It was one of his favorite places in the castle, second only to the spacious bedchamber he shared with Olinne. The King's Drawing Room was a small and oddly-shaped room behind the great hall, quiet and removed from the traffic of the court.

The walls were paneled in knotted wood, the ceiling coffered and inset with murals of hunting scenes. Beneath his pacing feet, a thick Torgothan rug turned his steps to silence. The room's special magic was that it seemed cozy when accommodating more than twenty, yet not overlarge when only - as the case was now - accommodating five.

"We must give Seric time," Chian of Westreach said. The tension in the dowager queen was shown only in the stiff set of her spine and the lines that worry had etched around her eyes. "He has among his men the best trackers in Westreach, and they will find Idasha."

Jherion grimaced, ashamed of himself for letting his own troubles get the best of him when here was a woman whose daughter had been absent for weeks. Possibly dead, almost assuredly ravished, although none dared to speak of such things and clung instead to the belief that Idasha was being held unharmed and untouched, for ransom. To further the queen's worry, her younger son had been gone nearly as long, seeking his sister.

Even Olinne, sitting by the window in a fall of late autumn light, had more personal cause to worry than did he. Alkath, her brother, had accompanied Seric of Westreach in the search. But she, wrapped in serenity as if it were a cloak, nodded in support of Chian's words.

The fifth in the room also wore emotion as if it were a cloak, but not in his case one of serenity. He was Cassidor Ephes, and his garment of troubled thought dragged heavily at his shoulders.

"What say you, magician?" Jherion asked. "What of your divinations? Have the spirits nothing to say?"

"Through the cast-stones, I know that they yet live, but the omens do not hint ofsuccess for Alkath. I am given signs of snow and ice, serpents and wolves, and others that I cannot fathom."

"That's not all, is it?" Jherion ceased his pacing and fixed the tall, thin Cassidor with a sharp look. "There's more."

Cassidor and Chian exchanged a look weighted with unspoken meanings.

"It could have been no random madman who stole Idasha away," Olinne ventured into the uncomfortable pause. "Were that so, my brother and hers would have found him 'ere now. It must have been someone prepared, with some other purpose in mind."

"Whatever you know, you must tell me," Jherion said.

"The spirits have let it be known to me who it was," Cassidor confessed. "We thought him dead, but were too hasty. It was Felin Kathak."

Jherion let out a slow breath. "The High Commander. He escaped the battle in Trevale, made his way here. But why take Idasha? Why not kill me? Or why not kill Alkath, by whose hand his own father died? He had the opportunity, but seized the girl instead! Why?"

"Sooner or later, Cassidor, the truth must be told," Chian said gently. "Although I know how it hurts you, what it costs you."

"Do you?" His pale face was at once waxy and hectic. "When I was a boy, I lived reckless as a stray dog, until my master Hadric took me in and taught me discipline, caution, honesty. I lived by those principles above and beyond, until it was rare that I had an undisciplined thought, unheard of that I would act boldly, and nigh impossible for me to go against any law, speak any falsehood!"

"Good magician, what is it that distresses you?" Olinne asked.

It was as if he hadn't heard, his gaze still fixed despairingly on the dowager queen. Jherion realized that the strain of this truth had Cassidor Ephes close to breaking, and in the deepest pit of his heart suddenly knew that he wanted to hear it even less than Ephes wanted to tell it.

"When Ithor Drok came to me, when we first approached Baron Halan with our plan, it went against every grain of my being to deceive, to betray Davore Kathak although I knew him to be a terrible man and a worse king! It took my every ounce of willpower just to allow Gedren and Alkath to go to Westreach. It was nearly more than I could stand to remain behind, to lie to the king as to what I saw in the cast-stones about his future! Only the belief, the certainty, that we were doing the right thing allowed me to get through it. And then you come to me, lady queen, to clear your conscience and shift the burden to my own!"

"Magician …" Jherion wasn't sure what he would have followed with, but it did not matter, for Cassidor was paying him no attention either.

"I set my very life and soul at risk to seek the will of the spirits," Cassidor continued. "I learned of their will, took the advice of my former master, and decided that as it was for the best interests of all, I could live with the lie. And it was! For the best interests of all! For Jherion, for Hothar, for Idasha, for all of us! Now you'd have me destroy all of that?"

"It has already been destroyed," Chian said, rising to face his trembling anger with a regal calm that Jherion envied. "If Felin Kathak has taken Idasha, you know where he must have gone."

"Kathan." The word fell from his lips like a stone. "The snow and wolves, yes, the spirits have made that clear."

"And if Seric and Alkath cannot reach them in time, you know what he'll do."

"Beseech his uncle the king for an army."

Jherion curled his fist. "Let them come. We'll be ready for them." At his side, Olinne gazed up at him with a mixture of wifely worry and maidenly devotion that made him feel ten times a hero.

