Arlen smiled a little.

"In the morning, we'll talk more, Dennis-but you may not see your mum for a bit now; I must tell you that, although I suspect you already know it might not be healthy for you to go back to Delain, by the look of you."

Dennis tried to smile, but his eyes were shiny with fear. "I had thoughts of more than the grippe when I came here, and that's the honest truth. But now I've put your own health in danger as well, haven't I?"

Peyna smiled dryly. "I'm old, and Arlen is old. The health o the old is never very strong. Sometimes that makes them more careful than they should be* but sometimes it makes them dare much." Especially, he thought, if they have much to atone for. "We'll speak more in the morning. In the meantime, you deserve your rest. Will you light his way upstairs, Arlen?"

"Yes, my Lord."

"And then come back to me."

"Yes, my Lord."

Arlen led the exhausted Dennis from the room, leaving Anders Peyna to brood before his dying fire.

When Arlen came back, Peyna said quietly: "We have plans to make, Arlen, but perhaps you'll draw us a drop of wine. It would be well to wait until the boy is asleep."

"My Lord, he was asleep before his head touched the hay he had gathered for his pillow."

"Very well. But draw us a drop of wine anyway."

"A drop is all there is to draw, " Arlen said.

"Good. Then we'll not have to set out with big heads to-morrow, will we?"

"My Lord?"

" Aden, we leave here tomorrow, the three of us, for the north. I know it, you know it. Dennis says there's grippe in Delain- and so there is; one who would grip us if he could, anyway. We go for our health."

Arlen nodded slowly.

"It would be a crime to leave that good wine behind us for the tax man. So we'll drink it* and then take ourselves off to bed."

"As you say, my Lord."

Peyna's eyes glinted. "But before you go to bed, you'll moun to the attic and get the blanket you left with the boy, against my strict and specific instructions."

Arlen gaped at Peyna. Peyna mocked his gape with uncanny aptness. And for the first and last time in his service as Peyna's butler, Arlen laughed out loud.

Peyna went to bed but could not sleep. It wasn't the sound of the wind that kept him awake, but the sound of cold laughter coming from inside his own head.

When he could stand that laughter no longer, he got up, went back into the sitting room, and sat before the cooling fireplace ashes, his white hair floating in small clouds over his skull. Unaware of his comic look (and if he had been aware of it, he would have been unmindful), he sat wrapped in his blankets like the oldest Indian in the universe and looked into the dead fire.

Pride goes before a fall, his mother had told him when he was a child, and Peyna had understood that. Pride's a joke that'll make the stranger inside you laugh sooner or later, she had also told him, and he hadn't understood that* but he did now. Tonight the stranger inside was laughing very hard indeed. Too hard for him to be able to sleep, even though the next day was apt to be long and difficult.

Peyna was fully able to appreciate the irony of his position. All his life, he had served the idea of the law. Ideas like "prison break" and "armed rebellion" horrified him. They still did, but certain truths had to be faced. That the machinery of revolt had come to exist in Delain, for instance. Peyna knew that the n.o.bles who had fled to the north called themselves "exiles," but he also knew that they were edging ever closer to calling themselves "rebels." And if he were to keep that revolt from happening, he might well have to use the machinery of rebellion to help prisoner break out of the Needle. That was the joke the stranger inside was laughing at, laughing too loudly for sleep to be even a remote possibility.

Such actions as the ones he was now thinking about went against the grain of his whole life, but he would go ahead anyway, even if it killed him (which it just might). Peter had been falsely imprisoned. Delain's true King was not on the throne, but locked in a cold two-room cell at the top of the Needle. And if it took lawless forces to put things right again, so it must be. But*

"The napkins," Peyna muttered. His mind circled back to them and back to them. "Before we resort to force of arms to free the rightful King and see him enthroned, the business of the napkins should be investigated. He'll have to be asked. Dennis* and the Staad boy, perhaps* aye*"

"My Lord?" Arlen asked from behind him. "Are you unwell?"

Arlen had heard his master rise, as butlers almost always do.

"I am unwell," Peyna agreed gloomily. "But it's nothing my physician can fix, Arlen."

"I'm sorry, my Lord."

Peyna turned to Arlen, and fixed his bright, sunken eyes upon the butler.

"Before we become outlaws, I want to know why he asked for his mother's dollhouse* and for napkins with his meals."

