“You cannot serve both him and the earth,” Binnesman said, climbing up onto Raj Ahten’s mount. “I know his heart now. He would destroy the earth.”

“I am a king’s man,” Jureem said, for he could think of nothing else to say. His father had been a slave, and his father’s father. He knew how to serve a king, and how to serve well.

“The Earth King is coming,” Binnesman said. “If you would serve a king, serve him.”

With a nod, he indicated for Prince Orden and Iome to mount up. King Sylvarresta was still ahorse.

Binnesman gave Jureem a long look. Then the wizard and his charges rode into the night, back up the road from which they’d come.

For a long time, Jureem sat ahorse, watching as Raj Ahten slept.

The night seemed darker than any that Jureem could recall, though the stars were shining fierce enough. “A king is coming,” the pyromancer had warned before her death. “A king who can destroy you.”

Not since Erden Geboren, two thousand years ago, had an Earth King risen in the land. Now King Orden had come. At Longmot, King Orden would be preparing for Raj Ahten’s attack.

Jureem gazed down at the obalin. Where once the Seven Stones had stood, now the creatures lay in ruin. He wondered at this portent. His heart pounded. He felt the warm night air, tasted the mineral tang of earth scent. Almost he turned to follow the wizard. But the sound of the horses’ hooves was lost in the night.

He stared at his master.

For years Jureem had given his all to the Great One, had followed his every whim. He had struggled to be a good servant. Now, he looked into his own heart and began to wonder why.

There was a time, a decade ago, when Raj Ahten had talked often of consolidating forces, of uniting the kings of the South under a single banner to repel the attacks of reavers. Somehow, over the years, the dream had changed, become twisted.

The “Great Light,” Jureem had called him, as if Raj Ahten were a Bright One or a Glory from the netherworld.

Jureem turned his own horse.

I am the weakest man here, he told himself. Yet perhaps Orden will accept my service.

I will be branded a traitor, Jureem thought. If I leave now, Raj Ahten will believe that I am the spy who warned Orden where to find the forcibles.

Jureem considered. So be it. If I am branded a traitor, I will become one. He had many secrets that he could divulge. And if he left Raj Ahten’s service, then it meant that the Wolf Lord would still have a spy in his midst.