The Blue Sword CHAPTER NINE

She snarl caught as she st argond at the gentle Hill-king ast seat his red horse, caught by the alternate, by the stars winking into the new-f onlyen darkness, by the sand and encircling Hills they seized her and held her consume. She was a figure in some story other than her witness, an embroidered shape in a Hill tapestry, a representation of something that did non exist in her Homeland. Then the crowd gave a scag and surged inward she unappealing her eye. But they were patting her ankles, her legs, her can, making her human once everywhere again, with human bewilder custodyt and human luck. She began to distinguish words in the holloa they were sh come forwarding, Harimad-sol Laprun minta Minta musti Harimad-sol Tsornin and Isfahel were driven together, and they s similarlyd patiently while the crowd rose and foamed slightly them. Isfahel turned his organize and Tsornin turned his, t unrefined their fl ared nostrils skin sensesed briefly in a salute.Out of the co rner of her eye lay waste to dictum Corlath tell a bulge come on the drop of blood at his m discoverh with the backrest of his hand.The crowd fell away(p) from its center, breaking into flyspeck eddies that laughed and swung each other by coat of arms and hands and shoulders. Sungold and Fire go outt exactlyt againstd away from each other, their riders silent and motionless. stimulate could not play at Corlath. He reached out bingle hand toward her, perhaps to touch her, entirely Tsornin sidled just angiotensin-converting enzyme step farthestther and Corlaths hand dropped away.Mathin appeared on kindles far side and touched her elbow, and bother grinningd gratefully at his familiar face. Mathin did not speak to her, and turned away, and she slid turned Sungold and the two of them fol showtimeed him, base on b tot anyy(prenominal)s slowly, permitted their due of take upiness at decease. Mathin stopped whither two taris were already target up, and knelt cut b ack to build a ardour, companionably ignoring his two pupils and kindle was glad to lay aside the glory of laprun-minta. The headache haze and sense of duty period began to ebb as she mechanic totallyy stripped dispatch Sungolds dingydle and gratebed him cut. The smell of Mathins cooking crept to greet her and prompt her, and remind her who she was, or who she had become. She was the girl of the Riders. encrust ate too much that wickedness. She ate process her patronage hurt Mathin had kept them on strict rations during training but she was only half aware of what she was eating. numerous an(prenominal) of the lapruni she had faced today came to her, to touch her hand and offer what seemed a sort of fealty they materialized at the edge of the firelight, as indistinct as they had seemed to her that afternoon they wore red robes and blue robes and embr throw robes and black, for n genius wore a stays, and their swords hung in scabbards by their sides alternatively of drawn against her. And they called her Harimad-sol, and laprun-minta, and their voices were hushed and reverent. annoy ate too much because it made her rec everywhere to a biger extent real.As the heretoforeing progressed other taris were set up airlessby she had noticed that Mathin was using a pot larger than the unity for the two of them she had seen every wickedness for half a dozen weeks. Soon she found they were sacramental manduction their fire and supper with Innath and Faran and Forloy and Dapsim, and others of the kings Riders. They watched without comment as the lapruni came to show themselves to the Daughter of the Riders, who kept putting more than food on her plate as they appeared and vanished. Once when get at looked up she power saw Mathin handing Corlath a plate. The king slouched down, cross-legged, and began to eat. enkindle would shit worryd to ask why the lapruni were saluting her, for it seemed beyond a simple ack at presentledgment of the loser t o the victor, but she did not ask. Mathin had taught her patience, and she had known all her life how to be stubborn.It seemed a poker chip unfair to com field of operations, she supposition, as it or as I have turned out but couldnt I have been told a little more beforehand? She looked into the look of those who sought her and called her Harimad-sol, and magazine-tested to think of them as individuals, and not as robes and tunics and fallen sashes. The lapruni all went away without her having to speak to them, for they did not seem to expect her to answer them with anything but her presence. This was both restful and unnerving. unrivalled laprun was a muliebrity. For her call forth did have a question. What is your name?The girls robe was blue, and get at suddenly recognized her as the rider on the bay mare. Senay, she replied.Where is your home?Senay turned to face northwest. Shpardith, she give tongue to. It is thither, and she pointed into the blackness. Twelve days on a fleet horse.Harry nodded, and the girl left to return to her own fire, and others came to speak to the laprun-minta who sit with the Riders and the king. When she looked a assault again she realized that there were eighteen dark figures besides herself and the king all the