"I want you to go with me," Jilseponie said to Roger Lockless, a diminutive man, stunted by a childhood illness that had nearly taken his life. But while Roger was short in stature, he was long on character. In the war with the demon's minions, Roger had stood firm as a beacon of hope, a lone hero to forlorn people. And he had stood strong beside Jilseponie and Elbryan through the ordeal of Markwart. Roger had grown under Elbryan's tutelage and proven to be the best friend Jilseponie -  Pony - could ever know.

"Go?" Roger asked hesitantly, and he glanced to the side of the table, where his wife Dainsey was looking on silently. Like Roger, the woman appeared somewhat frail, with spindly limbs. She had nearly succumbed to the rosy plague, was on her last breaths when Jilseponie had brought her to the mummified arm of Avelyn Desbris. Dainsey had been the first to taste of the Miracle of Aida, but though she had beaten the plague, she had never fully recovered her previous robust health. Now her hair was gray and thin, and her eyes were sunken back in her skeletal head.

"To Dundalis first," Jilseponie explained. "I must find Bradwarden. And then to Andur'Blough Inninness - though that journey I expect to make alone."

"You will go and question the elves?" Roger asked skeptically.

"How can I not?"

"How can you?" Roger countered. "Do you believe them to be your friends?"

He shook his head and insisted, "They are not your friends. Surely this development proves that beyond all - "

"Dasslerond must answer for this!" Jilseponie demanded, and the flash of power and anger in her blue eyes set Roger back a bit. Again, though, the diminutive man looked over at Dainsey, who was nodding at him approvingly, and gathered his strength.

"Lady Dasslerond is not your friend, Pony," Roger said quietly.

Jilseponie started to answer, but was given pause by his suddenly somber tone, by the obvious implication that he knew something here that she did not.

"When you were in Ursal, sitting as queen, Dasslerond's people came to me," Roger quietly explained.

"You knew of Aydrian?" The flash of anger was there again, suddenly and explosively, and Jilseponie even leaped up from her seat.

"No, of course not," Roger replied, and he placed his hands on her shoulders in a calming motion. "Lady Dasslerond's people came to me in Ursal, asking that I watch you carefully. Dasslerond fears you, and always has, for you possess something that you should not - in her eyes, at least."

Jilseponie eased back into her chair. "Bi'nelle dasada," she reasoned, her voice calm once more. "Lady Dasslerond fears - has ever feared - that I will teach the elven sword dance to the soldiers of Honce-the-Bear."

"Her people are not numerous," Roger remarked. "They fear for their very existence."

"And that gives her the right to steal a child from the womb?" Jilseponie cried, her voice rising in indignation once more.

'"Course it doesn't, and no one's saying such a thing," Dainsey interjected.

"I know how you feel - " Roger started to say.

"No you do not," Jilseponie insisted.

Roger conceded the point with a slight nod. "We have an enemy rising right here in our midst," he said. "Why will you go to the elves to begin another war, when one has come to you?"

"There are questions - "

"For another day," Roger interrupted.

"For now!" Jilseponie shot back. "This battle within the kingdom is not my war. I have no more wars in me. De'Unnero be damned - and he shall, I am confident - but he and Aydrian are a problem for the folk of Honce-the- Bear."

"Not of Jilseponie?" Roger asked, and the woman stared at him hard. "You will abandon these people? You have served them all your life."

"And given all that I have to give."

"That loss is yours more than theirs," Roger replied.

Those words stung Jilseponie profoundly, but they did little to change her mind or her course at that moment. "I leave for Dundalis in the morning. I intend to ride hard all the way. I welcome your company, Roger, and yours, Dainsey, but I will go alone if not beside you."

With that, the woman rose and walked out of Chasewind Manor, the greatest mansion in all Palmaris, formerly the house of the ruling Bildeborough family. Jilseponie had lived here when she had ruled this city as baroness and then as bishop, and she had passed the house on to Roger and Dainsey as her stewards when she had gone south to marry King Danube.

