Today he sank down in the water to his chin and pretended not to watch through his eyelashes as Betriz scrambled up onto a rock, translucent linen dripping, black hair streaming down over her trembling curves. She stretched her arms to the sun before belly-flopping forward to splash Iselle, who ducked and shrieked and splashed her back. The days were shortening now, the nights were cooling, and likewise the afternoons. The festival of the ascent of the Son of Autumn was at hand. It had been too cool to swim all last week—only a few days were likely left warm enough to make these private wet river excursions tolerable. Fast gallops, and the hunt, would soon entice his ladies to drier delights. And his good sense would return to him like a strayed dog. Wouldn't it?

THE SLANTING LIGHT AND CHILLING AIR DROVE THE lingering swimming party from the water to dry a while on the stony banks. Cazaril was so drenched in mellow ease that he didn't even make them conduct their idle chitchat in Darthacan or Roknari. At last he pulled on his heavy riding trousers and boots—good new boots, a gift from the Provincara—and his sword belt. He tightened the browsing horses' girths and removed their hobbles, and helped the ladies mount. Reluctantly, with many backward glances at the sylvan river glade falling behind, the little cavalcade wound up the hill to the castle.

In a spurt of recklessness, Cazaril pressed his horse forward to match pace with Betriz's. She glanced across at him, quick fugitive dimple winking. Was it want of courage, or want of wits that turned his tongue to wood in his mouth? Both, he decided. He and the Lady Betriz attended Iselle together daily. If some ponderous attempt of his at dalliance should prove unwelcome, might it damage the precious ease that had grown between them in the royesse's service? No—he must, he would say something—but her horse broke into a trot at the sight of the castle gate, and the moment was lost.

As they entered the courtyard, the scrape of their horses' hooves echoing hollowly on the cobbles, Teidez burst from a side door, crying "Iselle! Iselle!"

Cazaril's hand leapt to his sword hilt in shock—the boy's tunic and trousers were bespattered with blood—then fell away again at the sight of the dusty and grimy dy Sanda trudging along behind his charge. Teidez's gory appearance was merely the result of an afternoon training session at Valenda's butcher's yard. It wasn't horror that drove his excited cries, but rapture. The round face he turned up to his sister was shining with joy.

"Iselle, the most wonderful thing has happened! Guess, guess!"

"How am I to guess—" she began, laughing.

Impatiently he waved this away; his news tumbled from his lips. "A courier from Roya Orico just arrived. You and I are ordered to attend upon him this fall at court in Cardegoss! And Mother and Grandmama are not invited! Iselle, we're going to escape from Valenda!"

"We're going to the Zangre?" Iselle whooped, and slid from her saddle to grab her brother's reeking hands and whirl with him around the courtyard. Betriz leaned on her saddlebow and watched, her lips parted in thrilled delight.

Their lady-in-waiting pursed her lips in much less delight. Cazaril caught Ser dy Sanda's eye. The royse's tutor's mouth was set in a grim frown.

Cazaril's stomach lurched, as the coins of conclusion dropped. The Royesse Iselle was ordered to court; therefore her little household would accompany her to Cardegoss. Including her handmaiden Lady Betriz.

And her secretary.

The royse and royesse's caravan approached Cardegoss from the south road. They struggled up a rise to find the whole of the plain between the cradling mountains rolling out below their feet.

Cazaril's nostrils flared as he drew in the sharp wind. Cold rain last night had scoured the air clean. Tumbling banks of slate-blue clouds shredded away to the east, echoing the lines of the wrinkled blue-gray ranges hugging the horizon. Light from the west thrust across the plains like a sword stroke. Rising up on its great rock jutting out above the angle where two streams met, dominating the rivers, the plains, the mountain passes, and the eyes of all beholders, the Zangre caught the light and blazed like molten gold against the dark retreating cloud banks. Its ochre stone towers were crowned and capped with slate roofs the color of the scudding clouds, like an array of iron helmets upon a valiant band of soldiers. Favored seat of the royas of Chalion for generations, the Zangre appeared from this vantage all fortress, no palace, as dedicated to the business of war as any soldier-brother sworn to the holy orders of the gods.

