A Tale of Wishers: The Seven Dwarves

“Am I glad to be home or what! Wertantheow, Gymar, what did you eat for breakfast this morning? I bet Queen Vetra could smell you all the way in her castle!”
“It was the breakfast you made, Dymar, and I’m amazed any of us survived it.”
“I found it quite tasty.”
“You can’t taste anything, Symar; you lost the capability years ago.”
“Well, you can’t say much for taste, Fymar. You definitely lack it in women.”
“It was the first lady we’d seen in three years! If we stumbled upon a woman right now, would you know what to say to her? It’s been five years since we’ve talked to women.”
“I would treat her with proper respect and courtesy.”
“Well, we don’t all have your manners, Wymar.”
“You all are silly,” Lymar muttered as they reached their cottage and set their gear down. “Like there’s a woman just sitting in our house waiting for all your super-manly charms.”
“Actually,” Tymar said shortly, hearing him, “looks like they might not be so wrong.” He gestured towards the unusually clean floor, the pot over the fire, and the neat, orderly kitchen they had left a mess that morning. “Not the first time someone’s mistaken our place for a traveler’s lodge, but does this look like something a man would do?”
“Maybe a man who’s not so straight.”
“Fymar!”
They tiredly slopped food into their mouths and went upstairs to their bedroom to find, amazingly enough, an unfamiliar woman sleeping in their beds.
“Time to work your charms, Wymar; this one’s going to be awkward.”

The dinner was opulent, and the conversation polite. However, Rilen made a point of trying to sound more interested in what was happening, or at least appear so.
“I have been thinking, my love,” Rilen whispered into Vetra’s ear as the desert course arrived, “about the people in our kingdom. How can I help you rule if I know nothing about your people?”
Vetra blushed, despite the attempt to disguise her pleasure at his flattery. She knew that was all it was, but at least it was a start. Maybe things would work out after all. “My advisors can teach you all the customs of my land and you can sit in on my cases with the peasants.”
“I would wish to get to know them personally, my darling,” he kept pouring on the words, feeling like he was picking up steam on working up to his request. “I would like to travel your kingdom and hear from the ones who cannot, perhaps, make it to the castle. Take an interest in them, from the wealthiest noble to the lowliest beggar. Hear their grievances. Would you approve of such a journey?”
“I do believe it is quite the excellent idea,” Queen Vetra replied, glad just to see that he was finally taking an interest in her kingdom at all. “In fact, I would wish to go on one myself. Mayhap we shall spend the moon of honey in that way?”
“Ah, my Queen,” Rilen sighed, slightly deflated, but quick to improvise. “Think of how your country would run without you at the throne, ready in case of emergency. Your people need to be able to find you in their need; me, they do not know.”
“Conversely, your people need to know where to find you, my love.”
“My father has ruled Jangvit very well for the last couple of decades; I think he can handle it while I’m away.”
“Very well, then, you may go,” sighed the Queen. “But be sure to be back in time for our wedding; we would not do well to disappoint the people.”
“A thousand thanks, my love,” the prince bowed slightly, as his rank was still slightly inferior to the Queen’s. “As much as it pains me to leave you, I will take off in the morrow.”
If the Queen suspected ulterior motives, she gave no sign. In fact, for once she seemed to be smiling with more than democratic acting--a true smile, not a practiced one. For the very first time, Rilen realized (much to his surprise), that maybe Queen Vetra really did love him after all, despite the years of conflict between their countries, the bitter hatred, the backstabbing. Maybe she was not always as maneuvering and calculating as she seemed. Maybe there was more than an actress behind the Queen’s charms.
Despite this revelation, which was somewhat belated, he could not and would not shake off the memory of Nadra, wherever she was, and the fact that the Queen had tried to kill this innocent creature of misfortune. If only, he thought to himself as each person retired for the evening, if only I had known this before I took that garden stroll. Now it is too late.
Queen Vetra hummed to herself pleasantly as she removed her crown and set it in its box for safekeeping. She smiled into the mirror. “I think things are finally coming together, my long-time counselor. The girl has gone into hiding, and doubtless Rilen will forget about her. In fact, he is finally taking an interest in the kingdom. He sets out tomorrow to learn more--”
Suddenly, as her mirror interrupted her, she realized the ugly truth.
“My Queen, I would I could bring you good news, but it is not so,” the mirror was apologetic. “Rilen sets out tomorrow honestly wishing to learn more about your kingdom, but also to find the girl, to fulfill an oath he swore to her.”
“He also swore an oath to me!” the Queen cried. “If this were normal jealousy, I could live with it, no problem. If we were all normal people, nothing hinging on us, I would let him go, despite the heartbreak. But Karkonian lives depend on this! The blood of my people has been shed so long, this must not go wrong; the two crowns must be united.”
“What do you intend to do to this merchant’s daughter, then?” The mage in the mirror was bitter, but patient. The longer Vetra talked to him, the less he had to drown in the waters that surrounded him, punishing him for his crime.

