"Enough clever words," the other knight said grimly. "Will you come with us?"

The tall blue man smiled gently, and shook his head. "No. Tell the King of Galath I am too busy keeping him alive, in the face of what the other Dooms of Galath are doing, to have time just now for trading little threats with him at court. When Lorontar has been truly destroyed, perhaps."

"Lorontar? Lorontar's been dead for centuries!"

The man with the staff sighed and regarded the glowering knight rather sadly. "If you believe that, Galath has far greater problems than the absence of one reclusive wizard at court."

He turned and strolled away. Some of the knights traded glances behind his back, reached silent accord, and started after him-only to halt in mid-stride when he turned back to face them and added mildly, "I would have thought the absence of a baron to stand in Chainamund's place at court to be of far greater importance to the throne of Galath than my lack of attendance. Or is Melander proposing to offer the barony to me?"

"You?" one of the knights sneered, only to fall silent at a glare from the first knight who'd called out to the wizard.

That knight turned his gaze back to the tall blue man and said simply, "No." Silence fell, and they stood in the cold, faintly whistling mountain wind like statues for long enough that he felt compelled to add, "Three knights administer the barony now, until it should please the king to name a new baron."

The man with the staff nodded, as if he'd already known how matters stood in the barony below, and said almost gently, "And so it goes. Devaer gives way to Melander, yet the knights and nobles of Galath dance the same dances. Obey the royal dance-master, or fall from grace… and life. Have men sworn to the sword truly nothing better to do?"

Leaving that question hanging in the air unanswered behind him, the tall blue man turned back to the stair that had brought him up onto the battlements in an unhurried swirl of his cloak, and walked away from them.