The cell door opened with a rusty creak of protest. Mhor Daeric blinked in the sudden light of lanterns that seared his dark-adjusted eyes. He’d lost track of how long he had been incarcerated in his own dungeons. He guessed it was only a day or a day and a half, but with nothing to measure but the darkness and silence, it was impossible to tell. His head still ached, and there was a throbbing knot of pain right at the hinge of his jaw, but his thoughts were clear, and he no longer felt dizzy or nauseated. As best he could, he rose to confront his guards.
“Baron Tuorel wants to see you,” grated a voice behind a lantern. The soldiers dragged him from his cell and escorted him from the dungeons to the lower levels of the castle.
Daeric did his best to mask his shock at the number of Ghoeran soldiers who had mysteriously appeared in his castle.
The guards led him into the castle’s chapel. The black-clad Iron Guard of Ghoere lined the walls, silent as oiled steel. By the chamber’s doors waited a handful of Ghoeran knights and lords, the leaders of Tuorel’s armies. They watched Daeric enter with mingled contempt and triumph on their faces. The Mhor let his eyes slide past these lesser wolves, but he spied a face he knew. “Dhalsiel?” he said, pausing in his stride. “I see you’ve finally found companions suited to you. What was your price?”
The young count sneered. “I received no bribe,” he said in a contemptuous voice. “I serve those who are strong enough to deserve my allegiance. Baron Tuorel will set matters right in Mhoried.”
“If you betrayed your allegiance for that, you’re stupider than I thought.” Daeric turned his back on the Mhorien lord and marched ahead to the center of the room to meet his foe.
Baron Tuorel was standing in the center of the room, waiting for him with his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes smoldered with a fierce hunger, a tangible desire for power that leaped to Daeric as he entered the room. Daeric glanced past Tuorel to take in the rest of the room. The emblems of Haelyn had been replaced by the signs of Cuiraecen, the Anuirean god of war. Red-robed priests clustered around the altar, watching him.
The baron nodded. “Good day, my lord Mhor,” he said. “I trust your accommodations have not been too intolerable?”
“Forgive me, baron,” Daeric replied. “I just smelled something that turned my stomach, and I’m in no mood to banter.”
“Ah, young Count Dhalsiel. I suspect that your Baesil Ceried will sorely miss his troops in Cwlldon.” Tuorel smiled.
“My army should meet yours within the day, I expect.”
“I’m surprised you’re not there to lead your army in person.”
“Lord Baehemon is capable of supervising the destruction of Ceried’s force. Besides, I have matters requiring my attention in Shieldhaven, as you can see.”
“Well, get on with it, then.” The expectation of his imminent death did not disturb Daeric – he felt only sadness that his beloved Mhoried would fall under the heel of a conquering tyrant without a Mhor to defend it.
Tuorel’s false grin faded. “Very well, I’ll set to business.”
He stalked forward, halting an arm’s reach from the Mhor.
His eyes were cold as a serpent’s. “It is my intent to divest you of the rule of Mhoried,” he said. “You will participate in the ceremony of investiture and pass to me the lordship of your kingdom.”
Daeric managed to contain his surprise, keeping his face an iron mask. Blooded lords who ruled kingdoms – as the Mhor did, and Tuorel, for that matter – enjoyed a mystical link to the lands they ruled, above and beyond the innate power they inherited from their ancestral lines. In a very real sense, the Mhor was Mhoried, and the strength of Mhoried’s wild and untamed lands, the hardiness and character of her people, surrounded him. The union of bloodline and realm lived in his veins. Presumably, Tuorel shared the same sort of bond with Ghoere.
Frowning, Daeric sought a glimpse of what was in Tuorel’s mind. Any blooded scion could wrest the power of his bloodline from Daeric by committing bloodtheft. In fact, the power of all the Mhorieds could be claimed by the lord who killed the last Mhoried. But if Daeric died heirless, the tenuous link between him and the country he ruled would simply dissipate. By acquiescing to Tuorel and willingly transferring the mystical link to the baron, Daeric would pass the divine right to rule Mhoried to Tuorel intact and unweakened. There was something much more important than himself, or his family, at stake here.
