ALWAYS BEFORE, SHEhad thought of this time of year, the spring, as her favorite, a time of renewal, of reaffirming life itself. But this year, like the last few, brought with it a springtime that Lady Constance Pemblebury of the court at Ursal dreaded. For King Danube - the man she so adored and the father of her two sons - was leaving again, as he did every spring, loading up his royal boat and sailing down the Masur Delaval to the city of Palmaris and that woman.

Baroness Jilseponie Wyndon. The very thought of her brought bile into Constance Pemblebury's throat. On many levels, she could respect the heroic woman. Had their situations been different, Constance could imagine the two of them as friends. But now there was one little impediment: Danube loved Jilseponie.

He wasn't even secretive about that anymore. In the last couple of years, he had often proclaimed his love for the woman to Duke Kalas, his closest friend, trusted adviser - along with Constance - and the leader of his Allheart Brigade. To his credit, King Danube had tried to spare Constance's feelings as much as possible, never mentioning Jilseponie in Constance's presence. Unless, of course, Constance happened to bring up the matter, as she had that morning, pleading with Danube to remain in Ursal this summer, practically throwing herself at his feet and wrapping her arms about his ankles in desperation. She had reminded him that Merwick, their oldest son, would begin his formal schooling in letters and etiquette this summer, and that Torrence, a year younger than his brother, at ten, would serve as squire for an Allheart knight. Wouldn't King Danube desire to be present at Merwick's important ceremony? After all, the boy was in line to inherit the throne, after Danube's younger brother, Prince Midalis of Vanguard, and who knew what might befall Midalis in that northern, wild region?

So of course King Danube would want to personally oversee the training of one as important as Merwick, Constance had reasoned.

But Danube had flatly denied her request; and though he had tried to be gentle, his words had struck Constance as coldly as a Timberlands' late winter rain. He would not stay, would not be denied his time with the woman he so loved.

It hurt Constance that Danube would go to Jilseponie. It hurt her that he no longer shared her bed, even in the cold nights of early winter when he knew that he would not see the Baroness of Palmaris for many months to come - and Constance found it humorous that even when he was in Jilseponie's presence, Danube was not sharing her bed. What was even more troubling to her was that Jilseponie was still of child-bearing age, and any offspring of Danube's union with her would surely put Merwick back further in the line of succession.

Perhaps Jilseponie would go so far as to force King Danube to oust Merwick and Torrence altogether from the royal line.

All of those thoughts played uncomfortably in Constance's mind as she looked out from the northern balcony of Castle Ursal to the docks on the Masur Delaval and the King's own ship, River Palace. Duke Bretherford's pennant was flying high atop the mast this day, a clear signal that the ship would sail with the next high tide. That pennant seemed to slap Constance's face with every windblown flap.

A strong breeze,she thought, to carry Danube swiftly to his love.

"You will not join King Danube on his summer respite?" came a strong voice behind her, shattering her contemplation. She swung about and saw Targon Bree Kalas, Duke of Wester-Honce, standing at the open door, one hand resting against the jamb, the other on his hip. Kalas was her age, in his early forties, but with his curly black hair, neatly trimmed goatee, and muscular physique, he could easily pass for a man ten years younger. His eyes were as sharp as his tongue and more used to glancing up at the sun and the moon than at a ceiling, and his complexion ruddy. He was, perhaps, Constance Pemblebury's best friend. Yet, when she looked at him of late it only seemed to remind her of the injustice of it all; for while Kalas appeared even more regal and confident with each passing year, Constance could not ignore that her own hair was thinning and that wrinkles now showed at the edges of her eyes and her lips.

"Merwick will begin his formal training this summer," Constance replied after she took a moment to compose herself. "I had hoped that the Duke of Wester-Honce would personally see to his initiation into the knightly ways."

Kalas shrugged and grinned knowingly. He had already discussed this matter at great length with King Danube, the two of them agreeing that Merwick would be tutored by Antiddes, one of Duke Kalas' finest commanders, until he reached the ability level suitable for him to begin learning the ways of warfare, both horsed and afoot. Then Duke Kalas would take over his supervision. Constance knew that, too, and her tone alone betrayed to Kalas her true sentiments: that he should not be going along with Danube when Danube was going to the arms of another woman.

And as Constance's tone revealed that truth, so did Kalas' grin reveal his understanding of it. The Duke's constant amusement with her predicament bothered Constance more than a little.

Constance scowled and sighed and turned back to the rail - and noted that Danube's ship was gliding away from the dock, while an escort of several warships waited out on the great river. Surprised, the woman turned, noting only then that Duke Kalas wasn't dressed for any sea voyage, wasn't dressed for traveling at all.

"Danube told me that you were to go along," she said.

"He was misinformed," the Duke answered casually. "I have little desire to lay eyes upon Jilseponie Wyndon ever again."

