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“He doesn’t even remember!” Javethai crowed. Her laughter rang out triumphantly.

“Wait.” Alexander gasped and clutched at his head. “What am I supposed to remember?”

“You agreed to marry me, remember?” Javethai laughed again. “Give me the magic, bear. It ismine!”

Alexander doubled over, digging his fingers intohis hair. “No!”

“Submit to me! Marry me now! Or I will cut your heart out and eat it before these witnesses!”

The queen gripped Alexander by the throat with one hand and lifted him off his feet as she pulled a long, sharp knife out of her skirts with the other hand.

“I will not submit,” Alexander gasped.

Several ice goblins shouted, and the knife flashed.

A sudden commotion in the crowd near Gytha resolved into Eshkeshken and several others charging up the steps toward the queen.

A goblin touched Gytha’s feet, and the ice around her ankles cracked. She wrenched her feet free with a ferocious jerk, ran up the steps, and lunged at the queen without any plan at all. But the goblin prince was ahead of her.

The queen turned toward Eshkeshken and shrieked in rage. She flung Alexander away and put her hand up toward Eshkeshken, her lips drawn back in a snarl.

Eshkeshken shouted in a voice as sharp as lightning, “Javethai the Usurper, I charge you with treason! I am Eshkeshken, son of Jiehteshken! Stand down and beg for clemency, or die now for your crimes.”

The queen cried, “Eshkeshken the Coward? Eshkeshken the Weakling? I thought you long dead. You were hiding in plain sight, I see.”

Eshkeshken drew himself up even straighter, but beside the queen’s tall, powerful figure, his slim frame was hardly imposing. “Stand down, Javethai,” he said more softly. “My patience is at an end.”

He took a step forward, extending his hand for the knife.

The queen sidled a little to one side and then sprang.

Though Eshkeshken was smaller and unarmed, he was just as quick as she was, and he sidestepped her stab and gripped the knife with one hand.

She bashed her forehead into his face, and his knees gave way for a moment.

With shocking suddenness, a lance flew through the air and skewered them both.

Locked in their vicious embrace, they staggered and then collapsed half-atop each other, with the lance shaft sticking out of the queen’s back. The shaft had penetrated her completely, and stuck deep in Eshkeshken’s chest

The queen fought to push him away, but he was as helpless as she was, and instead they fell to one side, so that they faced each other as they lay dying together.

A roar of discordant goblin voices rose like thunder.

Dakjudr ran up the stairs and stood over Eshkeshken and Javethai. “Watch!” she cried. “Watch and see whose claim is just!”

She yanked on the lance, but the weapon would not come free. She put one foot on Javethai’s shoulder to brace herself and jerked again, producing agonized groans from the queen and Eshkeshken.

At last, after a few more bone-crunching heaves, she pulled the lance from their bodies and held it aloft. A clear, shimmering orb glittered on the point, dripping with gray blood that sparkled with silvery magic.

The queen gasped, “Give it back! That’s mine!” But she could not rise. She reached for Dakjudr’s ankle with one hand, grasping and clawing.

“Look! Behold your king!” Dakjudr’s voice rang out, sharp and hard. She looked down at Eshkeshken, her eyes gleaming with emotion. “The lance pierced his heart. You saw it. See the ice heart!”

Eshkeshken pressed a hand to his chest and gave a strangled groan. Then he rolled to his stomach and slowly, painfully, pushed himself to hands and knees, and then to his feet.

Dakjudr knelt before him and held out the lance in both hands. “Your Majesty.”

Eshkeshken took the lance and straightened, his thin shoulders back and his head high. He cast his gaze over the ice goblins. At last he said, “My name is Eshkeshken.”