“Why, Tuorel? What do you hope to gain from this?”
Tuorel paced away, his gestures betraying a growing impatience.
“One way or another, I mean for Mhoried’s strength to be mine. Isn’t it obvious? With Mhoried anchoring my northern flank, and Elinie my eastern marches, I can bring the rest of the heartlands to my banner within a year.”
“To what point?” asked Daeric.
“I mean to have the Iron Throne,” Tuorel said. “Once Anuire was the greatest of nations, an empire that stretched from the Sea of Storms to the Sea of Dragons. Now, look at us.
Five centuries of strife and disorder have brought us to our knees. I will end that. If peace must be found at the point of a sword, then so be it.” He stepped close to Daeric, close enough that only the Mhor would hear his words. “I am the one, Daeric,” he said, a glimmer of feverish intensity showing in his eyes. “It’s been shown to me. I must have the strength. I will have the strength.”
The Mhor met Tuorel’s gaze. “My question remains unanswered,” he said. “You cannot rule Mhoried until I allow it.
You may hold the lands, you may murder and threaten the people, you can even wrest the power of the Mhoried blood from me and my children – but the divine right to rule the land will not be yours until I hand it to you. You will be an occupier, an invader, but never the king.”
“My lord Mhor, is it really necessary for me to remind you that I hold your children, your servants, and hundreds of your subjects here? I will have my way. Sooner or later, you will stand before Cuiraecen’s altar and you will speak the oaths that will make me the ruler of Mhoried.”
“After which, of course, you will slay me for my bloodline. I expected no less.”
Tuorel’s lips twisted in a bitter smile. “Actually, no. Our friend Bannier has requested that you be delivered into his hands, without a blade in your heart. Your bloodline would be quite a prize, but I decided it was a fair price.”
The Mhor considered his words. Tuorel was more ambitious than he had thought. The kingdom would be virtually worthless to him until he subdued the provinces that still held out for the House Mhoried. It was a surprising strategy, a move that declared his intent to fight for and keep his conquests in Mhoried. I expected him to kill me and then exact tribute and allegiance from Thendiere or whoever succeeds me, he thought, but I never believed that he would seek the throne for himself. Given that, the idea that Tuorel would simply allow Daeric himself to fall into Bannier’s hands was equally surprising. The baron need Daeric’s blood to strengthen himself enough to rule two kingdoms. “I’m surprised you haven’t run me through already, bargain or no bargain,” he said. “No one feels bound to keep his word to a traitor, after all.”
Tuorel actually looked as if he’d been wounded by the Mhor’s words. “I made a promise. I shall keep it. If Bannier desires the power of the Mhoried blood, it’s his hand that will claim it. For my own part, I am satisfied with the taking of your kingdom.”
“I am the invested ruler of Mhoried,” Daeric said. “You cannot divest me as long as I do not allow you to.”
Tuorel only smiled. He moved closer, lowering his voice so that only Daeric could hear him. “There’s our struggle, now, eh? I don’t doubt that you’d withstand any duress I could bring to bear against you – the stubbornness of the Mhors is legendary. But let’s dispense with civility for a moment: your children are in my hands. And I’ve more than one, which means I could torture Ilwyn to death in front of your eyes, and then promise to do the same for Thendiere or Gaelin.” He reached one gauntleted fist to Daeric’s face and seized his jaw in a viselike grip. Daeric reeled and gasped in pain as Tuorel’s thumb g round into his swollen jaw. “I don’t believe any man could watch more than one of his children die that way, do you?”
“Bastard,” choked the Mhor. “When did you capture Gaelin?”
“My men took him at Iered. They’re bringing him here now.”
With crystalline certainty, Daeric knew Tuorel had lied.
“You don’t have Gaelin,” he said. “He’s still free.”
