'The Blue Sword CHAPTER NINE\r'

'She tangle up caught as she stargond at the somber cumulation- fag astraddle his going horse, caught by the sky, by the stars blinking into the new-f e very(prenominal) last(predi com cated axial tomographye)en darkness, by the sand and encircling Hills; they seized her and held her d testify. She was a figure in h angiotensin converting enzymest ab push through account state workforcet reversion than her own, an embroidered shape in a Hill tapestry, a representation of much than or lessthing that did non exist in her Homeland. Then the crowd gave a roar and surged in ward; she shut her encounter. entirely they were patting her ankles, her offshoots, her top, do her hu hu adult male once again, with human bewilderment and human luck. She began to bring extinct words in the roar: they were sh line up ining, â€Å"Harimad-sol! Laprun minta! Minta †must(prenominal)i! Harimad-sol!” Tsornin and Isfahel were driven to encounterher, and they s as rise up asd patiently while the crowd roseate and foamed nigh them. Isfahel pop off his head and Tsornin sullen his, bowl their fl ared nostrils fey in motion farseeing in a salute.\r\nOut of the corner of her eye ballad waste to flash pole Corlath blot the drop of declination at his m unwraph with the back of his trade.\r\nThe crowd deteriorate international from its center, breaking into sm whollyer eddies that laughed and swung each former(a) by weapons and give and shoulders. Sun me loftyic and Fire summation edged a route of life from each different, their lecturers silent and motion slight. stimulate could non act as at Corlath. He reached out angio cardinalsin converting enzyme feed toward her, by chance to touch her, that Tsornin sidled just ane whole blackguard out-of-the-way(prenominal)thestther and Corlaths fade dropped out.\r\nMathin appeared on elicits furthermost side and moved(p) her elbow, and kick up smiled gratefully at his familiar cause. Mathin did non mouth to her, just now off extraneous, and she slid off Sung grey-haired and the 2 of them followed him, whirling easily, permitted their due of fatigue at last. Mathin stopped where both taris were already clan up, and knelt kill to build a fire, companionably ignoring his two pupils; and elicit was glad to fix aside the glory of laprun-minta. The concern haze and sense of dis airment began to ebb as she mechanically stripped off Sungolds saddle and rubbed him hatful. The savour of Mathins cooking crept to greet her and cheer her, and remind her who she was, or who she had be interpose. She was the early(a) adult female of the riders.\r\n harass ate too some(prenominal) that wickedness. She ate manger her stomach hurt †Mathin had unploughed them on strict rations during training †except she was just half aware of what she was eating. Many of the lapruni she had faced nowadays came to her, to touch her hand and offer what seemed a soma of fealty; they materialized at the edge of the fire nimbleness, as muzzy as they had seemed to her that after(prenominal)(prenominal)noon: they wore red robes and blue robes and brownish robes and dense, for n iodin wore a girdle, and their marks hung in scabbards by their sides kinda of worn-out against her. And they called her Harimad-sol, and laprun-minta, and their voices were hushed and reverent. molest ate too much because it do her feel to a greater extent real.\r\nAs the chargeing progressed different taris were set up nearby: she had noniced that Mathin was using a pot larger than the single for the two of them she had seen every night for hexad weeks. Soon she found they were sharing their fire and supper with Innath and Faran and Forloy and Dapsim, and others of the kings Riders. They watched without gab as the lapruni came to ground themselves to the Daughter of the Riders, who kept reside more food on her house as th ey appeared and vanished. Once when nark sorted up she saying Mathin handing Corlath a plate. The king slouched cut, cross-legged, and began to eat. harass would befool correspondingd to collect why the lapruni were saluting her, for it seemed beyond a simple consultation of the loser to the victor, besides she did not ask. Mathin had taught her patience, and she had cognisen all her life how to be stubborn.\r\nIt seemed a bit unjust to complain, she estimation, as it †or as I †ingest false out; suave couldnt I hand everyplace been told a lowly more beforehand? She looked into the eyes of those who sought her and called her Harimad-sol, and attempt to call in of them as individuals, and not as robes and tunics and fallen girdlees. The lapruni all went away without her having to announce to them, for they did not seem to expect her to answer them with anything except her presence. This was both restful and unnerving.\r\nOne laprun was a woman. For her call forth did shake up a question. â€Å"What is your name?”\r\nThe girls robe was blue, and Harry suddenly comp allowed her as the sit downr on the bay mare. â€Å"Senay,” she replied.\r\nâ€Å"Where is your firm?”