She had barely exited the place, though, and had not even reached the gates across the courtyard, when she was assaulted by the sound of galloping horses and the shouts of a roused populace. She stood there on the front walk of Chasewind Manor, dumbfounded by the rising energy within the city - and it was a general tumult across the city, she could tell, even from where she stood on the elevated western edges.

She stood quiet and she listened, picking out the calls of the heralds.

A moment later, Roger and Dainsey were out beside her.

"Braumin has roused them," Roger observed. "He has decided to fight."

"And the folk're welcoming the choice," Dainsey added.

Jilseponie looked at them both and started to reply, but then the shouts rang out very near to Chasewind Manor's gate, as a rider galloped by, crying, "Long live Prince Midalis!" followed by the stinging, "Death to Aydrian!"

Jilseponie swung about, her face a mask of horror and anger, her breathing suddenly shallow.

"It won't come to that," Roger assured her, moving right beside her and wrapping one arm about her waist. "They are frightened, that is all. The bluster of criers is to rouse the people to a cause. They cannot - "

Jilseponie held her hand up to stop him. She understood quite well the need for such strong words when the folk would soon be asked to stand firm against an army.

But that didn't lessen the sting.

"So you have decided to fight," Jilseponie remarked when she caught up to Bishop Braumin and Master Viscenti a bit later on, in Braumin's office on the main floor of St. Precious.

"The choice was never ours to make," Braumin said to her. "I held audience on the square outside of St. Precious."

"Without sending word to me or to Roger in Chasewind Manor?"

"I had not planned it to be so definitive a speech," Braumin told her, and she knew the man to be sincere. "I planned to tell the gathering simply to measure their feelings on this."

"You understand what you ask of them?"

"I know what they demanded of me," Braumin replied.

"As soon as he told them the truth of our self-proclaimed king, and the truth of his companion, the folk needed no convincing," the recently arrived Master Viscenti put in. "They will not tolerate the return of Marcalo De'Unnero unless that return is with chains about him!"

"They are loyal to the line of Ursal, and the crown has been stolen,"

Braumin added.

Jilseponie stared at him hard, recognizing clearly the conflict that remained within the man. Yes, he was somewhat relieved that the people had grabbed on to his simple statements of fact and taken control of the momentum from that point forward, but there remained within Braumin a good deal of guilt and trepidation about all of this.

"You will lock the gates and not allow Aydrian entrance?"

The bishop of Palmaris squared his shoulders. "I will."

"And what will you do when Aydrian knocks those gates down?"

"Are we to surrender to him?" Braumin asked, suddenly animated, waving his arms and storming about. "Can the strongest simply take the throne with impunity? Are we not a land of tradition and law?"

Now it was Jilseponie's turn to stand quiet and hold fast to her stance.

"If you fight beside us, we have a chance," said Braumin.

Jilseponie was shaking her head before he ever finished the sentence. "I have business that will take me far from this place, likely never to return."

"You will forsake us in this dark time?" Viscenti put in.

"The day is dark, I do not doubt," Braumin added. "But who are we if we allow our mortal fears to defeat our principles? Who are we if we choose the comfort of the flesh over the serenity of the soul? We know what has happened here. We see the injustice clearly."

"And you resist that injustice," Jilseponie remarked.

"As should you. Are you not the same Jilseponie who stood fast beside Elbryan against the direst of odds? Are you not the same Jilseponie who would have given her life before denouncing her principles in the face of the demon-possessed Markwart?"

Jilseponie gave Bishop Braumin a pleading look, as desperate an expression as the man had ever seen, as she answered, "He is my son."

"Then we cannot win!" Viscenti lamented, and he turned away, throwing up his hands in despair.

"You cannot win in any case," Jilseponie said to him. "Not here, not now.

