Yet the blade had hardly cleared Raj Ahten's flesh when the wound began to close over, seamlessly. The man had so many endowments of stamina, he seemed no longer human.

The Sum of All Men, Orden feared, that creature which drew life from so many people that it could no longer be classified as mortal, could no longer die. Raj Ahten was becoming a Power, one to vie the elements or the Time Lords.

The chronicles spoke of it. The chronicles said Daylan Hammer had lived in Mystarria for a time, sixteen centuries past, before he went south, seeking to suffer in silence. For immortality had become a burden. Daylan's Dedicates passed away, yet he could not die, for in some fashion he had been transformed. The gifts transmitted through the forcibles remained with him eternally--unwanted, a curse.

Orden had perfect recall, and he saw the words now before him, as he'd read them while young, studying the fragment of an ancient chronicle written by a distant forefather: "Having loved his fellow men too deeply, Daylan found that life became a burden. For men he befriended, women he loved,147 blossomed and died like the roses of a single season, while he alone remained perennial. So he sought solitude beyond Inkarra, in the Isles of Illienne, and I suppose he lives there still."

All this flashed through Orden's mind as his sword cleared Raj Ahten's throat; then he realized he had swung so hard that the blade was getting away from him. Pain filled his arm as he strained muscles and pulled tendons, trying to hold it.

The sword flashed away into a bed of ferns upon the knoll.

He had no other weapon. But Raj Ahten still sat, frozen in horror at the power of his attack. Orden leapt, kicking at Raj Ahten's head with all his might.

He wore the steel-toed hoots of war, each with a heavy bar across the toe. The blow, he knew, would shatter his own leg. But it could also crush Raj Ahten's skull.

As Orden kicked, Raj Ahten twisted away. Orden's heel struck beneath Raj Ahten's epaulets.

A ripping pain tore through Orden's leg as every bone in it shattered, a pain so profound it wrung a cry from his throat.

Yet if I ruin myself, Orden thought, then I ruin Raj Ahten. Raj Ahten's shoulder crumpled. Orden felt the bones of the Wolf Lord's arm snap, followed by his collarbones, then the ribs caving in, one by one, snapping like twigs beneath his heel.

Raj Ahten screamed like one dying.

Orden landed on Raj Ahten's shoulder, and sat for what seemed a few seconds, gasping, wondering what to do next. He rolled off the Wolf Lord, to see if the man had died.

To his astonishment, Raj Ahten groaned in pain, rolled in the grass. The impression of Orden's boot lay stamped on the Wolf Lord's shoulder.

The scapula had caved in. Raj Ahten's right arm twisted at an unnatural angle. The flesh of his shoulder was pushed down six inches.

Raj Ahten lay in the grass, eyes glazed with pain. Blood frothed from his mouth. The Wolf Lord's dark eyes and chiseled face were so beautiful in that moment, Orden marveled. He'd never seen the Wolf Lord so close, in all his glamour. It took Orden's breath away.

"Serve me," Raj Ahten whispered fervently.

In that second, Mendellas Draken Orden was swept away by the force of Raj Ahten's glamour, and wished to serve him with his whole heart.

Then the second passed, and he grew frightened: for something moved beneath Raj Ahten's armor; the shoulder settled and swelled, settled once again, as if years of inflammation and healing and pain all rolled into one infinite, heart-stopping moment. The shoulder finally grew to a bulbous hump.

Orden tried to roll to his feet, knowing the fight was not over.

Raj Ahten crawled after him, grasped Orden's right arm by the wrist, and smashed his helm into Orden's own shoulder, so hard that the helm was jarred loose from Raj Ahten's head.

Bones shattered all along Orden's arm, and he cried out. He writhed on the ground, his right leg a ruin, his arm and shoulder useless.

Raj Ahten backed away, stood gasping for breath. "It is a shame, King Orden. You should have taken more stamina. My bones are already fully healed. How many days will it be until you can say the same?" He kicked hard, snapping Orden's good leg. Orden collapsed to the ground, on his hack.

"Where are my forcibles?" Raj Ahten said calmly.

Orden gave no answer.

Raj Ahten kicked King Orden in the face.