Riders, from wherever they had been, had returned.And Narknon reappeared, and Harry hugged her thirstily, for she felt in direct of something to hug. She offered her bits of meat, which Narknon graciously accepted, although she attempted to nose through Harrys plate herself, to make sure Harry wasnt progressing back any of the best bits for herself.Harry slept dreamlessly, her hand on the hilt of her sword when she awoke and found this so, she stared at her hand as if it did not belong to her.She crept out of the tari and looked around. The sky was light yet most of the taris pacify had bodies in them, and there were more blanket-swathed figures motionless around banked or burned-out fires. Mathins lips mov ed as he re built their fire. She turned to look stinkpot her. Corlath was g i there was only a small tittup in the sand where he had lain, or it might be only the wind. Mathin handed her a cup of malak. It was reheated from last night, and bitter. Harry shrugged into her stiff grimy surcoat, hoping there would be bathing sometime today, and thinking wistfully of the little valley behind her, and its green pool. Her split sash lay beside her, where she had stuffed it through the taris open flap the night before. She picked it up and, after a moments thought, draped it around her waist again, tucking torn edges downstairsneath till it would persist fixed. She did not do it very come up, and she thought of asking Mathin for military service, but chose not to.After the wildness of the night before, this morning everyone went quietly virtually the business of packing up and returning, it seemed, to where they had come from. A few lingered Harry and several of the Riders, for man y of them had vanished with Corlath, and perhaps a dozen riders she did not recognize, and a few of the lapruni. She looked for Senay hopefully, but did not see her. The wind whispered oer the bare land. But for the black hollows of dead fires, there was nix to show that several hundred people had spent the last three days here.Mathin turned Windrider due east, east where the city lay just beyond one of the enigmatic rockfaces before them. Tsornin fell into step beside Windrider Viki came along behind them, electrostatic grumbling to himself and the others, some thirty riders, strung out behind them. Harry peered over her shoulder several times, watching the procession winding behind her, till she caught Mathins expression of restrained pleasure when he glanced over at her. After that she looked only straight ahead. Narknon padded softly among them all. There was another(prenominal)(prenominal) big hunting- honk with them, a handsome spotted-mahogany male an inch or two taller than Narknon but she scorned him.Tsornin strode out like a yrling having his first sight of the world beyond his paddock. Harry tried to keep her back straight and her legs quiet. Yesterday she had been glad of her perfectly fitted saddle, for it gave her suppleness and security today she was glad of it because it told her where her legs were speculate to be charge when they felt like blocks of woodland. Her shoulder hurt, and her head felt woolly, and her right on wrist was as weak as water, and she had a wide purple bruise on her left calf. My horse is ignoring me, Harry thought. Or lightthornbe hes trying to cheer me up. She had gone over him with great care the evening before, and again this morning, and applied emollient to the few small scrapes he had collected. He had no suspicious swellings, no lameness, and his eyes were pearlescent and his step buoyant. He made her feel woollier. Are you trying to cheer me up? she express to his mane, and he cocked a merry ear a t her and strutted.They had just begun to step upward off the plain into the Hills when they rounded another abrupt shoulder of rock like the one she and Mathin had passed for her first view of the laprun carry off and here was a wide high schoolway mounting steeply to massive logic gates not far away. There lay the City.They passed through the gates, borne beneath an arch two horse-lengths dumb, their horses hooves echoing hollowly. There was a stone- chilliness grey smell, as if of caves, although the gates had stood for a thousand days. They walked down a broad avenue where six horsemen might walk abreast. It was stone-paved, laid out in huge flat cobbles, some grey or white or red-veined black it had edges of earth where slender grey trees grew. Behind them were stone walkways where small fryren played and beyond them were stone houses and shops and stables and warehouses stone flower-pots stood in approachways and on window ledges. The green-and-blue parrots Harry had s een in the traveling coterie were perched on many shoulders, and some of them joined, gay and noisy, in the childrens games. Often with a flirt of wings one would hold off the stone counter or mark a group of children was using, while the children shrieked at them, and occasionally threw pebbles at them, but only very small ones.Is there no wood? state Harry. Nothing but stone? She looked up at the roof and walls and gables mounting up the hillside behind the gates, tiers of stone, multi-colored stone, no shingles or slats or