"He wouldn't have taken her had he not known the truth. Which can perhaps be laid at the feet of this rat-master magician --" Chian continued.

"Nerrar." A snarl of hatred sounded foreign coming from the reserved Cassidor Ephes.

"What truth?" Jherion demanded. "What did that wretch discover? What makes Idasha so valuable to them?"

"If we don't tell him now," Chian said, "you know that the Kathani will. He should hear it from us, and then we can all decide what must be done."

Olinne's grip tightened. Jherion put an arm around her and held her protectively close, sensing in some dreadful, peculiar way that whatever the cryptic pair were about to unveil would change them all forever.

Cassidor heaved such a sigh that it seemed he was exhaling his very soul. "I cannot. It was your secret all these years. I'll not let you pass the entire burden to me."

Chian nodded and pressed her palms and fingers together as she seemed to gather and order her thoughts. "Jherion …"

"No!" Olinne gasped. "Whatever it is, we do not wish to hear! It is ill news, I know it is! It must be, why else would you look at us with such a weight of pity? We do not wish to hear!"

"Yet you must. Cassidor is right. The burden is mine, and I should have taken steps to correct it before now. I thought that Meryve would recover from her madness, and realize the folly of raising you with vengeance in mind --"

"You knew my mother?" Jherion asked.

"She never told you of her past, never set you on the path of overthrowing the Kathaks."

"No … she always told me that I was meant for something greater than that peasant life, that a destiny awaited me, but never what it was. Never why. I knew none of it until Dame Gedren, Alkath, and Ithor came to me."

"That was how it should have been. Who would have suspected that the old soldier would seek to set things right? Jherion … you are not the right-born heir to Hothar."

His blood slowly froze in his veins, and his voice emerged in a strengthless whisper. "What?"

Olinne's hand left his to join its mate, covering her mouth as her winter-sky eyes grew round. "Not the … but he … how?"

Speaking quietly but steadily, Chian of Westreach told her tale. Jherion groped his way to a chair and sank into it, his legs refusing to support him. The foundations of the new life he'd built crumbled away with each sentence, leaving him precariously balanced over a chasm of dark despair.

Some months back, in his hog-drover's hovel at the edge of the village, he'd listened as Gedren Ephes told him of Meryve's escape from the Kathani massacre. At that time, her words had filled him with a brimming, overpowering exultation. Validation, vindication, confirmation of everything his mother had ever told him and more.

Now, in the King's Drawing Room of Hothar Castle, he felt all of that bleeding away as if from a mortal wound.

Meryve … not his mother at all! Surviving her grief and anguish by holding onto the one thread of hope, that her son would grow to avenge his murdered family and take back what was his. And then to have that hope shattered by the birth of a daughter … sending her into insanity.

"I meant only to help her," Chian said. "To ease her madness and save the child. She needed a son. You needed a mother. It seemed at the time the best choice."

"And so all that I've done … all of this --" Jherion swung his arm around in a weak gesture to encompass the room and the castle beyond. "All of this was a lie. It isn't mine, none of it is mine. I'm as bad as Oldered Kathak … no, worse!"

"No!" Olinne's cry was startlingly loud, high and brittle on the edge of cracking. "You didn't know! Your intent was the best!"

"That changes nothing."

"It changes everything!" she protested. "You didn't know, Jherion! You were doing what you thought was right. Do you think I've forgotten what you said to me? How it may have begun out of a wish for a better life for yourself, but you came to see what it would mean to all of Hothar? You've fought for this, bled for it, because you believed!"

"I believed," Jherion said. He raised his eyes to Cassidor. "And you let me. Did you never mean to tell me?"

"Never," he admitted. "When first Queen Chian told me, I wanted to let it all be known. But wiser heads and the spirits prevailed. It was in a good cause. If no one knew, what was the harm?"

"What was the harm?" Jherion couldn't even bear to look at Olinne, afraid of what he might see in her face. "You would have let me live a lie, let all of Hothar be tricked. And what of Idasha? What of her birthright, her destiny?"

"She would not have wanted it, never," Chian said.

"You made me a king, and now you tell me I'm not …" he couldn't finish, could only slump in his chair and bury his face in his hands.

"Jherion --" Olinne began. By the soft rustle of her gown, he knew she meant to come to him, touch him, and he couldn't bear it.

"Jerin," he said, curt but muffled. "I'm only Jerin Hog-Drover, remember?"

"You are my husband," she countered.

"You were to be married to a king." He couldn't raise his head, couldn't stand to look at her. "At least with Alkath and Idasha, he'll have his wish that his grandchild rules Hothar next."

"Enough!" snapped Chian, the whipcrack of her voice forcing Jherion to sit up. He had a brief glimpse of the stricken Olinne, but then the dowager queen was in front of him, her expression very stern.