Blood spurted from Orden's right eye, and he felt it hanging against his cheek. Orden fell to the ground in a near faint, and covered his face with his good hand. Raj Ahten kicked his unprotected ribs. Something tore loose inside, and Orden began coughing, spewing flecks of blood.

"I'll kill you!" King Orden spat. "I swear it!"

It was a vain threat. Orden couldn't fight back. He needed to die. Needed Raj Ahten to kill him so the serpent ring would break and another warrior could fight in his stead.

King Orden began to cough; he could hardly breathe in air so thick, so liquid. Raj Ahten kicked his ribs again, so that Orden lay gasping.

Raj Ahten turned and scrambled up the trail fifty yards, through dry grass filled with yellow tansy, to the base of the Eyes of Tor Loman. A stone stair spiraled three times outside the circumference of the tower. Raj Ahten scrambled up it, limping painfully, one shoulder five inches lower than the other. Though his face looked beautiful, he seemed from the back to be little more than just another twisted hunchback. His right arm hung askew, and his right leg might have healed, but it looked shorter than the left.

Orden panted, sweated with exertion, tried to breathe in air that felt thick as honey. The grass near his head smelled so rich, he wanted to lie in it a moment, to rest.

On the heath, Iome and Gaborn rode side by side through the great throng. Gaborn held a shield high, and carried one of the Duke's lances. Tied atop it was a bit of a red curtain from the windows of the Duke's Keep. A white circle of cloth pinned in its middle would make it look, at a great distance, much like the Orb of Internook.

That is, it would appear like Internook's colors to anyone watching twenty miles away. Gaborn suspected Raj Ahten's far- seers would be watching. It was standard tactics during any siege to place scouts all around the battle.

For the past half-hour, Gaborn had been busy worrying about the logistics of what he did: trying to drive a couple of hundred thousand head of cattle and horses across the plain was hard work. Even the experienced drovers and horsemen in the retinue could not manage the task easily.

The work was made harder by inexperienced boys who tried desperately to help but who tended to startle the cattle at every turn. Gaborn feared that at any moment, the huge herd might stampede right or left, tramping the women and children who bore shields in a great line before the herd, as if they were warriors.148 Yet as he watched the skies above Longmont, fear seized Gaborn even more. The skies looked gray overhead, but far on the horizon darkness flashed as Raj Ahten's flameweavers pulled fire from the heavens.

Gaborn feared he had caused it, that his ruse had led Raj Ahten to hurry his attack on Longmont rather than to simply drive the Wolf Lord off in terror, as Gaborn had hoped to do.

As he rode, words began to form in his mind, a half-remembered spell from an ancient tome. Though he'd never fancied himself as one with earth powers, now he found himself chanting, "Earth that betrays us, on the wind, become a cloak to hide us, wrapped within. Dust that reveals us, in the sky, Hide our numbers from the predator's eye."

Gaborn felt shocked that such a spell had come unbidden to his mind. Yet at that moment, he recalled the spell, and it felt right to speak it, as if he had stumbled upon the key to a nearly forgotten door.

The earth powers are growing in me, he realized. He did not yet know what he would become.

He worried for his father, and as he did so, he felt the man's imminent danger, felt danger wrapped around him like grave clothes.

Gaborn hoped his father could hold out through the attack. He raised his war horn to his lips, blew once, and all around him, others did the same. Before his army, the marchers began singing songs of war.

Raj Ahten had dozens of far-seers in his retinue, but none were like him, none had so many endowments of sight. Raj Ahten did not know how many endowments he had, but he knew it numbered in the thousands. He could discern the veins in a fly's wings at a hundred yards, could see as clearly by starlight as the average man did by sunlight. While most men with so many endowments of sight would have gone day-blind, Raj Ahten's stamina let him withstand the full sun.

It took nothing to spot the towering cloud to the east, an army marching on him.

As he made his way up the tower, Raj Ahten kept searching to the south and west for signs of Vishtimnu's army, signs of help. With his heightened metabolism, it seemed he scanned the horizon for many long minutes for sign of a yellow pennant rising through the forest canopy, or the glint of sunlight on metal, the dust rising from the march of many feet, or the color that mankind had no name for--the hue of warm bodies.

