At the base, of the hill, blade-bearers dug burrows for fortifications.

Within an hour, all of the low-lying wizard fog had at last dissipated, and Roland could see into the distance for several miles. When he did, his heart fell.

To the south was an unending line of reavers, all marching from the mountains. down to Carris. These twenty thousand or so that held Carris had only been the vanguard of a vast army.

Roland had dared hope that the reavers would head north. Now it seemed they had found what they were looking for: a new home.

Raj Ahten stood on the ramparts of the gate tower and watched the hills to the south. Every quarter mile or so, he could see reavers by the threes and nines, forming a long line that reached from Carris down to the Brace Mountains and beyond. It was a maddening sight.

The wall of blade-bearers outside the castle gates would block any attempt to sally forth and attack.

Raj Ahten's flameweavers and counselors stood beside him, while his Days stood at his back. As he watched the fields below, Lord Paladane the Huntsman climbed up the tower.

"My lord," Paladane said softly, solicitously, "may I please have a word with you?"

Raj Ahten studied him curiously. The man's demeanor bespoke utter humility: But Duke Paladane was a brilliant man, a duplicitous man, and a famed strategist. In Raj Ahten's opinion, in a drawn-out war Paladane would have been Raj Ahten's most fearsome opponent. Now, he had come like a dog with its tail between its legs.

"Yes?" Raj Ahten asked.

"I have been considering a plan to abandon the castle," Paladane said humbly. "There is a gated aqueduct on the north wall."

"I know," Raj Ahten said. "Seven hundred and fourteen years ago, during the Siege of Pears, Duke Bellonsby pretended to abandon the city by boating men through it night and day. But when Kaifba Hariminah's men entered the city at last, and drank themselves silly in celebration, Bellonsby's men came up from the King's cellars and slaughtered them."

Raj Ahten let Paladane know that he'd antic.i.p.ated him. "You of course have a large number of boats."

"Yes," Paladane said. "I've nearly eight hundred skiffs at hand. We can begin evacuating women and children to the east sh.o.r.e of the lake now, at ten thousand people per flotilla. I estimate that we can make one journey every two hours.

"More than a hundred thousand people per day. If by some miracle the reavers did not attack for five or six days, the whole castle could be emptied."

Raj Ahten stared hard at Paladane, considering. Women and children. Saving them would of course be the first priority of these soft northerners.

He almost laughed. These people were his ancient enemies.

Besides, had the northerners ever considered the welfare of Raj Ahten's own women and children? In the past five years, northern a.s.sa.s.sins had struck down most of his family his father and sister, wives and sons. The war between Raj Ahten and the lords of Rofehavan had been b.l.o.o.d.y and personal. By invading the north, Raj Ahten had escalated it to the level of being b.l.o.o.d.y and impersonal.

Raj Ahten could easily evacuate his own Invincibles in a single flotilla, abandoning the people of Carris to fend for themselves. Or he might begin moving all his warriors from the castle now, and be gone by day's end.

"What makes you think that it will be safe on the east sh.o.r.e?" he asked Paladane. "Isn't it likely. that the reavers have set guards around the lake?"

Lake Donnestgree was large, forty miles from north to south, nearly three and a half miles from east sh.o.r.e to west.

"Perhaps," Paladane said cautiously. "But my far-seers in the tower cannot make out any guards there." Raj Ahten could almost see the doubts whirling in Paladane's head, the worries and fears.

Raj Ahten nodded toward the line of reavers marching from the mountains to the south. "It may be that the reavers are still waiting for reinforcements," he said, "or that they've secreted troops behind the hills. I would not underestimate the fell mage. It would be foolish to send women and children into greater danger."

He knew that villages were scattered to the east of Lake Donnestgree, even some minor fortresses that his people could defend. But the sh.o.r.e was so rocky, the land so mountainous, that only a few sheep farmers and woodsmen inhabited it. Raj Ahten turned to his old counselor; Feykaald. "Get twenty skiffs and fill them with mixed troops from our company and from Paladane's. Have them check the east sh.o.r.e of the lake for signs of reavers, and then march inland for several miles to make sure that the sh.o.r.e is secure. When they finish, have them hold a fortress and bring me word."

Feykaald studied Raj Ahten with heavy-lidded eyes, hiding his smile. He understood Raj Ahten's game. Scouting the sh.o.r.e and securing a beachhead was worthwhile, for Raj Ahten would need it if he did evacuate his men. "It shall be done, O Light of the Universe."

