His other appetites declined, as well. He was no longer interested in the rich foods he had always loved. The palace cooks did their best, but other than a forkful or two his meals were returned untouched. His desire for fine wine was gone. Gaius Prospero, always a man of grand proportions, grew thin and wan. His hair fell out. He suffered great pains in his joints. And now even his need for Razi left him, for when he drank it he no longer dreamed of glory but suffered from terrible head pains. And he continued to weep for his lovely young empress who had been the only creature in all his life that the emperor had loved. Then one stormy, moonless night, as his faithful slave woman Tania sat weeping softly by his side, Gaius Prospero died, his lost love’s name on his parched blue lips.

Lord Jonah knew first, for Tania, though heartbroken, was wise in the ways of her late master. She left her master’s dead body and hurried to find the emperor’s right hand. There were new alliances to be made now even for a slave. She was amazed when Lord Jonah told her that as the keeper of the emperor’s will, he knew its contents. Tania would now be free and given a small pension for her years of devoted and loyal service to Gaius Prospero.

Tania immediately knelt before Jonah. “Then it is as a free woman, my lord, that I offer your house my small services,” she said.

Jonah nodded. “And I accept them, Tania,” he told her. “You will watch over my wife for me, will you not?”

“Does Kigva not watch over the lady Vilia?” Tania said slowly.

“Indeed, Kigva is Vilia’s most loyal servant. But you, Tania, will be mine,” Jonah said meaningfully.

Tania arose from her subservient position before him and bowed from the waist. “As I loyally served my late master, Gaius Prospero, so will I loyally serve you, my lord Jonah,” she promised him, her face serious with her intent.

He gave her a nod of acknowledgment. “Go back and sit with the body so that no one else knows yet that he is dead. I will put my plans into motion.”

“Yes, my lord,” Tania said and hurried from his presence.

Kigva was crossing the far end of the broad hallway when she saw Tania coming from Lord Jonah’s library. She ran quickly to tell her mistress.

“The emperor must be dead,” Vilia said softly. “It is the only reason that Tania would go to my husband in the middle of the night. The clever creature is currying his favor. Quickly! I must send a faerie post to Lady Gillian. My husband must not be allowed to seize power. At least not until the women of Hetar have entrenched themselves in the ruling body. We will have no more of the men taking us into war and impoverishing our people. There must be change.”

Kigva brought her mistress her writing box and Vilia scrawled a message to Lady Gillian. The faerie post messenger, given the rolled parchment, dashed off to deliver the message. It had no sooner gone than Lord Jonah entered his wife’s apartments.

“Gaius Prospero is dead,” he told her without any preamble. “I am gathering my allies so that I may be given charge over Hetar before the High Council can meet to debate the issue to death and in the end do nothing.”

“You would be emperor then?” Vilia asked him.

“Nay, Gaius Prospero has given the title emperor a bad reputation. I would be called the Lord High Ruler of Hetar,” Jonah said.

“And I will be?” she pressed him.

“You are my wife,” he said to her. “You are the wife of the Lord High Ruler.”

“It is a great honor you do me,” Vilia murmured, but he did not, to her surprise, pick up on her sarcasm.

“Aye,” he muttered, his mind obviously somewhere else. “You have always been a perfect wife, Vilia. It is your forte.” Then he kissed her absently. “I must go, my love, there is much to do to cement my position. Of course, my first act once I am declared Lord High Ruler will be to plan a glorious funeral for my predecessor and beloved friend, Gaius Prospero. His contributions to the welfare of Hetar have been many.” He hurried off without another word to her.

For several long minutes Vilia stood silent and still. Once again she had been cut off from the power. Jonah had many times promised her that when he became emperor that she would be his empress. But now he would arrange a different title, Lord High Ruler, and she was again thwarted in her quest to rule. She would be relegated to nothing more than wife. Then Vilia laughed. Jonah was right. Love was for fools and she had been a fool for falling in love with him. He thought of her as all Hetarian men thought of all women. They were good for pleasures, for bearing children, but little else. Why had she believed he was different? Because until now he had treated her as his equal, but that had only been a ruse to help him climb the ladder of success.

Finally Kigva spoke. “What will you do now, my lady?” she asked softly.

