no doors and no windows and walls five feet thick. It took a mason six hours each day to openandcloseit.


The nightmares continued and the princess continued to fight for freedomeach night as if shewas fightingforher life.


When the king heard what the knight had done to his daughter he sent what soldiers and armshehadtofreeherandbringtheknightbeforehis thronetobepunished.


Theprincesswasbrought totheking’s sideonabedas shewas tooweak towalk. Theknight kneltbeforethemboth.


‘Look atmy daughter. Look at thewounds on her hands and arms and feet.’ the king raged, ‘youhavebeatenher, starvedherandthrownher inastonetomb.’


‘No,my lord.’ Said the knight. ‘I have tried to save her froman evil that besieges her every night!’


The princess watched themargue. She knew that if she said nothing, her father would be persuaded by the knight’swords and shewould be taken back to her prison to suffocate on herownnightmares.Andsherealizedwhat thecronehadbeentellingher: shecouldgiveup hermagic any time shewished, just bywanting it.But she could not say she loved the knight enough.


Theprincess turnedtothekingandsaid, ‘saveme.’ Theknightwashungforhis crimes.


With nothing left but hermagic, it became a game and the princess played itwith asmany men as she wished. The petty enmities she cultivated between rival lords and the grinding poverty threw the court into chaos and then the kingdom into civil war. Neighboring kingdoms seized the opportunity to invade. The king was killed and his bloodline was dethroned; the princess faced the guillotine and wept bitterly in it’s shadow. ‘Saveme,’ she saidandwas sparedbutevenhermagic couldsaveher fromtherageofallherenemies.


Shewasbanished.


In her new life she wandered, destitute and penniless, until she found a trade she could ply. Here and there she would use hermagic to incite brawls in taverns and bawdy houses, in thefightingofbrigandsandrougesherneedtotasteherpowerwas satiated.


She did this until the ugliness of her body reflected the ugliness of her soul and no man cared to save her.


And she kept wandering, a shambling, dusty old woman wandering shambling, dusty old roads. After a time her magic loosed from her tongue and she was able to speak other words,butnowsherarelyhadcauseto.


Until one day, when she had wandered so far from her former kingdom that the people around her had never heard its name, she heard from gossip and rumors that this new kingdomwas inturmoil.


Its princess was refusing tomarry a prince froma neighboring land. Themarriage would end a long and bitter acrimony between the two kingdoms. Peasants and nobles alikewere strungtight;despitethetreaties thedelayhadinspiredvicious cross-boarder skirmishesand raids,evennowtheirerstwhileallybuilt forces foraninvasionthey likelywouldnot repel.


Every day the princess took to her room and refused to come out, the fragile truce deterioratedfurther.


The old woman—sitting on a broken stool in a cast-off corner of a tavern—listened to a retinue of nobles speaking to each other in hushed and urgent tones. After amoment she roseandhobbledover.


12


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