Chapter I 1. That day the tourney grounds seethed: a roar of voices, the screaming of warhorses, and wherever the eye turned the flash of blades. Small for his age, Raven was wedged in the shoving crowd, too little to see the pageant below; he could only tilt his head back and watch the sky. Dust hung in the air, the sun glared down, and ten thousand banners stirred overhead. Among that riot of gaudy heraldry his eye caught at once on a single white tower, caught against a field of fire-red, tossing in the wind as though the flames truly burned. The flame leapt from the banner and burned its way into his heart; and there, too, stood the White Tower, like a sword driven into the breast of the earth. On that day, Raven had just turned twelve. On that same day, the Knight of the White Tower died at twenty-seven. 2. Drip. Drip. Drip... 189,408 ... 189,409 ... 189,410 ... "Hrk — cough!" A racking cough from the next cell broke through Raven's silent counting. "Damn it... where was I?" No one answered him. Down in the deep, dark dungeon, every prisoner had care only for himself. He strained after the number for a long while and, in the end, could not recall it; and even had he remembered, it was already too late. Heaven knew how many times the water had dripped from the wall in the meantime — the count was spoiled. The fourth day, more or less? The dungeon knew no sun, and Raven had long since lost the difference between dawn and dusk; his only measure of time's passing was the water that seeped endlessly from the ceiling. Each drop struck the floor with a single drip, at a pace of roughly one every two seconds. The last whole day he had counted out was the fourth. Now the thread was broken and he must begin all over again. Bloody, bloody hell... His wrists ached, and he tried to shift into an easier posture, but the bright clash of chains and the sudden check of iron forced him to abandon it. Ah — they had clapped him in irons the moment he entered the cell. He had sat so still he had nearly forgotten. The air reeked of rotting flesh, and now and then a rat set up its squeaking in the corners. Raven wet his cracked lips. His last drink had been some 67,300 drips ago, when a guard had spitefully sloshed a bowl of spoiled vegetable broth before him; straining at the chains about his wrists, he had crawled for all he was worth, neck outstretched, and lapped a mouthful or two off the floor. At the memory of that broth on his tongue he could not help rubbing the wrists he had scraped raw in reaching for it. Gods. How much longer would they keep him here? "Creaaak —" A shaft of light fell suddenly through the opening door. It was only the weak glow of a torch, yet Raven's darkness-steeped eyes could not help flinching from it. In an instant the whole cell-block stirred. No word was spoken, but Raven could hear the tight, restless shifting of every prisoner — moths drawn to a flame, afraid and unable to keep away. He looked toward the door. The face that followed the light in was a familiar one. "Ho, Moll. That word I asked you to pass along — did you pass it?" Moll, the one-eyed guard, jerked his head toward Raven's cell, scratched the back of his skull, and said nothing; he walked straight up to the bars, the great ring of keys at his belt jingling as he came. Raven mustered a smile for the approaching man. "Might I ask whether the baroness has heard my humble petition?" With a clang Moll threw back the iron gate and stepped close, his one good eye wide with bewilderment. "What was that noise just now?" He dug a finger in his ear. "Was it you?" Raven swallowed. "I said —" "Crack!" His jaw seemed to burst; the blow all but lifted the lid of his skull, a rush that drove his wits from his heels to the clouds. When sense returned he lay on his back, gazing blearily up at the cell ceiling. He pushed his numbed tongue forward and tasted copper-sweet; several teeth had come loose. Drip. Drip. Drip... Raven's blood ran down the oaken cudgel in Moll's hand and fell to the floor. "Spare me your filth." Moll spat on him. "What sort of low vermin are you, to think the baroness would hear your begging?" "One taler." Blood welled from Raven's mouth as he spoke. "I gave you a gold taler." "Aye, that you did." Moll twirled the cudgel idly, as though loosening his arm. "And I daresay a few more strokes will shake loose a few more." He showed a mouthful of rotted teeth, smiling calmly, venomously. Raven rolled his eyes. "I've had about enough of this." The cudgel fell like a thunderbolt, dashing the puddled water of the floor into spray. Moll blinked. His scant wits had not foreseen a miss — still