We must speak immediately,” Gaborn said.

The Duke caught Gaborn's tone, glanced up with a hurt look. “Milady, does Prince Orden speak for you and the King?”

“Yes, he does,” Iome said. “He's my friend, and our ally.”

“What would you have of me?” Groverman asked. “You have only to name it.” His tone was so submissive, his manner so meek, that, almost, Iome thought he feigned it. Yet when she looked into the Duke's eyes, she saw only submission.

Iome came to the point, “Longmont will soon be under attack. King Orden is there, with Dreis and others. How dare you refuse him aid!”

Groverman opened his hands wide, as if stunned. “Refuse him aid? Refuse aid? What more can I do? I've sent the best knights I could, having them ride as soon as they were able—over two thousand men. I've sent word to Cowforth and Emmit and Donyeis and Jonnick—and they'll converge here before noon. As I wrote in my message, I can promise another five thousand men by nightfall!”

“But...” Iome said, “Orden told us you refused aid.”

“On my honor, he is mistaken! I never!” Groverman shouted. “If women were squires and beeves were mounted knights, I'd march within the hour with an army of a quarter million. But I never denied him aid!”

Then she wondered. There had been too many knights on Longmot's walls. She'd thought they'd come from Dreis, or that Orden had gathered them in his travels.

Gaborn touched Iome's elbow. “My father has played us for fools. I see it now. I should have recognized what I felt. My father has always said that even the wisest man's plots are only as good as his information. He's fooled us, just as he seeks to fool Raj Ahten. He knew we wouldn't leave Longmont, so long as we trusted in reinforcements. For our own protection, he schemed a way to get us out of danger.”

Iome's head spun. Orden had lied with such seeming sincerity, had made her so furious with Groverman, it took her a moment to reassess the situation.

By now, if her estimates were right, Raj Ahten's troops should be reaching Longmont. Even if she and Gaborn turned now, they'd never make it back inside Longmot's gates. And a hundred thousand men should join Raj Ahten this day.

If Groverman waited until tonight to ride, he'd ride too late. Yet Iome could not bear to sit here while her allies fought in Longmont. There had to be something she could do. Iome tensed in her saddle as a plan took shape.

“Duke Groverman,” she asked, “how many shields do you have, at this very moment?”

“Ten thousand fighting men,” Groverman said. “But they are only commoners. My finest knights are in Longmont.”

“Not men—shields. How many shields do you have?”

“I—maybe I could scrounge twelve thousand, if we raided the armories of nearby estates.”

“Do so,” Iome said, “and get all the lances and armor and mounts you can—and all the women and men and children above the age of nine who can ride—and all the cattle and horses from their corrals. We'll make every blanket from your refugees into a pennant, and they shall fly hoisted on rails from your corrals. Bring all the war horns you can find. And do so quickly. We must depart no later than two hours from now.

“A great army is about to march on Longmont, so huge an army that even Raj Ahten must tremble!”

46 The Curse

In the cold, graying skies above Longmont, darkness flashed among the clouds like inverse lightning. Raj Ahten's three remaining flameweavers were in their battle-splendor now, clothed only in brilliant crimson flames. They hunched behind a battle wall of piled stones—a stone fence left by a farmer, really—and hurled flames at Castle Longmont. Each of the flame-weavers would reach up to the sky and grasp the sunlight, so that for a moment the whole sky would darken, and then strands of twisted light and heat would plummet into their hands and sit glowing like small suns, just before the flameweavers hurled.

It did little good. Castle Longmont was made of ancient stone. Spells had been woven into it by Earth Wardens over the ages. The balls of light and heat would sail from the flameweavers' hands, expanding in size as they moved toward the castle—for the flameweavers could not concentrate their power at this distance—until the giant glowing balls harmlessly splashed against the battlements.

Yet the efforts had some effect. King Orden's warriors had been forced to hide behind the battlements, seeking cover, and one flameweaver had hit a ballista on his first toss, forcing Orden's artillerymen to withdraw the ballistas and catapults into the towers.

So, for the moment, the battle was a quiet struggle—flameweavers hurling fireballs with little effect, tiring themselves, giants loading the catapults to send stones over the walls.

Sometimes, when a ball of flame smashed the high walls just below the machicolations, the inferno would send a blast of heat upward through the kill holes, where archers hid. Then Raj Ahten would hear a gratifying scream as a soldier felt the sharpness of his teeth. In places, bundles of arrows had burst into flame like kindling.

Even now, Raj Ahten had men and giants gathering fuel to build a huge inferno. Sunlight often served adequately as a source of energy for his flameweavers, but the afternoon skies were going gray, and the weavers' work was of poorer quality. If they could depend on a more immediate source of energy, their balls of flame would be tighter—perhaps small enough, even, to penetrate the archers' slots along the twin towers.

So the giants hacked down great oak trees and pulled fallen logs from the hills, where they stacked them before the castle like a great dark crown made of writhing limbs. When the flameweavers tapped this crown for fuel, they would increase their powers greatly.

Half an hour after Binnesman left the castle, an outrider came thundering from the west with urgent news. He raced his horse through camp and leapt to the ground at Raj Ahten's feet.

Ah, Raj Ahten thought, Vishtimnu's army has finally been sighted. In Raj Ahten's state, with his high metabolism, it seemed the man took forever to speak. Fortunately, he did not wait for permission.

“I beg pardon, Great King,” he said, head bowed. The man's eyes were wide with fear. “But I have urgent news. I was placed to watch at Harm's Gorge. I must report that a horseman came to the gorge and destroyed the bridge. He pointed a finger, uttered a curse, and the bridge collapsed.”

“What?” Raj Ahten asked. Could the Earth Warden be seeking to cut off Raj Ahten from his reinforcements? The wizard had claimed that he would not take sides in this battle, and Raj Ahten had believed him. But the wizard was obviously up to something.

“The bridge is destroyed. The gorge is impassable,” the scout repeated.

Raj Ahten's scouts were trained to treat every question, even rhetorical questions, as queries. They reported only what they saw, without embellishment.

“Have you spotted signs of Vishtimnu?”

“No, O Great Light. I saw no signs—no scouts, no clouds of dust on the road. The forest lies quiet.”

Raj Ahten considered. Just because his scout did not see signs of reinforcements, it did not mean that Vishtimnu was not coming. It could well be that the wizard had his own means of detecting them. And in an effort to delay the army from reaching Longmont, the wizard had destroyed the bridge. But this would only slow Vishtimnu, not stop him. Vishtimnu's armies brought great wains filled with food, clothing, and weapons, supplies enough to last the whole winter, to last for a long campaign. The wagons would not be able to pass the gorge, would have to go around, some hundred and twenty miles.

This would slow the caravan at least four days, probably five or six. It would slow even those knights mounted on force horses, so that they wouldn't reach Longmont today.

Destroying the bridge would do Raj Ahten little harm. Unless...the wizard knew that more than one army marched through these woods, and therefore sought to cut off Raj Ahten's escape.

Raj Ahten suddenly realized that Jureem had run off only hours ago. Perhaps he had feared to come to Longmont. Perhaps Jureem himself had conspired to create a trap!

Raj Ahten didn't hesitate. Two and a half miles northeast of Longmont, on a lonely mountain, an ancient observatory stood on a promontory that rose above the woods higher than any other hill for many miles. Raj Ahten could see the observatory from here—a round tower with a flat top, made of blood-red stone. It was called the Eyes of Tor Loman.

From its lonely seat, the Duke's far-seers could watch the land for many leagues. Raj Ahten did not have a man there now. His scouts and far-seers had spread out along the roads north, south, east, and west, increasing their view. Yet it was possible that at this moment, his far-seers could be racing this way with some evil report.

Raj Ahten called to his men, “Maintain the attack! Get the pyre burning!”

He spun and raced over the green fields of Longmont with all the speed he could safely muster.

47 The Eyes of Tor Loman

On the castle wall, Orden watched in fascination as the messenger rode to Raj Ahten, gesticulating. Several giants ambled between Orden and the Wolf Lord, blocking Orden's view.

Orden had studied the Wolf Lord, hoped the man would try to rush the castle. He had his men and dogs and giants and ladders all prepared. The mages were ready. But Raj Ahten remained patient.

Yet when the messenger came, Orden took heart. Bad news for Raj Ahten, Orden guessed by the demeanor of the messenger. Desperation might only be a moment away.

Then Raj Ahten fled. He leaped a stone fence, raced over the downs.

Orden counted off seconds, trying to guess Raj Ahten's speed. A hundred and ten, perhaps a hundred and twenty miles per hour the Runelord raced over the flats, slowing as he careered round the castle, taking to the air as he raced over a hill up the north road—toward the old observatory.

If that is the fastest you can run, I can beat you, Orden exulted. He glanced at his men along the wall-walk.

He had a hundred young men lying beneath the merlons, waiting for flameweavers to send their infernal missiles to smash against the castle. Spurts of fire would rise up through the grillwork of the machicolations. Each four or five times such a missile hit, the young men were to cry out as if wounded. Some young men were very dramatic, and at that moment, one of them leapt up, holding a leather vest against himself and batting at it furiously before pretending to fall as one slain. The boy had set the vest there ten minutes earlier, waiting for it to catch fire.

Many boys nearby tried to stifle chuckles at these antics. But those antics served a purpose. So long as Raj Ahten believed his tactics wore the castle down, he'd keep at them.

Orden took quick stock. If he could follow Raj Ahten, catch him, he'd be able to battle him alone, man to man.

“I'd better go,” Orden said.

Beside him, one of his captains gazed longingly toward Raj Ahten. “May the Powers be with you!” The captain clapped Orden on the back.

“You and I and Sylvarresta shall be hunting in the Dunnwood by nightfall,” Orden said. “Have no fear.”

Orden blew a deep, bass hunting horn in signal. Immediately his men at the gates let the drawbridge drop. His energies swelled as all through the castle the men in his serpent ring held perfectly still.

Suddenly the air seemed to thicken to the consistency of syrup. Orden had the strength of twelve men, but with the metabolism of sixty, it required considerable effort to breathe.

He leapt forward, bearing a single weapon—a thin half-sword, sharp enough to strike off Raj Ahten's head. He planned to take Gaborn's warning to heart, decapitate the Wolf Lord. And he carried his shield.

He began running, leaping down the stairs from the castle wall, surprised at the initial push it took to combat inertia. Running required constant, steady pressure. As he spun round a corner, his momentum was such that he accidentally veered from his course.

He raced down to the gate, and already his men had begun raising the drawbridge, as he had ordered. He bounded up the slight incline, gingerly leapt forty feet to clear the moat, running as he landed, and hurried after Raj Ahten.

The resistance of the wind against his shield felt tremendous. After a few yards he dropped it, hurried through the charred streets of the city, then veered onto a footpath that led over the downs.

The grass seemed marvelously green this morning, having been cleansed by last night's rains, and everywhere the little white winterstar flowers lay among the fields.

Orden raced over the downs, found that like Raj Ahten, when he reached the top of a mound, he was traveling so fast that he became airborne.

Orden had read of men who had taken great endowments of metabolism. He knew that going airborne was of little danger, so long as when he landed he made certain that he sped a little, kept his feet moving to absorb the impact of his fall.

He turned a corner. Learning to lean into a turn, he knew, was perhaps the most difficult aspect of running with high metabolism.

Many people found it difficult to adopt the easy rolling gait necessary to run. They wanted to move fast by pressing hard with their feet, as a normal man would when seeking a quick start, but those who tried it would snap their legs. The resting body had too much inertia to overcome.

Orden understood this principle well.

But remembering to lean into curves at the proper angle, that just felt unnatural. As Orden gained speed, he found he'd be running, trying to make a turn in the trail, and it seemed that strange forces grasped him. Gravity did not pull down so much as momentum kept him running in whatever direction he'd taken, and as he hit a muddy spot on one turn, only a great deal of dancing let him stay afoot and keep from smashing into a tree beside the trail.

Now he saw that Raj Ahten had kept his running speed down to a hundred miles per hour for good reason. It didn't feel safe to run faster.

Yet Orden sped up, for his life and the lives of all his people depended on it. He raced higher up Tor Loman, through the white-trunked aspens, under their golden leaves.

As he climbed one hill, looked down into the sun-dappled glen below, he saw a huge hart, its antlers wider than a man's arm span. Startled, it leapt gracefully in the air, seemingly to hang just a few feet above the ground.

I could run that deer down in a heartbeat, Orden realized, as he raced toward it, passing a span behind as it dropped toward a creek.

Orden climbed toward the pines, running up a rocky, narrow crag. Ahead, he saw the glint of dark metal as Raj Ahten entered the woods.

The sound of the steel rings in mail warned Raj Ahten of a pursuer. He glanced back. Orden rushed up the trail.

Raj Ahten could not imagine someone running fast enough to catch him. He redoubled his speed. The trail now led straight between the dark pines. A shaft of sunlight shone at the trail's end. Beyond it stood the red sandstone of the Eyes of Tor Loman.

Raj Ahten knew that fleeing was useless. Orden was gaining on him, and had the greater speed.

“I have you!” Orden shouted in triumph, a hundred yards behind.

Raj Ahten decided to use Orden's speed against him. He crested a small rise, leapt. He felt a sharp pain in his right leg, for his fibula snapped on takeoff.

He knew he could heal in seconds.

As Raj Ahten rose, he twisted, drew the hatchet from his belt, and hurled just where Orden should be.

To his surprise, Orden had begun to stutter-step, slowing. The hatchet should have cleaved him at something close to two hundred miles per hour, but the aim was high.

Deftly, Orden dodged under the projectile.

Raj Ahten's trajectory carried him high. Though the break in his leg seemed minor, it did not have time to do more than begin healing before he hit ground.

His tibia snapped, along with the first break, and he tried to let himself roll forward, take the weight from his fall on his good leg and shoulders.

As Raj Ahten came up, Orden fell on him, hacking viciously with his short sword. With Orden having so many endowments of metabolism, Raj Ahten could not prepare for the assault.

Raj Ahten leaned back from the attack. Orden's first swing hit him full in the throat. Crimson droplets sprayed from Raj Ahten's neck, and he felt the chink of metal as the blade struck bone.

King Orden exulted as he saw the horrible wound, watched flesh peel from Raj Ahten's throat, saw the Wolf Lord's handsome eyes widen in terror.

Yet the blade had hardly cleared Raj Ahten's flesh when the wound began to close over, seamlessly. The man had so many endowments of stamina, he seemed no longer human.

The Sum of All Men, Orden feared, that creature which drew life from so many people that it could no longer be classified as mortal, could no longer die. Raj Ahten was becoming a Power, one to vie the elements or the Time Lords.

The chronicles spoke of it. The chronicles said Daylan Hammer had lived in Mystarria for a time, sixteen centuries past, before he went south, seeking to suffer in silence. For immortality had become a burden. Daylan's Dedicates passed away, yet he could not die, for in some fashion he had been transformed. The gifts transmitted through the forcibles remained with him eternally—unwanted, a curse.

Orden had perfect recall, and he saw the words now before him, as he'd read them while young, studying the fragment of an ancient chronicle written by a distant forefather:

“Having loved his fellow men too deeply, Daylan found that life became a burden. For men he befriended, women he loved, blossomed and died like the roses of a single season, while he alone remained perennial. So he sought solitude beyond Inkarra, in the Isles of Illienne, and I suppose he lives there still.”

All this flashed through Orden's mind as his sword cleared Raj Ahten's throat; then he realized he had swung so hard that the blade was getting away from him. Pain filled his arm as he strained muscles and pulled tendons, trying to hold it.

The sword flashed away into a bed of ferns upon the knoll.

He had no other weapon. But Raj Ahten still sat, frozen in horror at the power of his attack. Orden leapt, kicking at Raj Ahten's head with all his might.

He wore the steel-toed hoots of war, each with a heavy bar across the toe. The blow, he knew, would shatter his own leg. But it could also crush Raj Ahten's skull.

As Orden kicked, Raj Ahten twisted away. Orden's heel struck beneath Raj Ahten's epaulets.

A ripping pain tore through Orden's leg as every bone in it shattered, a pain so profound it wrung a cry from his throat.

Yet if I ruin myself, Orden thought, then I ruin Raj Ahten. Raj Ahten's shoulder crumpled. Orden felt the bones of the Wolf Lord's arm snap, followed by his collarbones, then the ribs caving in, one by one, snapping like twigs beneath his heel.

Raj Ahten screamed like one dying.

Orden landed on Raj Ahten's shoulder, and sat for what seemed a few seconds, gasping, wondering what to do next. He rolled off the Wolf Lord, to see if the man had died.

To his astonishment, Raj Ahten groaned in pain, rolled in the grass. The impression of Orden's boot lay stamped on the Wolf Lord's shoulder.

The scapula had caved in. Raj Ahten's right arm twisted at an unnatural angle. The flesh of his shoulder was pushed down six inches.

Raj Ahten lay in the grass, eyes glazed with pain. Blood frothed from his mouth. The Wolf Lord's dark eyes and chiseled face were so beautiful in that moment, Orden marveled. He'd never seen the Wolf Lord so close, in all his glamour. It took Orden's breath away.

“Serve me,” Raj Ahten whispered fervently.

In that second, Mendellas Draken Orden was swept away by the force of Raj Ahten's glamour, and wished to serve him with his whole heart.

Then the second passed, and he grew frightened: for something moved beneath Raj Ahten's armor; the shoulder settled and swelled, settled once again, as if years of inflammation and healing and pain all rolled into one infinite, heart-stopping moment. The shoulder finally grew to a bulbous hump.

Orden tried to roll to his feet, knowing the fight was not over.

Raj Ahten crawled after him, grasped Orden's right arm by the wrist, and smashed his helm into Orden's own shoulder, so hard that the helm was jarred loose from Raj Ahten's head.

Bones shattered all along Orden's arm, and he cried out. He writhed on the ground, his right leg a ruin, his arm and shoulder useless.

Raj Ahten backed away, stood gasping for breath. “It is a shame, King Orden. You should have taken more stamina. My bones are already fully healed. How many days will it be until you can say the same?” He kicked hard, snapping Orden's good leg. Orden collapsed to the ground, on his hack.

“Where are my forcibles?” Raj Ahten said calmly.

Orden gave no answer.

Raj Ahten kicked King Orden in the face.

Blood spurted from Orden's right eye, and he felt it hanging against his cheek. Orden fell to the ground in a near faint, and covered his face with his good hand. Raj Ahten kicked his unprotected ribs. Something tore loose inside, and Orden began coughing, spewing flecks of blood.

“I'll kill you!” King Orden spat. “I swear it!”

It was a vain threat. Orden couldn't fight back. He needed to die. Needed Raj Ahten to kill him so the serpent ring would break and another warrior could fight in his stead.

King Orden began to cough; he could hardly breathe in air so thick, so liquid. Raj Ahten kicked his ribs again, so that Orden lay gasping.

Raj Ahten turned and scrambled up the trail fifty yards, through dry grass filled with yellow tansy, to the base of the Eyes of Tor Loman. A stone stair spiraled three times outside the circumference of the tower. Raj Ahten scrambled up it, limping painfully, one shoulder five inches lower than the other. Though his face looked beautiful, he seemed from the back to be little more than just another twisted hunchback. His right arm hung askew, and his right leg might have healed, but it looked shorter than the left.

Orden panted, sweated with exertion, tried to breathe in air that felt thick as honey. The grass near his head smelled so rich, he wanted to lie in it a moment, to rest.

On the heath, Iome and Gaborn rode side by side through the great throng. Gaborn held a shield high, and carried one of the Duke's lances. Tied atop it was a bit of a red curtain from the windows of the Duke's Keep. A white circle of cloth pinned in its middle would make it look, at a great distance, much like the Orb of Internook.

That is, it would appear like Internook's colors to anyone watching twenty miles away. Gaborn suspected Raj Ahten's far-seers would be watching. It was standard tactics during any siege to place scouts all around the battle.

For the past half-hour, Gaborn had been busy worrying about the logistics of what he did: trying to drive a couple of hundred thousand head of cattle and horses across the plain was hard work. Even the experienced drovers and horsemen in the retinue could not manage the task easily.

The work was made harder by inexperienced boys who tried desperately to help but who tended to startle the cattle at every turn. Gaborn feared that at any moment, the huge herd might stampede right or left, tramping the women and children who bore shields in a great line before the herd, as if they were warriors.

Yet as he watched the skies above Longmont, fear seized Gaborn even more. The skies looked gray overhead, but far on the horizon darkness flashed as Raj Ahten's flameweavers pulled fire from the heavens.

Gaborn feared he had caused it, that his ruse had led Raj Ahten to hurry his attack on Longmont rather than to simply drive the Wolf Lord off in terror, as Gaborn had hoped to do.

As he rode, words began to form in his mind, a half-remembered spell from an ancient tome. Though he'd never fancied himself as one with earth powers, now he found himself chanting,

“Earth that betrays us, on the wind, become a cloak to hide us, wrapped within. Dust that reveals us, in the sky, Hide our numbers from the predator's eye.”

Gaborn felt shocked that such a spell had come unbidden to his mind. Yet at that moment, he recalled the spell, and it felt right to speak it, as if he had stumbled upon the key to a nearly forgotten door.