Immediately Feykaald shouted to some of the captains, began a.s.sembling his sh.o.r.e party.

"My lord," Paladane said, "we also have plenty of wood here for h.o.a.rdings, beams from homes and corrals in the city. We could put men to work on the east wall of the castle, lashing together rafts. With enough rafts, we could evacuate perhaps a hundred thousand more people with a few moment's notice."

Raj Ahten studied Paladane briefly. Paladane was a thin man with a hatchet face, dark hair that had almost completely gone white. His dark blue eyes showed superior cunning. "Not yet," Raj Ahten objected: "If we begin lashing together rafts prematurely, it will turn men's minds toward flight, rather than on how to better defend themselves. Defending Carris is our first priority."

"My lord," Paladane said, "considering the number of reinforcements the reavers have coming from the south, I suspect that flight is our best--if not the only--alternative."

Raj Ahten smiled a practiced smile that included more than just a simple movement of the lips. He tightened the muscles around his eyes. "You are dismissed."

After the fog dissipated, news spread along the castle wall that Raj Ahten was sending sh.o.r.e parties to the east, so that the castle could be evacuated.

The news buoyed Roland's spirits. It was then that he took his first real view of the city of Carris itself. There were homes below him, and an almond tree that grew against the wall so high that if he dared he could have leapt into its topmost branches without injury. He was right behind some lord's garden, and the city stretched to the north all around.

Down in the inner bailey to the west he could see thousands of townsfolk, and the horses that Raj Ahten's knights had ridden tied in lines along the street.

Against the west wall of the outer bailey hunkered some forty frowth giants, each twenty feet tall. The tawny yellow fur beneath their ring mail looked darker than normal, for it was wet and matted by rain. The giants gazed about with their huge silver eyes, looking doleful and ill-used. The giants needed fresh meat often, and Roland did not like the way they eyed the peasant children of Carris, who peered at the monsters from doorways and windows and from beneath the eaves of inns.

Every bit as fearsome as the giants were Raj Ahten's war dogs, mastiffs that wore armor masks and harnesses of red-lacquered leather, and collars around the neck with huge curved spikes in them. These were force dogs, bred to war and granted endowments of brawn, stamina, and metabolism from other dogs in their packs.

Yet as fearsome as these beasts were, Roland knew that Raj Ahten's warriors were more fearsome still. Each Invincible had at least twenty endowments to his credit. In battle, the Invincibles were unmatched by any other soldier in the world.

Beyond these forces, the walls of Carris were bolstered with over three hundred thousand common soldiers out of Mystarria, Indhopal, and Fleeds. Indeed, men crowded the wall-walks and were stuffed in every tower like meat in sausage skins. The baileys and streets of the city were replete with spearmen.

A force so large would have seemed enough to repel any attack. Yet Roland realized that if the reavers attacked, all the men in the castle. would not be enough.

As he watched the small flotilla of twenty boats row east, he earnestly hoped that they would return soon, that the evacuation would begin. He considered his own best route into the water if the need arose.

Reavers blackened the land and continued marching from the south all morning. The number around Carris was impossible to count, but, surely tens of thousands raced over the countryside, toiling feverishly.

No man alive had ever seen a reaver work, had ever seen their cunning or efficiency or astonishing. speed.

The wind blew fiercely, and a thin rain began pouring two hours after dawn. A watery sheen covered the reavers' leathery hides. The rain and clouds above offered the people of Carris some hope, for all men knew that if lightning began to flash, the reavers would likely depart.

Howlers grubbed about everywhere, throwing up defenses in the muck. Burrowing holes. They excavated trenches to the south and west, flooding them with waters from Lake Donnestgree, forming a series of four oddly winding moats.

The sounds that arose from the fields west of Carris were odd, alien the rumbling and rasping of reavers, the apparently unprovoked and inexplicable bawls of the howlers, the smacking sounds that Glue-mums made as they worked. Beneath it all was a t.i.ttering, like the squeaking of bones, that emanated from gree flying among the horde. The sounds made Roland feel as if he'd been transported to another world.

To the north, reaver mages and Glue-mums worked at Bone Hill, molding ridges of rock to form an arcane design in bas-relief, a design that was strange and sinuous and somehow evil. As they worked, the mages sprayed certain k.n.o.bs and protrusions on their sculpture with fluids from their bungholes, creating a nauseating stench of decay like something from rotting corpses.

