"I hated him," Olban whispered. "I began to follow him every place. Wherever he went, I wasn't far behind him."

"What for?" Brand asked.

"At first I didn't know. Then one day he came out of the throne room wearing his robe and crown. He seemed so puffed-up with his own importance - as if he really was a king instead of just a common Sendarian scullion. Then I knew what I had to do. I took my dagger and I threw it at his back."

Brand's face suddenly froze.

"For a long time after that, I tried to avoid him," Olban continued. "I knew that what I had done was wrong - even as the dagger left my fingers. I thought that if I stayed away from him, he'd never find out that I was the one who'd tried to kill him. But he has powers, father. He has ways of knowing things no man could possibly know. He sought me out one day and gave me back the dagger I'd thrown at him and he told me that I should never tell anyone what I'd done. He did that for you, father - to keep my disgrace from you."

Grim-faced, Brand rose to his feet. "Come," he said to his other three sons. "We have fighting to do - and no time to waste on traitors." Quite deliberately he turned his back on his dying son.

"I tried to repay his mercy, father," Olban pleaded. "I pledged my life to protecting his queen. Doesn't that count for anything?" Brand's face was stony, and he kept his back turned in grim silence. "Belgarion forgave me, father. Can't you find it in your heart to forgive me too?"

"No," Brand said harshly, "I cannot."

"Please, father," Olban begged. "Don't you have one tear for me?"

"Not one," Brand told him, but Ariana saw that his words were a lie. The grim, gray-clad man's eyes were full, but his face remained granitelike. Without another word, he strode from the tent.

Wordlessly, each of Olban's brothers clasped his hand in turn, and then they left to follow their father.

Olban wept quietly for a time, but then his growing weakness and the drug Ariana had given him drained away his grief. He lay, half dozing on his pallet for a time, then struggled to raise himself and beckoned to the Mimbrate girl. She knelt beside him, supporting him with one arm about his shoulders and her head bent to catch his faltering words. "Please," he whispered. "Please tell her Majesty what I said to my father - and tell her how sorry I was." And then his head fell forward against Ariana, and he quietly died in her arms.

Ariana had no time to mourn, for precisely then three Sendars carried Colonel Brendig into her tent. The colonel's left arm was mangled beyond all hope of repair.