The earth powers are growing in me, he realized. He did not yet know what he would become.

He worried for his father, and as he did so, he felt the man's imminent danger, felt danger wrapped around him like grave clothes.

Gaborn hoped his father could hold out through the attack. He raised his war horn to his lips, blew once, and all around him, others did the same. Before his army, the marchers began singing songs of war.

Raj Ahten had dozens of far-seers in his retinue, but none were like him, none had so many endowments of sight. Raj Ahten did not know how many endowments he had, but he knew it numbered in the thousands. He could discern the veins in a fly's wings at a hundred yards, could see as clearly by starlight as the average man did by sunlight. While most men with so many endowments of sight would have gone day-blind, Raj Ahten's stamina let him withstand the full sun.

It took nothing to spot the towering cloud to the east, an army marching on him.

As he made his way up the tower, Raj Ahten kept searching to the south and west for signs of Vishtimnu's army, signs of help. With his heightened metabolism, it seemed he scanned the horizon for many long minutes for sign of a yellow pennant rising through the forest canopy, or the glint of sunlight on metal, the dust rising from the march of many feet, or the color that mankind had no name for—the hue of warm bodies.

But there are limits even to a far-seer's vision. He could not see through walls, and the forest canopy off to the west was wall enough that it could have hidden many armies. Moreover, a moist wind from the south blew in off the heath, from the vast fields of Fleeds, which were thick with dust and pollen, limiting his vision to thirty or forty miles.

He stood breathlessly, for a long moment. He did not worry about time. With so many endowments of metabolism, he could not have been six seconds searching the horizon in the southwest before he realized he'd see nothing. Vishtimnu's army was too far away.

He turned east, felt his heart freeze. In the distance, Binnesman's horse hurtled across the plains. Raj Ahten could see his destination: at the limit of vision, the golden towers of Castle Groverman rose from the plains beside a river of silver. And before the castle marched an army the likes of which he had seldom seen: hundreds of thousands of men.

A line of spearmen marched in front, five thousand across, and sunlight gleamed on their shields and helms. Behind them marched bowmen by the thousands, and knights mounted on chargers.

They had already crossed the heath a distance of some five to seven miles from Castle Groverman. At such a great distance, in such dirty air, he could not see them clearly. The dry dust of their passage obscured their numbers, rose from their feet in a cloud hundreds of feet high. It looked almost like the smoke of a range fire.

But it was not the heat of a fire he saw beneath that dust. He saw the heat of life, of hundreds of thousands of living bodies.

Among the horde, pennants waved in dozens of colors—the green banners of Lysle, the gray of North Crowthen, the red of Internook. He saw horns among the crowd, the horned helms of hundreds of thousands of warriors—the fierce axemen of Internook.

It can't be, he reasoned. His pyromancer had said that the King of Internook was dead. Perhaps, Raj Ahten's troubled mind told him, but Internook's armies are marching.

Raj Ahten stilled his breathing, closed his eyes. In the field below, rising winds hissed through the trees, but distantly, distantly, beneath the sound of the blood rushing through his veins, war horns pealed. The cries of thousands of voices raised in war song.

All the armies of the North, he realized, gathering against him. At the gates of Castle Sylvarresta, Orden's messenger had said King Orden planned this assault for weeks. And he'd hinted that traitors in Raj Ahten's own ranks had revealed the presence of the forcibles to King Orden.

Raj Ahten had rejected the tale, never considered the possibility it might be true—for if it was true, it portended such dire consequences for this invasion that Raj Ahten could hardly dare ponder them.

If it was true, if Orden had planned this raid weeks ago, then he could have sent for aid, he could have summoned the kings of the North to battle.

Four weeks ago Orden had set march. Four weeks. It was possible. The fierce Warlord of Internook could have marshaled his hordes, sent them in longboats to land on the rocky beaches of Lysle, then marched them here, joining with Knights Equitable of various kingdoms.

These would not be common soldiers. These would not be men who trembled at the sight of Raj Ahten's Invincibles.

Raj Ahten opened his eyes again, just as Binnesman's horse wheeled to join the procession, taking its lead.

“The new King of the Earth is coming,” the old wizard had said. Now Raj Ahten saw the truth. This Earth Warden would join his enemies. This Earth Warden would indeed serve a king. “The Earth rejects you...”

Raj Ahten felt a strange terror beginning to well up inside him. A great king marched at the head of that army, he felt sure. The wizard's king. The king his pyromancer had warned him of.

And he brought an army Raj Ahten could not match.

Even as he watched, a marvelous thing happened: at that very moment, the great cloud of dust over the army began to form—tall spires of dust rose hundreds of yards into the air like the points of a crown, and a face took form in the roiling dust, a stern visage of a cruel man with death in his eyes.

The Earth King.

I came here to hunt him, and now he hunts me, Raj Ahten realized.

Raj Ahten had little time remaining. He needed to return to the castle, take it quickly, win back his forcibles before he retreated.

He raced down the stairs of Tor Loman, heart pounding in terror.

48 Fire

Raj Ahten raced back down the forest trail, leaping rocks, speeding through glens. He suspected now that Longmont held no treasure, that the forcibles had moved.

Everything pointed to it—Orden practically begging for execution. The man was obviously joined in a serpent. To kill him would behead the serpent, freeing another soldier to fight with almost as much metabolism as Orden now carried.

But leaving Orden alive and incapacitated kept the serpent intact. Raj Ahten had only to find warriors dedicated to the serpent, slaughter them quickly, and cut the serpent into pieces.

The existence of a serpent seemed evidence that the forcibles had left Longmont, for if Orden had really taken hundreds of endowments, he'd not have relied on a serpent for power. He'd have garnered greater stamina. But the man was too easily wounded, too slow to heal.

No, he couldn't have taken hundreds of endowments, or even dozens. He didn't have the people here to serve as Dedicates. So he'd moved the forcibles. Probably not far. People who hide valuables seldom want to hide them far. They want to be able check on them frequently.

Yet it was possible Orden had given them to another.

All morning, Raj Ahten had hesitated to attack the castle for some reason he could not name. Something about the soldiers on the walls had disturbed him. Now he realized what it was: Prince Orden wasn't on those walls. He'd expected father and son to fight together, as in the old songs,

But the son was not here.

The new King of the Earth is coming, the old wizard had told him. But the wizard had not emphasized the word new. “I see hope for House Orden,” the wizard had said.

Prince Orden. It made sense. The boy had earth spells protecting him, a wizard in his employ. Gaborn was a fighter. Raj Ahten knew. He'd sent Salim to kill Gaborn on two occasions, in an effort to keep Mystarria from uniting with a more defensible realm. Yet the assassin had failed.

He has bested me at every turn, slain my pyromancer, evaded me.

So Gaborn now has the forcibles, Raj Ahten realized, and has taken endowments, and rides at the head of the advancing army. True, Gaborn hadn't had much time to garner endowments, but the matter could be easily handled. Orden had recaptured Longmont three days ago. In that time, a dozen faithful soldiers could have taken endowments on Gaborn's behalf, preparing themselves to act as vectors, waiting for Gaborn to return to Castle Groverman to collect his due. The new Dedicates might be secreted in Longmont or Groverman or any of half a dozen castles nearby.

Raj Ahten had used the same tactic on occasions. As Raj Ahten raced back to Longmont, he considered all these things. He calculated how much time it would take to seize Longmont, destroy the forces within, and search for his treasure, to verify his guess.

He had tricks up his sleeves, weapons he'd not planned to employ this day. He'd not wanted to reveal his full strength in battle, but perhaps it would be necessary.

He considered how much time it would take afterward to flee. Groverman's army stood twenty-five miles off. Many of those men were afoot. If every soldier had an endowment of metabolism and one of strength, they might make it here in three hours.

Raj Ahten planned to be gone in one.

In Castle Longmont, Captain Cedrick Tempest worried for his people, worried for Orden, worried for himself. After Orden and Raj Ahten had raced north, both armies waited expectantly while Raj Ahten's men prepared for battle.

The giants had carried whole trees of oak and ash to the slope of the hillside, as if to make a bonfire, and there the flameweavers had stepped inside, turning the dead trees into a conflagration.

For long minutes, the three danced within the fire, letting it caress their naked flesh, each of them walking around the edge of the bonfire, drawing magical signs in the air, emblems of blue-glowing fire that clung in the smoke as if they hung on a castle wall.

It was an eerie, mesmerizing sight.

Then they began to whirl and chant in an odd dance, as if each man himself were synchronizing with the flames, dancing with the flickering lights of the fire, becoming one with it.

Thus each flameweaver weaved and bobbed and cavorted, and began to sing a song of desire, calling, calling.

It was one of the flameweaver's greatest powers—that of summoning fell creatures from the netherworld. Tempest had heard of such things, but few men ever witnessed a Summoning.

Here and there, men on the walls began drawing symbols of protection, vainly muttering half-remembered spells. Some hedge wizard from out of the wild began to draw runes in the air, and the men around him clustered near for protection.

Tempest chewed his lip nervously as the wizards gathered their powers. Now, in the bonfire, the walls of flame thickened, becoming green things like no earthly fire. A luminous portal was forming.

In another moment, Tempest saw shapes materialize within that light-white flaming salamanders from the netherworld, bobbing and leaping, not wholly formed.

At the sight of those creatures summoned into the flames, Cedrick Tempest was chilled to the bone. His men could not fight such monsters. It was folly to stay here, folly to fight.

A cry of consternation caught in Tempest's throat. Help. We need help, he thought.

He'd hardly thought this, when he spotted a blur to the east of the castle, someone rushing over the downs, returning from Tor Loman. He hoped it was King Orden, pleaded to the Powers that Orden had returned victorious.

But the man racing over the downs did not wear Orden's shimmering cape of green samite. Raj Ahten raced toward them, his helm gone.

Tempest wondered if Orden had even caught the Wolf Lord, then glanced down into the keep. Shostag the Axeman was Orden's second. If Orden had died, then Shostag should be up, should be the new head of the serpent. Tempest saw no sign of the burly outlaw down in the keep.

Perhaps Orden still lived, would come to fight in their behalf.

Raj Ahten shouted a command, ordering his troops to prepare for battle.

An old adage said, “When Runelords battle, it is the commoners who die.” It was true. The Dedicates in their well-protected keeps, the common archers, the farm boys skirmishing for their lives—all would fall without notice before a Runelord's wrath.

All his life, Cedrick Tempest had sought to be more than a commoner, to avoid such a fate. He'd become a force soldier at the age of twelve, made sergeant at sixteen, captain of the guard at twenty-two. In all those years, he'd grown accustomed to feeling the strength of others in his arms, to having the health of Dedicates flowing in his blood.

Until now. He stood in nominal command of Longmont, struggling to marshal his forces against Raj Ahten's troops. Yet he was little more than a commoner. In the battle for Longmont, most of his Dedicates had been slaughtered. He had an endowment of wit, one of stamina, one of grace. Nothing more.

His chain mail weighed on him heavily, and his warhammer felt clumsy in his hand.

The winds sweeping from the south chilled him, and he wondered what this day would bring. He cowered behind the battlements. Certainly, he felt death in the air.

Yet for the moment the preparation for battle stood at a standstill. The soldiers and giants and dogs of Raj Ahten all kept beyond bowshot. For several more long minutes, only the flameweavers worked, dancing, twisting, gyrating in the heart of their bonfire, one with the flames; and the glowing salamanders took clearer form, becoming worms of white light, adding their own magical powers to those of the flameweavers.

Now, in the center of the great fire, the flameweavers stopped their wild dance and raised their hands to the sky as one.

The skies went black as onyx as the flameweavers began drawing ropes of energy from the heavens. Time and again, the flameweavers reached into the sky and caught the light. Time and again, they gathered it into their hands and merely held it, so that their hands became green blazing lights of their own that glowed brighter and brighter.

The hedge wizard muttered and cursed.

The flameweavers' magics took more than the mere light from heaven. For minutes now, the air had been growing colder. Tempest saw that a rime of frost began to cover the castle walls, and the haft of the warhammer in his hand had gradually become stinging cold.

Frost formed along the ground—heaviest near the bonfire, and fanning out over the fields and all around the army, as if this otherworldly fire drew heat, rather than gave it off. The flameweavers were drawing the energy from the fire so efficiently now that Tempest imagined that even he could have stood in those emerald flames, walked through them unburned.

Tempest's teeth chattered. It seemed that the very heat of his body was beginning to be sucked from him. Indeed, he could see the salamanders more clearly in the flames now—ethereal beings with tails of flame, leaping and dancing about, staring at the men on the castle walls.

“Beware the salamander's eyes. Don't look into the flames!” the hedge wizard began to shout. Tempest recognized the danger. For when his eyes met those pinpricks of flame that formed the orbs of a salamander, though for only a flickering instant, the salamander grew more solid in form while Tempest's blood ran all the colder. Men averted their gaze, studied the Frowth giants or the mastiffs or the Invincibles in Raj Ahten's army—anything but the salamanders.

In the foreboding gloom, the bonfire grew surreal—became a green flaming world of its own, its walls decorated in fierce runes, the creatures at its heart growing in power with each passing moment.

The clouds above had become so cold that a thunderous hail now began to fall lightly, bouncing like gravel from the battlements, pinging against the helms and armor of the castle's defenders.

Tempest felt frightened to the core of his soul. He did not know what the flameweavers might try. Would they simply suck the life heat from the men on the walls? Or would they send gouts of fire lancing into the ranks? Or did they have some scheme that was even more nefarious?

As if to answer his question, one flameweaver suddenly stopped his gyrations among the heart of the emerald flames. For a long moment, ropes of green energy coiled from the skies, falling into each of his hands. Now, the skies all around grew blacker than the darkest night. Distantly, thunder grumbled, yet if lightning flashed, Tempest never saw it.

In that moment, it seemed as if all time, all sound, suddenly stilled in expectation.

Then the flameweaver compacted the energy in his hand, as if he were forming a snowball, and hurled a green bolt of fire toward the castle walls. Immediately the flameweaver dropped back, as if spent.

The green bolt exploded into the drawbridge with a sound of thunder, as if answering the heavens. The castle rattled under the impact, and Tempest grasped a merlon for support. The ancient earth spells that bound the oak planks and stone of the bridge were supposed to resist fire. Even the touch of the elemental some fifteen minutes earlier had only barely charred the wood of the bridge.

But never was anything made to resist an accursed fire like this. The green flames smote the iron crossbars on the bridge, then raced up the metal, burning the iron with a fierce light, racing up the chains that held the drawbridge closed. Wondrously, the flames did not scorch the wooden planks of the bridge, did not burn the stone casements around it. Instead, they ate only the iron, burned only iron.

In horror, Cedrick Tempest imagined how the touch of that flame would have affected an armored warrior.

With a creaking sound, the bridge fell open.

Tempest shouted, ordering defenders down from the walls, to bolster the troops behind the ruined bridge. Three hundred knights were down in the bailey, mounted on warhorses, ready to issue out to attack if needed. But carts and barrels were also crowding the bailey, forming a barricade that would not be enough. In the hail and darkness, men struggled for better positions. Some knights were shouting, wanting to charge out now, attack while they might be of use. Other defenders on the ground sought to further barricade the gates. Warhorses were whinnying and kicking, and more than one knight fell from his charger and was trampled.

Overhead, the whole sky went black again while ropes of twisted energy began to feed a second flameweaver. A long minute later, the flameweaver hurled a great ball of green flames at the east tower, which overlooked the drawbridge.

Instantly the flames raced in a circle all about the base of the tower, so that for a moment it looked like a green ring upon a stone finger. But these flames were alive, seeking entry. They seemed to squirm through archery slots and up the kill holes. They flickered and licked the dull stone, limning the mortar that sealed the tower closed, then raced into windows. If anything, Tempest realized with mounting horror, this flameweaver's spell was more powerful than the first's.

What happened next, Cedrick Tempest did not want to know, yet he could not help but watch.

The stones of the tower seemed to wail in pain, and a rush of wind and light escaped all the holes in the tower from ground to rooftop as every piece of wooden planking or shield, as every wool tapestry, as every scrap of hide and hair and cloth on every man in that tower all simultaneously burst into flames.

Fierce lights raged from the windows, and Captain Tempest could see his warriors trapped inside, lurid dancers shrieking in horror among the inferno.

There could be no fighting such magic. In despair, Tempest wondered what to do. No charge had begun, yet already the castle gates were down, and half-undefended.

Before the castle gates, with a shout that seemed to echo from the sky, cutting through the blackness and the curtain of hail, came Raj Ahten's voice: “Prepare the charge!”

Somehow, in the past minutes, Tempest had lost sight of the enemy commander. Now he saw Raj Ahten on the hillside, standing among his men, staring toward the castle with an expression of apathy.

The Wolf Lord's well-trained troops knew what to do. His artillerymen began to feed iron shot into the baskets of their engines, send it hurling high against the walls.

All along the walls, Tempest's men hunched behind the battlements, and now the hail that fell from the skies grew deadly to the castle's defenders. An archer next to Tempest took a ball to the head, was swept from the castle walls. Men raised their shields high for protection.

Tempest looked to the hedge wizard, but now the wizard was crouched behind the battlements, eyes filled with terror.

Wind buffeted from the south, and for a few seconds there was light as the flameweavers took their rest. Tempest saw Raj Ahten's spy balloon, which had been moored a moment earlier, suddenly lift like a graak, despite the battering hail. Four balloonists began emptying sacks of arcane powders into the air, powders that floated down toward the castle in dirty clouds of yellow, red, and gray.

Tempest gaped, wondering where King Orden might be, whispering under his breath for the King to come, to save them all. Longmont is a great castle, protected by earth runes, he told himself. Yet already the gate was down, and Raj Ahten had not even begun his attack in earnest.

Now, seeking power once again, Raj Ahten's flameweavers began grasping ropes of fire from the skies. Green walls of flame shone like emerald around the great bonfire, bedazzling, their intricate runes gleaming. The blackening trees within the wall were a bizarre sight, like twisted fingers and arms in an enormous heap of burning body parts. Or like scraps of iron in the forge. Everything became luminous in the heart of the inferno—flameweavers, fiery salamanders, dancing among the logs at the fire's center.

As the flameweavers stole fire from heaven, darkness deepened, making the battlefield a garish, flickering, half-glimpsed sight. The hail fell heavier for a few seconds then, and the air froze in a cloudy fog before his face as Cedrick Tempest breathed.

In that flickering darkness, Tempest glimpsed giants gathering their ladders, men on the battlefield drawing weapons.

“Bowmen at the ready!” Tempest shouted. He watched the track to the north, hoping Orden would appear.

Yet he now feared it would not happen, feared that Orden still lived, and that the serpent ring had not broken. Perhaps Orden had never met up with Raj Ahten, and was even now racing off on some fruitless hunt. Or perhaps Orden was incapacitated.

Tempest's heart pounded. He needed a protector. There was only one thing to do—call upon the knights in the ring to form a new head. But no, he realized, that would not do. The Dedicates in the castle were widely dispersed. He did not have time to find them, speak to them all.

He needed to break the serpent ring, slay a Dedicate so that the serpent would form a head.

Across the hill, Raj Ahten made a pulling gesture with his hand, as if to yank clouds from the sky. Hundreds of mastiffs began racing for the castle in a black wave, their red masks and iron collars making the mastiffs a horrendous sight, their commander barking in short yaps.

Now the Frowth giants hoisted the great siege ladders, two giants to a ladder, and loped for the castle at a seemingly slow pace, yet covering four yards to the stride. Black behemoths struggling in the night.

Tempest did not have time to explain to another what needed to be done. He turned from his post above the gate, and ran for the stairs.

“Captain?” one of his men cried, as if worried that Tempest had become a craven coward in that moment.

Tempest had no time to explain. A shout rose across the battlefield as three thousand of Raj Ahten's archers raced forward, hurrying to give cover fire against the castle walls.

Tempest glanced over his shoulder before descending the stone steps. Raj Ahten's Invincibles raised their shields and charged. At their head, fifty men raced with a battering ram, a giant iron wolf's head at the ram's end. Tempest knew little of siege magics, but he could see that the iron wolf's head was bound with powerful spells. Fire glowed in its dead eyes.

Though the drawbridge had fallen open, Tempest's men had hastily set a wooden mantelet—a frame of timbers—just inside the green. The ram would smash into the inner defenses. Behind those defenses, Longmot's mounted knights had become restive. They held their great lances at the ready, helm visors down. Their horses shifted their weight from foot to foot, eager to charge.

Raj Ahten's Invincibles raced forward, the earth thundering beneath their iron-shod feet, pounding under the hail that began to fall more earnestly. These Invincibles were men with great endowments of stamina and brawn and metabolism.

Giants loped ahead with ladders, Invincibles with their ram. Arcane powders strewn from the balloon hung over the castle gate now, like a gray hand of doom.

For a moment, Tempest hesitated behind the ramparts inside the gate, wondering if he should stand with his men or hurry forward to slay Shostag.

Across the fields, Raj Ahten's artillerymen let catapults fly...

