His words put a chill in me. “I’ve used it,” I admitted. “At first I didn’t know what I was doing. But in the last few days, I’ve used it twice, knowing that I did so. Yet each time I was shocked when it worked.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What did you do?”

I told him first about the deer. He nodded slowly. “But that could have been sheer dumb luck. You know how it is. You believe you can do a thing, and then you actually do it.”

I nodded. “That’s what I thought. So I decided to prove to myself I wasn’t imagining things.” And I told him about the vegetables. He whistled low and shook his head. “That’s more than I’ve ever done. More than I’ve ever seen done, even by the Speck village mages. I think you’d best tread more carefully, my man. What you did was like flinging down a challenge to the magic. You may think you mastered it and made it do as you wished. But I think that sooner or later, it will demand payment of you for that.”

“What can it ask of me?” I demanded with a bravado I didn’t feel.

“Anything, brother. Anything at all.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

GETTYS

Three days later, we finally rode into Gettys. We made an odd sight, I’m sure. I sat on big Clove while Hitch rode hunched beside me on Renegade.

The drawroot had doubtless saved his life by sucking much of the toxic infection from his flesh, but that did not mean he was a well man. His fever had not abated. By night, it rose and tormented him. It had burned the flesh from his bones. I took him straight to his regiment’s doctor.

That morning we had descended from the hills into a wide, shallow valley.

As we finally broke clear of the cover of the trees, I reined in, startled at what I saw.

I’d always had a clear image of Gettys in my mind. I’d pictured it like the great stone citadels of the west. It would have watchtowers on its high walls, and secondary earthworks surrounding it. There would be banners flying from its ramparts, and it would bristle with soldiers and artillery.

The flags would snap smartly in the breeze on that last fortification of the Gernian kingdom. Savage wilderness would surround it.

What I saw was a cruel joke on my boyhood vision. On the hillside on the other side of the valley, commanding a view of the valley, was a wooden palisade that boasted a mere four watchtowers, one at each corner. In the valley below us, we could see the King’s Road, cutting a straight line toward the stronghold and continuing past it up the hills and toward the mountains. Behind the fort, the land rose abruptly in steep foothills that were the final line of defense before the Barrier Mountains. The mountains, which loomed above them, were steep and tall and thickly forested.