'Come closer, Golophin. I have heard a lot about you.' The wizard approached the bed and as the firelight fell on his ravaged face the Queen's eyes widened slightly. 'Hebrion's fall left its mark on you, I see.' 'It is a light enough burden, compared to some.' 'My husband asked you to come here?' 'Yes, lady.'

'That was thoughtful of him, but useless, as we both know. I would have sent for you in any case. There are so few folk of intelligence I can converse with these days. They all troop in here and look dutifully mournful - even Corfe - and I can get little sense out of them. I am near the end and that is that.' She hesitated, and said in a more ragged tone, 'My familiar is dead. He went before me. I had not imagined there could be such pain, such a loss.'

'They are part of us’ Golophin agreed, 'and with their passing goes something of our own souls.'

'You wizards, you can create them I am told, whereas we Dweomer-poor witches must wait for another to come along. Myself, I shall have no need of another. But I do miss poor Arach.' Then she seemed to collect herself. 'Where are my manners? You may sit and have some wine, if you do not mind drinking from a glass a queen has used before you. I would call a maid, but then there would be an interminable fuss, and I grow impatient with advancing years.'

'As do we all.' Golophin smiled, filling the glass. 'The old have less time to waste than the young.'

She stared at him in silence for a minute and seemed to be testing words in her mouth. Her eyes were bright as fevered jewels.

'What of you now, Master-Mage? Where do you call home?' 'I have none, lady. I am a vagabond.' 'Will Hebrion see you again?' 'I hope so.'

'You would be very welcome here as an advisor at court.'

'A Hebrionese wizard? I think you may exaggerate.'

'We have all manner of foreigners in Torunna these days. Formio is Fimbrian, Comillan a Felimbric tribesman, Admiral Berza a Gabrionese. Our Pontiff, Albrec, is an Almarkan. The flotsam and jetsam of the world end up in Torunna. You know why?'

'Tell me.'

'The King. They are moths to his candle. Even those haughty Fimbrians come trickling over the mountains to join him, year by year. And in his heart he hates it. He would rather be the simple nobody he was before Aekir's fall. I have watched him these seventeen years and seen the joy leech out of him day by day. Only Mirren lifts his heart. Mirren, and the prospect of leading an army into battle.'

Golophin stared at Odelia wonderingly. 'Lady, your can­dour is disarming.'

'Candour be damned. I will be dead within the week. I want you to do something for me.'

'Anything.'

'Stay here with him. Help him. When I go there will be only Formio left for him to confide in. You have spent your life in the service of kings. End it in the service of this one. He is a soldier of genius, Golophin, but he needs someone to guide him through the silken quagmire that is the court. He, also, is less patient than he was, and will brook no opposition to what he sees as right. I would not have such a man end his days a tyrant, hated by all.'

'Surely that is not possible.'

'There is a black hole in his soul, and once he sets his mind to something he will shift earth and heaven to accomplish it, recking nothing of the consequences. In the years he has been King I have tried to make him see the value of compromise, but it is like trying to reason with a stone. He must have someone of experience in the darker wiles of the world beside him, to help him see that a sword is not the answer to everything.'

'You flatter me, lady. But the confidence of a king is not an easily won thing.'

'He admires competence and plain speaking. From what I have heard you possess both. But there is another thing. When I am gone there will not be a single practitioner of the Dweomer at court, save only my daughter. She also needs guidance. There is a wellspring of power in her that quite eclipses anything in my experience. I would not have her explore the Dweomer alone.' Odelia looked away. Her with­ered hands picked restlessly at the heavy weave of the cover­let. 'I would she had been born without it. It would make her life easier.

'Your people and mine have chosen a different side in this war, Golophin. The wrong side. They had little choice in the matter, it is true, but they will suffer for it. They may even be destroyed by it.'

Something astonishing dawned on Golophin.

'You are against this war.'

Odelia managed a tight smile. 'Not against it, but I have my doubts about fighting it to the bitter end. The Dweomer runs in my blood as it does in yours, and in my daughter's. I believe this Aruan to be evil, but many of the aims he espouses are not. We will not be fighting Merduks in the time to come, but fellow Ramusians - not that there is much to tell between us all now, I suppose. And I do not want a pogrom of the Dweomer-folk to stain Corfe's victory, if he should gain one. There must come an end to this senseless persecution of those who practise magic'

Golophin felt a wave of relief. He was not a traitor then. His doubts were not his alone. And Bardolin might not be the evil puppet he had feared, but a man trying to do the right thing in difficult circumstances. The thing he had so wanted to be true might well be so.

'Lady,' he said, 'you have my word that when the time comes I will be by your husband's side. If needs be I will make myself his conscience.'

Odelia closed her eyes. ‘I ask no more. Thank you, Brother Mage. You have eased an old woman's mind.'

Golophin bowed, and as he did he found himself thinking that here in Torunna he had found a king and queen who were somehow larger than the monarchs he had known hitherto. Abeleyn, who had become a good ruler before the end, even a great one, seemed now but a boy beside Corfe of Torunna, the soldier-king. And this frail woman breathing her last before him: she was a worthy consort. There was a greatness here in this country that would remain the stuff of legend, no matter how many centuries passed it by.

He laid a hand on the Queen's forehead and her eyes fluttered open, the lashes feathering against his palm.

'Hush now.'

The Dweomer in Odelia had sunk down to a smoking ember. It would never kindle into light again, but it was all that was keeping her alive. That, and this woman's indomit­able will. She might have been a mage - the promise was there - but she had never undergone the training necessary to make her powers bloom. Anger stirred in Golophin. How many others, humble and great across this blinkered world, had wasted their gifts similarly? Bardolin was right. The world could have been different, could still be different. There might still be time.

He gave Odelia sleep, a heavy healing sleep, and with his own powers he stoked up that last ember glowing within her, coaxed it into a last flicker of life. Then he sat back, poured himself some more of the fragrant wine, and mused upon the crooked course of this darkening earth.

Eleven

Aurungzeb stirred lazily with a kiss of silk hissing about his hams. ‘I like that woman. I have always liked her. As direct as a man, but with a mind as subtle as an assassin's.'

He rolled over in the bed and the sturdy hardwood frame creaked under him. The white-limbed girl who shared it with him scurried nimbly out of the way as his vast bulk settled and he sighed comfortably.

Ancient Akran, the vizier, leant on a staff that had once been ceremonial but now was genuinely necessary. He stood on the other side of a curtain of gauzy silk which hung like fog around the Sultan's monumental four-poster.

'She is . . . remarkable, my Sultan, it must be said. Making arrangements for her husband's wedding while she, his wife, is yet living. That argues a formidable degree of will.'