'No, not really. Andine's very pretty, and she smells nice. She's soft and warm, and that voice of hers throbs like a bell. She's very easy to love, and she responds to love with love of her own. I didn't cheat her, Althalus. I did love her-and I still do.'

"I thought you were supposed to love only me."

'What a ridiculous idea. Just because I love her, it doesn't mean that I love you less. My love is boundless, you know.

"But now you've managed to sneak away from her, and that means that I've swindled her out of Eliar, the Knife, and you-all in the same day. I really think we should get out of here, Em-almost immediately."

'She won't wake up until morning; I've seen to that. When she does wake up, the first thing she'll do is search her whole palace for me. The idea of sending out her soldiers won't come to her until later.'

"Are you sure?"

'Trust me.'

Eliar woke up just before dawn, and he'd evidently forgotten that he was securely attached to the tree, because he started struggling with his chain before he was fully awake.

"Stop that!" Althalus barked sharply. "You'll hurt yourself."

Eliar quit fighting. He held up one of his wrists and jingled the chain. "You don't need to keep me locked up anymore," he said. "I've already told you that if you really do have an agreement with my Chief, I'll do what you tell me to do. If you're lying bbout it, you'll have to answer to him."

"Now you're starting to make some sense," Althalus said approvingly. "I thought I might have to rattle your teeth a little bit before you started to get the point."

"I'm a good soldier, and I follow my Chief's orders. I don't have to get any points or understand anything. I just have to do what I'm told to do."

"I think we'll get along just fine," Althalus said. "Hold out your hands. Let's get rid of those silly chains."

Eliar held out his wrists, and Althalus freed him.

Eliar stood up, stretching and yawning. "I didn't sleep too well," he said. "Those stupid chains jingled and rattled every time I moved. What am I supposed to call you? Sergeant, maybe? I won't call you Master, no matter what you do to me."

"If you ever call me Master, I'll braid all your fingers and toes together. My name's Althalus. Why don't you call me that?"

"Is that really your name? There's an old story in our clan about a man named Althalus."

"I know. Chief Albron thought it was just a coincidence, but he was wrong." Althalus made a wry face. "My name's about the only part of the story your people got right. The rest of it's the biggest lie I've heard in my whole life-and I've heard some very big lies in my time. Let's get it right out into the open, Eliar. I am the one who robbed Gosti Big Belly about twenty-five hundred years ago, but Gosti didn't have any gold in his strong room, just copper and a little brass. He wanted people to believe that he was the richest man in the world, so he spread some wild lies about how much gold I'd stolen from him. You wouldn't believe how much trouble that caused me."

The boy scoffed. "Nobody can live that long."

"I didn't think so myself, but Emmy cured me of that. Let's stick to the point here. Can you read?"

"Warriors don't waste their time on that nonsense."

"There's something you have to read."

"I just told you that I don't know how, Althalus. You'll have to read it to me."

"It won't work if we do it that way." Althalus took the Knife out from under his belt and held it out to Eliar. He pointed at the complex engraving on the blade. "What does this say?" he asked.

"I can't read. I told you that."

"Look at it, Eliar. You can't read it if you don't look."

Eliar looked at the leaf-shaped blade, and he jerked his head back, startled. "It says, 'Lead'!" he exclaimed. "I can actually read it!" Then he shrank back as the song of the Knife touched him.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Althalus said.

Emmy had been sitting nearby, watching. She rose and came over to where they were seated. She looked very closely at Eliar, who was still staring at the Knife with a befuddled expression. Tell him to do something, Althalus, she suggested. Let's make sure that you can control him before you give him the Knife.

Althalus nodded. "Stand up, Eliar," he said.

The boy immediately scrambled to his feet. He swayed a bit and put one hand to the side of his head. "It made me a little dizzy," he confessed.

"Dance," Althalus told him.

Eliar started to jig, his feet pattering on the ground.

"Stop."

Eliar quit dancing.

"Put both hands up over your head."

"Why are we doing this?" the boy asked, raising his hands.

"Just making sure that it works. You can put your hands down. Did you notice anything peculiar just now?"

"You kept telling me to do things that were sort of silly," Eliar replied.

"If they seemed silly, why did you do them?"

"I'm a soldier, Althalus. I always do what the man in charge tells me to do. If he tells me to do silly things, he's the one who's silly, not me."

"That sort of takes a lot of the fun out of this, doesn't it, Em?" Althalus said aloud. "Did the Knife force Eliar to jump around, or was it just his training?"

Eliar gave Emmy a surprised look. "How did your cat get away from Andine?" he asked curiously.

"She's sort of sneaky."

"Andine's going to be very angry about that. Maybe we should leave in sort of a hurry-right after breakfast."

"Are you hungry?"

"I'm always hungry, Althalus."