Go back to the castle?" Dennis asked the next morning, in a hoa.r.s.e voice that was almost a whisper. "Go back to where he is?"

"If you feel you can't, I'll not press you," Peyna said. "But you know the castle well enough, I think, to stay out of his way. If, that is, you know a way to get in unnoticed. To be notice would be bad. You look much too lively for a boy who is supposed to be home sick."

The day was cold and bright. The snow on the long, rolling hills of the Inner Baronies threw back a diamond dazzle which made the eyes water before long. I'll probably be s...o...b..ind by noon, and it'll serve me right, Peyna thought grumpily. The stranger inside seemed to find this prospect hilarious indeed.

Castle Delain itself could be seen in the distance, blue and dreaming on the horizon, its walls and towers looking like an ill.u.s.tration in a book of fairy stories. Dennis, however, did not look like a young hero in search of adventure. His eyes were full of fear, and his face bore the expression of a man who has escaped from a den of lions* only to be told he's forgotten his lunch, and must go back in and get it, even though he's lost his appet.i.te.

"There might be a way to get in," he said. "But if he smells me, how I get in or where I hide won't matter. If he smells me, he'll run me down."

Peyna nodded. He did not want to add to the boy's fear, but in this situation, nothing less than the truth could serve them. "What you say is true."

"But you still ask me to go?"

"If you can, I still ask it."

Over a meager breakfast, Peyna had told Dennis what he wanted to know, and had suggested some ways Dennis might go about getting the information. Now Dennis shook his head, not in refusal but in bewilderment.

"Napkins," he said.

Peyna nodded. "Napkins."

Dennis's fearful eyes went back to that distant fairy-tale castle dreaming on the horizon. "When he was dying, my da ' said if I ever saw a chance to do a service for my first master, I must do it. I thought I'd done it coming here. But if I must go back*

Arlen, who had been busy closing up the house, now joined them.

"Your house key, please, Arlen," Peyna said.

Arlen handed it to him, and Peyna handed it to Dennis.

" Aden and I go north to join the"-Peyna hesitated and cleared his throat-"the exiles," he finished. "I've given you Arlen's key to this house. When we reach their camp, I'll give mine to a fellow you know, if he be there. I think he will be."

"Who's that?" Dennis asked.

"Ben Staad.

Sunshine broke on Dennis's gloomy face. "Ben? Ben's with them?"

"I think he may be," Peyna said. In truth, he knew perfectly well that the entire Staad family was with the exiles. He kept his ear firmly to the earth, and his ears had not grown so deaf that he was not able to hear many movements in the Kingdom.

"And you'd send him down here?"

"If he'll come, aye, I mean to," Peyna replied.

"To do what? My Lord, I'm still not clear about that."

"Nor am I," Peyna said, looking cross. He felt more than cross; he felt bewildered. "I've spent my whole life doing some things because they were logical and not doing others because they were not. I've seen what happens when people act on in-tuition, or for illogical reasons. Sometimes the results are ludicrous and embarra.s.sing; more often they are simply horrible. But here I am, just the same, behaving like a crackbrained crystal gazer.

"I don't understand you, my Lord."

"Neither do I, Dennis. Neither do I. Do you know what day this is?"

Dennis blinked at this sudden change in direction, but answered readily enough. "Yes-Tuesday."

"Tuesday. Good. Now I'm going to ask you a question that my cursed intuition tells me is very important. If you don't know the answer-even if you are not sure-for the G.o.ds' sake, say so! Are you ready for the question?"

"Yes, my Lord," Dennis said, but he wasn't sure that he really was. Peyna's piercing blue eyes under the wild tangle of his white brows had made him very nervous. The question was apt to be very difficult indeed. "That is, I think so."

Peyna asked his question, and Dennis relaxed. It didn't make much sense to him-it was only more nonsense about the napkins, as far as he could see-but at least he knew the answer, and gave it.

"You're sure?" Peyna persisted.

"Yes, my Lord."

"Good. Then here is what I want you to do."

Peyna spoke to Dennis for some time, as the three of them stood in the chilly sunshine in front of the "retirement cottage" where the old judge would never come again. Dennis listened earnestly, and when Peyna demanded that he repeat the instructions back, Dennis was able to do it quite neatly.

"Good," Peyna said. "Very, very good."

