paid the Mar's shirtless chest the slightest attention.
'If you would be so kind as to bow down,' said Rishi. 'No disrespect is meant, but Queen Rosalind is not well, and the Royal Warden fears your singular appearance might prove too much of a shock.'
Atreus hesitated. 'I understand, but covering my face is a sacrilege to my goddess.'
'Which goddess?' Jyotish demanded, scowling.
Atreus steeled himself to answer. 'Sune Firehair.'
'The western Goddess of Beauty?' asked Jyotish.
When Atreus nodded, the chamberlain exchanged glances with the Royal Warden. They broke into fits of snickering, and even Rishi had to bite his cheeks and turn away.
Atreus felt the angry heat rising to his cheeks. 'One need not be beautiful to worship beauty.'
'That is so,' said the Royal Warden, for the first time speaking directly to Atreus. 'It is also so that Queen Rosalind is not well. She cannot be shocked.'
Rishi opened his shirt again and held it up before Atreus. 'This is the only way to see Queen Rosalind. If it is important, Sune will understand.'
'Perhaps you are right,' Atreus said. He would be the first to admit that the goddess had been thinking of someone else when she admonished her worshipers to display their faces. 'I would not want to cause Queen Rosalind any discomfort.'
Atreus allowed Rishi to drape the shirt over his head, then arranged the neck hole so that he could see his feet and spare himself the embarrassment of stumbling. The cloth smelled of curry and cinnamon, which Mar bodies seemed to exude the way westerners did sweat.
The Royal Warden pulled a curtain aside, and Jyotish led the way through the gap into the velvety enclosure. A soft droning drifted down from above. Rishi guided Atreus up the stairs of a huge dais, grasping his hand and locking fingers in a manner that would have seemed far too intimate in Erlkazar. A cool breeze wafted down from a window somewhere above, and a bright rectangle of light began to blush through Atreus's makeshift hood. When they reached the top of the dais they stopped and took their place at the end of a short line of supplicants. Through the neck hole of Rishi's shirt, Atreus saw half a dozen of the petitioners turn to gape at his makeshift hood and whisper hushed speculations about its purpose.
It took only a few moments before a woman said, 'What is all this?' Though her voice was reedy and frail, the murmuring supplicants fell instantly silent. 'Why is that man wearing a hood?'
Jyotish bowed contritely and started to apologize for the disruption, but he was quickly interrupted by Rishi.
'Honored Queen of Brilliance, the man you inquire after has journeyed from the other side of the world to bask in your radiance.' Rishi pulled Atreus toward the head of the line. 'He is a most unusual fellow, unfamiliar with our customs and therefore in need of my humble assistance.'
Through his narrow view hole, Atreus saw that they were approaching a huge bed with mahogany corner posts and a silken canopy. Spread across the mattress was an embroidered spread depicting six golden cranes wading through a reed pool. In the bed lay a small woman with honey-colored hair, ice-blue eyes, and a gaunt face as jaundiced as that of any goblin. The hands folded across her lap were almost skeletal, and her heavy crown, studded with rubies and diamonds, rested on a satin pillow at her side.
The queen regarded Rishi coldly. 'And you are?'
'Rishi Saubhari, Radiance, a bahrana ginger-prince from the Free Cities.' Rishi stopped two paces from the bed, where a handsome Ffolk man in a plain golden crown stood flanked by six guards. 'It was not so very long ago that I myself was presented to Your Brilliance and the Royal Husband.'
Still clasping Atreus's hand, he bowed first to the bedridden queen, then to the man with the golden crown. Atreus was about to do likewise when Jyotish scurried up and hurled himself to the floor.
'This is not my doing!' The chamberlain spoke so rapidly that Atreus could barely decipher his thick accent. 'I could not stop them!'