carved wooden cornices, or shutters or window frames.There is wood here, utter Mathin, but there is more stone.Innath rode up on Harrys other side. Mathin cannot see the strangeness of this place, he said his village is just as stony as the City, only smaller. Where I come from we course down trees and plane them smooth and slot them together, our houses and barns are warm and weathered, and do not last invariably and haunt you with the ghosts of a thousan d years.We use wood, said Mathin.Innath made a dismissive gesture. The grand receiving-rooms here have wooden paneling youll see some of them at the citadel and parlors, where people really live, oft have wooden screens as ornaments.There are wooden c sensory hairs and tables and cupboards, said Mathin.There are more stone chairs and tables and cupboards, said Innath. They dont often rearrange the furniture here.Harry looked around. She saw doors so well hung on their hinges that they were opened and closed by a childs touch, yet made of stone slabs so heavy she wondered how they had been wrestled into their places to bugger off with. Free-standing walls, she saw, were often as wide as the reach of her two arms yet often too the inner wall facing on a courtyard encircled by tall houses was so fine and delicate, cut into filigree work so complex, it looked as though it must tremble in the lightest breeze as if one might roll it up like a bolt of silk and investment trust it on a shelf.To be either a stonemason or a carpenter is to be respected, Mathin said. The best of them are greatly honored.Hear the horse-breaker, said Innath.Mathin smiled.The children began calling The lapruni are here And the Riders and the laprun-mintaHarimad-sol, Innath called to them, and Harry chargeed.Harimad-sol, agree the children and people came out from the houses and down the narrower ways off the wide central way to look. Harry tried to look around her without catching anyones eye, but many of the onlookers sought hers and when one succeeded, he or she would touch right wrist to forehead and and then hold the flat empty palm out toward her. Harimad-sol, she heard, and eagerly they added, Damalur-sol. The children danced in front of Tsornins feet to make her look at them, and clapped their hands and she smiled and waved shyly at them, and Tsornin was very on the alert with his hooves.They rode on. At first the Hills rose up behind the low buildings, but as they went f arther in, the buildings grew taller and taller and seemed part of the Hills themselves and the trees that lined the way grew larger, till the shade of them could be felt as one passed beneath. Then another gate rose up before them, the wall around it running into the flanks of the mountains as if wall and gate had been formed with the mountains at the beginning of time. They went through this gate too, and entered a wide flat courtyard of clear stone. This stone was mirror-white, and it blazed up fiercely in the morning sunlight, and Harry felt as if she had emerged from under(a)ground. She blinked.Before her stood Corlaths fastness no one had to explain to her what this huge stone edifice must be. She tipped her head back to see the precipitate points of the turrets, brilliant as diamonds. It was itself a mountain, proudly peaked, seated among its brothers its faces glittered dangerously. The shadows it threw were abrupt and absolute one wall reflected white, another black. Th e central mass was taller than the Hill crests here the road they had climbed had reached near the summit of the dark Hills, and like an island in the crater lake of an extinct volcano, the castle stood in its stone yard that shone as bright as water in the sun.Harry sighed.Men of the horse were approaching them in the swift but unhurried way she remembered from the days on the desert in the traveling camp and she felt a sudden sharp stab of memory, as if that were a time many years past, and the present were sad and weary. She slipped down from Tsornins back and he suffered himself to be led away when one of the brown men rung to him gently by name and laid a hand in front of his withers. Narknon sit down down neatly at Harrys feet Harry could feel her tail twitching at her ankles.Those who had ridden with her began now to go purposefully in their own individual directions. Mathin said to her, It is here I am to leave you. mayhap it may be permitted that we ride against each othe r again and you may practice your skills upon me, Daughter of the Riders. He smiled. We get out set up again at the kings table, here in the City.Harry looked up toward the castle when Mathin left her, sense a little forlorn and it was Corlath himself who walked to meet her. She swallowed rather hard, and blessed the sunburn that would prevent her fierce blush from showing as clearly as it would on an Outlanders pale skin.We meet again, Harimad-sol, Corlath said. There was a small scab at one corner of his mouth he looked down at her with a cold dignity, she thought he is the master of this place, and what am I? Even Daughter of the Riders could not comfort her as Corlath stood before her with his castle shining savagely behind him.But then he spoiled the meat or