Royse Teidez urged his black horse forward next to Cazaril's bay and stared eagerly at their goal, his face lit with a kind of awed avarice. Hunger for the promise of a larger life, free of the careful constraints of mothers and grandmothers, Cazaril supposed, certainly. But Teidez would have to be much duller than he appeared not to be wondering right now if this luminous miracle of stone could be his, someday. Why, indeed, had the boy been called to court, if Orico, despairing at last of ever getting heirs of his own body, was not meaning to groom him as his successor?

Iselle halted her dappled gray and stared nearly as eagerly as Teidez. "Strange. I remembered it as larger, somehow."

"Wait till we get closer," Cazaril advised dryly.

Ser dy Sanda, in the van, motioned them forward, and the whole train of riders and pack mules started down the muddy road once more: the two royal youths, their secretary-guardians, Lady Betriz, servants, grooms, armed outriders in the green-and-black livery of Baocia, extra horses, Snowflake—who might at this point more aptly be named Mudpot—and all their very considerable baggage. Cazaril, veteran of a number of hair-tearingly aggravating noble ladies' processions, regarded the progress of the convoy as a wonder of dispatch. It had taken only five days to ride from Valenda, four and a half, really. Royesse Iselle, ably backed by Betriz, had driven her subhousehold with verve and efficiency. Not one of the journey's inevitable delays could be laid to her feminine caprice.

In fact both Teidez and Iselle had pushed their entourage to its best speed from the moment they'd ridden out of Valenda and galloped ahead to outdistance Ista's heart-wrenching wails, audible even over the battlements. Iselle had clapped her hands over her ears and steered her horse with her knees till she'd escaped the echo of her mother's extravagant grief.

The news that her children were ordered from her had thrown the dowager royina, if not into madness outright, into deep distraction and despair. She had wept, and prayed, and argued, and, at length, gone silent, a relief of sorts. Dy Sanda had confided to Cazaril how she'd cornered him and tried to bribe him into flying with Teidez, where and how being unclear. He described her as gibbering, clutching, barely short of foam-flecked.

She had cornered Cazaril, too, in his chamber packing his saddlebags the night before the departure. Their conversation went rather differently; or at least, whatever it had been, it wasn't gibbering.

She had regarded him for a long, silent, and unnerving moment before saying abruptly, "Are you afraid, Cazaril?"

Cazaril considered his reply, and finally answered simply and truthfully, "Yes, my lady."

"Dy Sanda is a fool. You, at least, are not."

Not knowing what to say to this, Cazaril inclined his head politely.

She inhaled, her eyes gone huge, and said, "Protect Iselle. If ever you loved me, or your honor, protect Iselle. Swear it, Cazaril!"

"I swear."

Her eyes searched him, but rather to his surprise she did not demand more elaborate protestations, or reassuring repetitions.

"From what shall I protect her?" Cazaril asked cautiously. "What do you fear, Lady Ista?"

She stood silent in the candlelight.

Cazaril recalled Palli's effective entreaty. "Lady, please do not send me blindfolded into battle!"

Her lips puffed, as from a blow to the stomach; but then she shook her head in despair, whirled away, and rushed from the room. Her attendant, obviously worried to the point of exasperation, had blown out her breath and followed her.

Despite the memory of Ista's infectious agitation, Cazaril found his spirits lifted from their mire of dread by the young people's excitement as their goal neared. The road met the river that flowed out of Cardegoss, and ran alongside it as they descended into a wooded area. At length, Cardegoss's second stream joined the main. A chill draft coursed through the shaded valley. On the side of the river opposite the road, three hundred feet of cliff face erupted from the ground and soared aloft. Here and there, little trees clung desperately to crevices, and ferns spilled down over the rocks.

Iselle paused to stare up, and up. Cazaril reined his horse in beside hers. From here, one could not even see the beginnings of the human masons' puny defensive additions decorating the top of this natural fortress wall.

"Oh," said Iselle.

"My," added Betriz, joining them craning in their necks.

"The Zangre," said Cazaril, "has never in its history been taken by assault."

"I see," breathed Betriz.

A few floating yellow leaves, promise of autumn to come, whirled away down the dark stream. The party pressed their horses forward, climbing up out of the valley to where a great stone arch, leading to one of the seven gates of the city, spanned the stream. Cardegoss shared the stream-carved plateau with the fortress. The town ramparts flared back along the tops of the ravines like the shape of a boat with the Zangre at its prow, then turned inward in a long wall forming the stern.

