"I always knew that you walked in perill She knew it too. Do you not know that the gravest peril of her life is to be without you?"

"I must tell you!" Hal said desperately.

"Ay, ay. tell it then, if you must," Pelys acceded. "But understand that she is yours, not by your words or my consent, but by the choice of her own heart."

226 THE SILVER SUN.

"I am Hervoyel," Hal burst out.

"I thought your other name was Mireldeyn," Pelys remarked.

Haltingly Hal told them his story, searching for words that would help them understand the pitfalls of his des- tiny. Pelys whistled and looked somber, but Rosemary, with the insight of love, saw beyond the danger and the awful responsibility to the deepest wound in Hal's soul.

"Oh, poor Hal," she whispered, almost in tears. When he told about his mother's death, and his torment in the Tower, she cried outright. He put his good arm around her. "It is not a pleasant tale," he murmured. "I am sorry, love." But her tears were balm on his wounds.

As the narrative continued, he explained why he had not taken her more into his confidence. "I knew that Nabon of Lee would make his move soon, likely within the year. Ket and his men watched him while I was gone, and also guarded you, my lady, as well as they could.

But even so, if you had been captured-perhaps taken for extortion--then a hint that you knew something of the Welandais Prince would have spelled your death in some foul torture chamber. I know your courage, but you cannot keep your thoughts from showing in your face; your eyes are like mirrors for truth. So, for your own sake, I judged it best that you should know little of me or my doings. But the danger is over, for the time, and before Naboo has gathered his strength again we can expect to put an end to him, in an unseasonal feast of fires."

The tale flowed long into the afternoon, and Hal grew tired and weak before he was finished. There was much that Pelys and Rosemary did not yet understand. Most of Rosemary's questions, if she had asked them, would have been about Alan, and the hidden ache in his eyes, and the green stone which hung from his neck. But she did not ask them, for Hal slept, and when he awoke he was purged of care. Throughout the lazy, happy days which followed, Rosemary kept her perplexities to herself.

So she was now betrothed. She and Hal would wed within the year, if he lived. She shivered when she re- membered how closely death followed on his heels, but as much as she was able, she turned her thoughts to the present and its Joy. Still, she was often puzzled. So much more she knew about Hal now, and yet she hardly knew

The Dark Tower 227

him at all. He spoke to the horses sometimes in words she could not understand, and did not tell her what lan- guage he spoke. There was a mystery in his eyes that went beyond facts of birth or life, a knowledge and vi- sion which she could not begin to name or explain. She wondered when he would tell her what it meant, if he ever would, or could. Her musings made her sad, some- times, and wistful. Looking at her, Hal thought his heart would break for love of her, though he could not under- stand her moods; this maiden, of alt things, was a mystery to him.

When the leaves began to turn and a chill came into the air, Hal's cares came back with a vengeance. Time ceased its slow, stealthy passing and began to rush by. Hal started spending his days in the practice yard with Cory and Robin. His time with Rosemary no longer passed in long, dreamy wanderings, their thoughts and their talk roaming like their feet. Instead, they sat in silence, cling- ing to each other like desperate children, their kisses made urgent by the pressure of the passing days.

When the leaves had turned golden and scarlet, but still clung to the trees, Alan returned. Hal and Rosemary met him as he rode from the Forest. Alan's glance was hard, Ilia face set in grim lines. Hal seemed not to notice, for his eyes were moist as he gripped Alan's hand and thumped his shoulders. Wordlessly returning the rough greeting, Alan ducked his head-hiding what. Rosemary wondered? But when he turned to greet her, she saw that something of gentleness had come back to the tired lines of his face.

For two days he rested at Celydon. He sparred with Hal in the practice yard, and could not help smiling with pleasure to find him as well as ever. But smiles did not come easily to Alan these days, not even when he was in the boyish company of Robin and Cory and ardent Rafe.

Once he lounged an hour with Hal and Rosemary in the sunshine of the meadow, and he slowly relaxed, as if something inside him had let go for a while. But he would say little about where he had been, except for a brief talk with Hal.

"We see it everywhere," he blurted then, as if the words rushed out of him almost against his will. "The petty cruelties and persecution, torture and crippling, broken men and broken spirits, the dead and the slowly

228 THE SILVER SUN.

dying. But when I saw it happening to those I knew and loved as a boy . . ." He paused, clenching his teeth.

