So they were arrayed as they rode out of Coroth that day. So they would appear when they joined battle with Wencit a few days hence. But for now, it was enough that they were united and riding once more, heading toward a rendezvous with other loyal troops, secure in the knowledge that at least a moral victory had been won within Coroth’s walls.

There would be other, more glorious days for Kelson King of Gwynedd. But doubtful it was that any of the others would be remembered with quite such fondness in years to come. For the day that King Kelson rode out of Coroth at the head of an army marked his first true military victory, despite the fact that not a sword had been raised. Spirits would still be high when they reached the gates of Dhassa two days hence.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, who did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.”

PSALMS 41:9

THEY arrived in Dhassa as planned, and had been there for a night and a day making final plans for the Cardosa campaign, but news from the front was scarce. There had been no word from the armies of the north for nearly a week—indeed, no word from anywhere at all north and east of Dhassa—and concern was growing hourly. Now that the main armies of Gwynedd were once more united, the outcome of the approaching war was beginning to look more promising as far as sheer numbers were concerned. But the continuing silence in the north augured ill for the days ahead. Morgan was especially concerned that he had not been able to reopen communication with Derry.

It was not for lack of trying. The night before, as they had on numerous occasions since that last fleeting touch the night of the reconciliation, Morgan and Duncan had joined their efforts and attempted to make contact with Derry through the medallion spell they had used successfully so often in the past.

But all their efforts were for naught. Morgan had been confident that he could at least discover Derry’s location, especially at this relatively close range; but of the young Marcher lord there had been no trace. Even by stretching his powers almost to the limits of his endurance, Morgan had not been able to make the slightest contact.

Reluctantly, he could only conclude that Derry either was dead or else in the grip of something so monstrously powerful that he could neither detect Morgan’s call nor be detected. Morgan sadly feared that it was the former: a particularly sobering thought, after the heady successes of the week before.

Nonetheless, the business of planning for war must go on. On the night before the king’s armies were to depart for Cardosa, the candles burned late in the bishop’s palace at Dhassa. Bishop Cardiel had graciously set aside the great Curia chamber for a meeting place, that Kelson and his generals and military advisors might have a proper place to work. Outside the city walls, in the valley beyond the guardian lake, the soldiers of Gwynedd slept beside a thousand campfires while their leaders plotted and planned.