Yet even if she did not like the man, did not trust him, she couldn't let him die.

Nor could she sacrifice her own father for Orden's sake.

Her father sat now on his horse, staring dumbly into the stream, oblivious of all that was said around him. Raindrops spattered him, and he glanced this way and that, trying to discern what had hit him. Hopeless. Hopelessly lost to her.

Gaborn gazed down at Iome, as if worried at her health, and she realized he was oblivious of her dilemma. Gaborn hailed from Mystarria, from a kingdom near the ocean, where water wizards congregated. He had no knowledge of the lore of Earth Wardens. He had no idea that he'd been anointed to be King of the Earth. He had no idea that Raj Ahten feared him, would kill him, if only Raj Ahten knew Gaborn's identity.

Wind gusted on the hill again; Gaborn listened as if to a distant voice. A few minutes ago, she'd wondered if Gaborn was mad. Now she realized that something marvelous was happening. The trees spoke to him, called him, for purposes neither he nor she understood.

"What should we do now, milord!." Iome asked. She had never called any man but her father by that title, never submitted to another king. If Gaborn recognized the sudden shift in their relationship, he did not signal it.

"We should go west," he whispered. "Toward the heart of the woods. Deeper."

"Not south?" Iome asked. "Your father could be in danger--more danger than he knows. We might help him."

Gaborn smiled at her words. "You worry for my father?" he said. "I love you for that, Princess Sylvarresta." Though he said the words lightly, she could not mistake the tone of his voice. He indeed felt grateful, and he loved her.

The thought made her shiver, made her want him more than she'd ever wanted a man. Iome had always been sensitive to magics, knew that her desire for Gaborn was born of the earth powers growing in him. He was not handsome, she had to tell herself. Not really more handsome than any other man.

Yet she felt drawn to him.

How could he love me? she wondered. How could he love this face? It was like a wall between them, this loss of glamour, her loss of self-respect and hope. Yet when he spoke to her, when Gaborn assured her that he loved her, she felt warm all over.

She dared hope.

Gaborn frowned in thought, said softly. "No, we shouldn't go south. We need to follow our own track--west. I feel the spirits drawing me. My father is going to Longmont, where castle walls will enfold him. Bone of the earth. The earth powers can preserve him. He's safer there than we are here."

With that, he urged his horse forward, reached down a hand to help lift Iome to her saddle.

On the wind came the sound of war dogs baying in the far hills.

Chapter 26.

A GIFT.

For long hours they raced, leaping over wind-fallen aspens, climbing up and down the hills. Iome let Gaborn lead the way, half in wonder at the trails he chose.

Time became a blur--all the trees losing definition, time losing focus.

At one point, Gaborn pointed out that Iome's father seemed to be riding better. As if some portion of his memories had opened, and he recognized once again how to sit light in a saddle.

Iome wasn't so sure. Gaborn stopped the horses in a stream, and her father watched a fly buzz around his head as Gaborn asked time and again, "Can you ride? If I cut your hands loose from the saddle, will you hold on?"

King Sylvarresta made no answer. Instead, he looked up into the sky and began squinting at the sun, making a noise like, "Gaaaagh. Gaaaaagh."

Gaborn turned to Iome. "He could be saying yes."

But when Iome looked into her father's eyes, she saw no light in them. He wasn't answering, just making senseless noise.

Gaborn pulled out a knife, reached down, and slit the ropes that held King Sylvarresta's hands to the pommel of the saddle.

King Sylvarresta seemed mesmerized by the knife, tried to grab it.

"Don't touch the blade," Gaborn said. Her father grabbed it anyway, cut himself, and just stared at his bleeding hand in wonder. It was a small cut.

"Hold on to the pommel of the saddle," Gaborn told King Sylvarresta, then wrapped the King's hand around the pommel.

"Keep holding on."

"Do you think it will work?" Iome asked.102 "I don't know. He's holding it tight enough now. He might stay on the horse."

Iome felt torn between the desire to have her father safely tied to the saddle, and the desire to let him be free, unencumbered.

"I'll watch him," Iome said. They let the horses forage for sweet grass alongside a hill for a few moments. Distant thunder was snarling over the mountains, and Iome became lost in thought. A thin rain began to fall. A golden butterfly flew near her father's mount, and caught his eye. He watched after it a moment, held out a hand toward it as it flew off into the shadowed woods.