less the leg that suddenly swept his own from under him. At Raven's sideways kick Moll went down on his back. Before he could struggle, the arm that held the cudgel was caught between Raven's thighs; Raven wrenched his weight backward and — "AAAGH —!!!" The scream rang through the dungeon. Tears ran from both Moll's eyes, the blind and the seeing alike; his arm was bent at an unnatural angle. Breathing hard, Raven straddled and pinned him, raising his fist high. A warm drop fell on Moll's face — a drop of blood, welling from the fist Raven held aloft. A heartbeat before the cudgel fell, Raven had broken both his own thumbs to work his hands free of the irons. The agony was sealed off now. He looked into Moll's face and brought the fist down without mercy. One blow. Two. Three... The whimpering dwindled, then died away entirely. In the dead silence, only the fist kept falling. When they finally pulled him off, Moll's good eye was lost beneath a mask of swollen blood, and not one rotted tooth remained in his mouth. Two soldiers in chain mail hauled Raven down and ground his face into a puddle of filth. A black-robed steward, holding his nose, had Moll dragged away; then he turned a complicated look on Raven where he lay. "So you're Raven?" "'White Tower' Raven — Sir Raven, if you please." He spat the blood from his mouth onto the floor. "I am a knight, my lord." The steward stifled a laugh. "Hm. So you are. A wandering knight — a peddler of swords." Perhaps he sensed the silent anger in Raven; he coughed pointedly and moved the matter along. "As you will, 'sir.' You stand on the lands of House Buck, and the Baroness Valana Buck of Ridgemoor Keep has named you for an audience. Come with me." Raven was hauled up between the two soldiers and half-dragged the length of the corridor out of the dungeon. On the way out he saw Moll still lying half-dead by the wall. "Might I ask whether the things I carried when I came in are still about?" Raven said to the steward. "That rubbish?" The steward lifted a brow. "Locked in a chest." "Give him two talers for me, then." Raven nodded toward Moll. "The balance of what I paid him to bring me to the baroness." Chapter II 3. The firewood in the hearth crackled as it burned, yet the room stayed cold enough to set a man trembling. Raven stood in the gloom of the baroness's back, chafing his hands until they prickled back to life. A clean bandage wrapped his broken fingers; the maester had set the bones he snapped, but they still throbbed dully. Snow drifted past the floor-to-ceiling window before the baroness, and a cold wind poured in through its open casement. That he might look presentable before her, the steward had dressed Raven in clean clothes: a brown wool tunic, the house sigil stitched over the left breast — a robin perched on a bough, upon a shield quartered black and white by a cross. The wool itched against his skin, and the draught turned it into an ice-shirt worn upon the body. If only this audience might begin sooner and end sooner, Raven thought. Heaven was not obliging. The baroness stood silent a while longer before she turned, slowly, about. "Well met, Sir Raven." "My lady." He bowed to the haggard woman before him. She looked as though she had not slept in days: heavy pouches beneath her eyes, cheeks sunken with illness, skin the pale of a corpse. The gaze she turned on him was lusterless; her whole body seemed to float like a puppet dangling from strings. "You must be hungry. Will you not eat first?" She turned aside. A joint of roasted meat, carved through, sat on a small round table; fat welled like honey from the cuts, and the carving knife's blade caught the hearthlight, its walrus-ivory handle carved with exquisite craft. Raven swallowed. In truth, the sight of that steaming meat set his mouth watering fiercely. He wrestled with himself a moment, then shook his head. "You are kind, my lady, but I am not hungry." "Are you not?" She sat at the table and watched the meat without expression. "Nor can I eat. You, perhaps, know why." "I do know." Raven met her eyes. "I have been sending word to you all this while; only now am I granted a meeting." "This is our first meeting, is it not, sir?" "It is." Raven glanced about. For all the rich, many-colored damask hung about the room, all seemed grey as dying embers in this lady's presence. "And yet we have met before." She looked at him. "I know you, and I think you know me, sir. We met — in that dream." A dream, or something other. Raven said nothing, for the baroness had slipped into some memory of her own. "That dream..." Her eyes were fixed on Raven, yet her gaze passed beyond