So as he rode that night, he grew more refreshed with each pa.s.sing hour. He grew stronger, faster.

Though the deed repulsed him, he could not deny that the taste of evil was sweet, and unwittingly on one occasion he even found himself wondering, If Raj Ahten sought to use forcibles to become the Sum of All Men, could I not do the same?

Yet he cast the thought away quickly, for it was not worthy of a king.

He rode now with the wizard Binnesman at his side, along with five hundred lords out of Orwynne and Heredon. Gaborn had provided a fast force horse so that his Days could accompany the party.

At dawn Gaborn gazed down from a hill trail that looked over the rolling plains. A cold sun dawdled on the horizon, and a hazy mist hovered over the fields of Fleeds.

In preparation for a race over the plains, he stopped to water and feed the horses by a placid finger lake where wild oats and purple vetch and golden melilot grew thick. The icy water was marvelously clear; fat trout swam lazily among the humped stones beneath its surface.

Yellow larks sang in the willows beside the road; at his approach they flew up like sparks from a smith's grindstone.

"Feed and water here for fifteen minutes," Gaborn called out. "If we race, we can reach Tor Doohan within the hour. From there we'll strike south quickly, in hopes of reaching Carris by mid-afternoon."

Gaborn was raising the time scale. The sense of impending doom at Carris was becoming overwhelming, and the Earth bade him to strike.

"Midafternoon?" Sir Langley asked. "Is there some great hurry?"

Carris was so far away that no messenger could have brought him any news that was less than a day stale. But Gaborn surprised them with some. "Yes," Gaborn admitted "I believe that Raj Ahten is at the walls of Carris. Five minutes ago, my messengers were in mortal danger....The feeling pa.s.sed for a moment. Yet now once again I feel a staggering sense of danger rising around my Chosen messengers there."

The lords began talking to one another loudly, discussing strategies. Raj Ahten was notorious for taking castles quickly. Few believed that Carris would hold out through the day. If it did, then chasing him off might be an easy matter.

But no one believed that they'd find him crouched before the walls of Carris.

The consensus was that if Gaborn laid siege to the castle, he would likely be successful in the short term. But how long could he sustain such a siege? With Raj Ahten's armies spilling across the borders, the Wolf Lord would not have to wait more than a week for reinforcements. Which meant that Gaborn would either have to attack Raj Ahten in his stronghold quickly, or stave off armies that came to give him aid.

Either way, Gaborn might well be setting the stage for a battle of epic proportions.

It all sounded so simple. Lords from all across Rofehavan would gather to his banner. Already he had Beldinook and Fleeds, the Knights Equitable, Heredon, and Mystarria. With so many troops, taking Raj Ahten should not be hard. In fact, Gaborn almost hoped that Raj Ahten did take Carris, for it would leave him trapped, like a rat, there on the peninsula.

Yet Gaborn still felt deeply troubled. He felt death stalking every single man and woman in his retinue. There would be a battle royal at Carris, and it would not wait for a week. He feared that Raj Ahten was setting some sort of trap.

He worried that even with Lowicker's aid, and the aid of Fleeds, he would not gather enough troops to do battle.

Gaborn went to the edge of the lake, hoping to be alone with his thoughts. Little yellow posies sprouted between the rocks at the sh.o.r.e's edge. He plucked one, stood holding it. As a child he'd always thought posies to be such treasures, though now he saw how common they really were.

Like people. Men and women and children everywhere. Gaborn still treasured every one of them, though the Earth warned that he could save only a few.

His Days went to the water's edge, drew back the hood of his riding robe to expose his close-cropped hair. His skeletal features looked haggard, marred by worry. He knelt and cupped his hands to draw forth a drink.

"What is happening at Carris?" Gaborn asked.

The scholar dropped his handful of water, startled. He did not turn to Gaborn to answer. "All in good time, Your Highness."

"You cannot simply record the deaths of men," Gaborn said. "No matter how hard you try to conceal it, you feel for them. Yesterday, when the Blue Tower fell, I saw the horror in your face."

"I am Time's Witness," the Days said. "I do not get involved."

"Death stalks every man and woman in our party. There are hundreds of thousands of people at Carris, and I believe that death stalks them also. Will you merely witness it?"

