"Alas," he admitted. "But my lord king-" He looked up again. "You should not despair. You are a vigorous man, and your new queen is lush. Surely another son will quickly follow, to sit your throne in his time."

"I do not understand this calamity." The king sounded stronger. Close to anger. "Why am I punished, Barbazan? What sin is mine, to deserve this?"

Two frowning gazes slid into the chamber. Then the king shifted his resentful eyes to the physick's guarded face. What he saw there made him wince, and swallow.

"Speak your truth," he commanded. "Your words will not ruin you unless you repeat them elsewhere."

"My lord king..." Barbazan shook his head. "You know I am counted a great man of healing. In my sixty-five years I have seen all manner of sickness and death. No mysteries of the body remain for me."

"I do know it. Why else would you be trusted as physick to my court? Seek not for praise, Barbazan. Answer me instead." The king pointed into the chamber. "What pestilence devours his flesh?"

"Great and gracious king, I cannot name it," said the physick, full of sorrow and dread. "I have never seen its like in my life."

"Meaning what, Barbazan?"

"Meaning your son's affliction is not natural."

"Not natural?" The king's head lifted, as though he braced for a blow. "Do you tell me-"

"Alas, my lord king." Barbazan's words were almost a groan. "I fear your son's illness springs from some poisonous canker of the spirit."

A terrible silence. Then the king and the physick pressed their palms to their eyes, swiftly, that they might be spared the sight of evil. They spat on the corridor's stone floor, expelling evil from their souls.

Watching them, feeling his heart labour in his wasted, painful chest, Salimbene felt a different, sharper pain. They were branding him unclean. They were calling him cursed.

The king wrapped his heavily ringed fingers about the diamond sunburst chain resting on his breast and squeezed until its golden links threatened to buckle. "You are certain?"

"Yes, my lord king," Barbazan whispered. "Forgive me. I am."

"And he cannot be saved?"

"I do not say that, my lord. But-"

"Should not be saved?"

Barbazan frowned. "A question for a priest, I think."

"I am asking you, Barbazan."

"My lord king, I-" The physick placed his capable hands together, palm to palm. "I am sworn to heal the body. Beyond that, my authority wavers."

"Does it?" The king laughed, a harsh bark. "Then I envy you. Because my authority cannot waver. As Zeidica's king I must be priest and physick both to my kingdom. And as its priest I must face every truth... no matter how painful."

"What truth, my lord king?" Barbazan sounded fearful.

"That thanks to you I now understand my sin. My sin, Barbazan, was Salimbene's mother."

"His-his mother?"

The king's lips pinched bloodless. "Yes. For when I married that woman, I took to wife a witch."

"My lord king..." Uncomfortable, Barbazan shuffled his feet. "I know there were whispers. I dismissed them as the rotten fruits of jealousy. Instead of choosing a woman of Zeidica, your eye lit upon an outsider from Osfahr."

"A witch from Osfahr," said the king, his face dark. "They breed them as a dog breeds fleas in that cursed place."

"But my lord-she was examined. No flaw was found."

"She was a powerful witch. As full of secrets as ever she was with child."

"My lord king..." Barbazan risked his life to touch the king's arm. "If you knew her for a witch..."

The king knocked the physick's hand aside. "Know? I did not know! She snared me in a web of wickedness, blinded me with her spells and evil conjures. It is only now that I see what has been hidden from me all these years. That rotting lump of flesh in there that you say is beyond all natural remedy? It is not my son."

Barbazan's mouth dropped open. "My lord?"

"She said he is my son, but she is dead and he is dying, unnatural, and you, Barbazan, can you swear to me that my seed gave him life?"

"If not your seed, my lord king, then whose?"

"No man's! Is it not plain? She gave him life, with foulest sorcery."

"Sorcery? Oh, no, my lord king-"

"Can you swear she did not?" Sweat glistened on the king's brow. "Before the god of healing, Barbazan, with a sacred stone in your hand, would you swear it? "

Now the physick was sweating, salt trickles running down his temples and into the grooves in his parched cheeks. He looked like he was weeping. "My lord king, his face is yours when you were his age."

"Are you deaf?" said the king, his eyes wild. "She was a witch. If her son wears my youthful face, it is her sorcery to blame. Her sorcery is to blame for all the ills of my life."

"My lord king, what ills do you-"

"You are a fool," the king spat, glaring. "You call me vigorous but in nineteen years she birthed no other child. I call that ill!"

"Your son's birthing was bloody," Barbazan protested. "Your wife's body was ruined, after."

