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by a person but by a thing?”
    After a moment, Beatrix nodded.
    Finally, progress! Matteo sent a triumphant glance toward the king. The expression on Zalathorm’s face sent him rocking back onto his heels.
    The king stared at his wife, his countenance deadly pale and stamped with horror. He slipped onto his knees and buried his face in the queen’s lap. His words were faint and choked with emotion, but Matteo caught something that sounded like, “Gods above, what have I done to you?”
    After a moment, Matteo went to the door and tapped softly. The guard let him out, and he stood quietly in the hall until the king rejoined him.
    “Sire, disturbing though this interview was, we made progress. We should continue.”
    Zalathorm shook his head. “You will get nothing more. The moment has passed.”
    “Before it did, you learned something important.”
    “Yes.” Zalathorm cleared his throat then spun away and stalked toward the tower stairs.
    Matteo fell into step and waited, but the king did not elaborate. After several moments, the jordain gave up any pretense of patience. Stepping into the king’s path, he rounded to face him and affixed him with a challenging stare.
    “With respect, my lord, you command me to defend the queen but tell me nothing that might aid in her defense!”
    To Matteo’s surprise, the king dropped his gaze first. “Magic is not the solution to every problem. Sometimes it creates as many problems as it solves. I was not aware of one of these problems until just now. There is nothing more to tell you.” He held up a hand to forestall Matteo’s ready protest. “Nothing, at least that is not held in silence by powerful enchantments and wizard-word oaths.”
    The jordain stood his ground for a few moments more, then fell back with a sigh. A wizard-word oath was sacred, unbreakable. This was not a matter of choice. As a consequence of swearing “by wind and word,” the lips of a Halruaan wizard were magically sealed.
    So there it was, then. Matteo’s difficult task had taken a downturn into the realms of impossibility! He had twenty days to uncover a secret the king could not speak, a secret a nation of wizardlords had not uncovered.
    Twenty days, and each passing day left Tzigone alone, abandoned in a place of horrors beyond Matteo’s imagining.
    After a moment, he realized the king was studying him. “You are thinking of your friend,” Zalathorm stated gently.
    Matteo managed a faint smile. “I did not think any but a magehound could plumb a jordain’s heart”
    “She is her mother’s daughter. Such women are capable of inspiring joy and pain in great and equal measure. I do not know a way to release your friend,” he said, shrewdly anticipating Matteo’s next question, “but may I make a suggestion?”
    “Please!”
    “Follow your heart where it takes you. Perhaps the daughter’s secrets will shed light upon the mother’s.”
    Matteo seized the king’s arm, bringing them both to a stop. “Do you foresee this?” he said eagerly.
    The king pulled away and fixed him with a searching gaze. “Can you conceive of any circumstance, jordain, in which you would willingly, even gladly violate an oath? Regardless of the cost to you, or the gain to another?”
    Matteo hesitated, then shook his head.
    “Then you are the better man. Once before, I paid love’s price in honor’s coin. I would do so again if I could free Beatrix. Since I cannot help the queen, I will bless the man who can and bear any cost to myself as a bargain.”
    Before the jordain could respond, Zalathorm simply disappeared.
    With a deeply troubled heart, Matteo accepted the truth of his task. Zalathorm was as much a prisoner as either Beatrix or Tzigone, and the jordain’s task was to free Halruaa’s king.
    Even if that meant destroying him.

Chapter Three
    Deep, silvery mist-mist so thick it came just short of rain, so pale and chill it resembled shapeshifting ghosts-swirled a slow dance through the dismal