"And what have we here, a swordswoman? A noble?"

Myrrima looked down at her hands folded in her lap, more from shyness than from respect.

"A friend...of your son's. I'm betrothed to one of your guard--Borenson. I came to be with him. I'm no swordswoman, but I can cook a good stew, and I can wrap bandages."

"I see," Orden said softly. "Borenson is a worthy man. I had not known he was betrothed."

"Only recently," Myrrima said.

"Milady, he has not reached the castle yet. I'd hoped he would have come by now, but I left him with an assignment at Castle Sylvarresta. I hope to see him shortly, but to tell the truth, Raj Ahten's troops will also reach us soon. I cannot say who will reach us first."

"Oh," Myrrima said, thinking furiously. Borenson did not expect her, and she had not imagined he would be occupied elsewhere. She had no illusions about how well this battle might go. But in the short time she'd had with Borenson, she'd grown to see how important devotion was to him. It did not occur to her to think that he might have failed his mission, that Borenson might already have died.

She wanted to be with him now, in his hour of need. For in her family, devotion to loved ones was all that had ever allowed them to survive.

Myrrima licked her lips. "I'll wait for him here, if you don't mind."

Chapter 38.

THE HOPE.

Just after dawn, Iome and Gaborn rode to the tiny village of Hobtown, twenty-two miles northwest of Longmont. Hobtown was a collection of fifteen cottages with a smithy. But on Saturdays, like today, a few farmers brought merchandise to town to exchange.

So when Gaborn, Iome, and King Sylvarresta rode into the village, a couple of people had already wakened. The horses needed food and rest.

Iome spotted a young woman, perhaps twelve, digging onions and leeks from her garden. Clover grew high next to the garden fence. Iome called out, "Excuse me, good lady. May we let our horses graze on your clover?"

The girl said, "Of course, you're welcome to...it." She'd turned at the last moment, and froze at the sight of Iome.

"Thank you," Gaborn said. "We'd gladly pay, if we may purchase something for breakfast."

The girl turned, stared at Gaborn, pointedly avoiding the sight of Iome, trying to regain her composure. "I have bread from last night, and some meat," she offered, delighted at the prospect of money. In a farming community such as this, barter was the norm, and a man could live from one season to the next without feeling the weight of a worn coin in his palm.

"Please, that would be good," Gaborn said.

The girl dropped her onion basket, ran into the house.131 Iome tried to calm herself, to forget how the girl's slight had affected her, made her feel worthless and wretched.

Iome's father had drifted to sleep in the saddle last night. Iome felt glad of it. King Sylvarresta had fallen from his horse, spent much of the night sobbing. Gaborn now held the King in the saddle in front of him, the way one might hold a child.

The mounts began to tear at the clover, ravenous.

Iome looked about. The cottages here were of stone and wood, with thatch roofs. Flowers and herbs grew from pots beneath windows made of real glass. The few people in Hobtown seemed wealthy enough.

The town occupied a lovely meadow between the oak-covered hills. Bachelor's buttons and pinks grew wild in the grass, alongside daisies. Fat cattle grazed just outside town. Rich. This town is rich in contentment, Iome thought.

If Gaborn's fears proved true, Raj Ahten's army of reinforcements would march through this town today. Something of great value would be lost, a sort of innocence.

Iome looked up, caught Gaborn smiling at her. Yet only a moment before, the girl had put her hand to her mouth in horror at the sight of Iome.

Iome feared she'd never be beautiful again. Yet when Gaborn turned his gaze on her, he made her feel that she'd never lost her glamour.

"How do you do that?" Iome said, grateful for his attention.

"Do what?"

"How do you look at me like that and make me feel beautiful?"

"Let me ask you another question," Gaborn said. "In Internook, a woman must have flaxen hair to be beautiful, but in Fleeds she must have red hair and freckles. In Mystarria, our people have long admired women with wide hips and pendulous breasts.

But here in Heredon, beautiful women must have small, pert breasts and boyish figures."

"All over Rofehavan, women must be pale to be beautiful. But in Deyazz they must be dark and brown. Also in Deyazz, the women wear heavy golden earrings that pull down the ears. But here, such enlarged ears would seem grotesque."

"So I ask you, who is right? Are all these women really beautiful, or are they all ugly, or are they all the same?"

Iome considered. "Perhaps physical beauty is only an illusion," she said. "And you look beyond the illusion?"

"I do not think beauty is an illusion," Gaborn said. "It's just so common, we often don't see it. It is like these meadows: We as travelers see the flowers, but the townsfolk probably seldom notice how handsome their lands are."

Iome countered, "But what if our beauty is taken from us, and there is nothing left to see?"