"Another sign of sorcery! And it was sorcery kept me from discarding her when she was proved barren."

Stepping back, Barbazan raised placating hands. "My lord king, I do not think we can-"

"Is it not strange that her son sickened on the first blood moon since she died?" The king was breathing heavily, making the dangled sapphires in his ears swing and flash in the mellow light. "The blood moon, Barbazan! A witch's glory time, when all foul deeds are shrouded in murkiest night! If she did not conjure him to life with sorcery, why else would he fail when the moon rose bloody? Or do you say, physick, that his moral decay springs from my loins?"

Barbazan gasped. "No, my lord king."

"No, my lord king," the king said grimly. "And well for you that you do not say it, for there is more than one physick in this world."

"Yes, my lord king," said Barbazan, his voice strangled. "My lord king, these are weighty matters, far beyond my reach. I should return to your-to my patient."

The king lifted a finger. "Wait."

Still as death on his pillows, from beneath his lowered eyelids Salimbene watched the king stare at him. Watched his lips thin, and the leap of muscle along the bearded jaw that had softened with the passing years. And as he watched, saw his fate decided.

"Go, Barbazan," said the king. "And never return. You are no longer needed here. See to my wife. I wish to know how many days must pass before my seed will fall on her fertile, natural ground."

Barbazan's shocked stare leapt into the bedchamber, and out again. "But-my lord king-"

"You dare dispute me? "

Shuddering, the physick bent almost double. "No, my lord king."

"Barbazan..." The king placed a fist beneath the physick's chin and forced the frightened man's head up. "You said yourself, Carsissus will decide if he lives or dies. Is that not the truth?"

"Yes, my lord king," Barbazan whispered. "That is the truth."

Lowering his fist, the king nodded. "The solemn truth. For we are mortal, Barbazan, and flawed. The gods have no need of our interference."

"No, my lord king." Cautiously, the physick unbent himself. "I-I will see to the queen, my lord. And in this matter-" A final, flickered glance into the chamber. "I will trust the gods."

"Silently trust," said the king, his face full of dire warning. "Barbazan, you are wise."

Barbazan withdrew and for a long time after, the king stood silent in the bedchamber's open doorway. Salimbene waited, barely breathing. There had been a mistake, surely. Surely he had misunderstood. For seventeen years he and this man had lived as king and prince. Father and son. Friend and friend. Friends did not leave each other to die, alone and in miserable agony.

Fathers did not condemn their sons to that.

Still unspeaking, the king reached for the chamber door's carved ivory handle. Tightened his jewelled fingers around it. Started to pull.

Salimbene sat up. The pain sank its talons deeper into his corrupted flesh, but he ignored it. With her dying breath his mother had warned him... but he'd refused to believe her. How could he believe her? He was the king's son. His pride. His joy. His heir.

"Please, my lord. Wait. Speak to me."

The king said nothing. The door kept closing.

"Father! You'd abandon me? Leave me to die? Why?"

The door's closing paused. The king sighed. "A true prince would not have to ask."

A soft, final thud of wood against wood. The chamber sank into deeper shadow, its only light the small lamp on the table beside the bed.

Stunned, Salimbene screwed his crusted eyes tightly shut. Betrayal was a dagger twisting in his heart. Salt tears flooded his eyes, unstoppable, and spilled to sting the weeping lesions on his face. But not for long. Soon enough rage rose to burn away the grief. To burn away kind memories, leaving nothing but hate. And with the hate came fresh strength.

Beneath his wool-stuffed mattress was hidden a great secret. His mother's last and greatest gift.

Biting his scabbed lip, smothering the pain to a thin mewl, Salimbene kicked free of his sheet and half-rolled, half-fell, out of his princely bed. His linen sick-shirt tore free where seeping pus had glued it to his skin. Swift blots of blood spread across the older, yellower stains. He had to wait again, unevenly breathing on hands and knees, until he was strong enough to lift the mattress and grope beneath it. When at last his fingers touched the book of spells that had once belonged to his mother, Jelani of Osfahr, the true queen of Zeidica, it felt like a kind of coming home. Bound in gold-stitched calfskin, each stiff page covered with careful ink, no Zeidican would know what the book said. Its words were written in Osfahri.

"Keep this safe from prying eyes, my love," his mother had said in her native tongue, that they'd shared since first he learned to speak. "No one can know you have it. Your life is forfeit if it's found."

Bidding farewell to him on her deathbed, she was so thin he was sure he could see the bones and slowing blood below her skin.

