Delighted, she slipped the dress over her head and pulled the lacings tight. The dress fit her well. When she was ready, she followed Tam and Treader along a passage past more rooms and down a staircase to the main hall.
Unlike the Fon’s palace, which had a separate dining hall, most of the houses in Pra Desh were built with a large central room that was used for dining, entertaining, and family gathering. At that moment, Khan’di, Athlone, Sayyed, two of the hearthguard, Sengi, and several members of the Kadoa retinue were sitting at a large table, eating what Gabria guessed was the midday meal. Everyone sprang to their feet when she came down the stairs. She was secretly pleased to see Sayyed’s grin of pleasure and Athlone’s open look of relief and admiration.
Tam and Treader ran over to join Sayyed, while Khan’di strode forward to escort Gabria to his table.
“Gabria, I am pleased to welcome you to my house.”
She could not help but twirl around to display her dress. “Do I thank you for this? It’s lovely.”
Khan’di smiled in paternal appreciation. He had not realized until now how pretty this woman could be. “We had to throw out your singed clothes. I merely replaced them. It was the least I could do.” He led her to a chair and heaped her plate with spiced meat, cheeses; fruit, and fresh bread. Sengi poured a cup of light, fragrant wine.
Gabria waited until she had eaten her fill before she asked any questions. The men were glad to answer.
“Much has happened the past two days,” Khan’di began.
“Two days!” Gabria exclaimed. “I slept two days?”
“A day and a half really,” Sayyed corrected. “It was almost dawn when the storm came. You slept yesterday, and it is noon now.”
The sorceress was amazed. She had not known the spell would exhaust her so much. “What about the palace?”
Khan’di said, “The fire is out completely. The north wing is totally destroyed. The south wing has smoke and water damage, and the roof has been burned in places, but it is salvageable. We plan to rebuild.”
Gabria caught a note of suppressed excitement in his voice. “We?” she repeated pointedly.
Athlone replied for his host. “Khan’di Kadoa has been chosen by the guilds and the noble families of Pra Desh to be the new Fon.”
Gabria’s face lit with a smile. “That’s wonderful!”
Khan’di’s satisfaction showed in every movement of his body and in every line of his face. “We are going to rebuild the palace as soon as the economy of the city has recovered. The Fon’s army has been disbanded, and her supporters are in prison. Luckily, her treasury was still intact in the vaults. We have already sent peace delegations to the other kingdoms. And-” he leaned forward and his hand slapped the table in glee, “we found the prince of Calah unharmed in the dungeons.”
“How is that possible?” Gabria asked in surprise.
“The Fon must have been too cautious to kill him immediately, so she kept him handy.”
“But what about the fire?”
“The fire did not reach down very far. The doors protected the underground levels and enough air leaked in from the cracks and fissures in the dungeon to keep all the prisoners alive.”
Sengi added proudly, “The prince will be restored to his rightful throne.”
“And the feuding will begin again,” one of the other noblemen chuckled.
Gabria took a sip of her wine. “What about the Fon?”
“The courtier, Ancor, and Piers told us what happened.” Khan’di curled his lip in distaste. “The remains of the Fon’s body were found in the throne room. She and her monstrous tools of torture were dumped in the pit. The dungeons have been emptied and sealed.”
“What of Bregan?” she asked softly.
Athlone frowned. The loss of his friend still pained him deeply. He could hardly believe the old warrior was gone. “He will be buried this afternoon. He has won back his status and honor as a Khulinin warrior.”
She nodded and looked away to hide the blur of tears in her eyes. “Has anyone found Branth?”
There was a long silence; Gabria guessed the answer.
“The city guard did not recognize him in time,” Khan’di said heavily. “He stole a horse and slipped out of the city. He was seen riding north.”
The sorceress leaned back in her chair and stared at the far wall. Her responsibilities to Khan’di and Pra Desh were fulfilled with Branth’s departure from the city. Everyone would have preferred to have him in chains and ready to face the city’s judges, but despite their best efforts, the man had slipped away.
Gabria chewed her lip as she thought. She had two choices now: she could let Branth go and return home in time for the clan gathering, or she could pursue him and run the risk of missing the important council of chieftains. Her first inclination was to let Branth escape. She was tired of traveling and ready to go home. She wanted to settle her problems with Sayyed and Athlone, then attend the council and persuade the chiefs to change the laws against magic. The clan gathering was the only time in the year that all eleven chiefs met to create or change the laws that governed the clans. If she was not at the gathering this year, the chiefs could easily ignore the matter of sorcery or even vote against it.
Unfortunately her better judgment disagreed with her first inclination. The King Stallion had warned her that someone was experimenting in evil magic, and her vision had confirmed it was Branth. Back in the caves two nights ago, when she had sensed that great terror, she felt Branth had done something horrible. But what? A fearful, nagging doubt pricked her mind, and she remembered the look of bestial cruelty on his face in the throne room. The exiled chief was gone from Pra Desh, but he still had the Book of Matrah and was still very dangerous.
Gabria swallowed her disappointment. She rose and said to Athlone, “My lord, I have to go after him.”
For a moment, the Khulinin chief did not answer. He had already guessed how she would choose. Although he was proud of her determination and courage, a small cloud of foreboding darkened his thoughts. The feeling of terror he, too, had sensed in the cave had lodged in his mind, and he was badly frightened for Gabria. Worse, he knew that the only way he could help her against Branth was to learn sorcery himself.
To Athlone’s surprise, the idea did not unsettle him. When he had watched Gabria standing alone, smothering the fire and protecting Pra Desh, he had realized that he had made a mistake. Athlone had known for a year that he had the talent to wield magic, a talent that could be used for great good, and he had ignored it.
The chieftain stood and bowed slightly to their host. “Thank you for your earlier invitation, but we will be leaving as soon as possible.”
Khan’di’s shrewd glance went from the chief to the woman as he said, “I did not expect anything less.”
They buried Bregan that afternoon in the hills above the City. The travelers and the new Fon escorted the warrior’s body up the steep trail to a high peak that overlooked the grasslands far away in the purple haze.
They built a bier of logs and arrayed the warrior’s body in his mail shirt, his golden clan cloak, and his finest clothes. The hearthguard laid his weapons by his side; Lord Athlone put a gold armband on his forearm as a symbol of Bregan’s restored honor, and Gabria and Tam brought the bag of salt, the loaf of bread, and the water bag that the warrior would need for his journey to the realm of the dead.
They doused the bier with oil and set it ablaze. As the flames climbed toward the sun, Gabria sang the women’s prayers for the dead. It took several hours for the fire to die to embers. Only then did they cover the ashes with a high mound of dirt and mark the grave with a spear and helmet as befitting an honored clan warrior.