“Circe, I was there,” she replied. “I saw you shout your lament to the heavens and the instant you did, they wailed.”

“I didn’t do that. That storm was brewing all day,” I pointed out.

“This is true, but you called it down,” she returned.

I shook my head and whispered gently, “That’s insane.”

“It is? I do not see why you think this, considering I and thousands of Korwahks witnessed the same.”

I shook my head again and started, “I –” but she cut me off.

“This, too, has been whispered through the night. Many a cham stayed lit as husbands and wives put heads together, neighbors met with neighbors.” She looked forward. “Your storm coupled with the unprecedented acts of the warriors on behalf of Dortak’s bride…” she nodded her head once and finished, “if there were any nonbelievers, there are none now.”

I blinked then again asked, “What?”

She turned to me. “The golden queen of legend, her fierce king, the Golden Dynasty, there are many stories and as the years pass, these stories, as they have a tendency to do, grow and build until they become mythical, fantastical.”

“And what is the fantastical story of the Golden Dynasty?” I enquired although I was uncertain I wanted to know.

Of course, Diandra told me. “The one I always thought was a flight of fancy was the one that stated the mighty king and his golden queen were god and goddess. He had strength that was unparalleled, cunning beyond compare and his queen had magic. He was impossible to kill and she commanded the moon and stars, the sun, the rivers and seas, the heavens and the earth.”

I stared at her.

She kept talking. “The story tells that they never grow old, they live in youth until their first son succeeds the Dax. Then they fly on winged horse into the heavens.”

“That’s absurd,” I said softly.

She peered at me closely. “Circe, last night, I could feel your despair. I could feel your frustration at your powerlessness. It shone off you like an aura. And when you stood and shouted your lament, your one word felt like it pierced my skin. And it was your word that did that, my dear, not the thunder and lightning, which, I will remind you, does not come at once while the heavens open at the same time they pour down their tears. They start distant and one follows the other, they offer warning. They do not come one on top of the other with the wet. I have lived many years on this earth and I have not once seen that until you called it upon us last night.”

Okay, I had to admit, I lived many years on the earth, my earth, but still, I’d never known that to happen and I lived in Seattle where it rained a lot.

Oh man.

Still, it couldn’t be true. It had to be a fluke.

“Diandra, my sweet friend, I’m telling you, I don’t hold magic,” I whispered and she studied me closely.

Then she said quietly in return, “Perhaps you do and you did not know you did until last night and it flooded out from you when your emotions were careening out-of-control. But it matters not, now your people believe you do, they believe you hold great power, they believe your king cannot die, they believe you will never age and they believe, deep into the depths of their spirits, that the Golden Dynasty is upon us.”

I faced forward thinking, holy shit, now what do I do with this?

“There is more to this than last night, my dear,” she continued. “You fit the description of the Golden Goddess exactly. Golden hair, golden eyes and now, with your time in the sun, golden skin. You sing like the seraphs and your heart is as golden as your eyes. But you are the queen of the warrior nation because you are a warrior, fierce of spirit, a match to your formidable king from the very beginning, the night of your claiming. The warriors themselves respect you like no other woman, you have earned great loyalty in a short period of time as evidenced last night when so many came forward to intervene, an occurrence so extraordinary, I still have trouble believing it. The same holds true for the mighty Dax. Seerim has told me for years he has never seen a warrior like your King Lahn, even when he was younger, he had no compare. He has never been unhorsed, he has never been disarmed, he rode out for his first kill at the age of fourteen for his trainers had nothing left to teach him, he so excelled in his studies. ”

Oh man… really? Fourteen? Holy crap.

She kept talking. “I have seen him face challenges and his strength and speed is astonishing. It is superhuman and now, it would seem, this is because he is not a human but, like you, a god.”

“Diandra, I’m not –” I started but she held up a hand and I stopped.

“We will talk more later, not now, my love, for we approach the pyre.”

Considering our bizarre and scary conversation, I hadn’t noticed it but now I did. We had left the chams and climbed a small rise which we were now descending. Others on foot and on mount moved in the direction of the tall, wooden pyre on which a body wrapped in white gauze rested. There were many still approaching, like us, but it seemed there were thousands already gathered and waiting, silent and respectful.

As our procession approached, the thick crowd parted at the orders of the front of the guard and, since I was queen, we road straight to the pyre.

See? Sometimes it was not good being queen.

We stopped close to the pyre and I saw that the wood leading up to the top was mingled heavily with flowers, hundreds of them of all colors, shapes and sizes, even the body had flowers resting on it from those who had been able to toss their blooms that high.

Zahnin’s horse trotted forward and he dismounted to spot me as I swung off my horse.

Then my women and I approached the pyre, each of us lost ourselves in a moment of reflection before, in our time, we laid our flowers in the wood.

Then we stepped away and stood, waiting, as silent as the rest of the crowd as the trail of horses and people joined us and gave their blossoms in offering if they had them.

As I stood close to the pyre, I felt eyes, many of them. This was not unusual but after Diandra and my talk, my senses were heightened to the point these eyes felt physical.

I shook this off and noted our numbers were no longer swelling however I didn’t look around very much. I did this not because I didn’t want to encounter people who thought I was a goddess (crazy!) but because I didn’t want to see Dortak amongst them. I made a promise to Lahn and I needed to keep it. And to do that, I needed to adopt the ignorance is bliss strategy.

I also noted that no time was wasted for the gray-haired, female healer who had attended me when I had sunstroke was standing to the side bearing an unlit torch which another woman was lighting.