"What would you have of me?" he asked bitterly. "That I continue to pretend to be a king? What's the use? The Kathani will know, and then all of Ilgrath soon after."

"You are needed."

"Why? To keep up the playacting until your Idasha gets back? Open your eyes! They've probably got her wedded and bedded to some Kathani with a beard like a wolf's mane already! They'll storm down here come spring, demanding Hothar on her behalf. What would you have me do, fight for it? When it isn't mine and has never been?"

"Until we know for certain, I would have you conduct yourself like a king," Chian said.

"But I am not a king."

"But you are," said Olinne. "Not by birth, granted, but by deed. By right of arms. You fought for Hothar and won it --"

"With the support of barons who believed I did have right of birth," Jherion reminded them. "With the support of advisors who likewise believed."

"You cannot abandon Hothar now," Cassidor said. "You cannot run from what we've built, even if it is founded on an error. That does not matter --"

"Oh?" Jherion stood up, face to face with the magician. "Would it matter if Idasha walked in here this very moment and said she wanted her father's crown?"

Cassidor averted his gaze, and that was all the answer Jherion needed.

"As I thought." For everyday occasions rather than court ones, he wore only a simple golden circlet with the shape of an eagle at the front. He plucked it off, not without a wrench of regret, and dropped it onto the table.

"Jherion, don't," Olinne sounded perilously near weeping, and he still wouldn't let himself look at her.

"Olinne, I am sorry," he said to the floor. "Our marriage was as much a sham as my kingship. But what I felt for you … that was real. I wish you luck, I wish you well."

"Jherion!"

His heart was breaking, splitting in two, but he made himself turn from her, and leave the room.

As the familiar turrets of Hothar Castle came into view, Alkath Halan felt his spirits sink into his boots.

"And there … I've come home a failure," he said.

Seric Goranson and the others glanced at him in puzzlement. They weren't a morose bunch, these Westreachers. They were upfront in their emotions, and if something went wrong, they acknowledged it and moved on to do something about it without brooding. Thus his glumness these many past days confused them, and Alkath was in no mood to explain.

Upfront in their emotions … the women as much as the men, as he well knew. Idasha in her outspoken bluntness, her intense passions … Idasha, lost to him now and doubtless always.

They had followed for as long as humanly possible and beyond. Followed until even the hardy Westreachers, used to the mountainous terrain surrounding their valley home, were pushed to the limits of endurance. Only the Kathani, with the blood of wolves in their veins, could have made it through the blizzard that had finally made them turn back.

Had Idasha survived it? Would it be better to him to hope that she hadn't? He knew with a sick sureness what awaited her at the end of her journey, if it hadn't befallen her already. Captured by Felin Kathak, the Red Wolf, as violent and greedy as they came … a fair lady in the jaws of that beast would probably sooner wish for death!

But why Idasha? What had happened? He'd been over it countless times in his mind and could not come up with an answer. Felin Kathak at the castle, yes, easy enough, seeking to strike against Jherion. Or even to avenge his father's death, which had been served up on a battlefield in Trevale by Alkath himself. Yet when the opportunity presented, Felin had merely knocked him aside and gone after Idasha as if she'd been his target all the while.

Her brother Seric refused to believe that she was dead, calling his sister a scrapper and a survivor. But even his hopes had faded, and after Alkath's realization as to the identity of her abductor, Seric had resigned himself more to revenge than rescue.

Now here they were, returned to Hothar empty-handed and frostbitten. What had gone wrong? He was meant to find her, challenge and kill Felin, save her, and then they would be married. That was the way it was supposed to go … but he'd turned tail and left her to the mercies of the Kathani.

Slinking home like a coward. That was what they were doing, no matter what Seric said. It didn't matter that they needed supplies and reinforcements, that they'd need an army as big as both kingdoms could provide if they hoped to launch an assault on Kathan. Didn't matter that the small group of them would have been dead sure as the world-belt shines if they'd pressed on.

In the end, he knew he had abandoned the lady he loved to spare his own skin, and he would never be able to forget that dishonor. Even if by some miracle, when the war was done, they found her unharmed and untouched, that failure would always be between them.

Weeks had gone by since the coronation. The Narluki had departed, as had most of the other visiting nobles. As they reached the castle, they learned that a small contingent of Westreachers had been sent back over the passes to inform King Gethin of events, while the rest remained.

Alkath felt the contempt and condemnation of everyone around as Seric explained that they hadn't found Idasha. He could almost hear their accusations. What sort of knight was he, first to be unable to prevent his lady from being carried off, and then to be unable to find her?

Leaving Seric to a happy reunion with his own wife Falysse and their son, Alkath trudged to his quarters. He was grimy, achy, and disconsolate from head to toe, and the pains of his body were minor compared to the bleakness of his spirits.