Raj Ahten watched approvingly as the catapults let fly shells bearing mineral powders of sulfur, potash, and magnesium that would mix with other salts in the cloud above the castle wall.

The firing of these shells was timed so that they would stream through the skies at the same moment his battering ram drew within a hundred yards of the drawbridge.

In the darkness and hail, the bowmen on Longmot's walls saw the catapults fly, and dropped for cover, losing the precious second they needed to choose a target from among Raj Ahten's Invincibles.

For long years Raj Ahten had nurtured his flameweavers, feeding them. On the mountains south of Aven, fires burned constantly so they might appease the Power that the sorcerers served. His flameweavers were, Raj Ahten believed, the most fearsome of their kind on earth.

And these flameweavers had made great studies in the use of explosive fires. It had long been known that when wheat and rice were poured into their granaries, the flame of a small lantern could ignite the air with explosive force. Miners pounding out coal deep beneath the mountains of Muyyatin had long known that coal dust would spark at the touch of their lamps, sometimes exploding so ferociously that entire passages within the mine would cave in.

For generations, people had raised borage flowers to give them courage, and children had delighted in throwing the dried stalks into the fire to hear the popping sounds they exuded as they exploded.

But no one had considered how to benefit from the explosive force of such agents. So Raj Ahten's flameweavers studied the phenomenon, learned to prepare and grind and mix the powders.

Now Raj Ahten watched in awe and satisfaction as years of nurturing his sorcerers and financing their grim study paid off. The skies all around went blacker than the deepest night as the final ropes of fire twisted down from heaven. Hail plummeted from the air, and the sound of thunder raged overhead.

The huge bonfire where the flameweavers stood with the beings they summoned suddenly snuffed out like a candle, the green walls collapsing, the creatures within drawing all light and heat into themselves.

The skies remained black, and in that sudden total darkness, no archer could have seen his target to shoot. For ten seconds, the skies gave no light.

Atop the castle walls, Orden's knights performed one last defiant act. They broke into a grim song.

Under the cover of that shadow, Raj Ahten's troops continued to race for the walls.

As the bowmen on the castle rose to shoot at unseen attackers, a blinding light shot from the center of the flameweavers' infernos.

The sorcerous blast roared like a living sun from flameweavers and salamanders, and a green flaming wave of fire swept from the hilltop, raced toward the castle.

In the sudden rush of light, one could see the terrified faces of Longmot's defenders. Brave boys unmanned, brave men trembling but still defiant.

As the wave of flame traveled inexorably toward Longmont, it touched the arcane powders in the sky.

Then the whole arch above the gate roared into an inferno. Raj Ahten's powders exploded in a cloud of fire that rose like a mushroom some hundred yards at the base, slowly ascending a mile into the air. The concussion threw defenders from the walls like rag dolls. Many fell, stunned. Others staggered back in abject terror.

But the great green wave of flame was not a mere spark to touch off the explosive powders. It was much more than that.

The wave of green fire smote the castle walls, washing over hundreds of defenders who still stood.

On the crowded walls, away from the initial explosion above the arch, warriors were crammed shoulder to shoulder in ranks six deep. The green flames rolled over them like the roaring waves of the sea.

Longmont had been the perfect castle for Raj Ahten to use his powders on. Its south face was but a hundred and twenty yards wide. Defenders had concentrated along the upper wall-walk in that hundred yards.

Raj Ahten's flameweavers incinerated perhaps some two thousand men. As the mushroom cloud rose, Raj Ahten's flameweavers now fell unconscious into the ruins of their own bonfire. No flames leapt in the remains of the fire. No smoke rose, for the flameweavers had drained the vast majority of the energies from it, and in an instant the great blackened logs had incinerated, become ash. So now the flameweavers lay dazed among the hot coals.

But the white-hot salamanders suddenly leapt, as if freed from a cage, rushing hungrily toward the castle.

The scene before the castle gate was a pandemonium. Under the cover of darkness, Raj Ahten's giants had made the wall. Raj Ahten's archers unleashed a hail of deadly arrows—a hail that proved almost unnecessary—while his Invincibles began to race up ladders to the tops of the battlements.

No defenders stood on that south wall now. The explosion and waves of fire had all but emptied the wall-walk.

The castle gate stood undefended. The east tower was a smoking ruin. But within the west tower, a few men tried one last trick. King Orden's men unleashed a rain of burning oil, pouring it down runnels within the tower. Stone gargoyles above the gate suddenly spewed the vile stuff as Raj Ahten's troops raced in with their battering ram.

Some of Raj Ahten's men faltered under the heat of that oil, but such was the speed of the men running that the head of the ram still struck the mantelet behind the castle gate.

All the energy of the spells bound within the wolf's head exploded against the mantelet, sending timbers of wood splintering in all directions. Defenders behind the mantelet shrieked and died under the onslaught.

And in Raj Ahten's mind, a peculiar flame began to dance.

He knew that he should restrain himself now, that it was wrong to destroy men so ruthlessly. It would have been better to use those he could, take their endowments. These men had virtues and strengths that should not have been wasted in such a brutish fashion. Their ugly, fleeting little lives could have been converted to a grander purpose.

Yet the smell of burning flesh suddenly enticed Raj Ahten, left him tingling in anticipation. Against all his better reason, he hungered for destruction.

Cedrick Tempest had been standing behind the mantelet, racing between two warhorses toward the Duke's kitchens, where Shostag lay hidden, when the green wave of flame touched the battlements and a great ball of fire filled the sky overhead.

Fortunately, he'd been staring down, running away from the blast. The heat and energy of it shoved him face-first into the paving stones, so that his helm bent close to his head. For one moment, he'd felt the searing heat of the blast crisp his clothing, burn his skin at a touch. Then he tried to draw a breath in the hot wind of the fireball's passage.

Horses kicked and fell under the impact of the blast. One of them landed half atop him, the body of a knight crushing him.

For a moment, Tempest fell unconscious. Found himself crawling among the stones, among the fallen horses. Men and parts of men rained from the castle walls, a gruesome storm of burned bodies, destroyed flesh.

In that moment, he gazed about in horror as a blackened boy plopped at his head, an arm fell near his hand. He knew then that he would not survive this day. Three days past, he'd sent his wife and children to Castle Groverman, hoping they'd be safe, hoping he'd live to see them again. He remembered how they'd looked as they left—his two toddlers riding the back of a goat, his wife carrying their babe in her arms, his oldest daughter trying to look mature, her lips trembling as she stifled tears of fear.

Tempest looked up to the castle walls, on the west. The walls were nearly empty. Those men still up looked dazed, confused.

Suddenly, a flaming white salamander leapt up on the merlon of the south tower, gazing about. Tempest hid his face, lest the pearly orbs of its eyes touch him.

A second, smaller explosion sounded fifty yards behind him. Tempest tried to scrabble to his knees, looked back. Raj Ahten's Invincibles had just hit the little mantelet barricade inside the gates with their ram. The barricade exploded, sending shards of woods flying, flaming out.

Any men who stood near that barricade blew back under the onslaught of fiery debris, yet painfully few men had been standing at all. A few knights were still up on their horses, but the fallen bodies of their comrades hemmed them in.

The battle was lost. All along the walls before him, defenders were down. Thousands of men screamed and writhed in pain. Arrows were hurtling over the castle walls now, a dark and deadly rain, dropping into wounded men.

Some few hundred men were rushing from the north side of the castle, trying to reach the gates, to put up some kind of defense. Yet Raj Ahten's Invincibles rushed to meet them by the thousands.

War dogs in grim leather masks raced through the streets, leaping over fallen knights and their horses, ripping apart any man or beast that lived, feeding as they slaughtered.

Tempest hoped still that he might find Shostag, slay him so that the serpent would form a head. Yet he felt stunned, confused. Blood dripped from his face.

He collapsed as Raj Ahten's war dogs raced over him, leaping through the fray.

49 The Earth King Strikes

Binnesman rode over the heath toward Gaborn and Iome, beneath the cloud of dirt and pollen raised by the feet of hundreds of thousands of men and cattle.

Gaborn stared at the wizard. It was the first time he had seen him in full daylight. His hair had gone white, and the baggy robes he wore had turned from a forest green to shades of scarlet and orange, like leaves that had changed color.

Gaborn rode so close to Iome that at times her knee touched his. He dared not try to call a halt as the wizard neared, his mount speeding over the purple heather. Too many people and animals moved in the great throng. Yet Gaborn wanted to talk to Binnesman, wanted to hear his report.

Binnesman stared at Gaborn's troops for a long moment, wheeled his horse to a near halt, and at last asked in surprise, “Do you plan to feed Raj Ahten's army with all these cattle, or trample him with them?”

“Whatever he desires,” Gaborn said.

Binnesman shook his head in wonder. “I heard the startled cries of birds here, felt the earth groan under the weight of feet. I thought that you had conjured an army. I thought it fortunate that I'd gone to the trouble of destroying the old Harm's Gorge Bridge, blocking Raj Ahten's hopes for reinforcements from the west.”

“I appreciate the gesture,” Gaborn said. “What can you tell me? Have Raj Ahten's reinforcements been spotted?”

“No,” Binnesman said, “nor do I think they are close.”

“Perhaps luck is with us,” Gaborn said.

“Perhaps so,” Binnesman said.

On the horizon, just along the line of green hills covered with trees, the blackness flashed again, much more fiercely than ever before—a line of blackness that split the sky from horizon to horizon.

Then a great pillar of fire roared slowly into the air, an explosion so massive, Gaborn had never seen the like. Something terrible was happening.

“Gaborn,” Binnesman said. “Close your eyes. Use your Earth Sight. Tell me what is happening.”

Gaborn closed his eyes. For a moment, he felt nothing, and he wondered if Binnesman had erred in asking him to use the Earth Sight.

Then, faintly, he felt the connections, felt the invisible lines of power between him and his people. He had only consciously chosen his father. Now he realized that he'd been choosing people for days. He'd chosen Myrrima that morning in the market, and he'd claimed Borenson. He'd chosen Chemoise when he saw her helping her father in the wagon, and had chosen her father.

Now, he felt all those he had claimed—Borenson, his father, Myrrima, Chemoise and her father. He felt...danger. Terrible danger. He feared that if they did not fight now, they would all die.

Strike, Gaborn silently willed them. Strike now, if you can!

Twenty seconds later, the sound of an explosion roared across the plain, shaking the earth, like distant thunder.

50 The Opening

At Castle Sylvarresta, Chemoise was getting dinner in the buttery when she felt the urge to strike. The desire came so quickly and so profoundly that she struck her hand against the table by reflex, smashing a round of cheese.

Myrrima tempered her response with reason. The thunders of war shook the manor house where she hid, and outside the sky was black. She couldn't strike against Raj Ahten's soldiers, knew she was no match. So she raced upstairs, hoping to hide beneath some lord's bed.

Six years past, Eremon Vottania Solette had chosen to live as a Dedicate to Salim al Daub because he had two dreams: The first was to see his daughter again. The second was to survive until his grace returned so he would waken among Raj Ahten's Dedicates, able to fight.

Yet over the years, Eremon's hopes faded. Raj Ahten's facilitators drained too much grace from him, left him near death. Robbed of flexibility, his arms and legs became useless, so that he lay as stiff as in rigor mortis.

Life became torment. The muscles in his chest contracted easily enough to let him inhale, but afterward for long moments he had to consciously relax in order to exhale. Sometimes, his heart would clench and not open, and he'd struggle silently, fearing death.

Unable to relax his lips, he spoke with difficulty, through clenched teeth. He could not chew. If he swallowed anything but the weak broth Raj Ahten's servants fed, it sat like lead in his stomach; the muscles in his gut could not contract enough to digest it.

To empty his bladder or pass a stool was an embarrassment, a process requiring hours of work.

His five endowments of stamina had become a burden, for they kept him alive long after he wished for death. Often he'd wished that King Sylvarresta would slay the men who served Eremon as Dedicates. But the King had been too soft, and so Eremon languished. Until last night. Now, at last, it seemed that death was within reach.

His fingers curled into useless fists. He had lain for years in a ball, bent at the hips. Though endowments of brawn kept him strong, some muscles in his legs and arms had atrophied. So he'd lain imprisoned in weakening flesh, knowing he'd never get vengeance, a helpless tool of Raj Ahten.

Thus it seemed miraculous when his first dream came true, when Raj Ahten decided to take him to Heredon and throw his failing body in front of King Sylvarresta. The deed was supposed to shame the good king. Raj Ahten often went to great lengths to shame a man.

It had seemed miraculous when Eremon saw his daughter Chemoise. She'd grown beautiful, no longer the freckle-faced child of his memory.

Seeing her had been enough. Eremon now felt his life was complete; hereafter he'd take a long slide into oblivion.

Yet one deed more lay before him. As he languished in the Dedicates” wagon, it began to shake as men climbed onto the buckboard, opened the door. Slowly, Eremon opened his eyes. In the dark wain, flies rose in clouds from forlorn Dedicates around him. Men and women were crammed together like salted minnows in a keg, lying on beds of moldering hay.

Facilitators in gray robes stood huffing by the open door. Shafts of sunlight stabbing into the room blinded him, but Eremon could see that they'd set a body against the wall. A new Dedicate. Another victim.

“What have we here?” the guard asked. “Metabolism?”

The facilitator nodded. Eremon could see the scars on the man—a dozen endowments of metabolism he'd taken, and now he served as a vector.

Raj Ahten's facilitators looked for a place to lay the newcorner. A blind Dedicate who slept next to Eremon rolled in his sleep, huddling for warmth next to a limp rag of a man.

Thus a slim spot opened beside Eremon, and now the facilitators muttered in their own tongue, “Mazza, halabdaoabo”—"Here, move this brick of camel dung.”

One man nudged Eremon's stiff legs aside, as if he were the brick in question. They lay the new Dedicate beside him.

Eremon stared into the fat face of the eunuch Salim al Daub, not five inches from his own. The fat man breathed oh so slowly, in the way of one who has given metabolism. The man who held Eremon's endowment lay next to him, defenseless. A vector for metabolism. A vector, Eremon suspected, for Raj Ahten.

Salim slept a deep slumber from which Eremon swore he'd never wake.

A guard sat in the wagon, an Invincible on a stool in the far corner, wearing a curved dagger and bored expression. Eremon could not risk moving quickly, could not attract attention, but, then, he'd not moved quickly in six years.

For long minutes Eremon slowly tried to unclench his right hand. This unclenching came hard. He felt too excited, too wrathful. A thrill took him, for if he could destroy this man, he would win a double boon—his own endowments back, while he robbed Raj Ahten of metabolism.

Yet outside, a battle raged. Darkness strobed the sky, glimpsed as shadows and light breaking into the wagon. Men were screaming on the castle walls.

Eremon wished that he still had his endowments of strength, wished he could throttle Salim with supernatural finesse. But those had been lost last night.

For many long minutes he worked to open his damned, useless hand.

Suddenly, as he struggled, Eremon felt a great burning desire. Strike. Strike now if you can!

And as the thought filled him, his hand suddenly unclenched as effortlessly as a flower opening.

51 On a Mountain Track

Borenson felt more than half-crazed when he rode from Bannisferre. He was possessed, only partly conscious. He imagined the havoc he'd wreak upon Raj Ahten's troops.

Coming from the north, he saw no signs of battle. Too many hills and mountains sheltered Longmont from his view. He could see no darkening skies, for the low clouds sweeping over the mountains blackened everything. Once he thought he heard cries, but he heard them distantly and thought them voices from some waking dream, a remnant of the fantasies of destruction that played in his mind.

South of the mountain village of Kestrel, he turned aside on his trail, spurred his mount over the forest track, hoping to make better time. He had hunted these hills often with his king. He was a bit north of Groverman's hunting retreat, a lodge both large and comfortable.

He did not fear wights or beasts of the wood. He feared only that he'd reach Longmont too late.

As he climbed the mountains, the day turned cold. An icy drizzle soaked him, made the mountain trail slippery. Soon rain turned to sleet and snow, so that he lost more time by taking this trail than if he'd stayed to the road.

High in the hills where aspens bordered a glade, he saw sign of a reaver-tracks crossing the wooded trail. The reaver had dragged something heavy through here within the past few hours, just before dawn. Red blood clots lay on the ground, with bits of oily synovial fluid from a cracked joint. The scuff marks where the creature had been dragged still had tiny balls of clay rolled in them. Very recent marks.

The imprint of the reaver's track was nearly three feet long, two wide. Four toes. A female. A big female.

Borenson stayed on his horse as he studied the trail. Among a jumble of sharp stones lay some black hairs. It looked as if the reaver had dragged a carcass across the road, perhaps a boar. But the hair was too fine for a boar. Borenson sniffed. Bear, definitely. A big male. As musky as the scent of Dunnwood's boars, but not as dirty.

Borenson sniffed again, tried to catch the scent of the reaver, but smelled nothing. Reavers were uncanny in their ability to mimic the scent of their surroundings.

Borenson looked up the trail, wishing that he could track the reaver—if only for a moment.

Myrrima could be in danger. Mostly likely, Raj Ahten would lay siege for a bit, spend the day resting, preparing for battle. His occupying army should arrive soon.

Borenson feared he couldn't possibly reach the castle before the siege, couldn't help Myrrima.

Then he had to consider the challenge of hunting the reaver. She'd be up in the woods, near the mountaintop, feeding on the bear. The ground here was too cluttered for a man to negotiate easily: aspen limbs had blown from trees; underbrush grew thick and tall after a long summer.

Catching her would be hard. Reavers could sense movement, feel sound as a trembling. The only way to get close to one was to sneak, ever so slowly, letting footfalls come at uneven intervals.

For a moment, Borenson considered following the reaver.

Distantly, as if a voice called from far off, he felt a powerful compulsion. Strike. Strike now if you can!

His king needed him. Myrrima needed him.

He spurred his charger over the mountain trails as snow began to pile, the first of the season. The breath of Borenson's warhorse came in tiny swirls of cloud. His heart pounded.

Tomorrow is the first day of Hostenfest, the first day of the hunt, Borenson realized, and he started thinking about this in order to keep calm. It would have been a good hunt, with snow falling. The boars would have moved to the valleys, leaving tracks at the edges of glades. He'd have bet with Derrow and Ault as to which of their lords would first put a spear into a pig.

He longed for the yapping of dogs, the deep calls of the horns. The nightly feasts beside the fires.

But I must strike now, he thought, spurring his mount faster. He wished to strike, wished he had a target.

Again he worried whether he'd killed all the Dedicates at Castle Sylvarresta. I've struck as I can, he told himself. He'd killed all he'd seen, but some might have been taken from the keep into the city, so that invisible lines of power still tied Raj Ahten to Dedicates there.

A battle between Runelords could be complex. The number of endowments played a great part in a battle, as did the skill and training of the warriors.

But a balance of traits was also important. Raj Ahten had so many endowments, it seemed almost futile to slay his Dedicates. But a strong Runelord stripped of wit and grace could become a mere lout, nothing in battle. Take away his metabolism, and though a Runelord had ten thousand endowments of brawn, he moved so slowly compared to a balanced soldier that he might as well be a coat rack; he became a “warrior of unfortunate proportion.”

By killing men in Castle Sylvarresta, Borenson had robbed Raj Ahten of many endowments of grace. The Runelord had been hoarding it, had drawn it from hundreds of men at the castle. Which meant he felt overbalanced in brawn. This would leave him muscle-bound, lacking agility. Perhaps, given such imbalance, King Orden might stand a chance against the Wolf Lord.

So Borenson hoped he'd accomplished his job. He couldn't bear to think his incompetence might cost Orden this battle. Couldn't bear—couldn't stomach the shame that coursed through him when he thought of King Sylvarresta and Iome, still alive.

Sparing those two had cost the lives of dozens of others. Sparing them lent power to Raj Ahten.

A small amount of power, true. But if Borenson and some other assassins struck Raj Ahten's Dedicates at the right time, the Wolf Lord might reach some unfortunate proportion.

Today I hunt Raj Ahten, Borenson told himself, and he let a killing mood seep through every muscle and bone, blanket him like a cloak.

Today I am death. Today I hunt him, and nothing else.

In his imagination, he practiced killing, preparing his every fiber, his every response for cold murder. He imagined how it would be when he met Raj Ahten's scouts here, miles north of Longmont, along the road. He'd ride them down, impale them on his lance so that their warm blood washed him in a wave, leaving no witnesses. Then he'd steal a uniform and ride pell-mell to the battle lines, bursting in on Raj Ahten, as if delivering a message. His message would be death.

The warriors of Inkarra claimed that War was a dark lady, and that those men who served her best gained her favor. They claimed she was a Power, like Earth or Air, Fire or Water.

Yet in the Kingdoms of Rofehavan, it was said that War was but one aspect of Fire, and that no one should serve it.

But the damned Inkarrans should know, Borenson thought. They were masters of war.

Borenson had never sought the Dark Lady's favor, had never addressed her before, hut now a prayer formed on his lips, an ancient prayer he'd heard from others but never dared voice himself.

“Take me in your arms, Dark Lady, take me. Wrap me in grave clothes, and let your sweet breath lie cold on my cheeks. Let darkness steal over me, and fill me with your power. Today, I call to you. Today, I am death.”