Moments later, they headed into the forest, into the deep gloom. The trees gave shelter from the brief rain showers. For another hour they rode, as the darkness deepened, until they reached some old trail in a burn.

There, as they rode, another monarch butterfly flew up out of some weeds. Iome's father reached for it, called out.

"Halt!" Iome shouted, leaping from her saddle. She ran to her father, who sat askew, listening to his force horse breathe, lamely reaching a hand out.

"Bu-er-fly!" he shouted, grasping at the golden monarch that flashed ahead, as if racing the horses. "Bu-er-fly! Bu-er-fly!"

Tears streamed from her father's eyes, tears of joy. If there was any pain behind those tears, any recognition of what he'd lost, Iome could not see it. These were tears of discovery.

Iome's heart pounded. She grabbed her father's face, tried to pull him close. She'd hoped he would regain some wit, enough to talk. Now he had it. If he knew one word, he could learn more. He'd experienced his "wakening"--that moment when the connection between a new Dedicate and his lord became firm, when the bounds of an endowment solidified.

In time, her father might learn her name, might know she loved him desperately. In time he might learn to control his bowels, feed himself.

But for the moment, as she tried to pull him close, he saw her ruined face, cried out in terror, and drew away.

King Sylvarresta was strong, so much stronger than her. With his endowments, he easily tore from her grasp, and pushed her so hard that she feared he'd broken her collarbone.

It did not matter. The pain did not diminish her joy. Gaborn rode back to them, leaned over on his mount, and took King Sylvarresta's hand. "Here now, milord, don't be afraid," he soothed. He pulled the King's hand toward Iome, put the King's palm on the back of her hand, let him pet it. "See? She's nice. This is Iome, your beautiful daughter."

"Iome," Iome said. "Remember? Do you remember me?"

But if the King remembered her, he did not show it. His wide eyes were full of tears. He stroked her hand, but for the moment he could give her nothing more.

"Iome," Gaborn whispered, "you need to get back on your horse. I know you can't hear them, but mastiffs are howling in the woods behind us. We don't have time to waste."

Iome's heart pounded so hard she feared it would stop. Darkness could not be far away. The rain had momentarily halted.

"All right," she said, and leapt on her horse. In the distance, war dogs began to bay, and nearby some lone wolf raised its voice in answer.

Chapter 27.

THE UNFAVORED.

In the shadows of the birches, Jureem gazed down as his master's Invincibles took a moment to rest, throwing themselves on the ground. Beyond this ridge, the mountains wrinkled and folded like crumpled metal, and trees grew huge. Gaborn was fleeing into the darkest heart of the Dunnwood.

Yet Jureem knew enough to fear this region, as did the Invincibles. Maps showed the Westwood only as a blank, and at its center was a crude sketch of the Seven Standing Stones of the Dunnwood. In Indhopal, it was said that the universe was a great tortoise. On the tortoise's back sat the Seven Stones, and on the stones rested the world. A silly legend, Jureem knew, but intriguing. For ancient tomes said that millennia ago, the duskins, the Lords of the Underworld, had erected the Seven Stones to "uphold the world."

The Invincibles searched the ground under the birches for sign of Gaborn. Somehow, the Prince's scent eluded them, and now the mastiffs stood yapping stupidly, noses high, trying to catch the scent.

It should not have happened. Young Prince Orden had three people a horse. Their scent should have been thick in the air, the prints of the horses' hooves deep in the ground. Yet even Raj Ahten could not smell the boy, and the earth was so dry and stony that it could not hold a print.

Most of Raj Ahten's men were already unhorsed. Twelve horses dead, several dogs dead, too. The men who ran afoot should have been able to keep up with Gaborn, but complained, "This ground is too hard. We can't walk on it."

An Invincible sat on a log, pulled off a boot. Jureem saw the black bruises on his sole, horrible blisters on his heels and toes.

These rough hills had killed most of the horses and dogs. They'd kill men, too. So far, Jureem was lucky enough to retain a mount, though his butt hurt so badly he dared not climb off his horse for fear he'd never get back on. Even worse, he feared that at any moment his own horse would die. Not able to run with these men, he would be abandoned here in the woods.

"How does he do it?" Raj Ahten wondered aloud. They'd followed Gaborn for six hours, astonished at how the Prince eluded them. Each time, it had been in a stand of birches. Each time, they'd lost Gaborn's scent completely, had to circle the trees until he reached pine. Yet it was getting harder and harder to find the Prince's trail.