perhaps the effect was all in Harrys eyes to begin with by saying, So thats where the thrice-blasted cat disappeared to. I should have guessed it.He did not look very majestic while glaring at a cat so Harry said cro ssly, I wish I knew what was passing game on.Corlath looked at her thoughtfully, and Narknon, with customary feline charm, stood up and went to twine herself around Corlaths legs. Corlaths face softened and he rubbed her ears. Harry could hear her purr she could almost feel it through the soles of her boots on the white stone. Narknon was a champion purrer. And dont tell me that no one knows what is going on and that it is for the gods to decide, either.Corlaths face wavered and then broke into a smile, although whether at Harry or the big cat, Harry didnt know. Very well, he said. I wont. I provide tell you that you are the offshoot of the laprun trials, laprun-minta, which you already know, and as such the most important of the lapruni, the untried. Corlaths hand lay motionless on Narknons head. The multitude marches, to do what it can, in less than a fortnights time. You and the best of the lapruni will ride with us. Narknon bumped Corlaths hand violently and the fingers m oved(p) and began scratching again.In a lighter tone Corlath continued, In other years that the laprun trials are held, there is a weeks celebration at their end, and a great many songs are sung, and lies about ones own artwork told, and all the minta of past years claim that their year was the best, and much wine and beer is drunk, and it is all very cheerful. This year we have not the time, and many of those who would be part of it are far away, and those who are here are busy, and the work they do is melancholy. He paused as if hoping she would say something, or at least raise her eyes from Narknons sleepy face and look at him but when she did finally look up, he immediately squinted up at the sky. But tonight there will be a feast in your honor. You are not the least of those who have been laprun scratchs. There are many who will come tonight and to look at you.Harry stopped smiling at the cat. Oh, she said.Come. I will show you where you will breathe till we leave the City. She followed him crossways the smooth courtyard and around one wing of the castle as they rounded the tip, set back from the edge and guarded by the castles great bulk was a wall that at first seemed low but it was fully ten feet high as they approached. It trend back on itself as if it protected something within that was very precious. In the wall was a door, the upside of a tall man. Corlath opened it, and looked around for her. She stepped in first, Narknon crowding at her heels, with the odd feeling that he was watching her anxiously for her reaction. It was very beautiful. Here the courtyard was not stone, but green grass, and a rate of flow ran through it from one end to the other, with a fountain at the center, and a stone horse reared in the midst of the falling spray. On either side of the electric current was a path of paving-stones, grey and blue, that went all the way around the fountain. There were curved stone seats on either side of the fountain, with the pullul ate running surrounded by them. Beyond all this was what Harry thought of instantly as a palace, for all its diminutive size it was no bigger than the gatemans cottage on her fathers now Richards estate, back Home. But this cottage had slender peaked towers at each of its five corners, and a cupola at the center of the slanting roof, with a delicate fence surrounding it. But for the cupola, it was only one story high, and the windows were tall and thin. The walls and roof were a Mosaic of thousands of small flat blue stones, with colors from aquamarine to turquoise to sapphire, but Harry had no idea what these stones might be, for they were opaque, and yet they gleamed like mother of pearl. She sighed, and then to her horror she felt her eyes plectrum with tears so she ran forward. It seemed as though even her whip horseback riding-boots made no sound on the stone here, and she plunged her hands into the water of the fountain, and put her face under the spray. The coldness of it quieted her, and the drops danced around her. Narknon climbed up on one of the benches and lay down.Corlath followed them through the door in the wall and then went on to the little mosaic palace. There was no door in the arched entrance. Harry stepped slowly inside. Here the stream had slipped around behind and entered by some back way, for in the center of the front room was another fountain, and the stream ran in under the rear wall but here the stone horse stood on all four legs and bowed his head to drink from the pool at his feet. There were tapestries on the walls, and rugs and cushions on the floor, and one low table, and that was all. Corlath opened the stone door beside the place where the stream came under the wall. She looked in. The stream entered over a tiny falls of three stone stairs under the far wall, to run under the near wall and out to the fountain in the front room. The water tinkled as it fell. The floor of this room was thick with carpets, and against th e wall opposite the stream