They rode slowly on a narrow road, with a gray earth wall to his left, a tremendous precipice to his right. He had no words for names, nor for left and right. Everything carried with it a sense of discovery. Far, far down, he could see only misty grayness. Pine trees stood far below, prickling along the edges of rock.

They reached a narrow bridge carved from a single stone, spanning the gorge. The bridge curved up into the sky, and Sylvarresta looked down into the gorge, and felt as if he hung in the air, just so.

He did not recall ever having been here before, nor having felt thus.

A few dozen soldiers were on the bridge, guardsmen in dark-blue surcoats, wearing the face of the green man on their shields—a knight whose face was surrounded by green leaves. The young man and woman that King Sylvarresta rode with greeted these soldiers joyfully. For a while, the soldiers talked to the young man of their plans for guarding the bridge; then the young man bid the soldiers farewell, leaving them behind.

King Sylvarresta, the young man, and the young woman crossed the bridge, rode high up in the pine woods toward a mountain’s summit. Then the horses raced under the trees.

Huge birds, the color of sky, flitted overhead, calling among the trees, and the wind came fresh and cold. Then they reached a mountaintop and rode down from the wooded hills, to a land where fields of crops checkered the downs.

A castle loomed up from the fields, a tall edifice of gray stone. Horns began blowing on its battlements at Sylvarresta’s approach, and a dimly remembered pennant flew—the midnight black with the silver boar.

Men stood on the walls of the castle by the hundreds—men with bows and helms with wide brims, men with spears and hammers. Other men wore surcoats with the image of the green man, and they bore bright shields that shone silver like water.

The men all cheered and waved as they saw him, and King Sylvarresta waved back and cheered himself, until the huge drawbridge on the castle opened, and they entered.

The horses walked up a short, steep hill, hooves clanking over cobblestones. Men shouted joyfully at him and clapped, until an odd look came over their faces.

Some pointed at him, faces pale with emotions he did not recognize—horror, shock, dismay. They shouted, “Dedicate! He’s a Dedicate!”

Then his horse stopped in front of a gray building, a small keep. King Sylvarresta sat for a moment watching a reddish-brown lizard, as long as Sylvarresta’s finger, sun itself on the stones in the rock garden beside the door. He could not recall having ever seen such a thing, and wondered.

Then, in all the commotion, the lizard raced up the side of the building and over its gray roof. The King knew it was alive and he began shouting and pointing.