Then Gaborn understood why she had given up feeling, why she feared to be touched, to be hurt again. She feared rape.

She was right. Raj Ahten's soldiers might hurt her. These people who were too weak to stand, or whose metabolisms were so slow they could not blink more than five times an hour--all were a part of their Runelord. They were his invisible appendages, the source of his power. By upholding their lord, they opposed their lord's enemies.

If King Sylvarresta were put to death, these wretches wouldn't escape retribution.

Gaborn wanted to tell the maid to stay, that he couldn't take her. Wanted to tell her how dangerous the trip would be. But for her, perhaps the greater danger lay in remaining here in the Dedicates' Keep.

"I plan to try to swim out through the river," Gaborn answered. "Can you swim?"

The wench nodded. "A little." She shook at the thought of what she planned to do. Her jaw trembled. Tears filled her eyes.

Swimming would not be a valuable skill here in Heredon, but in Mystarria Gaborn had learned the finer points of the arts from water wizards. He still had protective spells cast over him to help keep him from drowning.

Gaborn leaned close, squeezed her hand. "Be brave, now. You'll be all right."

He turned to leave, and she shouldered past, taking a loaf of bread for herself as she scurried out. In the doorway she grabbed a walking stick and an old shawl, wrapped her head, and hurried out.

On a peg near where the walking stick had been, Gaborn spotted a baker's tunic, an article of clothing too warm to be worn near the ovens. The bakers typically would strip down to a loincloth while baking.

Gaborn put on the tunic, a grimy thing that smelled of yeast and another man's sweat. He hung Sylvarresta's fine blue robe in its place.

He looked now like a menial servant, but for his sword and poniard. He couldn't help those. He'd need them.

He hurried into the courtyard to gather the forcibles. The clear evening sky had darkened. In the courtyard, the shadows had grown surprisingly deep. Guards were carrying torches out of the guardroom to light the bailey.

As he got out the door, Gaborn saw his mistake. The great wooden gates to the Dedicates' Keep lay open, and Raj Ah ten's battle guard had just ridden in, men who even to the most casual observer could be seen to move with heightened speed, warriors with so many endowments that Gaborn was but a pale shadow in comparison. All around the courtyard, Lord Sylvarresta's Dedicates had gathered, staring in dismay at Raj Ahten's troops.

Raj Ahten himself, just outside the gates, was leaving the keep with Lord Sylvarresta and Iome.

Gaborn glanced at the ground in the yard. The forcibles he'd wanted to collect were gone. Taken.

A warrior in the guard pinned Gaborn with his eyes. Gaborn's heart beat fiercely. He shrank back, tried to remember his training in the House of Understanding.

A wretch. I'm a wretch, he wanted to say with his whole body. Another miserable cripple, in service to Lord Sylvarresta. But the sword he wore told another story.

A mute? A deaf man, one who still hoped to fight?

He shrank back a pace, farther into the shadows, hunched his right shoulder and let his arm hang down, stared at the ground, mouth dropping open stupidly.

"You!" the guard said, spurring his stallion forward. "What is your name?"

Gaborn glanced at the Dedicates around him, as if unsure whether he was being addressed. The Dedicates weren't armed. He could not hope to blend in.

Gaborn put on an idiot's grin, let his eyes go unfocused. There was a class of person who could be found in a Dedicates'

Keep that he might play, a servant who had no attributes worth taking, yet who loved his lord and therefore performed what41 service he could.

Squinting, Gaborn grinned up at the soldier, pointed a finger at his force stallion. "Ah! Nice horse!"

"I said, what is your name?" the soldier demanded. He sported a slight Taifan accent.

"Aleson," Gaborn answered. "Aleson the Devotee." He said "devotee" as if it were a lord's title. In fact, it was a name given to one rejected as a Dedicate, one found worthless. He fumbled at his sword as if trying to draw it. "I...I'm going to be a knight."

Gaborn managed to draw the sword halfway, as if to show it off, then shoved it back into the scabbard. The soldier would recognize fine steel if he saw it.

There, he had his disguise. A mentally deficient boy who wore a sword as an affectation.