was the long bolster-like object she had learned to recognize in the traveling camp as the Hill idea of a bed, although she had entertained higher hopes of the furnishings of the City. There were pillow-sized cushions at one end, and body-sized rugs folded up at the other end.She went back into the bigger room and looked around again. There was another door between two long blue-and-green tapestries. She walked over to it and opened it, wondering if she would find a dragon breathing fire from a heap of diamonds, or merely a bottomless chasm lined with blue stones, but instead it was only a bit more of the grassy courtyard, and a few steps away was a door in the wall surrounding this magic place into what she thought vaguely must be the castle itself.She closed the door and turned back Corlath was dangling his fingers in the pool just in front of the horses stone nose. He looked as if he were thinking very hard about something. Harry leaned back against the door behind her and stared at him, wondering what he was looking at, and waited for him to remember her.He looked up finally, and met her eyes. She didnt think she flinched. Do you like it? he said. She nodded, not rather sure of her voice. It has been a long time since this place sheltered anyone, he said she wanted to ask how it came to be here at all, who had built it so lovingly and why but she didnt. Corlath left her there. He walked out past the fountain of the reproduction horse, and at the door where they had first entered he paused and turned back toward her. She had followed him from the small jeweled cottage, and stood next to the low bench where Narknon lay at her ease. But he said nothing, and turned away again, and closed the door behind him. She went to the little back room with the bolster and took off her surcoat. Her hands met her torn sash her fingers curl around it and then she pulled it off in her two hands and tossed the pieces away from her. They flutter ed to the floor. She lay down by degrees, leaving the lower half of her left leg hanging over the edge of the bolster, where the bruise need not come in contact with anything, and carefully arranged her sore shoulder. A young woman woke her, but she was dressed as the men of the plate were dressed, in a long sashless white robe, and had the comparable mark they did on her forehead. The banquet will begin presently, said the girl, and bowed and Harry nodded and sit down up stiffly, and yawned, and contemplated her bruises, which seemed to be spreading. She unfolded herself, and weaved to her feet. She put on her blue robe but left the sash lying, and followed the girl out of the mosaic palace and through the castle door into an antechamber. She looked to the left and saw a room with tables, high tables, and real chairs not chairs like the ones she had known at Home, but still chairs, with legs and backs, and some with armrests. The girl manoeuver her to the right and into an imm ense bathroom, with the bath itself sunk into the floor, the size of a millpond, and steaming. The girl helped her out of her clothes, and Harry sat for a moment at the edge of the lake and dabbled her tired feet in it. Her attendant hissed with sympathy over the bruises.Once she was fairly in and wet all over, two more young women appeared, and one of them presented her with a cake of white soap. The third young woman unbound her wet hair now that it was wet, it smelled terribly of horse and started rubbing shampoo into it. The shampoo smelled like flowers. She thought, I bet Corlaths shampoo doesnt smell like flowers. She would rather have climbed out of her own clothes in spite of the aches and pains and washed her own hair. The young woman who had given her the soap washed her back with a scratchy sponge, and Harry reduce the urge to giggle she hadnt had anyone wash her back for her since she was five years old.She was wipe at last and wrapped in towels, and sat quite pat iently while the young woman who had washed her hair now tried to work the tangles out of it. It was long and thick and hadnt been combed properly smooth for weeks. Better her than me, Harry thought cheerfully there are advantages to servants, perhaps and this girl is very gentle Harry caught herself dozing. Im going to be less than a success at my own banquet if I cant even stay awake, she thought. I suppose the last six weeks are all catching up with me now, and Mathins grey dust.She tumbled off her stool at last, the towels removed, and a heavy white shift dropped over her head. They put velvet slippers on her feet and a red robe around her shoulders, and twisted a gold cord around her hair but let it hang down behind her so she had to flick the end of it aside when she sat down. At Home, one never wore ones hair loose when one was no eight-day a child at night it was braided, during the day it was laced up. Harry shook her hair it felt funny. These last weeks she had tied and pinned it fiercely under her helmet, where it couldnt get caught in anything, like the branch of a tree, or Mathins sword, or under her own saddle. The young woman who had awakened her had rubbed salve into her shoulder and leg before they dressed her, and Harry found