"You have heard me mention Tynan."

"Your father's old seneschal."

"Ay. He is still alive. Crippled with torture, and living only because he is too old to pose much threat. But he is fierce and loyal in spite of it all. I stayed at his cottage.

The rest-either dead, or only half alive, surviving at the price of their souls."

"Do they have hope now?" Hal asked, but Alan looked away and answered only with a shrug. Hal was puzzled, for he felt that Alan had something more on his mind.

But Alan stayed strangely silent. There was one visible sign of change: he no longer wore the ring he had got from his father's hand. When Hal asked him about it, he took the silver shining thing from a pouch slung under his tunic. But he offered no explanation, and he would not meet Hal's wondering eyes.

On the third day after Alan's return, they left Celydon.

Parting from Rosemary was a painful wrench for Hal, but they hoped that perhaps in a year they need not be parted again. Another hope eased Hal's going, a hope that maybe, once they were on their way, the comradeship of the road would return and Alan would be more himself,

And indeed he did become more easy as the days went by. Robin and Cory seemed to notice nothing wrong, but Hal still sensed a barrier between them, a distance, which hurt and fretted him. What had caused it, he could not understand. Was he somehow to blame, or had Alan found something in Laueroc which made him so aloof? If Alan had a secret . . . Hal remembered years past, and sighed. He could not probe, when Alan had so patiently borne with his own unfolding mysteries. Sadly, reluctantly, Hal acknowledged that a door had shut between them when Alan went to Laueroc, and stood between them still.

They spent the winter in danger, not so much from men as from freezing cold and ravenous beasts. So great was the pressure of their task that, in this season when all men kept within doors if they could, they sought no shel- ter, but moved across the empty surface of the land like ants braving a cottage floor. The horses grew thick coats of fur for protection, and spent their nights stamping and snorting, huddled nose to tail against the cold. The com- rades wore layer upon layer of clothing, but in spite of it their fingers and faces were frozen and thawed and frozen again. They grew hardened to the weather, and found a fierce Joy in their defiance of it. Only in the worst of storms, when blinding curtains of white would have frozen them entirely, did they take refuge in some cottager's hut or outlaw's cave. They watched the weather signs care- fully, for to be caught by such a storm would have spelled certain death.

When they left Celydon they turned northward. They hastened across the Marches, wary of Arrok and avoiding Firth, for the King's army still besieged Roran's town. It would be to his advantage, Hal thought, that Iscovar's forces were divided, for the commander who had marched to Firth would almost surely have turned bis army against the Prince.

229.

230 THE SILVER SUN.

Before winter struck, the company reached the harsh Northern Barrens, where Hal went to parley with the war lords, as Roran had arranged months before. These were mettlesome men, vain and quarrelsome as peacocks, chief- tains of the barbaric tribes which roamed the far north in constant warfare. Tent dwellers even in bitterest winter, they were gaudy in their apparel, brawling in their ways.

Robin and Cory found themselves fighting them from time to time, but Hal dominated them by force of his will and his flashing eyes. And Alan looked grim enough to give any man pause.

The warlords agreed to join forces against Arrok when the time came, and also to drive the besiegers from Firth.

They hated Arrok and respected Roran, so these were tasks to their liking. Hal only hoped they could keep peace among themselves long enough to accomplish them.

But winter would help enforce the truce he had ordered in preparation for the greatest war of ail.

By the time the worst cold came, Hal and his comrades were on their way southward through the Westwood- There they spent several days with Blain the Lean, the outlaw whom Alan had met the summer past. Blain was a strange man for an outlaw, thin, dark and intense, not at all like the usually sturdy and stoical folk who are able to survive in the woods- He showed no skill in arms. Yet in his own way he seemed very clever, even worldly-wise.

He discussed with authority the overthrow of power and the taking of power, describing in detail schemes of kings and nobles, sorcerers and priests, present as well as past. He even had some knowledge of military maneuvers- Hal wondered where he had got his education, since he was not of the nobility. From the sorcerers at Nemeton? It almost seemed that he must have been a novice, at least, in that coven of subtle and ambitious men. Yet Winter- fest, that most sacred of Eastern yearly-days, came and went while they were with him, and no notice was taken.