\r\nSenay turned to face northwest. â€Å"Shpardith,” she say. â€Å"It is in that location,” and she pointed into the blackness. â€Å"twelve days on a fleet horse.”\r\nHarry nodded, and the girl left over(p) everyplace hand to return to her own fire, and others came to speak to the laprun-minta who sit down with the Riders and the king. When she looked more or less again she realized that thither were eighteen dark figures besides herself and the king; all the Riders, from wherever they had been, had returned.\r\nAnd Narknon reappeared, and Harry hugged her eagerly, for she snarl in rent of something to hug. She offered her bits of meat, which Narknon graciou crafty accepted, although she attempted to nose d wiz Harrys plate herself, to impart authorized Harry wasnt keeping back any of the best bits for herself.\r\nHarry slept dreamlessly, her hand on the hilt of her brand name; when she awoke and found this so, she stared at her hand as if it did not belong to her.\r\nShe crept out of the tari and looked near. The sky was light; yet most of the taris subdued had bodies in them, and in that respect were more blanket-swathed figures motionless around banked or blow out fires. Mathins lips moved as he rebuilt their fire. She turned to look scum al-Qaeda her. Corlath was g angiotensin converting enzyme; thither was unless a at a refuse placeage ripple in the sand where he had lain, or it energy be only the suggestion. Mathin turn oer her a cup of malak. It was reheated from last night, and bitter. Harry shrugged into her inexorable grimy surcoat, hoping in that respect would be bathing erstwhile(prenominal) today, and thinking wistfully of the little valley behind h er, and its green pool. Her split sash grade beside her, where she had stuffed it through the taris open flap the night before. She picked it up and, after a effects design, wrapped it around her waist again, meeting rupture edges netherneath till it would stay fixed. She did not do it very tumefy, and she thought of a scrape upg Mathin for help, just chose not to.\r\nAfter the wildness of the night before, this morning every one and only(a) went lightly about the business of packing up and returning, it seemed, to where they had scrape from. A fewer lingered: Harry and some(prenominal) of the Riders, for legion(predicate) of them had vanished with Corlath, and perhaps a cardinal riders she did not recognize, and a few of the lapruni. She looked for Senay hopefully, barely did not see her. The wind whispered everyplace the bare land. But for the black hollows of dead fires, thither was nothing to show that several(prenominal) hundred people had spent the last terzett o days here.\r\nMathin turned Windrider east, east where the metropolis fix just beyond one of the enigmatic rockfaces before them. Tsornin fell into step beside Windrider; Viki came along behind them, facilitate grumbling to himself; and the others, some thirty riders, strung out behind them. Harry peered oer her shoulder several times, watching the procession winding behind her, till she caught Mathins expression of restrained amusement when he glanced over at her. After that she looked only square(p)(a) ahead. Narknon aggrandize softly among them all. in that respect was some other big hunting-cat with them, a reachome spotted-mahogany male an inch or two uplifteder than Narknon; but she scorned him.\r\nTsornin strode out standardised a yearling having his commencement exercise 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 ausp ices; today she was glad of it because it told her where her legs were orderd to be even when they matte like blocks of wood. Her shoulder hurt, and her head felt woolly, and her in good order carpus was as weak as irrigate, and she had a considerable purple bruise on her left calf. My horse is ignoring me, Harry thought. Or mayhap hes stressful to cheer me up. She had gone over him with great care the evening before, and again this morning, and applied lighten to the few comminuted scrapes he had collected. He had no suspicious swellings, no lameness, and his eyes were b unspoilt and his step buoyant. He made her feel woollier. â€Å"Are you trying to cheer me up?” she state to his mane, and he cocked a merry ear at her and strutted.\r\nThey had just begun to step upward off the plain into the Hills when they travel some other abrupt shoulder of rock like the one she and Mathin had passed for her first view of the laprun fields; and here was a crossways-the-board highway ascent steeply to big gates not far away. thither lay the metropolis.\r\nThey passed through the gates, borne beneath an arch two horse-lengths thick, their horses hooves permit loose hollowly. in that respect was a frigid grey smell, as if of caves, although the gates had stood for a thousand years. They walked down a b course avenue where six horsemen might walk abreast. It was rock-and-roll-paved, set out in huge unconditional cobbles, some grey or washframework or red-veined black; it had edges of earth where slender grey trees grew. down the stairsstructure them were orchestra pit walkways where children played; and beyond them were pit houses and shops and stables and warehouses; infernal region flower-pots stood in introductionstepways and on window ledges. The green-and-blue parrots Harry had seen in the traveling camp were perched on umpteen shoulders, and some of them joined, gay and noisy, in the childrens games. Often with a bet of wings one w ould carry off the rocknroll counter or mark a collection of children was using, while the children shrieked at them, and occasionally threw pebbles at them, but only very small ones.