him to nowhere. "You were in that dream as well, were you not?" "I was." The words were barely out when the baroness came sharply to herself, her face alight with an I-knew-it rapture. "Then it is true — I saw you in my dream." Her voice was no longer dead water; in her fervor she seemed ready to crush the arm of her chair. "You alone can save me!" For all her wildness, Raven understood her feeling perfectly. That dream was the very reason he had sought this audience. He drew nearer, softening his voice as best he could. "My lady, that is why I am here. I have come to help you." Tears traced the hollows of her wasted cheeks. "Save me, sir. Oh, save me." Raven came on, step by step. "Rest assured, I —" The rest of the sentence never came. He frowned in confusion and found his windpipe stopped with blood. Slowly he turned his head. The place beside the meat-platter was empty; he looked down, and the knife stood in his belly. The walrus-ivory handle was gripped in a withered hand heavy with rings; its tremor, half terror and half rapture, traveled by the wrist into Raven's very vitals. The baroness held the knife, a smile of release upon her face. "Thank you, sir," she said. "At last I shall have peace." The strength drained from Raven's legs and he sank to his knees, his center lost. If that isn't the damnedest thing. Looking at her smile, he could not help a bitter one of his own. Sense drew away from him, and the dream began to take its place. No, no, no — not that dream again. His inward plea reached no ear, and the scene before him began, inevitably, to warp and change. As the blood ran from his belly, the dream began. 4. A fog thick as milk drowned the whole forest. So the dream always opened; it never changed. Raven stood in the dense mist and felt a leech crawl across the toe of his boot. Again. Of course. In helpless irritation he tried to scratch his head, but his arm would not obey. Ah — in the dream he had no command of himself. It was a wretched feeling, as though his whole body were cased in an iron skin molded to him; he could not so much as relax for a moment. Perhaps because it was a dream, absurdities that the waking world would reject were taken easily here — his dress, for one. Raven was next to naked: his only clothing a pair of tall leather boots and a pair of white smallclothes, a sword-belt slung loose at his hip and forever slipping, and a longsword with an absurdly ornate hilt set with rubies. The white mist clung damp, thick and heavy, to his skin. It ought to begin soon. Raven counted silently within; the details of the dream never varied, and he had lived this same scene countless times. Sure enough, when his inward count reached zero, a clear birdsong rang out — short, quick notes at first, then trills alternating with long calls. It came from far off and threaded through the fog. At the same instant Raven's body began to move against his will. The unseen prison that clamped him wrenched at his limbs and drew him toward the sound of the song. No. Don't. Regardless of his will, Raven broke into a run, plunging headlong through thornbush that laid red weals across his near-pale skin. He was hunting something; the birdsong kept pace at his side, announcing the quarry's whereabouts. Raven knew every blade and branch of this white-mist wood, so many times had he repeated it. His smallclothes were dragged to rags across the boughs and no longer covered anything worth hiding. Shhhk! The screening bushes fell away and a trembling figure stood before him. Raven wanted badly to close his eyes; he did not wish to watch what came next again — but even the ownership of those two thin lids was not his. "No!" The familiar scream. As always, the baroness stumbled to the ground and scrabbled backward until her spine met an unyielding, massive trunk, two tracks of tears wetting her lashes. Her dress was nothing like the one she had worn seconds before in the waking world: a pale-blue girlish frock, absurd on a woman nearing forty. The skirt was mired in mud, and her weeping was hoarse. Raven lifted his head and saw a robin perched on the bough above her, silent, watching all that passed below with cold indifference. A lofty bystander, looking on as a tragedy played out for the thousandth time. Raven reached toward his torn-clothed groin and drew the ornate blade; it sang as it left the scabbard, and he advanced on the baroness step by step. A long horn-note blared without warning, and from the bushes on every side poured countless rabbits, clad in motley, much-patched jester's garb, each bearing a long horn; they took orderly station on either side of Raven. They