Simon’s recovery was slow, only pared to everything else he’d been through. He was used to healing or dying almost immediately, and there had been only a few instances where he’d been forced to actually let his body mend, the most notable of which had been ages ago when he’d fought with the orcs. There, he’d been afraid of scrambling his brains with the wrong healing spell, and he’d been forced to spend weeks in bed, letting the cussion heal on its own.

  The view from his sickbed in Rivenwood wasn’t half so lovely as his view from the pace’s guest room, though, and the Queen was muicer to him than the shrew that saw only Simon’s evil aura and not the man behind it. He paused for a moment to try to remember the vilge wise woman’s found that he couldn’t. He was still gd that he’d saved her, of course, but happy not to think of her most of the time. Still, Simon wondered what she might say about him with his steadily improving aura.

  Though he eime to think about this and other topid frequently used a borrowed hand mirror to ask questions of it from his growing pile of notes, Simon was ba his feet ihan two weeks. There was simply only so much ying in bed he could take. Those first steps were halting, and only across the room to use the chamber pot or to go outside and stand on the baly, taking in the sea air and the anding view of the o that surrouhe city on three sides.

  What it didn’t show him was the volo, though. Simon was unsure if that was on purpose or a happy act, but the one dire he most wao look in, he couldn’t. He didn’t dwell on it, though. He could tell from the smell of the air and the manner of servants that it wasn’t still erupting. So, if there was no danger, everything else could wait.

  The Queen tio visit him often. It wasn’t daily. She was a busy woman. Still, every two or three days, she would e to his room and bring him a book to read or an expensive piece of fruit to savor. Whether she was attempting to subtly remind him of his p the peg order with these luxuries or just giving him rewards worthy of a hero, he couldn’t say. That’s just the way she was. One moment, she was so dighat she bordered on the formal, and the , she was just a woman, and the illusion of formality fell apart as she ughed at some joke or beamed when she saw him standing for the first time.

  She was a y woman, though, and even when she was being friendly or even flirtatious, she was still probing him and looking for ao her questions. What was he really doing here? How did he really sy Brogan? How did Simon know to sy the giant if he didn’t know who that was?

  Simon’s protests and memory pses only went so far, but eventually, he got enough information about the cursed nd of Ionia to make up a suitable story. As they talked, she told him of how her great-grandfather, Andus, carved out a vast try from these rocky slopes by killing or sealing away each of the mohat pgued it. “He stole the north from the harpy queen and sealed away Brogan the burning to build Ionar, among other terrible beasts. Feion, everything erfetil the curse.”

  Apparently, an oracle had prophesied that his reign would spell only doom for the world and that every time one of his progeny got married, one of the monsters Andus sealed away would return to torment his desdants. It was a crazy story, and Simon was extremely skeptical, at least until the Queen said, “No one was really sure it was true until my mother remarried, almost 50 years after her father’s death. She fell to love, despite all the warnings. That’s when the basilisk returned aroyed the city of Ozioptin.”

  A chill went through Simon at those words. He’d never known the name of the city, but he’d been there before. He’d been there lohan he’d ever been anywhere else. “Ozioptin?” He asked, his mouth suddenly dry. “Could you show me that on a map?”

  “A world traveler like you doesn’t know about the city of stone?” she asked with a sad smile. “Did your propheot have enough room for two doomed cities?”

  “All I know is that if Ionar falls, trade will halt, and wars will start,” Simon said, “So I came to see what I could do to stop that.”

  She pursed her lips but said nothing. Instead, she had a servant bring her a map of the kingdom. Simon admired its workmanship immediately, even if he wasn’t sure about some of the choices the author had made distance-wise. Still, it was o see Ionia id out so ly, pinned between the Raiden Mountains and the Grekahere were some isnds off the shore he hadn’t known about, and there, oher side of the mountains, was the desert he’d passed through more than ond ly marked not so far away from the mountain range.

  Oziopin. Just seeing that was almost enough to give Simon fshbacks. He’d stared at that range for lifetimes. He could draw it in his sleep. He didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, he asked, “Why was there a city built in su out-of-the-ce, in the desert?”

