Then she began lugging the bodies to the back of the Dedicates’ Keep, to a wooded hollow, the King’s tombs.

Iome had never done such heavy labor, so she had not gone two hundred feet past the gate, round the corner of Feet Street, when she found herself, heart pounding, moist with sweat, begging the others to stop.

It was nearly noon. As she waited in the bright sunlight, the smell of ash cloying the air, a dirty young hunchback in a deep-hooded robe darted out from the shadows beneath a market’s awning.

Immediately she knew it was Binnesman. She could feel the earth power emanating from him, and she wondered what had brought him back, wondered why the wizard sought her.

The hunchback sidled up to Iome, forcing her back a step. “Let ol’ Aleson give you a hand with that, lass,” he whispered, pulling back his hood a bit, and he reached for the right front pole to the litter.

It wasn’t Binnesman at all. Iome felt astonished to recognize Gaborn’s face beneath a liberal coat of grime. Her heart pounded. Something was afoot. For some reason, Gaborn had not made it outside the castle gates and needed her help. And, somehow, Gaborn had grown in the past few hours; had grown in the Earth Powers.

Iome pulled her hood closer to hide her face. For a moment, she felt once again as if all her pride and courage would leach from her. The spell woven into Raj Ahten’s forcibles still sought to drain her self-esteem.

Over and over again, she whispered in her mind a litany: This, I deny you. This I deny you.

Yet she could not bear the thought that Gaborn might recognize her. She let him take the litter; then Iome walked beside him as the pallbearers cut through an alley, down the narrow streets that led to the tombs.

The tombs of House Sylvarresta consisted of hundreds of small stone mausoleums, all painted white as bone, rising among a sheltered grove of cherry trees. Many of the mausoleums were designed to look like miniature palaces, with absurdly tall pinnacles, and statues of the dead kings and queens standing at the gates of each tiny palace. Others of the mausoleums, those reserved for trusted retainers and guards, were simply stone buildings.

When they reached the shelter of the grove, Gaborn and the others set down their burdens. Gaborn whispered to Iome, “I am Gaborn Val Orden, Prince of Mystarria. I’m sorry to impose upon you, but I’ve been hiding all night, and I need information. Can you tell me how House Sylvarresta fares?”

With a start, Iome realized that Gaborn didn’t recognize her—not with her beauty gone, her skin rough as bark. Behind her, Iome’s Days had her face and historian’s robes covered beneath the charnel robes, just another anonymous pallbearer.