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again. We wouldn’t want to let the work pile up on us, would we, gentlemen?’
    Berit was not yet fully adept at some of the subtler forms of magic. That part of the Pandion training was the study of a lifetime. He was far enough along, however, to recognize ‘tampering’ when he encountered it. The log-boom seemed to be lumbering southward at a crawl, but the turning of the seasons was giving some things away. It should have taken them much longer to escape the bitter cold of the far north, for one thing, and the days should not have become so much longer in such a short time for another.
    However it was managed, and whoever managed it, they arrived at a sandy beach a few miles north of Matherion late one golden autumn afternoon long before they should have and began wading the horses ashore from the wobbly collection of rafts.
    ‘Short trip,’ Khalad observed laconically as the two watched the novices unloading the horses.
    ‘You noticed,’ Berit laughed.
    ‘They weren’t particularly subtle about it. When the spray stopped freezing in my beard between one minute and the next, I started having suspicions.’ He paused. ‘Is magic very hard to learn?’ he asked.
    ‘The magic itself isn’t too hard. The hard part is learning the Styric language. Styric doesn’t have any regular verbs. They’re all irregular—and there are nine tenses.’
    ‘Berit, please speak plain Elenic.’
    ‘You know what a verb is, don’t you?’
    ‘Sort of, but what’s a tense?’
    Somehow that made Berit feel better. Khalad did not know everything. ‘We’ll work on it,’ he assured his friend. ‘Maybe Sephrenia can make some suggestions.’
    The sun was going down in a blaze of color when they rode through the opalescent gates into fire-domed Matherion, and it was dusk when they reached the imperial compound.
    ‘What’s wrong with everybody?’ Khalad muttered as they rode through the gate.
    ‘I didn’t follow that,’ Berit confessed.
    ‘Use your eyes, man. Those gate-guards were looking at Sparhawk as if they expected him to explode—or maybe turn into a dragon. Something’s going on, Berit.’
    The Church Knights rode off across the twilight-dim lawn to their barracks while the rest of them clattered across the drawbridge into Ehlana’s castle. They dismounted in the torch-lit courtyard and trooped inside.
    ‘It’s even worse here,’ Khalad murmured. ‘Let’s stay close to Sparhawk in case we have to restrain him. The knights at the drawbridge seemed to be actually afraid of him.’
    They went up the stairs to the royal apartment. Mirtai was not in her customary place at the door, and that made Berit even more edgy. Khalad was right. Something here was definitely not the way it should be.
    Emperor Sarabian, dressed in his favorite purple doublet and hose, was nervously pacing the blue-carpeted floor of the sitting room as they entered, and he seemed to shrink back as Sparhawk and Vanion approached him.
    ‘Your Majesty,’ Sparhawk greeted him, inclining his head. ‘It’s good to see you again.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Ehlana?’ he asked, laying his helmet on the table.
    ‘Uh—in a minute, Sparhawk. How did things go on the North Cape?’
    ‘More or less the way we’d planned. Cyrgon doesn’t command the Trolls any more, but we’ve got another problem that might be even worse.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘We’ll tell you about it when Ehlana joins us. It’s not such a pretty story that we’d want to go through it twice.’
    The Emperor gave Foreign Minister Oscagne a helpless look.
    ‘Let’s go speak with Baroness Melidere, Prince Sparhawk,’ Oscagne suggested. ‘Something’s happened here. She was present, so she’ll be able to answer your questions better than we would.’
    ‘All right.’ Sparhawk’s gaze was level, and his voice was steady, despite the fact that Sarabian’s nervousness and Oscagne’s evasive answer fairly screamed out the fact that something was terribly wrong.
    Baroness