Reluctantly, Gilthas agreed. “You must go, for Rashas must never know about us.” As one reciting a lesson, he spoke with a thread of sulky bitterness in his tone.

Not Rashas or another person more than those who already did. Their secret was shared only by the Queen Mother, Gil’s trusted servant Planchet, and Kerian’s dearest friend in her master’s hall, Zoe Greenbriar. That secret had been kept for thirty years, for political reasons, and it was for political reasons that, later today, the king would be obliged to attend a dreary Senate meeting.

Gilthas would attend the meeting of the Thalas-Enthia, ostensibly because Senator Rashas insisted that he do so. To Rashas, indeed to nearly everyone, Gilthas seemed a weak, vacillating youth who could not determine which color hose looked well with what tunic and so could be counted on not to interfere with any serious work the senate had before it.

“The lad-ah, the king-the king is a youth and he is learning,” Rashas insisted to his fellow senators, the ladies and lords of the Thalas-Enthia. He insisted, but with seeming gentleness. “You see that our young lord is already showing wisdom in this terrible time, when the half of Krynn lives under the talons of dragons. He is showing the wisdom to wait, learn, and watch while older, wiser heads govern.” Carefully, the senator would withhold his smile and maintain gravity. “We are blessed in our king.”

Blessed in our king. Kerian knew the senator, in whose household she had been a servant for years. She knew the wily old elf’s way of thinking. Blessed in our king, our malleable puppet king. Rashas might well think so, for early in his rule Gilthas had not made a reputation for himself as a strong-willed leader. Plagued by ill health in his childhood, in his youth he’d been haunted by the chill uncertainty that he could not ever be a son worthy of parents who had fought so bravely during the War of the Lance. Who could live up to the legacy of Princess Laurana, the Golden General? What son could stand free of the legend of the storied Hero of the Lance, Tanis Half-Elven? Early in his rule, Gilthas had, indeed, been a puppet king.

There came a time when he had stopped being the young man who brooded over uncertainties and filled up pages of parchment with grim poetry. In truth, he still composed his darkly moody poems. Kerian did not much care for these. For all but she and the Queen Mother he wore the persona of a young man who vacillated between a kind of depression and the vapidity of a spoiled royal son. To the two women who loved him and knew him best, however, Gilthas was more. Uncertainty still dogged him, and nightmare haunted his sleep, dark dreams that to the young king sometimes seemed like terrible prophecy, but these no longer debilitated him, these he fought to rise above.

There is the courage of the sword and the courage of the heart and soul. Gilthas had discovered the latter and for this Kerian loved him.

A lot of what Rashas thought he knew about his king was false, and a lot about his king Rashas didn’t know at all. He did not know that a young Kagonesti woman in his service was beloved of the king. He did not know that much of what his servant heard made its way to Gilthas, dross to be sifted for grain. Rashas did not know-and if Gilthas and Kerian were careful, he would never know- that now and then, at a critical juncture, Gilthas found himself with just the kernel of information necessary to put him in a stronger position to bargain with his Senate than that august body might have expected.

In the last few years he’d put two governors into power in the eastern provinces, and these governors awaited their chance to prove themselves loyal. He’d granted favors to certain lords and ladies, knowing favors would be returned if needed. He hoped today to have another choice of his installed. He intended to set up the young Lord Firemane in the lord’s late mother’s position as governor of a northern province. Rashas had been, if not hoping for the old woman’s death, ready to install a governor with no familial and sentimental ties to the royal family. Such positions were not hereditary among elves, but Gilthas was prepared to point out-correctly-that no other man or woman had the wealth or the personal regard among the people of that far province to rule well. There could be no other choice but young Firemane unless the senate was willing to fund the installation of an outsider. In these dragon-days, with so much tribute going to Beryl, few senators would be eager to underwrite a problematic candidate.

Wily as Rashas, Gilthas played a dangerous game. He pretended to dance to the will of his senate, a senate ruled by Rashas, while working in the shadows to help his mother in her struggle to free the elf homeland from the Dark Knights and dragon dominion.

Outside the bedchamber, Planchet’s voice threaded among the others, the king’s body servant calling the household to order. The Queen Mother, he told them, would not be joining the king for breakfast.

“Take the place setting away,” Planchet said, following his command with a brisk clap of his hands.

Silent now for the sake of those outside, Kerian glanced at her lover.

“Mother received dispatches late last night.”

Kerian raised an eyebrow, and Gilthas crooked a lean smile. “A note, delivered late while you slept, my love. She’ll make her excuses and not attend the procession or the Senate session.”

“The treaty?”

Gilthas nodded. Perhaps the dispatches were a packet of letters from Abanasinia, perhaps from one of the Plains-folk leaders; perhaps some word at last from the dwarves of Thorbardin, a sign that the High King and his thanes did, at last, thaw toward the idea of making a pact with the elves.

Who ever knew about dwarves, those long thinkers, age-long deliberators? In centuries past, the elves had been fast friends with elves, Pax Tharkas stood testimony to that. In these times, the dwarves had a decent regard for the woman who had played so large a part in the War of the Lance but not so much interest in coming out from their mountain fastness to join treaties. There had been war in the mountain in the years of the Chaos War, a civil war among the dwarven clans that, it was said, had left the kingdom in ruin. Upon the will of these wounded, erstwhile allies hung the fate of a treaty that might stand a chance of delivering the elves from their captivity.

Outside, the servants murmured to each other. Clothing was being laid out even as a breakfast tray settled on a carved ivory stand to await the royal pleasure.

“Time to go,” Kerian whispered.

Out into the start of a day long beloved of the Qua-linesti people. The elves would celebrate the change of the season and pretend not to notice the Dark Knights lurking. That was life in occupied Qualinost, but a much better life than in other Dragon Realms. Where blue Khellendros ruled, people starved; in the eastern parts of Krynn where Malystryx the Red reigned, the people wept blood. Here, in exchange for tribute, the elves had rags of freedom and full larders. It was the tenuous bargain.

Kerian brushed her lover’s lips with a kiss.

Beneath her lips, she felt his rueful smile as Gilthas traced the line of her cheek with his finger. “Go, then. Come back again tonight.”

This she promised, now as always, willingly. She kissed him again, and the king held her just a moment longer before he let her go.

In the fabled city of the elves, with towers gleaming and silvery bridges shining, the people went in the colors of Autumn Harvest Men, young and old, dressed in nut-brown trousers, their shirts the russet of ripened apples, tawny barley, maples gone golden and dogwoods changed to the color of wine. The women, old and young and even the little girls, swirled in the streets and byways. They wore the same colors as their men, blue for asters in the fields, purple for the berries in the glades, gold, brown, and rose. In their hair they wove ribbons of silk, satin, and grosgrain. Around their waists they cinched sashes to match and the fringes hung down past the knee.