She smiled crookedly up at him. 'Then there's no point in making much of it, is there?" Their lips met again, gently this time, the loose strands of her hair tickling his face. 'Go with God, Rudy, though the Bishop would die in her tracks if she heard me say that to a wizard.'

Through their next kiss Rudy mumbled something about the Bishop. 'Which probably wouldn't do her any harm,' he added as their mouths parted. He reached up tenderly and brushed the tear from her cheek. In all his twenty-five years, he couldn't remember anyone, man or woman, who had ever been concerned about what he was going to do. Why did it have to be a girl in another universe? he wondered. Why did it have to be a Queen? Another tear stole down her cheek, so he whispered, 'Hey, you look after Pugsley while I'm gone.' His way of referring to Prince Tir, the last heir of the House of Dare, made

her laugh in spite of herself. 'All right.' She smiled shakily.

'We'll find the Archmage and his Council,' Rudy whispered encouragingly. 'See if we don't.' He kissed her once more quickly and turned and fled, the bluish feather of light dying behind him.

In darkness he hurried through the mazes of the Royal Sector, misery in his heart.

She was afraid for him, and more than that, he was all she had - he and her baby son. In the past month she had lost the husband she had worshipped, the Realm she had ruled, and the world she had grown up in. Yet she had never said, 'Don't go.'

And what's more, you selfish bastard, he cursed himself, // never crossed your mind not to go.

She had never questioned that his need to be a wizard took precedence over his love for her. Wretched as the truth made him, he understood it for what it was; he was first and foremost a wizard. Given a choice of what to do with the limited time remaining to him in this universe, he would rather seek the sources of his own power and the teachings that Ingold and the other wizards could give him than remain with the woman he sincerely loved.