"There may well be nothing I can do to stop it," the Days answered. He turned to look at Gaborn. The morning sun showed a tear glistening in his eye.

What is he saying? Gaborn wondered. That he will not stop it, or cannot?

Cannot, Gaborn decided. But if that was true, what trap had Raj Ahten set that was so diabolical that it could not be thwarted? Gaborn needed to know more.

"You asked me last night if I would ever Choose a Days," Gaborn said. "My answer is yes, I will. But only if the Days will give himself in service to his fellow men."

"You seek to buy my allegiance?" the Days asked.

"I seek to save the world."

"It may be that you seek in vain," the Days said.

"How comfortable it must be, to simply remain a voyeur," Gaborn chided, to pretend that indifference is a virtue, and that our fates are all seed by time."

"You hope to anger me into breaking my vows?" the Days said. "That is a deed that I would have thought beneath you. My opinion of you is lowered. It will be noted in the book of your life."

Gaborn shook his head. "Beg, ridicule, badger, blackmail. If I ask hard things of you, I do not ask for myself alone. I warn you: I will not Choose you. I am riding into battle with you at my side, and I will not Choose you. You will most likely die today if you do not name the threat at Carris."

The Days trembled, tried to keep a firm jaw as he turned away. But his trembling demeanor told Gaborn much. There was a danger at Carris, a threat so enormous that the Days really believed he would die today.

Yet he chose oblivion rather than to break his vow of noninterference in the affairs of mankind.

As Gaborn stood waiting beside the lake, Erin Connal came to him. She'd warned him last night that she wanted to speak to him alone, and now she sat down beside him and said, "Your Highness, I have news of a plot against you."

She then gave him the bare bones of King Anders's plot to subvert Gaborn's claims to his throne.

Gaborn felt overwhelmed. He could hardly imagine why Anders would do it: For another lord to fight him was...so wasteful.

He'd imagined that people would have rejoiced to hear that the Earth had chosen a new king. Instead, it seemed to Gaborn that the land sprouted enemies like...like the banks of this cold lake sprouted posies.

Gaborn spoke to Erin for a few minutes, then she fetched Prince Celinor so that he could get closer to the heart of the matter.

Gaborn sat him down and questioned him. "Erin has warned me that your father plots against me. How serious is his plot, do you think? Would he go to war, or send a.s.sa.s.sins against me?"

Celinor answered frankly, as if he'd been worrying about the possibility himself. "I...don't know. My father has never sought war against or tried to a.s.sa.s.sinate a fellow lord of Rofehavan. He never spoke to me about the possibility. However...my father has not been himself lately. Not for the past month, at least. I think he is going mad"

"Why would you think him mad?" Gaborn asked.

Celinor looked all about, in order to make certain that no one else was close enough to hear.

"About three weeks ago, while all the castle was asleep, he crept to my room with nothing but a candle in his hand.

"He was naked, and wore nothing at all but a beatific smile such as I'd never seen on his face. His voice was soft and dreamy, and he woke me and announced that he had seen a sign in the heavens, and knew of a surety that he was to be the next Earth King."

"What sign had he seen?" Erin asked.

"He claimed that he saw three stars falling from the heavens, all at once, bright and flaming. Then these stars, he says, as they neared the horizon, suddenly veered from their course and wheeled about, circling the castle, creating a flaming crown that encompa.s.sed all of South Crowthen."

Gaborn wondered at such a story. Meteors did not figure at all in any legend dealing with the earth powers. "He thought this an Earth sign?"

"He did," Celinor said. "But I took it merely for a sign that he'd had some waking dream, and told him so. As proof I went to speak to the far-seer upon the castle walls, and to the guardsmen there, so that I could convince my father of his error."

"What did they say?" Gaborn asked "The guardsmen in the Dedicates' Keep had seen nothing, for they'd been making their rounds down below inside the keep. Four men were found to be missing. The far-seer upon the watchman's tower was dead."

"Dead?" Erin asked. "How?"

"He'd fallen from the tower. Whether he was pushed or had slipped or merely decided to jump, I don't know."

"The missing men?"