stamped time with their feet and, heads thrown back, blew upon their horns, the brimming notes laced with laughter and cheers. All of it was like some cruel comedy, and Raven its player on the stage. Mist beaded on the cold steel. His movements were steady, precise; the edge parted the cloth over the baroness's belly, and a thin line of blood bloomed across the pale skin. Blood fouled the blade, yet the beads of water upon it never stirred. With the slow, unstoppable weight of fate itself, Raven's sword entered the baroness's abdomen. He watched her expression set, by degrees, into a statue of despair; her breathing ceased, precisely, three seconds later. The blood ran like a river and froze to frost in the cold white wood. All as it always was: inevitably, Raven committed the outrage once more. In a little while the dream would end. Five. Four. Three... Before his eyes closed, a white-mist shadow seemed to flicker past. Imagination? ...Two. One. He opened his eyes and saw again the baroness's frozen face. Odd. Raven stared. By rights the dream should have ended by now, yet the scene before him had not changed by a hair from the dream. No — there was some subtle difference. He looked quickly about: the roomful of silks, the drifting snow, the stone-cold meat, the dead hearth. With a clatter the dagger in his hand struck the floor, and the baroness's body slid down after it, overturning the chair with a dull thud. Blood spread wide and soaked the soles of his boots; its cold, slick touch dragged him back to reality in an instant. This was no dream. Looking into the baroness's fast-dilating pupils, Raven felt his own breathing turn ragged. "My lady!" A cry came from behind him. He turned on instinct and saw the steward sitting on the floor in horror. In an instant guards poured into the room. They gave him no chance to speak; iron-clad fists hammered him from every side. Raven never knew how he was brought down; he remembered only that, as he fell, his eyes met the dead baroness's by chance. In those spreading pupils he saw a face as though gathered of white mist. It was his own face. Chapter III 5. Drip. Drip. Drip... Water seeped from the wall and fell ceaselessly on the cold, hard stone, but Raven did not count it now. Bruised and swollen, he lay in the corner of his cell; the wool tunic he had worn so briefly had been stripped from him, and his naked body was a map of bruises. What day was it? He could not recall. His last sight of another person seemed an age ago. This was the deepest condemned cell of the dungeon, and no other prisoner shared it. The cell was a narrow square; lying down, he could not so much as straighten his legs. All this while neither water nor food had passed his lips. Fever burned his forehead like a brand in a fire, and he scarce had the strength left to breathe. At this rate, Raven reckoned, he would soon be meeting the baroness he had killed. It made no sense — she had been the one to put a knife in him first — but then, she was dead, wasn't she? To murder a noble in the noble's own castle... Raven knew that even if the Three worked a miracle, there was no way out of this alive. Before they threw him here, the steward had sworn, hand on heart, to see his head struck off. To that end they had even dressed the stab wound she gave him — wrapped it in a foul rag that had already begun to stink. The baroness's castle lay in a remote country; the nearest headsman was at least two days' travel off. Before he arrived Raven would most likely die first of fever, and then of hunger. He should never have refused in her chamber; he ought to have made short work of that roast. Such reckonings came too late now; the water was spilt. Barring a miracle, Raven's life would run out in this cell. He did not sigh — not that he had made his peace with it, but he lacked even the strength to sigh. He half-suspected the castle had sent for no headsman at all, and meant simply to starve him to death. To think that the great "Knight of the White Tower" could not even die with a full belly... With a clang a shaft of light came through the small grate in the door and fell across his face. Days without a glimmer of light made him narrow his eyes and turn them weakly toward the window. Shadows moved beyond it; someone, it seemed, was studying him through the grate as well. Who? Could the headsman have arrived already? Before he could think, the scent of toasted wheat drifted suddenly to his nose. His parched mouth watered on instinct, and a light stirred in the depths of his vacant eyes. The lock was fumbled with without; at a harsh metallic scrape the rusted door swung