But even in the depths of his cauldron of misery, he realized something worse was amiss the moment he stepped into the wing that housed the Halan family. What he heard as he opened the sitting room door and stepped inside made his jaw drop.

"Ephes will officiate the annulment and the queen of Westreach will witness it, I'll see to that!" his father stormed. "They wove this tangled mess, so they'd not dare defy me!"

"But what of poor Olinne?" cried his mother, her hands fluttering all about in the manner they did when she was sorely distressed. "Her heart is broken!"

"I'll send her home to the estate until spring, and then she'll return to Plesvar. We'll find her another husband later, when all this is cleared up."

"Another husband!" Alkath blurted, stark horror overwhelming everything else.

"Alkath!" Baron Halan came at him with such vigor that Alkath didn't know if his father meant to hug him or smite him. "Gods be praised you've returned! And Idasha? Recovered from her ordeal, I hope, because I don't want to delay the wedding."

"Wedding? What? Father --"

"How can you be so cruel to our own dear daughter?" his mother wailed. "She's not eaten for two days, nor come out of her room!"

"What's going on?" Alkath demanded. "Has something happened to Jherion?"

"Jherion!" spat Baron Halan. "I should have known this plan was madness the moment I heard it! Make a hog-drover into a king, pah! And to think I let him sully my own precious child! Well, no more of that! Olinne will be fine, in time. Perhaps we'll send her to one of those woman-houses in Westreach until she's over the shame."

"Father!" Alkath flung down his knapsack and helmet. "Tell me what's happened! Where is Jherion?"

"Your friend Jherion has been keeping himself closeted away, and good for him!" the baron said fiercely. "But they convinced him to keep up the pretense until you brought Idasha home to take her rightful place. Now he can go back among the hogs where he belongs!"

"What?"

"He's not the king!" Nearly apoplectic, the baron explained. "Soon it'll be common news, common news to go with a common peasant. Princess Meryve lost her senses when she had a daughter, so Chian of Westreach switched the babes. Jherion's true parents are a soldier and a chambermaid. It's your Idasha that is the true Lendrin heir."

"If this is a jest," Alkath said weakly, knowing that his father never jested, "it is in the poorest of humors!"

"How could they have done this to us?" wailed the baroness. "My poor daughter … oh, and she was such a lovely queen! Now she'll be nothing!"

"It's the truth, son." His father's hand slammed down on his shoulder almost hard enough to hurt. "But you'll salvage this family's honor. Thank the spirits for bringing you and Idasha together."

"Idasha is queen? Idasha?" It was still trying to sink into Alkath's mind, and not doing so gracefully. "She would never wish that … never accept it!"

"We'll have to keep your sister away from court for some time, until all this unpleasant business has been forgotten. But with the bustle of another wedding, that shouldn't take long. Once you and Idasha are married --"

"We didn't find her!"

"-although that would make you more a Prince Consort than a true king, but it'll -- what did you say?"

Alkath hung his head. "We didn't find her. Felin Kathak has her, and they were well into Kathan before the weather made us turn back."

The grip on his shoulder went from congratulatory to punishing. "What? You can't mean to stand there and say to me that you let a little snow make you turn and run!"

"You left her with Felin Kathak?" His father's voice was rising, not quite a shout but headed that way. "When she is heir to Hothar? He'll marry her himself! A curse on you for foolishness! What were you thinking?"

"I didn't want to turn back! Seric led, not I, and knew the weather would kill us swifter than even the Kathani!"

"You should have gone on!"

"Stop, please, stop!" the baroness screamed, hands over her ears. "This will help nothing!"

Baron Halan released Alkath and took several long breaths to calm himself. Alkath did likewise, but the sickness around his heart had spread through his entire body.

"Father, please, tell me everything. It makes sense now, if Felin knew about Idasha, but how did he find out? And Jherion, Olinne, what happened to them?"

Glowering and reluctant, his father told Alkath all that had taken place since he left. He in turn related his failure in the north.

"My poor Olinne," Emrana Halan whimpered. "She was a queen, my sweet little girl, queen of all Hothar, and now no decent man will want her! Oh, how could they have done this? What are we to do, Maragon, what are we to do? First Arayse executed and now Olinne shamed … our family is destroyed!"

The castle cemetery was in a nook off of the main courtyard, sheltered and shadowed by high walls and tall trees that blazed with a riot of autumn colors against the grim, clouded sky. Although a bustling city street was just on the other side, a solemn hush held sway here in the court of the dead.

At the rear of the enclosure was a shrine to the gods and spirits, an elaborate marble structure built around a simple block of stone. That block was ancient and pitted, the symbols carved upon it long since worn to ghosts by the passage of time. The graves nearest the shrine were marked with stone cairns nearly reclaimed by the land, only token rises telling where the bones of the earliest kings were interred.