At that moment, a heavy wain pulled through the portcullis, an open wagon filled with men in hooded robes--men slack- jawed, with vacant eyes, their wits drained. Men so weak from granting brawn they could not rise, but only lay exhausted, arms hanging over the edge of the wagon. Men so cramped from granting grace that every muscle seemed clenched--backs curved, fingers and toes curled into useless claws.

Raj Ahten was bringing Dedicates of his own to the keep. Four huge draft horses pulled the wain. The honor guards' own stallions danced and kicked. There was little room for so many beasts here in the square, not with Dedicates standing around, gawking.

"That's a fine sword, boy," the guard grumbled at Gaborn as his horse shied from the wagon. "Be careful you don't cut yourself." His words were a dismissal; he fought to move away from the wagon without crushing the nearest bystander.

Gaborn shuffled forward, knowing the surest way to get rid of someone was to hang on for dear life. "Oh, it's not sharp. Do you want to see?"

The wagon halted, and Gaborn saw Iome's Maid of Honor, Chemoise, in its very back, holding the head of one of the Dedicates there. "Father, Father..." she cried, and then Gaborn knew that these were not just any Dedicates to Raj Ahten, but captured knights, brought back to their homeland as trophies. The man Chemoise held was in his mid-thirties, hair of palest brown. Gaborn watched the maid and her father, wished that he could save them. Wished he could save this whole kingdom.

You too, he vowed silently, dazed. If I have my way, I will save you, too.

From out of the shadows at Gaborn's side, a heavy man in a dirty robe approached. He growled, "Aleson, you stinking fool!

Don't just stand in the way. You didn't empty the Dedicates' chamber pots, like I told you! Come along now and do your job.

Leave the good men alone."

To Gaborn's surprise, the fellow thrust two buckets full of feces and urine into Gaborn's hand, then cuffed him on the head.

The buckets reeked. For one who had endowments of scent, the odor was unbearable. Gaborn choked back his desire to vomit, twisted his neck, gave the man a wounded glare. The fellow was stout, with bushy brows, a short brown beard going gray. In the shadows he looked like just another Dedicate in dirty robes, but Gaborn recognized him: Sylvarresta's herbalist, a powerful magician, the Earth Warden Binnesman.

"Carry these off to the gardens for me, before it gets too dark," the herbalist whispered viciously, "or you'll get another beating worse than the last."

Gaborn saw what was happening. The herbalist knew that Raj Ahten's scouts had his scent. But no man with endowments of scent would come too near these buckets.

Gaborn held his breath, hefted the buckets.

"Don't stub your toes in the shadows. Must I watch you every moment?" Binnesman hissed. He kept his voice low, as if to keep from being overheard, knowing well that each soldier in Raj Ahten's guard had enough endowments of hearing to discern the very sound of Gaborn's heart at this distance.

Binnesman led him round to the back of the kitchens. There they met the kitchen maid. "Good, you found him!" she whispered to Binnesman. The herbalist just nodded, held a finger up, warning her not to speak, then led them both through a small iron gate out the back of the Dedicates' Keep, along a worn trail, into a garden. The cook's herb garden.

Along the south wall of the garden grew some dark green vines, climbing the stone wall. Binnesman stopped, began picking leaves. In the failing light, even Gaborn recognized the narrow, spade-shaped leaves of dogbane.

As soon as he'd picked a handful, Binnesman rolled them in his palm, bruising them. To a common man the dogbane had only a slightly malodorous scent, but it was poison to dogs. They avoided it. And Binnesman was a master magician capable of strengthening the effects of his herbs.

What Gaborn smelled in that moment was indescribable--a gut-wrenching oily reek from a nightmare, like evil incarnate.

Indeed, an image filled Gaborn's mind--as if suddenly a giant spider had strung webs of murder here across the path. Deadly.

Deadly. Gaborn could imagine how the stuff would affect a hound.

Binnesman sprinkled these leaves on the ground, rubbed some on Gaborn's heel.

When he'd finished, he led Gaborn through the cook's garden, ignoring other herbs as he went. They jumped a low wall, came to the King's Wall--the second tier of the city's defenses.

