By the time one reached the Holy Land, one was far beyond the western kingdoms, where generations of wizards had channeled magic into reasonably orderly and predictable pathways. Since magic is a natural force, part of the same forces that had shaped the earth, it should work wherever one was, but away from the western kingdoms it might be hard to control or might be channeled in unexpected ways. Pilgrims at the holy sites should probably be safe from dragons and nixies, but those sites were surrounded by cities, deserts, and seas unlike anything in the west. I wasn’t sure I trusted Evrard to react well to unexpected new spells or magical creatures.
The queen came back into the hall. The smile that normally hovered on the edge of her lips was, surprisingly, not there.
She was still worth looking at. With the emerald eyes she had passed on to Prince Paul and her midnight hair, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever met. Even though she was only half the age of King Haimeric, she was so obviously in love with her husband that my intermittent dreams, that she would decide to love me too, had never progressed beyond dreams.
She sat down by the king. “That was my aunt in the City,” she said. “She’s worried about my uncle.”
I sat up straighter, abruptly paying attention.
“It’s been nearly a year since he left on pilgrimage, and months since she’s heard anything from him. She’s frightened, and she wanted someone to reassure her that he must really be all right. She even said that their wizard told her before they left to get in contact with us if she hadn’t heard anything for a while. I’m afraid I couldn’t give her much reassurance. She said she’d already talked to the wizards at the school about searching for her husband, but they said they couldn’t help.”