Vilia laughed and then she turned to Kigva with a brilliant smile. “Let him be made Lord High Ruler if he can indeed manage it,” she told her serving woman. “Becoming it and remaining it are two different things, my girl. I have said it is time for the women of Hetar to speak up and indeed it is. Thanks to Gaius Prospero’s wars we are now the majority. We must now speak up for our rights and the rights of the generation of women to come.”

“Not all women will support you, my lady,” Kigva replied.

“More will than won’t,” Vilia answered. “I will not be pushed aside any longer because of my sex. Besides, women are wiser than men. It is not simply Lady Lara’s magic that makes the Domina of Terah respected by her husband and her people. It is her wisdom.”

“Would you rule Hetar, mistress?” Kigva queried.

“I will rule Hetar one day,” Vilia responded. “It is my fate as the twelfth generation of the descendants of Ulla, the favored concubine of a great sorcerer. It is said that before she died she said that the twelfth generation of her descendants would rule Hetar. I am the only descendant in the twelfth generation. I once believed that it was my lot to be Gaius Prospero’s empress, but it was not. And then Jonah promised me that I would be his empress, but now he makes himself Lord High Ruler and tries to relegate me to a subservient position. Is it not obvious to you, Kigva, that if I am to rule Hetar that I will do it in my name and not a man’s?”

Kigva nodded.

“Then you will help me to work toward that goal,” Vilia told her serving woman. “And you will continue to keep my secrets, will you not?” She smiled at the younger woman. “I am quite certain that Tania, the late emperor’s slave woman, will offer her services to my lord Jonah. She probably already has. She is a clever woman, and quick to watch for every advantage. Do not trust her, Kigva. She will attempt to worm her way into your confidence, but beware of her no matter what she says.”

“If she is a slave, can she not be sold away?” Kigva asked.

Vilia shook her head. “The emperor will have freed her with his death. He was always most fond of her and she was totally loyal to him.”

“I will be careful of her,” Kigva promised. “I will not reveal your secrets, my lady, and one day you will fulfill your ancestress’s prophecy. I know that you will!”

Vilia smiled again. “Yes, I will,” she said.

17

“THE EMPEROR IS dead,” Lara told her husband.

“It is as you said it would be,” Magnus Hauk replied. He was no longer interested in Hetar. The danger had been nipped in the bud, and everything was back to normal. The Twilight Lord was penned in his castle in the Dark Lands. The giants were now allies of Terah. The Wolfyn had been decimated. And as Lara had predicted, the dwarf nation was not about to go to war for Kol. Their task was to protect the two heirs to the Dark Lands.

“Jonah has managed to get himself elected something called Lord High Ruler,” she continued. “How quickly he has distanced himself from everything having to do with Gaius Prospero,” Lara said. “He has even managed to relegate Vilia to a place of unimportance. I doubt she is pleased with that. Once again, a husband has betrayed her.”

“We need not be concerned with Hetar or its convoluted politics,” Magnus Hauk said. “It has naught to do with us, my love.” He lavished a warm and loving smile on her. On her swelling belly where his son now resided. His son! He could hardly wait to hold the boy in his arms. He loved Lara’s children and he loved their daughter, Zagiri, but a man needed a son to carry on his name. This child would be his heir. This child would be the father of generations of Terahn rulers to come.

“There is no escaping Hetar, my lord,” Lara told him. She had felt his thoughts, and frankly found herself irritated. This child in her belly had come from her love for Magnus Hauk, but suddenly he was behaving like a typical man and not the man she loved. “There can be no pretending that everything will return to what it was before our lands knew one another. Everything has changed, Magnus.”

“Aye, we know one another, but praise the Great Creator that an ocean separates us. The rules for trade between our nations have not changed. To all intents and purposes Hetar does not exist for us,” the Dominus said.

Lara sighed deeply. “Magnus,” she said, “Hetar very much exists for Terah. Do you think that Jonah will be content to leave things as they are, knowing that we are here? We will gain some respite from him while he rebuilds his power base, but then we will have no choice but to deal with him and with Hetar.”

“But for now they are out of our lives, and we don’t have to,” he replied. “You must not distress yourself, my love.” His hand reached out to touch her growing belly.

Angered by his refusal to see or understand, and furious that he was treating her like some prized breeding animal, Lara abruptly got up and left him. Going to the stables she saddled Dasras and rode out from the castle. “Fly,” she told the great stallion. “I need to get away from my husband, who is behaving like a perfect fool. If I remain I may say something I should not.”