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that morning.
    "I remember you as a child," he said. "A patient little creature. Abeleyn liked you, but had the cruelty of all small boys. I hope you do not hold it against him."
    "Of course not," she said, rather coldly.
    He smiled. "You have a head on your shoulders, lady, or so I am told. That is why I am here. Were you another tinsel-brained princess, you'd be kept in the dark and told whatever we thought you'd believe. But I have a feeling that will not suffice. That is why I am willing to do what I am about to do."
    Ah , she thought, and straightened. "Brienne, leave us."
    Her maidservant exited the room with a piteous look. Golophin rose from his chair and paced about the floor like some huge cadaverous bat, his mantle billowing out behind him. No - he was more of a raptor, a starved falcon, perhaps. Even his movements were as quick and economical as a bird's, despite the wine he'd quaffed.
    He went to the far wall, pulled back the hideous tapestry that hung there and pressed hard on the stone. There was a click, and a gap appeared, rapidly broadening into a low doorway.
    Isolla sucked in her breath. "Magic."
    He laughed. "No. Engineering. The palace is riddled with hidden doors and secret passageways. Now you must come with me."
    She hesitated. She did not like the look of the hole he was gesturing at. It might lead anywhere. Was there some kind of plot afoot?
    "Trust me," Golophin said gently. And then she saw the suffering in his eyes. There was a grief there that he held bottled up as tightly as a genie of eastern myth. Despite herself, she rose and joined him at the secret door.
    "I am going to take you to meet your betrothed," the wizard said, and led her into the darkness.
     
     
    I SOLLA HAD SEEN bale-fire before, as a child. A ball of it hovered above Golophin's head in the dark and lit the way for them. But it was a guttering thing, like a candle almost burnt down to the wick. She suddenly realized that the old mage was damaged in some way - something had stolen away his strength and made him into a caricature of what he had once been. It was the war, she guessed. It had drained him somehow.
    The passage they trod was smoothly made out of jointed stone, and it rose and wound like the coils of a snake. There were other doors off its sides, leading to other rooms in the palace, Isolla supposed. She knew she, a foreigner, was being trusted with some of the secrets of the palace. But then she'd be Hebrion's queen soon enough anyway.
    They halted. The bale-fire went out and there was a grating of stone. She followed the wizard's lean back through a low door like the one in her own chambers, and found herself in a high-ceilinged room that was almost totally dark. A rack of tall candles fluttered by the side of a massively ornate four-poster bed, and she could make out weapons on the walls gleaming in the gloom. Maps and books and more of the dull hangings. A bedstand with jug and ewer of silver. And everywhere engraved or embossed, the Hebrian Royal arms. She was in the King's chambers.
    "Speak normally. No whispers," Golophin told her. "He is far away, but not gone, not entirely. It may be that a new voice will reach him as a familiar one might not."
    "What - ?" But Golophin took her arm and led her to the side of the huge bed.
    The King. Her horrified eyes took in what was left of him at a glance, and her hand flew to her mouth. This thing was to be her husband.
    Golophin was watching her. She sensed a protective anger in him that was not very far from the surface. She brought her hand down and touched Abeleyn's where it lay on the coverlet.
    His features she recognized: the dark hair as thick as ever despite the threads of grey. The face she had known as sun-brown was as pallid as the sheets behind it. She was surprised to feel grief, not for herself who was to be joined to this wreck of a man, but for Abeleyn, the high-spirited boy she had known who had pulled her hair and said cruel things about her nose. He