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away from the sleeper’s couch and shook her head. “Alas for your hopes, my king! Your wife carries a healthy girl, without arcane talent as all of her sex must be, unless they are of far northern human blood… or doubly descended from the Green Ones.”
    Conrig groaned. “If the laws of Didion prevailed here, the lass might reign as their great Queen Casabarela did! But Cathra reserves its crown for male issue, and so must my Sovereignty.”
    “Unless the law is changed,” Stergos put in with a hopeful smile.
    “Don’t be a fool, Gossy,” the king exclaimed. “Why should the Lords of the South agree to change it now, when all save we three believe there are two legitimate male heirs to the throne?
    We can only hope for a better outcome to a future pregnancy, and meanwhile pray that no enemy learns the secret of my poor sons and I.”
    “There are only two enemies,” Ullanoth said, “that need concern you now.”
    Conrig and Stergos regarded her with open dismay, each thinking that she must have heard the rumor about Maudrayne and her son.
    But the Conjure-Queen went on to say, “My little brother Beynor knows nothing of your own talent—not yet. But he’s up to some kind of mischief with the Salka. I’ve been too indisposed to spy on him closely with the Loophole sigil of late, but my ordinary scrying reveals him to be in a state of unusual excitement. I’ve told you that Beynor spends his time studying the historical archives of his monstrous hosts in the Dawntide Isles. I cannot read lips well, and the Salka have erected magical barriers that dim my unaugmented oversight of their citadel. But I believe that Beynor may have made some important discovery. And he may have shared it with your old enemy, Vra-Kilian Black-horse, the former Royal Alchymist.”
    “But how?” Stergos demanded. “Our wretched uncle was deprived of all talent by the iron gammadion before being confined to Zeth
    Abbey. Kilian is unable to speak on the wind himself, nor can he receive any windspoken communication from another. And no humans dare set foot on the Dawntide Isles, so there can have been no written message from Beynor delivered to the abbey.”
    “My brother may have been cursed by the Lights and stripped of his sigils,” Ullanoth said, “but he still retains the strong natural talents he was born with. One of those is the ability to invade dreams. When we were young children, he used to torment me until I learned to shut him out.
    Fortunately, that defensive ability comes readily to those who are adept at the arcane arts.”
    The king nodded thoughtfully, remembering that Snudge had also told him once of being harassed by Beynor while sleeping. “So you believe your brother communicates with Kilian through dreams?”
    “Zeth Abbey is well shielded from windsearching, but I have been able to follow Beynor’s mental footsteps, as it were, to that place many times. I doubt there is any other person residing in the abbey who would be of interest to him.”
    “Beynor and Kilian!” Conrig mused. “What common cause could the two exiles share nowadays? And yet they did conspire against me as I prepared to invade Didion…”
    Ullanoth had learned some years ago that both villains shared knowledge of a mysterious hidden Page 16

    trove of sigils. But she was unaware that the king already knew of its existence.
    “I shall have to warn Abbas Noachil about this at once,” Stergos said. “He’s very old and ill, but he can order the Brethren to take special precautions against Kilian’s escape.”
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    “That would be prudent.” Ullanoth turned to Conrig. “Unfortunately, Beynor has also attempted to invade the dreams of some person residing here in Gala Palace. I learned of this only two days ago, as I scried him on the parapet of the