"Binnesman," Jureem said. "Binnesman has put some Earth Warden's spell on the Prince, hiding him." Gaborn was leading them all somewhere they did not want to go.

One of Raj Ahten's captains, Salim al Daub, spoke with a soft, womanly voice. "O Light of the Earth," he said solemnly, "perhaps we had better relinquish this fruitless chase. The horses are dying. Your horse will die."

Raj Ahten's magnificent horse did show signs of fatigue, but Jureem hardly imagined it would die.

"Besides," Salim said, "this is not natural. The ground everywhere we walk is harder than stone, yet the Prince's horse runs over it like the wind. Leaves fall in his path, hiding his trail. Even you cannot smell him anymore. We are too near the heart of103 the haunted wood. Can't you hear it?"

Raj Ahten fell silent, and his beautiful face went impassive as he listened. He had endowments of hearing from hundreds of men; he turned his ear to the woods, closed his eyes.

Jureem imagined that his master could hear his men rustling about, the beats of their hearts, the drawing of their breaths, the strangling noises their stomachs made.

Beyond that...must be silence. A pure, profound silence all across the dark valleys below. Jureem listened. No birds called, no squirrels chattered. A silence so deep that it was as if the very trees held their breath in anticipation.

"I hear," Raj Ahten whispered.

Jureem could feel the power of these woods, and he wondered. His master feared to attack Inkarra because it, too, harbored ancient powers--the powers of the arr. Yet here in the north the people of Heredon lived beside this wood and apparently did not harvest the power, or did not commune with it. Their ancestors had been a part of these woods, but now the northerners were sundered from the land, and had forgotten what they once knew.

Or maybe not. Gaborn was aided by the wood. Raj Ahten had lost the boy's trail, lost it hopelessly.

Now Raj Ahten turned his head to the northwest, and looked out over the valleys. The sun shone briefly on Raj Ahten as he gazed at a deep valley, far below.

The heart of the silence seemed to lie there.

"Gaborn is heading down there," Raj Ahten said with certainty.

"O Great Brightness," Salim begged. "Haroun asks that you leave him here. He feels the presence of malevolent spirits. Your flameweavers attacked the forest, and the trees want retribution."

Jureem did not know why this annoyed his master so. Perhaps it was because Salim asked him. Salim had long been a fine guard, but a failed assassin. He'd fallen from Raj Ahten's favor.

Raj Ahten rode to Haroun, a trusted man who sat on a log, his shoes off, rubbing his maimed feet. "You wish to stay behind?" Raj Ahten asked.

"If you please, Great One," the wounded man asked.

Before Haroun could move, Raj Ahten drew a dagger, leaned over and planted it through his eye. Haroun gasped and tried to stand, then tripped backward over a log, gagging.

Jureem and the Invincibles stared at their lord in fear.

Raj Ahten asked, "Now, who else among you would like to stay behind?"

Chapter 28.

AT THE SEVEN STANDING STONES.

Gaborn rode full-tilt, and though his mount was one of the strongest hunters in Mystarria, in the afternoon he felt it giving way beneath him.

The stallion wheezed for breath. Its ears drooped, lying almost flat. Serious signs of fatigue. Now, when it leapt a tree or jumped some gorse, it did so recklessly, letting brambles scrape its hind legs, setting its feet loosely. If Gaborn did not stop soon, the horse would injure itself. In the past six hours, he'd traveled over a hundred miles, circling south, then heading back northwest.

Gaborn felt certain Raj Ahten's scouts must have begun to lose mounts by now. He could hear but two or three dogs baying.

Even Raj Ahten's war dogs had grown weary of the chase. Weary enough, he hoped, to make mistakes.

He rode on, leading Iome through a narrow gorge. Night's shadows were falling.

He could see quite well here. As if the eyebright administered the night before had not yet worn off. This amazed him, for he'd expected it to lose its effect long ago.

He felt thoroughly lost, had no idea where he'd managed to end up, yet it was with a light heart that he raced down into a deep ravine, covered in pine.

Here he found something he'd never expected to encounter so far into the Dunnwood--an ancient stone road. Pine needles had fallen on it over the ages, and trees grew up through the middle of it. Yet all in all, as he headed deeper into the gorge, the path could be tracked.