"Why don't we eat, then?" Althalus held the Knife out to the boy. "Here. You're the one who's supposed to carry this. Tuck it under your belt and don't lose it."

Eliar put his hands behind his back. "You should probably know that I was planning to kill you last night before we got to know each other. You might want to think it over a little before you just hand me back my knife like that."

"You aren't going to try to kill me now, though, are you?"

"No. Not now."

"Why not?"

"You're the man in charge, Althalus. Your arrangement with Chief Albron sort of makes you my Sergeant. A good soldier never tries to kill his Sergeant."

"Then I haven't got a thing to worry about. Take the Knife, Eliar, and let's eat."

"What a great idea," Eliar said enthusiastically, tucking the Knife under his belt.

"Bacon? Or maybe ham?"

"Whichever one you can make the quickest."

Althalus made some ham and a loaf of black bread. Then he produced a very large cup of milk.

Eliar started to eat as if he hadn't had anything for a week.

Althalus made more. 'How long can he keep this up?' he silently asked Emmy.

'I'm not really certain,' her reply came back. She watched Eliar eat with a slightly bemused look in her large green eyes. 'See if you can distract him enough to get him to show me the Knife. I need to find out where we're supposed to go next.'

"Eliar," Althalus said, "you can keep chewing, but Emmy needs to take a quick look at your Knife."

Eliar mumbled something.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Althalus told him. "Just take the Knife out from under your belt and show it to her."

Eliar shifted the chunk of ham he'd been eating to his left hand, wiped the grease off his right hand on the grass, and drew out his Knife. Still chewing, he held the Knife out to Emmy.

She glanced at it briefly. 'Awes,' she said.

'Isn't it in ruins?' Althalus asked.

'So?'

'Just thought I'd mention it, that's all. I'll go saddle my horse.'

Emmy had gone back to watching Eliar eat. There's no real hurry, Althalus. Her silent response sounded slightly amused. 'From the look of things, our boy here's just getting started.'

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Just exactly where's this war?" Eliar asked as he trotted along beside Althalus' horse, "and what kind of people are we going to be fighting?"

"War?" Althalus asked.

"People don't rent soldiers just for show, Althalus. I'm fairly sure you didn't go to all the trouble of getting me away from Andine just because you were lonesome. Sergeant Khalor always told us that we should find out as much about the people we're going to be fighting as we possibly can."

"Your Sergeant's a very wise man, Eliar."

"We all looked up to him-even though he could be awfully picky about details sometimes. I'll swear that he can talk about one speck of rust on a sword for half a day."

"Some Soldiers are like that, I suppose," Althalus said. "I don't get all that excited about it myself. A rusty sword kills somebody as well as a polished one does."

"We're going to get along just fine," Eliar said, grinning broadly. "Now, then, who am I supposed to fight?"

"The war we're involved with isn't exactly like an ordinary war-at least not yet. We haven't quite reached the point of armies and battlefields."

"We're still choosing up sides?"

Althalus blinked, and then he laughed. "That might just come closer to what we're doing than anything I've heard so far."

'Watch your mouth.' Emmy's thought had a slight edge to it.

Althalus laughed again. "That's why we absolutely had to get our hands on the Knife, Eliar," he told the boy. "It's the only thing that can tell us who's on our side. The ones we want can read it. Others can't. Emmy can read more of it than you and I can, and it tells her where we're supposed to go to recruit the people we'll need."

"She's not really a cat, then, is she? My mother's got a cat, but all her cat does is eat and sleep and chase mice. If Emmy's that important, you took an awful chance when you traded her for the Knife the way you did. Andine's a very strange little lady. You're lucky she didn't chain Emmy to her bedpost."

"The way she had you chained to that pillar in her throne room?"

Eliar shuddered. "That was a real bad time for me, Althalus. The way she used to look at me gave me the wibblies. She'd sit there for hours playing with my knife and staring right straight at me. Women are very strange, aren't they?"

"Oh, yes, Eliar. Indeed they are."

Shortly before noon, Althalus noticed a farmstead some distance back from the road they were following, and he turned into the lane that led toward the house. "Let's get you mounted, Eliar," he said.

"I can keep up with you on foot, Althalus."

"Possibly, but we've got a long way to go. I'll talk with the farmer here and see what he's got to offer."

While Althalus spoke with the seedy-looking farmer, Eliar carefully examined the farm horses in the large corral behind the farmhouse. "This one," he said, rubbing the ears of a large sorrel horse.

The farmer started to object, but he changed his mind when Althalus jingled his purse.

"You paid him too much," Eliar said as they rode away from the farm.

"The money doesn't really mean anything."

"Money always means something, unless you just made it up in the same way you make up the food we eat." Then he looked sharply at Althalus. "You did, didn't you?" he demanded. "You just reared back, waved your hand, and there was a great big pile of gold, wasn't there?"