Nadra slept uneasily, mind heavy with nightmares. In them, she saw her father, dying side by side with the former king, then the king’s own daughter turning around and betraying her, coming after her with axes and pitchforks. And there was one more face, yes, one more face--Rilen, so eager to learn, so bound by duty not to.
Slowly, slowly, she woke up, rubbing her eyes and was very disoriented to see seven really, really short men staring at her. It took her a moment for her to register that this wasn’t one of her dreams, then exclaimed, “I’m sorry! I didn’t know this house was occupied. I was seeking refuge from someone trying to kill me, I was wounded, and this was the first place I could find. I’ll leave, if you wish--”
“Lady,” one of them cut her off. “Tell us why you have such enemies, and then we’ll decide whether or not you’ll have to leave.”
So she told the seven men (or, as she realized after a while, dwarves; she had heard tales of such living in the mountains and supplying fine jewels to the trade routes, but had never met any, and they fascinated her) her story, from the conversation in Vetra’s garden to her encounter with Gerrain.
“So you see,” she said, feeling somewhat hopeless, “I’m a marked woman. I’d be putting all of you in danger if I stayed.” She got up; her side was sore from her wound, but she started to pick up her knapsack anyway, and her staff.
“Wait, don’t go!” Tymar called. Nadra stopped. “Let me see your staff; it looks familiar to me.”
She handed over her staff reluctantly, as it had once belonged to her father. The dwarves crowded around it and began to talk excitedly.
“Isn’t that the staff of the merchant who got men to pay full due for our jewels?” Tymar was saying. “I remember him telling us he had a daughter.”
“You’re meaning to tell me that you knew my father?”
“Yeah; nice man, how is he? He really saved our hides,” affirmed Fymar.
Nadra closed her eyes. They would not like her answer. “Sorry to say he’s dead; he died side by side with the former king. Since then, I’ve tried to keep his business running, but with little success. I kept some items of trade, but being marked, I doubt that I can make my living as a merchant any more. My voice afforded me some profit, which will last me for some time, but then I expect that I will die. No matter, though; I am merely a drop in the bucket of the larger things at stake here.”
The dwarves seemed astonished at her determined speech. They withdrew into themselves, discussing the repercussions each choice would have on their lives. Finally, they broke up and asserted their position on the matter.
“We have decided,” said Wymar, who seemed to be something of an authority to them, “that so great is the debt we owe to your father, a good man, that we have no choice but to show you kindness and hospitality. Our only condition is that you do not leave the house and you speak with no one outside our household. I’m sure, as your father’s daughter, you understand our reasons for these conditions.”
“Indeed,” Nadra replied, greatly relieved. “To leave would expose our position, and to speak with strangers would only allow Vetra to find me more easily. However,” her voice darkened, “you must know that Vetra can find anyone, anywhere, and you are still putting yourselves at great risk by keeping me here, and may not be able to protect me. It’s not worth trying; the Queen is powerful. But thanks for your hospitality, all the same, and I am willing to leave if ever you find yourselves in too much danger. Now,” her voice brightened up again, “why don’t I make us some breakfast? I could use something to do.”
The dwarves Gymar and Dymar seemed much relieved at the proposition.
“So. . .” she said as she threw some ingredients into a pan, “help me keep this straight. Why do all your names rhyme? It makes it very hard to memorize.”
“No kidding,” Lymar interjected. “You’d think our mother would have some more imagination. Load of fun it is, trying to figure out whose name is being yelled in the mines. After a year of head injuries from yilite thrown to the wrong dwarf, we started to address each other by numbers, listed by rank. We vote on it every year.”
“So what are your numbers?”
“I,” said Wymar, “am number one. I will be honored to have you as guest here.”
“Tymar used to be number one, because he’s so observant, but then he noticed Gymar’s flatulence, my bad cooking, and Symar’s inability to taste anything. He lost three votes that way--only Fymar voted for him because he thought that Tymar would be able to find some dwarf-women to be our wives,” Dymar informed her.
“There are dwarf women?”
“You don’t see them around very often,” explained Fymar. “They like to play hard to get.”
“No,” said Lymar, “they just hate your bad pick-up lines and pass out whenever they come near Gymar.”
“Hey, my pick-up lines are good! Watch this: Nadra, these guys can’t cook, but maybe we can cook up some magic together, what do you say?”
Nadra laughed. “Fymar, the sad thing is that I actually know some women who would fall for that!”