"My father refused to say where they've gone. He hints that they are on some mission. He said merely that 'They had duties elsewhere'"

"You think your father murdered his own far-seer, and sent the others away?" Gaborn asked "Perhaps," Celinor said "I had men check the borders of South Crowthen, looking for the four men. After a week we found a peasant who says that he did indeed see one of the missing knights racing south. He said he hailed the man, but the knight rode as if in a dream...without seeing him, without speaking.

"On a hunch, I looked harder, and found that indeed all four knights had left the kingdom--one riding north, another south, a third east, and the last to the west. Each man rode away without speaking a word"

"This reeks of sorcery," Gaborn said. He did not like it. This had nothing to do with the earth powers. It hinted at something dark and dangerous.

"So I thought," Celinor said. "We had an herb woman in the hills nearby, a lady called the Nut Woman, for she was always collecting nuts. She was a witch who lived in the woods and cared for the squirrels. I went to her cave to seek her counsel, to learn if this was the Earth's doing...but though I've heard that she'd lived in that cave for a hundred years, she had suddenly gone.

"And this is the odd part: every squirrel in those woods disappeared with her."

Erin licked her lips nervously. This Nut Woman obviously served the Earth. She was an Earth Warden, like Binnesman, but with a different charge. "Have you asked the wizard Binnesman about this?" Gaborn asked.

Celinor shook his head. "I have had little evidence for my concerns. After this one night, my father has not spoken of his delusion again, though it seems to me that his delusion guides every deed."

"How's that?" Erin asked.

"He very calmly and systematically contacted his lords and began strengthening his defenses, doubling and quadrupling his guard. This did not seem a bad thing, for three days before Hostenfest, he managed to slaughter a group of Raj Ahten's a.s.sa.s.sins.

"Indeed, my father's demeanor, his reasoned response to his belief, almost convinced me that his fantasy was a good thing, that if he was deluded, this might be a helpful delusion. And I confess that even I began to wonder if perhaps the sign was true.

"Then, something else happened, last week. My father flew into an indescribable rage upon learning that another claimed to be the Earth King. He screamed and threw things about. He ripped tapestries with his bare hands and toppled his own throne. He beat the servant who'd brought the news. When he finally calmed after several hours, he claimed that he should have seen it, that he should have known that pretenders would claim his throne. It was then that he began to plot how he might discredit Gaborn's t.i.tle. Indeed, his stories seemed so convincing that even I wondered if Gaborn might be a fraud. Yet my father has suddenly become...unstable. He will be talking about one thing, and suddenly change the subject or shout some unrelated command. He...moves oddly."

"The man sounds daft and dangerous," Gaborn said. "Why haven't you told others? Why did you wait until now?"

Celinor folded his hands and stared hard at Gaborn. "When I was a child of ten, my grandfather went mad, suffering from grand delusions and hallucinations. For his own safety, my parents locked him in a cell beneath our keep.

"As a child, I used to listen to him mutter and laugh long into the night, in his cell down below my bedroom.

"At the time, my father told me that it was a curse in our family. He sought to keep his own father comfortable as he lived out his last days. We Vectored metabolism to him through four servants, so that he would grow old and die quickly, while we spread the news abroad that my grandfather had pa.s.sed away.

"My father made me vow that if he should ever show the same symptoms, that I would treat him no better and no worse.

"I have always been loyal. If my father is mad, I would hope that he merits our compa.s.sion."

"As do I," Gaborn said. Yet he had to worry. It sounded as if a madman haunted the borders of Heredon. He'd hoped to find an ally in Anders, as he had in Kings Orwynne and Lowicker.

At that, Gaborn called for his men to mount up, and he raced for Tor Doohan with renewed vigor. With the clear morning light and dry roads, they made good time. As they raced, the troops began to spread thin, those on the fastest horses taking the lead while others fell miles behind.

An hour later, Gaborn, the wizard Binnesman, and a few lords thundered over Atherphilly Trail into Tor Doohan. The "palace" at Tor Doohan had stood far longer than anyone knew. It was no palace at all, by modern terms. It was instead only an enormous crimson tent pitched within a circle of crude white stones.

The stones atop Tor Doohan were roughly hewn from the earth. Some were planted in the hillside as pillars so that they rose up like jagged teeth, eighty feet tall and forty feet wide. Atop the standing stones, others had been placed crosswise between each pillar, and these stones too were each over eighty feet long and weighed hundreds of thousands of tons.