Later rulers were entombed within the walls themselves, during the era of construction. Their descendants had varied in their choices of final rest, from simple graves to raised tombs. But they all had one thing in common. They were all of the royal blood.

Unlike him.

And unlike one other.

Jherion knelt at the headstone that bore Meryve's name, the name of the woman he'd known as his mother. But Meryve's remains were in Westreach, not here. What bones might moulder beneath that blanket of earth belonged to another woman, a serving-woman whose death was as much a lie as Jherion's entire life.

Despite the violence and horror of their deaths, despite his sudden and ruthless seizure of their land, Oldered Kathak had seen to it that the Lendrins were buried with the honor accorded a king and his family. Perhaps he feared the woeful wrath of their spirits. Perhaps, and Jherion thought more likely, the warlord usurper had enjoyed walking along the row of headstones and seeing the same dates of death inscribed on each.

He moved down the line, suppressing a shiver. It was as if the dead were looking up at him, their cold sightless eyes crawling over him. He passed Meryve's husband Andris, passed the small and inexpressibly sad marker to the infant princess Nera, and came to his own name. Jherion the Younger, three years of age when he'd died. Further down, past the crown prince and princess, past Queen Audra, he came to his own name again.

Jherion Lendrin, last of the Lendrin kings.

He'd come here before, shortly after the coronation, and taken a strange sort of comfort from the presence of the dead, from those he'd believed to be his kinsfolk. From the namesake king that he'd thought to be his grandfather.

Now he felt nothing. Only the same hollow ache that had devoured him from within since learning the truth, and the creeping sense of presence. Watching him. Measuring him. Finding him lacking, unworthy.

Of all the bones in this silent yard, the only kinship he could claim was that of the vast family of the common-born. The serving-woman who had died suffering the fate meant for Meryve might have been a chambermaid, as he now knew his own mother had been.

He returned to her grave, thinking of the tomb that he and his foster-father Osric had built for the real Meryve when the drown-cough had taken her from them. She had died years later and leagues away from this stone bearing her name.

With nowhere else to go, Jherion sat at the base of a tree. He drew his knees up and rested his forehead upon them, closing his eyes.

"So this is how you mean to deal with it, is it?"

He knew the voice, knew the heavy dragging tread that crushed leaves. "Leave me, Ithor. There's nothing to be done."

"By thunder there isn't! You've been sulking and brooding around the place for days. You need to get out, that's what. Come on. I'm taking you for a drink."

Jherion barked a short laugh. "A drink? What good would that do?"

"Can't make you feel any worse. Until the morning, that is … and even so, that'll take your mind off your other troubles."

"Troubles … I've lost everything, Ithor! The only reason they've not driven me back to the hogs is because they need me to keep up this playacting until they've learned what became of Idasha. Better, as they put it, a false king than no king at all. And so I do my duty when all is a lie, and haven't been permitted to so much as see Olinne since all this came to light!"

"Aye, they're claiming she's ill." Ithor snorted. "That, of course, leads only to everyone gossiping that she's morning-sick. Her father hates that, he does, but can't tell them different."

"He means to make us annul the marriage, and then she'll be gone. Back to Plesvar, and I'll never be able to speak with her again!"

"Come on, boy. A drink. Or six. I know just the place."

Unable to muster any argument, Jherion followed Ithor out of the castle and into the city. With his hood pulled up against the beginning rain, he attracted little notice as they made their way to an inn.

"Here we are!" Ithor threw the door open. Firelight, laughter, and mingled scents of ale, roasted meat, and woodsmoke surrounded them.

Jherion stepped inside and looked around with approval. During his humble village life in Westreach, he had often imagined a proper tavern. The Iron Kettle fit the bill in every possible way, from the stone-lined hearth large enough to broil a pack-beast, to the buxom barmaid with the lowcut blouse.

Ithor clumped across the room on his crutch, hailing and being hailed by men of younger years but equally tough and grizzled demeanor. He leaned as far over the bar as he could manage and delivered a hearty slap to the backside of a bent-over woman.

"Kolna, my gorgeous giantess, two mugs of your finest!" he bellowed.

She stood up, and up. Jherion had seen few men so tall, and never before a woman. Her height overtopped his own, as did her weight. But not in obesity; she was rounded only in the places a woman was supposed to be. The rest of her was solid, with arms and shoulders that a blacksmith would respect.

"Ithor Drok, you old goat! Touch me again and I'll break you into bits!"

"I love you too, darling Kolna! How about that ale?"

"How about showing me the color of your coin?" she replied tartly.

"I'll show you the color of something," he grumbled, digging in his poke. He flung down a handful of coins. "There … what'll that buy me?"

