Pug nodded. ‘Sometimes it seems like yesterday when Kulgan and I stood on the beach reading your message.’ Pug studied the sorcerer’s face. ‘But so much of what you’ve done, so much of what you’ve told me, it’s all been lies and deceit.’
‘Yes, but much of it was truth, as well. I could sense my future, even see it clearly at times. That was never a lie. My life was shown to me in idle thoughts, random dreams, and visions that would come unexpectedly. Were he still living in full, Sarig could have given me more, but were he still alive as we think of such things, he wouldn’t need me.’
‘So when you told me that I was to take your place,’ said Pug, ‘you really thought you were done here?’
‘Yes,’ said Macros. ‘That bit of story telling I gave you, about kings to advise and wars to stop, was just that, something to divert your interest from me, to let me find my own way without your coming to find me when you needed some advice!’
Pug saw Macros’s anger growing again. ‘If you were to have become one with Sarig, I would not have been allowed to draw you back. Macros. He wouldn’t have permitted it.’
The anger lessened but didn’t entirely vanish. Pug could see it smoldering below the surface, like a banked fire.
‘There is that,’ Macros admitted. ‘The problem is that I know how much I’ve forgotten.’ Tears gathered in his eyes. ‘I . . . can’t explain.’
Nakor’s gaze narrowed. ‘But was it you?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Macros.
‘Were you the one who knew, or was it this God of Magic?’
Macros said softly, ‘I don’t know.’
Pug said, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ Nakor said to Macros, ‘but as you became more godlike, didn’t your sense of “self” lessen? Didn’t you feel more detached from who you were?’
Macros nodded. ‘That is true. My life became a dream, a dim memory.’
‘I suspect that had you achieved godhood, you’d not have known it, for you, the mind we call Macros, would have ceased to exist,’ observed Nakor.
Macros considered this. ‘I will have to ponder that.’
Miranda said, ‘What about the Queen? Why isn’t she my mother?’
Nakor shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe she made the wrong deal with the Pantathians. When she was Lady Clovis, she was hungering after eternal youth, and she was practicing some very nasty necromancy. Bad things to do, and she really was in over her head. That was twenty years ago, so who knows what has happened since then. She may have been punished for her failing in the plot with the Overlord of the City of the Serpent River and his magician, or it may be simply expedient for whatever has taken her over to use her this way. I don’t know. But I do know that the woman who was once wed to both of us is probably dead.’
Pug turned to Miranda. ‘If it’s time for making a clean breast of things, why don’t you tell us your part in this?’
Miranda said, ‘When I began to manifest powers, I hid that fact from my foster parents. They tried to get me interested in marrying one of the local merchants, so I ran away.’ She glared at Macros. ‘That was two hundred fifty years ago, if you’d bothered to come investigate!’
Macros could only say, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I found a magician, an old woman named Gert.’ She smiled as she said, ‘When I need to, I can look like her, and given some men’s response to a pretty face and a round bosom, that’s a good thing to know.’
‘That’s a very good trick,’ agreed Nakor.
‘She was hideous to look at, but she had the soul of a Saint of Sung, and she took me in. She quickly recognized my abilities and taught me what she knew. After she died, I began seeking out others who could teach.
‘About fifty years ago, I was arrested by the Keshian Secret Police. A fox of a man named Raouf Manif Hazara-Khan saw in me a great weapon, so he recruited me.’
‘Hazara-Khan is a well-known name in Krondor,’ said Pug. ‘Wasn’t he the brother of Kesh’s ambassador to Krondor?’
‘The same. His brother had reported some very strange things about the battle of Sethanon, not the least of which was the appearance of dragon riders in the sky, a gigantic explosion of green fire, and the utter destruction of one of the Kingdom’s more modest cities.
‘So they set me to the task of discovering exactly what was going on.’
‘And?’ said Pug.
‘And I deserted.’
Nakor positively cackled with glee. ‘That’s wonderful!’
‘When I began discovering the truth, I realized we were involved with much more important things than serving one nation or another.’
‘That’s certain,’ said Pug. ‘We’ve got some interesting problems to confront, and some choices to make.’
‘Most important,’ said Nakor, ‘we have to discover who is behind all these things that are going on.’
‘The third player,’ said Miranda.
Macros said, ‘I know who it is.’
‘The Demon King,’ said Miranda.
‘No,’ said Pug. Looking at Macros, he said, ‘If it’s as I think it is, the situation is such that we may not even discuss it safely.’