Tuorel’s eyes went hard. “I forgot about that damned truth-ear of yours,” he muttered quietly. He let go of Daeric’s face and turned away, only to bring his other hand flashing in a silver arc to slam into the Mhor’s jaw. Daeric spun and fell to the cold marble of the floor, lights flaring in his eyes as he gasped in shock. He coughed blood and broken teeth onto the chapel floor, and then the pain came, burning hot and white in his mouth and jaw. Tears leaked past his swollen eyelids, but he didn’t cry out. With the pain came a fierce joy and hope: if he could resist, if he could find death before Tuorel wrested his kingdom away from him, Gaelin would have a chance to win it back. As long as Gaelin remained alive and free, Ghoere’s victory was incomplete.
Tuorel stalked away. He glared at the priests and the guards in the chapel, daring them to speak. He reached the open area before the altar and wheeled. “Take what comfort you can now, old man,” he spat. “With your son roaming the land, I’ve no choice but to break you with torture until you scream for the chance to hand me your lands. And you won’t be the only one to suffer, I promise. Thendiere and Ilwyn will pay for every heartbeat of your silence.” He nodded to the guards on either side of Daeric. “Take him away,” he said.
“Give him some time to consider the circumstances of our next encounter.”
The guards lifted Mhor Daeric by his arms and dragged him to his feet. He stumbled between them as they led him to the door and back down to the dark dungeons. Despite the pain that filled his mind, a sense of purpose dawned in his heart. If I find death before Tuorel breaks me, he thought, the divine right passes to Thendiere, and from him to Gaelin. A Mhor will follow me to rule Mhoried, even if the land is held by our enemies.
He held on to that thought as they dragged him back to his cell. Again, he was chained in the dark and left to the silence and the pain of his injuries. Hours or days passed, as he waited for his next meeting with Tuorel. He left his aching body and wandered in the corridors of his memory. Eventually, exhaustion overtook him, and he slept again.
Mhor Daeric was awakened by a clatter and thump outside his cell. Even as his eyes opened, he knew he’d just heard the guard fall to the floor, and he shook the cobwebs from his head.
The sound of the lock turning brought him to full consciousness.
Although spears of agony pinioned his arms and legs, he forced himself to sit up and swing his legs to the floor. “Who’s there?” he asked quietly, eyes straining into the darkness.
“It’s Thendiere, Father. Can you walk?” The door eased open, and the first prince appeared. His hand was heavily bandaged, and his face was bruised. Despite his injuries, a fierce gleam burned in his eyes, and in his good hand he held a highland fighting-knife, a long blade nearly the size of a small sword.
“Whether I can or not, I’m bloody well going to now,”
Daeric answered. He pushed himself to his feet, gritting his teeth against the pain that flared in his joints. “How did you get out of your cell?”
“I’m afraid it’s my work, my lord.” Tiery shuffled past Thendiere to take Daeric’s hand. “I couldn’t leave you in Tuorel’s hands for another day.” The old minstrel was pale with fatigue, and his breath whistled unevenly between his teeth. Behind him, a pair of Mhorien servants – a gaunt stablekeeper named Caede, and a short but powerful Brecht fletcher named Hans – bowed as Daeric emerged. Two Ghoerans lay sprawled on the floor. With a grimace of pain, the Mhor stooped to take one man’s sword.
“Excellent work, Tiery,” he said.
“Hold your thanks until we escape,” Tiery replied.
“Tuorel’s doubled the guard by night, just to make sure things like this don’t happen. Getting out of Shieldhaven without a fight is going to be damned hard.”
“How about Ilwyn?”
“She’s being held in the south tower, my lord.”
The Mhor frowned, peering down the shadowy corridor as he weighed his options. He loathed the idea of leaving his daughter in Tuorel’s hands, but getting himself and Thendiere killed in an attempt to rescue her was certainly no better. Besides, if he and his son escaped, Ilwyn became a valuable hostage against the Mhorieds. Killing her after they escaped would be spiteful and shortsighted, even for Tuorel. “We’ll have to leave her for now, then,” he said at last. “We may be able to ransom her later. ”
Thendiere’s face grew grim, but the prince nodded. “We should get moving,” he said.