As he rode, Borenson began to smile, then to laugh a deep, throaty chuckle that seemed to rumble from someplace outside him, to well up from the hills or from the trees.

52 A Perfect Day

Orden woke in pain, unable to tell how long ago he had passed out. The blood around his mouth was still wet, tasted coppery on his tongue. Any moment, Mendellas Orden thought, Raj Ahten will kick me again, begin pummeling me to death.

But nothing happened. Orden lay weak, at the edge of consciousness, waiting for a killing blow that never came.

With his many endowments of stamina, Orden could sustain tremendous damage. His wounds, as extensive as they were now, would not lead to his death. Weeks of convalescence, perhaps, but not death.

That is what he feared.

He opened his good eye, tried to see. The sun high above shone very dim through clouds; then the sky went black.

The glade nearby was empty.

He swallowed, struggled to think. He'd heard the faint ching of ring mail as he passed out. Realized numbly that it could have been the sound of Raj Ahten lunging away.

Orden looked around the field at the edge of the knoll. The wind faintly swayed the pines; the grass sat as if bent in a stiff gale. A flock of starlings hung in the air like thistledown, not five spans from him. But Orden was living so quickly, the wind seemed to blow slowly in comparison.

Raj Ahten had fled.

He's left me, Orden realized, because he suspects I'm part of a serpent. He's left me so he can attack the castle. Dimly, he heard a roar like the sound of the sea. Loud sounds, as if tides surged and churned. In his quickened state, the world of sound had vastly changed.

Now he recognized that these must be loud noises, must be cries of war. With one hand, he pushed himself up, gazed over the rolling slope of Tor Loman to Castle Longmont.

What he saw horrified him.

Beyond a curtain of rain or sleet, a huge fire raged on the hillside above Longmont. From that otherworldly fire, flameweavers and salamanders had drawn terrible energies, sending a green wave of flame screaming across the downs to the castle. Frowth giants lumbered over the fields carrying great scaling ladders. The mastiffs of war, with their iron collars and fierce masks, boiled like a dark tide toward the castle gates.

Everywhere in the blackness Raj Ahten's Invincibles raced like dark roaches for the castle, shields high to deflect arrows, weapons drawn.

Raj Ahten's forces were storming Longmont. The sky above the castle was black, ropes of twisted fire funneling from the sky.

King Orden watched from Tor Loman. With his endowments of metabolism, it seemed the skies had gone black for long minutes; one could only discern the dim ropes of flame winding down from heaven—coiled and churning like the winds within a tornado.

He could do nothing to help. He could not charge into battle, could barely crawl.

Quietly, he began to sob. Raj Ahten had taken everything from him—his past, his present. Now his future.

In the darkness, Mendellas turned and painfully struggled up the rough stone steps of the tower to the Eyes of Tor Loman.

To block the agony of his ruined limbs from his mind, he tried to remember good times. The feasts in his palace in Mystarria during midwinter, on Alms Day.

Always the fogs washed over the green swales on those winter mornings, and from the pinnacles of the great tower one could look down over the marshes as if one were a Sky Lord in a ship of cloud—the gauzy fog so pure. In places, lesser towers of the Courts of Tide could be seen, or the greens of distant pine forests on the western hills, or to the south the shimmering waters of the Caroll Sea reflecting the sky.

On such mornings, he'd always loved to stand on his own observatory in the tower, and watch the geese in their winter migration come winging below him in dark Vs.

He conjured the memory of a perfect day long ago, when he'd descended from his tower, invigorated at dawn, gone to his wife in her bedchamber.

He'd planned to fetch her up to the observatory, to show her the sunrise. Weeks before, an early frost had killed the roses in her garden, and he'd planned to show her how the sun crept up the horizon in the color of the softest blushing rose, a rose that painted the fog for miles around.

But when he reached her bedchamber, she had only smiled at his request, then devised other entertainments.

They'd made love on the tiger-skin rug before the hearth.

By the time they finished, the sun had been up for hours. The poor of Mystarria had gathered in the streets before the castle to collect the winter's alms.

Thus the King and Queen had been required to go out in the afternoon, to spend the remainder of the day riding the huge wains through the street, where they passed out meat, turnips, dried fruits, and silver to those who stood in need.

Orden and his wife had labored hard, stopping often to exchange smiles, or to let a touch linger.

Orden hadn't thought of that day for years, though every sight, sound, and smell remained perfect in his memory. With twenty endowments of wit, Orden could relive such moments at will. It had been a magic day. It was the day, he discovered weeks later, he'd got his wife with her first child, Gaborn.

Ah, how he longed for her still.

As Orden reached the top of the Eyes of Tor Loman, the light reappeared in the heavens, and he stared in horror to see the monstrous wall of fire that Raj Ahten's beasts had hurled against the castle. The skies were painted with strange powders—gray and black, the yellow of sulfur, something red.

The vast, seething green wave of fire seemed to roll through the sky slowly from this distance, at the pace he lived. For what seemed agonizing minutes, Orden crawled across the stone steps.

As he crawled, Orden wondered why Raj Ahten had come here. Certainly not to see down into Longmont. The view here offered nothing.

No, something else had alarmed the Wolf Lord.

So King Orden gazed east, saw dust rising from the plains as if they were aflame, the light shining from shields. An army marching from Castle Groverman.

Despite the immense dust cloud, it could not have been a large army, Orden knew. Thirty thousand commoners come to his aid, marching across a dusty heath, nothing more. They'd be no match for Raj Ahten's Invincibles.

But Orden knew his son marched at the head of that army. Certainly Gaborn would not be fool enough to attack Raj Ahten. No, this had to be a ruse. Orden smiled. Against a man of Raj Ahten's wit, misinformation could be a potent weapon. His son was fighting as best he could.

In almost every contest, victory came to those who refused to be subdued. The Prince was not cowed.

A good ruse, this, Orden told himself. Raj Ahten believes Longmont was taken days ago. Now he sees an army come to smash him. King Orden only hoped the ruse would work.

And a darker fear crept into his mind. Certainly Gaborn would not attack, would he? Would he?

Yes, he would, Orden realized. If he believed that by doing so he could save his father. Didn't I tell him to attack? Orden thought. Didn't I tell him to sweep down the hill with his knights?

Orden was filled with dread. This was a boy who risked himself to save enemy Dedicates. This was a boy who had become an Oath-Bound Lord.

Orden didn't doubt. Though he'd die in the attempt, Gaborn would certainly attack!

At that moment, the great wave smashed into the castle, sent pillars of fire racing into the sky. Orden could see the horrible damage it wrought, men flying over the walls like flaming birds, could see giants and war dogs, Invincibles and archers all rushing for the castle gates.

Yet he could not feel the stirring within that marked the death of a Dedicate. None of the Dedicates in his serpent ring burned in that flame. Surely the castle would fall.

Deep inside, he felt an overpowering urge. Strike. Strike now as best you can!

Orden recognized that he himself might hold the key to insuring that this great fiasco of a battle served some higher purpose. The men in the castle were joined in a serpent ring, and if the castle were overrun, the men in the ring would all be forced to fight, none drawing metabolism from the others. Eventually one of them would die, and a serpent would form. But who would be at its head?

Certainly not that idiot Dreis, Orden hoped.

No. It had to be Shostag. Formidable, venerable in his own crude way. A fierce warrior.

Orden crawled to the edge of the observatory, looked down.

The Eyes of Tor Loman perched on the edge of a promontory, and on the west edge, huge rocks thrust up from the ground. There, Orden thought. I will hit there.

He threw himself from the tower. It was time for the serpent ring to break. Now let Shostag the Axeman earn his lands and title. Let Gaborn live to inherit his birthright.

And let me return to the arms of the woman I love.

With so many endowments of metabolism, Orden seemed to fall slowly, almost as if he floated to his death.

53 The Fluttering

A pillar of fire rose into the far-off skies like a mushroom, and the sound of thunder rumbled over the plain.

Yet Gaborn felt something far more disturbing—distantly, distantly he felt a single heartbeat flutter and fail.

It tore him, dismayed him, far more than that flash of light or the groaning of the earth.

He swayed in his saddle, whispered, “Father.”

Somehow, somehow Gaborn feared that his wish to strike at Raj Ahten had caused his father's death.

It had not been the will of the earth to strike. Gaborn had felt no compulsion greater than his own anger. Yet he'd given the command.

No, Gaborn thought. I don't believe it. I don't believe I caused it. How can I know he's dead until I've seen it?

The wizard Binnesman turned to Gaborn, infinite sadness in his eye, and whispered, “You called for your father. Is he gone, then?”

“I...don't know,” Gaborn said.

“Use the Earth Sight. Is he gone?”

Gaborn felt inside himself, tried to reach out to his father, but could feel nothing. He nodded.

Binnesman whispered so that only Gaborn could hear. “So the mantle passes. Until now you have been but a prince. Now you must become a king in deed.”

Gaborn slumped forward in his saddle, sick to his heart. “What? What can I do? How can I stop this?” Gaborn asked. “If I am Earth King, what good can I do?”

“Much good. You can call the earth to your aid,” Binnesman said. “It can help protect you. Hide you. You only need to learn how to do so.”

“I want Raj Ahten dead,” Gaborn said blankly.

“The earth will not kill,” Binnesman whispered. “Its strength lies in nurturing life, protecting. And Raj Ahten is backed by other Powers. You must think, Gaborn. How can you best protect your people? All mankind is in jeopardy, not just these few at Longmont. Your father is but one man, and I fear he chose to place himself in jeopardy.”

“I want Raj Ahten dead! Now!” Gaborn shouted, not at Binnesman, but to the earth that had promised to protect him. Yet he knew the earth was not at fault. Gaborn had felt a premonition that his father was in jeopardy. Yet he had not heeded that warning, had not pulled his father from Longmont.

Gaborn felt ill to his heart.

He was twenty miles from Longmont. His force horse could cover that distance in less than half an hour. But if he did, what would it gain him? He'd lose his life.

He considered spurring his horse on, anyway.

Beside him, Iome seemed to read his thoughts. She touched his knee with her hand. “Don't,” she whispered. “Don't go.”

Gaborn looked at the ground. At his horse's feet, gray-green grasshoppers flew up in fright, fat grasshoppers, sluggish at the end of the autumn.

“Can we help them at Longmont, do you think?” Gaborn asked Binnesman.

The wizard shrugged. Worry lined his face. “You help their cause even now, with this ruse. But do you mean, can you defeat Raj Ahten? Not with these troops. The battle goes ill for Longmont—as it would for you, should you attack too soon. Your strength lies not in slaughter, but as a defender. Let your men kick up more dust as they walk. Then we will see what happens...”

They rode on in palpable silence for two long minutes. All that time, Gaborn felt torn, fey. He blamed himself for his father's death, for the death of Rowan, for the deaths of all the Dedicates at Castle Sylvarresta. Such a toll, such a heavy price the world was paying for his weakness. For he felt sure that if he were stronger, if he had just done something different, turned left when he'd turned right, he could have saved them all.

A strange noise began to rumble across the plains—a single note, a cry like none Gaborn had ever heard or thought to imagine. It rolled over the plains like a distant shout.

Raj Ahten's death cry! he thought.

But almost immediately, it was followed by another such cry, echoing over the heath.

Binnesman's mount kicked and raised its ears, just as heavy wet drops of sleet began to splash over the ground. With an ache in his heart, Gaborn watched the wizard spur his horse toward Longmont, and wished he could follow.

“Come, Gaborn, bring your army!” Binnesman shouted. “The earth is in pain!”

Then he saw—the sleet ahead had begun to fall in great sheets from the sky, watering the heath. No far-seer would be able to pierce the oncoming deluge. If Gaborn's ruse had not worked already, it could have no further effect.

With a shout, Gaborn raised his fist, called the charge.

54 Shostag

Shostag the Axeman hid in the Duke's cellars when he felt the quickening. A sense of profound energy tingled through every inch of his skin, and he leapt into action.

So Orden had died. Shostag wondered how it had happened.

Shostag had outwitted dozens of Runelords in his short life. He was not a man of deep understanding or broad study, but he kept his eyes open, reached decisions fast. Most people assumed that because fat covered his bearlike muscles, he was also dull-witted. Not so.

As he clutched his huge double-headed axe, he raced up the steps and burst through the cellar doors. He did so with calculated efficiency, hitting doors no more quickly than if he'd run full-tilt. He even slipped the bar from a door as he exited, so the door burst open from the impact of his blow.

Then he raced through the buttery of the Duke's kitchens, out the kitchen doors, and to the green before the great hall.

Hundreds of Raj Ahten's Invincibles were in the green, battling the defenders of Longmont. War dogs raced among them, huge mottled gray horrors in red leather masks. Along the west wall he saw a fiery salamander, and along all the walls were men, burning or fallen in battle.

A few of Orden's archers along the north castle walls were firing into the green, for his men were faring so poorly that any arrow would likely strike Raj Ahten's men without a chance of hitting a defender.

But even the fastest war dog or Invincible in the group could hardly move at an eighth of Shostag's speed. They seemed little more than statues. Here in the green, Shostag could see no sign of Raj Ahten.

Shostag took his great iron axe and began moving through the crowd, swinging in complex arcs, lopping the heads off of Raj Ahten's Invincibles in almost a casual manner, cleaving dogs in two, dodging arrows and whatnot.

He'd hardly murdered two hundred of the bastards when he spotted a swift movement at the gates. Raj Ahten himself, rushing toward him.

The Wolf Lord wore no helm, but bore a battle-axe in one hand and a scimitar in the other. Or at least Shostag imagined it was the Wolf Lord. His face shone like the sun, but he had a hideously deformed shoulder. All the easier to fight him, Shostag imagined.

Raj Ahten took one look at Shostag, smiled. “So, King Orden is dead, and you think you are next, do you?”

Shostag jutted his chin, and spun his huge axe with a flourish. “You know, that arm would look better if I hacked off the rest of it for you.”

“Come give it a try,” Raj Ahten urged. The Wolf Lord was studying the swath of corpses, some of them still in the process of falling, strewn in a path from the kitchens.

With a start, Raj Ahten dashed left, darted up the narrow road to some lord's manor, away from Shostag. As he sped along the street, he slashed the throat of any defender within reach, shoved his own men from his path.

Shostag leapt after him. He saw Raj Ahten's plan.

Shostag was at the pinnacle of twenty men, each vectoring metabolism to him. And several of those men had taken endowments of metabolism before, so that Shostag now ran with the speed of forty. If Raj Ahten could find a man in the serpent and slaughter him, he'd break the line of Shostag's power, “slice the serpent” in two.

By doing so, he'd give two separate warriors high metabolism, create two serpents' heads, neither able to strike as quickly as Shostag could now. Raj Ahten was hunting for Dedicates.

If Shostag was lucky, Raj Ahten would find a man near the tail of the serpent. Killing the tail would still leave Shostag with high metabolism, leave him with the speed of something close to forty.

But Shostag preferred not to rely on luck.

Raj Ahten had glanced at the corpses strewn across the yard, seen that Shostag came from the kitchens. Now Raj Ahten suspected that the Dedicates wouldn't be hiding in the Dedicates' Keep, hut were secreted around the castle. Raj Ahten ran to the nearest unsecured building.

Shostag followed, rounded a corner too fast. His center of gravity kept him traveling so that he bowled into half a dozen of the castle's defenders. He scraped his leg on some man's pike. Regained his feet. Ran.

The air felt heavy, hard to breathe. Shostag did not have the endowments of brawn necessary to easily draw breath with such high metabolism. His head spun; he felt dizzy.

Raj Ahten turned at a doorway leading to the lord's apartments, raced into the manor. Shostag followed.

Shostag was a Wolf Lord, with endowments of scent from three dogs. He could smell better than most men ever dreamed, and men are such smelly brutes. Thus he wasn't surprised to enter the room and see Raj Ahten tearing at the door of a cedar wardrobe. Like Shostag, Raj Ahten didn't need to see a man to know that one was hiding in the room.

Shostag rushed Raj Ahten, axe whirling.

Raj Ahten spun, blocked Shostag's blow with his own battle-axe; sparks flew from the weapons. The iron handle of Raj Ahten's smaller axe bent. Shostag marveled that his blow didn't shatter Raj Ahten's arm. With deadly grace Raj Ahten swung his icy scimitar beneath Shostag's guard, pierced Shostag's belly with a blow of cold horror.

But Shostag was no commoner, dismayed at the sight of his own guts. He had more stamina than most lords, the stamina of wolves who hunted the winter woods for bear and boar.

The little prickling wound only angered him, so that Shostag whirled his mighty axe with both hands, spun and delivered a blow that should have cleaved the Wolf Lord in two.

But Raj Ahten threw himself back, dropping his bent axe, dodging Shostag's blow, smashing the finely wrought cedar door of the wardrobe, falling into it himself.

A Dedicate lay beneath Raj Ahten, half buried by splintered cedar, crouching among some maids' dresses, a warhammer in one hand, shield in another. Sir Owlsforth, a warrior five men down the line of defenders from Shostag in the serpent.

If Shostag didn't kill Raj Ahten now, he'd never get another chance. He drew back his great axe, preparing to cleave the Wolf Lord in two.

At that moment, Raj Ahten plunged two fingers through the eye slits of Owlsforth's helm, into his brain.

Shostag felt a piercing nausea, and watched in horror as Raj Ahten leaned away from the falling axe and suddenly became an indistinct blur, leaping toward him.

Shostag knew nothing more.

55 The Cry

Raj Ahten did not trouble himself with finding the heads of the serpent. He followed his keen nose through buildings, and in a few moments found several more men hiding, slaughtered six more Dedicates. As he did so, he also murdered another sixty of Longmot's defenders. He half-hoped to find Jureem here.

The battle was winding down. King Orden was dead, most of the defenders. Seldom had Raj Ahten dealt a foe such a fell beating. Never had he personally spilled so much good blood.

Once, he came upon a man running from a building with uncommon speed—a nobleman. He recognized the Earl of Dreis by the gray horse and four arrows on his shield, more than by any finery. Another head to a serpent.

A fine-looking warrior, the Earl was. Spooky gray eyes, tall and noble in every mannerism.

Ahten slowed enough to hamstring the fellow, then slashed the Earl's throat as he fell.

By now, Raj Ahten had the battle well in hand. He stood on the rise below the Dedicates' Keep, perhaps fifty paces from the two hundred or so knights who kept guard there.

He stopped for a moment to survey the battlefield. Down below, his men had taken the courtyard. The walls were almost empty of defenders.

Now Raj Ahten's men raced along the wall-walks to the east, while a trio of salamanders cleared the walls to the west. Everywhere the cries of dying men arose, insubstantial to his ears. The scents of blood and smoke and sulfurous powders carried on the wind.

Little remained for him to do.

He raced for the Dedicates' Keep, thinking to slaughter the two hundred warriors who stood guard, when a great feeling of anxiousness swept over him, that familiar twist of the stomach that accompanies the death of a Dedicate.

Eremon Vottania Solette throttled Salim al Daub. It takes a long time to strangle a man, particularly if he has endowments of stamina. Eremon found the job immensely difficult. Sweat began to bead on his brow, and his fingers grew wet, making his fingers slip.

Salim didn't fight, remained unconscious. Yet he turned his head slowly, uncomfortably, tried even in his stupor to escape. His legs began to kick feebly, rhythmically. Salim's lips went blue, and his tongue bulged. His eyes opened in blind panic.

The guard didn't see, for the man stood gazing out the rough door of the wagon to watch the storming of the castle. Among the stinking, ill-kept Dedicates, the silent struggle attracted no notice. The rhythmic kick of Salim's feet seemed but a background noise, the shuffle of a sleepy Dedicate as he sought comfort among the moldy hay.

Nearby a deaf Dedicate watched Eremon, eyes wide in fear. This was no knight brought to embarrass a Northern lord. This was one of Raj Ahten's own Dedicates, a fellow who vectored hundreds of endowments of hearing to the Wolf Lord. For his service, he was treated worse than a dog. The Dedicate had reason to hate his lord, had reason to wish him dead. Eremon held the deaf man's eye as he strangled Salim, silently hoped the man would not raise a cry.

Salim kicked once, hard, made a pounding noise with his boot.

At the wagon door the guard spun, saw Salim's feet kicking. The guard lunged forward, sliced Eremon's arm with his curved knife, hacking it off.

Blood spurted from Eremon's arm, just below the elbow, and the severed stump burned like fire. But his hand, the hand that had been robbed of grace, that could hardly unclench over these many years, clung to Salim's throat like death itself, fingers locked on the big eunuch's esophagus.

The guard snatched at it, tried to pull the severed hand from Salim's throat. Eremon managed to kick the guard behind the knee, so that he fell back among the Dedicates.

In that moment, Eremon felt a great easing in his chest as grace flowed through him, felt his heart and muscles unclench completely for the first time in many years. Salim was dead.

Eremon gasped a deep breath, tasted in one last gasp the sweet air of freedom. Then the guard was on him.

In a moment of vertigo, the world slowed profoundly for Raj Ahten. The deep-toned clickings of the Earl of Dreis' dying shout now came as a call for aid to his ears, and Raj Ahten found himself sliding on his feet as he tried to stop before the crowd of soldiers who guarded the Dedicates' Keep.