"The rate you down the ale? Not more than an hour's worth."

"My friend'll buy the next round, then, when that's gone. Jherion! Don't just stand there!"

Kolna planted her big fists on her meaty hips and laughed. "Ah, Ithor, you don't expect me to believe you've brought the king here!"

Jherion slid onto the stool next to Ithor. "As it please you, lady, he's brought me, at any rate."

Her mouth dropped open but no words emerged. It took a small and rather rabbity-looking man perched at the end of the bar to squeak it out.

"Spirits save us, it is the king!"

An astonished gabble swept the room like a grassfire. Ithor chuckled smugly. "Care to see the color of his coin, Kolna-my-popkin?"

"Sire!" the woman gasped.

"Just Jherion, please, good innkeep." Reasoning that he may as well spend it while he had it, he threw her a thick gold coin. "Drinks for all, with my gratitude."

"Straightaway!"

She had to cuff the barmaid, who was gawking at Jherion with eyes the size of teacups, to get the girl moving. Soon fresh mugs of Kingsbest ale were in every hand, and Ithor clambered to the top of the bar to raise his in a toast.

"To King Jherion! One of the lads!"

"To the king!" they chorused.

Several rounds later, with his head pleasantly abuzz and the distant thunder a sound of no concern, Jherion found himself pouring out the entire story to Kolna, while Ithor nodded and mumbled comments. Most of these latter were highly uncomplimentary and aimed at Baron Halan, Cassidor Ephes, and finally at Jherion himself.

"What do you mean, I've given up?" Jherion demanded.

"Haven't fought it, have you? Just accept what they say and lay down and die!" Ithor poked him in the chest with a gnarled finger. "You're king, a pox on you!"

"I'm not, can't you grasp that?"

"Dog-bollocks!" He slammed down his mug hard enough to slosh foam over the bar. "Aye, so it's not in your blood … so what? You've fought for it, earned it, deserve it! You've the heart, the guts, and the stones of a king, boy!"

Their conversation had not been precisely hushed, and Jherion realized that they had the attention of everyone in the bar. Even the half-deaf cook and Kolna's small rabbity husband were hovering nearby. He looked at their faces, expecting to see the shock and condemnation, but saw instead only a blurred sort of indignation.

"So you're telling us," said Kolna, "that after all you've done, after you freed us from the Kathaks and made Hothar the pride of Ilgrath, they're turning you out because of a mistake of birth?"

"I'm lowborn!" Jherion said. "Who would accept me as a king?"

"Why, we would," rumbled Prath, the cook.

"Aye, who better? A king what knows about being a commoner! Wouldn't let the highborns tax us half to death!" said a burly man built like a block of granite. "Would know about the needs of the people!"

"Look what you've already done!" Kolna said. "I know plenty who've had coins in their pockets and meat on their tables for the first time in years thanks to you!"

"So you've got to fight for it, boy!" Ithor said. "Fight to keep what you've built, what you've earned!"

"I have no claim! Why is this so hard for you to understand? Idasha of Westreach is the rightful heir!"

"And she's in the hands of the Kathani now." Ithor stuck his finger in Jherion's face instead of his chest this time. "Going to let them take over? Going to let them take things back to the way they were when Davore was king?"

Angry horror rippled through the other men.

Kolna fixed Jherion with a serious look. "I'm an innkeep. I listen, I hear things. And I tell you, it would matter not one crumb to the people of Hothar whether your father was a king or a beggar. They would support you. All you need do is call."

"Aye! We'll rise up against the highborn if that's what it takes!" the burly man cried. "They've sat on their well-padded rumps too long! We need a king who can get the job done because he's a man, not because he's a pedigree!"

"Wait!" Jherion rose and spread his arms. "This is wrong. I don't want to spur you to rebellion! They're only trying to do what they think is best for Hothar!"

"Look around you, Jherion," Ithor said, very sober now. "This is Hothar. Here in this room. Out there in the streets. There's not a soldier fought with you in Trevale that wouldn't lay down his life for you, not because of a crown but because of you. Maybe you started out a hog-drover. But we made you a king, and that's what you're going to be!"

Gedren Ephes had listened to about as much of this tiresome foolishness as she was prepared to take. She was on the verge of pushing back her chair when Seric of Westreach beat her to it.

"This is the purest idiocy I have ever heard," he announced, punctuating his opinion with the smash of a fist on the table. A crash of thunder from outside distantly echoed it, as if in agreement.

"Hear, hear!" Gedren said. She was only glad that neither Jherion nor Olinne were here to witness it. Nor was Ithor, for that matter … had he been in attendance, she didn't doubt that he and Baron Halan would have already exchanged vile words, perhaps even blows.

"Idiocy? What idiocy?" Baron Halan spun to face Seric. "The fate and future of our kingdom is at stake!"