You have seen my strength with the gemstones, and believe that such power would bolster enough to resist. But I have seen Aydrian's strength, and it is greater still! He will knock down the gates of Palmaris if they are closed before him."

"Then all hail King Aydrian!" Master Viscenti dramatically cried, swinging about to face the woman. "And all hail Father Abbot De'Unnero! Damn the traditions of Church and State alike! Damn the - "

"There is a third course open to you," Jilseponie said to Braumin.

The bishop glanced at Viscenti, who quieted at once, and both turned to Jilseponie, eager for her counsel.

"Defy Aydrian with a soft wall of resistance," Jilseponie explained.

"Make a stand here if you must, but do not include all of your resources in that stand. Allow your line to bend, all the way to Vanguard."

Bishop Braumin looked even more intrigued.

"Only the unified opposition of the folk of Honce-the-Bear holds any hope of defeating Aydrian now," Jilseponie went on. "He holds the Kingsmen army of Ursal at his disposal, the Allheart Knights among them, and many thousands more in reserve, gathered from the lands about Entel. The people do not know enough to deny his claim as their king, particularly when that claim is made at the end of an Allheart lance. Such a common denial of Aydrian, if it is to grow, cannot begin until Prince Midalis publicly makes his claim to the throne."

It all made sense, of course, except... "You ask me to surrender the city," Braumin remarked.

"I ask you to save the garrison for Prince Midalis," Jilseponie corrected. "For he will need every ally he can find before this is ended."

"You will go to him?"

Jilseponie stepped back and offered no reply, for in truth, she hadn't thought that far ahead. A moment later, she just shook her head. "I'm going home," she said softly. "At this time, I need to go home."

Master Viscenti started to argue that course, but the perceptive Braumin understood clearly that nothing more could be said here, and so he held up his hand to silence Viscenti. He reached out and took Jilseponie by the shoulders, looking her right in the eye.

"Forgive my... forgive our callousness," he said softly. "You have been through so very much. You owe the people of Honce-the-Bear nothing, my friend. Go home and heal, Jilseponie."

"Bishop!" Viscenti started to say, but again Braumin stopped him with an upraised hand. He walked away from Jilseponie then, moving quickly to his desk, and from the top drawer, he produced a small pouch.

"Take these with you," he offered, handing the bag of gemstones to Jilseponie. She motioned as if to resist taking them, but Braumin only pushed them toward her more forcefully. "Use them as you see fit, or use them not at all. But you must have them." He looked deeply into her eyes, the caring look of a dear friend, and nodded. "Just in case."

Jilseponie took the pouch, and the two monks moved for the door.

"A soft wall of resistance?" Bishop Braumin asked.

Jilseponie merely shrugged and walked out of the room and the abbey, the two monks in tow.

"It is my fervent hope that you will find your heart and your strength and join us in this battle," Bishop Braumin said to her. "We have fought so hard to win the Abellican Church to Avelyn's vision, to bring the common man more fully into our protective fold. Marcalo De'Unnero would destroy all that we have accomplished in short order, I am sure."

"Avelyn's vision?" Jilseponie echoed softly and skeptically, for she wasn't even sure of what "Avelyn's vision" might truly be. She thought of the "mad friar" then, the drunken brawler she had met in a tavern not far from Pireth Tulme when she had been serving in the Coastpoint Guards.

This man who had defeated Bestesbulzibar in the bowels of Mount Aida at the cost of his own life. This man who had taught her the gemstone use.

What might Avelyn think of all of this? Would he, perhaps, be as weary of it all as was she? A wagon pulled up then, unexpectedly, and all three turned to regard the driver, a diminutive man.

"Come along," Roger said to his friend. "We've a long road ahead and I intend to make a good start this day."

Despite her glum mood and true despair, Jilseponie Wyndon Ursal could not deny her smile at the sight of Roger and Dainsey sitting in a wagon laden for the road.

The long road that would take her home.