"Is this not Solamnia?" he asked. "And are you not… my friend?"

"Do you know what to do?" Boniface asked curtly, raising his hood once more.

"Trust me," the assassin hissed. His hand snaked to the dagger at his belt, and to Derek that hand seemed… seemed scaled, of all things, like the back of a reptile. Behind the assassin, a cape switched and billowed unnaturally.

Surely not, Derek thought, his hand on the withers of his horse, calming the frantic animal. Surely it is some trick of the mist.

"Trust you?" Boniface asked. 'Tell me what you are to do, and in the order you are to do it. Then we shall talk of trust. We shall talk of payment then, too-of the gold that comes to the trustworthy and the silent."

"Dam the waters upstream," the assassin began, the monotone of his voice signaling that he repeated memorized instruction. "Post the lookouts. If the occasion comes, it will be one lad-on foot or on horse, no matter-the sign on his shield a red sword against a yellow sun."

Boniface nodded. "And if the occasion comes…?"

"Open the dam when the boy approaches midcurrent," the assassin intoned, shifting from foot to foot with a strange, padding sound. "Let the Vingaard Drift do the rest."

"And then?"

"Let no word pass of our doings, of our dealings," was the answer, and then in Old Solamnic, the ancient tongue surprising and corrupt on the lips of this hooded conspirator, "and dispose of my accomplices."

"Dividing the gold will be far easier," Boniface joked in the time-honored language of ceremony and song, and Derek found himself recoiling from his knightly master as well as the gnarled monstrosities with which he dealt.

What is this? the lad thought, his thickheaded arrogance sliding from him like a layer of dirt under a heavy rain. Where does your honor take you, Lord Boniface of Foghaven?

But he said nothing, and Derek Crownguard sat in the saddle as gold-half of the gold in question-passed between Knight and assassin, with the promise that the rest would follow when the boy's body was fished from the river. In silence, the squire followed his Knight up the sloping rise of the riverbank and north toward the keep, where they would shelter the rest of the night by innocent fires, talking Oath and Measure with the garrison.

"What if…" Derek began, but Boniface waved away the words, his arm batlike under the dark canopy of his cape.

"Who would believe them?" he asked, his voice steady and sinister. "Who among honorable folk would trust the likes of them against the word of a Knight of the Sword?"

He turned in the saddle, regarding his squire with a cold and level gaze.

"Be thankful 'tis an orphaned brat, without the uncles and cousins sniffing the blood of every Crownguard after the deed is done. If that were the case, you'd not be clean of this, nephew"

He shot Derek a withering stare. "What is more, I shall trust in your silence on this matter, as you shall trust that, given circumstance and the reason to do so, I am fully capable of dealing with… inconvenient witnesses. Indeed, I have done so before."

His gaze became distant, abstract. Derek liked it even less.

Lord Boniface shook his head, suddenly and fiercely, as though wrestling himself away from attending to an obscure music. He rose in the saddle and blinked stupidly.

'Tomorrow we return to the Tower, to gather the last… contingencies."

On the plains of Solamnia, the ancient Vingaard Keep in sight, Derek Crownguard received his own instruction. And learned what would befall him if he did not follow the lessons.

In the early evening, Sturm awoke to music, to the touch of soft hands. Two beautiful women hovered over him, perched like tiny impossible birds in the thick branches of the oak. Red-haired and pale they were, and almond-eyed like elves, though smaller by far. Both were dressed in thin silver tunics.

"Dryads!" Sturm gasped, recalling the legends of enchantment and imprisonment. He started to his feet. Quickly and firmly, the two restrained him.

"Hist!" one whispered, pinching his lips with her delicate fingers. She smelled of mint and rosemary. 'Tell the Master, Evanthe!"

Vainly Sturm tried to slip away from the dryad, but her grip tightened, as did the grip of the roots about his legs. He couldn't move. Then, awakened by his struggles, the greater pain returned, rushing over his chest and shoulder. He remembered the wound he had taken, the black thorn in his shoulder.

The pain returned, but with it came the music, tumbling from the branches like a sweet and silvery rain. Sturm looked around him for Mara, but in vain. Then softly, melodiously, the bewitching creatures at his side began to sing.

Their voices twined with the sharp descant of the flute, which sported through the words like an otter through silver water. Despite his confusion and precarious balance, Sturm found himself smiling, and he propped himself up on an elbow, searching again for the elf maiden.

Vertumnus mused at the foot of a holly not ten yards away, his leafy face uplifted, a brace of owls at his shoulder.

Sturm groped about for his sword, scattering dryads and roots and fallen leaves. The Green Man continued to play, his expression serious and unfathomable. Slipping, wincing with pain, Sturm touched the hilt of the weapon, but it didn't budge from its home in the fire-blackened heart of the tree, and his fingers slid uselessly over the shining metal.

Meanwhile, an unlikely company had joined with Lord Wilderness. From concealment in the surrounding woods, a deer emerged, then a badger. Three ravens circled about the oak and perched amid the high branches, joined incongruously by a small brown lark, and all around Sturm the branches seemed to blossom with squirrels. Finally, out of the shadows came a white lynx, who curled at Vertumnus's feet and regarded Sturm with gold, translucent eyes.

The lad tried to speak, but words and breath eluded him. The dark pain from his wound passed through him once more, and he saw and felt no more.

"Evanthe. Diona," Vertumnus ordered. "Untie the lad." "And after, sir?" Evanthe asked. "Set him in the heart of this tree?"

"Water the floor of the forest with his human blood?" Diona asked eagerly.

"No more imprisonment," Vertumnus declared. "And no more death. By the turn of the night, he will have passed through both."

"You'll give him to her!" Diona hissed. "To that incanting hag with her roots and potions!"

"She'll herbalize him!" Evanthe protested. "No fun for us in vegetables!"

Vertumnus smiled mockingly. He held the flute in the outstretched palm of his hand and breathed over it softly. The instrument vanished, and in the face of such quiet and powerful magic, the dryads ceased their clamor.

Luin and Acorn shambled placidly into the clearing, hitched to a green covered wagon, bound to the traces by vine and woven rope. At the reins of the vehicle sat Jack Derry, his eyes intent on the lad in the tree. With a quick, respectful nod and smile, he acknowledged the presence of Vertumnus.

"Welcome back, my son," Vertumnus said. The dryads bowed to Jack, and from the smoldering branches of the oak, the lark descended, alighting on his shoulder.

"How is he, Father?" Jack asked, guiding the wagon to a place beside Vertumnus.

"Ebbing," Diona replied, her hand shifting to Sturm's neck, the white fingers gently searching for his pulse. "He has endured much and suffered the wound. His life is low and dwindling even further."

"Untangle him, Jack," Vertumnus ordered.

"As you wish, Father," Jack replied dutifully, with a theatrical wink at the dryads, who blushed and turned away. "Though I cannot see what you'll make of him. Nobility and idiocy war within him, and I'm pressed to tell you which has the upper hand."