Last summer, at Sir Tarus’s urging, Grace had finally ordered an exploratory mission into Imbrifale. Tarus himself had led the small company of knights through the gate, with the Spiders Aldeth and Samatha serving as scouts. Master Larad and the young witch Lursa had gone as well, for there was no telling what fell magics might remain in the Pale King’s Dominion.

For an entire month, Grace had paced the outer wall of Gravenfist Keep, gazing out across the vale, waiting for them to return. She had hoped to be able to speak across the Weirding to Lursa. However, the moment the troop passed through the Rune Gate, all contact with them ceased, as if their threads had been cut by a knife. The Ironfang Mountains, woven with enchantments to imprison the Pale King, proved a barrier that could not be pierced by thought or magic.

At last, on the first day of Revendath, they returned to Gravenfist Keep. The company had not lost a single member on the journey; however, all of them suffered in spirit. None seemed able to speak of what they had found except for Master Larad, and even he spoke in halting words, so that it took many days before Grace finally learned all they had discovered.

Imbrifale was dead. Nothing lived in that Dominion—not men or monsters or animals, or even trees or plants. Every living thing that had dwelled there had been infused with and twisted by the Pale King’s magic over the centuries. Nothing had not been bound to him, and when he and his master Mohg had perished, so did all else.

What had happened in the thousand years the Rune Gate was shut would never truly be known, for no written records had been found, but some things could be gleaned from what the company saw. They came upon terrible cities, built like the hives of some insect species. There the feydrimand other inhuman slaves of the Pale King were bred and born, fed through holes in tiny chambers, where they either perished or grew strong enough to break their way out.

Other cities were more like the castles and keeps of the Dominions, though sharper, harsher, made only for function, with no consideration for beauty or comfort. There the human subjects of the Pale King had dwelled, and beneath one such keep they had found a labyrinth of chambers that contained stone tables large and small, and racks filled with knives and curved hooks. In one such chamber they discovered a cabinet containing iron lumps, some the size of a man’s fist, some tiny, no larger than a robin’s egg. In the next chamber was a pit filled with bones, many of grown men and women, but others the birdlike bones of infants—the remains of those who had not withstood the transformation.

Elsewhere the company came upon mines: immense wounds gouged in the land, oozing fetid liquids and emitting noxious fumes. Near each mine stood a foundry, many of them still filled with half-finished machines of war. At last they had reached Fal Imbri, the Pale King’s palace, and they had looked upon his throne: a chair of iron forged for a giant, carved with runes of dread, its edges sharp as razors.

The throne was empty. The company had turned around to begin the long journey home.

“Do you want us to go back there, Your Majesty?”

Grace turned in the saddle. Aldeth was gazing at the open Rune Gate, his expression grim, his gray eyes distant. He seemed not to notice the way his hand crept up his chest.

“No,” Grace said softly. “There’s nothing for us there.” She forced her voice to brighten. “Now come, let’s go see what Sir Tarus wants with me.”

9.

Half an hour later, they rode through an arch into the courtyard between the main tower of the keep and Gravenfist’s outer wall. Once this place had thronged with warriors, rune-speakers, and witches desperately battling to hold back the army of the Pale King. It was crowded today as well, though there were far more farmers, weavers, tanners, potters, merchants, and blacksmiths than there were men-at-arms.

Over the last three years, Gravenfist Keep had become less of a military fortress and more of a working castle. Most of the men who had marched here with Grace had stayed, and their families had come north to join them. There were now a number of villages in the valley, and farms were springing up in the fertile lands between the mountains and the Winter Wood—lands that had lain fallow for centuries.

There had been a brief time when Grace had considered relocating her court to the old capital of Tir-Anon, some thirty leagues to the south; that was where the kings and queen of Malachor had dwelled of old. She had journeyed there the autumn after the war, along with Falken and Melia, but they had found little. Tir-Anon had been utterly destroyed in the fall of Malachor seven hundred years ago. There was nothing save heaps of rubble overgrown with groves of valsindarand sintaren. They had returned to Gravenfist sober, and determined to make it their home.

“There you are, Your Majesty,” Sir Tarus said, rushing up as Grace brought Shandis to a halt before the main keep. His face was nearly as red as his beard.

“So it appears,” she said. “Thanks to a little help from Master Larad, Aldeth here was able to ferret me out.”

She glanced to her left, but where the spy had ridden a moment ago there was now only empty air. A sigh escaped her. “I wish I could disappear like that.”

Tarus clucked his tongue. “Queens don’t get to disappear, Your Majesty.”

“And why is that?”

“Because they must be ever available to their counselors, vassals, and subjects, of course.”

She allowed him to help her down from her horse. “That’s exactly why I wish I could vanish sometimes.”

“None of that now, Your Majesty,” Tarus said, giving her a stern look. “There’s work to be done.”

Grace sighed. This was part of an ongoing battle with Sir Tarus. She had made him her seneschal three years ago (after Melia gently pointed out that Grace didn’t have to try to run the kingdom all by herself), and in the time since Tarus had taken the job seriously. Too seriously, she sometimes thought. He worked at all hours of the day and night, and he hardly seemed to smile anymore. Where was the dashing young knight with the ready grin she had first met in the forests of western Calavan?

He’s still in there, Grace. Just older, like each of us.

A groom came to take Shandis to the stables, and Tarus walked with Grace to the main keep.

“Well,” she said as they approached the doors of the great hall, “were you going to tell me what was so urgent it couldn’t wait? Or are you simply going to spring it on me and see if I faint from shock?”

“Now that you mention it, I was sort of favoring the latter option,” Tarus said. “Only then I reconsidered,” the seneschal hastily added when she gave him a piercing glance.

However, even after he told her what had transpired, Grace still felt a keen jolt of surprise as she stepped into the great hall and saw the two men standing before the dais. One she did not recognize at all. He was a younger man, short but well built, dark-haired, and clad in a gray tunic. His face was squarely handsome, but softened by a sensuous mouth. He held a staff carved with runes.

The other man she did recognize, but only after careful consideration. When she first met him, at the Council of Kings in Calavere, he had been a corpulent man dressed in ostentatious clothes, his gaze haughty, his thick fingers laden with rings.

The years had aged him greatly. He was rail-thin now, and wore a simple black tunic and no jewelry. His bulbous nose was still ruddy—a testament to a past penchant for too much wine— but his close-set eyes were clear and sober. He and his companion knelt as she entered.

“Rise, Lord Olstin of Brelegond, please,” she said when she managed to find the breath to speak. “You are welcome in Malachor.”