Khamsin watched the party below make its way slowly down the mountainside. “And if she had killed me—even accidentally?”

Wynter’s jaw hardened. “Then no amount of mercy could have saved her. You are my wife, under my protection. Harm to you is harm to me.”

“And if I do not bear the child you require? You would really chain me to this mountain and leave me to face my death?”

“I am the King of Wintercraig and you are my wife. I cannot take another woman to wife so long as you live. The mercy of the mountains is a symbolic death. Just as that woman is now dead to us, so, too, would you be.”

She gave a disbelieving laugh. “Symbolically or truly? Do you really think your countrymen would climb the mountain to offer me, the daughter of the Summer King, mercy?”

He held her gaze, his own unwavering. “That, Khamsin, depends entirely upon you. Give us reason to believe you are worthy of mercy, and I have no doubt you will find it.”

CHAPTER 15

Heroes and Hazards

Khamsin thought about those words all the way back to Gildenheim. Her original plan had been to settle in and befriend the locals with an eye towards using what knowledge she could glean from them to escape the threat of death. Now, she realized, she had even greater reason to put that plan into action. The people she had thought to befriend for information and assistance were the very ones who had the power to set her free should she indeed end up chained to the slopes of Mount Gerd.

When they reached the palace, Wynter plucked her from the litter and carried her in his arms from the courtyard to her bedroom. He set her on the plump, fur-covered mattress with a warning to “Stay there!” then he was gone. Her tingling, vibrant sense of awareness and excitement went with him, but she was too proud to call him back.

She was tempted to rise from her bed, but he’d been wise enough to wring a promise from her that she would not. What pleasure she derived from his trust in her word was completely eclipsed by his willingness to use it against her. But she had given her oath. So, except for occasional trips to the bathroom, for the night and the day that followed, she stayed in bed and soaked up the light from her lamps and the sun and let her body heal.

She would have been bored to distraction except for Krysti. He kept her company the whole second day and turned out to be a delightful companion. He scrounged up a deck of cards, taught her a game called Aces, and they played for two hours. He warned her at the start that he wouldn’t let her win, and he didn’t. He beat her soundly at every game in the first hour, but she just narrowed her eyes, set her jaw and demanded another game. She won her first hand at the end of the second hour.

“You are a good opponent,” she told him with grudging admiration, “but I’m starting to get the hang of it. Don’t expect to win as often when we play again tomorrow.”

He smiled at the scowl she couldn’t quite wipe off her face. “You don’t like to lose.”

“Never,” she agreed. “Not for any reason. I never have. I’m like Roland that way.”

“Roland?”

She looked at him aghast. It was plain he didn’t know who she was talking about. “Roland Soldeus,” she prompted, “the Hero of Summerlea? The ancient king who held back an invasion force of fifty thousand with a mere three thousand men?” Still no recognition. She hesitated for a moment, remembering the humiliating rejection with the top-floor children, but thrust the pain of that remembered wound away. Krysti had sworn her a year of service. He couldn’t very well turn his back on her.

“Roland was an ancestor of mine. Well,” she corrected, “an ancestor of mine was his brother. I have a book about his most famous battles there on the table. Hand it to me, and I will read to you about the greatest hero who ever lived.”

Krysti crawled to the other side of the bed and came back with the worn book with the tarnished silver letters stamped into the spine. Kham opened the book and began to read. In no time, she was as engrossed as ever in the tale of Roland Triumphant. Lying beside her on the bed, his chin propped on his hands, eyes shining like stars, Krysti drank in the tales of the legendary Summerlea warrior with as much eager excitement as she ever had. And when she read the tale of Roland’s last and greatest battle, her throat closed up as it always did when she reached the part where his horn sounded a lonely, stirring cry across the valley of dead and dying, gathering Roland’s remaining men for one final, desperate charge against the invading hordes.

“ ‘They rode, the last one hundred, their banners lifted high.

Their armor gleamed like silver beneath the sun’s bright eye.

Before them, clad in golden scales, his brow with sunlight wreathed,

Rode Roland, the Triumphant, the Heir of Rose and Lea.

Oh, ever will a man be born more glorious than these,

The greatest sons of Summer led by their shining king?’ ”

Krysti’s hands clenched into fists, his little face was tense and flushed. “Did they do it? Did they beat them?”

She smiled at him, as Tildy had so often smiled at her. “Be patient, Krysti. Let me finish reading, and you will learn.” She bent her head back to the book and continued reading where she left off. “ ‘The first two lines of Golgoth fell back in dazzled fear, as Roland and the hundred charged forth to meet their spears.’ ” The last charge of Roland and the Hundred consumed more than fifteen pages in the book, describing in detail how valiantly those great knights had battled, how each mighty hero had fallen, how the clouds rolled in and cast a gray gloom across the battlefield as if the sky itself mourned their passing. Finally, only Roland and a dozen of his men remained in a field soaked with blood and littered with the enemy’s dead. Around them, the last ten thousand of the Golgoth’s army drew near, ringing the king and his men. Defeat was certain, but even then Roland would not surrender. He lifted his mighty sword, Blazing, high into the air and called upon the full measure of his Summer gifts.