Who had placed the stones together, or when, or why, no one rightly knew. Ancient tales called it the "Place of the White Mare," for it was said that a race of giants had built the stones as a corral to hold the Star Mare, before she escaped and became a constellation.

Of course, only giants could have placed the stones in the circle, yet even for hill giants like those still living in Inkarra, it would have been a monumental task.

But as for the stones' purpose? Certainly they did not hold a giant horse. To the horse clans, any such stack of stones would have seemed like a corral.

Gaborn suspected that the stones marked the tomb of some ancient hill giant king, though no one had ever dug for his bones.

The horse clans of Fleeds had gathered for annual games and war counsels atop Tor Doohan for nearly three thousand years, until it had become the permanent camp of the High Queen.

The nomadic horsesisters of Fleeds had long sneered at folk who settled in one place. Thus the Queen's palace at Tar Doohan was an enormous tent that had remained erected within the stones now for thirty generations. While the tent stood on the hill, villages had grown up along the Roan River to the west, and eighteen fortresses now dotted the valley. Yet the palace pavilion remained the symbolic heart of Fleeds.

Gaborn felt thankful when they rounded the hills on the Atherphilly Trail and at last saw the Red Queen's great pavilion of scarlet silk pitched inside the ring of stones. Two enormous bronze statues of mares, their hooves pawing the air, rose above the palace entrance.

On the grounds outside the circle, hundreds of clan lords had pitched their own tents in the shadow of the palace, preparing for war. Yet they were remarkably few in number, and Gaborn was concerned. He'd hoped that Queen Herin the Red would offer some troops to ride at his side. But too many men and women had died in the battle against Raj Ahten, and many more had already gone south to retake the fortress at Castle Fells.

Fleeds was a poor land, and it looked as if Herin the Red would have few troops left to offer him. She was a proud woman, and Gaborn could see that she had no one at all to spare.

Still, hundreds of young warriors wildly raced their horses around the palace, for legend said that any warrior who raced his mount seven times around the great stone circle while blowing his or her warhorn would have good luck in battle.

As Gaborn and a few dozen lords rode up to the pace, he listened to those who had never seen it make appreciative sounds of surprise.

The racing young riders now drew in their reins, and stared back in equal wonder to see the Earth King.

Many young women--lancers and archers--urged their mounts to rear up and paw the air as a sign that they were willing to give themselves and their mounts into Gaborn's service. Yet he dared Choose none until he spoke with Queen Herin the Red Gaborn, Binnesman, Gaborn's Days, and the various lords rode under the statues of the war mares and dismounted; servants rushed forward to take their weary horses down to the royal stables.

Few things made Gaborn feel quite so humble as to walk beneath the great statues and standing stones of the palace. A cool morning wind blew across the hills, beating against the tent, so that its red silk outer walls billowed and rolled. The sentries posted outside the pavilion pulled back the flaps.

The lords went into the antechamber of the pavilion, into a room that had a ceiling eighty feet high, while a servant went to announce the party to Queen Herin the Red. The sun shining through the top layers of silk cast a scarlet glow, so that even the golden urns along the walls were bathed in a ruddy hue.

Many lords stood gaping about at the vast tapestries on either wall to the left and right. Both tapestries showed the emblem of Fleeds, a great roan mare pawing the air, while flames issued from its nostrils. The tapestries showed the mare upon a green field, and on that field, one could see every blade of gra.s.s, every dandelion, every posy, every ant.

Outside, the young knights resumed their race around the palace, blowing their warhorns.

"Well," Sir Langley joked, "I don't know how we'll ever hold a council here with all of this racket."

His ignorance of course was excusable. The Queen's Sanctum at the heart of the palace was virtually soundproof.

The palace was enormous. Its roof consisted of three layers of cloth, one above another, but each nearly five hundred feet across. The interior was divided into rooms by great curtains and tapestries that formed the walls.

Furthermore, wooden ramparts fashioned of logs had been built beneath the great awnings of the tent, forming floors and stairs, further dividing the pavilion into three separate levels. The framework of these logs allowed tapestries to be hung as walls. Thus, the Red Queen's palace was less secure than a palace of stone, yet far more serviceable than a simple pavilion.