Constance stared long and hard, digesting that. She knew that Kalas had tried to bed Jilseponie several years before - before the onset of the rosy plague, even - but he had been summarily rebuffed. "You do not approve of Danube's choice?"

"He will make a queen of a peasant," Kalas replied with a snort and without hesitation. "No, I do not approve."

"Or are you jealous?" Constance asked slyly, glad to be able to turn the tables on Kalas for a bit. "Do you fear Jilseponie will not rebuff his approaches, as she rebuffed your own?"

Duke Kalas didn't even try to hide a sour look. "King Danube will pursue her more vigorously this year," he stated knowingly. "And I fear that she will dissuade his advances, insulting the King himself."

"And you fear more that she will not," Constance was quick to add.

"Queen Jilseponie," Kalas remarked dramatically. "Indeed, that is a notion to be feared."

Constance turned away, looking back out over the great city and the distant river, chewing her lips, for even to hear that title spoken caused her great pain. "There are many who would disagree with you -Danube, obviously, among them," she said. "There are many who consider her the hero of all the world, the one who defeated the demon dactyl at Mount Aida, who defeated Father Abbot Markwart when he had fallen in evil, and who defeated the rosy plague itself. There are many who would argue that there is not another in the world more suited to be queen of Honce-the-Bear."

"And their arguments would not be without merit," Kalas admitted. "To the common people, Jilseponie must indeed seem to be all of that and more. But such rabble do not appreciate the other attributes that any woman must, of necessity, bring to the throne. It is a matter of breeding and of culture, not of simple swordplay. Nor do such rabble appreciate the unfortunate and unavoidable baggage that Jilseponie Wyndon will bring along with her to Ursal."

He stopped abruptly, stalking over to stand at the railing beside Constance, obviously agitated to the point that Constance had little trouble discerning that he was jealous of Danube. Targon Bree Kalas, the Duke of Wester-Honce and the King's commander of the Allheart Brigade, was not used to rejection. And though Jilseponie's refusal had occurred a decade before, the wound remained, and the scab was being picked at constantly by the knowledge that Danube might soon hold her in his arms.

But there was something else, Constance knew, something that went even deeper. When she took a moment to consider the situation, it was clear to see. "Her baggage is her allegiance to the Abellican Church," the woman reasoned.

"She is a pawn of Abbot Braumin Herde and all the other robe-wearing fools," Kalas replied.

Constance stared at him incredulously until he at last turned to regard her.

"After all these years, you still so hate the Church?" she asked, a question that went back to an event that had occurred more than twenty years before. Kalas had been an upstart at the court of the young King Danube, often bedding Danube's wife, Queen Vivian. When Queen Vivian had succumbed to an illness, despite the efforts of Abbot Je'howith of St. Honce and his supposedly God-given healing gemstones, Kalas had never forgiven Je'howith or the Church for not saving his beloved Vivian.

"You wear your hatred for the Church more obviously than the plume on your Allheart helm," Constance remarked. "Has Danube never discovered the source of your bitterness?"

Kalas didn't look back at her, just stared out at the city for a long, long while, then gave a little chuckle and a helpless shrug. Had King Danube ever learned of Vivian's connection with Kalas? Would Danube, who had been busy bedding every courtesan in Ursal, Constance Pemblebury included, even care?

"He never loved Vivian as he loves Jilseponie," Constance remarked. "He has been courting her so patiently for all these years - he will not even share my bed nor those of any others. It is all for Jilseponie now. Only for Jilseponie."

Now Kalas did turn his head to regard her, but the look he offered was not one that Constance could have expected. "That is the way love is supposed to be," he admitted. "Perhaps we are both wrong to show such scorn for our friend's choice."

"An epiphany, Duke Kalas?" Constance asked; and again, Kalas gave an honest shrug.

"If he loves her as you love him, then what is he to do?" the Duke calmly asked.

"We share two children!" Constance protested.

Kalas' laugh cut her to the bone. It was well known in Ursal that King Danube had fathered at least two other children. In Honce-the-Bear, in God's Year 839 ,that was nothing exceptional, nothing even to be given a second thought.

Now Kalas wore the same sly grin that she had first seen on his face this day. "Is it the loss of your love that so pains you?" he asked bluntly. "The mental image you must carry of Jilseponie in Danube's arms? Or is it something even greater? Is it the possibility of greater loss that Jilseponie Wyndon will bring with her to Ursal? She is young, yet, and strong of body. Do you fear for Constance's heart or Merwick's inheritance?"

Constance Pemblebury's lips grew very thin, and she narrowed her eyes to dart-throwing slits. The word both! screamed in her mind, but she would not give Duke Kalas the pleasure of hearing her say it aloud.

The shake of his head and his soft chuckle as he walked back into the palace told her that she didn't have to.