open with a groan, and the light poured over Raven so that he shrank from it in spite of himself. A stranger's silhouette stood against the torch-glow, and with each step into the cell the pieces of his armor clashed together. It took Raven's dazzled eyes a moment to adjust. The man knelt at his side and his face came clear by degrees. It was a face plowed into furrows, its wrinkles parted by one appalling scar after another. Raven knew the marks of blade and axe-edge when he saw them; the scars wove a map of steel biting steel. "So you're the little cur that killed Lady Valana?" The voice was younger than the face — early thirties, perhaps. His brown hair curled, threaded here and there with grey, and his smoke-grey eyes were bloodshot and worn through. Raven pressed his lips together and forced out a thread of a sentence. "It wasn't me..." "Lies." The man gave a scornful laugh. "Only you and the lady were in that room. If not you, who else?" Raven closed his eyes in resignation. He knew that anything he said was wasted. The facts stood plain: his was the hand on the dagger, his the blade in the baroness's belly. To all the world her killer could only be him. One thing alone was true — the will that killed her was not his. But speak that abstract nonsense aloud and it would earn him only more mockery and rage. Ignoring his thoughts, the man went on with a cold little laugh. "The storm broke last night; the patrols say a mountain flood has sealed the road, and the headsman cannot reach the castle these two days. The steward says your execution is put back." Raven heard the whisper of steel leaving its sheath and knew at once that something was wrong. "But I've no patience for waiting, and I'd as soon you died as fast as may be." Cold steel pressed to Raven's throat; a warm line slid down his neck — his own blood. Raven understood the man's errand at last. "You mean to kill me?" "Have I not made that plain enough?" The blade pressed harder. "Save your breath. I've sent the guards away. Down here, apart from me, no one will hear you scream." "You cannot execute me out of hand. I am a knight." "Who's to prove it?" Raven craned his neck to meet his eyes. "Sir Taff of Kervish, Sir Wellman Strike, and Leon of the White Tower — any of them can speak for me." "They are a thousand miles off; they'll not come in time." The blade did not slacken. "And besides — whether you're a knight be damned to me." "Say your last prayer to the Three, before I open your throat." Raven swallowed, and the bobbing Adam's apple dragged across the keen edge. The sting cleared, a little, the wits that hunger and fever had clouded. The man's purpose was plain: to sever the last straw Raven clutched. Yet down that pitch-dark road ahead, Raven seemed to catch a single glimmer of light. Once, just once, the thing might turn. Had this been the headsman the steward sent, Raven would have had no hope. But this was different: the man before him was no unthinking executioner who acted only by the book. There was hate in his voice, and grievance, and anger. Emotion was the greatest variable in all the wide world. Raven knew that before his throat was cut he had the chance of exactly one sentence. What sentence could save him? As the blade crossed his Adam's apple a second time, the answer came. "I saw the one who killed the baroness." He spoke with his eyes shut. "Her killer is a man made of gathered white mist." In the dark, Raven felt the steel at his throat give a single tremor. The man's voice was flat as still water. "Where did you see him?" "In a dream." The moment the words left him Raven regretted them. In such a pass, even spoken true they sounded like mockery, like provocation; a shorter-tempered man would have opened his throat on the spot. Yet, against all expectation, nothing happened. Drip. Drip. Drip... Raven listened to the water fall another dozen times, and his own breath rose and fell a dozen times in its rhythm. He kept his eyes shut, afraid to look at the man's face, afraid of finding doubt or fury there. The drips mounted into the dozens, and still nothing happened. Numbed body and all, Raven wondered whether he were already dead. Perhaps the blade had opened his throat the instant he spoke, and this consciousness was only the last lingering of a soul taking leave. These tangled thoughts crowded his mind until a wave of wheat-scent scattered them all. A soft clink. Raven opened his eyes to find a steaming bowl of wheat porridge set on the floor before him, a few dark raisins afloat on top. "Eat." The man had risen at some point and now leaned against the doorframe. "When you've done, tell