She sighed. He hardly seemed the same man as the dashing warrior to whom she had lost her heart. Still, he seemed a stable, responsible ruler. No doubt the people would love him. She wondered, would she?
* * *
Lemml Touday saw the silhouette of the Princess against the window curtain as he arrived at the palace for his meeting with Prince Rango. He hoped she had not put the Prince into a bad mood today. What he had to tell the Prince would not sit well even if His Highness was in the best of moods.
Prince Rango was again in his privy council chamber. Today he was moving pins around on a wall map, consulting a handful of note cards as he did so. In his simple trousers and close-fitting tunic, he looked more like a military commander than he had on other of Lemml’s visits and the priest found that this made him uneasy.
“Greetings, Lemml,” the Prince said. “Have a seat. I will be with you as soon as I have finished marking these position reports on the map. I’ve heard from my questing heroes and things seem to be going quite well.”
“You seem to be marking more than four units there, Your Highness,” the priest commented.
“That’s right,” Prince Rango said, “I’ve been repositioning various units around the Faltane. There are still pockets of fighting—bandit activity and such. It wouldn’t do to win the Faltane from Kalaran only to lose it to Civil unrest.”
“Not at all, sire,” Lemml said.
Prince Rango finished with his map and bore a silver salver over the table. With a slight flourish, he uncovered a pair of fluted blue-green bottles marked with white script lettering in an unfamiliar language. They were filled with a brown liquid that Lemml suspected was identical to the beverage he had imbibed on his previous visit. The Prince removed metal caps from the bottles with a curious device and poured the foaming beverage into two iced goblets.
“Over half of the royal wine cellar has gone over to this stuff,” the Prince said cheerfully. “Fortunately, I like it. Now, what is the news from the Temple?”
Lemml sipped his drink. He found that the sweet, syrupy stuff made his teeth squeak slightly. Still, it was refreshing.
“The Demon of Darkness continues to hold forth within the skull of Kalaran. The Messenger of Light retreated so far into the right socket that it is difficult to see. Given that the more rampant manifestations of the space-time rift are beginning to disperse—Your Highness’s advisors seem to have been correct on that point—I am having more difficulty reassuring the religious authorities that nothing is wrong.”
Prince Rango’s smile was cold. “I have paid you well to assuage their fears. Do so.”
“I will,” Lemml promised hastily.
He leaned forward in his chair, dropping his voice so that the Prince had to lean to hear what he said next.
“But, my lord, what if the skull is right? What if something of Darkness
is
threatening the good of the Faltane? Shouldn’t we do something?”
The Prince guffawed. “I place no faith in magical trinkets. How could the skull of an evil wizard provide us with any reliable knowledge? I swear, Lemml, you’ve become as superstitious as your masters! I had thought you a solid businessman.”
Lemml flushed, “I am, Prince Rango. However, magic is a potent force. One who toys with it toys with dangerous matters.”
The Prince slapped his sheathed sword. “Leave such concerns to me, Lemml. This sword has beaten great enemies. Keep peace within the Temple and within a handful of days all will be settled. I will be coronated and nothing will stir me or those who have served me well.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Lemml smiled weakly. “I shall return to report within a few days’ time.”
“Very good.” The Prince’s chuckle was robust, but his eyes were cold. “And make certain that I like that report, Lemml.”
“I will, sire. I will.”
Lemml hurried from the Prince’s council chamber. His belly was roiling from a combination of the sweet brew and worry. He was safely in his rooms when he recalled that the sword with which the Prince had beaten his great enemies was no longer in the capital. Mothganger, along with the other artifacts, was on its way into hiding.
Prelude the Fourth“Wanted: Guardian” by Robert Lynn Asprin relates how Stiller takes the sword Mothganger, intending to hide it in a dragon’s lair, but the wily dragon and an elf convince him to leave it with them. They will encase it in stone and have a copy of it buried to the hilt in stone as a decoy (presumably to be extracted by young Arthur, King-to-be). At the story’s end Stiller loses everything in a poker match with the dragon, and the elf begins black market sales of Mothganger counterfeits to warriors.
“W
e can finish the fittings when the ladies in question return from…” The seamstress paused. “Where did you say they were?”
“Jancy has gone into the Desolation of Thaumidor and Domino is in the farther reaches of the Lake District,” Princess Rissa answered, twirling so she could see herself in her wedding gown.
Pearls glistened on the bodice, lace trimmed the plunging neckline and the floor-sweeping hem. The detachable train was trimmed with even more lace and embroidered with the crest of Regaudia, the Royal House of which she was the last survivor.
“How is work coming on the veil?” she asked anxiously.
“Well, Your Highness,” the seamstress replied with a soothing smile. “Once the Prince supplied the measure of the crown with which it will need to fit, work went along swimmingly.”
“Have you seen the crown?” Rissa asked curiously.
“No.” A blush actually lit the seamstress’s thin face. “The Prince explained that it was to be a surprise for you and that no one but the smiths and jewelers working on it were to see it before the wedding day. He said it is his gift to you.”
“Have you thought about what you will give him, ducky?” Daisy asked. “And about gifts for the members of the wedding party?”
Princess Rissa frowned. “I have, but I am rather stumped. They are all so different. Finding one gift that would suit each of them would be difficult—that is, if we omit weaponry, which doesn’t seem appropriate.”
“No, ducky, it doesn’t,” Daisy said severely.
