To Gaborn’s surprise, the Days turned his mule, headed back. Gaborn had seldom been free of the historian’s scrutiny. But the Days’ mule couldn’t keep up with a force stallion. If he tried to follow, the historian would only get killed.

Borenson reached behind his saddle, pulled his bow and quiver, backed his horse, and handed the weapons to Gaborn. He whispered, “May the Glories guide you safely.”

Gaborn would need the bow. He nodded, grateful.

When the men had disappeared through the mist, Gaborn licked his lips, his mouth dry with fear. Preparedness is the father of courage, he reminded himself. A teaching from the Room of the Heart. Yet suddenly all that he’d learned in the House of Understanding seemed . . . inadequate.

He prepared to fight. First he dismounted, removed his fancy feathered hat, tossed it to the ground. It wouldn’t do to ride ahead looking like a wealthy merchant. He needed to seem a humble peasant, without benefit of endowments.

He reached into his saddlebags, drew out a stained cloak of gray, threw it over his shoulders. He strung the bow. He had no battle-axe to cut through armor—only his dueling saber, and the dirk strapped at his knee.

Gaborn stretched his arms and shoulders, limbering them. He slid his saber from its sheath, as familiar with its balance as if it were part of his own body, then slid it back carefully.

He couldn’t disguise his horse. The beast stood too proudly, like a being of stone or iron come to life. Its eyes glowed with fierce intelligence.

Gaborn whispered in his horse’s ear. “We must hurry, my friend, but travel quietly.”

The horse nodded. Gaborn couldn’t be certain how much it understood. It couldn’t follow a conversation. But with endowments of wit from other horses in its herd, it followed several simple verbal commands—which was more than could be said of some men.

Gaborn dared not ride the beast at first. Instead, he led it. There would be outriders, he knew, both behind and before Raj Ahten’s army. Gaborn didn’t want to be a silhouette in the fog for some archer to practice on.

He began running lightly at a pace he could keep up for days. In the unnatural fog, the fields were strangely quiet.

Field mice scurried from his approach; a lone crow cawed from an oak. Sparrows flew up in a cloud. Somewhere, in the forest, he could hear a cow lowing, wanting to be milked.

For a long time as he ran, there was only the dry rattle of bending grass, the muted thump of his horse’s hooves.

As he sprinted north through the close-cropped fields, he made a personal inventory. As far as Runelords were concerned, he was not powerful. He’d never wanted to be so. He could not bear the guilt he’d have borne to become powerful, the cost in human suffering.