With a resigned sigh, Merritt obeyed, soon nodding off in his chair as another of the men on the floor succumbed. When all were still, a few of them snoring, the cupbearer knelt at Lionel’s knee and offered up the cup in trembling hands, unable to meet his lord’s eyes. Lionel’s look was almost tender as he took the cup and turned it idly in his long fingers.

“They are fine men, my lord Bran,” he said softly, glancing up at Bran with hooded eyes. “They have trusted me with their very lives, and I have gambled with those lives held in trust. If you, through any action, cause me to be forsworn—if any harm should come to any man here—I swear that I will avenge them even from the grave. Do you understand me?”

“I have given you my word, sir,” Bran said neutrally. “I have said that no harm would befall you or them. If your master’s intentions are as honorable, you need have no cause for fear.”

“I do not fear, my lord; I warn,” Lionel said softly. “See that you keep your word.”

With a glance at the cupbearer, he raised the cup in salute and murmured, “C’raint!” Then he drank from the cup and gave it back into the cupbearer’s hands. As he sat back in the chair, he shivered slightly, as though against a sudden chill, though it was warm enough in the tent. Then he laid his head against the back of the chair and slipped into unconsciousness. The cupbearer set the cup on the carpet beside him and felt for his master’s pulse; then, satisfied that there was nothing more he could do, he rose shakily to his feet and made a curt bow toward Bran Coris.

“If you are ready to fulfill your part of the agreement, my lord, we should be on our way. We have a difficult ride ahead of us, a large part of it through icy water. His Majesty will be waiting.”

“Of course,” Bran murmured, scanning the sleeping hostages with admiration as he donned his helmet. He certainly could not fault their discipline.

“Look after them, Campbell,” he said, pulling on gloves and moving toward the entrance to the tent. “Wencit will want them back in good health, and we would not wish to disappoint him.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places.”

ISAIAH 45:3

THE walled city of Cardosa lies nearly a mile above the Eastmarch plain, on a high plateau of sheer-faced rock. It has been the seat of earls and dukes and, sometimes, of kings, and it is guarded west and east by the treacherous Cardosa Pass, the major passage through the Rheljan Mountains.

Late each autumn, toward the end of November, the snows sweep in from the great northern sea, cutting off the city and burying the pass in snow. This condition persists well into March, until long after winter has fled the rest of the area. Then the melting snow turns the Cardosa Pass into a raging cataract for the next three months.