Prince Rilen watched the sun rise over the small Karkonian village of Gorenik, feeling himself smile for the first time he could remember in a very long time. The people of Gorenik had been most receptive of him, giving him gifts and greeting him with kisses. Apparently, he was the first distinguished person to come to their village for several long years, and they were astonished at the ornamentation on his saddle and the embroidery on his robes. All in all, he was quite sad to be leaving them; they were really good, honest, hardworking people; they amazed him with the hope they found in the joining of the two kingdoms. If only they knew, he had thought, if only they knew how I feel about the whole thing.
But he could never bring himself to tell the orphans, widows, widowers, and mothers of men and women lost in the war this; they were clinging to one lone hope of an end to it all, and they found it in him. They, like Nadra, seemed to think that this would help avenge the deaths of their loved ones, and their misfortunes.
“An end to bloodshed!” People would jubilantly cry in every occupied road he traveled. “Peace and rest from war! Long live Prince Rilen, son of Greiden, to be wed to our glorious Queen!”
How could he deny them? How could he betray these hopeful faces? He loved Nadra, but it was that love that tortured him in the faces of these people, out of situations so similar to hers, so counting on him to do this one thing he did not want to do.
He sighed and spurred his horse on; it would be a good day’s ride before he reached the next village.


Nadra grinned as she strummed the strings of the lute, the seven dwarves sitting at the table, giving her rapt attention. They were some of the merriest souls she had come by in her travels, and they sure enjoyed music. It almost seemed sometimes as though she earned her room and board with them merely by her voice. She didn’t mind; she found it quite enjoyable.
“This is a song I learned from the minstrels of the Queen’s palace when they were hard-pressed to get some songs learned for a banquet,” Nadra informed them. She strummed the strings faster, grinning evermore. “I hope you find it as amusing as I did.” With that disclaimer, she launched into the following song:
A knight, a prince and our good loved Queen
Gathered bout this place.
Together sworn for merriment clean
That God for pleasure may’nt be faced.

Said knight to Prince,
“Let’s set our lasses a-dancin’
For never is charm greater since
The Queen was caught romancin’.”

The Queen with humor took this jest
And saidst to our good knight,
“Wouldst not the dancer be the best
If he did with his partner fight?”

The Prince, now readily joined the fray
And of our knight and Queen queried
“Thy subjects would, if they may
At said dance, get married?”

Amongst the three, they all decided
A compromise was best--
So to all three, one wish abided,
Yet along with all the rest.

The time did come, at hall for all the guests
The minstrels did come forth
And entertain with all their bests.
Oh, such a nightmare it was worth!

The dancers, all, in answering requests
Began to dance, and then to brawl
And with th’ priests married all the guests.
Merry with wine, none cared at all.

So in the morning, each man saw his bride
Jester with princess, jailer with minstrel
And Prince with damaged pride--
For his love was none other than the widow dried.

The dwarves hooted and whooped at the last verse.
“That’s as funny as Fymar’s pick-up lines!“
Then Tymar shouted, “I remember your father’s sweet tongue for tales; will you grace us with his gift?”
“Indeed, my friends,” replied Nadra with good humor, “for that is what you were to my father, and he did pass some of his sweet tongue to me. Listen closely, and listen well; you will love the tale I have to tell.”
She fell into the descriptive, inward rhyme of the storytellers with great ease. Back when she had been selling merchandise with her father, the merchants of the guild would, after a long day’s barter, sit back in the coffeehouse and tell tales from their travels. Although she was a woman, her father would take her to such gatherings and let her listen, the richness of the words mingling with the pleasing aroma of the coffee. It was something she remembered well, and with fondness; thus, it pleased her to recreate those meetings by telling her tale.
The dwarves listened, enraptured by her eloquent words.
“Long ago,” she began, “before the twenty-one kingdoms were established, it was not kings or monarchs who ruled, but brave chieftains and fierce warriors. These men were brave, bloodthirsty, and feared throughout all the land. They would ransack villages, killing the men who did not give them their allegiance and enslaving the women. It was terror in its purest form.
“Out of this chaos, though, a man arose who brought them to order, who risked his life to get them to reign not through violence, but through talking and negotiation.” She went on to tell them of Wertantheow, the chieftain who endeared himself to the bloody warlords by getting them to trade beneficially. He united the land, bringing order and crowning the first of the twenty-one kings. Unfortunately, other chieftains envied him, even though he had brought them prosperity, and he was killed. All his achievements, all his mighty deeds meant nothing for jealousy.
“So the hero died,
But not his ideas with him
His deeds never lied
Neither did their light grow dim.

