“Still, it required no less bravery on your part to follow him, to take the risk,” Siyaddah said.
Was it bravery, Alun wondered, or greed?
“And he did meet with a wyrmling?” she asked.
“Most assuredly.”
“That must have been frightening,” she said.
Not very. I was hiding, Alun thought.
“To what end did they meet? I wonder,” she said.
Alun stopped dancing. His heart was hammering and he suddenly felt over-warm. All of the rich food felt as if it was turning to a ball of grease in his stomach. He feared he would retch.
“Sometimes,” Siyaddah said gently, without condemnation, “it takes great courage to do what is right.”
Alun turned and fled, bumping into dancers, hurrying from the great hall. He raced outside, stood gasping for air as he leaned against a pillar.
Does she know? he wondered. Does she know why Daylan Hammer met with the enemy-risked his own life, his own honor to meet with them? Or does she only guess?
She only guesses, Alun decided. If she knew, she would have told me. But she believes him to be a man of virtue.
It was said that Daylan Hammer ate at the High King’s table. Siyaddah would have been in range to hear his jokes, or his songs when he took the lute. She would know his heart better than Alun did. She was a sensitive woman, and perhaps had come to know Daylan better than others around him.
Perhaps she’s even in love with him.
No, that can’t be, Alun thought. He is too small and strange, too different from us.
Alun went staggering to the kennels.
Back to the dogs, where I belong, he thought.
There, he found things much as he had suspected. Hart’s Breath had gone into labor and given birth to a pup, and had that frightened look that bitches get when they deliver their first. What is wrong with me? Hart’s Breath’s body language asked as she puttered about, her hips quivering, eyes wide as she sniffed at the pup. What is that black thing squirming on the floor?
Alun stayed with her, stroking her forehead and whispering words of comfort, while she continued to deliver. He held up each newborn for her to sniff, introduced the pups by complimenting her. “Ah, you’re such a good dog,” he would say as she licked each pup, “such a good mother. And look how pretty your babies are.”
Soon, she wagged her tail at the sight of each new birth, proud of her offspring, and when Alun left her there late at night, she was happiest hound in the world.
He was weary and nearly sober when he made his way back to the King’s Keep. The feast was long over, the tables cleared, the servants gone to bed. Two guards stood outside the door and barred his way.
“I need to speak with King Urstone,” Alun said at their challenge.
“At this hour?” one asked. “Regarding what?”
Distantly, from up above, Alun heard a man sobbing, the sound faint and distant as it came through an open window. The king sobbing in his chambers as he mourned.
“It concerns a plan to save his son,” Alun said.
They did not send a messenger to ask the king if he wanted to be disturbed. The guards looked at each other, and one of them grabbed Alun by the bicep and pulled him into the keep as if he’d just apprehended a thief.
Alun found himself shivering in terror. He was about to tell the king of Daylan Hammer’s mad plot to save his son.
Warlord Madoc will have me stripped of my office when he finds out what I’ve done, Alun thought.
IN THE COLDEST HOUR
There are those who criticized High King Urstone for his weak mind, but it was never his mind that failed him. Rather, it was his great love that brought him down.
An hour before dawn, the coldest hour of the night, the Wizard Sisel went to the High King’s door with Shaun the baker in tow. A single knock, and they were in.
King Urstone was sitting at a desk, writing out orders for work to be done during his absence. He had commanded that no other work be done until the castle was set in order. No housewife was to wash the family’s clothes. No merchant was to be found selling in the streets.
Instead, there were slabs of rock that needed to be hauled up and set in place. There were buckled walls that needed mending. And every man, woman, and child would be required to work at it the next day.
He was fully dressed in the same maroon robe and gray tunic that he had been wearing at dinner. But he looked to be in better spirits than Sisel had imagined he would.
“Sisel,” he asked. “What may I do for you-and Goodman Shaun, is it?” The king had an excellent memory for names but he always asked timidly, afraid that he might offend someone by making a mistake. Thus he gratified and honored them even though his voice held a tone of apology.
“I have something to show you, Your Highness,” Sisel said. He turned to Shaun. “What is your name?”
The baker looked back and forth between the king and the wizard, and at last he said, “I’m not rightly sure anymore.”
King Urstone wondered if the man had taken a blow to the head.
“It used to be Shaun,” the baker said. “But it was Hugheart on that other world, Captain Hugheart.”
Ah, the king thought, this again.
“And what was your calling on this other world?”
“I was a lord, a runelord,” Shaun said. “I…was a royal guard at Castle Corneth, in the land of Aven.”
“You claim to be a runelord,” Sisel asked. “Can you explain to the king what that is?”
“I was given attributes by vassals-strength, speed, stamina, wit. They gave it to me in a ceremony. We used branding irons, called forcibles, to make the transfer. The brands left scars on me.”
Shaun rolled up his sleeve, displaying his bicep. On it were a dozen small scars, burned into his flesh, each a circle with its own design within. King Urstone had never seen the like. But still, the story sounded like madness.
“Show the king what you can do,” the wizard said.
Shaun the baker, a man that King Urstone had once played with as a child, suddenly leapt eight feet in the air, somersaulted with the agility of a cat, and dropped to a crouch. As he landed, he slammed a fist into a table that was made of slate. The table shattered as if it had been hammered with a maul.
The king stared in awe. No man in the kingdom, no matter whether he was warrior-born or not, had such strength.
The wizard reached into a pocket, pulled out a small red stone. “Your Highness, behold the most deadly weapon in the world!”
The king peered at the stone. He was an educated man. “Corpuscite?” he asked. It was a metal, softer than lead, and when put to the tongue tasted salty, like blood.
“It is called blood metal, upon that world where the runelords dwelled. And it is exceedingly rare there.”
“But…there’s a whole hill of it-” the king began to say.
“South of the city,” Sisel finished. “We will need it, if we are to defend ourselves. And I have begun a search of the city. We will need to find someone who has worked as a facilitator on this other world, a wizard who can make the branding irons we need and transfer attributes from one person to another. If we hurry, we could have warriors like Shaun here in place before the wyrmlings next attack.”
“Where are the vassals who gave you these powers?” the king asked.
“In the land of Aven, far to the north and east of here,” Shaun said. “I must surmise that they are still alive, for if they had died, their powers would have been stripped from me.”
Sisel licked his lips. He had obviously been thinking much. He continued, “My lord, I have a confession. Daylan Hammer mentioned that there are some among us, like Shaun, who lived other lives, who had shadow selves upon that other world. Such people are now two halves, bound into one. I am one of those. I served as an Earth Wizard in this other world, and I have begun to remember things…strange things. But the memories come hard. Sometimes, it is like pulling teeth to recall a single detail. My name was Binnesman, and I was a counselor to a wondrous king, a hero like none that our world has ever known.”