Hal and Alan learned much from Blain, and listened more than they spoke. The keen edge of his intelligence, and its almost fanatical force, commanded their respect.

His men, none of whom could read or write, almost wor- shiped their leader, as if he were a seer. But the visitors sometimes felt an indefinable lack in Blain, like an ingre- dient missing in a complicated drh. It was difficult to know how he feit toward them. Though he could not

The Dark Twer 231

seem to restrain himself from showing strong feelings about all matters of the mind, concerning matters of the heart he revealed little. Still, he offered his allegiance readily and with conviction. He seemed to like Alan, for he spoke most often to him. This was all to the good, since he would be fighting beside Alan at Laueroc. Hal sat back contentedly, saying little.

When they left Blain, their ways once again parted.

Alan and Cory traveled south toward Laueroc, while Hal and Robin headed back across Isle toward the Forest and Craig the Grim. Relentless winter was at its height, and their journey was a slow one. It was a weary month and a half before Hal and Robin came to shelter. They settled into outlaw caves gratefully, waiting out the stormy skies.

Once every fortnight or so, as for many months past, Tod, the King's master of hounds, took his charges out for a few days on the open weald. Each time, he chanced to meet a fellow of indeterminate occupation, going bird- shooting with quail-feathered arrows. And as planned, Trigg would return to the Forest and report news of the King to Craig. When Alan and Cory rode in from Laueroc, after Hal and Robin had already been with Craig three weeks, the report was still the same: no change in the King's health. But on a night when a hint of spring stirred in the breeze, on a night when Hal paced restlessly in his den and thought of sleeping outside, Trigg burst into camp on a lathered horse with the news that King Iscovar had taken to his chamber at last.

The four comrades were off before sunrise the next morning, and three nights later they made their camp in the same copse that had provided shelter the night of the Tower raid. The next morning, while Robin and Cory stayed in its concealment, Hal and Alan boldly galloped the main road into the place that Hal had once hatefully known as home.

They won their way into the castle by main force of arrogance. In shining helms and glittering mail, with shields at the ready, they pounded the gate with the hilts of their naked swords. When the gatekeeper asked their business, Hal shot him such a glance as froze his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Fiery golden flecks filled Alfie's eyes as they rode through the courtyard, and the proud steed arched his neck and struck out his hooves as fiercely

232 THE SILVER SUN.

as an eagle striking at his kill. ArundePs eyes glowed darkly dangerous; he moved with his own peculiar ghost- like grace. Hal and Alan held the horses to the slow trot past groups of kingsmen who gaped in floundering amaze- ment. The news had spread quickly, and the groom who joyfully ran to take their horses was one who had known Arundel before.

Hal and Alan strode swiftly through the cold stone cor- ridors of the keep. Servants, guards, even noble scions flattened themselves against the walls to make way for the two warriors- The lines and scars of four years of hardship were on their faces, and the memory of those years in their eyes. Their consummation was now at hand.

Only the guard at the King's chamber door attempted to stop them, for his was the ultimate responsibility, and his life the forfeit. Hal scarcely looked at him, but struck the sword from his hand in one blow, knocked him to the floor with the hilt and threw open the door without a backward glance. Alan followed him, though distaste for Iscovar repulsed him like an odor in the room. He sta- tioned himself just inside the door. But Hal strode to the foot of the great canopied bed and looked down at the wasted form of the man he knew as his sire.

King Iscovar had been a grossly corpulent man when Hal had seen him last. Now his overlarge skin lay in puck- ered folds around him, toadlike, yellow and wrinkled.

His body, once vigorous and overbearing, lay limp. But the passions which had dominated his life still glared from his eyes: cruelty, greed, pervasive ill will. His face was as expressionless as a mask, staring blankly at his heir. But he could not mask the malignancy of his soul; it lurked in his eyes.

He and Hal observed each other silently for some mo- ments. The King seemed detached, but hot hatred smol- dered in his gaze. Hal's face was hard and fiat with his dislike. "I have come for my inheritance," he said at last, "little though I desire it from you. Will you help me or hinder me?"

Iscovar's eyes glittered as he moistened his lips to an- swer. But before he spoke, the guard entered, staggering, sword raised. Hal ignored him, but Alan blocked his path.