"The key to my power, the same power that sleeps in you, is in this book, Salimbene," she'd whispered, despite her suffering. "You feel the power waking, don't you? You've had the dreams."

Of course she'd known, without him telling her. Never in his life could he hide the truth from his mother. She was a witch. A sorceress of Osfahr. Since learning the truth of her as a child, just turned four, he'd held her life in his hands. But it had been safe there. She knew it.

"When the time comes, use your magic freely," she'd told him, her sunken eyes brilliant even as the shadows closed in. "Never fear it. Salimbene, my precious son, one day you will be a sorcerer king, the most magnificent the world has ever seen. This is your birthright. Do you believe me? "

"Yes," he'd said, weeping. Not sure if he did believe, only desperate to please her. "But I know nothing of magic, of power. How will I-"

Seventy-two empty days had passed since she died, and still he could feel her thin, cold fingertips on his wet cheek.

"Everything you need is in the book, my son. Trust it. Trust yourself. But Salimbene... you must beware the king. After I'm gone he'll be a danger to you."

His father a danger? How could that be? Shocked, he'd tried to argue. But she wouldn't let him. And even as her gasping breath failed, and her brilliant eyes dimmed, she fought to save him.

"Salimbene, I beg you. Do not trust the king! And know there is one more danger you must beware. The Oracle of Nicosia. It has the power to destroy you. Find it, my love, no matter the cost. Find it and destroy it. Only then will you be untouchable. Promise me, Salimbene. Promise!"

So he'd promised her, not understanding, and then held her close as she died.

Now, with her warning about the king come true, he pressed her book of spells hard against his chest, feeling his heart beat through the old calfskin and thickly inked rough pages, and stared at his chamber's door. The king had closed it like a funerary closed the lid on a coffin. Mute as the grave he'd shouted: I have no son. My son is dead.

Salimbene looked down at his hands, blotched with the bloodied lesions that marred the rest of his body. Felt the fever within, and the dangerous weakness... and beneath them both, his slowly stirring newborn power. He smiled. His father had proven false, but his mother never would. Of that he had no doubt. All he had to do was keep his promise. Destroy the Oracle... and claim his birthright.

"I am Salimbene, a sorcerer king," he whispered to the empty room. To the waiting world, which could not hear him yet. "And though I am declared dead, on my mother's bones I swear: I will escape this coffin. I will live again. From the shadows I will rule you... and you will never know."

CHAPTER 1.

Brassy-sweet, a single wavering trumpet blast rent the cold air. The destriers reared, ears flattened, nostrils flaring, then charged each other with the ferocity of war.

"Huzzah!" the joust's excited onlookers shouted, throwing handfuls of barley and rye into the pale blue sky. The dry seeds fell to strike their heads and shoulders and the trampled, snow-burned grass beneath their feet. Blackbirds, bold as pirates, shrieked and squabbled over the feast as children released from the working day's drudgery shook rattles, clanged handbells, blew whistles and laughed.

Oblivious to all save sweat and fear and the thunder of hooves, the two battling nobles dropped their reins and lowered their blunted lances. A great double crash as both men found their marks. Armour buckled, bodies swayed, clods of turf flew. Their destriers charged on despite each brutal strike.

With a muffled cry, his undamaged lance falling, abandoned, Ennis of Larkwood lurched half out of his saddle, clawed for his dropped reins, lost his balance and fell. For three strides his horse dragged him, both arms and his untrapped leg flailing wildly, helmeted head bouncing on the tussocked dirt. Then the stirrup-leather broke and he was free. Squires burst from the sidelines like startled pheasants, two making for the snorting horse, three rushing to their fallen lord.

Heedless of the vanquished, the crowd cheered victorious Black Hughe, youngest son of old Lord Herewart. Hughe let slip his ruined lance, pushed up his helmet's visor and raised a clenched, triumphant fist as his roan stallion plunged and shied. The mid-afternoon sun shimmered on his black-painted breastplate, thickly chased with silver-inlaid etchings.

"Fuck," Balfre muttered, wishing he could reach beneath his own armour and scratch his ribs. "Did a more rampant coxcomb ever draw breath?"

Standing beside him, sadly plain in undecorated doublet and hose, his brother sighed. "I wish you wouldn't do this."

"Someone must," he said. "And since you refuse, Grefin, who else is there? Or are you saying our dear friend Hughe isn't ripe for a little plucking?"

Grefin frowned. "I'm saying the duke will be ripe to toss you into the dankest dungeon he can find once he hears what you've done. You know he's got no love for-"