me the whole of it again." "In whose dream did you see the killer?" Chapter IV 6. Fragrance! Wheat and raisins slid down Raven's throat with the thick, hot porridge and tumbled in a single stream into his stomach. The long-empty organ turned warm and heavy at once, yet it could not stay Raven's endless appetite. It would never have occurred to him that a plain bowl of porridge could outdo a tavern's roast quail or mutton stew. Porridge with plain water was feast and wine to him. He had hungered too long; his tongue could not even feel the heat, and he licked the bowl clean to the bottom. "Slowly, won't you?" Watching him, the man was a little alarmed, lest Raven bolt his food and swallow his own tongue. Raven carefully licked the last grain into his mouth and held out the bowl. "Another." "Bide a moment." The man stopped him with a resigned hand. "You've starved too long; a bellyful at one go would burst you." Raven licked his lips. He knew the truth of it — a body starved so long loses much of its power to digest, which was doubtless why he had been brought food as gentle as porridge. His belly still felt somewhat empty, but he endured it, wet his lips, and set the wooden bowl down. "There'll be food enough hereafter. For now, let us to business." The man helped Raven sit and propped him comfortably against the wall. "I am Sir Dewitt Buck, captain of the baroness's household guard and commander of Ridgemoor Keep." "Buck..." Raven stroked his stretched belly and turned the name over in his mind, then recalled at once that it was the baroness's own house. "You are kin to the lady?" "She is older than I in years, but by our generation she is my niece, of a sort." Raven noticed how Sir Dewitt's eyes dimmed as he spoke of it. "Mine is a cadet branch of the Ridgemoor Bucks. I was sent here at six to be a page, made a knight at twelve, with old Lord Lannor himself witnessing my accolade. I served at the lady's side — as Miss Valana's guard, and then the baroness's — for more than twenty years." "I swore to Lord Lannor that I would shield her with my life, and little did I think..." Bitterness stood plain on Dewitt's face; Raven had marked on his entry that the man looked as though he had not rested in a very long while. He understood, in some measure, the feeling of having failed another. Perhaps aware of his own lapse, Dewitt rubbed his nose in haste and recovered himself. "The lady is dead; I have no heart now to weigh rights and wrongs. Only one thing matters to me at this hour — to put the true killer to the sword with these hands." The look in Dewitt's eyes was fierce enough to frighten, but it did not frighten Raven. His ear caught the key phrase — the "true" killer. Before, Dewitt's blade had been at Raven's throat, until Raven named someone. A man made of white mist. At those words — wild nonsense to any ordinary ear — Dewitt had plainly wavered. Taken with his present stress on the "true killer," it was clear he understood a layer of the truth deeper than Raven's own. "I won't deceive you; matters stand ill for you." Dewitt looked at him. "Everyone in this castle believes you killed Valana. Even I have not wholly put the possibility by." "Half of them would chop you to pieces for the pigs; the other half would have you gelded first and then chopped for the pigs. Our good steward, for his part, is set on the king's law: the moment the headsman arrives, you die by it." "I've seen that headsman many a time. Aron's his name; he soldiered under the baron, quick and clean, never once at fault." Dewitt paused. "If he comes, you're a dead man. But I have a plan." "A plan to save my life?" "A plan that might save it." Dewitt said. "As I told you, the flood has sealed the roads; the headsman is two days off at the soonest. Which is to say, until then your life is safe." "If in those two days you can lay hands on the true killer, there's a thread of hope." Dewitt's words were a straw indeed — but one so fine it would snap at a tug, and barbed all over. "The killer is a man of white mist who appears only in dreams. How am I to lay hands on him?" Raven pointed out. "Ordinarily, of course, you couldn't. It's your fortune that I, for one, believe you." Dewitt smiled, and the smile was bitter. "Thank the Three for it; I may know a thing or two about this killer of yours." "Come with me." Raven followed Dewitt from one underground place to another. Unlike the dungeon, this place was older still, blanketed in dust; when the door opened, a cloud of it set Raven coughing. "Hardly anyone comes here." Dewitt lit the oil lamp within and the room brightened at once. "Since the day I came to