One king, their nearest neighbor, sent four matched black horses, without a white hair on them; another king sent a black carriage that gleamed like a mirror. The third king sent a heavy rope of black opals, and the fourth sent a cape of the feathers of the ebony bird, the cost of one of. whose feathers would feed a peasant family half a year. The fifth king, who had been twelve years old when the dead queen had married her true love, sent the same lord as had attended the wedding, older now, and the casket he bore this time contained black pearls.

One day two heralds and three horses arrived, all bearing black stripes on their gear (although some noticed that the stripes were of the sort that could be taken off again), and this was an embassy from the sixth king of the queen's seven suitors.

Their own black-robed king was in his receiving-hall that day, for his ministers had determined that it would be good for him to go through the motions of governing, even though each motion had to be prompted by the ministers themselves. He could not even be trusted to feed himself, these days, but someone must sit next to him and tell him to put food in his mouth for every bite. But he was docile now, unlike the first weeks of the queen's illness; and the harassed ministers wished to believe this an improvement. And so it was the king who welcomed the heralds from the sixth king, or, more accurately, it was his ministers who welcomed them and, when prodded, not very subtly, the king who nodded slowly in an acknowledgement he did not feel.