A gentle voice behind her shattered her troubled silence.

"Are you the lady Rosemary?"

She spun around to face a towheaded stranger crouch- ing beside a slim dark youth. Quickly he answered her pusled glance. "I am Corin. I have been traveling with Alan. He has gone to find Hal, who has seen battle, it seems, along with Robin here."

Robin was unconscious with a deep cut on the head, and his shield arm was smashed at the shoulder. It took both of them to set it. Rosemary was as pale as Cory be- fore they were done, for Robin writhed and moaned in his pain, thdugh he did not wake. To distract both of them, she asked Corin how he had come to know such comrades. The story he told made her long more than ever to see her gentle warrior.

Far into the night she labored, and till the dawn she waited, walking quietly but restlessly from place to place.

The servant girls rested, nodding, against the walls. Robin

211.

212 THE SILVER SUN.

slipped into the deep sleep that comes after pain, and Corin slumbered, exhausted, beside him. Rafe dozed in the gatehouse, and the wise, sure-fingered old physician slept on a straw tick in the midst of the wounded, ready to rise at an instant's notice should there be need. Now and then a man stirred or moaned in his pain, but none woke. In all the world, it seemed to Rosemary, only she kept vigil. She had never felt so alone.

But then a clatter of hooves roused Rafe, and Rosemary shook the physician into wakefulness. In the hour before dawn Alan came, bearing his burden before him.

The physician's face grew grave as he peeled off blood- stiffened clothing and gently probed Hal's weakened body.

The wounds were many, but one was deadly. In the break of the mail beneath the arm a sword had pierced deep, through muscles, ribs and vitals. Incredibly, Hal had wrenched himself away with such force that the sword had broken off in the hand of his foe. Yet he had kept his seat and fought and fled, with the point of the sword bur- ied perilously near his heart.

Hal stirred at the first touch, and his eyes searched the many who stood around him, holding candles, holding his hands and feet. "Robin?" he whispered.

"He will be well," Corin hastened to assure him. "He is sleeping."

The healer's probe opened Hal's wound, and he stifled a cry by biting his lip so that the blood flowed in yet an- other place. His eyes went to Rosemary's. "Love," he panted when he could speak, "pray go from me."

She started to protest, but the healer stopped her with a sharp glance. She kissed Hal, and went, but only as far as the next room. She knew that Rafe held down his shoul- ders, that Alan placed the biting stick in his mouth. She knew that Hal panted and trembled as the knife cut into his side, and she could see in her mind's eye how he willed himself to keep still. Then she heard him struggle, shouting, "Fiends! Bloody, bloody fiends!"

"He thinks he is in the torture chamber!" choked Alan.

"Hal! Hal-" With gentle words he brought him back to himself for a moment as the knife bit deeper yet. Then the castle rang with the terrible, racking scream of a strong man in unbearable agony. Rosemary rushed into the room.

Corin leaned against the wall; Alan looked pale and shaky.

Hal lay still. "By the gods, be is dead," Rosemary

The Dark Tower 213 breathed, but the old physician shook his head. "Fainted, praise be. Hold the basin, my lady."

The knife moved delicately, warily; one slip could mean death. The healer pulled out the shard with cautious fin- gers, then wiped the sweat from his brow with a sigh that was more like a groan. They washed and dressed the wounds, and the still form did not move. But as Alan and Rafe laid him in the lord's own bed, Hal stirred and thickly spoke. "You can cage and torture the body," he grated, "but the soul flies free as the eagles."

Alan touched his forehead with cool fingers and called pleadingly, "Hal!" His distant eyes focused slowly and painfully on Alan's face.

"Brother," he whispered, "if I die, will you carry on what I have begun?"

Rosemary felt a chill like ice grip her heart, and she swayed on her feet. Alan's face went as white as the blood-drained one he faced. "Hall" he exclaimed. "Do not say thati"

"My soul is weary within me, and longs for escape," murmured Hal. "As you love me, will you not do this thing for me?"

"But I am not you, Hal!"

"Alani" Hal pleaded.

But Alan had risen to his feet, his face awesome.

"Mireldeyn!" he commanded, and Rosemary wondered at the strange words she now heard. "I charge you, by the love we bear each other, to give over such thoughts!"

"Elwyndas," groaned Hal, "let me go!"