Meanwhile, a mile to the south of Carris, the reavers began to form an odd tower black and twisted, like a narwhale's horn, yet tilted at an odd angle, as if pointing toward Bone Hill Beside the tower on the sh.o.r.e of the lake they built several huge domes made of stone bound with glue-mum resin.

Some conjectured that these were egg-laying chambers or some sort of hothouses.

But the reavers did not attack Carris.

They dismantled hamlets that had grown over the centuries. They plundered fortresses and converted the stones to their own purpose. They tore up roads and gardens.

But the reavers did not attack. So long as the blade-bearers blocked the only road in and out of Carris, no man could hope to flee that way or sally forth to attack. But then so long as the reavers did not storm the castle gates Roland felt...mollified by the arrangement.

As the day wore on, he was able to forget the creeping sense of menace and horror of the morning, the cries of Raj Ahten's foot soldiers as they were carried to their deaths. He dared hope. For long hours as the day wore on, the men on the walls held remarkably silent. By noon they began talking animatedly, easily.

The sh.o.r.e party had been gone for hours, and would surely return soon. Who could blame the men if they did not hurry back to Carris?

But minute by minute, hour after hour, men scanned the waters, and saw no boats return from the east.

CHAPTER 45.

FRAIL KING LOWICKER.

Until a week ago, Myrrima had never been more than ten miles from home; and as she rode through Fleeds, she felt as if everything she'd known were slipping away.

Myrrima had left behind her family, her country. The land was changing subtly as she rode south. First she pa.s.sed through the plains of southern Heredon, into the canyon lands of northern Fleeds, and now she was moving farther south. Here, the plains were richer and more fertile than back home, a bit more wet. She did not recognize some of the trees at the roadside, and even the people were different. The sheep men of Fleeds were often shorter and darker than people at home, the horse clans taller and more fair Cottages were no longer made of mud and wattle, but of stone. Even the air smelled different, she thought, though it was hard to tell, given that she had an endowment of scent from a dog.

Most of all, Myrrima had left herself behind She had the strength of three men in her arms now, the grace of four, the stamina of her dogs, the speed of five.

She'd never been so cognizant of her own power.

Yet she felt an unsettling sameness to her. In her heart she still loved in the same way, still, felt her own inadequacies. Even with her new endowments, Myrrima felt impotent. Though she was a wolf lord, she felt all too common still.

She did not know whether Borenson would welcome her on his quest south, but by nightfall she hoped to reach Carris and present herself to him. She hoped he'd think she'd earned the right to accompany him to Inkarra, though she could not pretend to have his skills in battle.

But her encounter with Lord Pilwyn had left her shaken, uncertain. What kind of enemies would she find in Inkarra? How could she hope to fight them? Endowments would not be enough to fight wizards like the Storm Lord and his kin.

At Tor Doohan, Myrrima found everything in disarray. Gaborn's knights were strung out for miles. Some were just reaching Tor Doohan, while a pa.s.serby told them that Gaborn himself had ridden south an hour ago.

A knight rode out of the shadows of the great white stones that circled the crimson pavilion and addressed Iome. "Your Highness, His Majesty King Orden bade me inform you that he has had to ride on to Carris in great haste. He left this letter in my care."

Iome read the letter, sniffed the paper to make sure that Gaborn's scent was upon it, then wadded it angrily and stuffed it in her pocket.

"Bad news?" Sir Hoswell asked. "Can I do anything to help?"

Iome glanced at him distractedly.

"No," she answered. "My lord is in great haste to reach Carris. He bids us hurry. We won't be able to rest the horses long if we are to catch him before nightfall."

"Is it wise even to try, milady?" Sir Hoswell inquired. "You've ridden over four hundred miles since dawn yesterday. Even your fine mount cannot easily bear such punishment!"

It was true. Sir Borenson's force horse had been plump when Myrrima set off for the south, but in the past two days it had lost seventy or eighty pounds of fat.

The lords of Rofehavan fed their force horses special diets when traveling in haste, using a mixture called "miln." Miln consisted of rolled oats and barley coated with dried mola.s.ses, often with alfalfa or melilot thrown into the mix. For a horse, miln was a heady pleasure, and a force horse fed well on it could run for hours, while a horse fed on gra.s.s alone was said to have "legs of straw," for they would not hold the mount long.

