“Yes we could!” Kim Ford lied, shouting it.

She was on her feet. The nearest guard shifted forward, but quailed at a paralyzing glare from Loren. “I brought your true King here from the edge of the sea last night, by the power I carry. I can take him to your army as easily, should the Dwarfmoot ask me to.”

Lies, lies. The Baelrath was gone. She kept both hands in her pockets all the time she spoke. It was no more than a bluff, as Loren’s words to the guard had been. So much was at stake, though, and she really wasn’t good at this sort of thing, she knew she wasn’t. Nonetheless she held her gaze fixed on Kaen’s and did not flinch: if he wanted to expose her, to show the Baelrath that had been stolen from her, then let him! He would have to explain to the Dwarfmoot how he got it—and then where would his talk of honor be?

Kaen did not speak or move. But from the side of the stage there came suddenly three loud, echoing thumps of a staff on the stone floor.

Miach moved forward, slowly and carefully as before, but his anger was palpable, and when he spoke he had to struggle to master his voice.

“Bravely done!” he said with bitter sarcasm. “A striving to remember! Never have I seen the rules so flouted in a challenge. Matt Sören, not even forty years away can justify the ignorance involved in your bringing an object into a striving! You knew the rules governing such things before you had seen ten summers. And you, Kaen! A ‘minor transgression’? How dare you speak a second time in a word-striving! What have we become that not even the oldest rules of our people are remembered and observed? Even to the extent”—he swung around to glare at Kimberly—“of having a guest speak in Seithr’s Hall during a challenge.”

This, she decided, was too much! Feeling her own pent-up fury, rising, she began a stinging retort and felt Loren’s punishing grip on her arm. She closed her mouth without saying a word, though her hands inside the pockets of her gown clenched into white fists.

Then she relaxed them, for Miach’s rage seemed to have spent itself with that brief, impassioned flurry. He seemed to shrink back again, no longer an infuriated patriarch but only an old man in troubled times, faced now with a very great responsibility.

He said, in a quieter, almost an apologetic voice, “It may be that the rules that were clear and important enough for all our Kings, from before Seithr down to March himself, are no longer paramount. It may be that none of the Dwarves have had to live through times so cloudy and confused as these. That a longing for clarity is only an old man’s wistfulness.”

Kim saw Matt shaking his head in denial. Miach did not notice. He was looking up at the lofty half-filled Hall. “It may be,” he repeated vaguely. “But even if it is, this striving is ended, and it is now for the Moot to judge. We will withdraw. You will all remain here”—the voice grew stronger again, with words of ritual—“until we have returned to declare the will of the Dwarfmoot. We give thanks for the counsel of your silence. It was heard and shall be given voice.”

He turned, and the others of the black-garbed Moot rose, and together they all withdrew from the stage, leaving Matt and Kaen standing there on either side of a table which held a shining Crown, and a shining Scepter, and a black sharp-edged fragment of the Cauldron of Khath Meigol.

Kim became aware that Loren’s hand was still squeezing her arm, very hard. He seemed to realize it in the same moment.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, easing but not releasing his grasp.

She shook her head. “I was about to say something stupid.”

This time the guards were careful not to test Loren’s patience by intervening again. Indeed, all about the Hall there was a rising swell of sound as the Dwarves, released from the bond of silence that had held them during the striving, began animatedly to discuss what had taken place. Only Matt and Kaen, motionless on the stage, not looking at each other, remained silent.

“Not stupid at all,” said Loren quietly. “You took a chance by speaking, but they needed to hear what you could do.”

Kim looked over at him with sudden dismay. His eyes narrowed at the sight of her consternation.

“What is it?” he whispered, careful not to be overheard.

Kim said nothing. Only withdrew her right hand slowly from its pocket, so that he could see what, clearly, he hadn’t seen before—the terrible absence of fire, the Baelrath gone.

He looked, and then he closed his eyes. She put her hand back in her pocket.

“When?” Loren asked, his voice thin and stretched.

“When we were ambushed. I felt it being taken. I woke this morning without it.”

Loren opened his eyes and looked at the stage, at Kaen. “I wonder,” he murmured. “I wonder how he knew.”

Kim shrugged. It hardly seemed to matter at this point. What mattered was that, as things stood, Kaen had been quite accurate in what he’d told the Dwarves. If the army was west of the mountains, there was nothing they could do to stop them now from fighting among the legions of the Dark.

Loren seemed to read her thoughts, or else they were his own as well. He said, “It is not over yet. In part, because of what you did. That was brightly woven, Kimberly—you blunted a thrust of Kaen’s, and you may have bought us time to do something.” He paused. His expression changed, became diffident and strained.

“Actually,” he amended, “you may have bought Matt time, and perhaps yourself. There isn’t much of anything I can do anymore.”

“That isn’t true,” Kim said, with all the conviction she could muster. “Wisdom carries its own strength.”

He smiled faintly at the platitude and even nodded his head. “I know. I know it does. Only it is a hard thing, Kim, it is a very hard thing to have known power for forty years and to have none of it now, when it matters so much.”

To this, Kim, who had carried her own power for only a little over a year and had fought it for much of that time, could find nothing to say.

There was no time for her to reply, in any case. The rustle of sound in the Hall rose swiftly higher and then, as swiftly, subsided into a stiff, tense silence.

In that silence the Dwarfmoot filed soberly back to their stone seats on the stage. For the third time Miach came forward to stand beside Kaen and Matt, facing the multitude in the seats above.

Kim glanced at Loren, rigid beside her. She followed the tall man’s gaze to his friend of forty years. She saw Mart’s mouth move silently. Weaver at the Loom, she thought, echoing the prayer she read on the Dwarf’s lips.

Then, wasting no time, Miach spoke. “We have listened to the speech of the word-striving and to the silence of the Dwarves. Hear now the rendering of the Dwarfmoot of Banir Lok. Forty years ago in this Hall, Matt, now also called Sören, threw down the symbols of his Kingship. There was no equivocation in what he did, no mistaking his intention to relinquish the Crown.”

Kim would have sold her soul, both her souls, for a glass of water. Her throat was so dry it hurt to swallow.

Miach went on, soberly, “At that same time did Kaen assume governance here under the mountains, nor was he challenged in this, nor has he been until this day. Even so, despite the urging of the Moot, Kaen chose not to make a crystal for the Lake or to pass a full moon night beside her shores. He never became our King.

“There is then, over and above all else, the Moot has decided, one question that must be answered in this striving. It has long been said in these mountain halls—so long it is now a catchphrase for us—that Calor Diman never surrenders her Kings. It was said today by Matt Sören, and the Moot heard him say it before we came forth for the judging. That, we have now decided, is not the question at issue here.”

Kim, desperately struggling to understand, to anticipate, saw Kaen’s eyes flash with a swiftly veiled triumph. Her heart was a drum, and fear beat the rhythm of it.