"For the sake of those who have suffered under seven generations of oppression, I will not! Only you can save them!" Alan's voice was as compelling as a trumpet call;

then it gentled. "Let us see your innermost strength, Mireldeyn. Look at me."

Eyes met and embraced. Like dawn, or moonrise, Hal's flickered into tentative light.

"Say it," Alan commanded- "I promise you, Elwyndas." The words were dragged out from under an immense weight of pain, but they came,

"Promise me what?"

"To carry on the fight."

"By what do you swear?"

"By the love between us."

"What more?" Alan was merciless.

214 THE SILVER SUN.

Hal knew what Alan wanted. Under that adamant gaze he summoned the last shred of strength in his soul.

"By the burden of my birth," he gasped, his face glisten- ing in agony of spirit.

In deepest love and gratitude, Alan did what he had never done-he knelt and kissed Ha! on the brow. Then he turned and spoke in a low voice to Rosemary, who stood stupefied by this strange scene.

"The shadows of black memories lie on his soul," be told her. "Sit by him and talk to him; remind him of every moment of love you have ever shared, every ray of light in his life, every reason to live, I have done alt I can for him. Now I go on a fool's journey-to seek Veran's balm for his heir's ills."

Like the wind of war Alan swept across the land. He did not ride Alfie, spent in spite of his great heart, or the wounded Arundel. Instead he rode Rate's giant black charger, Night Storm, and sat like blond lightning on his back. He bore neither shield nor helm, nor even blanket, but rode on the lightest of saddles and carried only water, sword and a little food. His cloak spread in the wind of his passing like the wings of an eagle. Folk who marked his going blessed themselves, as if they had seen an omen.

The little jar at Firth marked "Bloome of Veran's Crowyn" was as far beyond his reach as the moon. The elfin gold which flowered in the Eagle Valley was farther yet. For unspoken reasons, he and Hal had never carried with them any of the precious plant; it was not fitting, somehow, to pluck the lovely remnant of the legendary past and hoard it in concern for self. But now, in direst need, Alan fiercely prayed that Hal's strength would hold out as he urged the black steed toward a little valley be remembered, where an old woman worked at her loom, where time stood still and the blight of warlike greed had, some way, not yet entered.

He left Celydon in the early day. Two long days and two nights passed, and still he rode. He used no caution and sought no cover, but set his course like the bird who flies before the gale, as straight as the fields and roads could take him. Though he galloped through a lord's meadow or past a manor gate, men had scracely time to shout before he was gone from view.

Late in the second night he stopped. Stormy lay flat,

The Dark Twer 215

but Alan could not rest, though his eyes were bloodshot and his face twitching from lack of sleep. He paced im- patiently through the dark hours. At the first faint light of dawn, he spoke to the steed in the Old Language, and Night Storm rose trembling to his feet. "By my troth, you are worthy of your master's love,'* Alan praised him.

He cast about the countryside, searching. As the first rays of the morning sun struck the tops of the trees, he found what he sought. But his lips parted with a groan of the deepest despair he had ever known. Some name- less battle of a petty war had raged across the little valley.

The turf was torn and scarred, the stream muddied and stained with blood. Bodies of men and horses mingled with the bloated carcasses of sheep. The stench of death and war lay on the place. No trace of the indefinable fragrance of timelessness remained.

Eyes clouded by tears of helpless wrath, Alan turned to leave. Then he stopped. There was no need to hurry back and watch Hal die, he told himself, taking a per- verse satisfaction in the agony of his failure. Stubbornly he went to the ruined cottage and found the charred body of the old woman lying near her loom. He wrapped her in his cloak and took her to a spot less defiled than most, by the stream and under an old willow tree. From the forrested slopes he carried stones and raised a cairn over her. Finished, he knelt and commended her to Aene, though he eerily felt that it was not her grave that he had made. But as he knelt, an inexplicable feeling of peace stole over him, and the mist cleared from his eyes.

His left knee rested against a root of the great willow.

Just beyond the ridge of the root, and almost hidden in its sheltering curve, shone a single tiny golden flower....

Rosemary sat by Hal's bedside as Alan had told her to, and spoke of the good things in life, of flowers and green growing plants, furry creatures, warmth after win- ter, food after hunger, cool water in the heat. She spoke as best she could about dreams, deeds, friendship and fellowship. But most of all she spoke to him of love, her memories and dreams of their love.