  “That would be a good question, except that it wasn’t always desert,” she answered with a shake of her head as she traced out a line on the map with her finger, briefly toug his. “It's true that the Wantari wastes have been there forever, but Oziopin was built in the midst of a fertile valley. There was even a beautiful ke there o was only when the curse came that the water fled, and the beast appeared. They say that the pce will stay that way until someone mao strike down the mohat’s a cruel prophecy sino one beat it, of course, but it’s there just the same.”

  “No one beat it?” Simon asked, suddenly putting a lot less sto this talk about curses and prophecies since he’d already beaten it a few years iure. “How do you know someone hasn’t struck it down already.”

  “Because no one ,” she answered with a shake of her head. “Every year, another youries, or a mert caravan that strays too close disappears. The thing is a true monster. ‘No hero of Ionar or any other kingdom of the known world shall ever be able to sy this beast, and it will squat over Ionar until the impossible happens.’”

  She spoke, reg the prophecy from memory and making his blood run cold. She clearly interpreted the thing to mean forever, but as someone who had killed the basilisk, he khat simply wasn’t so, but he knew something else too. He wasly from around here. Suddenly, he very much wao meet whoever had prophesied all of this or at least read their other work for clues about what else might happen iure.

  “Who was it that said all these things, and why do you believe them anyway?” Simon asked, rolling up the map. “The future be whatever it is you want it to be.”

  “I only wish that were so,” the Queen sighed, “But the Oracle is never wrong.”

  “Never wrong?” he asked skeptically. “Didn’t your evil va monster wake up retly despite the fact that you hadn’t vioted yrandfather’s prophecy?”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “But you stopped it before it could doom the city. Clearly, you were always inteo be a part of that destiny, so she still wasn’t wrong.”

  “Wasn’t wrong?” he asked, fbbergasted. She’d been wrong in every single life except for this one so far. Before he could protest that, though, she tinued.

  “Don’t you see? It's all part of the pn, and just like you, if we all do our part, then we make the world a better pce, one life at a time.” As the Queen spoke, she took the map back from him, toug his hand, before she rolled it up. She left him then with a lot to think about.

  Oracur magic might hint at some neeagic he did not yet uand, and being able to predict what was going to happen would certainly be useful. “More than useful,” he said to himself as he carefully stretched. “It would be OP as fuck.” Still, the idea of fate made him nervous. He didn’t like the idea that whatever he was doing had already been taken into at by someone, somewhere.

  Hedes had shown practically unlimited power and at least a limited knowledge of what he was mostly likely to do, but he didn’t believe that even she was omnipotent. He was sure he’d surprised her more than once or twice so far. So, while the idea that someohan her could know such things was unlikely, he couldn’t rule it out entirely.

  Simon used words of healing twice more after that. Oo fix the tibia in his left leg that had bee crooked, and again trow his big toe when he discovered that the bance problems of losing it were just too big to pensate for. Despite his best efforts, the digit was an ugly, misshapen thing. It looked like a mutated version of a toe as drawn by a kindergartehe oe did the job and moved in roughly the way a toe should move, but it dispelled any notions about him repg his fingers when he left. The only way he’d do that is if he bought some nice gloves and opped wearing them. At least he didn’t have to look at his feet as long as he kept his boots on.

  Slowly, piece by piece, Simon put himself back together again. He didn’t think he’d be fighting with a sword anytime soon, but he retty sure in a few weeks, he wouldn’t need a servant or a wall to lean on if he wao move further than a few steps. That didn’t make him any prettier in the mirror, though. The frostbite his armor had inflicted on him had given him gnarly scars across his arms and legs especially. His face was mostly fine, fortunately. It hadn’t been in direct tact with any etal. At least not until he’d hit the ground. All in all, he sidered this to be a success. He didn’t know how much, though, until they finally brought him his armor.

  It was only when he saw how ma was that Simon uood how lucky he was to be alive. Cooled magma g to the outside of several pieces, and the way the leg ptes were bent poio some very bad breaks. Without magic, Simon would certainly have been dead by now.