But there are limits even to a far-seer's vision. He could not see through walls, and the forest canopy off to the west was wall enough that it could have hidden many armies. Moreover, a moist wind from the south blew in off the heath, from the vast fields of Fleeds, which were thick with dust and pollen, limiting his vision to thirty or forty miles.

He stood breathlessly, for a long moment. He did not worry about time. With so many endowments of metabolism, he could not have been six seconds searching the horizon in the southwest before he realized he'd see nothing. Vishtimnu's army was too far away.

He turned east, felt his heart freeze. In the distance, Binnesman's horse hurtled across the plains. Raj Ahten could see his destination: at the limit of vision, the golden towers of Castle Groverman rose from the plains beside a river of silver. And before the castle marched an army the likes of which he had seldom seen: hundreds of thousands of men.

A line of spearmen marched in front, five thousand across, and sunlight gleamed on their shields and helms. Behind them marched bowmen by the thousands, and knights mounted on chargers.

They had already crossed the heath a distance of some five to seven miles from Castle Groverman. At such a great distance, in such dirty air, he could not see them clearly. The dry dust of their passage obscured their numbers, rose from their feet in a cloud hundreds of feet high. It looked almost like the smoke of a range fire.

But it was not the heat of a fire he saw beneath that dust. He saw the heat of life, of hundreds of thousands of living bodies.

Among the horde, pennants waved in dozens of colors--the green banners of Lysle, the gray of North Crowthen, the red of Internook. He saw horns among the crowd, the horned helms of hundreds of thousands of warriors--the fierce axemen of Internook.

It can't be, he reasoned. His pyromancer had said that the King of Internook was dead. Perhaps, Raj Ahten's troubled mind told him, but Internook's armies are marching.

Raj Ahten stilled his breathing, closed his eyes. In the field below, rising winds hissed through the trees, but distantly, distantly, beneath the sound of the blood rushing through his veins, war horns pealed. The cries of thousands of voices raised in war song.

All the armies of the North, he realized, gathering against him. At the gates of Castle Sylvarresta, Orden's messenger had said King Orden planned this assault for weeks. And he'd hinted that traitors in Raj Ahten's own ranks had revealed the presence of the forcibles to King Orden.

Raj Ahten had rejected the tale, never considered the possibility it might be true--for if it was true, it portended such dire consequences for this invasion that Raj Ahten could hardly dare ponder them.

If it was true, if Orden had planned this raid weeks ago, then he could have sent for aid, he could have summoned the kings of the North to battle.

Four weeks ago Orden had set march. Four weeks. It was possible. The fierce Warlord of Internook could have marshaled his hordes, sent them in longboats to land on the rocky beaches of Lysle, then marched them here, joining with Knights Equitable of various kingdoms.

These would not be common soldiers. These would not be men who trembled at the sight of Raj Ahten's Invincibles.

Raj Ahten opened his eyes again, just as Binnesman's horse wheeled to join the procession, taking its lead.

"The new King of the Earth is coming," the old wizard had said. Now Raj Ahten saw the truth. This Earth Warden would join his enemies. This Earth Warden would indeed serve a king. "The Earth rejects you..."

Raj Ahten felt a strange terror beginning to well up inside him. A great king marched at the head of that army, he felt sure.

The wizard's king. The king his pyromancer had warned him of.

And he brought an army Raj Ahten could not match.

Even as he watched, a marvelous thing happened: at that very moment, the great cloud of dust over the army began to form-- tall spires of dust rose hundreds of yards into the air like the points of a crown, and a face took form in the roiling dust, a stern149 visage of a cruel man with death in his eyes.

The Earth King.

I came here to hunt him, and now he hunts me, Raj Ahten realized.

Raj Ahten had little time remaining. He needed to return to the castle, take it quickly, win back his forcibles before he retreated.

He raced down the stairs of Tor Loman, heart pounding in terror.

Chapter 48.

FIRE.

Raj Ahten raced back down the forest trail, leaping rocks, speeding through glens. He suspected now that Longmont held no treasure, that the forcibles had moved.