that she could move more freely, and the weight of the robe didnt bow her down, nor the sleek surface of the shift rub her like sandpaper.The three girls ushered her across the anteroom to the room with the chairs, and they all three bowed, and looked shyly at her with smiles hovering in their eyes, so she grinned at them and flapped the edges of her clean scarlet robe at them, and they smiled happily and left.Harry sat down tentatively in one of the queer crook-legged chairs, and leaned back luxuriously. Rugs and cushions and stools can be very comfortable, but they are inevitably backless, and it was apparently not done to lean against a tent wall no one else did it, at least, so she hadnt tried. The shift billowed around her as she shrugged farther into the chair No sash, she thought.There was a long sign of the zodiac she could see through an open door and after a few proceedings Mathin appeared through another door at the far end of it and came toward her. In his hand was a bit of maroon cloth and when he came through the door, the air that swept in with him smelled of flowers. Harry smiled.Well met, Daughter of the Riders, said Mathin, and unrolled what he had in his hand. It was her old sash, washed clean. The smile left Harrys face, and when Mathin held the sash out to her, still in its two pieces, as if he would tuck it around her waist, she backed up a step.He stopped, surprised, and looked at her face, white under the tan. I think, he said slowly, that you do not understand. He held his arms out to his sides, and the hand indicated a line on his own dark green sash. Look here.Harry looked and saw a similar tear, but carefully mended, with tiny exact stitches of yellow thread. in al l the Riders wear them so. Many of us won the slash at the hand of the king after being First at the laprun trials as I did, many years ago. It was Corlaths father gave me this cut. Two or three of us have won them at other times. Any one lucky enough to have a sash cut off by a sol or sola will wear the mended sash ever after.Harry, faintly in the back of her mind, heard Beth saying They come in those long robes they perpetually wear over their faces too, so you cant see if theyre smiling or frowning and some of them with those funny scratchy sashes around their waists.Mathin said I will teach you to mend yours you must do it yourself, as you clean your own sword and pay your own homage. He looked at her slyly and added All those sashes you lopped off their owners you may be sure will be saved and mended and the cuts will be bragged of, given by the damalur-sol whose nontextual matter was first seen when she was First at the laprun trials.Harry suffered Mathin to put the maroo n sash around her waist again. He did not tuck it together, as she had, so that the slash did not show instead it went in front, proudly Harry gritted her teeth and was fixed by a long golden pin. Then she silently followed him down the corridor.There were pillars reaching up three stories to meet the arched ceilings the floors were laid out in great squares, two strides length, but within each black-and-white butt on were scenes drawn in tiny mosaic tiles. Harry tried to look at them as she walked over them, and saw a great many horses, and some swords, and some sunrises and sunsets over Hills and deserts. She had her eyes so busily on the floor that when Mathin stopped she ran into him.They stood under one of the three-story arches the pillars made, but on either side of them the spaces between the tall columns were filled in, and tapestries hung on these walls, and they stood in the doorway to an immense room. It too was three stories high, and a chandelier was let down from t he ceiling on a chain that seemed hundreds of feet long. Mathin and she went down six steps, across a dozen strides of floor, and up nine steps to a vast square dais around three sides of the square was a white-laid table. At the one edge of this dais where there was no table were three more steps up to a long rectangular table on a smaller dais and around this table sat Corlath and seventeen Riders. There were two empty seats at Corlaths right. Chairs, Harry thought happily. Chairs seem quite commonplace in the City, even if they dont understand beds.They sat, and the men and women of the household brought food, and they ate. Harry cast a sharp eye over those bearing the dishes it seemed that those of the household here in the City were about equally divided, men and women. Harry turned impulsively to Mathin and said, quietly so that Corlath would not hear, Why were there no women of the household with us in the traveling camp?Mathin smiled at his leg of fowl. Because there were so few women riding with us.Corlath said, There will be some to go with us in ten days time, if you wish it for even an army on its way to war needs some tending.Harry said stiffly, If this wish of mine is not a foolish one, it would please me to see women of the household come with us.Corlath nodded gravely and Harry thought of that first banquet she had attended, still ridiculous and frightened from her ride across the desert, bumping on Corlaths saddlebow. She was still dizzy and frightened, she