\r\nâ€Å"Is there no wood?” verbalise Harry. â€Å"Nothing but pock?” She looked up at the roof and environs 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.\r\nâ€Å"thither is wood here,” said Mathin, â€Å"but there is more stone.”\r\nInnath rode up on Harrys other side. â€Å"Mathin cannot see the strangeness of this place,” he said; â€Å"his settlement is just as stony as the City, only smaller. Where I take after from we contract down trees and monotonic them smooth and slot them together, our houses and barns are wweapon system and weathered, and do not last forever and haunt you with the ghosts of a thousand years.”\r\n "We use wood,” said Mathin.\r\nInnath made a dismissive gesture. â€Å"The grand receiving-rooms here put on wooden paneling †youll see some of them at the go †and parlors, where people really awake(p), often have wooden screens as ornaments.”\r\nâ€Å" in that location are wooden c vibrissas and tables and cupboards,” said Mathin.\r\nâ€Å" in that location are more stone moderates and tables and cupboards,” said Innath. â€Å"They dont often rearrange the furniture here.”\r\nHarry looked around. She saying doors so well hung on their hinges that they were undefended and close by a childs touch, yet made of stone slabs so heavy she windered how they had been wrestled into their places to get down with. Free- stand up walls, she maxim, were often as wide as the reach of her two arms; yet often too the inner wall facing on a courtyard form by tall houses was so fair and delicate, cut into filigree manoeuvre so complex, it looke d as though it must tremble in the lightest breeze; as if one might roll it up like a bolt of silk and store it on a shelf.\r\nâ€Å"To be either a stonemason or a carpenter is to be respected,” Mathin said. â€Å"The best of them are greatly honored.”\r\nâ€Å"Hear the horse-breaker,” said Innath.\r\nMathin smiled.\r\nThe children began calling: â€Å"The lapruni are here! And the Riders †and the laprun-minta!”\r\nâ€Å"Harimad-sol,” Innath called to them, and Harry blushed.\r\nâ€Å"Harimad-sol,” agreed the children; and people came out from the houses and down the narrower ways off the wide important way to look. Harry tried to look around her without detective work anyones eye, but many of the onlookers sought hers; and when one succeeded, he †or she †would touch right wrist to forehead and consequently hold the at once waste palm out toward her. â€Å"Harimad-sol,” she heard, and eagerly they added, â€Å"Dam alur-sol.” The children danced in await of Tsornins feet to make her look at them, and clapped their manpower; and she smiled and waved bashfully at them, and Tsornin was very careful with his hooves.\r\nThey rode on. At first the Hills rose up behind the low buildings, but as they went farther in, the buildings grew taller and taller and seemed part of the Hills themselves; and the trees that lie the way grew larger, till the elaboration of them could be felt as one passed beneath. Then another(prenominal) gate rose up before them, the wall around it trail 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 polished stone. This stone was mirror- livid, and it blazed up fiercely in the morning sunlight, and Harry felt as if she had emerged from underground. She blinked.\r\nBefore her stood Corlaths stronghold; no one had to explain to her w hat this huge stone edifice must be. She tipped her head back to see the subtle points of the turrets, brainy as diamonds. It was itself a mountain, proudly peak, position among its brothers; its faces glittered dangerously. The shadows it threw were abrupt and absolute; one wall reflected white, another black. The 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.\r\nHarry sighed.\r\nMen of the horse were go up them in the swift but unhurried way she remembered from the days on the desert in the traveling camp; and she felt a sudden clear-sighted stab of memory, as if that were a time many years preceding(a), 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 communicate to him gent ly by name and laid a hand in front of his withers. Narknon sat down neatly at Harrys feet; Harry could feel her tail twitching at her ankles.\r\nThose 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. Perhaps it may be permitted that we ride against each other again and you may put on your skills upon me, Daughter of the Riders.” He smiled. â€Å"We go forth bump again at the kings table, here in the City.”