But even miln would not allow a force horse to race endlessly. Myrrima's mount had three endowments of metabolism. With so many endowments, a few hours of rest would seem like a day to the beast, allowing it to recuperate.

"Gaborn is racing his horse," Iome objected to Hoswell.

Hoswell shook his head. "It's not my place to counsel the Earth King," Hoswell said, "but Gaborn knows the danger he's riding into. Half of the mounts he's driving to Carris will die at this pace."

"We'll take two hours rest," Iome said to Hoswell. "We can feed the horses here, and carry extra miln to keep them along the way until we reach Beldinook."

Hoswell looked at his own mount. It was in far worse shape than Iome's mount or Myrrima's. The beast had been skinnier than these in the first pace, and so had been hard pressed to keep pace with the stouter mounts. Myrrima knew full well that when Hoswell objected to the pace of the ride, he objected mostly for the sake of his own beast.

If the horse lived to reach Carris, it would most likely be in poor condition for battle. Nor would it carry a man far in case of a forced retreat.

"So be it," he said heavily. He leapt from the mount and led his horse to the stables, intending to give it as much rest as he could. With it he took the palfrey from the Inkarran a.s.sa.s.sin.

Myrrima watched Hoswell go.

"Why do you give him such a black look?" Iome asked. "Is there something between you?"

"Nothing," Myrrima said. Hoswell was Lord of the Royal Society of Archers, a master bowier who had spent years in the south, studying the making of hornbows. He was a man of sound reputation, in the good graces of the King. Myrrima did not want to have to confess that she detested the man.

Myrrima sat astride Borenson's big warhorse and fought the urge to continue south now. Iome must have noted her mood.

"Gaborn begged me to stay here in his note," Iome confessed weakly. "He does not think the road ahead will be safe. He says that he fears that 'Doom lies upon Carris,' and even now the Earth bids him to strike and flee with equal fervor. He's confused. I thought I should warn you."

"He's probably right," Myrrima agreed. Iome sounded as if she felt unsure what to do. "Milady," Myrrima said. "If you wish to stay here, I understand....But I'm not riding to war at Carris. I hope to accompany my husband to Inkarra. I must take the road south."

"You sound driven," Iome said warily. "I fear that you will never forgive me."

"Forgive you, milady?" Myrrima asked, surprised by the Queen's tone.

"I'm the one who sentenced your husband to perform his Act Penitent," Iome said. "Had I known that I was driving you south, too, I'd not have done it. Perhaps I should lay aside the quest....It's a hard thing I've done."

"No," Myrrima said. "It was a generous thing. You've given him a way to earn forgiveness, and in Mystarria I've heard that there is a maxim 'Forgiveness should never be given--it must be earned.' I fear that in my husband's case, he cannot even forgive himself until he has earned it."

"Then I hope he can earn it, with you at his side," Iome said. "You have a warrior's spirit. I'm surprised that no one noticed it sooner."

Myrrima shook her head, glad to change. the subject. She'd always been strong of will, but she'd never seen herself as a warrior--not until a little over a week ago.

"It's said that when the Earth King Erden Geboren was crowned, he Chose his warriors. I know full well that Gaborn Chose me in the market of Bannisferre on that first day we met. Even though neither he nor I knew that he was the Earth King. He thought me brash and said he wanted me in his court, but he was really Choosing me.

"But do you know what I was thinking when he Chose me?"

"What?" Iome asked.

Myrrima hesitated, for she'd not told this to anyone, had not even recalled the thought until now. "I was thinking, even when I saw him standing there at the tinker's booth, all dressed like some fop of a merchant prince, that I would fight for that man. I would die for him.

"I'd never thought that about a man before. The notion gave me the courage to take his hand, though he was a total stranger."

Iome was bemused. "Gaborn told me how you met, how you took his hand there in the market. He saw it as only an attempt at seduction, a poor woman looking for a good marriage."

That was true, but now Myrrima recognized that there was also something more. Myrrima tried to express the odd notion that was growing in her. "Maybe Gaborn did not Choose me, so much as we Chose each other. Last week, you mentioned that one could not be so near his creative powers without wanting a child. I...there's more to him than that. Ever since we've met, I look at the earth, and time and again I'm stunned by its beauty--by the yellow of a daisy, or the blue shadows cast by rounded stones, or the rich smell of moss. He makes me feel more awake and alive than ever before. But there's something else He makes me want to fight."