“Some say he’ll return,
And bring order once again.
Although he did burn
He is among exalted men.”

The dwarves were moved by this tale, and one by one, thinking their own pensive thoughts, drank their last ales and retired, bidding Nadra good-night. She spread a mat out in front of the fireplace, and by the time she awoke the next morning, the dwarves were gone, already off to their work in the great jewel mines of Karkonia.

As Rilen came upon the forest town of Wieshaw, he was quite surprised to find Queen Vetra there with her company, smiling at him from a crowd in the small square. The peasants seemed quite impressed that their “Glorious Queen” would actually come and care about them. As he joined her, she was reading the palms of the villagers, telling each their fortune.
“That’s a very imprecise branch of magic, I hear,” he said jokingly.
Vetra shrugged and replied, “It’s easy to guess the future; it’s hard to find the past. The present is all of which we can truly be sure, but the future is in everyone’s face. You’re going to marry the miller’s son,” she addressed the pretty village girl who was in front of her. The girl blushed happily and joined her friends, chattering and laughing about their fortunes.
“What do you see in my face, my beloved?” He asked her, wondering how much of what Vetra did was really making sense.
She took a long glance at him, her green eyes piercing him, searching, it seemed, into his very soul. It was a frightening feeling, as though being examined under a glass, and he could feel her penetrate layer by layer of his mind, into the very dark recesses of his heart...
All of a sudden, he began to fight back, to dig into her mind, into her thoughts, and could find a tiny, very tiny fear. It overwhelmed him as he began to see peasants in the field, courtiers at their gossip, soldiers in the skirmishes on the border, and even Nadra, sitting in a cabin he had never seen before, examining and polishing brilliant jewels. A vicious pain wracked him as Vetra forced him back out and tried to look into his mind once more, but it was too late. He looked away, and the connection broke off. The Queen breathed heavily, her eyes wider than before.
“That’s enough--I think maybe I should get back to the capital, and you should do the same. We can talk about this then,” she whispered, panicked. She regained her composure and spoke aloud to the people. “Thank you all very much for your hospitality; unfortunately, the matters of state dictate that I am not absent from my throne for very long. I’m afraid I must leave.”
She turned to go. As he caught up to her, he called, “Wait! Can I stay here for a while and learn more from them?”
“As you wish,” Vetra sighed. “As you wish.”
With that, she spurred her horse to a gallop and disappeared into the distance at breakneck speed, leaving the peasants staring at the place she had just been in wonder.