He realized he had only his normal six endowments of metabolism. Some of these guards might nearly equal him.

He shouted a battle cry of such incredible volume that no human tongue had ever matched it. He had begun thinking only that he might dishearten a few warriors.

But as he shouted, the effect astonished even him.

The men began to drop to their knees, grasping in pain at their helmets. The walls of the keep behind them shuddered and vibrated, dust cascading from cracks in the stone as if the walls were a rug, and his Voice a stick that beat it.

The Wolf Lord had endowments of Voice from thousands, and brawn that let him expel air with incredible force. Yet even he had never guessed that his cry might carry such power.

So astonished was he that as Raj Ahten shouted, he shaped his call, lowering the tone several octaves until stone and gravel chipped away from the wall.

Then he shouted anew, increased his volume, chipping deeper at the stone, turning his voice into a fey weapon.

It was written in Taif that the Emir Moussat ibn Hafir once had his warriors raise such a cry. In the deserts of Dharmad, the brick walls of the city of Abanis had crumbled under such a sound, letting the Emir send his cavalry through the rubble.

But then the sound had come from the voices of a thousand trained warriors, crying as one, and the city walls had been made of weak adobe brick.

It was called the Death Cry of Abanis, a sound legend said could rend stone much as certain singers could train themselves to shatter crystal.

Now, Raj Ahten raised such a shout alone.

The effect felt gratifying. Before him, warriors dropped as if clubbed, many falling in shock, some dropping in death. Blood poured from men's ears and from their noses.

Behind them, as Raj Ahten reached his crescendo, the huge stone tower of the Dedicates' Keep suddenly cracked, rending nearly from top to bottom.

Yet the tower did not quite crumble or fall.

Raj Ahten raised the shout again, playing his voice back and forth over the stone, experimenting with various harmonic frequencies, until he struck just the right chord.

This time the tower crumbled like magic, falling in a mighty crash that pummeled the earth, raising a cloud of dust. Great stones dropped, slamming into prostrate defenders who had guarded the tower's steps.

Raj Ahten turned, looked on the walls of Castle Longmont. In places, the walls of the castle had cracked. The Duke's Keep looked as if artillery had struck it, blasting off huge chunks of stone, crumbling a windowsill, toppling gargoyles.

Those men who still could gazed at Raj Ahten in horror.

Defeated. Longmont lay defeated.

Raj Ahten stood, gloating in his power. The King of the Earth may come, he thought, but I am mightier than the earth.

Everyone, even Raj Ahten's own men, watched him in terror. Among his Invincibles, few had been damaged by the Death Cry. Raj Ahten's Invincibles each had a minimum of five endowments of stamina—and, apparently, that was enough for them to withstand the destructive power of his Voice.

But many commoners who had defended the walls had punctured eardrums or had lost consciousness.

In the moment that followed, Raj Ahten's Invincibles finished their swordplay, slaughtering those who resisted, dragging those who surrendered down into the courtyard.

When the defenders of Longmont were disarmed, their armor taken, fewer than four hundred men remained. To Raj Ahten's pleasure, the others had all died, either in battle or from his shout.

On the castle walls, the salamanders stood a moment, gazing longingly at the prisoners. But with the battle won and no more prey to be had, they began to waver, until their fiery forms became a mere shimmering heat, and were gone back to the netherworld from whence they had been drawn.

For a long moment, Raj Ahten merely stood, surveying the scene, tasting his victory.

He addressed the survivors simply. “I need information. To the man who supplies an answer first, I'll grant life. The rest of you shall die. Here is my question: Where are my forcibles?”

To their credit, most of the knights refused to answer. Some shouted curses, but half a dozen shouted variations of “Gone! Orden sent them away!”

Six men tried to purchase their lives. Some had blood trickling from ears. Some wept. Some were young men who had never faced danger. Others were family men, perhaps, who worried for the welfare of wives and children. Raj Ahten recognized a captain who had been made a Dedicate just days before, but he did not know the captain's name. One silver-haired old fellow, Raj Ahten imagined, was just a coward.

Raj Ahten called them forward, led them to the drawbridge while his Invincibles moved in for the slaughter.

“You six men,” Raj Ahten said. “One of you has saved your life, but I do not know yet who among you shall live. Perhaps one shall live, perhaps all...” He knew full well who had spoken first—the old coward. But he dared not admit it. He needed them all to answer, needed to learn if his source spoke truthfully. “So, I must ask you another question. Where did he send my forcibles?”

“We don't know. His guards rode off without telling,” the men answered in unison.

Two men had been slow to answer. Raj Ahten lunged forward with his saber, cut them down, perhaps with too much enthusiasm. He'd feared that the forcibles would be gone, that this attack had been a waste of his time.

“The odds narrow,” he whispered viciously. The four remaining men watched in terror. Beads of sweat formed on their brows. “Tell me, when did the forcibles leave?”

Two more men hesitated. The captain said, “Just after Orden's men arrived.”

A fourth man nodded silent agreement, eyes blazing, becoming suddenly disheartened. The older fellow, the coward. He'd been too late to speak, he knew.

Raj Ahten slaughtered two more men, left only the last two soldiers. The captain still wore the colors of Longmont. Perhaps the man would make a valuable spy. The older coward was dressed in pigskins, a gamy fellow of the woods. Raj Ahten suspected that he did not really know his answers firsthand, and so was forced to merely concur.

“Where is Gaborn Orden?” Raj Ahten asked. The man in pigskins had no answer. Raj Ahten could see it in his face.

“He rode into the castle at dawn, then rode out again just after,” the captain of Longmont answered.

From the castle, the last agonized cries of dying prisoners sounded, the grunting and screams. The old man in pigskins cringed, knowing he would be next, while the captain sweated heavily, panting.

The captain had that inward gaze that men of conscience get when doing evil. Raj Ahten did not trust him to answer another question honestly. You could only push a man so far.

Raj Ahten stepped forward, slashed the old fellow who wore pigskins in half.

He considered killing the captain of Longmont. He had not wanted to leave any witness to tell the secret of his magic powders, or to reveal his battle tactics. It would be a small matter to gut the fellow.

Yet the captain might serve a greater purpose. By telling how Raj Ahten had destroyed the walls of Longmont with a mere battle cry, this lone survivor would spread fear across the kingdoms of the North.

All the Northern castles, all the proud fortresses that had stood for thousands of years as men battled the Toth and the nomen and each other—all were useless now. Death traps.

The men of the North should know. They should be prepared to surrender.

“I'm most grateful,” Raj Ahten told the captain. “You've won your life. You served as my Dedicate once. Now you shall serve me again. I want you to tell others what happened here. When men ask how you survived the battle, tell them: Raj Ahten left me to testify of his power.”

The soldier nodded weakly. His legs shook. The captain wouldn't be able to stand much longer. Raj Ahten put a hand on his shoulder, and asked casually, “Do you have a family, children?”

The man nodded, burst into tears, and turned away.

“What is your name?”

“Cedrick Tempest,” the young man cried.

Raj Ahten smiled. “How many children, Cedrick?”

“Three...girls and a boy.”

Raj Ahten nodded appreciatively. “You think yourself a coward, Cedrick Tempest. You think yourself disloyal. But today, you were loyal to your children, yes? 'Children are gems, and he who has many is rich indeed.' You will live for them?”

Cedrick nodded vigorously.

“There are many kinds of heroes, many forms of loyalty,” Raj Ahten said. “Do not regret your decision.”

He turned to walk back to his pavilion on the hill, stopped to clean the gore from the blade of his scimitar on a dead man's cape. He considered his next move. His forcibles were gone—to Mystarria, perhaps, or any of a hundred keeps. His reinforcements were late. An army was marching on him.

Yet he had a new weapon, one that might yet win the day, beyond all hope or expectation.

The men closest to Raj Ahten had taken great damage from his cry, as did men with but a few endowments of stamina. Raj Ahten dared not use his weapon too near his own men. Which meant that if he sought to kill Gaborn by the power of his Voice, he'd have to stand alone.

A few small flakes of snow began to fall from the leaden skies, swirling at his feet. He had not noticed how cold it had become.

He studied the damage to Castle Longmont from outside. Cracks had broken the walls, splitting the stone in numerous places. Massive walls of black stone nearly a hundred feet tall still loomed above him. The foundation stones were thirty feet thick, fourteen feet wide, twelve feet tall. Each stone weighed thousands of tons. This fortress had stood for centuries, indomitable. He'd seen the wards of earth-binding on its gates.

His flameweavers' most powerful spells could hardly pierce the walls. His catapults hadn't chipped them. Yet his voice had rent some of the massive foundation stones.

Even Raj Ahten marveled. It was not clear yet what he was becoming. He'd taken Castle Sylvarresta with nothing more than the power of his glamour. Now he found that his Voice was becoming a potent, dazzling weapon.

In his realms to the south, Dedicates died from moment to moment, while new ones were recruited. The configuration of his attributes was always in flux. But of one thing he felt certain: More endowments were being added than were lost. He was being added upon. Becoming the Sum of All Men.

Perhaps now was the time to face this young fool—the Earth King and his armies. Raj Ahten glowered.

He turned and gave a great roar, threw his voice against the near wall. “I am mightier than the earth!”

Longmont cracked—the whole southern wall shuddered. Cedrick Tempest fell, too, running from the gate, clutching his helm, curling in on himself when he could run no more.

To Raj Ahten's dismay, the upper half of the Duke's Keep crumbled to the left. Some of his men screamed within the castle as the building collapsed on them. It was as if the wards of earth power that bound the castle crumbled, leaving the keep in ruin.

At the same time, on the hill behind him, Raj Ahten heard a branch crack.

He turned, glimpsed the great oak by his pavilion. The trunk of the great oak snapped...and half of the tree crashed through the roof of his Dedicates' wagon.

In that moment, Raj Ahten felt a dozen small deaths, the dizzying breathlessness that accompanied the loss of virtue.

The world slowed terrifyingly. For long years, Raj Ahten had brought his wagon with him. In it he bore Dervin Feyl, a man who had bequeathed Raj Ahten an endowment of metabolism many years back, had become a vector.

Dervin had just died, along with the Dedicate who vectored glamour to Raj Ahten, and several other minor men.

Raj Ahten marveled at his sudden sluggishness. Did my Voice smite the tree, or does Earth seek to punish me? he wondered.

Did the earth strike at me? He had no way to answer the question. Yet it mattered a great deal. The wizard Binnesman had cursed him, seemingly with no effect. Had the wizard's curse weakened that tree?

Or had his own Voice been his downfall?

Such a small blow. Yet so profoundly effective.

Raj Ahten wondered, but at that moment, it no longer mattered. Raj Ahten, despite his victory at Longmont, stood defeated. Though he had the wit and grace and brawn of thousands, without his speed he'd become a “warrior of unfortunate proportion.” Even a common soldier, some boy without endowments, might be able to slaughter him.

If Gaborn came against him with the speed of even five men and endowments of stamina from another five, Raj Ahten could not prevail against him.

Raj Ahten cast his eyes about in desperation. His flameweavers had burned themselves out. His forcibles were gone. The salamanders had returned to the netherworld, and would not be summoned easily for a long while. His arcane explosive powders were all used up.

I came to destroy Orden and Sylvarresta, he thought, and that much I've accomplished. But in doing this, I've created a greater enemy.

It was time to flee Longmont, flee Heredon and all the Kingdoms of Rofehavan while he reconsidered his tactics. At this moment, despite whatever other victories his men might win here in the North, he could feel the Kingdoms of Rofehavan all slipping from his grasp.

Raj Ahten had his endowments, thousands upon thousands of them. But his mines were petering out, and his forcibles were in the hands of his enemy. Whatever gifts he had now, the young king might soon match.

Raj Ahten felt utterly dismayed.

The snow was blowing. The first snow Raj Ahten would see this winter. In a few weeks, the passes in the mountains would be blocked.

He could continue this contest later, he reasoned. Shocked. He dreaded the thought of waiting until spring.

He shouted orders for his men to begin the retreat, leaving no time to loot the castle.

He stood for several long minutes as his soldiers scrambled to obey, pulling down pavilions, harnessing the horses, loading wagons.

The Frowth giants emerged from the castle, bearing corpses of defenders in their paws to eat on the way home. Along the western hills, wolves howled mournfully, as if in loss at the sight of Longmont in ruins.

Raj Ahten's counselor, Feykaald, shouted in a high voice, “Move, you sluggards! Leave the dead! You, there—help load those wagons!”

The snow thickened. In moments it piled two inches deep at Raj Ahten's feet. He only stood, gazing at Castle Longmont. He wondered how he had failed here, considered how Jureem had betrayed him to King Orden.

When he finished musing, Castle Longmont lay dead. No fires burned in it, no men cried out in pain.

Cedrick Tempest wandered before the gates, the lone soldier holding his bleeding ear, cursing and muttering under his breath. Perhaps his mind had gone.

Raj Ahten took a horse, considered again how the wizard Binnesman had stolen his, and rode over the hills.

56 The Greeting

By the time Gaborn reached Longmont, the land lay empty of troops, the ruins of the castle covered beneath a layer of new-fallen snow.

Most of Gaborn's army was still far behind. Only some fifty knights rode mounts swift enough to keep up. In the woods to the west, wolves howled forlornly, their voices rising and falling in eerie cadences.

Binnesman had ridden ahead, rummaged near the ruins of the Dedicates' Keep, searching among the rubble.

Everywhere lay carnage and destruction—walls and towers of Longmont in ruin, the soldiers of Orden crumpled under stone. Only a dozen or so of Raj Ahten's troops lay dead outside the castle, riddled with arrows.

Raj Ahten had carried off a great victory here, a mind-numbing victory, almost unparalleled in any chronicle Gaborn had ever read. For the past hour, Gaborn had tried to deny his feelings, his suspicion that his father had died. Now he feared the worst.

Only one warrior stood alive on the battleground, a captain who wore the colors of Longmont.

Gaborn rode up to him. The soldier's face was pale, his eyes full of horror. Blood dribbled under his helmet from his right ear and had crusted in the dark hair of his sideburns.

“Captain Tempest,” Gaborn asked, recalling the man's name from earlier in the day, “where is my father, King Orden?”

“Dead, mi-milord,” the captain said, then sat down in the snow, his head hanging. “They're all dead.”

Gaborn had expected it. Yet the news punched him. He put one hand over his belly, found himself breathing hard. I was no help, he thought. Everything I've done has been in vain.

He surveyed the damage, his shock and horror growing more profound. He'd never seen a castle so destroyed—not in a matter of hours.

“How is it that you survived?” Gaborn asked weakly.

The captain shook his head, as if searching for an answer. “Raj Ahten took some of us prisoners. He—killed the others. He left me alive, to bear witness.”

“To what?” Gaborn asked.

Tempest pointed numbly at the towers. “His flameweavers struck first. They summoned creatures from the netherworld and hit the castle with spells that burned iron—and a fireball that burst in the air above the gates, tossing men about like sticks.

“But that was not the worst of it, for then Raj Ahten himself came and shattered the castle's foundations with the cry of his Voice. He killed hundreds more of us!

“I...my helm has thick leather pads, but I can't hear from my right ear, and my left is still ringing.”

Gaborn stared at the castle, numb.

He'd imagined that Raj Ahten had brought some terrible engines to bear on those walls, or had his flameweavers conjure some unspeakable spell.

He'd seen that great mushroom of fire rise in the air. But he'd never imagined that the walls could crumble from a mere shout.

The soldiers behind him had spread out, were slowly riding over the battleground, to seek for signs of life among the ruins.

“Where is—where can I find my father?”

Tempest pointed up a trail. “He ran that way, toward Tor Loman, chasing Raj Ahten, just before the battle commenced.”

Gaborn turned his horse, but Captain Tempest rushed forward, dropped to his knees. “Forgive me!” he cried.

“For what, surviving?” Gaborn asked. Gaborn himself felt the guilt of those who live, unaccountably, while all around them die. It was heavy on him now. “I not only forgive you, I commend you.”

He let his horse trot over the snowfield to the sound of Tempest's sobbing and the howls of wolves.

The rings in his mail rang as the horse broke into a gallop, and Gaborn rode up a muddy trail. At first he could not be certain he headed in the right direction. Snow covered the trail, and he could discern no tracks.

But after half a mile, as the trail moved under the aspens, he saw signs in the mud and fallen leaves—the huge strides of men with enormous metabolism racing through the woods. Tracks ten steps across.

After that the trail was easy to follow. The path to Tor Loman had been well maintained, the brush cut away. It made for an easy, almost pleasant ride.

Along the path, Gaborn watched for sign of his father, but found none.

At last he reached the bare peak of Tor Loman, found the meadow with the Duke's old observatory at its top. The snow had fallen heavy here, stood three inches deep, and Gaborn found Raj Ahten's fine helm lying at the base of the observatory.

The helm itself was deeply embossed, with intricate silver designs like braided ropes or the braided fires a flameweaver pulled from heaven. These ran down the noseguard and over the eye slots. A single huge diamond fit between the eyes. Gaborn took it as a prize of war, tied its broken strap to his saddle, careful not to crush the white owl's wings on the helm.

As he tied it, he sniffed the cold air. The snow had cleansed the sky, carried away most of the scent, yet Gaborn could still discern the odor of his father's heavy samite cape, the oil he used to protect his armor. His father had been here. Might be nearby—alive and wounded, perhaps.

Gaborn climbed the observatory, gazed off into the distance. The snow had stopped falling ten minutes ago, so he could see fairly well, though with but two endowments of sight, he could not be called a far-seer. To the east, Iome and her people pushed across the heath, ten miles back. They had neared the Durkin Hills Road.

In the distance to the southwest, at Gaborn's limit of vision, Raj Ahten's troops retreated over the hills, the red and gold of their colors muted by distance.

He saw men stopping on their horses, gazing back toward him. Gaborn imagined that some far-seers watched him, wondering who now stood on the Eyes of Tor Loman. Perhaps even Raj Ahten himself watched.

Gaborn whispered, “I reject you, Raj Ahten. I will destroy you.” Gaborn raised a fist in the sign of challenge. But if the men on the far hill made any gestures of their own, he could not see. They merely turned their mounts and galloped over the crest of the hill.

Even with an army, Gaborn realized, I couldn't catch Raj Ahten now.

Yet in his heart, Gaborn felt some relief. He loved this land, as his father had. They had wanted nothing more than to drive Raj Ahten from it, keep it beautiful and free. For a time, perhaps, they had succeeded.

But at what price?

Gaborn glanced down at his feet. The snow had fallen after Raj Ahten's descent. Yet the scent of both Gaborn's father and the Wolf Lord lingered here. The metallic tang of blood.

So, Gaborn surmised, Raj Ahten had come here, had seen the clouds of Gaborn's passage, the distant herds of cattle and soldiers mingled together, had fallen for the ruse.

That gave Gaborn some comfort. Raj Ahten could be fooled, could be beaten.

Gaborn circled the tower, tried to see down into the woods. He imagined his father and Raj Ahten struggling on the tower, until at last, perhaps, his father was thrown over.

He looked down, saw what he dreaded: at the base of the observatory, among the rocks, a hand thrust up, dead fingers clutching a palm full of snow.

Gaborn raced down the winding stairs, found his father, and pulled at the corpse, shaking it to clear the snow off.

What he saw broke his heart. For on his father's frozen face was a broad smile. Perhaps in death, some fleeting memory had made him smile. Or perhaps it was but a grimace of pain. Yet Gaborn imagined that his father smiled at him, as if to congratulate him for his victory.

57 Today I Am Death

Gaborn had already ridden ahead when Iome's glamour returned. Iome had no idea how Raj Ahten's vector had died, felt little relief at the woman's passing. Like Iome, the woman had been a mere tool in Raj Ahten's hand, one that was poorly used.

Yet Iome's beauty returned. She felt it as an easing of her heart, a return of her confidence. Like a flower blossoming.

Yet it was not the unnatural beauty she'd had since birth, not the borrowed glamour. The skin on her hands softened and lost their wrinkles. The blush of youth returned to her cheeks. For once in her life, for the first time, Iome was simply herself, without benefit of endowments.

It was enough. She wished that Gaborn could have been here to see, but he had ridden ahead.

Though messengers from Longmont had told Iome what to expect when she reached the castle, had said that Raj Ahten had destroyed it with a shout, nothing they said could have prepared her for the ruin.

She rode at the head of ten thousand people from out of Groverman and the villages round about. Many of the women had already turned back, heading for their own hearths, their own homes. Their work here was done.

But others followed Iome, particularly people who'd lived in Longmont, who had come to see what was left of their homes.

As they neared the ruined castle, saw the empty fields with wolves slinking about the hedgerows, many women and children began crying for what they'd lost.

They'd deserted their homes three days ago, but a few days of huddling under ragged shelters at Groverman had shown them just how difficult it would be to make do once the snows fell.

Certainly, most of them hoped to come home, to rebuild. But in hard times, with war approaching, Iome's people could not rebuild without some nearby fortification.

The castle was nearly ruined. Huge blocks of stone that had lain in place for twelve centuries now lay cracked and shattered.

