For that moment, nothing else mattered. The King ignored his counselors, his armorer, the resounding tumult of an impending war. There was infinite love in the King’s eye, infinite sadness. His look told Dewynne that he knew what she was giving him, that she mattered. Iome knew that her father hated this, hated having to suck others dry in order to protect his vassals.

In that second, something must have changed in Dewynne; she must have reached that necessary moment of yearning, that moment when the transfer of attributes could take place. The facilitator’s growls turned to demanding shouts as the full force of his spell came unleashed.

The white-hot blood metal of the forcibles trembled and twisted, like a snake in the facilitator’s hands.

Dewynne shrieked from a pain unimaginable. Something within her seemed to collapse—as if a great crushing weight pressed down on her, or as if she had become diminished, had grown smaller.

The smell of burning hair and seared skin rose on wisps of smoke.

Dewynne writhed, tried to squirm away. The sergeant held her, a man of inhuman strength.

Dewynne turned from Lord Sylvarresta, teeth clenched. She was biting off the tip of her tongue, blood and spittle flowing from her chin.

In that moment, Iome thought she could see all the pain in the world in that good woman’s eyes.

Dewynne collapsed into unconsciousness. The stamina had gone from her, so much so that she could no longer keep her eyes open, could not resist the fatigue of the day.

Instead, the blood-metal runes glowed white hot and throbbed. The facilitator, a narrow-faced man with a crooked nose and a long gray goatee, studied the molten rune of power for a moment, its light reflecting in his black eyes; then his shouting turned to a song of joy, of triumph.

He held the forcible over his head with both hands, waving it, so that a trail of white light held in the air, like a meteor’s trail, but did not fade. The ribbon of light hung in the air, tangible. The facilitator inspected it carefully, as if judging its width, its heft.

He broke into a piping song and ran to Sylvarresta, trailing the ribbon of light. Everyone stopped, no one daring to come near that light, to risk breaking the connection about to be forged between lord and Dedicate.

At his lord’s side, the facilitator bowed, placed the white-hot blood metal beneath the King’s breast. The facilitator’s song softened now, coaxing, and slowly the small forcible in his hand began to disintegrate, to crumble and blow away like white ash, even as the white umbilical of light faded.

Iome had not taken a vassal’s endowment since childhood. She had no way to remember how it had felt. But just as giving an endowment caused unspeakable pain to the giver, so the receiver felt an inexpressible euphoria.