The dwarves had left Nadra their jewels to polish and cut, as they knew her skill with such things had been handed down to her from her father. As she was handling a particularly fine yilite stone, the door knocked.
“Maybe a merchant,” she said to herself as she moved to answer the door.
She was right, but it wasn’t a particularly prosperous one. It was a small boy, who looked somewhat scared. He was holding a silk corset. “My mother sent me to sell these in the town, but I lost my way. Can you help me?”
She showed him the right way to the town and noted the fine embroidery on the corset. “May I take a look at this?” She asked. The boy consented.
It was very well made; she had never seen finer craftsmanship on a corset before. It reminded her of the intricate work she had seen of her mother’s; her father had saved every cloth her mother made before she died. Besides, she was needing a new corset; her old one had been ruined when the assassin had injured her side. “How much are you asking for this?”
“Twenty-five yatins.”
Nadra raised her eyebrows in surprise; it was an immensely good deal. “You sure about that, son? That barely covers materials.”
“That’s the price my mother told me to sell it for. We don’t buy our materials; we have silkworms and we make them ourselves.”
Nadra whistled. That was an even finer deal. “Tell you what,” she said, smiling, “I’ll give you thirty, though it deserves more like sixty. Tell your mother that she does a very fine job.”
“Don’t worry,” the boy smiled mischievously as he took the money and left. “I will.”
She quickly returned to the cabin and redressed her wound and fitted the new corset around it. As she tied the last knot, the garment began to squeeze her in a way that the best-fitting of clothing should not squeeze. She gasped for breath, for some air to scream, but her cry was broken off. In her last conscious thought, she used the magical crafts she had observed the queen using to call Wymar (she did briefly think of Rilen, but was resolved not to call for his aid) to her side. He materialized just as she collapsed, unconscious.
He overcame his surprise at being there and quickly assessed the situation at hand. Nadra was not breathing, and shockingly only half-dressed. For a woman who enjoyed modesty so much, this was unnatural, so this must be the source, he reasoned, of her suffering. He hoped and prayed that she wouldn’t be offended when she woke up, unsheathed his dagger, and sliced through the corset strings.
She remained motionless for a moment, while Wymar feared for the worse, then started, slowly, to breathe painfully. “Are you all right?” Wymar asked as the other six dwarves began to straggle in from work and she covered herself with the broken remains of the corset. “You had us scared there.”
She opened her eyes. “It was the Queen.,” she moaned. “She knows I’m here, and that I’m wounded; she reopened it.” The dwarves were able to observe now the red blood steadily dripping down her side. “Please,” she pleaded as she struggled to her feet with great difficulty, “I can endanger you all no longer. My merchant’s eye and my sympathetic heart could not refuse the seller’s offer. I will go out into the forest and die there, where none of you can take the blame for harboring me.”
“We could never do that now, not with you in this state,” Symar said earnestly--he had tears in his eyes. “In the name of Karkonia, sit down! You are one of us now, and we can’t leave you to die.”
Nadra began to sob uncontrollably as Fymar made movements to redress her side and Dymar to boil some water for some reviving tea. “The last person who said that was the prince, and look what’s happening now. No, for the sake of Karkonia, I must be found in the middle of the woods by an unknown hunter, where I will be taken for some idle wanderer who got lost so that no blame can be placed on the Queen by anyone, especially not the Prince. That way, the fighting will stop and there won’t be any more needless death.”
Symar grew angry as she started towards the door. “We don’t care,” he said, blocking her path. “You’re staying with us.” He took her by the arm and sat her down. “Now calm down, stop talking like that, and let us take care of that wound of yours.”

Queen Vetra consulted her mirror as soon as she made it back to the capitol. “What sort of man is this that he dares dig into my mind without permission?”
“He did not realize that even power as great as yours can be cracked into, a mind penetrated. He has a hard time dealing with magic; to him, it is unnatural. That is why he has such misgivings in marrying you.”
Vetra frowned. “The magic I have, passed through my father, is the only thing that holds this country together. I suppose he must be beginning to realize that, but it came too late. Now there is that peasant girl to deal with, and he’ll never understand why I did it.”
“So true,” said the mage in the mirror. “Consider always, your options, oh Queen.” He looked at her hopefully through the glass.
So she did.
She considered exiling Nadra to a mining outpost; Rilen would find her, though, and there would be a terrible confrontation that could result in civil war. She also considered allowing Nadra and Rilen to ride off into the sunset together and never be seen again, but that would go against her father’s wishes to have the two nations allied.
She also considered, sadly enough, drowning herself in the well with the mage. That would certainly rid her of the issue entirely. Unfortunately, that would just leave Karkonia leaderless, scattered, and doomed to conquest and destruction.
The only option left, it seemed, was one she hated. By the time the night was done, she was headed for the cottage once again, a beautiful poisoned comb clutched in her little girl hands.