Gaborn's horse stood next to hers, and it shifted its feet, so Gaborn's knee suddenly touched Iome's. "Then you should rejoice," Gaborn said. "People can be beautiful on the inside, too. And when they feel most bereft of outer beauty, then they so long to be beautiful that they rearrange their hearts. And beauty springs from them, like these flowers spring from this field."

"When I look inside you," Gaborn said, staring at her, staring into her, "I see your people smiling. You love their smiles, above all. How can I not love what is in your heart?"

"Where did you get such strange ideas?" Iome said, wondering at his last words, wondering how he had managed to capture her love and hope for her people in so few words.

"From Hearthmaster Ibirmarle, who taught me in the Room of the Heart."

Iome smiled. "I should like to meet him someday, and thank him. But I begin to wonder about you, Gaborn. In the House of Understanding you studied in the Room of the Heart--a strange place for a Runelord to spend his time. Why spend your time among troubadours and philosophers?"

"I studied in many places--the Room of Faces, the Room of Feet."

"To learn the ways of actors and travelers? Why not the Room of Arms, and the Room of Gold?"

Gaborn said, "I received training in arms from my father and from the palace guards, and I found the Room of Gold...boring, with all those little merchant princes watching one another with such envy."

Iome smiled at Gaborn, bemused.

Presently the girl issued from her cottage with some scones and meat, and three fresh figs. Gaborn paid her, warned her that Raj Ahten's army might pass this way in a matter of hours, then let the horses walk for a while.

They stopped outside town, beneath a tree, and let the horses drink from a pool beside the highway. Gaborn watched Iome eat in silence. He tried to rouse the King, so he might eat too, but Iome's father remained asleep.

So Gaborn saved some bread, meat, and a fig in his pocket. Ahead of them, the mountains rose dark blue and threatening.

Iome had never been so far south. She knew of Harm's Gorge, of the deep canyon just beyond the mountains, which divided much of the realm.

She'd always wanted to see it. The road, she'd been told, was very dangerous. For miles it consisted of a narrow track beside a precipice. The duskins had carved that road centuries ago, made the great bridge across Harm's River.

"I still think it odd," Iome said, "that you spent your time schooling in the Room of the Heart. Most lords study little else but arms, or perhaps Voice."

"I suppose," Gaborn said, "if we Runelords only want to win battles and hold our fortresses, we need only study in the Room of Arms.

"But...I guess I don't believe in it. We seek ways to use one another all too much. It seems deplorable that the strong should dominate the weak. Why should I study that which I deplore?"

"Because it's necessary," Iome said. "Someone must enforce the laws, protect the people."

"Perhaps," Gaborn said. "But Hearthmaster Ibirmarle always found it deplorable, too. He taught that not only is it wrong for the strong to bully the weak, but that it is just as vile for the wise to rob the stupid, or the patient to take advantage of another's impatience.

"These are all just ways that we harness other men to our plows. Why should I treat men as tools--or worse, as mere obstacles to my enjoyment?" Gaborn fell silent a moment, and his glance strayed northward, to Castle Sylvarresta, where Borenson had slain the Dedicates last night. Iome could see how Gaborn regretted it, how he perhaps even thought it a personal failure that he had been so naive.132 He said, "Once, ages ago, an old shepherd, who was the highman of his town, sent word to my grandfather, asking him to buy his wool. The shepherd's town had long had a contract with a certain merchant from Ammendau, who carried their wool to market, but the merchant died unexpectedly. So the highman sent to the King, asking him to purchase the wool for his troops at a bargain price.

"But the highman did not know that rain in the west hills had caused a blight of wool rot on the sheep there. In all likelihood, the highman's wool would fetch triple its price, if the townsmen could get it to market.

"My grandfather, on seeing the situation, could have leapt at the chance to buy the wool cheap. If he'd listened to the merchants who schooled in the Room of Gold, he'd have done so. For they think it a virtue to buy cheap and sell high.

"Instead, Grandfather sent to the hearthmaster at the Room of Feet and arranged for a caravan to transport the wool at a fair price, cheaper than the villagers had paid before.

"He then sent to the highman and told him all that he had done. He begged the highman to sell his wool to the poor at its normal price, so that they would not go cold through the winter."

Iome listened to the tale somewhat in awe, for she'd often thought Orden's line to be hard, cold men. Perhaps it was only Gaborn's father. Perhaps he'd grown cold, after his own father's bad end.

"I see," Iome said. "So your grandfather won the love of the poor."

"And the respect of the highman and his village," Gaborn said. "That is the kind of Runelord I would want to be, one who can win a man's heart and his love. That is my hope. It is harder to storm a heart than to storm a castle. It is harder to hold a man's trust than to hold any land. That is why I studied in the Room of the Heart."

