"Wisdom is nothing, without power. Someday you will be Queen. Your husband will rule Burland because he is your husband, and then you will have power, and then it will not matter if you are wise."

"What is power?" asked Asineth.

Berry laughed, which told the six-year-old girl that she had asked a good question, a hard one. Adults always laughed when Asineth asked a hard question. After they laughed, Asineth always studied the question and the answer, to see what made it such an important question.

"So power is naming people?" asked Asineth.

"And something more. Power is to tell the future, little Asineth. If the astronomer says, Tomorrow the moon will come and cover the sun, and it happens as he said, then he has the power of the sun and the moon. If your father says, Tomorrow you will die, it will also happen, and so your father has the power of death. Your father can tell the futures of all men in Burland. You will prosper, you will fail, you will fight in war, you will take your cargo downriver, you will pay taxes, you will have no children, you will be a widow, you will eat pomegranates every day of your life—he can predict anything to do with men, and it will come to pass. He can even tell the astronomer, Tomorrow you will die, and all the astronomer's power over the sun and the moon will not save him."

Berry brushed her hair a hundred times as she spoke, and her hair glistened like gold. "I have power, too," said Berry.

"Whose future do you tell?" asked little Asineth.

"Your father's."

"What do you say will happen to him?"

"I say that tonight he will see a perfect body, and he will embrace it; he will see perfect lips, and he will kiss them. I predict that the seed of the King will be spilled in me tonight. I tell the future—and it will come to pass."

"So you have power over my father?" asked Asineth.

"I love your father. I know him as he does not even know himself. He could not live without me."