"All you care about is the shame you perceive upon your family!" Seric shot back. "That much is plain to all of us."

"I care that we've put an imposter on the throne! The throne, might I add, that rightfully belongs to the woman you call sister!"

"Do you in earnestness think that Idasha would be better suited to rule than Jherion?" scoffed Seric. "I know my sister, and heed me, she will not do it. Not for all the world. She has no desire, no inclination, for a queenship."

"She will not cooperate," Chian said. "Seric speaks true. Idasha is of her own mind, and would sooner give up her life than her freedom." Her composure faltered as she added, "She is most likely dead already."

"I will not believe that!" Alkath cried. "If she were dead, I would know! They need her. Unharmed. They need her."

"What are you suggesting, then?" Baron Halan leaned forward, bracing his hands on the table. "That we do nothing? We've dressed up a pig farmer as a king; would you have us leave it that way?"

Gedren did rise now, far shorter than the livid baron but with eyes no less flashing in anger. "Why not? Why not leave Jherion as king? He's earned it!"

"He's a pig farmer!"

Alkath Halan spoke up. "He is a knight."

"That's right!" Gedren slapped her hands together. "You knighted him yourself, my lord Baron! That elevates him!"

The baron gaped at them, mustering his wrath. Before he could unleash it, Chian cleared her throat.

"Only we know," she said, gesturing to encompass the room. "The few of us here, the baroness, Olinne, Ithor, and Jherion himself."

"I cannot believe my ears!" raged the baron. "You'd propose to perpetuate this! When an army of Kathani is about to ride down our throats! What of them? They know!"

"They have no proof," Seric pointed out. "They have the word of a demented youth, and Idasha herself who will deny it to the end to avoid the chains of royalty."

"That demented youth heard it from your mother's very own lips!"

"Do you think I would admit that to the Kathani?" Chian said.

He blustered. "You would lie. You would let this great glaring lie continue." His gaze raked the room. "All of you would! For what?"

"For Hothar," Gedren said. "The people love Jherion. He has proven himself beyond our wildest hopes. Hothar would be far better served with him than with Idasha, who would hate every moment of it, or with a return to Kathani rule."

Seric nodded. "And what of it if he's common-born? The first king of Westreach was a mine-worker before slitting the belly of the Black Snake with his lhote and freeing the warring tribes, uniting them all as kinsfolk thereafter. Go back far enough and everyone's ancestors were common-born. Even yours, Baron."

"And Olinne loves him," Alkath said.

Halan slowly turned to his son. "You dare to sit there and tell me you'd see your sister the wife of a peasant?"

"A knight," Alkath repeated firmly. "He trained with us, proved himself. He is a knight, Father. Blooded in battle, a victorious commander. A knight."

"Cassidor?" Gedren glanced at him worriedly.

Her husband had not spoken throughout their discussion. He had all but wholly retreated into an inner darkness, struggling with the conflict now before him. At her prompting, he only shook his head and would not meet any of their eyes.

"You are all mad. Each and every one of you," stated the baron flatly. "My wife and I, and our daughter, are leaving this place at first light. I will not be stained by this shame."

"Is it much further?" Olinne asked, taking pains to stay close to Will and keep her cloak drawn securely around her.

In the sheeting rain, she couldn't see more than a few feet ahead, and from watching her step to avoid the runnels of water overflowing the streets, she hadn't been watching where they were going. They could be anywhere by now, and it felt as if they'd picked their way through the storm for miles already.

"Almost there, highness, fear not."

"I cannot believe I've done this! Running away, defying my own father …"

"If you hadn't, he'd have packed you off to Plesvar before you knew what hit you."

"But it is my duty! I've never disobeyed him before, never!"

"What made you change your mind?" He had forsaken his usual bells and motley in favor of more functional garb, and wore a sword slung at his waist with no great confidence.

For a highborn lady to be out on the city streets at night with only one man as escort, and him a jester at that, was risky enough. For a queen, it was unheard of. Yet she'd had no one else to which to turn, no one else who wouldn't have either tried to dissuade her, or gotten word back to her parents.

"I could not leave him, not like that," Olinne said. "They haven't let me see him since we found out the truth, not even once! I love him, Will!"

"I know you do, highness. That's why I'm helping you. Just an incorrigible romantic at heart, that's your servant Will!"

He led her to the door of an inn, and Olinne paused doubtfully, listening to the noise and revelry coming from within. "Here?"

"It might sound a bit rough, but the innkeep is a friend of mine, and good at keeping secrets. Besides, the note I had tonight from Ithor said to bring you here, if at all I could. And lo! Before I could even seek you out, you came to me! Happy happenstance, that!"

"Ithor? Why should he want you to bring me here?"

"Let's go see, shall we?"

