Saints preserve us,' Dr. Kellen said, and squeezed Galen's shoulder. 'What have we done to our youth?

It was a palace, made entirely of gold, sitting on an island of silver snow at the very top of the world. East of the sun, and west of the moon.

Can you be sure?" "I haven't spent the last fifteen hundred years learning how to knit my own socks, boy!" The crone looked like she might box Heinrich's ears, if she could reach them.

If it's easter than east and wester than west, it must be north.

Er," Oliver said. "He talks even less than the one Lily married," the crone remarked to Walter. "Though when the mood strikes him, he asks just as many questions as Galem." "I'm sorry," Oliver said weakly. The old woman nodded. "You are forgiven," she pronounced in a queenly tones.

Galen!" The crown princess flung herself into her husband's arms with a glad cry. The other princesses shrieked and threw themselves at their brother-in-law only a moment later.

And then what did you do, Lord Oliver?" Karl's eight-year-old daughter gazed up at him in awe, as though this were the best story she had ever heard.