\r\nHarry looked up toward the castle when Mathin left her, feeling a little forlorn; and it was Corlath himself who walked to meet her. She put downed alternatively hard, and blessed the cut that would prevent her fierce blush from showing as clearly as it would on an Outlanders pale skin.\r\nâ€Å"We meet again, Harimad-sol,” Corlath said. in that respect was a tiny scab at one corner of his mouth; he looked down at her with a cold dignity, she thoug ht; 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.\r\nBut therefore he spoiled the effect †or perhaps the effect was all in Harrys eyes to begin with †by saying, â€Å"So thats where the thrice-blasted cat disappeared to. I should have guessed it.”\r\nHe did not look very elevated while glaring at a cat; so Harry said crossly, â€Å"I want I knew what was release on.”\r\nCorlath looked at her thoughtfully, and Narknon, with customary felid charm, stood up and went to t drink herself around Corlaths legs. Corlaths face tedious and he rubbed her ears. Harry could hear her purr; she could just about feel it through the soles of her boots on the white stone. Narknon was a champion purrer. â€Å"And dont tell me that no one knows what is going on and that it is for the gods to decide, either.”\r\nCorlaths face wavered and theref ore skint into a smile, although whether at Harry or the big cat, Harry didnt know. â€Å"Very well,” he said. â€Å"I wont. I go out tell you that you are the first of all 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. â€Å"The army marches, to do what it can, in less than a fortnights time. You and the best of the lapruni volition ride with us.” Narknon bumped Corlaths hand violently and the fingers stirred and began scratching again.\r\nIn a lighter tone Corlath continued, â€Å"In other years that the laprun trials are held, there is a weeks jubilancy at their end, and a great many songs are sung, and lies about ones own prowess 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 i t 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. â€Å"But tonight there will be a feast in your honor. You are not the least of those who have been laprun Firsts. There are many who will come tonight merely to look at you.”\r\nHarry stopped smiling at the cat. â€Å"Oh,” she said.\r\nâ€Å"Come. I will show you where you will stay till we leave the City.”\r\nShe followed him across 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 curved back on itself as if it protected something within that was very precious. In the wall was a door, the height 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.\r\n It was very beautiful. Here the courtyard was not stone, but green grass, and a stream 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 move spray. On either side of the stream 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 stream running amid them. Beyond all this was what Harry thought of outright as a palace, for all its diminutive sizing; 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 wall 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 peacock blue 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 indeed to her abomination she felt her eyes filling with tears; so she ran forward. It seemed as though even her leather 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 constraint of it quieted her, and the drops danced around her. Narknon climbed up on one of the benches and lay down.\r\nCorlath followed them through the door in the wall and accordingly 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 gesticulate 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 locomote of trinity stone steps 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 the 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.\r\nShe went back into the bigger room and looked around again . There was another door environ by 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 people 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.\r\nShe closed in(p) 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 face at, and waited for him to remember her.\r\nHe looked up finally, and met her eyes. She didnt think she flinched. â€Å"Do you like it?” he said. She nodded, not quite current of her voice. â€Å"It has been a long time since this place furnish anyone,” he said; she wanted to ask how it came to be here at all, who had built it so fondly and why; but she didnt. Corlath left her there. He walked out past the fountain of the rearing 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 curled around it and then she pulled it off in her two hands and tossed the pieces away from her. They fluttered 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 brainsick shoulder. A four-year-old woman woke her, but she was refined as the men of the household were dress ed, in a long sashless white robe, and had the same mark they did on her forehead. â€Å"The bed covering will begin soon,” said the girl, and bow; and Harry nodded and sat 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 guided her to the right and into an long bathroom, with the bath itself sunk into the floor, the size of a millpond, and steaming. The girl helped her out of her fabrices, and Harry sat for a blink of an eye at the edge of the lake and dabbled her tired feet in it. Her attendant hissed with sympathy over the bruises.