Almost subconsciously, Iome began calculating what it would take to repair the fortress: five hundred stonemasons out of Eyremoth, for they were the best. Carters to drag the stones, Frowth giants hired out of Lonnock to place them. Men to dig moats. Lumberjacks to cut trees. Cooks and ironsmiths, with mortar, chisels, saws, awls, axes, and...the list went on and on.

But to what purpose? If Raj Ahten could simply shatter the castle with a shout?

She looked up on the hill, saw Gaborn kneeling in a patch of snow, in the field. Gaborn had laid his father's body out on the hill above the castle, beneath a great oak tree. A huge limb lay near them.

Gaborn had collected dozens of spears, and he ringed these about his father's corpse, creating a fence of sorts, to keep out the wolves.

In the tree above his father's corpse, he had hung his father's golden shield. He took his father's helm, laid it in the snow at his father's feet—a sign that his father had fallen in battle.

She turned her horse, went to him, leading her father's stallion. Behind King Sylvarresta followed the three Days: hers, her father's, and Gaborn's. King Sylvarresta had verged on falling dead asleep in his saddle a few minutes before, but now stared about, grinning broadly at the snow through bleary eyes, a child filled with delight.

Gaborn looked up at Iome as she approached; his face looked bleak, desolate. Iome knew then that she would find no words to comfort him. She had nothing to offer him. In the past few days, she'd lost nearly everything—her home, her parents, her beauty...and things less tangible.

How will I ever sleep again? she wondered. In her mind, the castle had always been the supreme icon of security. In a world fraught with danger, it had always been a safe haven.

No more.

She felt now that she'd lost her childhood, her innocence. Her peace of mind was torn from her.

Not just because her mother lay dead and one of her castles lay in ruins. As she rode that morning, she considered what had happened. Yesterday, she'd feared that Borenson would sneak into Castle Sylvarresta, kill her Dedicates. She imagined that secretly she'd known what he would do, though she hated it.

By not challenging him, not confronting him, Iome had agreed to it. The horror of it had all been creeping up on her since noon yesterday. Now she found herself defenseless. She hadn't slept for two nights. She'd felt dizzy for hours, had feared she would topple from her horse.

Now it seemed as if a great invisible beast, lurking beneath her consciousness, suddenly sprang and seized her.

Iome had meant to say some word of comfort to Gaborn, but suddenly found icy tears coursing down her cold cheeks. She tried to wipe them, began shuddering quietly.

Gaborn had prepared his father's body well. The King's hair was combed, his face was pale in death. The glamour he'd worn had died with him, so that the man she saw was not the King Orden who had seemed so regal, so powerful, during life.

He looked like some aging statesman, with a broad face, skin somewhat weather-beaten. He smiled enigmatically. He was dressed in his armor, and lay on a plank. His richly embroidered cape of shimmering samite covered him like a robe.

In his hands, he clasped the bud of a single blue rose, perhaps taken from the Duke's garden.

Gaborn turned to look up at Iome, saw the expression on her face, then stood slowly, as if the effort pained him. He walked to her, grabbed her shoulders as she slid from her horse, and held her close.

She thought he would kiss her, tell her not to weep.

Instead his voice sounded hollow and dead as he whispered fiercely, “Grieve for us. Grieve.”

Borenson thundered into Longmont in a red fury. From the moment he had crested a ridge five miles back and seen the ruined towers, the crowd milling on the downs outside the castle, he'd known the news would be bad. Among the crowd, many colors flew, but none for Raj Ahten.

He wished Raj Ahten were dead, wanted to strike against him with a rage so burning that Borenson had never felt its like.

So he was still in a frustrated rage when he galloped down the north road into Longmont and met the ragged commoners milling about by the thousands. He looked among the crowd for the colors of Orden, saw them nowhere.

He rode up to a pair of teens who scrambled among the snow outside the castle, robbing the corpse of one of Raj Ahten's soldiers. One young man was perhaps fourteen, another eighteen. At first he thought the vermin were stealing money pouches or rings, and he'd have belittled them for doing so. Then he recognized that one lad was wrestling the armor from the corpse, while the other helped lift the dead weight.

Good. They sought armor and weapons that they could never otherwise purchase.

“Where is King Orden?” Borenson asked, trying to keep the emotion from his voice.

“Dead, like all them buggers in the castle,” the youngest lad answered. He had his back to Borenson, hadn't seen to whom he was speaking.

A sound escaped Borenson's throat, something like a growl or a snort. “Everyone?”

Pain must have sounded in his voice, for the lad turned and looked up, eyes widening in fear. He dropped the body and backed away, raising a hand in salute. “Yes—yes, sir,” his older friend said formally. “Only one man lived to tell the tale. Everyone else is dead.”

“A man survived?” Borenson asked distantly, though he wanted to cry out, call Myrrima's name and see if she would answer. Myrrima had been in this castle.

“Yes, sir,” the older lad said. He staggered backward, afraid Borenson would strike. “You—your men fought bravely. King Orden made a serpent, and fought the Wolf Lord man-to-man. They—we won't forget such sacrifice.”

“Whose sacrifice?” Borenson asked. “My king's, or the buggers'?”

The young men turned and ran as if Borenson would strike them both down, and he very nearly did, but he felt little anger toward them.

Borenson scanned the downs wildly, as if Myrrima might stand on the brow of a hill waving to him, or as if he might see one of Raj Ahten's scouts crest a ridge. Instead, as he looked up, he spotted Gaborn beneath an oak.

The Prince had laid out King Orden's body, ringed it with spears from his fallen guards, as was the custom in Mystarria. He just stood there, over his dead father, hugging Iome. The Princess had her back to Borenson, and wore a hood, but there could be no mistaking the curves of her body. A knot of three Days all huddled a few yards off to the side, watching the scene with studied patience.

The idiot King Sylvarresta had come off his horse, was in the circle of spears, fawning over King Orden, gazing about dumbly, as if to beg for help.

A sense of horror and desolation swept Borenson, so that he cried out in astonishment and despair.

The fallen castle, the fallen king.

I may have killed him, Borenson thought wildly—my own king. Orden had fought Raj Ahten hand-to-hand, and lost. I could have followed my king's orders, slain all the Dedicates. Had I obeyed in every detail, perhaps it would have changed something. Perhaps Raj Ahten would have died in that battle.

I let my king die.

The guilt that welled up in Borenson was a wild thing, a storm that came from everywhere and seemed to uproot every fiber of his sanity.

An ancient law in Mystarria said the last command of a king must be obeyed, even if the king falls in battle. The command must be obeyed.

The air seemed to grow thick around Borenson. From deep in his throat, the battle chuckle issued as he lowered his lance, flipped down the visor of his helm with a rapid nod of his chin, then spurred his horse into a gallop.

His lips clenched tight against his teeth.

White had fallen from gray clouds earlier. Soft cold. Frozen beauty, covering everything, sparkling when a patch of sunlight struck it.

King Sylvarresta gaped in wonder, sometimes moaning in delight when he saw a new beauty—the mounds of snow crusting a pool in the road, or clumps of melting snow dropping from a tree. He had no word for “snow,” could not recall it.

Everything seemed new, brimming with wonder. He felt very tired, but could not sleep once he came to the castle.

There were too many oddities here, people behind him crying out in pain. He looked at the castle, saw fallen towers. He could only marvel at how they had fallen.

A woman led his horse up a hill, to a great tree where spears stood about in a circle.

Sylvarresta listened to the young man talk to the woman, then gazed up in the tree. An orange cat, the kind of half-wild mouser common to farms, sat on a branch, staring down at him. It stood, arched its back, then walked out on a huge limb above King Sylvarresta, its tail twisting in the air. It meowed hungrily and gazed at something on the ground.

King Sylvarresta followed its gaze, noticed a man lying on the ground, under a shimmering green cape. He recognized that royal cape, the one that had mesmerized him just this morning. He recognized the man beneath it.

King Orden. His friend.

At the same moment, he knew something was profoundly wrong. Orden did not move. His chest did not fall and rise. He only clasped his hands over a blue flower.

In an instant Sylvarresta's world shattered. He remembered what this was, dredged it up from some deep place where all horrors lay hidden.

He shouted wordlessly, not knowing the name for this thing, and leapt from his horse. He hit the ground, scrambled over the snow, sliding in the muck, till he broke through the fence of spears that stuck in the ground, reached Orden's hand.

Orden's cold fingers held a single flower, blue as sky. Sylvarresta grasped the cold fingers, picked them up and tried to get them to move. Reached for Orden's cheek, stroked it, to find it as cold as the rest of him.

Sylvarresta cried, and turned back, to discover whether the others knew this great dark secret, knew of this beast that stalked them all.

As he caught the eyes of the young man and the woman, he saw horror there.

“Yes,” the young man said softly. “Death. He is dead.”

Yes, they knew the secret.

The woman said in a sad if scolding tone, “Father—oh please, come away from there!”

In the fields below, a knight rode a great warhorse, speeding toward them like an arrow, his visor and his lance lowered. So swift he came. So swift.

Sylvarresta shouted the great secret. "Death!”

58 Broken Men

Gaborn heard the thud of hoofbeats, the ringing of mail as links clanged against one another. He had thought it only a local knight riding across the downs—until he recognized the throaty battle chuckle, a sound that filled him with dread.

Gaborn had been watching King Sylvarresta, shocked and saddened that the poor fool, though he knew almost nothing at all, had been forced to confront mortality. It felt like watching a child get torn apart by dogs.

Gaborn only had time to push Iome behind him, spin and raise a hand to shout “No!”

Then Borenson's gray steed thundered past, its armor rattling. Huge. Unstoppable.

Borenson's lance was lowered on the far side of the horse, twenty feet of polished white ash with its blackened steel tip at the end. Gaborn thought of throwing himself forward, pushing that lance tip away.

But Borenson raced past before Gaborn could act.

Gaborn stood but thirty feet from King Sylvarresta, yet time seemed to slow in that second.

Gaborn had seen Borenson joust a hundred times. The man had a steady hand, a deft touch. He could skewer a plum off a fence post with a lance, even on a force horse galloping sixty miles an hour.

Borenson approached with his lance low, as if he'd go for a stomach wound, and Gaborn saw him raise it just a bit, holding steady, aiming at Sylvarresta's heart.

For his part, Sylvarresta seemed not to recognize what was happening. The King's face had twisted in a grimace, for he'd just remembered the one thing Gaborn had hoped he'd never come to learn, and he had been shouting the word “death,” though he could not have foreseen his own.

Then the steed bore down on Sylvarresta. Borenson pulled his lance to the right a fraction of an inch, so it would not graze one of the spears in Gaborn's spear wall.

Then the horse charged through the spear wall, sent some shafts flying, shattered others. Almost at that same moment, the tip of Borenson's lance took King Sylvarresta just below the sternum.

The spear entered deftly, pushing the King backward and lifting him from his feet.

Borenson let the lance slide ten feet through the King's chest, so the tapering wood spread his ribs open wide, then suddenly released the haft and leaned clear of the dying man.

The horse thundered two steps, leapt the corpse of Gaborn's father, crashed through the far wall of spears, and charged on past the trunk of the huge oak tree.

King Sylvarresta stood a moment, blinking stupidly at the huge lance that skewered him, staring in wonder at his own blood as it spurted over the polished white ash. Then his knees buckled. His head sagged, and he pitched to his left.

As he died, he looked at his daughter and moaned weakly.

Gaborn had no weapons at hand. He'd left his horseman's warhammer sheathed in his saddle.

He rushed forward, grabbed a spear from the ground, and called to Iome. She did not need prodding. Her horse had startled away at Gaborn's shout.

Iome ran behind Gaborn. He thought that she would let him shield her. But in a moment it became clear that she did not plan to hide behind him at all. She merely sought her way past him, to get to her father, who lay crumpled and bleeding.

Borenson spun his horse, pulled the horseman's battle-axe from its sheath on the back of the saddle, and flipped up the visor of his helm. For half a second, he merely glared.

There was pain in his blue eyes, the pain of madness. His face was red from rage, his teeth gritted. He smiled no longer.

Running forward, Gaborn grabbed his father's shield from the spot where it hung to the oak, raised it to protect Iome and Sylvarresta, then backed away, standing five feet behind the cold corpse of King Orden.

Gaborn knew Borenson would not risk letting his mount trample King Orden's corpse, defiling it. He'd not spur his horse into battle.

But Gaborn did not feel so certain Borenson would refrain from striking him: Borenson had been compelled to commit bloody murder in assassinating the Dedicates at Castle Sylvarresta. He'd been forced to choose between slaughtering King Sylvarresta and the King's men—his own friends—or letting the Dedicates live to serve Raj Ahten.

It was an evil choice, with no fair answer, no answer that any man could hope to live with.

“Give her to me!” Borenson shouted.

“No!” Gaborn said. “She is a Dedicate no longer!”

In that moment, Borenson looked down beneath Iome's hood, saw her fair face, no longer wrinkled. Saw her eyes clear. A look of astonishment came over him.

A dark blur rushed past Gaborn, some knight of Sylvarresta with great metabolism, running with his might at Borenson. The fellow leapt, and Borenson leaned back from the attack, swung his warhammer, caught the warrior full in the face. Blood sprayed the air as the dying warrior hurtled over Borenson's horse.

Hundreds of people had witnessed Sylvarresta's murder. Gaborn had been totally focused on Borenson, but now he became aware of the others.

Duke Groverman and a full hundred knights were rushing up the hill with weapons drawn. Behind them ran commoners. Some looked furious, others dismayed. Some could not believe what had happened. Gaborn heard shouts, the hue and cry of “Murder, murder most foul!” and “Kill him!” and others shouting in wordless grief at the death of their King.

Young boys with scythes and sticks were running up the hill, their bloodless faces twisted in dismay.

Iome dropped to her knees, took her father's head in her lap. She rocked back and forth, weeping. Her father's blood was pumping out quickly through the huge wound, as if he were a steer being bled by a butcher. The blood pooled and mingled with the melting snow.

Things had happened so quickly, Gaborn just stood, dazed. His guard had killed the father of the woman he loved. Gaborn's own life might well be in jeopardy.

Some here would see it as their duty to avenge House Sylvarresta. A tide of people swept toward Borenson. Some young men were stringing longbows.

Gaborn shouted, using all the power he could muster in his Voice, “Stop! Leave him to me!”

Borenson's horse danced backward at the shout, and he fought to control the mount. Those nearest Gaborn all stopped expectantly. Others still rushed up the hill, unsure.

Iome looked down at her people, raised a hand for them to halt. Gaborn suspected that her command alone would not have stopped the mob, if Borenson were not such a deadly foe. But partly from fear, partly from respect for their Princess, the crowd advanced only falteringly, and some older and wiser lords near the front spread their arms, to hold the more hot-tempered men back.

Borenson glared at the mob in contempt, then flourished his hammer, pointing at Iome, and gazed into Gaborn's eyes: “She should have died with the rest of them! By your father's own orders!”

“He rescinded that order,” Gaborn said calmly, using all his training in the control of Voice, precisely repeating every studied inflection, so he could convey to Borenson that he spoke the truth.

Borenson's mouth fell open in horror, for he was full of guilt, and Gaborn now laid it on him thicker. Almost, Gaborn imagined that he could hear the sneers that would be cast at Borenson's back for years: “Butcher. Assassin. Kingslayer!”

Yet Gaborn could not speak anything but the truth, no matter how horrible it might be, no matter how it might destroy his friend. “My father rescinded that order, when I presented King Sylvarresta before him. He hugged the man as a friend dearer than a brother, and begged forgiveness!”

Gaborn pointed down with his spear at King Sylvarresta for effect.

If he had thought Borenson gone in madness before, now he became certain of it.

“Noooo!” Borenson howled, and tears filled eyes, eyes that now gazed past Gaborn's head, at some private torment. “Noooo!”

He shook his head violently. He could not bear for it to be true, could not live with it being true.

Borenson half-dropped and half-threw his warhammer to the ground, then turned in his saddle, pulled his right leg over and stepped off his horse awkwardly, as if he were walking down a great stair.

“No, please, no!” he said, shaking his head from side to side. He grabbed his helm, pulled it off, so that his head lay bare. He bowed to the ground, neck stretched, and as he walked forward, he stammered under his breath, staring at the ground.

He walked in a strange gait—back bent, head low, knees almost touching the ground at every step.

Gaborn realized that Borenson was torn, did not know whether to approach him or drop to his knees. He was trying to keep his head bowed.

“My lord, my lord, ah, ah, take me, milord. Take me!” Borenson said as he crept forward.

A young man dashed up with a hammer, as if to deal the death blow himself, but Gaborn shouted at the lad to stay back. The mood of the crowd was growing uglier. People were bloodthirsty.

“Take you?” Gaborn asked Borenson.

“Take me,” Borenson begged. “Take my wit. Take it. Please! I don't want to know anymore. I don't want to see anymore. Take my wit!”

Gaborn did not want Borenson to become as Sylvarresta had been, did not want to see those eyes that had laughed so often grow vacant. Yet, at that moment, he wondered if he'd be doing the man a kindness.

Father and I are the ones who took him to the brink of madness, Gaborn realized. To take his endowment would be vile—like a king who taxes the poor till they can pay no more, then tells himself that by relieving them of endowments he shows generosity.

I have violated him, Gaborn realized. I have violated his Domain Invisible, taken his free will. Borenson had always tried to be a good soldier. Now he will never see himself as good again.

“No,” Gaborn said softly. “I will not take your wit.” Yet even as he said the words, he wondered at his own reasons. Borenson was a great warrior, the best fighter in Mystarria. To take wit from him would have been wasteful, like a farmer killing a fine horse in order to fill his belly when a chicken would have served as well. Do I deny him this because it is merely pragmatic? Gaborn wondered.

“Please,” Borenson shouted again. He hobbled next to Gaborn now, not more than an arm's length away. His whole head shook, and his hands trembled as he pulled at his own hair. He dared not look up, but kept his eyes at Gaborn's feet. “Please—you, ah, you don't understand! Myrrima was in that castle!” he pointed to Longmont and wailed, “Myrrima came. Take my—my metabolism then. Let me know nothing until this war is over!”

Gaborn shrank back a step in horror, wondering. “Are you certain?” he asked trying to sound calm, trying to sound reasonable when all reason left him. Gaborn had felt other deaths—his father's, Chemoise's father's, even King Sylvarresta's. But he had not felt Myrrima's. “Have you seen her? Have you seen her body?”

“She rode from Bannisferre yesterday, to be here in the battle, with me. She was in the castle.” Borenson's voice broke, and he fell to his knees and sobbed.

Gaborn had felt so right when he matched Borenson and Myrrima. He'd thought he felt another Power guide him, the powers of the earth coursing through him. Surely he had not felt impressed to match them so that they could meet so tragic an end?

“No,” Gaborn said more firmly, deciding. He would not take Borenson's endowment, even if the guilt did promise to destroy him. Kingdoms were at stake. He could not afford such mercy, no matter how it rankled him.

Borenson dropped to his knees, put both hands palm-forward on the ground. It was the traditional stance of prisoners in war who offered themselves for beheading. He cried, “If you will not take my endowment, then take my head!”

“I will not kill you,” Gaborn answered. “If you give your life to me, I will take it—glad for the bargain. I choose you. Serve me. Help me defeat Raj Ahten!”

Borenson shook his head and began to sob, great racking sobs that left him breathless. Gaborn had never seen anything like that from the warrior, felt stunned to learn the man was capable of experiencing such pain.

Gaborn put his hands on Borenson's shoulders, signaling for him to rise, but Borenson only knelt, weeping. “Milady?” someone called.

Down in the fields below Gaborn, utter silence reigned. Groverman and a hundred other knights now drew near, aghast. Staring at Borenson in horror. Wondering what they should do. Some knight had called Iome, but she only held her father's head, rocking it, almost oblivious of her surroundings.

After a long moment, Iome looked up. Her eyes filled with tears. She bent to kiss her father goodbye, on the forehead.

Her father had not even known her at the last, Gaborn realized. He'd forgotten her existence, or did not recognize her, robbed of glamour. That seemed perhaps the worst blow of all.

Iome straightened, looked downhill at her knights. “Leave us,” she said in the firmest voice she could muster.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Someone coughed. Duke Groverman watched her with unblinking eyes. “My Queen...”

“There's nothing you can do. There's nothing anyone can do!” Iome said. Gaborn knew she spoke not of the murder, not of the demands of justice, but of everything—Raj Ahten, this whole senseless war. Most of all, she spoke of death.

“These men...this is murder,” Groverman insisted. “House Orden should pay for this insult!” By ancient law, a lord was responsible for the behavior of his vassals, just as a farmer was responsible for damage done by his cow. By law, Gaborn was as guilty of murder as Borenson.

“Gaborn's father lies dead with two thousand of his best knights,” Iome answered. “What more do you want of House Orden?”

“He's not the killer—it's the knight at his feet we want! This is a matter of honor!” some knight shouted, after having decided all on his own that Gaborn was innocent. Gaborn did not recognize the fellow's device, two crows and an oak tree over the Sylvarresta boar.