Everything pointed to it--Orden practically begging for execution. The man was obviously joined in a serpent. To kill him would behead the serpent, freeing another soldier to fight with almost as much metabolism as Orden now carried.

But leaving Orden alive and incapacitated kept the serpent intact. Raj Ahten had only to find warriors dedicated to the serpent, slaughter them quickly, and cut the serpent into pieces.

The existence of a serpent seemed evidence that the forcibles had left Longmont, for if Orden had really taken hundreds of endowments, he'd not have relied on a serpent for power. He'd have garnered greater stamina. But the man was too easily wounded, too slow to heal.

No, he couldn't have taken hundreds of endowments, or even dozens. He didn't have the people here to serve as Dedicates.

So he'd moved the forcibles. Probably not far. People who hide valuables seldom want to hide them far. They want to be able check on them frequently.

Yet it was possible Orden had given them to another.

All morning, Raj Ahten had hesitated to attack the castle for some reason he could not name. Something about the soldiers on the walls had disturbed him. Now he realized what it was: Prince Orden wasn't on those walls. He'd expected father and son to fight together, as in the old songs, But the son was not here.

The new King of the Earth is coming, the old wizard had told him. But the wizard had not emphasized the word new. "I see hope for House Orden," the wizard had said.

Prince Orden. It made sense. The boy had earth spells protecting him, a wizard in his employ. Gaborn was a fighter. Raj Ahten knew. He'd sent Salim to kill Gaborn on two occasions, in an effort to keep Mystarria from uniting with a more defensible realm. Yet the assassin had failed.

He has bested me at every turn, slain my pyromancer, evaded me.

So Gaborn now has the forcibles, Raj Ahten realized, and has taken endowments, and rides at the head of the advancing army. True, Gaborn hadn't had much time to garner endowments, but the matter could be easily handled. Orden had recaptured Longmont three days ago. In that time, a dozen faithful soldiers could have taken endowments on Gaborn's behalf, preparing themselves to act as vectors, waiting for Gaborn to return to Castle Groverman to collect his due. The new Dedicates might be secreted in Longmont or Groverman or any of half a dozen castles nearby.

Raj Ahten had used the same tactic on occasions. As Raj Ahten raced back to Longmont, he considered all these things. He calculated how much time it would take to seize Longmont, destroy the forces within, and search for his treasure, to verify his guess.

He had tricks up his sleeves, weapons he'd not planned to employ this day. He'd not wanted to reveal his full strength in battle, but perhaps it would be necessary.

He considered how much time it would take afterward to flee. Groverman's army stood twenty-five miles off. Many of those men were afoot. If every soldier had an endowment of metabolism and one of strength, they might make it here in three hours.

Raj Ahten planned to be gone in one.

In Castle Longmont, Captain Cedrick Tempest worried for his people, worried for Orden, worried for himself. After Orden and Raj Ahten had raced north, both armies waited expectantly while Raj Ahten's men prepared for battle.

The giants had carried whole trees of oak and ash to the slope of the hillside, as if to make a bonfire, and there the flameweavers had stepped inside, turning the dead trees into a conflagration.

For long minutes, the three danced within the fire, letting it caress their naked flesh, each of them walking around the edge of the bonfire, drawing magical signs in the air, emblems of blue-glowing fire that clung in the smoke as if they hung on a castle wall.

It was an eerie, mesmerizing sight.

Then they began to whirl and chant in an odd dance, as if each man himself were synchronizing with the flames, dancing with the flickering lights of the fire, becoming one with it.

Thus each flameweaver weaved and bobbed and cavorted, and began to sing a song of desire, calling, calling.

It was one of the flameweaver's greatest powers--that of summoning fell creatures from the netherworld. Tempest had heard of such things, but few men ever witnessed a Summoning.

Here and there, men on the walls began drawing symbols of protection, vainly muttering half-remembered spells. Some hedge wizard from out of the wild began to draw runes in the air, and the men around him clustered near for protection.

Tempest chewed his lip nervously as the wizards gathered their powers. Now, in the bonfire, the walls of flame thickened, becoming green things like no earthly fire. A luminous portal was forming.