Rishi turned toward Jyotish. 'We were meant to wait?' He allowed his jaw to drop in a purely artificial expression of surprise. 'The queen did not summon us forward? Apologies! Apologies many and profuse! Then I was much mistaken in the impression that she wished to meet this man-this man who has journeyed many months across land and sea all the way from the parched wastes of the far side of the world, and only so he might bask in the divine radiance of Edenvale's queen.' Rishi tugged sharply on Atreus's hand. Taking the hint, Atreus bowed first to the queen, then to her husband. 'Please excuse the interruption,' he said, feeling rather clownish with Rishi's shirt draped over his head. 'It was not my intention to disturb your court.'
Rishi finally released Atreus's hand. 'Allow me to present Atreus Eleint, a noble prince of Erlkazar-'
'Loyal citizen!' Atreus corrected, horrified. In Erlkazar, such a gross misrepresentation could cost a man his tongue. 'I am not even a lord.'
Rishi continued without missing a beat. 'Our honored traveler is a man of no small consequence, bearing a royal letter of introduction from the King of Erlkazar himself.'
Queen Rosalind shifted her gaze to Atreus, then spoke to him in Realmspeak as modern as Rishi's. 'Is this true?'
'I have it here, Your Majesty.' Moving slowly so as not to alarm the queen's bodyguards, Atreus reached into his cape and withdrew the parchment. 'It is from His Royal Highness, King Korox of Erlkazar.'
Atreus held out the letter, expecting someone to take it from him and break the seal for Queen Rosalind, as was the custom in western lands. The action drew an astonished groan from Jyotish and stony silence from the queen's retinue. Atreus tipped his head back and saw that he was pushing the letter toward the Royal Husband.
'What are you doing?' Rishi hissed. 'You must present the letter to Her Radiance, not her husband!'
'I beg your pardon.' Atreus stepped to the edge of the queen's bed and offered the parchment to her. 'In my own land, one does not approach the king-er, monarch- directly.'
Rosalind's voice grew as icy as it was frail. 'Yes, I am aware that customs differ in the west.'
With great effort, she lifted her hand to accept the letter. Atreus placed the parchment in her shaking palm. She passed it to the Royal Husband, then let her arm fall to the bed before dragging her hand back to her lap. Atreus suddenly felt thankful to the warden for insisting that he cover his hideous face. The last thing he wanted was to scare the poor woman to death.
The Royal Husband broke King Korox's seal, then turned to Rosalind and read in a deep voice free of accent.
'Greetings and Good Tidings to Her Royal Majesty Rosalind, Most Radiant Queen of the Great Land of Edenvale.
'We hope that this missive finds you as well as we are in Erlkazar. Be it known that the explorer bearing this letter, Atreus Eleint, is a man of no small ability and a particular friend of ours. We ask that you grant him every courtesy due a man of high station and help him along his way. We eagerly await our chance to repay you in good kind.
'With high regards, His Royal Majesty Korox.'
No sooner had the Royal Husband finished reading than Rosalind looked to Atreus. 'Well, explorer, how can we help you and make your king happy with us?'
Atreus could not help smiling behind his makeshift hood, for it had not occurred to him that he was an explorer until he heard Korox's letter. 'I am planning a journey into the Yehimal Mountains. Any assistance you can provide by way of a guide and porters would be greatly appreciated. I will, of course, pay all the necessary expenses.'
'Then how very fortunate it is that I am standing here,' said Rishi. 'My affairs in the ginger business-'
'At the moment, Rishi, we are not interested in your ginger,' said Rosalind, cutting off the Mar. 'But we will be in a better position to help our explorer if he cares to tell us what he is seeking. Unless, of course, it is a secret.'
The queen fixed her eyes on Atreus's view hole and waited, leaving no doubt in his mind that the help he received would come in direct proportion to his candor.
'I am happy to name my goal,' Atreus said. 'I am searching for three peaks called the Sisters of Serenity.'
'My goodness, what a happy coincidence!' exclaimed Rishi 'By a great good fortune, it happens I passed