Duke Bretherford, a smallish man with salt-and-pepper hair and leathery skin that was cracked and ruddy from years at sea, stood on the deck of River Palace, staring at the back of his good friend and liege, King Danube, and grinning; for the King's posture was noticeably forward, with Danube leaning over the front rail.

So eager, he seemed.

And Duke Bretherford could certainly respect that, though he, like so many other nobles of Danube's court, had grave reservations about the advisability of bringing a peasant into their circle to serve as queen. But Danube's posture was surely comical, though it pained Bretherford even to think such mockery of his beloved King.

He took a deep breath and steadied himself, suppressing his mirth, and strode over to stand at the rail beside his king. Beyond, to the north and west, the long dock of Palmaris was in plain sight.

"Will she be there this year?" Bretherford asked.

King Danube nodded. "I sent messengers ahead, the first to inform Jilseponie that I would be journeying to Palmaris this summer and would desire her companionship and then the second, a week later, to confirm that she would indeed remain in the city."

"Confirm?" Bretherford dared to ask. "Or to command her to do so?"

King Danube snapped his gaze the Duke's way, but he could not retain his scowl when he saw his short, bowlegged friend's smile. "I would not command her so, for what would be the gain? Other than to lay my gaze upon her, I mean, for that is ever a pleasure. But, no, Jilseponie assured my second courier that she would be in residence this summer."

"Do you take that as a good sign that - " Bretherford started to say, but he paused and cleared his throat, realizing that he might be overstepping his friendship with King Danube, that he was, in effect, asking the King about his intentions.

If King Danube took any offense, he did not show it. He looked back out at the distant docks and the gray, fog-enshrouded city beyond. "Jilseponie has known much tragedy," he said, "has known great loss and great love. I have sensed something blossoming between us, but it will not come swiftly. No, her wounds were not yet healed when last I saw her."

"But when they are healed?" Duke Bretherford asked.

King Danube thought it over for a moment, then shrugged. "Then I will have her answer, I suspect, whatever that answer may be."

"A painful delay," the Duke remarked.

"Not so," said Danube. "In most things, I am not a patient man. But for Jilseponie, I will wait as long as she needs me to wait, even if that means that I will spend decades of summering in Palmaris, pacing my throne room in Ursal throughout the dark of winter, just waiting for the weather to calm that I might go to her once again."

Duke Bretherford hardly knew how to respond to that declamation, for he understood without any doubt that King Danube was not lying, was not even exaggerating. The man had waited so long already - and despite a host of courtesans, particularly Constance Pemblebury, practically kneeling outside his bedchamber door, begging entrance. It did the Duke of the Mirianic's heart good to see his King so devoted, so obviously in love. Somehow that fact elevated Bretherford's estimation of this man he already admired. Somehow, seeing this true and deep and good emotion in the King of Honce-the-Bear, the greatest man in all the world - and in Bretherford's estimation, the closest, along with the father abbot of the Abellican Church, to God - ennobled Bretherford and affirmed his belief in things greater than this physical world. Danube's love for Jilseponie seemed to him a pure thing, a higher truth than the mere physical lust that so permeated the streets of Ursal.

Still, she was a peasant. . . .

"It will be a fine summer," King Danube remarked, as much to himself as to Bretherford, or to anyone else, and surely the King's smile was one of sincerity.

"Greetings, Lady Pemblebury!" Abbot Shuden Ohwan cried with the exuberance of one obviously nervous when he saw Constance striding across the nave of the great chapel of St. Honce. The impish man had a tremendous lisp, one that made "greetings" sound more like "gweetings." "All is in place for Prince Torrence's acceptance of the Evergreen, I assure you, as I assured you last week. Nothing has changed for the ill, I pray! Oh no, not that, I pray, for it would be better to be done with the ceremony now, in the spring, before the inevitable host of weddings begin. Of course, your needs would supersede - "

"I have not come here to discuss the ceremony at all," Constance interrupted, holding her hands up in a pleading gesture for the man to calm down. She knew that if she let Ohwan go on, she would likely spend the better part of an hour listening to his rambling. The man thought himself a great orator; Constance considered him the most complete idiot she had ever met. His rise to the position of abbot of St. Honce only confirmed for her that Duke Kalas' disparaging attitude toward the Abellican Church was not without merit. True, St. Honce had been in a great fix those years before, when Abbot Hingas and several other masters had all died on the road to the distant and wild Barbacan, victims of a goblin raid on their journey to partake of the covenant of Avelyn. Old Ohwan was the highest ranking of the remaining masters. And, true, the man had been much more tolerable in his younger days - sometimes seeming even introspective - than after his ascension to the highest position. It seemed as if Ohwan had come to view his position as confirmation that everyone in the world wanted to hear his every thought spoken again and again.

Still, despite the circumstances that had brought him to the position, it seemed to Constance that the Church should have some way of removing him, especially since many of the younger brothers of St. Honce had blossomed into fine young masters.