this castle the outer door has stood locked. Apart from us, no living soul knows of this place." "Where are we?" "A hidden chamber. A refuge. Left by some lord of the keep, heaven knows how many generations back." Dewitt shook out a brown dust-cloth draped over the corner and coughed on it himself. "Cough... when I was small... cough... I stumbled down here once at play and made it my secret place. Not even old Lord Lannor knew of it." Talking all the while, he dragged the cloth aside and cast it away; beneath the corner it had covered stood several stacked piles of books. He pulled down a row of wall-hangings to reveal a bookshelf behind them. "Until the headsman comes, lie low here. I'll bring you two meals a day." Dewitt charged him. "Let's begin with a late supper — I'm still hungry." Raven drew a chair to the round table at the room's center and sat, taking stock of his surroundings. The chamber was no small one and fully furnished: a great four-poster in one corner, a hearth set in the wall, vented heaven knew how. For all its smell of mildew, set beside the dungeon it was as comfortable as a royal bedchamber. "Supper can wait a little." Dewitt chose a heavy black-bound volume from the pile and sat across from him, leafing through it as he spoke. "As I said, if the true killer isn't found within two days, you'll never need trouble yourself over an empty belly again." Which was true enough. "Sir Raven, at the risk of a tangent — do you know how House Buck came by so fair and sizable a castle?" "I can't say I do." House Buck's name was no great renown, yet Ridgemoor, the castle it held, ranked among the kingdom's finest: a three-sided siege work, a tower raised at each of the wall's three corners, tall and straight, a moat girdling the whole, gates of thick oak bound in cold steel — to say nothing of its broad deep woods, the villages beyond its glens, the white-tailed deer and boar that roamed the forest in number, and the thriving folk of those villages. "House Buck is a shadow of itself now, but a century ago we were the height of fashion in the kingdom of Lotharin." Dewitt leaned back in his chair with the book, propping his feet on the table, the look of a man turned toward memory. "We stood high in the Lotharin king's favor, and for one reason: every lord of our line bore a miracle beyond the common lot of men." "We could command dreams." His eyes snapped suddenly to Raven, who frowned faintly, a look of deep meaning on his face. "More precisely, we could see the future in dreams. From oldest times the lord of House Buck was the Lotharin king's own dream-reader, divining weal and woe through sleep and carrying the kingdom through peril after peril." Raven was silent a long while. Instinct told him the man was making game of him, yet Dewitt's tone did not ring false. "Fortune-telling's all a sham." Raven said. "I met a prophet once on the road who foretold I'd die of the flux by the morrow unless I gave him a copper. I gave him a box on the ear instead, and the next day I was fit as a fiddle." "This is no mountebank's trick I speak of, sir. I speak of true power." "If it's true, how came it none of you foretold that the baroness would die by my hand?" Raven saw the corner of Dewitt's eye twitch and knew he had overspoken. He half-feared the knight would draw on him where he sat, but Dewitt only glared and let it pass. "I speak of history." Dewitt ignored the interruption and went on. "The gift of dream-reading was lost a century ago, and House Buck sank to the tail of Lotharin's nobility. Only this keep, granted us by King Laszlo the Second, bears witness that we once shone." "Though it seems, now, that 'lost' is too hasty a word." Dewitt turned the black book to a certain page and held it out. Raven took it. "I'm ashamed to own it, but I have little letters." "No matter. You can read a picture, surely." Raven looked at the page and understood Dewitt's meaning at a single glance. The page was crowded with the empire's common script, which he had never learned; he did not spare a single word of it a look, his gaze seized from the first by the picture set among the writing. It was a rough hand-drawing, a charcoal scrawl of utter blackness; and in the midst of that black patch stood a single jarring smear of white — white that caught the eye, white that appalled, white shaped like a human figure gathered of mist. "This is the secret of House Buck's dream-reading. The book gives it many names." Dewitt ticked them off finger by finger. "Lord of the Mist-Wood. The White-Mist Man. The White Phantom. As for me..." "...I am rather in the habit of calling him — the Dreamer."