"Why?" He suspected his frown was closer to a pout. Having a great many lovely women at his disposal was a young man's fantasy. Reality, Abivard had discovered, was less than imagination had led him to believe. Oh, variety every once in a while was enjoyable, but he preferred Roshnani over the wives he had inherited from Godarz.

When he told her as much, she glowed like a freshly lighted lamp. All the same, she said, "You still might be better advised to choose someone else tonight. If you call only for me, I will be hated in the women's quarters-and so shall you."

"Has it come to that?" Abivard asked, alarmed.

"I don't believe so, not yet, but I've heard mutters around corners and from behind closed doors that make me fear such a thing is not far away," Roshnani answered. "Your lady mother might perhaps tell you more. But this I say: better to give up a little happiness now if in the giving you save a great deal later."

The words had the ring of sense Abivard was used to hearing from Burzoe, which to his mind meant Roshnani had the makings of as fine a principal wife as any dihqan could hope for.

"Do you know what you are?" he asked her. She shook her head. "A woman in ten thousand," he said. "No, by the God, in a hundred thousand."

That earned him a kiss, but when he tried for more this time, Roshnani pulled away. "You must be able to give your best to whomever you call tonight," she said.

He glowered in mock indignation. "Now you presume to question my manhood?" But since he had a pretty good notion of what he could do in that regard, he made no more than that mild protest-Roshnani was too likely to be right.

When evening came, he summoned Ardini instead of Roshnani. She came to his bedchamber in a silken gown so transparent he could see the two tiny moles she had just below her navel. That excited him, but she had drenched herself in rose water till she smelled stronger than a perfumer's. He almost sent her back to the women's quarters to scrub it off, but desisted: no point in embarrassing her. He regretted that later, for the bedchamber was redolent of roses for the next several days.

Abivard conscientiously summoned each of his wives from the women's quarters in turn. A couple of times, he had to pretend to himself that he was really making love with Roshnani, though he took special pains to make sure those partners never noticed. Thinking of what he did as a duty helped him get through it. He suspected that would have amused Godarz.

The duty done, though, he went back to spending most of his nights with Roshnani. Most of the times he summoned other women were at her urging. Some principal wives, he knew, would have grown arrogant if shown such favor. Roshnani did her best to act as if she were just one of many. That only inclined Abivard to favor her more.

One morning after sleeping alone-he had been drinking wine with Frada and some of his older half brothers, and came to bed too drunk to be much interested in female companionship-he woke with a headache so splitting, he didn't even feel like sitting up. Still flat on his belly, he reached down and blindly groped for his sandals. All he managed to do, though, was push them farther under the bed, beyond the reach of his sweeping arm.

"If I have to call a servant to bend down to get my shoes, everyone will know how bad I feel," he said aloud. Just hearing his own voice hurt, too. But even hung over, Abivard was dutiful. He got out of bed-actually, he came close to falling out of bed-and pulled out first one sandal, then the other.

Suffused in a warm glow of virtue that almost masked his crapulence, he was about to don the captured footgear when his bloodshot gaze fell on something else under the bed, something he didn't remember seeing there before-not that he spent a lot of time looking under the bed: a small, dark-gray, rectangular tablet.

Before he thought much about what he was doing, his hand snaked out and seized the tablet. His eyebrows rose as he pulled it out to where he could get a good look at it: it was heavier than he had expected. "Has to be lead," he said.

The upper side of the tablet was blank and smooth, but his fingers had felt marks on the thing, so he turned it over. Sure enough, the other side had words cut into the soft metal, perhaps with an iron needle. They were, at the moment, upside down.

Abivard turned it over. The words became clear. As he read them, his blood ran cold. May this tablet and the image I make bind Abivard to me in cords of love. May he waste away from wanting me; may desire cling to him like a leech from the swamps. If he wants me not, may he burn with such pain that he would wish for the Void. But if he should die of desire for me, let him never look on the face of the God. So may it be.

Moving as if in a bad dream, Abivard broke the curse tablet in two and spat on the pieces. Now his heart pounded as hard as his head. He had heard of women using magic to bind a man to them, but he had never imagined such a thing happening in the women's quarters of Vek Rud stronghold.

"Who?" he whispered. Roshnani? He couldn't believe that-but if she had ensorceled him, he wouldn't believe it, would he? Did she make him so happy because she had magically compelled him to fall in love with her?

It was possible. With cold rationality, he recognized that. He wondered how he would ever trust another woman if it proved to be so. But he also knew it didn't have to be so, not when he had had every one of his wives out of the women's quarters and into his bedchamber in the recent past.

He started to call for Burzoe, but then shook his head. He did not want even his mother to know of the curse tablet. If she let slip an unfortunate word, as even the wisest person, man or woman, might do, chaos would rule the women's quarters, with everyone suspecting everyone else. If he could find any way to prevent that, he would.

Whistling tunelessly between his teeth, he tossed the broken pieces of the tablet onto the down-filled mattress. When he had thrown on a caftan and buckled the sandals whose escape under the bed had led him to find the tablet, he put on his belt and stuck the two chunks of lead in one of the pouches that hung from it.

He was out the door and walking down the hall before he realized he had stopped noticing his headache. Amazing what fear will do, he thought. It was not a hangover cure he hoped to use again any time soon.

The normally savory cooking smells wafting through the living quarters only made his stomach churn: terror hadn't cured him after all. He hurried out into the courtyard and then down into the village that lay below the stronghold on its knob.

He knocked at the door of Tanshar the fortune-teller. The old man was as close to being a proper wizard as anyone in the domain-and that thought made Abivard wonder if Tanshar had prepared the curse tablet and whatever image went with it. But he could more easily imagine the sky turning brown and the land blue than Tanshar involving himself in something like this.

Tanshar awkwardly held a crust of bread and a cup of wine in one hand to free the other so he could open the door. His eyes, one clouded, the other clear, widened in surprise when he saw who had disturbed his breakfast. "Lord Abivard," he exclaimed. "Come in, of course; you honor my home. But what brings you to me so early in the day?" Tanshar made it sound more like curiosity than reproach.

Abivard waited till the old man had closed and barred the door behind him before he fished out the broken pieces of the tablet and held them in the palm of his hand so Tanshar could see them. "I found this curse under my bed when I arose this morning," he said in a flat voice.

The fortune-teller reached for them. "May I?" he asked. At Abivard's nod, he took the two flat pieces of lead, put them together, and held them out at arm's length so he could read them. When he was done muttering the words to himself, he clicked his tongue between his teeth several times. "Am I to infer one of your wives left it there, lord?"