She’d been terrified in her dream, had watched her people, the peasants of Heredon, racing to the safety of the castle. The hills to the north, east, and west were full of them—peasants in brown tunics and thick boots, hunched and running for cover. Hefty women with babes in tow, men pushing wheelbarrows full of turnips. Boys driving calves with sticks. An old woman with sheaves of wheat tied to her back. Young lovers with dreams of immortality in their eyes.

All of them raced, seeking cover.

But Iome knew the castle could not protect her people. Its walls would never hold back Raj Ahten.

So she pursed her lips and blew with all her might, blew to the west, then to the east, then to the south. Her breath came out smelling of lavender, and it purpled the air. Every person it touched, everyone she breathed upon in all the kingdom, turned to white thistledown, white thistledown that bobbed and swirled in every small eddy of wind, then suddenly caught in a great gust and went floating high and away over the oaks and birches and alders of the Dunnwood.

Last of all, Iome breathed on herself and upon Gaborn, who stood beside her, so they too turned to thistledown and went flying high over the Dunnwood, gazing down at the autumn leaves, all golden and flame and earthy brown.

She watched as Raj Ahten’s armies burst from under the trees with a shout, soldiers waving battle-axes and spears toward her castle. No one stood to oppose them.

Desolation. Raj Ahten might have hoped to win something, but all he would inherit would be desolation.

As her horse carried Iome south through the night, she felt as if she flew, leaving the world behind. Until just after midnight, when a sudden dizziness swept over her, and she looked up to see her father, too, weaving in his saddle. Grief struck her as she recognized what was happening.

At Castle Sylvarresta, someone—Borenson, she suspected—had begun to slaughter her Dedicates.

32

A HIGH PRICE FOR HOSPITALITY

The army of Raj Ahten came to Hayworth after midnight, as King Orden had said it would.

The innkeeper Stevedore Hark woke in his cot beside his wife to the sound of hoofbeats on the far side of the river. It was an odd trick of sound that let one hear them so clearly here on the promontory above the water. The stone cliffs on the hillside above the road caught the sounds of hoofbeats, sent them echoing down over the flood.

Stevedore Hark had taught himself years ago to wake at the sound of such hoofbeats, for more often than not, if a man was riding abroad at night, it meant Hark would have to find the traveler a bed.