Horns and trumpets were calling, slowing the hundred and more ships of the royal fleet to a crawl. A little vessel draped with gaudy bunting was coming out to meet them with a wriggle of oars.

One of the royal triremes, the swift and handy three-banked vessels which were the backbone of the fighting fleet, had already come alongside the stranger and passed it as harmless, though that didn't explain why the island's authorities felt a need to approach Garric-Prince Garric-at sea. No reasonable official would choose to negotiate on the wobbling deck of a warship, since even people who weren't seasick would find a conference table in the palace a better location for spreading documents and consulting ledgers.

"There seem to be five-no, six passengers," Sharina said, peering down at the deck of the twenty-oared barge bringing the Ataran delegation. She frowned and added, "And one of them's just a boy."

The island's present ruler called himself King Cervoran, and his ancestors for hundreds of years had claimed the title "king" also. They'd gotten away with it because First Atara kept to itself, never making trouble for its neighbors or for the King of the Isles in Valles… and because for generations the King of the Isles had ruled little more than the island of Ornifal and eventually had ruled nothing outside the walls of the royal palace.

That'd changed when the present King of the Isles, Valence III, adopted a youth named Garric, a descendent of the ancient line of Old Kingdom monarchs, as his son and heir apparent. Ithad to change. Unless there were a strong hand on the kingdom's rudder, the same forces that swept up Garric and his sister would smash the new kingdom. The second catastrophe would finish what that of a thousand years before had left.