who developed a liking for him, was content with that; the prince was not. For an entire sike she venomously plotted his death. Then it suddenly occurred to her that Egarn was by far the bravest person she had ever met, and she idolized bravery. Five oversized lashers had assaulted him simultaneously, and he met them without a flicker of fear and casually tossed one after another to the ground. When three of them came at him with drawn swords—himself unarmed—he had faced them just as calmly. His was a different sort of bravery, a bravery of skill and courage rather than the brutal force with which lashers met danger and dealt out death. Once she understood that, she fell madly in love with him and made him her first consort.

In Lant, it was unheard of for a peerager to openly mate with a one-namer. Even a willful prince such as herself wouldn’t have dared to do so if he hadn’t been a stranger. When several of her uncles objected, she told them what Egarn himself had said—in his own land, no one held a rank that was higher than his—and they had to be content with that.

Egarn was the father of her first child, a beautiful, gentle daughter who looked remarkably like him. Fortunately for the Peerdom of Lant, the girl died young. With her shy inwardness, she would have made a deplorable prince and peer, but she was a lovely child. Even when the prince tired of Egarn’s quiet ways and found other consorts, for many, many years—in fact, until she began her wars of conquest—they had remained friends, and when she needed advice, she had gone to him without hesitation and with the certainty that he would speak honestly and unselfishly. She appointed him Med of Lant when the Old Med her uncle died, and she had never regretted it.

She did not regret it now. Not only had he made Lant a healthier place for everyone, but none of her military conquests would have been possible without him.

The lashers of Lant, who guarded and supervised the no-namers and filled the ranks of the peer’s armies, were a race apart—a squat, muscular people possessed of a fearless recklessness that could, with proper training, make them invincible warriors. She saw that even when she was young. As soon as she became peer, she began organizing and training her Lantiff, elite troops of lasher horsemen whose frenzied charges, flashing, curved swords, and vicious lances were calculated to inflict terror on their opponents. She tested her ideas with occasional raids into neighboring peerdoms, and the results were gratifying.

Unfortunately, she miscalculated. She alarmed her neighbors before she was ready for war, and they responded by developing armies of their own. Worse, as the army of Lant became stronger and its incursions more frequent, the neighboring peerdoms began to band together for mutual assistance against the marauding Lantiff. Over the years a stand-off developed, but the Peerdom of Lant was badly outnumbered, and that disparity increased yearly. Finally the neighboring peers decided to put an end to Lant’s perpetual belligerency. A combined invasion was planned; Lant was to be partitioned amongst its neighbors and its peeragers exterminated.

In deep despair, the peer turned to Egarn. He promised to devise a weapon that would protect the peerdom against any combination of enemies, and he had done so, to her delight and astonishment. The amount of destruction a mere handful of trained Lantiff could do with the strange tubes Egarn fashioned strained the powers of belief. Suddenly she possessed a force powerful beyond her wildest imaginings.

The lesson of a near defeat had taught her to plan her moves with care. She launched a lightning campaign, triumphantly concluded before her enemies could react in concert, and toppled the first of her neighbors. Before she she struck again, she paused long enough to assimilate the conquered army into her own, fortify her new borders, and set up an administration that could exploit the subjected territory’s war potential.

She had conquered all her northern and eastern neighbors, began a long-planned southern invasion, and was turning her thoughts beyond the western mountains to the Ten Peerdoms when Egarn committed his appalling treachery. He came to her with a tale about renewing the weapons. She had believed him. Why not? She knew med servers had to replace their lens from time to time. Further, Egarn had given the weapons to her freely as a gift and asked nothing for himself. He never asked anything for himself except the freedom to pursue his studies.

Then he informed her he had destroyed the weapons—every one of them, he said—and he refused to make more. When she inflicted privations on him and threatened torture, he killed his guards with a weapon he somehow had kept hidden and escaped.

She had thought him the most selfless, the most totally loyal individual in her peerdom. When he turned against her, she discovered she hadn’t known him at all. In her fury she taxed him with treason, and he answered, “I have repaid my indebtedness to Lant and to you many times over. I have kept your peerdom healthy through both of our lifetimes, and I gave you weapons to defend it against invaders. When you used those weapons for conquest, you also used them against me.”

Now he had vanished utterly. So had the Lantiff sent to capture him, along with their dogs and horses, leaving her wondering uneasily about other miraculous weapons he might have.

She was consumed by apprehension that he might escape over the mountains and bestow his weapons, his knowledge, and his counsel—she well knew the value of all three—on the decadent rulers of the Ten Peerdoms. She took the only course open to her. She hurriedly concentrated her Lantiff, blocked all routes to the west, and began a massive search.

Then a totally unexpected report arrived out of the south. She refused to believe it, but she sent Com Gerna, the young commander of her guard, to investigate. He returned after eight daez of frenzied riding and silently offered her a shabby bundle. The peer opened it with her own hands.

She recognized Egarn’s clothing. The combination of peerager trousers and one-name smock defied both custom and common sense, but Egarn had worn it because he thought it comfortable.

The peer sniffed distastefully. The clothing reeked of death.

“I had the garments washed carefully, Majesty,” Com Gerna said. “The odor clings to anything it touches.”

She pushed the clothing aside and examined the small bag of oddments that accompanied it. The belt she recognized at once. There was a package of dried leaves of a kind Egarn had been fond of munching; a quill sharpener; the thin, flat piece of wood with patterns of figures used by Egarn in making calculations; an ordinary pocket len that had assisted his failing eyesight; a few trinkets. Most of it was mere pocket debris, but the trinkets brought back memories.

She fingered them thoughtfully. Egarn had worn the disk of metal on a thong as a neck ornament. A coin, he called it, and claimed it held a mysterious significance in the land of his origin. Where that land was she never understood. Perhaps the Old Med her uncle had known. Egarn never talked about it to anyone else. Certainly he had been a strange man.

“No weapon,” she said suddenly. “But we know he had at least one weapon when he escaped.” She looked at Com Gerna narrowly. “Are you positive the dead man was Egarn?”

“Yes, Majesty. There can be no doubt at all that it was he. These are personal things his servers know well. Another might have come into the possession of one or two, perhaps, but who else would have been carrying all of them, both the valuable and the trivial? The body was advanced in decay by the time I saw it, but the recognizable features were those of the Med of Lant—the tallness of stature, the slender build, the bald, beardless head. Of course the face—”

The peer shuddered. “But there was no weapon?” she persisted.

Com Gerna squirmed uneasily. “Majesty, I searched as carefully as the conditions permitted. The battlefield had been plundered twice—once by Wymeffian one-namers and once by local lashers from a nearby compound. There were many bodies, and scavengers would not waste time on trifles as long as there was a possibility of richer loot on the other dead. That is why these things were left. We can’t know what they took. It was sheer luck that a commander who formerly served your majesty at court chanced to see the body.”

“Then you think plunderers took his weapon?”

“I think it was taken by a one-namer or common lasher who thought it might prove valuable. When he couldn’t discover a use for it, he threw it away. Believe me, Majesty, if such a one had started using it, we would have heard.”

“And—there is nothing else?”

“I organized a careful search of a large area around the place where the med’s body lay. We discovered only one thing of interest, and that was found a considerable distance away. A plunderer could have taken it and then tossed it aside as worthless. It may have no connection with the med. Certainly he made no regular use of it—his servants and assistants don’t recognize it—but because it is so strange, I immediately thought it might be

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