A message? Those words triggered something in Simon’s mind. He experienced for an instant the return of pain to press above his eyes, that conviction there was something for him to do. This was foreknowledge of a kind, but not such as he had known on the road to Sulcarkeep. Now he was being summoned, not warned. Koris and the Guardsmen would ride north if they willed, but he must head south. Simon put down his last guard against this insidious thing, allowed himself to be swayed by it.

“Has any news come out of the south?” he demanded of the sentry.

“Ask that of the Lord of Wings, Guardsman.” The man was suspicious after the training of his kind. Simon headed for the stairs.

“Be sure that I shall!”

Before he went to the Commander of the Falconers, he tracked down the Captain, finding Koris busied with preparations for taking the trail. He glanced up from his saddlebags to Simon, and then his hands stopped pulling at buckles and straps.

“What’s to do?”

“Laugh if you will,” Simon replied shortly. “My road lies to the south.”

Koris sat down on the edge of a table and swung one booted foot slowly back and forth. “Why does Karsten draw you?”

“That is just it!” Simon struggled to put into words what compelled him against either inclination or sense. He had never been an articulate man and he was discovering it even harder here to explain himself. “I am drawn—”

The swinging foot was still. In that handsome, bitter face there was no readable expression. “Since when — and how has it come upon you?” That demand was quick and harsh, an officer desiring a report.

Simon spoke the truth. “There was a dream and then I awoke. When I looked just now through the gap into Karsten I knew that my road leads there.”

“And the dream?”

“It was of danger, more I cannot remember.”

Koris drove one fist into the palm of the other. “So be it! I wish you had more power or less. But if you are drawn, we ride south.”

“We?”

“Tunston and Jivin shall carry our news to Estcarp. The Kolder cannot cut through the barrier of the Power yet awhile. And Tunston can rally the Guard as well. Look you, Simon, I am of Gorm and now it is Gorm which fights against the Guard, though it may be Gorm which is dead and demon-inspired. I have serve Estcarp to the best of my ability since the Guardian gave me refuge, and I shall continue to serve her. But it may be that the time has come that I can serve her best outside the ranks of her liege men instead of within them.