"I see," Iome said. "And I am sorry."

"For what?" Gaborn asked.

"That I ever said I would turn you down, if you asked me to marry you." She smiled at him, and spoke teasingly, but realized it was true. Gaborn was a strange and wondrous young man, and in the past day she had begun to recognize that he was much more than he seemed. She feared that at this rate, she'd fall in love with him so fiercely by the end of another day that she'd never want to separate from him again.

When the horses finished watering, Gaborn loped them for a while.

The magnificent crevasse at Harm's Gorge opened suddenly--a deep rent where a river rushed, and the trail they took snaked around its edge. According to legend, the duskins had created this place, had broken the pillars that held the Overworld.

They let their animals creep along a narrow trail beside the ledge, and Iome looked at the pillars of gray and white stone that rose up from the canyon, a marvel to see. She wondered if these were the pillars of legend or merely the roots of mountains long since eroded away.

Beside the steep sides of the canyon, huge trees clung, looking like bristles on a horse brush. A mile to the north, Harm's River churned in a waterfall and fell far into the chasm, but Iome could not see where the waters landed, for the canyon was so deep that its heart was lost in darkness, and no sound escaped from its silent depths. Enormous bats wheeled in the canyon, down where the shadows filled the endless chasm.

If a person fell from the road, it was said that you could hear his scream for a month until the sound was lost.

They took the narrow pass slowly, the idiot King Sylvarresta walking along the treacherous edge of the road, often stopping to peer into the mists so far below.

Chapter 39.

THE GREEN MAN.

King Sylvarresta woke, and moved through a world of dream. The doors of his mind were closed. He did not remember much. No words, no names--not even his own. Yet much in the world had a vague familiarity. The horses, trees.

He woke to see a great light in the sky, the color of gold and roses. He felt certain that he had seen it somewhere before.

They rode slowly on a narrow road, with a gray earth wall to his left, a tremendous precipice to his right. He had no words for names, nor for left and right. Everything carried with it a sense of discovery. Far, far down, he could see only misty grayness. Pine trees stood far below, prickling along the edges of rock.

They reached a narrow bridge carved from a single stone, spanning the gorge. The bridge curved up into the sky, and Sylvarresta looked down into the gorge, and felt as if he hung in the air, just so.

He did not recall ever having been here before, nor having felt thus.

A few dozen soldiers were on the bridge, guardsmen in dark-blue surcoats, wearing the face of the green man on their shields--a knight whose face was surrounded by green leaves. The young man and woman that King Sylvarresta rode with greeted these soldiers joyfully. For a while, the soldiers talked to the young man of their plans for guarding the bridge; then the young man bid the soldiers farewell, leaving them behind.

King Sylvarresta, the young man, and the young woman crossed the bridge, rode high up in the pine woods toward a mountain's summit. Then the horses raced under the trees.

Huge birds, the color of sky, flitted overhead, calling among the trees, and the wind came fresh and cold. Then they reached a mountaintop and rode down from the wooded hills, to a land where fields of crops checkered the downs.

A castle loomed up from the fields, a tall edifice of gray stone. Horns began blowing on its battlements at Sylvarresta's approach, and a dimly remembered pennant flew--the midnight black with the silver boar.

Men stood on the walls of the castle by the hundreds--men with bows and helms with wide brims, men with spears and hammers. Other men wore surcoats with the image of the green man, and they bore bright shields that shone silver like water.

The men all cheered and waved as they saw him, and King Sylvarresta waved back and cheered himself, until the huge drawbridge on the castle opened, and they entered.

The horses walked up a short, steep hill, hooves clanking over cobblestones. Men shouted joyfully at him and clapped, until an odd look came over their faces.133 Some pointed at him, faces pale with emotions he did not recognize--horror, shock, dismay. They shouted, "Dedicate!

He's a Dedicate!"

Then his horse stopped in front of a gray building, a small keep. King Sylvarresta sat for a moment watching a reddish- brown lizard, as long as Sylvarresta's finger, sun itself on the stones in the rock garden beside the door. He could not recall having ever seen such a thing, and wondered.

Then, in all the commotion, the lizard raced up the side of the building and over its gray roof. The King knew it was alive and he began shouting and pointing.

The young man behind King Sylvarresta had dismounted, and now he helped Sylvarresta down from his horse.

Together with the young man and the ugly woman, Sylvarresta walked under the eaves of the building, up some stairs. He felt so tired. Walking the stairs hurt his legs, made them stretch uncomfortably. He wanted to rest, but the young man urged him forward, into a room thick with good smells of cooked food, where a warm fire burned.

A pair of dogs thumped their tails as King Sylvarresta approached, so that at first he did not really notice the two dozen men sitting at a table, eating things that smelled good.