“Why not?” Shandie demanded sharply.
“Just rumor,” Umpily said smugly. “I do recommend these savory eels in ginger.”
Recognizing that there were some secrets even the imperor could not be trusted with, Shandie changed the subject, and the Order of the Companions of the White Impress was never heard of again.
Umpily’s prediction was fulfilled, though. A few weeks later, a new warlock of the north was elected to fill a sudden vacancy. Sorceress Jarga disappeared at about the same time. Shortly thereafter, a God of Lost Causes was added to the lists.
Prince Gathmor, having visited the Nintor Moot in the summer and been dubbed duke of Kinvale on his fifteenth birthday by the imperor, discovered he was the young lion of Krasnegar, worshipped by imp and jotunn alike. He also discovered the problem of girls and the advantages of prescience in solving it. It was at about that time that his mother began pulling out gray hairs; she prayed frequently to the God of Rescues.
Eshiala was delivered of a fine baby daughter, proclaimed throughout the Impire as Princess Ylla.
The imperor wooed his wife tirelessly, but it was many months after the coronation and Ylla’s birth that she accepted him again as her husband. Thereafter they lived a long and happy life together, and were later blessed with a third daughter.
Prince Emthoro eventually recovered from his ordeal as surrogate imperor, and Duchess Ashia from hers as surrogate impress. The tribulation they had shared had forged a bond between them. The aged duke of Hileen having died, Ashia thereupon married the prince. She later bore him several handsome children, surprising nobody more than he.
On the very night of Princess Ylla’s birth, ancient Mistress Ukka died at Yewdark. By then spring was returning. Trees were budding around the abandoned mansion, crocuses flowered unseen, and the shoots of daffodils sprouted already amid the weeds.
Ukka died as she had lived much of her life alone and yet convinced that she was not alone. In her last hours she chattered busily to the invisible Voices that only she could hear, she laughed as if their messages were amusing. A spark from her final candle, perhaps, or spontaneous combustion amid the heaps of litter in the cellars . . . something fired the great house soon after she died, and it burned to the ground. The Voices were heard no more—if indeed they had ever been heard.
Some years later, the imperor had a more modern edifice constructed on the site and donated it to his wife as a summer home. They spent many happy days at Yewdark with her children, and Princess Ylla resided there often after her marriage.
Rap served two years as warlock and then resigned his throne. Over all protests, he returned to his beloved Krasnegar. By that time the little kingdom had acquired several magic portals and lost its isolation forever. He became an elder statesman, consulted by secular and occult authorities from all over Pandemia. Many a deadlock in the Council of Sorcery was broken when King Rap’s opinion was made known.
The years passed. Prosperity returned to Pandemia More than anyone else, Thinal deserved credit for restoring Imperial finances. He was acknowledged to be the most brilliant Minister of Inland Revenue the Impire had ever known. He served three times as consul and died a senator.
Lord Umpily refused all public honors. At his death he left an extensive library of memoirs. The imperor promptly ordered them destroyed, and supervised that destruction in person.
Emshandar V himself outlived all of them except his daughters, dying in 3063, full of years and widely mourned. He had ruled with compassion and imagination, delivering peace and justice and prosperity. The impire he bequeathed to his successors was a far different realm from the one he had inherited, for his reign coincided with the transformation that sociologists later termed the Sorcerous Revolution, when the powers released by the new protocol so dramatically improved the quality of life in Pandemia. The old man never applied his own name to the basic document, but by then everyone else knew it as Emshandar’s Protocol and history gave him the credit for it, calling him Emshandar the Great.
He was succeeded by his daughter Uomaya, who was herself elderly and also childless. When she died after a very brief reign, the throne passed on to her nephew the duke of Rivermead, oldest son of the late Princess Ylla.
Had Lord Umpily’s memoirs survived, then someone might have realized that this was a change of dynasty. Agraine’s line was ended and a grandson of Signifer Ylo sat upon the Opal Throne. Mortals’ memories are short, though, and to mortals Emshandar IV was by then only a name in the history texts, the last of the “old” imperors, his achievements irrelevant and even his crimes forgotten. The Gods remembered better, and in the fullness of time They had rendered justice for the Yllipo massacre.
But perhaps not even the Gods recalled how the Statue had prophesied this, one blustery summer day back in the previous millennium.