"I'm glad I've pleased you, sir."

"Nothing about this business pleases me, Dennis. Nothing at all. If Ben Staad is with those unfortunate outcasts in the Far Forests, I mean to send him away from relative safety and into danger because he may be of some use to King Peter. I'm sending you back to the castle because my heart tells me there's something about those napkins he asked for* and the dollhouse* something. Sometimes I think I almost have it, and then it dances out of my grasp again. He did not ask for those things idly, Dennis. I'd wager my life on that. But I don't know." Peyna abruptly slammed his fist down on his leg in frustration. "I am putting two fine young men into terrible danger, and my heart tells me I am doing the right thing, but I* don't*know* WHY!''

And inside the man who had in his heart once condemned a boy because of that boy's tears, the stranger laughed and laughed and laughed.

The two old men parted from Dennis. They shook hands all around; then Dennis kissed the judge's ring, which bore the Great Seal of Delain on its face. Peyna had given up his judge-General's bench, but had not been able to part with the ring, which to him summed up all the goodness of the law. He knew he had made mistakes from time to time, but he had not allowed them to break his heart. Even over this last and greatest of mistakes, his heart did not break. He knew as well as we in our own world do that the road to h.e.l.l is paved with good intentions-but he also knew that, for human beings, good intentions are sometimes all there are. Angels may be safe from d.a.m.nation, but human beings are less fortunate things, and for them h.e.l.l is always close.

He protested Dennis's act of kissing his ring, but Dennis insisted. Then Arlen shook Dennis's hand and wished him speed o' the G.o.ds. Smiling (but Peyna could still see the fear lurking in Dennis's eyes), Dennis wished them the same. Then the young butler turned east, toward the castle, and the two old men headed west, toward the farmstead of one Charles Reechul. Reechul, who raised Anduan huskies for a living, paid the grinding taxes the King had imposed without complaint, and was thus considered loyal* but Peyna knew that Reechul was sympathetic to the exiles encamped in the Far Forests, and had helped others reach them. Peyna had never expected to need Reechul's services himself, but the time had come.

The farmer's eldest daughter, Naomi, drove Peyna and Arlen north on a sled pulled by twelve of the dogger's strongest huskies. By Wednesday night, they reached the edge of the Far Forests.

"How long to the camp of the exiles?" Peyna asked Naomi that night.

Naomi cast the thin, evil-smelling cigar she had been smokin into the fire. "Two more day if the skies keep fair. Four more days if it snows. Maybe never, if it blizzards."

Peyna turned in. He drifted off to sleep almost at once. Logic or illogic, he was sleeping better than he had in years.

The weather kept clear the next day, and on Friday as well. At dusk of that day-the fourth since Peyna and Arlen had parted from Dennis-they reached the small huddle of tents and makeshift wooden huts for which Flagg had searched in vain.

"Ho! Who comes, and can you say the pa.s.sword?" a voice called. It was strong, st.u.r.dy, cheerful, and unafraid. Peyna recognized it.

"It's Naomi Reechul," the girl called, "and the pa.s.sword two weeks ago was ' tripos.' If it's not that now, Ben Staad, then put an arrow through me and I'll come back and haunt you!"

Ben appeared from behind a rock, laughing. "I'd not dare meet you as a ghost, Naomi-you're fearsome enough "live!"

Ignoring this, she turned to Peyna. "We've come," she said.

"Yes," Peyna said. "So I see."

And I believe it's well that we have* because something tells me that time has grown short* very short indeed.

Peter had the same feeling.

By Sunday, two days after Peyna and Arlen reached the camp of the exiles, his rope would still, by his calculations, finish up thirty feet short of the ground. This meant that when he dangled from the end of it with his arms fully extended, he would face a drop of at least twenty-one feet. He knew that he would be wiser by far to go on with his rope for another four month seven another two. If he dropped from the rope, fell badly, and broke both of his legs so that the Plaza guards found him groaning on the cobbles when they made their round-o'-the-clock, h would have wasted more than four years, simply because he did not have the patience to pursue his labor another four months.

This was logic Peyna could have appreciated, but Peter's feeling that he must now hurry was much stronger. Once Peyna would have snorted at the idea that feelings could be more trust-worthy than logic* but now he might have been less sure.

