At the promise of reward, Alun fell silent.

The old king nodded at his men, his face filled with endless sadness.

"Madoc is right. There may never be a better time to attack," the king said. "For long I've hoped to win my son's freedom, and I've listened to Daylan's counsel. But I can hesitate no longer. The good of my people must outweigh my own selfish desires. Prepare for battle."

10.

A MAN OUT OF FAVOR.

Peace can be found in any clime, and any circ.u.mstance. He who has learned how to face death and dishonor without fear cannot have his peace taken from him.

-Daylan Hammer Daylan Hammer struggled against his captors as they bore him to the dungeons. He thrashed and kicked, but even with four endowments of brawn, he couldn't match the combined strength of the warrior clan. These men had been bred to battle over too many generations and were too large. In fighting them, he only risked breaking his bones.

So he battled them, but at a measured pace. He didn't want them to guess his true strength.

They dragged him to the dungeons.

There were fine cells at the top, places where n.o.bles had been held captive in ages past. Now, only a few scraggly paupers filled the cells. Justice in Caer Luciare didn't lend itself to long prison stays. A few lashes with a whip for disturbing the peace, a lopped-off hand for stealing, a day in the stocks for questioning a lord's character-those were the kinds of punishment that were dealt out. The prison was used mainly to hold criminals for a few hours before sentencing.

So Daylan hoped for a n.o.bleman's cell. But they bore him below, past the torture chamber where tongs and forges and bloodied knives gave mute testimony to past retributions.

The Princess Kan-hazur was in a cell near the door. He saw her sitting, dressed in gray rags, her dark hair a ragged mat. She was larger than most of the warriors, topping eight feet, and though she was but eighteen, her long, powerful arms looked as if they could snap a man in half.

She growled as the warriors pa.s.sed, and lunged, grabbing one by the collar and ramming his head into the bars.

Daylan kicked hard then, using the diversion to nearly break free.

But years of confinement had left the princess weak, and within a moment the warrior had her by the hair, twisting her head around until he could get her in a stranglehold.

The warriors carried Daylan past her cell, to a small grate, and Daylan fought fiercely at that point, managing to kick one warrior in the face and loosen a few teeth, just before they shoved him into a foul hole.

He slid down a rough incline perhaps forty feet, before he landed in a pool of feces and urine that was chest-deep.

There was little light in this place. He peered up above, perhaps a hundred feet. Light shone through a few privies. He was below the soldiers' barracks.

The walls were slick with excrement, the slope far too steep for a man to climb.

The dark waters were hot and smelled of sulfur. Obviously, they had trickled in through some crack in the rock from the hot springs that were used to warm the city in the winter. The water was too hot for comfort.

There was a jangle of keys up above as his captors locked the iron grate. Someone laughed and shouted down at him, "Dinner!"

A loaf of bread came bouncing down the slimy slope, to land with a wet plop. Daylan picked it up. It had been old and crusty.

For a long moment he stood, a.s.sessing the situation.

The smell was atrocious, but he knew that you could get used to any smell. He had been in some dire places in his life, but nowhere as foul as this.

There was nowhere to sit, nowhere to rest. The cesspool left him only a small s.p.a.ce to stand in, perhaps only ten feet across. And he imagined that when he got tired enough, he could try to float.

But the excrement in the cesspool had the consistency of quicksand. A layer of water and urine covered the top, perhaps to a depth of four inches, and all beneath that was a sordid stew.

To try to rest would be to drown.

Of course, that was what he was here for. That was his torment. He could stand in the muck while soldiers rained their urine down on him, or dropped a foul hail upon him, waiting for days without food or drink, until the High King decided that it was time to fish him out, bring him to his trial, and, hopefully, condemn him to a speedy death.

Or he could choose to rest, and thus to drown.

He tried wading a bit, found that objects that were sharp and hard rolled and shifted beneath his feet-the bones of those who had chosen to drown.

After a few minutes, the sound of the captor's harsh laughter died away, and he was left to himself.

I am supposed to deliver the princess to the rendezvous point tomorrow, he realized.

That will take some doing, he thought, emitting a bark of painful laughter.

So much had changed in just a few hours. He wondered if the wyrmlings could keep to the bargain now, even if he did manage to deliver her.

He thrashed about, trying to find a comfortable place to stand.

Perhaps if I can climb up to the grate, he thought, I could squeeze through the bars.

But the climb looked impossible. Without a rope it was hopeless.

Even endowments of brawn and grace would not let him negotiate that slick slope.

I'll have to dig my fingernails into the rock, he thought, to get any purchase. Maybe then, I could climb out.

But even to try would attract attention. Once news of a captive broke out in the barracks, many a curious eye would be aimed down the privy holes.

That is, until tomorrow, Daylan realized.

The troops were to leave at dawn.

As if to confirm his worries, someone called out from above, "Look, there's a rat in the p.i.s.ser."

"Well then, you know what to do," a gruff voice laughed.

A steady yellow rain began to fall.

"You men sat at my table," Daylan shouted up. "Which of my songs or jokes offended you so?"

There was no answer from above.

With no other recourse, Daylan Hammer merely folded his arms, closed his eyes, and tried to remember fairer days.

11.

UPON A BED OF STARS.

Not even a village idiot will honor a lord of poor character, and any man who builds a n.o.ble character-whether he be low-born or high-will find himself honored by all.

-Hearthmaster Waggit It was with a heavy heart that Fallion left Castle Coorm. There were over a hundred and eighty people left in the castle, mostly impoverished families with grubby children, too little food, and no way to protect themselves.

If Talon was right, they would be in grave danger so long as they stayed in Coorm.

