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serious diplomatic effort."
    "I understand perfectly, your Majesty." Javelin smiled. "I have just the man—a recently recruited Nyissan assassin named Issus."
    "Good. A possible alliance will serve the same purpose as a real one. We can distract Zakath without the loss of a single man—unless we count this Issus fellow.''
    "Don't worry about Issus, your Majesty," Javelin assured him. "He's a survivor."
    "I think we're missing something," Anheg growled. "I wish Rhodar were here."
    "Yes," Porenn agreed in a voice near to tears.
    "Sorry, Porenn," Anheg said, engulfing her tiny hand in his huge one, "but you know what I mean."
    "I have a diplomat in Rak Urga," Varana continued. "He can make the overtures to King Urgit. Do we know anything useful about the King of the Murgos?"
    "Yes," Porenn said firmly. "He'll be amenable to the suggestion."
    "How do you know, your Majesty?"
    Porenn hesitated. "I'd rather not say," she said with a quick glance at Javelin.
    "Just take my word for it."
    "Of course," Varana agreed.
    Vella rose and walked to the window, her satin gown filling the room with its music. "You people of the West always want to complicate things," she said critically. "Zakath's your problem. Send somebody to Mal Zeth with a sharp knife.'‘
    "You should have been a man, Vella." Anheg laughed.
    She turned and looked at him with smoldering eyes. "Do you really think so?" she asked.
    "Well," he hesitated, "maybe not."
    She leaned disconsolately against the window casing. "I wish I had my juggler here to entertain me," she said. "Politics always give me a headache." She sighed. "I wonder whatever happened to him."
    Porenn smiled, watching the girl intently and remembering the sudden insight she had when the Nadrak girl first arrived in Boktor. "Would you be terribly disappointed to find out that your juggler was not who he seemed to be?" she asked. "Belgarath mentioned him in his letter."
    Vella looked at her sharply.
    "Belgarath would have known him, of course," Porenn went on. "It was Beldin,"
    Vella's eyes went wide. "The hunchbacked sorcerer?" she exclaimed. "The one who can fly?"
    Porenn nodded.
    Vella said a number of things that no genteel lady would have said. Even King Anheg turned slightly pale at her choice of language. Then she drew a dagger and advanced on Yarblek, her breath hissing between her teeth. Mandorallen, clad all in steel, stepped in front of her, and Hettar and Barak seized her from behind and wrested the knife from her grasp.
    "You idiot!" she shrieked at the cringing Yarblek. "You absolute idiot! You could have sold me to him!" Then she collapsed weeping against Barak's fur-clad chest, even as Hettar prudently relieved her of her other three daggers.

    Zandramas, the Child of Dark, stood gazing across a desolate valley where shattered villages smoked and smoldered under a lead-gray sky. The eyes of the Child of Dark were hooded, and she looked unseeing at the devastation spread before her. A lusty wail came from behind her, and she set her teeth together. "Feed him," she said shortly.
    "As you command, mistress," the man with white eyes said quickly in a mollifying tone.
    "Don't patronize me, Naradas," she snapped. "Just shut the brat up. I'm trying to think."
    It had been a long time. Zandramas had worked everything out so very carefully. Now she had come half around the world, and, despite her best efforts, the Godslayer with his dreadful sword was but a few days behind her. The sword. The flaming sword. It filled her sleep with nightmares—and the burning face of the Child of Light terrified her even more. "How does he stay so close behind?" she exploded. "Will nothing slow him?"
    She thrust her hands out in front of her and turned them palms-up. A myriad of tiny points of light seemed to swirl beneath the skin of her hands—swirling, glittering like a constellation of minuscule stars spinning in her very flesh. How long would it be until those constellations invaded her entire body and she