Peter had been having a dream-for almost a week running now it had played over and over, gradually becoming more distinct. In it, he saw Flagg, bent over some bright and glowing object-it lit the magician's face a sickly greenish-yellow. In this dream, there always came a point when Flagg's eyes first widened, as if in surprise, and then narrowed to cruel slits. His brows pulled down; his forehead darkened; a grimace as bitter as a crescent moon twisted his mouth. In this expression, the dreaming Peter read one thing and one thing only: death. Flagg said only one word as he leaned forward and blew upon the brightly glowing object, which whiffed out like a candle when the magician's breath touched it. Only one word, but one was enough. The word from Flagg's mouth was Peter's own name, uttered in tones of angry discovery.

The night before, Sat.u.r.day night, there had been a fairy-ring around the moon. The Lesser Warders thought it would soon snow. Examining the sky this afternoon, Peter knew they were right. It was his father who had taught Peter to read the weather, and standing at the window, Peter felt a pang of sadness* and a renewed spark of cold, quiet anger* the need to make things right again.

I'll make my try under cover of darkness and under cover of storm, he thought. There'll even be a bit of snow to cushion my fall. He had to grin at that idea-three inches of light, powdery snow between him and the cobbles would do precious little one way or the other. Either his perilously thin rope would hold* or it would break. a.s.suming it held, he would take the drop. And his legs would either take the impact* or they wouldn't.

And if they do take it, where will you go on them? a little voice whispered. Any who might have shielded you or helped you* Ben Staad, for instance-have long since been driven from the castle keep* from the very Kingdom itself; for all you know.

He would trust to luck, then. King's luck. It was a thing his father had often talked about. There are lucky Kings and unlucky. But you'll be your own King and you'll have your own luck. M'self, I think you'll be very lucky.

He had been King of Delain-at least in his own heart-for five years now, and he thought his luck had been the kind which the Staad family, with its famous bad luck, would have understood. But perhaps tonight would make up for all.

His rope, his legs, his luck. Either all would hold or all would break, quite possibly at the same time. No matter. Poor as it had been, he would trust to his luck.

"Tonight," he murmured, turning from the window* but something happened at supper which changed his mind.

It took Peyna and Arlen all day Tuesday to make the ten miles to the Reechul farm, and they were nearly done in when they arrived. Castle Delain was twice as far, but Dennis probably could have been knocking at the West Gate-if he had actually been mad enough to do such a thing-by two that afternoon, in spite of his long walk the day before. Such is the difference, of course, between young men and old men. But what he could have done really didn't matter, because Peyna had been very clear in his instructions (especially for a man who claimed not to have the slightest idea of what he was doing), and Dennis meant to follow them to the letter. As a result, it would be some time yet before he entered the castle.

After covering not quite half the distance, he began to look for a place where he could hole up for the next few days. So far he had met no one on the road, but noon had pa.s.sed and soon there would be people returning from the castle market. Dennis wanted no one to see him and mark him. He was, after all, supposed to be home, sick in bed. He did not have to look long before he found a place that suited him well enough. It was a deserted farmstead, once well kept but now beginning to fall into ruin. Thanks to Thomas the Tax-Bringer, there were many such places on the roads leading to the castle keep.

Dennis remained there until late Sat.u.r.day afternoon-four days in all. Ben Staad and Naomi were already on their way back from the Far Forests to Peyna's farm by then, Naomi pushing her team of huskies for all they were worth. The knowledge would have eased Dennis a bit if he had known-but of course he did not, and he was lonely.

There was no food at all upstairs, but in the cellar he found a few potatoes and a handful of turnips. He ate the potatoes (Dennis hated turnips, always had, and always would), using his knife to cut out the rotten places-which meant he cut away three -fourths of every potato. He was left with a handful of white globes the size of pigeons' eggs. He ate a few, looked toward the turnips in the vegetable bin, and sighed. Like them (he didn't) or hate them (he did), he supposed he would be reduced to eating them by Friday or so.

If I'm hungry enough, Dennis thought hopefully, maybe they'll taste good. Maybe I'll just gobble those old turnips up and beg for more! He finally did have to eat a number of them, although he managed to hold out until Sat.u.r.day noon. By then, they actually had begun to look good, but as hungry as he was, they still tasted terrible.

Dennis, who suspected the days ahead might be very hard, ate them anyway.