With Caede leading the way and Hans bringing up the rear, they hurried down the hallway to the guardroom that controlled the dungeons. No less than six Ghoerans were there, but they were sprawled on the floor or slumped by tables, snoring loudly. The Mhor gave Tiery a strange look.
“This is your doing?”
“Aye. In my younger days, I learned a trick or two of the magician’s art. Many bards do, you know.” Tiery chuckled.
“Don’t worry; these fellows won’t wake for an hour or more, as long as we don’t rouse them.”
“ Wouldn’t want to be in their shoes tomorrow,” Caede observed.
“Tuorel’s likely to hang them for dereliction of duty.” At the far end of the room, they found the stairs leading up to the castle proper. The stableman halted and peered up the steps, looking and listening to see if anyone was coming down.
“Where do we go from here?” Thendiere asked. “The postern, over the battlements, out the gatehouse?”
“The gates will be guarded,” Daeric said, thinking. Suddenly, an idea struck Daeric, and he smiled. “Ah, I know! I almost forgot it was there! Make for the keep.”
The other men exchanged puzzled glances. The walls there were sheer stone, overlooking a hundred-foot drop. After a moment, Tiery laughed softly. “The secret stairs! I haven’t set foot there in forty years!”
The Mhor nodded to Caede. “To the keep, if you please.
Let’s not get caught here talking about it.”
The stableman sprang up the stairs, taking them two at a time as he hurried up into the gloomy passageway. The rest followed him, moving more slowly. Both Thendiere and the Mhor were weakened from their imprisonment and rough treatment, and Tiery’s age was quickly wearing him out. The halls were dark, with lanterns burning at long intervals, just barely close enough to dispel the shadows that lay between them, and the silence was ominous. The familiar chambers and passages seemed filled with menace, as if Shieldhaven itself, not the soldiers of Ghoere, had become their enemy.
They skirted the great hall by following a passage that ran near the castle’s outer walls, past a long gallery of low stone arches filled with foodstuffs, water, and arms. Upon entering the keep’s lower floors, they turned into one of the tower’s turrets and followed a winding stair up.
At the next floor, they came to an ironbound wooden door that led into the keep’s outermost passages. This floor of the tower was one level beneath the royal quarters, and contained chambers used by advisors and courtiers in times of peace. Across the hall stood a door leading into a unused archer’s gallery. “Into the gallery,” Daeric instructed Caede.
At that moment, one of the doors opened in the hall behind them, and a battle-scarred old captain emerged. He took one glance at the Mhoriens and immediately backpedalled.
“Guards! Guards! To the keep!” he bellowed.
Hans rushed forward, swinging a small hand axe, but the fellow twisted out of the way and caught Hans’s weapon hand. The fletcher and the captain struggled over the axe, while the captain continued to shout for help.
“Damn the luck!” swore Daeric. “Caede, help Hans! Tiery and Thendiere, follow me!” He stepped forward and threw open the door, racing into the arc her’s gallery. Behind him, he heard the captain’s cries suddenly cut short as Caede ran him through while his arms were pinned by Hans. But doors were slamming open throughout the keep, and men were shouting and running, filling the air with the clatter of mail and heavy footsteps.
The gallery was a long, narrow room with four wide, shuttered embrasures overlooking the fortress’s outer walls. It served as a simple storeroom in times of peace. The Mhor ran forward, looking for the concealed stair. If he remembered correctly, there was a trapdoor hidden in the floor of an archer’s perch. He searched quickly, conscious of the fortress waking around him. Behind him, the two servants slammed the door of the room shut and set their shoulders against it.
“Hurry, my lord!” called Caede. “There’s a squad of guards right behind us!”
Thendiere looked ahead, toward the gallery’s opposite door. “They’ll be around to try the other door in a moment. Whatever you’re looking for, you’d better find it soon.”