Iome said, “You say honor is at stake? The knight at Gaborn's feet, Sir Borenson, saved my life yesterday, and the life of my father. He slew an Invincible outside Longmont for us. And he matched wits with Raj Ahten and helped drive the knave from our kingdom—”

“It's murder!” the knight shouted, shaking his axe. But Groverman reached out a hand, silencing the fellow.

“You say,” Iome stammered, “it's a matter of honor, and perhaps it is. King Orden, my father's best friend, first ordered our deaths.

“And who among you is to say he is not right in this? My father and I were Dedicates to our sworn enemy. Who of you would have disobeyed such an order, were our roles reversed?”

“My father gave endowments to Raj Ahten, thinking it a small thing, just as I did. But many small wrongs can make a very great evil.”

“Is it murder for this knight to slay his enemies, to follow orders? Or is it honorable?”

Iome arose now, hands covered in blood; tears streamed down her face. She argued for Borenson's acquittal with her whole heart, and Gaborn wondered if he'd have had the presence of mind to do the same under such circumstances.

For his part, Borenson just glared at the knights blankly, as if he did not care how they judged him. Kill me, his eyes said, or let me live. Just be done with it.

Groverman and his men neither advanced nor retreated. They held their ground, as yet undecided.

Iome bit her lip, and her jaw trembled so that she pierced the lip, unnoticed. Such rage and hurt shone in her eyes. She couldn't deal with this any longer, couldn't argue. Her people were angry; she felt hurt and betrayed to the core of her soul—to lose all her family in the space of two days.

Gaborn had seen the aftermath when his own mother was slain, and now his father. He knew how desolate Iome must feel, knew how her own pain must outmatch his own.

Iome said to Gaborn facetiously, “Milord King Orden, Sir Borenson—after all your great kindness these past two days, I bid you get away from here, lest my people slay you. Ours is a poor land, and our hospitality suffers for it. Get out of here. For your service, I grant you your lives, though my vassals wish me to be more penurious.”

She spoke in a tone that mocked her own people, but Gaborn knew that she was serious, that she could not cope any longer.

“Go on,” Gaborn whispered to Borenson. “I'll see you at Bredsfor Manor.” To his relief, Borenson stood and marched to his horse, executing the order without complaint.

Gaborn went to Iome, pulled off his right gauntlet, and let his hand rest on her shoulder. She seemed so slight, so frail beneath the thin cotton of her dress. He could not imagine that she'd hold up under the pressure she now felt.

She no longer looked as beautiful as the first star of evening. She no longer looked wretched. Her only glamour now was her own, and Gaborn could not have loved her any more than he did at this moment, could not have longed to hold her any more than he did right now.

“I love you, you know,” he said. Iome nodded once, only slightly. “I came to Heredon to ask for your hand, milady. I want you still. I'd have you for my wife.” He did not say it to confirm his feelings to Iome. He said it only for the benefit of her people, so that they would know.

In the crowd, several people hissed at the proposal. Some cried aloud, “No!”

Gaborn could see he wasn't in favor at this moment. These people didn't know how he had schemed and fought for their freedom. They'd witnessed only this last craven deed. He would not win their hearts this day, though he hoped to, in time.

Iome reached up and stroked his hand, but offered no words of comfort.

Gaborn walked to the top of the hill, where his horse pawed the snow in an effort to graze on the sweet grass beneath, then followed Borenson south.

At his back, Gaborn's Days broke from the crowd, following in his shadow.

59 The Healer

As Iome sat over the body of her father, she wondered if she could even live another day. It seemed that her energy, her will to struggle, had been drawn out from her as completely as her beauty had been drawn out two days before.

She stood over her father's body, wanting desperately to sleep or to scream. The cold snow melted, penetrating her thin boots, just as the stout wind penetrated her thin dress.

Her people were a cold comfort. They knew they needed a lord to protect them, but Iome had no wit with which to guide them, no glamour to inspire them to follow, no brawn or skill in battle.

Without my glamour, they see through me, Iome thought. They see that I am a sham, a nothing. All Runelords are nothing, without their Dedicates to fill them with power, make them substantial.

As she shivered on the hill, Iome found that her people offered her nothing now. No one brought her a shawl or offered a shoulder to lean on.

None dared approach her. Perhaps they believed she needed time to suffer alone.

But Iome was no good at suffering alone.

She felt confused. Gaborn had not ordered her father's death. He'd struggled mightily to keep her father alive. Yet, somehow, she felt betrayed. Perhaps it was because he did not grow irate at Borenson.

Had Gaborn taken the man's wit, or his head, Iome would have thought Gaborn cruel and hard. Yet part of her felt Borenson deserved some unnamable punishment.

To her surprise, it was the wizard Binnesman who first came to her, after an hour, and wrapped a blanket over her. The wizard huddled beside her, handed her some warm tea.

“I—don't want anything,” Iome said. It was true. Her throat felt tight, her stomach in knots. “I just need sleep.” She was too weary to even look up at him.

“Sometimes rest is as good as sleep,” Binnesman said, and he stood watching her. “I put lemon balm and linden blossoms in the tea, along with a bit of chamomile and honey.”

He pressed the hot mug into her hands, and Iome drank. She'd learned long ago that Binnesman knew her needs better than she did, that he could soothe a heart as easily as he could soothe wounds.

The tea seemed to loosen her tight muscles, unknot her. She closed her eyes, leaned her head back, marveling at its effect. The tea made her feel almost as if she'd just been wakened from bed a few moments ago. Yet she felt a deep—seated weariness even the tea could not touch, a tiredness and ache close to the bones.

“Oh, Binnesman, what should I do?” Iome asked.

“You must be strong,” Binnesman said. “Your people need you to be strong for them.”

“I don't feel strong.”

Binnesman said nothing in answer, only put his gnarled arms around her shoulders and held her, as her father had when she was a child and she'd awakened from an evil dream.

“Gaborn would help you be strong, if you would let him,” Binnesman offered.

“I know,” Iome said.

Down below her, most of the knights had begun to set a camp in the fields. The thin snow had melted now, and the night would not be cold. But only part of the castle looked serviceable. The Duke's barracks and one of the manor houses still stood, though they had cracks in them. By no means could the castle house the thousands here, but some knights had brought squires and tents—enough so everyone would have shelter for the night.

Yet as the people put up tents, Iome caught many distrustful glances, heard grumbled comments. “What are the people down there saying about Gaborn?”

“The usual things...” Binnesman said. “Rumor-mongering.”

“What kinds of things?” Iome demanded.

“They feel you should have reacted more strongly to your father's death.”

“He died when Raj Ahten took his wit. There was nothing left of my father.”

“You are made of stern stuff,” Binnesman said. “But had you cried and demanded Borenson's death, perhaps your people would feel more...relieved.”

“Relieved?”

“Some people suspect that Gaborn ordered your father's death.”

“Gaborn? How could they suspect that?” Iome asked, astonished. She looked downhill. An old woman bearing a load of sticks from the woods glanced at Iome, suspicion deep in her eyes.

“So he could marry you, take over your kingdom. Some people think that the fact that you let him live is ample proof that he has you fooled, and that now you are about to swoon into his foul clutches.”

“Who would say such things? Who would even think such things?” Iome asked.

“Do not blame them,” Binnesman smiled at her. “It is only natural. They have been deeply hurt these past few days, and suspicion comes easily. Trust comes much harder, and it takes time.”

Iome shook her head, dumbfounded. “Is it safe for Gaborn here? He's not in danger?”

“As it stands,” Binnesman said, “I think some people in this valley pose a threat, yes.”

“You must go warn him to stay away!” Iome said. She realized that she'd been hoping for Gaborn to come back tonight, that she could not stand the thought of being away from him. “Tell him...tell him we cannot see each other, that it's dangerous. Maybe in time...a few months.” Iome found herself shaking at the thought, tormented.

A few months seemed an eternity. Yet in another month or two the snows would begin to fly in earnest. Travel between their kingdoms would become difficult.

She wouldn't see Gaborn again before spring. Five months or six at the soonest.

Iome nearly collapsed in on herself at the thought. Yet it would be best for both of them to take this slowly, to give her people time to see. No other prince would want her, no one would take a wife who had been an enemy's Dedicate.

Now that her father and King Orden were dead, within a few weeks the chronicles of their deeds would begin to be slowly distributed by the Days, a volume here, a volume there. Perhaps when the truth came out, Iome's people would think better of Gaborn.

Yet another problem presented itself. Iome's Maid of Honor, Chemoise, would be heavy with child by the time Iome saw Gaborn again. If Iome's people disapproved of her match with Orden, how would Gaborn s people feel about her?

Ostensibly, Gaborn had come here seeking a union because the wealth and security of Heredon were to have been a boon to Mystarria. But Raj Ahten had taken the wealth, made a mockery of Heredon's castles, stolen away the Princess's beauty.

Iome had nothing to offer but her affection. And she knew that affection comes cheaply.

She still hoped that Gaborn might love her. She feared that she deluded herself in even hoping for a union with him. It seemed foolish, like the child's fable of the lazy man who planned to get rich someday by discovering that rain had washed dirt off a pot of gold that lay hidden in his fields.

Surely, in the months to come, Gaborn would come to see that she had nothing to offer, would reconsider. Though he spoke of loving her, surely he'd see that love was not reason enough to unite their kingdoms.

As Iome considered these things, Binnesman nodded kindly, worry on his face, lost in his own private musings. He studied her from under bushy brows. “So you want me to warn Gaborn away. Do you have any more messages for him?”

“None,” Iome said. “Except...there is the matter of Borenson.”

“What of him?” Binnesman asked.

“I...don't know what to do about him. He killed my father, a king. Such a deed cannot go unpunished. Yet his guilt is almost more than he can bear. To lay further punishment upon him would be cruel.”

Binnesman said, “There was a time when knights who inadvertently erred were given a second chance...”

60 A Treasure Found

In the House of Understanding, in the Room of the Heart, Gaborn had learned that there are dreams and memories so disturbing the mind cannot hold them.

As Gaborn rode in silence on the road south to Bredsfor Manor, he caught up to Borenson, watched his knight's face, and wondered if the man would break.

Time and time again, Borenson's head would nod, his lips quivering as if he were about to say something unspeakable. Yet each time he raised his head, his eyes would be a little clearer, a little brighter, his gaze a little steadier.

Gaborn suspected Borenson would forget his deeds, given a week or a month. He might claim that some other knight had slaughtered Sylvarresta, or that the good king had died in battle or fallen from a horse.

Gaborn hoped Borenson would forget. They rode in silence. Gaborn's Days coughed from time to time, as if he were developing a cold.

After twenty long minutes of this, Borenson turned, and on the surface his manners seemed almost carefree, the pain had retreated so deeply. But it was there, lying far within. “Milord, I was up above the Duke's lodge a bit ago, and I saw the tracks of a reaver. A big female. May I have your leave to hunt her tonight?”

It was an obvious jest. “Not without me,” Gaborn said, musing. “Last autumn, I came to the Dunnwood to hunt boars. This year we shall hunt reavers. Perhaps Groverman will ride with us. What think you?”

“Hah, not bloody likely,” Borenson spat. “Not after what I've done!”

Immediately, Borenson's eyes looked troubled again, and Gaborn sought to turn his thoughts. “Tell you what, if we kill a reaver, you get to eat the ears,” Gaborn jested. To eat the ears of the first boar of the hunt was a great honor. But reavers had no ears, and no part of a reaver was edible. “Or at least I'll cut off a patch of hide shaped like an ear.”

“Oh, you are too generous, milord,” Borenson chortled like some peasant woman in the marketplace, heaping unearned praise on a noble. “Oh, you're so gracious. All you lords are so...er, well, lordly, if you catch my meaning.”

“Well, uh, thank you, dear lady,” Gaborn said, affecting a stodgy accent much like that of the Marquis of Ferecia, a noted poser. He raised his nose in the air, just as the Marquis would, then used the full powers of his Voice to imitate the Marquis' accent. “A blessing on you and your hovel and all your snot-nosed prodigy, dear lady. And please don't come any nearer, or I think I might sneeze.”

Borenson laughed deeply at the jest, for the Marquis often sneezed when dirty peasants got too near his person. His threats of illness kept peasants away, so that the Marquis would not have to tolerate the scent of their poverty.

It was a grim sort of humor, but it was the best Gaborn could manage at the moment, and it eased Borenson's spirits somewhat. Gaborn almost hoped that someday things between them would be as they had been before.

Two weeks ago, Gaborn had ridden into Heredon with hardly a care. Now he felt the weight of the whole world landing squarely on his shoulders. Deep in his heart, he knew nothing could ever be the same.

They crossed the downs for several miles, riding over the rolling hills.

The clouds began to break, and the afternoon sun began melting the snow. A mile from Longmont, farmhouses still stood along the road, stone cottages whose thatch roofs had not been torched. All the animals were gone from their pens and the fruit had been harvested, giving the place an eerie sense of emptiness, but the shelters still stood.

Then they crossed a hill and saw Bredsfor Manor nestled in a cozy vale, a long building of gray stone with two wings fanning out. Behind it lay barns and dovecotes, carriage houses, servants' quarters, and walled gardens. A circular drive curved among the flower beds and topiaries before the manor, A deep brook cut through the vale, and a white bridge spanned the brook farther down the road.

On the steps of the manor sat a woman in cloud-colored silk, her dark hair cascading over her left shoulder.

Myrrima gazed up at them, stood nervously. Her beauty had not diminished in the past few days. Gaborn had almost forgotten how lovely she looked, how inviting.

Borenson spurred his horse and charged downhill, shouting, “How—what are you doing here?”

In a moment Borenson leapt from his horse, and Myrrima melted into his arms.

Gaborn halted a hundred yards off.

Myrrima laughed and hugged Borenson, weeping. “You didn't make it to Longmont in time. King Orden told me to wait here for you. Oh, I was so afraid. The skies went black, and frightful screams shook the ground.

Raj Ahten's army passed here—right down this road, so I hid, but they were in such a hurry—they never slowed...”

Gaborn turned his horse around, rode back over the hill, followed by his Days, so that the two could have a few moments of privacy. There he rested beneath an elm tree, where the ground was free of the slushy melting snow. Part of him felt relieved. He'd believed, somehow, that Myrrima was important to his future, that she would play a major role in the wars to come, and he felt grateful to find that his father had chosen to save her, to send her out of harm's way.

Yet at the same time, he could not help but feel somewhat jealous of whatever happiness she and Borenson might have.

Iome had been so horribly scarred by her encounter with Raj Ahten, so shattered. The manner of her father's death was sure to divide them. Gaborn did not know if she would ever want to speak to him again.

Perhaps it would be better to forget her, he mused. Yet her happiness mattered to him. Gaborn still felt numb; his breathing came ragged, and he trembled.

Both of them bore wounds from this war, and these deep cuts were just the beginning.

But we cannot give in to pain, Gaborn thought. It is a Runelord's duty to place himself between his vassals and danger, to take the enemy's blows, so that fragile people do not have to suffer.

Though Gaborn felt hurt beyond telling, he did not weep, and he did not let himself mourn his loss. Just as, he vowed, he'd never let himself flinch in the face of danger.

Yet he feared that this day, these deeds, would haunt his dreams.

Gaborn's Days stood behind him, under the elm. Gaborn said, “I missed you, Days. I'd not have thought it, but I missed your presence.”

“As I missed you, Your Lordship. I see you have had a little adventure.”

It was the Days' way of asking Gaborn to fill in the blanks in his knowledge. It occurred to Gaborn that the Days did not really know how many things had happened to him, how he'd given himself to the Earth, or how he'd read the Emir of Tuulistan's book, or how he'd fallen in love.

“Days, tell me,” Gaborn said, “in ancient times, the men and women of your order were called the 'Guardians of Dream.' Is that not right?”

“Long ago, in the South, yes,” the Days answered.

“Why is that so?”

“Let me ask you another question, Your Lordship. When you dream, do you sometimes find yourself wandering through familiar lands, to places unconnected?”

“Yes,” Gaborn said. “There is a path behind my father's palace in Mystarria, and in my dreams, when I ride my horse behind it, I sometimes find myself in the fields behind the Room of the Heart, which is at least forty miles from the palace, or I ride through those fields and find myself by a pond in the Dunnwood. Is this significant?”

“It is only the sign of an organized mind, trying to make sense out of the world,” his Days answered.

“Then how does this answer my question?” Gaborn asked.

“In your dreams, there are paths you fear to tread,” the Days answered. “Your mind shies from the memory, but they too are part of the landscape of dream. Do you remember them, also?”

Gaborn did. As the Days spoke, he remembered a time many years ago, when he'd been traveling with his father in the mountains, and his father had wanted him to ride up a trail through a steep, narrow ravine of black stone, where cobwebs hung between the rock. “I remember.”

His Days looked at Gaborn with slitted eyes, nodded slightly. “Good, then you are a man of courage, for only men of courage remember that place. Someday soon, you will find yourself riding through your dreams. When you do, take that trail, and see where it leads you. Perhaps then you will have the answer to your question.”

Gaborn gazed at the Days, wondering. It was a trick, he knew, to tell someone what to do in their dreams. The mind would do as instructed, fulfill the command.

“You want to know what happened to me over the past three days,” Gaborn said. “Would it be selfish, if I kept that knowledge to myself?”

“A man who fancies himself to be the servant of all, should never give in to a selfish desire,” the Days answered.

Gaborn smiled. “After I left you,” he said, and he told the tale in full, though he never mentioned the Emir's book.

For a long hour Gaborn related his tale, and as he did so, he considered his new responsibilities. By now, his father's Dedicates had regained their endowments, and so the people of Mystarria would know that their king was dead. People would be frantic for news. Already, little boys riding their graaks would be on their way to Castle Sylvarresta. Gaborn would need to go there, send letters home. Plan his war.

Myrrima herself walked over the hill to disturb his worrying, her hips moving like boiling waves beneath her gray silk.

She did something no woman had ever done to him.

She came to him, put a hand over his in sympathy, and just stroked it, staring deep into his face. Few women had ever dared touch him so familiarly.

“Milord,” she whispered, “I...Your father was a good man. As deeply as he loved, so shall he be missed. I will always...revere his memory.”

“Thank you,” Gaborn said. “He deserved that.”

Myrrima pulled at Gaborn's hand, and said, “Come down to the manor, into the garden. It is a beautiful garden. It will ease your spirits while Borenson and I fix dinner. Grapes hang on the vines, and vegetables are in the field. I found hams in the smokehouse.”

Gaborn had not eaten since last night. He nodded wearily, took her hand, led his horse down to the manor. Behind them, his Days rode in silence.

The garden behind the manor was everything Myrrima had promised. The snow had nearly all melted, leaving the garden wet, fresh. Rock walls covered with rose and wisteria enclosed the garden; herbs and pleasant flowers grew all about.

A wide brook meandered through the lawn. In its deep, rocky pools, fat trout sunned themselves and snapped at bees that buzzed through the flowers beside the water.

Gaborn walked among the herbs for a long hour, examining plants. It was not as marvelous as Binnesman's garden had been, nowhere near as sprawling and wild and diverse. Gaborn had a little knowledge of herb lore, as much as most princes learned. So as Gaborn wandered about, he could not help but find things he'd need: dogbane growing on a trellis on the south wall of the manor, a bit of shepherd's purse for stanching wounds, nightcap poppy to help him sleep. There were so many herbs, and Gaborn did not know what to do with them.

He was so involved in harvesting the root of mallow to treat burns, that at first he did not notice when Binnesman arrived just before dinner.

“Hello,” Binnesman said at Gaborn's back, startling him. “So, you gather herbs now?”

Gaborn nodded, afraid that to a master herbalist such as Binnesman, his efforts would seem feeble. Gaborn knelt near the aromatic, serrated leaves by the ground, and suddenly felt unsure, wondered if these rose-pink petals really were mallow, or if he'd been mistaken.

Binnesman only nodded kindly, and smiled, then knelt beside Gaborn and helped him dig. “The root of mallow is best for burns when it is still fresh,” he said, “though vendors hawk it dried. It is the cooling sap that you need, not some desiccated twig. But a dried mallow root, once soaked in water, can still give some relief.”

Gaborn stopped digging, but Binnesman urged him to keep on. “Look to the tops of the roots, the thickest parts. It's good that you do this, learn which parts to use.”

He pulled at the mallow, then broke off its purplish-brown root for Gaborn to see. The sap oozed onto Binnesman's fingers, and the old wizard touched the cool stuff to Gaborn's forehead. “See?”

“Yes, I see,” Gaborn answered.

There was an uncomfortable silence between them, and the wizard stared into Gaborn's eyes. Gaborn could see flecks of green in the old man's skin, but his robes had gone a ruddy flame, the color of maple leaves in autumn.

“You think I have some great powers,” Binnesman said, “but it is only the power that comes from serving the Earth.”

“No, your herbs are far more potent than any I've seen in Mystarria,” Gaborn said.

“Would you like to know the secret of it?” the wizard asked.

Gaborn nodded dumbly, hardly daring believe the wizard would tell him.

“Plant the seeds yourself, My King,” Binnesman said, “in soil fertilized and turned by your own hands. Water them with your own sweat. Serve them—fulfill their every need—and they'll serve you fully in return. Few men, even among the wise, understand the great power one can gain from service.”

