The facilitators left the tent, hurried back a few minutes later, bringing the desired Invincibles—elite guards and assassins who each had at least three endowments of metabolism. They were all big men, strong of bone, so that they could handle the stress of great brawn and metabolism. And they were strong in wit and grace. He would sorely miss any one of them.

Raj Ahten knew his men well. The man he least valued was Salim al Daub, an old household guard who had been elevated in status several times, despite the fact that Salim had failed him as an assassin. Twice he’d gone to kill Prince Orden, and twice he’d returned a failure, with only the ears of women and children.

“Thank you for coming, my friends,” Raj Ahten said when he’d decided. “You have all served me valiantly for many years. I ask now that you serve me once again, for I need your metabolism. You, my friend Salim, will have the honor to serve as vector.”

The words slid from Raj Ahten’s tongue as sweetly as candied dates. The men could not resist the power of his Voice. The facilitators drew out the forcibles.

A cold wind blew from the south, rippling the silk walls of Raj Ahten’s Pavilion.

42

A COLD WIND

Faintly, across the battlefield, from the huge purple royal tent that Raj Ahten had entered, Orden heard the chants of facilitators borne on the cold wind. The sound came dimly, so dimly that few men on the walls could have discerned it. Orden could hear it only because he focused, detected it beneath the song of the wind rushing through the leaves of grass along the hills, a sound so much like the waves of the ocean back home.

“What’s taking them?” an “archer” on the castle walls asked, a farm boy who knew nothing of war. They’d been waiting an hour. In that time, Raj Ahten’s men had not sought to parlay. They did not seem to want to attack.

King Orden began to pace the walls, past men who stood shoulder to shoulder, four deep. He watched with mounting nervousness as Raj Ahten set his forces, laid his siege.

“I do not like that chanting,” Captain Holmon said softly in Orden’s ear. “Raj Ahten has endowments enough without it. We would be better off if we got this battle under way, before their reinforcements arrive.”

“How?” Orden asked. “Mount a charge?”

“We can goad the old dog into battle.”

Orden nodded to Captain Holmon. “Sound your horn, then. Call Raj Ahten to a parlay. I want him out here, within bowshot.”

43

THE SPARK

The facilitators had just finished granting endowments of metabolism from nine of Raj Ahten’s men to Salim when the horns sounded, calling for a parlay.

The facilitators looked at Raj Ahten, curiously.