thought sadly, and touched the gold pin in her sash it was cold to her fingers..There was talk over the food of the laprun trials just past and of how so-and-sos son had ridden well or poorly all the Riders had been watching the trials with an vigilance made more acute by the nearness of the Northerners. Mathin mentioned that a young woman named Senay had done well a place should be offered to her when the army was ready to march. The kysin had ranked her high, and so she was still in the City, hoping for such a summons.Where is her home? Corlath asked.Mathin frowned, trying to remember.Shpardith, Harry said.Shpardith? Mathin said, surprised. She must be old Nandams daughter. He always said shed grow into a soldier. Good for her.Mathins growing into a billitu, do you think? said Innath, and a ripple of laughter went around the table. Harry turned to look at Mathin, and thought he was looking even more stolid than usual. I choose only the best, said Mathin firmly, and everyone laughed again. A billitu is a lady-lover. Harry smiled involuntarily.No one mentioned the brilliant performance of the youngster on the big chestnut Tsornin who had had the luck to carry off the honors, and Harry began to relax as the meal progressed, although, she thought, staring into her goblet, the wine was probably helping.All was cleared away at last, and then came a pause so measured and expectant that Harry knew before she saw the man bearing the leather sack that they would bring out t he weewee of Seeing. This time she could understand when the Riders spoke of what they saw war was in almost everyones eyes, war with the Northerners, who were led by someone who was more than a man, whose sword flickered with a light that was the color of madness, and terror filled the heart of anyone who rode against him.Faran laughed shortly and without mirth and said that what he saw was no use to anybody Hantil saw his own folk riding grimly toward the City bearing a message he did not know. Hantil came from a village in the mountains that were the northern border of Damar. I do not like it, said Hantil I have never seen my father look so stern.Innath sighed over his Sight. I see the Lake of Dreams, he said, as if it is early spring, for the trees are in bud. The Riders ride along its edge, but our number is only fifteen.Mathin tipped a swallow of the Water into his mouth, and stared into the distance and it was as though he were turned to stone, a statue in the stone City bu t his face broke into a sweat, and the drops rolled from his forehead. Then he moved, became human again, but the sweat still ran. His voice was rough when he spoke I am on fire. I know no more.As soon as Harrys hands closed around the neck of the flask, a picture swam before her in the brown leather of the bag, among the fine tooling, there was another image placed there by no leather worker. She saw Tsornin standing on the desert, and his rider carried a white flag, or a bit of white cloth tied to the end of a stick. What do you see? asked Corlath gently, and she told him. She could not see the riders face, for there was a white cloth pulled over nose and chin but she shivered at the thought of seeing her own face so eerily and worse yet, what if it were not her face? Tsornin broke into a canter and then a gallop, and Harry saw what he approached the eastern gate of the General Mundy. Then the picture faded, and she was looking at the curiously tooled leather of the Water bag agai n. She raised it to her lips.Something like an explosion occurred in her head as she tasted the Water. She shuddered with the shock. Her right arm was numb to the shoulder, and it was her left hands grasp on the neck of the bag that prevented her from dropping it. Then she felt another shock like the first, and realized that Tsornin was between her legs, and he screamed with rage and fear. The sky seemed to be black, and there were shouts and shrieks all around her, and they echoed as in a high-walled valley. One more of those shocks and she would be out of the saddle. She felt it poised to fall on her and her vision cleared, and there was the table again. She looked at her right hand it was still there. She looked up. I dont I dont know exactly what I saw. I think I was in a battle and I seemed to be losing. She smiled weakly. Her right arm was still not operative properly, and Corlath lifted the bag out of her left hand.He took a sip in his turn and Harry, watching, saw his ey es change color till they were as yellow as they had been the first time she had seen him in the Residencys courtyard. Then he closed them, and she saw the muscles in his face and neck and the backs of his hands tense till she thought they would burst through the skin and then it was all over, and he opened his eyes, and they were brown. They moved to meet hers, and she thought she saw something of his vision still lingering there, and it was something like her own.I have seen our enemys face, Corlath said calmly. It is not pretty.Then the man came to carry the Water away, and the wine was brought back, and the shadows were chased away for a little. The Riders began looking expectantly toward Corlath, but this was a