“And the respect of the highman and his village,” Gaborn said. “That is the kind of Runelord I would want to be, one who can win a man’s heart and his love. That is my hope. It is harder to storm a heart than to storm a castle. It is harder to hold a man’s trust than to hold any land. That is why I studied in the Room of the Heart.”

“I see,” Iome said. “And I am sorry.”

“For what?” Gaborn asked.

“That I ever said I would turn you down, if you asked me to marry you.” She smiled at him, and spoke teasingly, but realized it was true. Gaborn was a strange and wondrous young man, and in the past day she had begun to recognize that he was much more than he seemed. She feared that at this rate, she’d fall in love with him so fiercely by the end of another day that she’d never want to separate from him again.

When the horses finished watering, Gaborn loped them for a while.

The magnificent crevasse at Harm’s Gorge opened suddenly—a deep rent where a river rushed, and the trail they took snaked around its edge. According to legend, the duskins had created this place, had broken the pillars that held the Overworld.

They let their animals creep along a narrow trail beside the ledge, and Iome looked at the pillars of gray and white stone that rose up from the canyon, a marvel to see. She wondered if these were the pillars of legend or merely the roots of mountains long since eroded away.

Beside the steep sides of the canyon, huge trees clung, looking like bristles on a horse brush. A mile to the north, Harm’s River churned in a waterfall and fell far into the chasm, but Iome could not see where the waters landed, for the canyon was so deep that its heart was lost in darkness, and no sound escaped from its silent depths. Enormous bats wheeled in the canyon, down where the shadows filled the endless chasm.

If a person fell from the road, it was said that you could hear his scream for a month until the sound was lost.

They took the narrow pass slowly, the idiot King Sylvarresta walking along the treacherous edge of the road, often stopping to peer into the mists so far below.

39

THE GREEN MAN

King Sylvarresta woke, and moved through a world of dream. The doors of his mind were closed. He did not remember much. No words, no names—not even his own. Yet much in the world had a vague familiarity. The horses, trees.

He woke to see a great light in the sky, the color of gold and roses. He felt certain that he had seen it somewhere before.