She clung to his arm as they entered the inn, staring around wide-eyed at the coarse-clad men. Some were sitting at tables, swilling ale and gorging on food in a manner that made her father's fanghounds look dainty, while others had linked arms in a circle to perform a stomping dance to a tune hammered out on the backs of pans. A woman tall enough to wear the world-belt for a crown was behind the bar, while a girl only a few years older than Olinne hurried back and forth serving drinks.

Olinne spied Ithor, listing to the point of tumbling from his barstool. His crutch had fallen unheeded into a puddle of spilled ale on the floor, and he was clinging to the edge of the bar with one hand while he emphasized his slurred lecture by jabbing his finger against the arm of the man beside him …

The man beside him!

"Jherion!" Her cry was high and clear, piercing the din of the room.

He whirled toward her. "Olinne?" he whispered. "Olinne?"

"Oh! Jherion!" She rushed toward him, through a path that had miraculously cleared. Out of the corners of her eyes, she was aware of the tavern's patrons staring in amazement at her, but she only cared to see Jherion, rising slowly as if he could not believe his senses.

She made to throw herself into his arms, but he stepped back, holding his hands at shoulder-height so as not to touch her. "Olinne … what are you doing here? You shouldn't be here!"

"I should be with you, my husband!"

"Husband?" He winced as if the word pierced him like a dagger. "Only until the annulment ceremony. Then you'll be rid of me, Olinne, I swear it. As your father wishes."

He turned away from her, dejection and loss in every line of his body. Utter silence held sway, but for the snap of the flames. To Olinne, Will and Ithor and the dozens of commonborn strangers watching this scene unfold were scarcely there at all. Her heart twisted like a wrung-out rag in her chest.

"I don't want to be rid of you," she said. "Please, Jherion, won't you talk with me? Won't you look at me?"

"My eyes aren't worthy of your beauty."

"They … they were once." Even to her own ears, how young she sounded! How full of pain! "And still are!"

"That's not what your father believes. You have no more choice than I do. Your father meant you for a king's wife, not a peasant's."

"You are king. You deserve to be. Oh, Jherion, look what you've done for Hothar! The people are happy and well, and such great works you've done in so short a time!"

Ithor stirred. "See, boy? As we've been telling you!"

The innkeep, the enormous woman, thumped him on the head with her knuckle and mouthed at him to hush.

"It doesn't matter," Jherion said. "When all's said and done, I am no one."

"I love you," she said.

He looked at her then, as if only to see it in her face one last time, and when he spoke, his voice was unsteady, on the verge of tears. "What mattered to me the most was never the wealth, the armies, the castle … it was loving you, and being a king in your eyes."

"You will always be a king in my eyes!" She took his hand though he tried to prevent it, and held the back of it to the smoothness of her cheek. "Whatever else, I shall always love you! How could I not?"

"But, Olinne, I am not a king. We can never be together."

"We already are! We just … we just cannot let them tear us apart!"

"Circumstance and cruel truth have already done that." He made a weak effort to retrieve his hand but she held fast.

"I may have been raised to know my duty and obey my father, but I also know when to follow my heart. I meant to run away tonight rather than let him send me back to Plesvar. He deemed me old enough to wed, and thus I deem myself old enough to decide! I'll follow you, husband."

"Follow me where? Back to Westreach, back to the hogs? To live in poverty and die far from home as Meryve did? I cannot condemn you to that. I love you too much."

"Wherever you go, Jherion, that is where I wish to be."

"No! You say that now, you mean it now, but what would happen in a year's time? In ten years' time? You were raised to a world that I wasn't. You'd hate mine, and would soon come to hate me. I'd rather be apart from you forever and remember our love, than have it soured."

"Then stay! Stay with me!" She would not give in to weeping, so she told herself even though she could feel the warmth of tears on her skin.

"Olinne, you are destroying me," Jherion said. "We both know what must be."

"Let me be queen in your eyes, Jherion! Give me children, sons and daughters born of our love. Let us build our own life, together! Please!"

She held imploringly to his hands, and saw his resolve crumble in the face of her devotion. He stroked the dark fall of her hair wonderingly. Then, with a cry of mingled joy and desolation, pulled her close in an embrace.

"You are my life, Olinne! Whatever happens, be with me, and I shall be strong!"

Around them, a rousing cheer arose with such force that it drowned out the noise of the storm.

"Kolna!" bellowed Ithor with a wide grin. "Your best room for the king and the queen!"

"Oh … no … we …" Olinne blushed hotly as lusty laughter filled the room.

Metal jangled as Kolna tossed the keys to Jherion. "Honor my house, sire! Make us a little prince or princess for Hothar here tonight!"

"Of all the duties of a king," Jherion said, sweeping Olinne into his arms, "none could please me more!"

Concluded in Vol. XII - The Rightful Heir

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