Binnesman led Gaborn along a narrow road with the King's Wall on one side, the backs of merchants' shops on the other, till he reached a small gate with iron bars, small enough so a man would have to duck to pass through. Two guards stood at the gate in the stone wall. At a gesture from Binnesman, one guard produced a key, unlocked the iron gate.

Gaborn set down the stinking buckets of feces, wanting to be rid of the burden, but Binnesman hissed, "Keep them."

The guards let the three through. Outside the wall was a kingly garden, a garden more lush, more magnificent than any Gaborn had ever seen. In the sudden openness, the last failing light of day still let Gaborn see better than he had in the shadows of the narrow streets.

Yet the term "garden" did not feel entirely correct. The plants that grew here were not pampered and set in rows. Instead they grew in wild profusion and in great variety all about, as if the soil were so alive that it could not help but produce them all in such great abundance.

Strange bushes with flowers like white stars joined in an arch over their heads. Creepers trailed up all along the garden's42 stone walls, as if seeking to escape.

The garden rolled away for a half mile in each direction. A meadow full of flowers spread before them, and beyond it lay a hillock overgrown with pines and strange trees from the south and east.

In this place, odd things had happened: orange and lemon trees grew beside a warm pool, trees that should never have survived these winters. And there were other trees beyond, with strange hairlike leaves and long fronds, and twisting red branches that seemed to rake the sky.

A stream tinkled through the meadow. A family of deer there drank at a small pool. The pale forms of flowers and herbs sprouted everywhere, blossoming in profusion. Exotic forests rose to both the east and the west.

Even this late in the evening, with the sun having fallen, the drone of honeybees filled the air.

Gaborn inhaled deeply, and it seemed that the scents of all the world's forests and flower gardens and spices rushed into his lungs at once. He felt he could hold that scent forever, that it enlivened every fiber of his being.

All the weariness, all the pain of the past few days seemed to wash out of him. The scent of the garden was rich.

Intoxicating.

Until this moment, he thought, he'd never truly been alive. He felt no desire to leave, no hurry to leave. It was not as if time ceased here. No, it was a feeling of...security. As if the land here would protect him from his enemies, just as it protected Binnesman's plants from the ravages of winter.

Binnesman bent low, pulled off his shoes. He motioned for Gaborn and the serving wench to do the same.

This had to be the wizard's garden, the legendary garden that some said Binnesman would never leave.

Four years earlier, when the old wizard Yarrow had died, some scholars at the House of Understanding had wanted Binnesman to come, to assume the role of hearthmaster in the Room of Earth Powers. It was a post of such prestige that few wizards had ever rejected it. But then there had been a huge uproar. Binnesman had published an herbal several years earlier, describing herbs that would benefit mankind. An Earth Warden named Hoewell had attacked the herbal, claiming that it contained numerous errors, that Binnesman had misidentified several rare herbs, had drawn pictures of plantains hanging upside down, had claimed that saffron--a mysterious and valuable spice brought from islands far to the south--came from a specific type of flower when, in fact, everyone knew that it was a mixture of pollens collected from the beaks of nesting hummingbirds.

Some sided with Binnesman, but Hoewell was both a master scholar and a ruthless politician. Somehow he had succeeded in humiliating and disaffecting a number of minor herbalists, even though, as an Earth Warden by training, his own magical powers dealt with the creation of magical artifacts--a field apart from herbalism. Still, his political maneuvering swayed a number of prominent scholars.

So Binnesman never got the post as hearthmaster in the Room of Earth Powers. Now some people said that Binnesman had refused the post in shame, others that his appointment would never have been ratified. As Gaborn saw it, such were the lies and rumors that Hoewell promulgated to aggrandize himself.

Yet a rumor more persistent than any other arose, and this one Gaborn believed: In the House of Understanding, some good men whispered that despite the pleas of many scholars, Binnesman simply would not go to Mystarria, not for any prestigious post. He would not leave his beloved garden.

On seeing the exotic trees, tasting the scents of rare spices and honeyed flowers on the wind, Gaborn understood. Of course the herbalist could not leave his garden. This was Binnesman's life's work. This was his masterpiece.

Binnesman tapped Gaborn's boot with his foot again. The serving wench already had her shoes off. "Forgive me, Your Lordship," Binnesman said, "but you must remove your shoes. This is not common ground."