"Leave here," Fallion warned them. "Stay in the caves beneath the castle tonight. There are boats that can take you out through the underground river in the morning, so that the little ones will not have to walk so far. They'll carry your food, too. Whatever you do, don't show your faces above ground tonight. Stay hidden till morning, then make your way north to Ravenspell, or east to the Courts of Tide. There should be people there, greater safety. Travel only by day, and hide yourselves at night."

He looked at a young boy, no more than three, terrified and vulnerable. His right cheek was bruised, and his eye swollen shut.

Fallion patted his head, whispered some words of encouragement.

In a more perfect world, he thought, children would never know such fear.

He wished that he could do more for them. He was tempted to stay behind, lead them to safety himself, but Talon had objected. "If we're right, you're the one that the enemy is searching for. Staying with the refugees would only slow you down-and place them in greater danger."

So Fallion left amid sad farewells, hugging Hearthmaster Waggit and Farion, departing the castle an hour before sunset, taking only his three friends and some food. At the castle gate, Fallion and the others raised their swords in salute, crying out, "Sworn to defend."

The people cheered, not realizing that the salute carried sad memories for the four. For it was on just such a journey from this castle that they had first sworn their oaths to one another.

Fallion took one last longing look at the golden tree, tried to let its form become etched in his memory. For a long moment, he listened, hoping to hear its voice in his mind once again. But there was nothing.

Regretfully, he struck out through the meadows, heading toward the mountains to the west. The air was full of the smell of pines, clean and refreshing, and the warm sun beat down on the fields.

With every step, Fallion found himself threshing wheat and oats, knocking the full kernels from the stalks. Gra.s.shoppers and honeybees rose up in small clouds as they pa.s.sed.

Soon his party reached the coolness beneath the woods. Sunshine slanted through the trees, casting shadows, while light played upon motes of dust and pollen in the air.

The woods filled with the chatter of jays, the thumping of woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, the peeps of nuthatches and occasional coo of a mourning dove.

It would have been a perfect walk, if Fallion hadn't felt so drained. The weariness lingered with him, left him so sapped that he could hardly walk, much less keep up with Talon's grueling pace. Still, she urged him on.

Jaz often complained, for he was as weary as any, but Rhianna merely kept silent, following at Fallion's back like a shadow, sometimes whispering encouragement.

The old road to Hay was a road no longer. In this new world, it was filled with rocks and scree, gouged by canyons and blocked by hills. Sometimes along the path, Fallion saw further evidence of the damage done by his spell-trees growing up insanely through boulders, a nuthatch impaled by a tuft of gra.s.s, speared through by a dozen small blades, struggling vainly to break free.

And he wondered at the damage done to himself. Why am I so weary? He found sweat rolling off of him, a steady sheen, even though the day was cool.

But not all of the "accidents" were bad. As they walked along near sundown, they came upon a vine growing in the shadows of some rocks. It looked like some kind of pea, with a few brilliant white blossoms and it had berries on it-perfectly white berries, like wild pearls, that glowed brightly among the shadows.

Rhianna stopped and peered at them in wonder. "What are these called?" she asked Talon.

Talon merely shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "I've never seen them before, never heard of them-not in either world."

Fallion could only imagine that two plants had combined, creating something that was better than on either world. Whether the light-berries, as he decided to call them, had ever existed on the One True World, he did not know, but he liked to think that they had.

Rhianna picked a dozen berries, carried them in her palm for a ways.

It wasn't until they stopped that night in a rocky grotto, shielded on three sides by rocks and from above by a huge pine tree, that Fallion came up with a theory for his fatigue.

They plunged into the blackness of the grotto, a place that would be decidedly easy to defend from strengi-saats. Jaz threw down his pack, dropped onto a bed of pine needles, and said dramatically, "I'm dead."

Fallion brushed some twigs off of a mossy bed. A firefly flew up out of a nearby bush, then others began to shine, turning into lights that danced and weaved among the trees.

Rhianna laid her light-berries down, but Fallion saw that they were fading.

That's when the realization struck. "Of course you're dead," Fallion told Jaz. "And so am I, and Rhianna."

Rhianna halted, peered at him in the shadows, as did Talon. "All three of us are dead-at least we were on this world."

"What do you mean?" Talon asked, standing above him like a hulk.

"Talon, you said that humans were almost gone from this shadow world. How many are left?" Fallion asked.

"Thirty-eight thousand."

"Yet on our world, there were millions," Fallion said. "Talon I've been wondering why you you joined with your shadow self, but we didn't. Now I understand. We have no shadow selves here." joined with your shadow self, but we didn't. Now I understand. We have no shadow selves here."

The others peered at him, and Fallion talked in a rush, thinking aloud. "We were hunted as children, Jaz and I, from before our birth. Rhianna was, too. On this world, our other selves failed to survive. That's why we feel so...dead."

There was a long silence. "You're scaring me," Rhianna said. She sat down on unsteady legs, nearly collapsing from exhaustion.

"If we died on this world, wouldn't we remember at least some of our lives?" Jaz asked. "Shouldn't we remember being children?"

"Does dust remember?" Talon asked.

There was a drawn-out silence as Fallion considered the implications. He wondered if he even had a history on this world. Had he died, or had it been one of his ancestors? Perhaps he'd never been born here.

"Fallion," Rhianna asked with rising concern. "You came on this quest because you want to heal the world, bind the shadow worlds into one perfect world. But have you considered the possibility that in that world, perhaps none of us would exist?"

"We feel half-dead now," Jaz said. "Would we die if all the worlds were bound?"

Fallion had no idea.

If I bind the worlds, heal them, Fallion wondered, is it possible that I would be doing it for others, and not for myself?

And what about those unfortunate souls like me? Would I doom them to oblivion? Or would we all live, filling a single world to the breaking point?