Yet when she reached the inn and dismounted, Celinor only sat ahorse, watching her. She stood in the shade of the porch, glancing back. The yeasty smell of ale was strong here, having soaked into the floorboards over the ages.

"Are you coming in?" she asked.

His face looked set, determined He merely shook his head, then apologized "I'll go on up ahead, let my horse rest a few moments."

Erin went into the inn, her Days following, and sat down at a table alone, just the two of them. In moments a young serving girl hurried over, asking, "What would please the lady?"

The owner of the hostel, a big-bellied man, sat with King Orden, talking cordially. She heard the fellow congratulating Gaborn on his recent marriage.

"I'll have ale," she said. The waif hurried off.

In moments the hostler himself ran downstairs to help fetch up some ale kegs. Fat King Orwynne said in his high voice, "So, Your Highness, it seems that Prince Celinor fears to join us."

"Good," Gaborn said. "I'd hoped that he might have the strength to forbear this place."

"But do you think it will take?" Orwynne said. "I for one believe that even the railings of the Earth King will not keep him sober through the week. I'll bet you ten golden eagles, milord, he'll be falling off his horse by sundown tomorrow."

"I hope not." Gaborn said, though he did not accept the wager.

"Your Highness," Erin wondered aloud, "have you spoken to Prince Celinor?"

King Orwynne glanced at her with the dismissive look that some warlords gave the women of Fleeds. He did not respect her, but he answered her question before Gaborn could speak. "The sot had the audacity to present himself to the Earth King this morning, before we rode out, and offer his sword in service. The Earth King rejected him, of course."

Gaborn sat wearily, gazing down at his hands folded on the table. "Don't be so harsh," Gaborn said. "The man has a good heart, but I could not in conscience Choose a man who loves strong drink more than he loves himself or his fellows."

"So you rejected him?" Erin asked "Not rejected," Gaborn said.. "I asked him for a show of contrition. I asked him to give up his greatest pleasure. In return, if he can remain sober, I will Choose him."

Erin had not heard that the Earth King made such bargains with men. He had Chosen her outright. Yet she was glad of it, glad to know that a man might better himself to some reward.

When her ale came, she took only a small sip, then went out front where her mount was tied to the hitching rail. She poured ale into her palm for her horse, let it drink, the hairs of its muzzle tickling her palm. A strong drink would serve her mount well, give it the energy it needed to keep up with the other lords' horses. Her own mount was a good force horse, with a single endowment each of strength and metabolism and grace, but it was not so lavishly endowed as Gaborn's charger, or those of some of the other mounts in the retinue.

She wondered at Gaborn's words. He'd said that Celinor had a "good heart." What exactly did that mean? Celinor had done nothing but voice his doubts about Gaborn's sovereignty yesterday. The High Marshal had hinted that he thought Celinor might even be a spy, out to destroy Gaborn. Yet Gaborn had looked into the man and seen a good heart?

It made no sense.

Perhaps, she thought, Gaborn did not mind if Celinor had reservations.

After she'd finished giving her horse some drink, she took her gla.s.s mug inside, dropped a copper dove on the table. Her Days followed. Together they rode out of town.

Erin found Celinor and his Days in a meadow dotted with yellow dandelions and white clover. Celinor brushed down his mount as it grazed.

She stopped and did the same, taking a moment to check the beast's legs and ankles. One of its shoes had lost two nails, but otherwise the horse was fine. Celinor would not keep his eyes off her.

"I am surprised that you're not with the others," Celinor said at last. "There will be few comforts through these hills, until we reach Bannisferre."

She dared not admit why she'd come. Her code of honor was such that she stood by a man in battle, even if he was only a man who battled his own vices. "Since we're allowed to open ranks, I thought it might be more of a comfort to get a head start," she said. "Let the others chew on my trail dust for a while."

"I'm certain they'll make a fine meal of it," Celinor laughed. Erin smiled. So he truly had not meant to be disrespectful toward Gaborn, she thought. He merely jests by nature.

"So," Erin asked, "you think Gaborn is the Earth King after all? I've heard that you bent the knee to him."