“There is nothing more?” Gaborn asked.

“My plants grew to serve the people of this land. You saw how I dunged them with human waste. I used dung from many people, over many generations. So the plants serve these people.

“We are all...intertwined. Man, plant, earth, sky, fire, water. We are not many things, but one thing. And when we recognize that we are all but one thing, then we begin to tap into that One Greater Power—the communion.”

Binnesman fell silent and watched Gaborn intently. “Do you understand?”

As he considered, Gaborn thought he began to apprehend what Binnesman tried to say, but he did not know if he could comprehend it yet.

“There are gardens in Mystarria,” Gaborn said, for lack of any other response. “I'll speak to my gardeners, learn what seeds I have to plant. I should be able to get many kinds of seeds, at the House of Understanding.”

“May I see your gardens?” Binnesman asked. “Perhaps I could advise you on matters of their cultivation.”

“I'd like that,” Gaborn said. “But you've spent your life here. Won't you stay in the Dunnwood?”

“To what purpose?” Binnesman asked. “The Seventh Stone has fallen. The last of the obalin is dead. I've nothing more to learn from it, and can no longer serve it. My garden is destroyed.”

“Your wylde. What of it?”

“I searched for it all this afternoon, listened to the trees and grass. If it walks the earth, it does so far from here. I will search for it in Fleeds and farther south, until I find it. Perhaps in Mystarria.”

“But the woods?”

“Are beautiful indeed,” Binnesman said. “I will miss them. Now you are my king. I will follow you.”

It had such an odd sound, this exclamation of devotion. To Gaborn's knowledge, no Earth Warden had ever claimed fealty to a king. Wizards were solitary beings, living outside the bounds of common men.

“It will be terrible, won't it?” Gaborn asked. “The war. I feel it coming. I feel...a shifting under the earth. Energies stirring.”

Binnesman merely nodded. Gaborn looked down, noticed that the old wizard stood barefoot, though a few dollops of snow still hid among the leaves in the garden.

Gaborn said now the thing that had been haunting him all afternoon. “I claimed him with my whole heart. I claimed my father. I tried to protect him, and I tried to serve him—just as I claimed Sylvarresta and Chemoise's father and Rowan. Yet I failed them. They're all dead—seeds of mankind that I chose to save. Tell me, Binnesman, what more must I do?”

The wizard studied Gaborn frankly. “Don't you understand, milord? It is not enough simply to want them. You must serve them with your whole mind, your whole will.”

Gaborn wondered deep in his heart what he needed to do, and in answer he felt a terrifying sense of distress, a sense that the whole world was rocking, shifting under his feet, and he had nothing to cling to. Certainly he'd loved his father and Sylvarresta, had struggled to keep both kings alive.

“It is my fault that Raj Ahten still lives,” Gaborn mused. “I spun too thin a web to catch such a large fly.” Gaborn smiled at the image.

Yet there was something more he needed to do, something he could not quite grasp or voice. Gaborn was so new in his powers. He didn't know his own measure, his own responsibilities.

Binnesman said something then, words that would haunt Gaborn forever. And as Binnesman spoke the secret, Gaborn felt his mind begin to unhinge: “Milord, have you not understood? Choosing a man for the Earth is not enough. The powers of Earth are weakening, while Fire grows strong. Each person you seek to save, Fire will only seek more fully to destroy. And it will seek to destroy you above all.”

Gaborn gasped and his heart froze at the recognition, for surely he'd felt this all along—this secret nagging suspicion. The new powers he'd felt stirring within him bore a tremendous price. By choosing to love someone, by seeking to save a person, he marked the person, made him a target.

“How then? How can I do anything?” Gaborn asked. “What does it benefit a man to be chosen?”

“In time, we will learn to use your powers,” Binnesman said. “You think that benefit is slight, and perhaps that is so. But is the benefit slight to a man, if it means the difference between life and death?”

As Gaborn considered, he recognized that he'd done some things right. He'd saved Iome when Raj Ahten hunted them. He'd managed to save Borenson at Longmont. He'd drawn Myrrima here for reasons he did not yet understand, and he suddenly felt sure to the marrow of his bones that if he'd not sent Borenson back to warn Myrrima of the invaders in the woods, the whole family would have been slaughtered.

Without the aid of Gaborn's fledgling powers, many more would be dead now.

Yes, I've done something. But I must do far, far more.

“What will you now, milord?” Binnesman asked, almost as if divining his thoughts.

“What would you advise?” Gaborn said.

“You are the king; I am merely a servant, and no counselor,” Binnesman said. “The earth will serve you in ways it would never serve me. I have no idea what you should do.”

Gaborn considered. “There are forcibles hidden here in the garden,” Gaborn said with a sigh. “I'll dig them up. Raj Ahten believes I already have them, that I've already used them. By the time he returns, I shall have done it. He may become the Sum of All Men, but I shall be the sum of all his nightmares.

“You know much about ancient lore,” Gaborn said. “Can he do it? Can he become the Sum of All Men?”

“Not of all men,” Binnesman said. “He craves power, the guarantee of a continued existence. I do not know much of the Runelords' arts, but I know this: If he seeks to become the Sum of All Men, perhaps he should go to the source, learn how it is done.”

“What do you mean?” Gaborn asked.

“We Earth Wardens live a long time. Lives given in service are usually long, and lives given in service to the land can be longest of all. Yet when I was young, four hundred years ago, I once met a man of the South. I met him at an old inn near Danvers Landing. He seemed only a young Runelord, some traveling noble. But a hundred and eighty years ago, he came north and visited Castle Sylvarresta for the summer. At least I believe it was him. There had been trouble that year to the north with reavers and with robbers. He put an end to them both. Then he went south again.”

“Daylan Hammer? You are telling me that Daylan Hammer still lives? The Sum of All Men? After sixteen hundred years?”

“I am telling you that he may live,” Binnesman said. He shook his head thoughtfully. “I could be mistaken. I've never told this tale to anyone. Perhaps it is unwise to tell you now.”

“Why?”

“He did not seem to be a happy man. If he has secrets, they should remain with him.”

“Is happiness everything?” Gaborn asked.

“Yes, ultimately I believe it is,” Binnesman said. “It should be the goal of your existence, to live life in peace and joy.”

Gaborn considered. “Am I wrong to fight Raj Ahten using his own tactics? To fight him at all.”

“To fight him is dangerous,” Binnesman said. “Not just dangerous for you, dangerous for the whole world. If he would join your cause, I would rejoice. But he will oppose you, and it is not for me to say whether you should fight him. It shall be your task to gather the seeds of humanity. You must decide which to save, which to toss aside.

“You have already begun your task.” He waved to the manor house, where Borenson and Myrrima cooked in the dining hall.

Gaborn shuddered at the thought of his task, that he was supposed to somehow gauge the worth of men, save some, discard others. This would have to become the work of his whole soul, his every waking thought. Yet even then, he had no guarantee that he could succeed. “What of Iome?”

“A good woman, I think,” Binnesman said. “She is very much in touch with the powers, can feel their most subtle influence, better than you—or I. She would be an asset.”

“I love her,” Gaborn said.

“Then what are you doing here?” Binnesman asked.

“Giving her time alone, to grieve. I fear that if she accepts me, her people might revolt. They will not want me.”

“I would not worry about her people, only about her. Do you think she wants you to leave her alone? Do you think she doesn't love you?”

“She loves me,” Gaborn said.

“Then go to her, soon. If she grieves, then grieve with her. Sharing our pain makes our wounds heal faster.”

“I...it wouldn't be a good idea. Not now. Not so soon—after.”

“I spoke with her not an hour ago,” Binnesman said. “She asked for you. She wants to see you on some urgent matter, tonight—soon.”

Gaborn studied the wizard's face, wondering. It seemed madness to go to her now, considering how her people felt about him. Yet if Iome had asked for him, perhaps she had good reason. Perhaps, he thought, they had treaties to discuss. She would need money to repair her castle. House Sylvarresta knight need loans, armies...

He would give whatever she asked, of course.

“All right,” Gaborn said. “I'll see her.”

“At sunset,” Binnesman said. “Don't let her be alone after sunset.”

Binnesman's words encouraged Gaborn. What good was it to have a wizard as your counselor, he reasoned, if you did not listen to his wisdom?

61 Peace

Gaborn did not leave the manor before sunset. He took time to warm some water in the kitchens, to bathe and rub his hair with lavender; to scrub his armor with the soft leaves of lamb's ear, so that he'd present himself well.

By evening the clouds blew out of the region altogether, and warmer air now suffused the night, almost as if it were any other afternoon in late summer. The scents of grass and oak grew strong in the air.

Borenson and Myrrima stayed behind at the manor.

Only the wizard Binnesman and Gaborn's Days rode with him to Longmont. There, thousands of people worked in the twilight, salvaging supplies from the castle, cleaning the dead. More warriors arrived from farther north—eight thousand knights and men-at-arms from Castle Derry, headed by Duke Mardon, arriving unexpectedly at the summons of Groverman.

Gaborn reached camp, and was escorted to Iome by a guard who seemed friendly enough.

Custom in Heredon dictated that the dead be interred before sunset on the day of their death, but so many lords and knights were swelling in from the hills around Longmont, setting up tents, that King Sylvarresta could not be buried. King Orden, too, had not been interred, and whether this was done as an honor, so that the kings might be buried together, or because the people did not want to bury a foreign king on their soil, Gaborn did not know.

But too many people wanted to view the bodies, to pay their last respects.

Gaborn found Iome still mourning her father. The bodies had been cleaned and laid out on fine blankets over beds of paving stones. The Earl of Dreis lay near their feet, in a place of honor.

Upon seeing the dead, the wounds on Gaborn's heart felt all fresh and new. He went to Iome, sat beside her, and took her hand. She clenched his fingers tightly, as if her very life depended on his touch.

She sat with her head lowered, eyes forward. Gaborn did not know if she was only deep within herself, fighting her pain, or if she kept her face down simply to hide it, for now she was no more lovely than any other maid.

For a long half-hour they sat while the soldiers of Sylvarresta came to pay their last respects, talking to one another in hushed whispers. Many a proud soldier shot Gaborn a disapproving scowl on seeing how he touched Iome so familiarly, but Gaborn defied them.

He feared Raj Ahten had won a small victory here, had succeeded in driving a wedge between two nations that had long been friends. Vainly, he wondered how he could ever heal that wound.

All along the downs, for a mile around, campfires began to spring up for the night. A soldier came with two large torches, and planned to set one at the heads, the other at the feet of the two kings, but Binnesman warned the man away.

“They died fighting flameweavers,” he said. “It would be inappropriate to put flames so close to them now. There is starlight enough tonight to see by.”

Indeed, the sky was alive with stars, just as campfires lit the valley.

Gaborn had thought it an odd sentiment on Binnesman's part. Perhaps he feared the flames as much as he loved the earth. Even now, on the cool of the evening, he walked barefoot, keeping himself in contact with the source of his power.

Yet almost as soon as the torches were withdrawn, Iome tensed, as if every muscle in her body spasmed.

She leapt to her feet and raised her hands high over her eyes, gazing up to the surrounding hills, and shouted, “They come! They come! Beware!”

Gaborn wondered if Iome had lost too much sleep over the past few days, wondered if she dreamed now with her eyes open. For she was gazing all about, at the line of trees on the western hills, her eyes shining with a fierce wonder.

Gaborn could see nothing. Yet Iome began shouting and grabbing at Gaborn as if something horrible and wonderful were happening.

Then the wizard Binnesman leapt away from the bodies of the dead kings, shouting, “Hold! Hold! Everyone get back! No one move, on your peril!”

All over the camp, for hundreds of yards, people looked up toward the campfire at their mad princess, at the shouting of the wizard, worry etched on their brows.

Binnesman took Iome by one shoulder, holding her close, and whispered in satisfaction, “Indeed, they do come.”

Then, distantly, distantly, Gaborn heard something: the sound of a wind moving through the trees, sweeping toward them from the forest northwest of the castle. It was an odd sound, an eerie sound that rose and fell, like the baying of wolves, or like the song of the night wind playing through the chimneys of his father's winter palace. Only there was a fierceness, an immediacy to the windsong he had heard only once before.

Gaborn gazed to the west, and it seemed that a chill breeze touched him. But it was an invisible wind, one that moved without swaying branches or bending grass in its wake.

Not a wind, Gaborn decided, but the sounds of many dainty feet, rustling the leaves and grass. And from the woods, mingled with that odd windsong, came the faint sounds of hunting horns, and the yapping of dogs, and the shouts of men.

On the far hills, pale gray lights began playing under the trees as mounted riders appeared by the thousands. The gray lights shone dimly. The colors of the riders' livery was muted—as if Gaborn watched them through a smoked glass.

Yet he could make out the details of their livery and devices: ancient lords of Heredon rode those horses, with their ladies and their dogs and their retainers and squires, all dressed for a great hunt, carrying pig spears. And more than lords rode with them, for Gaborn could see commoners and children in that retinue, madmen and fools, scholars and dotards and dreamers, maids and ladies, farmers by the drab score, pages and smiths and weavers and horsemen and wizards—a whole rollicking nation.

The strange howling in the woods was that of ghostly laughter, for all were laughing gaily, as if in celebration.

The spirits of the Dunnwood rode their mounts to a halt, just under the trees on the western hills, and stood, staring expectantly toward Gaborn and Iome.

Gaborn recognized some of the men there—Captain Derrow and Captain Ault, Rowan and other men and women from Castle Sylvarresta, most of whom remained nameless to him.

At their head rode a great king Gaborn recognized only from his device, for on his golden shield he bore the ancient emblem of the green knight.

It was Erden Geboren.

Tens and tens of thousands of other lords and ladies and peasants rode with him or followed after, a great horde that covered the hills and downs. The ghost king raised a great hunting horn to his lips with both hands, and blew.

Its deep call echoed over the hills, silencing everyone who still spoke throughout all the mortal camp. He blew it plaintively twice more, in short riffs.

It was the call that King Sylvarresta had blown last year at the beginning of his hunt, an invitation for all riders to mount their horses.

At Gaborn's side, a cold wind stirred, a chill that smote him to the bone, so powerful and frightening was it.

Fear gripped him, made him terrified to blink or twitch. To do so would surely kill him, Gaborn felt. So he stood, frozen, until he recalled his father's words. “No prince of Mystarria need fear the spirits of the Dunnwood.”

He looked from the corner of his eye to see the ghost of King Sylvarresta rise from the corpse there on its pallet. Sylvarresta bent at the waist, sitting up, and gazed longingly across the field, to the men of the great hunt.

Then he reached over and shook King Orden's shoulders, rousing him as if from a deep slumber, so that he, too, awoke.

The kings rose together and seemed to call across the valley. Though their lips moved, they spoke no words that Gaborn could hear, yet a strange moaning issued over the downs.

Across the far valley came a quick response. Two ladies rode out of that distant crowd, emerging fifty yards from the edge of the wood, each of them leading a saddled horse.

Gaborn recognized them. One woman was the Queen Venetta Sylvarresta, and the other was Gaborn's own mother.

They smiled radiantly, and seemed to be talking as if neither had a care in the world. Grand. Happy.

King Sylvarresta and King Orden took each other's hands and walked casually down the field as they used to when they were but young men. Sylvarresta seemed to be telling a long joke, and Orden laughed at him heartily, shaking his head. Their voices carried on the wind as an odd twitter, the words escaping Gaborn.

They moved with deceptive swiftness, these ghosts, like deer leaping through the grass. In but a handful of steps, King Orden and King Sylvarresta both met their wives, and kissed them in greeting, then mounted their own steeds.

All across the fields, other knights rose to join the hunt. Men from the fallen castle. Chemoise's father appeared at the base of the oak, hurried across the fields to the great throng.

As the knights and kings all joined the great hunt, the wraiths behind them all turned away, began riding back into the Dunnwood, the hounds baying distantly, faint sounds of laughter and cries of the hunt issuing from the lips of various lords, and Erden Geboren's horn sounding above all.

From his horse's back, Gaborn's father stared across the valley, as if glimpsing the living knights camped in their fields for the first time. For half a heartbeat, his mouth opened in dismay, as if he recalled the things of his mortal life, or as if he'd just remembered a troubling dream. Then his eyes cleared, and he smiled broadly. The mortal world concerned him no longer.

He turned his horse, galloped into the woods. Then he was gone.

Gone forever, Gaborn realized, until I can join him.

Gaborn found himself weeping, not in pain or joy, but in wonder. Last year as his father had camped with him during his hunt in the Dunnwood, his father had said that the kings of Mystarria and Heredon did not need to fear the ghosts of the Dunnwood. Now Gaborn understood why.

We are the ghosts of the Dunnwood, he realized.

Yet as the great horde turned and began disappearing into the wood, one rider remained. Erden Geboren stared off toward Gaborn for a long minute, his eyes piercing, then spurred his horse forward.

He sees me. He sees me, Gaborn realized, and his heart pounded in terror, for everyone knew that to attract the gaze of a wight brought death.

The great king moved as if in a dream, crossing the downs in a seeming heartbeat, so that only seconds later, Erden Geboren himself sat in his saddle above Gaborn's head, staring down.

Gaborn gazed up into the face of the wight. He bore his shield, and wore armor of green leather. His helm was a simple round thing of ancient design.

He stared deep into Gaborn's eyes, in recognition.

Gaborn had imagined that Erden Geboren would be young, as in the songs of old, that he would look noble and brave. But he was an aging man, well past his prime.

Erden Geboren pointed to the ground at Gaborn's feet, and Gaborn looked down, to see where he pointed.

As Gaborn did, dry oak leaves in the grass began to rustle and stir in a slight breeze, drawing upward as if in a whirlwind, then suddenly rose high and twined their stems together, then lodged in his fresh-combed hair.

All around the downs, the men and women of Heredon gasped in wonder.

Erden Geboren had crowned Gaborn with the circlet of leaves. It was the ancient symbol of Mystarria, the sign of the Earth King. Tonight was the eve of Hostenfest.

Yet among all the vast throng of people gathered there, only one man dared call out from the fields below, “All hail the new King of the Earth!”

Gaborn looked up into the eyes of the ghost king, Erden Geboren, and suddenly understood something. He could command these spirits. He could have commanded them all along. In rage Gaborn said, “If you make me your king, then I order you and your legions to do what you can to protect these woods. Raj Ahten has taken many lives here. See that he takes no more.”

Erden Geboren nodded solemnly, then turned his pale horse and rode over the fields, his great charger leaping the fences and hedgerows as he retreated into the Dunnwood.

In moments, the sounds of hunting horns rang suddenly loud, and then faded again into the distance as the wights departed.

Everyone stared at Gaborn, utterly silent. Many looked troubled, as if uncertain what had happened, or unwilling to believe. Others merely gaped in astonishment. It was said that the ancient kings commanded the Dunnwood, that the wood served them. Gaborn understood now that it was the ghosts of the wood that had served his forefathers—and now Gaborn had dared command them.

Gaborn almost feared to breathe, for he knew that whatever he said this day, it would be remembered by all.

Iome looked up at Gaborn, tears glistening in her eyes. He was already holding her hand, but now she squeezed his fingers tightly, her right hand to his left. And she raised her hand high.

Among poor people in both their kingdoms, a marriage was made in a manner similar to this: the man and woman who wanted to wed would stand before witnesses, holding hands together, while a friend bound them at the wrist with a white ribbon. Then the newlyweds would raise their hands as one, for all to see.

So everyone understood the significance of her gesture. I am a poor woman, who wants to make a marriage.

Gaborn raised her hand in his higher, and shouted to all those in the camp, “You yourselves saw Sylvarresta and Orden ride together now as they did in life, united as true friends. Seeing as death cannot divide them, let our people not be divided!”

Everyone in the camp stood quiet, none yet daring to move.

Duke Mardon stood two hundred yards downfield from them. A campfire glowed at his feet, showing his face. His golden goblet had recently been filled. He was a huge man, more of a leader than any other in Heredon. A lord that men loved and looked to.

Now, it seemed that hundreds of eyes turned to the Duke, seeking sign of his approval.

Mardon was no fool. Perhaps he recognized that Heredon needed this union. Perhaps he had time to consider the wealth and power Mystarria commanded. Perhaps he recognized the necessity of allying himself with the Earth King.

Yet if such mercenary thoughts crossed the Duke's mind, they did not show. For almost immediately he raised his golden goblet in salute to Gaborn, and a broad smile creased his face. He called, “And, milady, what say you?”

Iome clenched Gaborn's hand tightly, raised it higher. She turned to Gaborn now, and looked up at him, the starlight shining in her eyes. “For Sylvarresta's part, I accept...gladly.”

Duke Mardon shouted and raised his goblet high. “It seems our King Sylvarresta celebrates Hostenfest this year with a hunt after all! Let us rejoice for him...and for his daughter. We double our cause for celebration!” He drained the cup quickly, and tossed it far into the night, into the camps of his troops, to be the prize of some poor soldier.

That action more than any other finally brought a cheer from the camp, and endeared Mardon to Gaborn forever after.