Daeric dropped to his knees, searching for the hidden iron ring that he knew was there. He groped in the darkness for an agonizing eternity before he felt the cold metal. “I’ve got it!”
He started to lift the trapdoor, but a voice spoke in the shadows: “My apologies, my lord Mhor, but I cannot permit you to escape. You are far too valuable to me.” From a black shadow at the far end of the room, a figure suddenly rose, somehow emerging from the darkness, like a man standing up from a shallow stream. Strange wisps and streamers of shadow ran down Bannier’s dark cloak, and he stepped forward with a sinister smile. “Did you think I would trust your safekeeping to nothing more than fools with swords?” he said. “I thought it wise to place wards upon your cells in case something like this happened.”
The Mhor slowly stood, raising the sword he’d taken fro m the guard. “Bannier. I should have guessed you’d look after your prize.” The shouting and rush of footsteps now surrounded them, as Ghoere’s soldiers moved to surround them.
In a matter of minutes they’d force the doors open. Daeric had to neutralize the wizard, and quickly, or they were all lost.
Bannier knew it, too. He quickly raised his hands and opened his mouth to speak a spell. But before he voiced more than a syllable of his incantation, Thendiere roared and threw his heavy cane at the wizard. The cane turned once in the air before striking Bannier’s outstretched arms, breaking his concentration and the spell. Thendiere threw himself on the gaunt wizard, tackling him on the stone floor. Bannier slammed into the stone flags with a grunt of surprise.
At the other end of the hall, the door flew open, and Ghoerans poured into the room, swarming over Caede and Hans.
The two servants valiantly held their ground for a moment before they were overcome. With a mighty effort, Daeric heaved the trapdoor open, revealing a dark shaft leading straight down into the wall. Rusted iron rungs marked the ladder to the hidden door. Daeric barked at Thendiere.
“Come on! We’ve not a moment to lose!”
The prince was still struggling with the wizard. Even as Daeric watched, Bannier freed a hand. The wizard shouted an unrecognizable word, and an aura of crackling blue energy formed around his fist. Seizing Thendiere by the shoulder, Bannier punched him awkwardly in the side of the neck, a weak and glancing blow – but the blue energy detonated with an actinic flare of light and a sharp crack! that left the Mhor’s ears ringing. By the time the glare faded from his eyes, Bannier was rising from Thendiere’s twitching body.
“Not again, you bastard,” Daeric breathed. He rose to his feet. Behind him, the Ghoeran guardsmen closed in carefully, but Daeric didn’t spare them a glance. Hot tears of rage flowed down his cheeks, as his mind dissolved in white-hot fury. “Not again!”
Screaming like an animal, he threw himself at Bannier and caught the wizard by the neck. His powerful rush carried the two halfway through an embrasure in the wall, battering open the wooden shutters. The guards clutched at his back, his legs, trying to restrain him.
With all the strength he had left, Daeric kicked and turned, deliberately hurling himself over the edge. With his hands locked around Bannier’s throat, he dragged the wizard with him. The world spun crazily as they twisted, stars and walls flying past, but Daeric saw nothing but Bannier’s face gagging for air. The ground rushed toward them, wind roaring in Daeric’s ears as he fell spinning to the white snow and black rock hundreds of feet below. In the last moment of his life Daeric felt the wizard’s body change, melting through his fingers like black ink as the shadows took him, and then the Mhor struck and bounced from the brutal rocks of Shieldhaven, his body tumbling into the dark forests below.
Aesele, I’m here – and the darkness came for him, too.
At that moment, Gaelin was standing by the banks of the Stonebyrn, gazing over the river. He peered through the fog, trying to make out what was happening on the other side by the landing of Norbank, but the Stonebyrn was a good four or five hundred yards wide at this point, and even Erin’s elven-sight couldn’t pierce the gray mists. The guards nervously talked and jested in low voices as they tended to their mounts or oiled their arms and armor. Something in the set of Gaelin’s shoulders must have warned everyone he desired privacy, for his companions stayed clear of him.
