“The whole world comes to Daltigoth!” Tol had to shout above the melee.

The marshal was not amused. “The doings of peasants and riff-raff do not concern me. I must enter the city before nightfall. I may have come the furthest distance, but the emperor will not be told Enkian Tumult was the last of his lords to arrive!”

“Perhaps if you took only a few retainers you could work your way through.”

“The Marshal of the Eastern Hundred does not enter the imperial capital like a Caergoth clerk, with only a handful of lackeys at his heels! I will enter with my full escort!” Enkian fixed him with a hard, unfriendly eye and added, “See to it, Tol. Disperse the mob.”

Tol knew better than to ask how he was to cleave through a crowd of harmless, quarrelsome folk without causing dangerous panic or bloodshed. “I shall do my best, my lord.”

He wended his way back to his motionless men. Miya and Kiya, in grass capes and hats, offered him a steaming cup of cider. The resourceful sisters had found someone in the supply wagons with a charcoal burner. Tol sipped the warm brew gratefully.

“What are our orders?” Narren asked.

Tol regarded his friend over the rim of the cider cup. “Lord Enkian says we must part the crowd for him, but how? We can’t go through with leveled spears!”

“Too bad that Morthur Grane fellow is dead,” Miya said. “He could magic these folk asleep, like he did us.”

Her words sparked an idea. Tol dug in his belt pouch and fished out Morthur’s sapphire ring. He was about to slide it on his finger when Kiya stopped him.

“Don’t. It is an evil ring.”

“How evil can it be? You only slept. Truly evil magic would have killed you.”

Kiya was adamant. “There are worse things than death.”

He ignored her and pushed the ring onto his finger. Holding out his hand, as he’d seen Morthur do, he waited. Nothing happened.

“Maybe there must be words spoken,” Narren suggested.

The crowd rippled, forcing Tol’s group to step lively to keep their balance on the wet pavement. Kiya climbed on a wagon wheel and peered over the heads of the mob.

“More warriors arrive,” she reported. “Their banner has two blues-one dark, one sky.”

“The Marshal of the Northern Hundred,” said Tol, removing the ring from his finger. Lord Enkian would be pleased to know he was at least ahead of them.

Miya took the ring from him, and Kiya barked, “Sister! Beware!”

The younger Dom-shu grinned, saying dismissively, “Faw, grasslander magic. This ring is as lifeless as its former owner. And it’s pretty!”

She slid the ring on over her gloved finger. It was a loose fit.

“A very fine stone,” she said smugly, and brought her hand up to admire the jewelry. She had to clench her fingers into a fist to keep the ring from sliding off and being lost in the mud underfoot.

Without a sound, Narren and Kiya collapsed, along with fifty or sixty of the nearest people. Tol caught Kiya, staggering under her weight. He propped her back against the wagon, as the ox team sighed and laid down in their traces.

A momentary hush fell over the crowd, then a woman screamed. In a circle twenty paces across centered on Miya, every living thing had dropped unconscious. Men and women, a cart full of gnomes, two kender (their hands still in others’ pockets), horses, oxen, a poulterer’s caged chickens-all lay inert. Only Tol and Miya remained upright.

Cries of “A curse!” “Poison!” “Plague!” began, low at first, then rising in volume. Panic erupted as those not stricken struggled to escape whatever baleful influence had struck so swiftly. Carters lashed their beasts, turning away from the bridge. Ahead, terrified folk trapped on the bridge leaped into the Dalti. Fortunately, though the river here was deep, it was also placid.

“Put your hand down!” Tol said sharply to Miya.

Startled by the efficacy of the magic ring, she complied immediately.

A shout went up from the west bank as the bottleneck broke open. People on horseback, in wagons or carts, and on foot burst off the end of the bridge and fanned out across the riverbank. Over the heads of the stampeding crowd, Tol could see Lord Enkian, vainly shouting orders at his mounted escort. No discipline could be maintained in such a rout. The marshal and his retainers were swept away by the rushing tide of people and wagons.

Tol took Morthur’s ring from Miya and put it away. Once the ring was safely tucked into his pouch, his comrades began to stir.

Miya squatted down by her groggy sister. “I hexed you!” she announced happily. “You went down like a rotten elm!”

“Shut up,” Kiya growled.

The others roused too. By the time they had collected themselves and shaken the wagon drivers awake, the great bridge was temporarily clear of traffic.

Tol looked back at the eastern shore. The men of the later-arriving marshal of the Northern Hundred were scattered to the horizon. It would take them half a day to regroup. To the west, toward Daltigoth, Lord Enkian had vanished from view. At least the stampede had driven them in the right direction. Despite the strangeness of their success, Tol couldn’t help but grin.

“Men of Juramona, forward!” he called to his foot soldiers. The rain still fell, but the day now seemed brighter.

The peninsula between the two branches of the Dalti was low and flat, covered by a patchwork of rich farmland. Imperial roads had been built on causeways above the fields, orchards, and pastures, so traffic to the capital would not damage the lush cropland below. Already the neatly ruled plots of black earth were streaked with fresh green sprouts. The paved causeways were wide enough for one wagon to pass another unimpeded. Tol was amazed to see the hard stone was rutted with the imprint of the hundreds and hundreds of wheels that had passed over it.

To the southwest the sky lightened, clouds thinning and rain easing. When they came to the west fork of the river, the Juramona contingent was relieved to see ten broad bridges spanning the waters. Traffic streamed freely across the gleaming white stone bridges toward the city, now only nine leagues away.

A rider in Enkian’s retinue was waiting on the far shore to collect the baggage train, and Tol’s escort. As he led Tol to where Lord Enkian waited, in a grove of pines alongside the Ackal Path, the rain finally ceased.

Tol saluted the marshal. Enkian pointedly did not ask how he had broken the bottleneck on the eastern bridge. “I want the baggage train to stay close behind us from now on,” he said. “The streets of Daltigoth teem with thieves, and I don’t want to lose any property before we reach the Imperial Palace.”

The only way for Tol’s foot soldiers to keep up with horsemen was to ride, so he divided his men, ten to a wagon, and bade them climb aboard. He and the Dom-shu sisters rode in the lead wagon.

Enkian’s escort removed their wet cloaks and donned clean, blood-red capes. They fixed scarlet horsehair plumes to the combs of their helmets and to their horses’ bridles. Finery in place, they set off.

The valley opened before them. Like the peninsula, it was bursting with abundance. On the north side of the road were endless rows of fruit trees-apple, cherry, pear, and a host of others. The rain-freshened air was scented with the perfume of the flowering trees.

On the south side of the road, the valley floor was dotted with herds of shaggy red cattle. Hundreds grazed behind stout timber fences. All bore the same brand on their hips: a curved line with a simple cross at one end. Parver, the wagon driver, explained that the saber symbol was the emperor’s own brand. The entire vast herd belonged to the lord of all Ergoth.

An arrow-straight canal paralleled the road. Long stretches of it were banked with slabs of granite. According to Parver, the Dalti river had been diverted into the canal, which ran all the way to the city. Rafts and barges (some visible as he spoke) traversed it to the main river, and thence all the way to the Gulf of Ergoth and the sea.