Autumn sunshine slanted down through windows of painted glass to splash the tinctures of Alba’s high-clan crests across a floor of tessellated marble. Flames danced and flickered in nine great hearths to drive chill from the air, but their heat could not thaw the ice which edged the voice of Gemmel Errekren. “Do you know what you have done?” he snarled. The old enchanter was in such a passion as he seldom allowed to possess him, and the energies summoned up by high emotion swirled in lambent coils about his hands and the black, dragon-patterned stave they held. A lesser man might well have flinched from the rage of such as Gemmel—and with good reason—but Rynert the King remained at least outwardly unruffled, sitting straight-backed and aloof in his great chair. “I do what must be done,” he said calmly, “for the good of the state.” Portentous yet indefinite, such a statement might have sounded good in the ears of a councillor, but it failed to satisfy Gemmel.