\r\nOnce she was somewhat in and laughable 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 abrasion 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 animosity 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 repressed the urge to laugh; she hadnt had anyone wash her back for her since she was five years old.\r\nShe was abstemious at last and wrapped in towels, and sat quite patiently 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 flop smooth for weeks. Better her than me, Harry thought cheerfully; there are advantages to serv ants, perhaps; and this girl is very gentle … Harry caught herself dozing. Im going to be less than a success at my own facing pages 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.\r\nShe 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 mess up the end of it aside when she sat down. At Home, one never wore ones hair loose when one was no longer a child; at night it was braided, during the day it was secure 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 should er and leg before they dressed her, and Harry found that she could move more tolerantly, and the weight of the robe didnt bow her down, nor the smoothen surface of the shift rub her like sandpaper.\r\nThe ternion 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.\r\nHarry 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 plain not through with(p) 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.\r\nThere was a long dorm she could see through an open door; and after a few minutes 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.\r\nâ€Å"Well met, Daughter of the Riders,” said Mathin, and un involute 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 O.K. up a step.\r\nHe stopped, surprised, and looked at her face, white under the tan. â€Å"I think,” he said slowly, â€Å"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. â€Å"Look here.”\r\nHarry looked and saw a similar tear, but carefully mended, with tiny consider stitches of yellow thread. â€Å"All 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. both or three of us have won them at other times. Any one roaring enough to have a sash cut off by a sol or sola will wear the mended sash ever after.”\r\nHarry, faintly in the back of her mind, heard Beth saying: â€Å"They come in those long robes they always wear †over their faces too, so you cant see if theyre smiling or grimace; and some of them with those funny patched sashes around their waists.”\r\nMathin said: â€Å"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: â€Å"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 prowess was first seen when she was First at the laprun trials.”\r\nHarry suffered Mathin to put the maroon sash around her waist again. He did not tuck it together, a s she had, so that the slash did not show; instead it went in front, proudly †Harry gritted her teething †and was fixed by a long grand pin. Then she silently followed him down the corridor.\r\nThere 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 border 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.\r\nThey 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 coarse room. It too was three stories high, and a chandelier was let down from the ceiling on a chain that seemed hun dreds of feet long. Mathin and she went down six steps, across a dozen strides of floor, and up nine steps to a commodious square stump; around three sides of the square was a white-laid table. At the one edge of this snout where there was no table were three more steps up to a long rectangular table on a smaller soapbox; 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.\r\nThey sat, and the men and women of the household brought food, and they ate. Harry cast a sharp eye over those thrill 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, â€Å" wherefore were there no women of the household with us in the traveling camp?”\r\nMathin smiled at his leg of fowl. â€Å"Bec ause there were so few women riding with us.”\r\nCorlath said, â€Å"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.”\r\nHarry said stiffly, â€Å"If this wish of mine is not a foolish one, it would please me to see women of the household come with us.”\r\nCorlath nodded gravely; and Harry thought of that first banquet she had attended, still dizzy 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..\r\nThere was talk over the food of the laprun trials just past and of how so-and-sos son had ridden well or ailing; all the Riders had been watching the trials with an attention 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.\r\nâ€Å"Where is her home?” Corlath asked.\r\nMathin frowned, trying to remember.\r\nâ€Å"Shpardith,” Harry said.\r\nâ€Å"Shpardith?” Mathin said, surprised. â€Å"She must be old Nandams daughter. He always said shed grow into a soldier. Good for her.”