“And how do I help my people from The Enchantments, Nandra?” Fern asked. “There is not much I can do, but what I can do, I do it, and it is needed. A little, in a land where there is not much for the sisterhood, is a lot. I toe a line in the Airenzian soil that has not been drawn in your sand and I do it with a purpose. You are not in a position to judge for you know nothing of this. I’m glad of it for you. But in return, it would be nice, if you can’t understand, you can at least empathize.”

Nandra made no response.

Rebecca changed the subject.

“I will speak with Melisse. But for now, without a complete circle, there is naught we can do. We will meet again soon.”

“There is naught we could do even if we had a complete circle. What is taking these warriors and their women so long?” Nandra demanded to know. “It is far from hard to copulate.”

“Matters of the heart are never easy,” Rebecca returned.

“I fight the instinct every day to slip each one of them a love potion,” Nandra muttered.

“Do not do that!” three witches stated sharply.

“It must be natural, organic,” Lena remonstrated.

Nandra sighed deeply for she knew this too well.

“We have felt it in the veil, there is promise,” Lena reminded them.

They had felt it.

There was promise.

What they could not know, was if it would come to fruition.

And if it did…

If it would be enough.

45

The Game

Queen Silence

Fifty Miles Inside the Southern Border

WODELL

I stood in the opened flap of the large red tent I shared with my husband and I looked to the top of the swell of the moor where Mars stood with Farah.

His dark, handsome head was bent to her.

It was night, and although there were many torches around the expansive camp, the distance and the lack of light hid his expression from me.

But he stood very close to her, had his arm about her waist, and that spoke volumes.

My husband had spent a good deal of time with Farah during our journey.

Not to mention, he did the same before it, when we remained in Firenze as the death ceremony for Farah’s mother, Sofia, was being arranged and then carried out.

I knew they were close. She had been sitting at his side on a stack of cushions beside his throne the first moment I laid eyes on him. Their manner to each other spoke of it as well.

However, I was wondering at this closeness now for it did not seem simply close.

It seemed close.

And as was the Firenz way, a man could have a wife and be very, very close to another woman.

Indeed, as close as he could get.