In a daze, Gaborn did as ordered, pulling off his boots. He got up, wanting nothing more than to stroll through these grounds for a day.

Binnesman nodded meaningfully toward the buckets of feces. Gaborn hefted his unsavory burden, and they were off, strolling across a carpet of rosemary and mint that emitted a gentle, cleansing scent as their feet bruised the leaves.

Binnesman led Gaborn through the meadow, past the deer that only looked at the old Earth Warden longingly. He reached a particular rowan tree, a tree that was phenomenally tall, a perfect cone. He studied it a moment, then said. "This is the place."

He dug a small hole in the detritus beneath the tree, motioned for Gaborn to bring the dung.

When Gaborn brought the buckets, Binnesman emptied them into the Pit. Something clanked. Among the feces Gaborn saw objects dark and metallic.

With a start he recognized Sylvarresta's forcibles.

"Come," Binnesman said, "we can't let Raj Ahten have these." He picked up the forcibies, placed them back into the bucket, ignoring the dung on his hands. He walked fifty paces to the brook, where trout snapped at mosquitoes, slapping the water.

Binnesman stepped into the stream and rinsed the forcibles one by one. Then he placed them together on the bank. Fifty-six forcibles. The sun had set nearly half an hour ago, and the forcibles now seemed but dark shadows on the ground.

When Binnesman finished, Gaborn tore a strip of cloth from his tunic and wrapped the forcibles into a bundle.

Gaborn looked up, caught Binnesman appraising him, squinting in the half-light. The herbalist seemed lost in thought. His beefy jowls sagged. He was not a tall man, but he was broad of shoulder, stocky.

"Thank you," Gaborn said, "for saving the forcibles."

Binnesman did not acknowledge his words, merely studied him, as if peering behind Gaborn's eyes, or as if he sought to memorize Gaborn's every feature.

"So," Binnesman said after a long moment. "Who are you?"

Gaborn chuckled. "Don't you know?"

"King Orden's son," Binnesman muttered. "But who else are you? What commitments have you made? A man is defined by his commitments."

A cold dread filled Gaborn at the way the Earth Warden said "commitments." He felt certain that Binnesman was speaking of the oath he'd made this night to Princess Sylvarresta. An oath he'd rather have kept secret. Or perhaps he spoke of the43 promise Gaborn had made to the kitchen wench, the promise to save her, or even the silent vow he'd made to Chemoise and her father. And, somehow, he felt, these commitments might offend the herbalist. He glanced at the kitchen wench, who stood with hands folded, as if afraid to touch anything.

"I'm a Runelord. An Oath-Bound Lord."

"Hmmm..." Binnesman muttered. "Good enough, I suppose. You serve something greater than yourself. And why are you here? Why are you in Castle Sylvarresta now, instead of next week, when your father was scheduled to arrive?"

Gaborn answered simply. "He sent me ahead. He wanted me to see the kingdom, to fall in love with its land, with its people, as he had."

Binnesman nodded thoughtfully, stroking his beard. "And how do you like it? How do you like this land?"

Gaborn wanted to say that he admired it, that he found the kingdom beautiful, strong and almost flawless, but Binnesman spoke with a tone in his voice, a tone of such respect for the word "land," that Gaborn sensed they were not speaking of the same thing. Yet perhaps they were. Was this garden not also part of Heredon? Were not the exotic trees, gathered from far corners of the earth, part of Heredon? "I have found it altogether admirable."

"Humph," Binnesman grunted, glancing around at the bushes, the trees. "This won't last the night. The flameweavers, you see. Theirs is a magic of destruction, mine a magic of preservation. They serve fire, and their master will not let them resume human form unless they feed the flame. What better food than this garden?"

"What of you? Will they kill you?" Gaborn asked.

"That...is not in their power," Binnesman said. "We have reached a turning of the seasons. Soon, my robes will turn red."

Gaborn wondered if he meant that literally. The old man's robes were a deep green, the color of leaves in high summer.

Could they change color of themselves? "You could come with me," Gaborn offered. "I could help you escape."

Binnesman shook his head. "I've no need to run. I have some skill as a physic. Raj Ahten will want me to serve him."