Nadra sat outside the cottage, grateful for the warm summer’s day. The sunlight streamed through the trees, creating a glistening glow on the shimmering green leaves. Her wound was somewhat better; the pain had died down to a dull ache.
As she hung up the dwarves’ laundry to dry in the summers air, she allowed her head scarf to slip down to her shoulders, no longer disguising her short, ebony-black hair. She sang, encouraged by the whistling of the noisy birds in the branches of the trees and by Wymar, who sat in the house to watch over her, making sure the Queen didn’t return. He sat at a work table, inspecting yilite for the market.
It was some time before she saw the little girl standing behind her.
“You sing so beautifully,” the wide-eyed little girl said. “It sounds like the stories my mother used to tell me about the minstrels of the court.”
“You flatter me. What is that you’re selling?”
“Combs, miss, finely made combs to put bread on my family’s table.” The girl did appear famished, and the combs were, as she had said, finely made with gold and yilite stone in the handle. As Nadra inspected them, the girl said, “You have beautiful locks; why cover them?”
“What is your price?” Nadra asked, more interested in the girl’s family than the combs. She knew the only way to help them would be to buy the girl’s wares; country folk were way too proud to accept charity.
“Five yadins.”
Nadra paid the money and took her comb. The girl left, merrily skipping in the sunshine. Nadra smiled, seeing the little girl’s happiness. She looked back at the house; Wymar was occupied with his stones. She was glad; he would not have approved of her act of charity.
Nadra took off the rag that served as her head covering and pulled her hair up into the comb. She looked into the window pane, admiring the craftsmanship of the piece. Suddenly, the comb began to pierce through her skin, penetrating her skull. She called out for Wymar, and he came just in time to draw the poisonous thing out before it turned into a liquid, burning his hands briefly as he dropped it with a yelp.
“What is to be done about you?” Wymar helped her back up to her feet. “Your merchant’s eye will be the death of you!”
“That Queen knows how to get me where it hurts,” she sighed. “Maybe I’m meant to die.”
“Don’t say that!” Wymar exclaimed. “Besides, word has it that Prince Rilen is not far from these parts. You could plead your case to him, and he could speak to the Queen about it!”
Nadra turned pale. “That’s not good.” She stared into the window pane again. “You know why I’m in this trouble. I can’t do that.” She started breathing heavily. “If he’s gone looking for me, the entire kingdom could be in trouble!” She put her head in her hands. “The queen is right to dispose of me. There should be no distractions, nothing between her and Rilen. He wasn’t keen on marrying her in the first place; I have made things worse.”
She started to weep. At first, Wymar thought it was for her own peril, and he tried to speak some words of comfort. She brushed these aside, wailing, “Oh, my father! How I have betrayed you, who were at the very side of the dying king. Am I to condemn our nation to death when we have already suffered so much for so long? Rilen, I loved you like all others, but never wished for any love in return. Could you not have forgotten me, forget I ever lived? Why did you pledge to find me? Lose me, find the Queen who is trying to save lives!”
“And trying to kill you.”
“What other choice does she have?” Nadra sobbed. Then, with a strong-willed resignation she dried her tears and drew herself up again, as she had when she had so confidently left Rilen for her fate. A strange flame burned in her eye, and Wymar could see that there was some triumph. She proclaimed, “When the Queen comes next, let her come! I will be ready; nothing she does will truly kill me now, though she may take life from my body. Karkonia will live as I die, and Rilen will learn to love her. They will save our wounded nation, and I will have made it happen.”
Wymar was moved. “You are as good as your father, and your deeds will surpass his. We will stand by you to the end.”
“Thank you,” Nadra smiled, a tear glistening in her eye. “You and your brothers have been my first real friends in many years; nothing I do for Karkonia will ever pay the debt I owe to you for sheltering me.”
“It has been an honor.” Something occurred to him. “What shall I tell the others?”
“Say nothing until it is done; the time left should not be dimmed by what is ahead for me. Tymar will probably see what is going on, but if he is wise, he will keep it to himself.”
“Very well, then; they will not know.”

Prince Rilen felt an ever-increasing feeling of anxiety as he approached the seven great mountains close to the capitol that yielded the precious yilite stone. Perhaps he was paranoid; perhaps in his brief insight into the Queen’s mind he had seen some of her plots. He himself was not quite sure.
One thing was, however: he was not the same Rilen who had come to Karkonia with bored detachment. No longer existed the dull feeling of ennui that had plagued him early in his visit. Now he was alert, thirsty to learn, aching for some sort of wisdom to deal with the trials ahead.
His brief encounter with the Queen’s mind had certainly been an eye-opener. It had never occurred to him that Vetra’s constant stress might be from anything other than his disinterest in her, and it had startled him greatly to see the scope of what her mind was seeing.
He could not, however, forget that at that very moment this same woman was trying to kill an innocent, upstanding citizen who had been nothing but loyal to Karkonia. How could someone with such a great scope of knowledge and power do something so terrible?
It didn’t help that at the same time he juggled these weighty things in his mind, Nadra was still there, also. Still beautiful, still honest, still loyal, still wise, but still doomed if he did not find her first. It pulled him apart, it confused and bewildered him to have to put those two women side by side and choose between the love of Nadra and the end of the war, which would save many lives, but not hers.
“It’s just one of those years,” he muttered into his horse’s ear as he moved on, silhouetted by the gathering dusk. Something told him it was time to return to the capital; he would see his father before continuing his search.