He was surprised to discover his thoughts were turning to his childhood and upbringing in the court of Shieldhaven. The darkness and the cold, clinging river mists brought him to somber introspection, a sense of melancholy. He thought of the day his mother had died, the stern and unyielding face of his father as the Mhor broke the news to his young sons. The spark in his father’s eye left and never returned. The only comfort Mhor Daeric took from that day forward was in cold, harsh duty.
“Gaelin.”
He looked up, startled. No one was nearby; the soldiers had a small fire going about thirty yards away, and Erin was softly strumming her lute over there, but the voice had been very close. “Who’s there?” he called in a low voice.
“Gaelin, it is your father.” A shape was forming in the fog, a spectral image. It was coming nearer, striding over the waters and the mists, and now he saw a pearly, opalescent light playing in the fog. The figure that stood before him was the Mhor, but Daeric was a silver apparition of mist and moonlight, somehow brighter than the surrounding night, and yet more faint and distant than he could imagine.
Cold fingers of fear grew in Gaelin’s heart. “Father? Is that you? Am I dreaming?”
A soft smile formed on the shade’s face. “We dream more than we know, Gaelin.” The ghostly shape drew nearer, reaching for him, and Gaelin felt a cool touch along the side of his face, even though there was nothing there.
A strange, cold certainty dawned in his heart. “You are dead,” he whispered. “I can feel it.”
Mist swirled and danced around the figure of his father.
“Bannier betrayed and killed us, Gaelin. Only you and Ilwyn are left. You are the Mhor now.”
Gaelin realized that he had fallen to his knees before the spirit. In the periphery of his awareness, he saw his companions surging to their feet in alarm at the apparition, and their cries of concern sounded faintly in his ears. He tried to deny the spirit’s words, but a thin, icy blade of grief pierced his chest. It grew stronger and colder with each passing moment.
“No,” he said. “No, it’s not supposed to be this way. You have years to live yet, and Thendiere is to follow you. It can’t be!”
The shade of Daeric grew colder, and a hint of the old sternness appeared. “What has happened is what was meant to be,” he whispered. “Mhoried is in your hands, Gaelin. You must heal her wounds, and scatter her enemies. You must be her heart, her soul, her strength. She needs you, Gaelin, and if you refuse her call she will perish as surely as I have. You are the Mhor.” The voice began to recede, growing more distant, and the apparition dimmed and drew back. “You are the Mhor.”
“No! Wait!” cried Gaelin. He dug his fingers into the cold, dark dirt of the riverbank. A great racking sob escaped from his lips. “Father, come back, please!”
The apparition faded until it was no more than the glimmer of moonlight in the fog. Gaelin lifted his head to look after it, and saw one last silver mote dancing in the night.
Very faint now, the voice of his father came to him one last time: “You are who you are. You cannot deny it.” And with that, the apparition was gone.
For a long moment, Gaelin gazed after it. His companions were hurrying toward him, rising from the fireside and drawing their weapons. He rocked back on his heels, and held his hands to his chest, as if to crush the earth and soil to his heart to stop the pain. Through his tears, he saw the black rich dirt begin to glow, a leaping purple nimbus of faerie-light so faint and delicate that in an instant he was captivated without a thought. The purple halo grew brighter and darted up his arms, over his shoulders, and in a moment he was encased in the violet aura. He drew a deep, ragged breath; he was breathing living flame.
Suddenly the faint halo blazed furiously into a brilliant corona of searing fire. The heat and light flooded through his body, tearing from him an inhuman scream of ecstasy as his blood became liquid fire, hotter and purer than molten silver.
In a moment of transcendent lucidity, he saw the great sweep of Mhoried, from the rich and ancient lands by the river through belts of forest and into the wild, snow-capped highlands of the north. He felt the pulse of life and vitality that swelled as the land itself welcomed and acknowledged him, a supernal extension of his own senses and body to include everything from the tiny circle of firelight where he knelt to the farthest reaches of the Mhor’s domain.