"After he rejected the High Marshal," Celinor said, "I reasoned that he is either the Earth King or a madman. I don't think he's mad. He rejected me, too, of course. But I'd hoped for nothing better."

"Not rejected," Erin said. "I hear that he is holding his judgment in reserve."

"Indeed." Celinor smiled, c.o.c.ked his head to the side. "And I hope someday to be worthy of his blessing. Already I've gone twenty hours without a drink."

Erin tried to think of a compliment appropriate for such a negligible feat, and had to wonder. Twenty hours? He'd offered his sword into Gaborn's service only this morning. Yet the alehouses around Castle Sylvarresta had been full last night as people celebrated the end of Hostenfest.

What's more, tradition required a toast to end Hostenfest before going to bed. She couldn't imagine him having gone the night without a drink.

"Twenty hours?" she asked. "But you only offered service this morning."

"I swore off drink yesterday," Celinor said.

She looked at him inquisitively.

"You scorned me," Celinor said, "and you were right to do so. For I realized that you were correct: All of my best friends did live in alehouses. I would not have it so. I could not bear to look into your eyes and incur your displeasure."

Erin smiled, pleased that her one remark might have inspired a change in the man. Yet she did not trust it completely.

"Will you ride with me today?" Erin asked.

"I would be happy for the opportunity," Celinor said. They mounted up, and raced off side by side.

CHAPTER 18.

ONE FOR THE BOOKS.

Gaborn sat in his chair in the Dwindell Inn. King Orwynne kept up a rambling monologue on a number of topics, but Gaborn felt too preoccupied to listen. All morning long, he'd felt a constricting sensation in his chest, the rising recognition of danger.

As his people fled Castle Sylvarresta, his fears for them eased. Yet not everyone had left Castle Sylvarresta. He felt Iome there with Myrrima, and dozens of guards and townspeople still braving the danger.

What powers might this Darkling Glory possess that it so dismayed him? A sense of doom was growing on him, and he promised himself that he would not wait too long before warning the others. So Gaborn nodded at King Orwynne's blathering, hardly speaking, hardly daring to move. He felt distracted, worried in particular for King Orwynne.

It would be foul indeed to lose him, Gaborn thought--I must take special care of him.

King Orwynne was a staunch ally, a rarity these days. And his force warriors would be badly needed on the trip south.

Gaborn prepared to leave the Dwindell Inn at well past one in the afternoon.

Hundreds of knights still poured into Hayworth, eager for a brief rest. The streets were lined with horses, and the innkeeper had brought barrels of ale to the porch. A maid filled mugs as fast as the men could drink. She had no time to clean the mugs. A man would simply pa.s.s a mug forward through the press, along with a copper dove, and she'd take the coin and fill the mug.

Thus the kings had to shoulder their way through the throng as they headed toward their horses. Gaborn went to the hitching post, untied his own mount. Time was short.

At that moment, Gaborn's Days tapped him on the shoulder. Gaborn turned and looked the scholar in the eye. The brown-robed fellow looked shaken. "Your Highness..." the Days said, and he held his hands wide, as if to say Words cannot express my sorrow.

"What?" Gaborn asked.

"I am sorry, Your Highness," the Days said. "It will be a bad day for the books. I am sorry." The aura of death surrounding Gaborn was overwhelming.

"A bad day for the books?" Gaborn said, a sense of horror rising in him.

He faced the abyss. I'm under attack, he thought. Yet he could see no attacker.

"What? What's happening?" he wondered aloud.

Fat King Orwynne had heard the words, and now he looked from Gaborn's Days to Gaborn, worry, on his brow.

"Your Highness?"

Gaborn looked up at the steel-gray clouds that gathered above, and sent a warning to Iome and the others still at Castle Sylvarresta. "Flee!"

He put a foot into a stirrup, began to leap onto his horse, and suddenly felt the earth twist.

A wrenching nausea a.s.sailed his stomach as his strength suddenly left him. Gaborn slipped from the saddle, stood for a moment leaning against his horse.

I'm under attack, he thought, by some invisible agent.