Constance dismissed both these thoughts and her current disdain for Abbot Ohwan, reminding herself that it was in her best interests to keep this man, this easily manipulated fool, in a position of power. She looked at him as he stood there with his head tilted to one side, his tongue constantly licking his thin lips, his dull eyes staring at her; and she offered a warm smile, the source of which, in truth, was the fact that, at that moment, Abbot Ohwan looked very much to her like one of Duke Kalas' less-than-brilliant hunting dogs.

"I expect that you will soon preside over a great wedding ceremony at St. Honce," she said calmly.

"King Danube?" Abbot Ohwan dared to whisper, and Constance nodded.

"Oh, Lady Pemblebury!" the abbot cried and he fell over her, wrapping her in a great hug. "At last, he has come to see the value of the mother of his children. At last, our great King will assume the proper role as father to his princely sons!"

"The ceremony will not include me," Constance scolded, pushing Ohwan back to arm's length, and then she started to add You fool! but managed to bite it back. "King Danube has sailed north to Palmaris."

"Official business," Ohwan replied. "Yes, of course, we were informed."

"Lust, and nothing more, fills the sails of River Palace, " Constance explained. "He has gone north to be beside Jilseponie Wyndon, the Baroness of Palmaris."

"The savior of - "

"Spare me your foolishness!" Constance sharply interrupted. "Jilseponie Wyndon has done great good in her life, I do not doubt. But you do not know her as I know her, Abbot Ohwan. If she does become the next queen of Honce-the-Bear, then you can expect great changes in the structure of Ursal, particularly within St. Honce."

"She has no power in the Abellican Church," Ohwan argued. "No title at all . . ."

"No title, but do not underestimate her power," said Constance. "And do not doubt that she will use that power to reshape St. Honce as she has done St. Precious in Palmaris."

"That is Abbot Braumin's province," said Ohwan.

"Braumin, who owes his position to his relationship with Jilseponie Wyndon and nothing more," Constance pointed out, and there was some truth to her point. In the days of Father Abbot Markwart, Braumin Herde had been a minor brother at St.-Mere-Abelle, the great mother abbey of the Abellican Church. In the ensuing split of the Church, Braumin had thrown his hand in fully with Jilseponie and Elbryan and with the cause of Avelyn Desbris, this new martyr whose actions in defeating the demon dactyl - and that after he had been declared a heretic by Markwart - had sent tremendous ripples throughout the Church. Braumin's side had prevailed in that conflict, and the young monk had been rewarded with a position of power far beyond any that he could possibly have otherwise achieved, had he toiled another decade and more at St.-Mere-Abelle.

"Do not misunderstand me," Constance went on. "Jilseponie Wyndon will prove a fine queen for King Danube and will serve the people of Honce- the-Bear well."

"That is very generous of you," Abbot Ohwan remarked.

"But she is not of noble breeding and has no knowledge of what it means to be a queen, let alone what it means to be a queen mother." There, she had said it, straight out; the blank look on Ohwan's face, his jaw dropping open, his eyes unblinking, told her that he had caught her point completely.

"I have heard rumors that she was . . . damaged," Constance remarked.

"In her battle with Father Abbot Markwart on the field north of Palmaris," Ohwan replied, for that tale was common knowledge. "When she lost her child, yes. I have heard much the same rumor."

"See what more you can learn, I pray," Constance asked. "Is Jilseponie barren?"

"You fear for Merwick and Torrence," the abbot said.

"I fear for Honce-the-Bear," Constance corrected. "It is one thing to have a peasant Queen, who can easily be controlled by a skilled court and King. It is quite another to have that peasant Queen bringing children, heirs, into the picture. Their blood and breeding will never suffice to assume the role that destiny puts in their path. Do you not remember the terrors of King Archibald the Red?" she finished dramatically, referring to a tyrant who had ruled in Honce-the-Bear in the sixth century, born of a peasant Queen with a bitterness toward those of higher station. Taking the cue from his mother, Archibald had tried to invert the entire social structure of the kingdom, seizing land from noblemen to give to peasants and filling his count with uncouth farmers, all with disastrous consequences. The nobility had turned against Archibald, resulting in a five-year civil war that had left the kingdom broken and devastated.

Abbot Ohwan knew that history well, Constance could see from the horrified look on his face.

"It would be better for all if Merwick remained in the line of succession, do you not agree?" she asked bluntly.

"Indeed, my lady," Abbot Ohwan said with a bow. "I will inquire of St.- Mere-Abelle and St. Precious to see what I might learn of Jilseponie's condition."

"The better for us all if her battle against Father Abbot Markwart left permanent scars," Constance said with a coldness that made Ohwan shiver. The woman turned on her heel and strode out of the chapel, leaving a very shaken Abbot Ohwan behind.