"No whit!" Trigg protested. "Ye're too tired to think aright, Hal. Their faces-they smiled 's if they'd looked for midnight and found dawn."

But Hal had scarcely heard. "Robin, here, had a spear in his legs," he panted in a kind of desperate monotone.

"We took it out as gently as we could, but he shrieked and swooned. They all shrieked, when the spirits came.

The prisoners would have run like the guards, except they were chained in their cells. The whole night has been full of screaming, and none of it mine. Alan took a ring from a dead and tortured hand. Horrible-"

"Ye're babbling," Trigg said, and took the cloth away from him like a mother taking a toy from a cranky child, stretched him on the ground and covered him. Within a few moments, Hal was deeply asleep. Alan returned from

198 THE SILVER SUN.

puttering with the horses, lurching from tree to tree in his weariness. Trigg looked at him and sighed.

"Go get yer rest," he told Alan. "I'll watch."

"You're a godsend, Trigg," Alan mumbled, and fell asleep as he met the ground.

Hal awoke in late afternoon, still exhausted, but calm.

Alan sat up groggily beside him. Two cheerful campfires gave them welcome; over one bubbled a pot of gruel, and the other licked at spits of roasting birds. Trigg, looking tired but content, was dishing gruel for Robin, crooning to himself. Hungrily turning the spits was a stranger, a burly peasant with a homely, open face, who could almost have been Trigg's twin. Beside him, rendering the air poetic with its aroma, sat a bag of fresh, hot bread.

'"At's Drew," Trigg explained as Hal and Alan blinked. "Lives nearby, 'n' came for water. We got along fine; he's a cousin t*me that I ha* not seen these many years. Bread *n' gruel from his wife, in trade for one of my grouse."

Anxiously, Hal went to kneel beside Robin. The boy opened his eyes, and the ghost of a smile played around his pale lips. "Hal," he whispered. "I thought it was a dream."

"No dream," he murmured, caressing Robin's forehead.

"Are you in pain?"

"Nay. Trigg has comforted me marvelously well."

"He is a good nurse," Hal agreed softly. "I know."

" 'N' he knows a need when he sees it," grumbled Trigg from behind their backs. He handed Hal a ladle full of whitish goo. "Go wash. Soap from Drew. No dinner till ye do."

Hal and Alan looked at each other, and their weary dismay suddenly gave way to shouts of laughter that woke the camp. From head to foot, they were covered with bat dung, dirt and dust, filth and cobwebs. Only Hal's fingers were clean from bandaging Robin. He whooped until tears wet his grimy cheeks. "A pretty pair of rescuers we are!"

Alan choked.

"Like gods, you appeared to me," remarked Roran, go- ing to his son. "Anyway, we're no sweet-smelling lot our- selves, after sitting for a week in our own dirt."

" 'At's truth," Trigg said bluntly. "But ye I'll let eat before ye wash."

They all ate and washed by turns, gradually becoming

The Dark Tower 199 clean and full through the course of a lazy evening. When they finished at last, Trigg was asleep. The rest of them felt sociable for the first time in days, and clustered com- panionably around the campfires. Even Robin sat with them, resting against Cory. At his waist Cory wore the hunting knife Alan had given him, with its polished handle in the shape of a horse's head.

"You seem almost as done in as the rest of us, Hal,"

Roran remarked.

"It was hard, going back to the Tower," Hal acknowl- edged quietly. "I have been there before."

No one wanted to ask him when. "And Alan, what has come over you?" Cory inquired lightly. "You are so silent, and brooding-" Corin stopped abruptly. For a moment, Alan's glance pierced him with fear. But Alan's reply was calm.

"I have been watching the Wheel in motion, and I can't see the tilt of it. Look here." He reached under his tunic and drew out the glimmering Elfstone upon its golden chain. He held the green jewel aloft in the firelight, to- gether with the black and silver ring on his hand. Corin gasped as brilliant light bathed him.

Glowing like a vision in the heart of each stone was a radiant half-circle sunburst in the form of a mighty crown.

Corin squinted into the dazzling depths and vaguely per- ceived twin faces under crowns of silver and gold. But the vision faded before he could recognize the faces. Alan lowered his hands.

"Did the ring ever do that before?" asked Hal softly, as amazed as Corin.

"Never to my knowledge." Alan laughed harshly. "But then, I paid it little heed."

"Whence came the ring and the stone?" asked Roran, his face pale under his swarthy skin.

"The ring came from my father's hand, long dead in the King's charnel pit." Alao scarcely seemed able to go on, and Hal spoke up in his stead.

"It's a marvel that we found it. They always loot the bodies before they discard them, even of the gold in their teeth." He froze, and a peculiar pain washed across his face. "Corin," he said suddenly, "try to take the ring off Alan's finger-but be careful."

Puzzled, Cory obeyed. But as soon as he touched the ring he jerked his hand back with a yelp of pain. "Are you

200 THE SILVER SUN.

all right?" asked Hal anxiously. "What happened?" cried Reran.

"It stings like nettles!" gasped Corin, laughing even as tears of pain sprang from his eyes. "I dare say I'll live.

But I should think, Hal, that if you were expecting some- thing like that to happen, you might have taken it on yourself!"

Hal took the ring gently from Alan's finger and set it upon his own. Lord Koran touched it, then winced and put his finger to his mouth. Hal returned the ring to Alan, who sat in silent bewilderment.

"I knew nothing of this," he said at last. "How did you?"

"A buried memory. He wore it to his death, all through the torture, and none of the guards would touch it But I touched it without harm...."

Roran looked startled, and drew breath to speak, but kept silence.

"I had forced it out of my mind along with the rest of those black days," Hal concluded grimly.

No one had the heart to pursue the matter further.

Corin tried to return the conversation to a former topic.

"And the green stone? Whence did it come?*'

But Alan sprang up and strode away from the fire.

Cory looked after him in dismay, unable to follow; Robin had fallen asleep on his shoulder.

"Never mind," Hal said gently from beyond the fire.

"He will be back shortly."

"He's so changed," Corin blurted.

"With reason," Hal replied. "The green stone is a gift of love from a certain maiden whose people remember back to the Beginnings. It was with her that he learned to watch the turnings of the Wheel. . . ." Hal looked into Corin's perplexed face and sighed. "It is difficult to un- derstand."

"Impossible," grumbled Alan from behind Cory's back.

"Pay no mind, Cory.... Here, let's get Robin back to his bed."

They all went to bed, and slept late into the following morning, and rested by the spring all that day, regaining strength, since Drew had no word of kingsmen being near.