“YOU ARE THE MHOR.” A thousand voices spoke in his mind. “YOU ARE THE BLOOD OF MHORIED, THE HEIR TO THE THRONE OF BEVALDRUOR. YOU ARE THE MHOR.”
The fire, its beauty, its awesome scope, terrified him. He felt as if he were standing on the edge of a bright abyss. He understood that if he embraced it, he would surrender his soul to an ancient and unknowable mystery. He covered his eyes to block out the raging brilliance. “I refuse,” he said, his voice small and discordant. “YOU CANNOT REFUSE.”
“No! By Haelyn’s grace, I beg you, find another!”
“YOU MUST BE THE ONE.” The chorus was implacable, surrounding and crushing him with its power. A thousand rivulets of fire streamed from the ground over his body, crackling with a brilliance and heat that threatened to sear his mortal flesh to ash and desiccate his soul. Gaelin screamed, a howl of living fire that blazed like a beacon in the night.
And suddenly there was silence and darkness, and Gaelin found himself kneeling in the wet dirt of the Stonebyrn’s banks. Madislav knelt to one side, shouting his name over and over, while Erin held his hand, weeping in fright. His vision cleared, and he slumped forward into her arms, exhausted.
He could feel his blood, the ancient blood of the Mhorieds that had gained the divine fire of the fallen god Anduiras fifteen centuries ago. It raced through his veins and hammered in his heart and his temples, singing in his ears.
Everywhere he looked, a shimmering violet tracery surrounded him, clinging to the earth like dew, streaming through the trees like sunshine.
Erin’s voice called him back to the present. “Gaelin! What happened? Are you all right?” Her long red hair hung over her shoulders, cowling her face as she leaned over him.
He closed his eyes, slowly sat up, and then climbed to his feet.
His companions stepped back as he moved away, staggering into the night. He tried to gather his thoughts, to turn and face the others, but his legs gave out and he fell to his knees again.
“What did you see and hear?” he asked over his shoulder.
Madislav was the first to answer. “We heard you speaking, and then you cried out,” he said. “When I looked… you will say I am losing my mind, but I thought you were talking with your father.”
“I saw someone, too,” Erin said. “And then a moment later, there was a fire all around you. You fell to your knees, and… I don’t know what I saw. Gaelin, what does it mean?
What was it?”
He looked down, studying his fist. “My father has fallen by a traitor’s hand,” he said, “and my brother with him. The Mhor is dead.” He raised his eyes and met their gazes, and he could tell that they sensed the truth of it too.
“Daeric and Thendiere are dead,” Madislav said slowly.
The Vos warrior rolled the words from his mouth, as if speaking them made it so. “Gaelin, you are Mhor.”
There was a long silence then, broken only by the whispering of the wind in the trees. Then, toward the back of the group, one of the guards – a young woman named Niesa, whom Gaelin barely knew – suddenly drew her sword. The rasp of the steel on leather seemed harsh and loud. She pushed her way forward to stand in front of Gaelin and then dropped to one knee, offering her sword by the hilt. “By the Lord Haelyn and the Red Oak, I pledge my faith and service to you, Mhor Gaelin,” she declared. Niesa looked up, and tears streaked her face. “For all my living days, I am your servant.”
The other guards glanced at each other, and one by one they dropped to their knees and drew their swords, offering their oaths. Madislav and Ruide joined them a moment later, and then Erin knelt too. “By the White Hall, I pledge my faith and service to you,” she said in a clear voice. Gaelin accepted their oaths, moving with a curious detachment, almost as if he were walking in a waking dream. When the last of his companions had stood again, he was surprised to see the first gray light of dawn tint the eastern sky.
“What shall we do, Mhor Gaelin?” asked one of the guards.
Gaelin looked around, searching for an answer. Finally, he said, “We’ll wait one hour and see if Captain Maesan and the rest of the troop join us. Then we ride for Shieldhaven.”