In the clear light of this crisp afternoon, the city failed signally to look sinister. Markets, glimpsed down side streets, were bright with food and flowers, thronged with men and women. Bakers and bankers, weavers and tailors and jewelers and saddlers, together with such trades and crafts that were not required by their need for running water to be down by the riversides, offered their wares. The royal company rode through the misnamed Temple Square, which had five sides, one for each of the big regional mother-houses of the gods' holy orders. Divines, acolytes, and dedicats strode along, looking more harried and bureaucratic than ascetic. In the square's vast paved center, the familiar cloverleaf-and-tower shape of Cardegoss's Temple of the Holy Family bulked, impressively more extensive than the homey little version in Valenda.

To Teidez's ill-concealed impatience, Iselle demanded a stop here, and sent Cazaril scurrying into the temple's echoing inner courtyard to lay an offering of coins upon the altar of the Lady of Spring in gratitude for their safe journey. An acolyte took charge of it with thanks and stared curiously at Cazaril; Cazaril mumbled a brief distracted prayer and hurried back out to mount again.

Climbing the long shallow slope toward the Zangre, they passed through streets where houses of the nobility, built of dressed stone and with elaborate iron grilles protecting windows and gates, loomed shoulder to shoulder, high and square. The dowager royina had lived in one such, for a time in her early widowhood. Iselle excitedly identified three possible candidates for her childhood home, until, overcome with confusion, she made Cazaril promise to determine later which had been hers.

At last they rode up to the great gate of the Zangre itself. A natural cleft across the plateau opened just before it into a sharp shadowed crevice, more daunting than any moat. On the far side, huge boulders formed the lowest course of stones in the walls; irregular, but fitting so tightly a knife blade could not have slid between them. Atop them, fine Roknari work, its delicate traceries of geometric decoration seeming sugar rather than stone. Atop that, yet more crisp-cut stone, towering higher and higher as if men competed with the gods who had thrown up the great rock the whole edifice stood upon. The Zangre was the only castle Cazaril had ever been in where he suffered whirling vertigo standing at the bottom looking up.

A horn sounded from above, and soldiers in the livery of Roya Orico saluted as they rode across the drawbridge and through the narrow archway into the courtyard. Lady Betriz clutched her reins and stared around with her lips parted. The courtyard was dominated by a huge high rectangular tower, newest and crispest, the addition of the reign of Roya Ias and Lord dy Lutez. Cazaril had always wondered if its great size was a measure of the men's strength... or their fears. A little beyond it, almost as high, a round tower loomed at one corner of the main block. Its slate roof was tumbled in, and its tall top ragged and broken.

"Dear gods," said Betriz, staring at the half ruin, "what happened there? Why don't they repair it?"

"Ah," said Cazaril, thrown into tutorial mode, considerably more for his own reassurance than Betriz's. "That's the tower of Roya Fonsa the Wise." Known more commonly, after his death, as Fonsa the Fairly-Wise. "They say he used to walk upon it all night, trying to read the will of the gods and the fate of Chalion in the stars. On the night he worked his miracle of death magic upon the Golden General, a great storm and gouts of lightning threw down the roof, and set a fire that didn't burn out until morning despite the torrents of rain."

When the Roknari had first invaded from the sea, they had overrun most of Chalion, Ibra, and Brajar in their first violent burst, even past Cardegoss, to the very feet of the southern mountain ranges. Darthaca itself had been threatened by their advance parties. But from the ashes of the weak Old Kingdoms and the harsh cradle of the hills new men had emerged, fighting for generations to regain what had been lost in those first few years. Warrior-thieves, they made an economy of raiding; noble fortunes were not made, but stolen. Turnabout, for the Roknari idea of tax collection was a column of soldiers taking all in their winding path at sword's point, like locusts in arms. Bribe and counterbribe turned the columns back, until Chalion was become an odd interlocking dance of counting armies and armed accountants. But over time, the Roknari were pushed back north toward the sea again, leaving behind as legacy a residue of castles and brutality. At length the invaders were reduced to the five squabbling princedoms hugging the north coast.

The Golden General, the Lion of Roknar, had looked to reverse the ebb of his history. By war, guile, and marriage he had in ten blazing years united all five princedoms for almost the first time since the Roknari had landed. Barely thirty, he'd gathered a great tide of men into his hands, preparing to sweep south once more, declaring he would wipe the Quintarian heretics and the worship of the Bastard from the face of the land with fire and sword. Desperate and disunited, Chalion, Ibra, and Brajar were losing against him on every front.