"Saddle one more than you planned to," she whispered merrily, "because I'm coming with you."

"You are what?"

I tried to scramble to my feet, but I was surprised past scrambling.

"B-But, Danelle! Surely you know there would be conniptions through the upper ranks of the Order if they heard you'd even suggested such an arrangement, and worse still if they heard I had listened to your madness."

Her smile was steady and deadly serious.

"I can think of worse conniptions," she announced with bright menace.

At once, in a cascade of thoughts as rapid as floodwater, I rushed through my litany of wrongs, past the marked playing cards of my wealthy early days in the castle and on to the black-market selling of spices from the larder, even including the steady trade in rustled horses and hustled armor I had planned until fear, second thoughts, and Bayard's instructions had set in.

It was all accounted for. All, that is, except Marigold.

Who, when I had come to the castle a raw lad of seventeen, hungry for leisure and money and baked goods, had shared my interest in pastry with such zeal that croissants and pies had led to… other things. Many were the narrow hours of the morning when I scurried down the back corridors of the castle, seeking the darkest route from chamber to chamber, wrapped in a crumb-covered bedsheet.

It was a weak spot in my armor. For even when I signed on for a squirehood of chastity and service, I figured that it was too much to tackle both virtues right away. So the dalliance with Marigold continued until it became an embarrassment: The cakes she sent to my quarters with her maidservants took on naughtier and naughtier shapes until even the stable grooms would blush when they gossiped about it.

"Wait a half-mile from the castle, a little after dawn," I whispered. "On the Highland Road, out of sight of the battlements. Bring a good horse and a blanket and provisions for a week's ride."

Dannelle's eyes widened with each sentence. When I had finished she gaped at me, swallowed hard, and nodded.

"A half-mile from the castle," she whispered. "A little after dawn."

Then, like a vision, she slipped into the darkness of the paddock and, passing through the horses and the rain beyond them, found the entrance to the tower, closing the heavy door behind her.

Leaning against Lily, my old mare, who stood sleeping in her stall, I looked up through the downpour at Dannelle's high window.

Yes, it was best to take the girl along.

For if she broke the news about my evenings with Marigold, the mere aftershock of the telling might break a few more legs around the castle. Far better to cart her miles away, to avoid upheaval and her considerable talent with tales and rumors and revelations.

And she was pretty.

I chuckled to myself.

She would slow us down, of course, and no doubt cause further dissension in my ranks. I would have to watch Alfric around her, and Ramiro himself was not to be trusted.

And yet…

I remembered a time when this paddock had been a topiary, the window covered with vines. When I had looked up through shrubbery and night and watched the light in that window like a baying dog waiting for red Lunitari in the dark sky.

Could those moonstruck nights have really been years ago?

After a minute or so, a light flickered on in Dannelle's chamber. I smiled and propped my chin against Lily's cool, wet-smelling back. The old mare whickered, shifting her weight from flank to flank, dreaming no doubt of bittersweet memories.

"A long time ago, I thought she liked me." I whispered. "Is there still a chance, old girl?"

Chapter VII

Rain was general throughtout Solamnia. The waters had risen above the stone fences that portioned off the country south of the Vingaard River. Risen so high, in fact, that in some places the fences were submerged, and the servants said that from the heights of the Cat Tower one could look north and west to where the Vingaard had overflowed its banks and see only thatched roofs in the lowlands where houses had once dotted the landscape- thatched roofs afloat on a muddy, swirling tide of water.

We grew uneasy at home, of course, because of the well beneath us. For years, Castle di Caela had enjoyed running water, pipes, and plumbing, because one of Sir Robert's ancestors possessed the foresight to build the place above an enormous artesian well. Now good fortune rebounded on us with a vengeance, for those subterranean springs had dangerously little natural outlet to the surface, as the ground water slowed the customary seepage and flow. The more nervous of the engineers had nightmares in which all of Castle di Caela rode a monstrous geyser into the Solamnic skies and was dashed, inhabitants and all, when it hurtled to earth miles away.

Only the highlands, it seems, remained reasonably dry, a narrow ridge of waterlogged land that extended due west from Castle di Caela nearly twenty miles until it rose even farther into the foothills of the Vingaard Mountains. A traveler, it seems, could forget about fording the river and follow that ridge along its cobbled spine, known as the Highlands Road. From there, he might enter the known passes through the mountains by a way obscure and roundabout.

Legends emerge from this time: incredible stories of strange migrations and drownings. When the waters cleared finally, over a month after the ceremonial evening in which I was knighted, travelers and scavengers continued to find the bones of birds dotting the landscape-sparrows and nightingales and the heavier skeletons of owls and raptors. Tales arose that the trees in which the larger birds slept were overwhelmed by water, rapidly and violently, catching the sleepers unaware. And as for the smaller birds, why, they simply dropped from exhaustion, having flown in circles for days without finding a place to alight.

As for the folk who dwelt in the countryside of Southern Solamnia, it seems that for once the poor fared better than their more wealthy countrymen. For the poor built their houses of wood instead of stone, and many of them floated away north and east across the plains, where they settled on higher ground, some of them beyond the Vingaard Keep halfway to the Dargaard Mountains.

Whatever the circumstance, people vanished, people drowned. And people floated away, their far destinations a mystery.

There was little mystery, on the other hand, about our setting forth.

The next morning after the incidents in the stable, six horses were assembled in the bailey and led to a plot of high ground where we did not have to mount them in ankle-deep standing water. Two of the horses were laden with supplies-food, dry clothing, and extra weaponry, all wrapped under canvas, from which most of the water ran in little rivulets onto the ground.

Our provisions were dry for now, but if the rain continued, I foresaw trouble in the making.

The other horses were for the four of us, of course: Ramiro and his squire Oliver, and the two Pathwarden boys, Alfric and me. Only recently pried from his rank-smelling hideaway, Alfric managed to do a fairly decent job of guiding Lily out of the unnaturally quiet stable, and into the brisk, damp air of the Solamnic predawn. He took his place with Oliver behind Ramiro and me, sullenly holding on to the reins of one of the pack animals.

I was drowsy that morning, having dozed fitfully in the stable as Oliver prepared four horses-Ramiro's, his own, and the two pack animals. I awoke now and then to the faint light of the lantern nodding against the flanks of horses, to the rush of rain on the roof, and Lily's blissful snoring. To the sounds of Oliver busy at some unattended detail with a voiceless efficiency that was almost frightening, making me wonder if this was how a real squire was supposed to behave.