"Your Highness?" King Orwynne asked. "Are you well?" The wrenching nausea came again, and for a second, Gaborn was stunned, dazed and unsure of where he was.

Gaborn shook his head as he shakily sat down on the porch of the inn. The porch was dirty, but warm. People moved aside to give him air.

"I think he's been poisoned!" King Orwynne shouted.

"No--no! Dedicates are dying," Gaborn said feebly. "Raj Ahten is in the Blue Tower."

CHAPTER 19.

AT THE BLUE TOWER.

The fog had been thick over the sea all morning as Raj Ahten rowed to the Blue Tower, lured by the call of seabirds, the sound of waves crashing over rocks.

In the thick fog, he'd bypa.s.sed the warships set to guard the tower, until he reached its base.

His shoulder ached as he rowed. King Mendellas Orden had kicked him hard in the battle at Longmot, had crushed the bones of his right shoulder. With thousands of endowments of stamina, he would live, but over the past week he'd had surgeons cut into his flesh a dozen times and break the bones, try to straighten them. His wounds healed within minutes, but the pain had been excruciating, and still his shoulder was little better.

d.a.m.n the Mystarrians--old King Orden and his son.

In the past week, Raj Ahten had been able to retrieve enough forcibles to boost his metabolism again, enabling him to prepare for war.

Now he reached the Blue Tower, saw it rising from the fog. It was enormous, this ancient fortress that housed the vast majority of Mystarria's Dedicates.

Raj Ahten stood in the prow of a fine little coracle and made a deep sound from far back in his lungs. It was not a shout. It was more of a rumbling, a chant, a single deep tone that rattled the bones and chilled the air and sent the stone of the Blue Tower thrumming in harmony.

It was not an exceptionally loud sound. Great volume, he'd found, did not serve him. It was the precise tone that he wanted, a note which varied between different kinds of rock--that made stone sing in return.

For long moments he held this tone, letting his Voice mingle with the song of the stone, until he heard the explosive sound of stone splitting; until the servants in the Blue Tower began screaming in terror, their voices as distant and insignificant as the cries of gulls; until great swaths of stone crashed from the battlements and plunged into the sea, spewing foam.

Still he sang, until roofs crashed into floors and people threw themselves from windows to escape the doom.

Still he sang, until turret collapsed against turret and gargoyles fell from the walls like ghastly parodies of men, until the whole of the Blue Tower tilted to the left and dashed into the sea.

The smoke and dust of ruin rose gray in the fog. The deadly warships that guarded the Blue Tower hoisted sail and came gliding toward him.

The Blue Tower tumbled down, and surely as it fell, Mystarria would fall with it. The Dedicates inside had died, along with all of their guards.

Raj Ahten turned and put his back to the oars one more time. He would slip through the fog before the war ships could intercept him.

His back ached, but he felt comforted to know that Gaborn Val Orden would ache even more.

CHAPTER 20.

AN EARTH KING STILL.

Gaborn had never felt a Dedicate die. The sensation had been described to him, the wrenching nausea, the sense of loss as brawn or stamina were ripped away.

Now he felt it keenly. Wave after wave of nausea a.s.sailed him as his endowments were stripped. His mail suddenly seemed to hang heavy on his frame, a suffocating weight that bore him down.

He'd not slept for three nights. With his endowments of stamina he'd taken it lightly, but now fatigue overcame him.

He felt bewildered, weary to death. King Orwynne stared in horror.

Gaborn hunched over and covered his stomach with his hand, as if reeling from a physical blow. Yet his greatest concern was not for himself.

The Blue Tower housed the vast majority of the Dedicates who served Mystarria. More importantly, the warriors of Mystarria made up nearly a third of all the force soldiers in all the kingdoms of Rofehavan.

Duke Paladane's warriors, the finest in Mystarria, would become worthless commoners in moments, or with the loss of key attributes, they might at best become "warriors of unfortunate proportion," perhaps strong but slow, or wise but weak.

Even now Duke Paladane was driving his men into formation before Raj Ahten's troops, while Raj Ahten's Invincibles sharpened their blades for the slaughter.