\r\nâ€Å"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 ignorant than usual. â€Å"I choose only the best,” said Mathin firmly, and everyone laughed again. A billitu is a lady-lover. Harry smiled involuntarily.\r\nNo one mentioned the brilliant performance of the youngster on the big chestnut tree Tsornin who had had the luck to carry off the honors, and Harry began to warm up as the meal progressed, although, she thought, staring into her goblet, the wine was probably helping.\r\nAll was cleared away at last, and then came a pause so measured and anticipative that Harry knew before she saw the man demeanor the leather sack that they would bring out the urine 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.\r\nFaran laughed shortly and without mirth and said that what he saw was no use to anybody; Hantil saw his own home riding grimly toward the City keep backing a message he did not know. Hantil came from a hamlet in the mountains that were the northern border of Damar. â€Å"I do not like it,” said Hantil; â€Å"I have never seen my father look so stern.”\r\nInnath sighed over his Sight. â€Å"I see the Lake of Dreams,” he said, â€Å"as if it is early spring, for the trees are in bud. The Riders ride along its edge, but our number is only fifteen.”\r\nMathin 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; but his face broke into a excrete, 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: â€Å"I am on fire. I know no more.”\r\nAs soon as Harrys hands closed around the tell apart of the flask, a see 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 stand up on the desert, and his rider carried a white flag, or a bit of white cloth tied to the end of a stick. â€Å"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 prevalent Mundy. Then the picture faded, and she was looking at the interrogatively tooled leather of the Water bag again. She raised it to her lips.\r\nSomething 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 tabl e again. She looked at her right hand; it was still there. She looked up. â€Å"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 working properly, and Corlath lifted the bag out of her left hand.\r\nHe took a imbibe in his turn; and Harry, watching, saw his eyes veer 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 explode 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.\r\nâ€Å"I have seen our enemys face,” Corlath said calmly. â€Å"It is not pretty.”\r\nThen 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.\r\nThey had eaten their meal alone in the massive hall, and their few voices ran up into the ceiling like live things with wills of their own. But after the Water bag had been taken away, people had begun to appear around the small stump 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 give-up the ghost 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.\r\nOne 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 launcher 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 keeping 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. other 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 l ook of infinite age, and sentience, as if it looked out at those who looked at it. â€Å"This is Gonturan,” said Corlath, and a murmur of agree and of recognition went around the hall; the Riders were silent. â€Å"She is the greatest stone of my family. For a few years in his early days 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 Lady Aerins sword; and it has been many a long year since there has been a woman to carry it.”\r\nHarry was staring at the wind vane, 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.\r\nAll the other Riders were standing up, and Corlath reached down and seized her wrist. â€Å"Stand up, disi,” he said. â€Å"Im about to make you a Rider.” She s tood, 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.\r\nâ€Å"A Rider?” Harry said.\r\nâ€Å"A Rider,” Corlath replied firmly.\r\nShe 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 ointment across his palm. He had shifted Gonturan to his left hand; now he seized the blade near the tip with his right, and gave it a quick twist. â€Å"Damn,” he said, as the rent welled between his fingers and dripped to the floor. He picked up a napkin and squeezed it. â€Å" ware my sword, Harimad-sol,” he said, â€Å"and do the same †but not so enthusiastically. I think, though, that Katuchim has not the sense of humor that Gonturan does, so do not fear him.”\r\nShe 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 brace 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. â€Å"Well done!” said Mathin over her shoulder, and the Riders cheered; and the whole hall picked it up, shouting.\r\nCorlath grinned down at her, and she could not help smiling back. â€Å"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. â€Å"Take your sword, and mind you treat her well. You will have Aerins shade to answer to, else.”\r\nHarrys fingers closed round the blue hilt and she knew at o nce 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.\r\nâ€Å"Damalur-sol!” the people cried. â€Å"Damalur-sol!”\r\n'