‘It’s this one, of course.’ She pointed at the ring on his left hand.

‘How do you know?’ he asked, removing the ring and slipping it on her finger.

‘Anyone can see that, Sparhawk.’

‘If you say so,’ he shrugged.

Sparhawk was really not accustomed to bathing in the presence of young ladies, but Ehlana seemed unwilling to let him out of her sight. Thus he began the story even as he bathed and continued it while they ate. There were things which Ehlana did not grasp and others she misunderstood, but she was able to accept most of what had taken place. She cried when he told her that Kurik had died, and her expression grew fierce when he described the fates of Annias and her aunt and cousin. There were a number of things he glossed over and others he did not mention at all. He found the evasive remark, ‘You almost had to have been there’ very useful a number of times. He made a rather special point of avoiding any mention of the nearly universal depression which seemed to have fallen over the world since the destruction of Azash. It did not seem to be a proper subject to be mentioned to a young woman in the initial months of her first pregnancy.

And then as they lay together in the close and friendly darkness, Ehlana told him of the events which had taken place here in the west during his absence.

Perhaps it was because they were in bed where such things normally happen, but for some reason the subject of dreams came up. ‘It was so very strange, Sparhawk,’ Ehlana said as she nestled down in the bed beside him. ‘The entire sky was covered with a rainbow, and we were on an island, the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. There were trees – very old – and a kind of marble temple with graceful white columns, and I was waiting there for you and our friends. And then you came, each of you led by a beautiful white animal. Sephrenia was waiting with me, and she looked very young, hardly more than a girl, and there was a child who played some shepherd’s pipes and danced. She was almost like a little empress, and everybody obeyed her orders.’ She giggled. ‘She even called you a grouchy old bear. Then she started to talk about Bhelliom. It was all very deep, and I only could understand a little of it.’

None of them had grasped it all, Sparhawk remembered, and the dream had been more widespread than he had imagined. But why had Aphrael included Ehlana?

‘That was sort of the end of that dream,’ she continued, ‘and you know all about the next one.’

‘Oh?’

‘You just described it to me,’ she told him, ‘right down to the last detail. For some reason, I dreamed every single thing that happened in the Temple of Azash in Zemoch. My blood kept running cold while you were telling me about it.’

‘I wouldn’t worry all that much about it,’ he told her, trying to keep his voice casual. ‘We’re very close together, you know, and it’s not really too strange that you’d know what I was thinking about.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Of course. It happens all the time. Ask any married woman, and she’ll tell you that she always knows what’s on her husband’s mind.’

‘Well,’ she said dubiously, ‘maybe.’ She snuggled closer to him. ‘You’re not being very attentive tonight, love,’ she accused. ‘Is it because I’m getting fat and ugly?’

‘Of course not. You’re in what’s called a “delicate condition”. Mirtai kept warning me to be careful. She’ll carve out my liver if she thinks I’ve hurt you.’

‘Mirtai isn’t here, Sparhawk.’

‘But she’s still the only one with a key to that door.’

‘Oh, no, she isn’t, Sparhawk,’ his queen said smugly, reaching under her pillow. ‘The door locks from either side, and it won’t open unless it’s been unlocked from both sides.’ She handed him a large key.

‘A very cooperative door,’ he smiled. ‘Why don’t I just slip on out to the other room and lock it from this side?’

‘Why don’t you do that? And don’t get lost on your way back to bed. Mirtai told you to be careful, so you ought to practise that for a while.’

Later – quite a bit later actually – Sparhawk slipped out of bed and went to the window to look out at the rain-swept night. It was over now. He would no longer rise before the sun to watch the veiled women of Jiroch going to the well in the steely grey light of dawn, nor would he ride strange roads in distant lands with the Sapphire Rose nestled near his heart. He had returned at last, older certainly and sadder and infinitely less certain of things he had always before accepted without question. He had come home at last, his wars over, he hoped, and his travels complete. They called him Anakha, the man who makes his own destiny, and he grimly resolved that his entire destiny lay here in this unlovely city with the pale, beautiful young woman who slept only a few feet away.

It was good to have that settled once and for all, and it was with some sense of accomplishment that he turned back to the bed and to his wife.

Epilogue

Spring came grudgingly that year, and a sudden late freeze stripped all the fruit trees of their blossoms, obliterating any chance of a crop. The summer was wet and cloudy, and the harvest scanty.

The armies of western Eosia returned home from Lamorkand to immerse themselves in unrewarding toil in stubborn fields where only thistles grew in abundance. Civil war erupted in Lamorkand, but there was nothing unusual about that; there was a serf rebellion in Pelosia, and the number of beggars near the churches and at the gates of the cities of the west increased dramatically.

Sephrenia received the news of Ehlana’s pregnancy with astonishment. The undeniable fact of that pregnancy seemed to baffle her, and that bafflement made her short-tempered, even waspish. In the usual course of time Ehlana gave birth to her first child, a daughter whom she and Sparhawk named Danae. Sephrenia gave the infant an extended examination, and it seemed somehow to Sparhawk that his tutor was almost offended by the fact that Princess Danae was totally normal and disgustingly healthy.

Mirtai calmly rearranged the queen’s schedule to add the task of nursing to Ehlana’s other royal duties. It should be noted in passing perhaps that Ehlana’s ladies-in-waiting all jealously hated Mirtai, even though the giantess had never physically assaulted nor even spoken sharply to a single one of them.

The Church soon lost sight of her grand design in the east, turning instead to the south to seize an opportunity which presented itself there. Martel’s enlistment of the most fervent Eshandists and his subsequent defeat at Chyrellos had decimated the ranks of that sect, leaving Rendor ripe for reassimilation into the congregation of the faithful. Although Dolmant sent his priests into Rendor in a spirit of love and reconciliation, that spirit lasted in most of his missionaries for only so long as the dome of the Basilica remained in view. The missions to Rendor were vengeful and punitive, and the Rendors responded in a fairly predictable fashion. After a number of the more strident and abrasive missionaries had been murdered, larger and larger detachments of Church Knights were sent into that southern kingdom to protect the unwelcome clergy and their meagre congregations of converts. Eshandist sentiments began to re-emerge, and there were once again rumours of caches of weapons out in the desert.