Gaborn frowned in thought, said softly. “No, we shouldn’t go south. We need to follow our own track—west. I feel the spirits drawing me. My father is going to Longmot, where castle walls will enfold him. Bone of the earth. The earth powers can preserve him. He’s safer there than we are here.”

With that, he urged his horse forward, reached down a hand to help lift Iome to her saddle.

On the wind came the sound of war dogs baying in the far hills.

26

A GIFT

For long hours they raced, leaping over wind-fallen aspens, climbing up and down the hills. Iome let Gaborn lead the way, half in wonder at the trails he chose.

Time became a blur—all the trees losing definition, time losing focus.

At one point, Gaborn pointed out that Iome’s father seemed to be riding better. As if some portion of his memories had opened, and he recognized once again how to sit light in a saddle.

Iome wasn’t so sure. Gaborn stopped the horses in a stream, and her father watched a fly buzz around his head as Gaborn asked time and again, “Can you ride? If I cut your hands loose from the saddle, will you hold on?”

King Sylvarresta made no answer. Instead, he looked up into the sky and began squinting at the sun, making a noise like, “Gaaaagh. Gaaaaagh.”

Gaborn turned to Iome. “He could be saying yes.”

But when Iome looked into her father’s eyes, she saw no light in them. He wasn’t answering, just making senseless noise.

Gaborn pulled out a knife, reached down, and slit the ropes that held King Sylvarresta’s hands to the pommel of the saddle.

King Sylvarresta seemed mesmerized by the knife, tried to grab it.

“Don’t touch the blade,” Gaborn said. Her father grabbed it anyway, cut himself, and just stared at his bleeding hand in wonder. It was a small cut.

“Hold on to the pommel of the saddle,” Gaborn told King Sylvarresta, then wrapped the King’s hand around the pommel. “Keep holding on.”

“Do you think it will work?” Iome asked.

“I don’t know. He’s holding it tight enough now. He might stay on the horse.”

Iome felt torn between the desire to have her father safely tied to the saddle, and the desire to let him be free, unencumbered.

“I’ll watch him,” Iome said. They let the horses forage for sweet grass alongside a hill for a few moments. Distant thunder was snarling over the mountains, and Iome became lost in thought. A thin rain began to fall. A golden butterfly flew near her father’s mount, and caught his eye. He watched after it a moment, held out a hand toward it as it flew off into the shadowed woods.