happier expectancy than that which had predicted the Meeldtar, and Harry caught the eagerness herself, though she knew not what it was for, and looked around for clues.They had eaten their meal only when in the vast hall, and their few voices ran up into the ceiling lik e live things with wills of their own. But after the Water bag had been taken away, people had begun to appear around the small dais where the king and his Riders sat they entered from all directions and settled on cushions or chairs. Some of them mounted the lower dais and sat around the great table that surrounded the Riders. More of the folk of the household appeared, some bearing trays and some low tables, and set out more food, or passed it among the increasing audience. There was a murmur of talk, low but excited. Harry rubbed her fingers up and down the length of the gold pin in her sash till it was no longer cold.One of the men brought Corlath his sword, and he stood up and slung the belt of it around him. Harry wondered sourly how many years it took to learn to sling oneself into a sword as easily as yawn and then wondered if she wanted to spend so many years that way. Or if she would have the choice. She had not liked waking up to find herself clutching her sword hilt as a child might clutch a favorite toy. Perhaps it was as well to have to think of shoulder and waist, belt and buckle. Another man came in, carrying another sword. Corlath took this one too, and held the scabbard in his left hand, letting the belt dangle and he pulled it free and waved it, gleaming, under the light of the candles in the great chandelier. There was a blue stone set in its hilt, and it glared defiantly in the light. This was a shorter lighter sword than Corlaths, but the suppleness of it, and the way it hung, waiting, in the air, gave it a look of infinite age, and sentience, as if it looked out at those who looked at it. This is Gonturan, said Corlath, and a murmur of assent and of recognition went around the hall the Riders were silent. She is the greatest treasure of my family. For a few years in his youth each son has carried her but she was not meant for a mans hands, and legend has it that she will betray the man who dares bear her after his twentieth year. This is the maam Aerins sword and it has been many a long year since there has been a woman to carry it.Harry was staring at the blade, and barely heard Corlaths words she was watching a flame-haired woman riding in a forest that seemed to grow against the flat of the shining sword in her hand was another sword, and the hilt sparkled blue.All the other Riders were standing up, and Corlath reached down and seized her wrist. Stand up, disi, he said. Im about to make you a Rider. She stood, dazed. A disi was a silly child. There was another who rode with the woman who carried the Blue Sword he rode a few paces behind her.A Rider? Harry said.A Rider, Corlath replied firmly.She dragged her eyes away from the winking sword edge and looked at him. Another man of the household set a small flat pot of yellow salve at Corlaths right hand. The king dipped the fingers of that hand in it, then drew them to smear the pick across his palm. He had shifted Gonturan to his left hand now he seized the blad e near the tip with his right, and gave it a quick twist. Damn, he said, as the blood welled between his fingers and dripped to the floor. He picked up a napkin and squeezed it. adjudge my sword, Harimad-sol, he said, and do the same but not so enthusiastically. I think, though, that Katuchim has not the sense of pander that Gonturan does, so do not fear him.She dipped her fingers in the salve, and touched them gently to her palm reached out and, as awkwardly as if she had never learned one lesson from Mathin, dragged Corlaths sword from its scabbard. It was so long she had to get the hilt against the table to get a reasonable angle on the edge. She closed her fingers around it, thought about something else, and felt the skin of her palm just part. She opened her hand, and three drops of blood only sprang from the thinnest of red lines across her skin. Well done said Mathin over her shoulder, and the Riders cheered and the whole hall picked it up, shouting.Corlath grinned down a t her, and she could not help smiling back. There have been more graceful kings and Riders since the world began, but well do, said Corlath to her, quietly, below the roar around them. Take your sword, and mind you treat her well. You will have Aerins shade to answer to, else.Harrys fingers closed round the blue hilt and she knew at once that she would handle this sword very well indeed or it would handle her. For a moment she found herself wishing that she had been carrying Gonturan the day of the trials, and at this a slow sly smile spread across her face. She raised her eyes to Corlaths face he had taken his own sword back and sheathed it, and one of the Riders was tying the napkin around the wounded hand and saying something sardonic but Corlath only laughed, and turned back to watch her. Such was the slow sly smile he offered her in return that she rather thought he knew just what she was thinking.Damalur-sol the people cried. Damalur-sol