Behind Gaborn, Iome’s Days shifted nervously, and the bakers suddenly left the tomb as if they’d just recalled urgent matters elsewhere. Iome wanted to break into tears, to fall into his arms. She only stood, trembling terribly. “No. Nothing.”

Gaborn swallowed hard. “Can you bear another message to the Princess for me?”

“What?”

“Tell her . . . that she haunts my dreams. That her beauty is indelible in my memory. Tell her that I’d hoped to save her, hoped to give her some small aid, and maybe I did some good—I killed a powerful flameweaver. Because I’m here, my father has come, though perhaps too late. Tell her I stayed the night in Castle Sylvarresta, but now see that I must leave. My father’s soldiers are hunting for me in the woods. I dare stay no longer. I’m going to try for the woods, before my father charges the city.”

Iome nodded.

“Will you come with me?” Gaborn asked. He stared into her face, and now she knew without a doubt that he recognized her. His eyes were filled not with contempt, but with pain, and so much gentleness, she longed to fall into his arms. Yet she dared not move.

Iome’s eyes filled with tears. “Come? And leave my father? No.”

“Raj Ahten will not hurt him.”

“I know,” Iome said. “I—don’t know what to think. Raj Ahten is not totally evil, not as I feared. Binnesman hopes for some good from him.”

“ ‘When you behold the face of pure evil, it will be beautiful.’ ” Gaborn quoted an old saying among Runelords.

“He says he wants to fight the reavers, that he wants to unite mankind for our own defense.”

“And when the war is won, can the Wolf Lord give your endowments back to you? Will he give his own life so that all those who were robbed of endowments can regain them, as Good King Herron did? I think not. He will keep them.”

“You don’t know that,” Iome said.

“I do,” Gaborn insisted. “Raj Ahten has revealed his nature. He has no respect for you or any other. He will take all that you have, leave you with nothing.”

“How can you be sure? Binnesman seemed to want him to change. He hoped to convince the Wolf Lord to rid himself of the flameweavers.”

“You believe he will do it? You can stand here, over the body of your dead mother, and believe Raj Ahten has any degree of decency whatsoever?”

“When he speaks, when you look in his face—”