“Something with the new royal emblem would be nice,” the seamstress suggested, “perhaps a crystal dish or a picture frame.”
Rissa shook her head. “The emblem is a good idea but we haven’t finished designing it. In any case, I can’t see what Domino or Jancy or Stiller or Gar would do with a crystal dish.”
Fleetingly, she envisioned Domino watering her horse from the hypothetical piece of cut crystal or Gar using it to design some novel but poetic fashion of slaying an enemy.
“Clothing is certainly out,” the seamstress said hesitantly. “How about a rare wine?”
“Most of the royal cellar has been transformed into this brown fizzy goo that only Rango can stand,” Rissa said, sparing a wan smile at the memory of her fiance. “We are importing wine by the barrel for the wedding feast, but I don’t count on it staying wine.”
“Do the members of your wedding party have any hobbies?” the seamstress asked.
“Domino used to raise horses, but I’m not certain if she still does. Spotty—I mean Stiller—gambles.” She frowned. “I never did learn if Jancy had any hobbies. She’s a warrior by training and most of what we did was fight.”
“And this Gar?” the seamstress said hesitantly. “Does he have any hobbies?”
Princess Rissa nodded. “He kills people. Elegantly.”
“Perhaps weapons would be best.” Daisy sighed. “Something like a ceremonial dagger with a place for the royal crest to be mounted once you have one.”
“I’ll speak to Rango,” Rissa said, although that was the last thing she really wanted to do. “Certainly he will know a smith who can do the work quickly.”
“You should change first, ducky,” Daisy admonished. “He shouldn’t see the gown until the wedding day!”
* * *
In his council chamber, the impending bridegroom was in conference with Lemml Touday. He frowned as the priest finished his report.
“And so, Your Highness, I have diverted discussion from the skull repeatedly. Now that the Temple is in festive upheaval with plans for the wedding and coronation the question should be moot until afterwards.”
“Afterwards?” The Prince raised his elegant eyebrows. “Afterwards everything will be happy. The artifacts will be returned, the magical phenomena will cease, and we will settle down to an era of peace and justice.”
Lemml frowned. “I sincerely hope so, Your Highness. However, I have been researching the history of prognosticatory devices like the skull and they are rarely wrong. Their portents have been misunderstood and their warnings ignored, but if they consistently warn of impending Evil, then that Evil is impending.”
“I see,” the Prince said, sipping his brown, frothy drink with urbane relish, “and you think that I am being overly casual in regard to these portents.”
Lemml took a deep breath. “In a word, sire, yes.”
He reached into the sleeve of his robe and removed the small pouch he had received from the Prince on his last visit. It jingled, slightly fuller even than before.
“I have meditated at length,” he said, “and have decided to return some of your donations to my favorite charity. I will not speak of anything that has passed between us, but I am a priest and I find that I cannot forget my duty.”
The Prince studied Lemml, then his gaze came to rest on the map on the wall. He rose, studied the position of some of his pins, and then returned to his seat.
“Lemml, on that map I have been tracing the progress of several things. The blue pins mark the last known positions of my questing heroes.”
Lemml turned so that he could look. Behind him, he heard the Prince take the cap off one of the bottles and refresh their drinks.
“The red pins mark bandit incursions and monster sightings,” the Prince continued, “the green pins mark natural disasters—floods, earthquakes, tornados. The yellow pins mark unnatural disasters.”
“There seem to be a good number of those in Caltus,” the priest commented, accepting the freshened goblet from the Prince’s hand.
“There do, but there are fewer than there were before,” the Prince said. “Several of my heroes are on their return journeys and the number of disastrous occurrences—natural and unnatural—has been falling steadily. To be brief, I have been looking for any evidence of the Evil that you and the skull have been fussing about and have seen no trace.”
Lemml sipped his drink. It seemed a trace bitter this time—perhaps the magical sweet stuff had begun to spoil. He rather hoped so. He didn’t share the Prince’s fondness for the drink and longed for a cool goblet of wine or a mug of beer.
“I am relieved that you are being so careful, sire,” he said, “but my position stands. I can no longer serve as your eyes and ears within the Temple. Also I must warn you that I will be alert to foil those who might be tempted to do so now that I am not.”
Rango shook his head sadly. “You misjudge me, priest. Do you not recall that you came with this offer to me, not me to you? You think that because you were corrupt that others will be or that I would seek to ask other priests to serve both Crown and Temple? No, when you came to me, I took it as an omen that the Deities of Light wished for me to have eyes and ears within their buildings. Now that you depart my service, I will end that phase of my rulership.”
“I hope so.” Lemml rose unsteadily, the strain of the conversation having frayed his nerves. “Then I bid you good day, my lord, and offer my blessings on your impending nuptials.”
“Good-bye, Lemml Touday,” the Prince said with a curious smile. “I shall not see you again.”
Dismissed, the priest made his way down stone corridors that suddenly seemed infinite. His head spun. One stone wall looked much like another. He passed the same tapestry three times without coming to the side door which he had used to come to his meetings with the Prince.
Calling out was out of the question. He did not know what type of reception he would get from the Prince’s Guard, some of whom were tough soldiers, hardened by service in the wars against the Fallen Sunbird. Staggering on, he froze as he heard light footsteps tripping down a stone stairway. Then the Princess Rissa came into view.
“Oh, my!” she cried, kneeling beside him. “What has happened to you?”
He tried to reply and vomited on her shoes.
When next he knew himself, he was lying on a pallet in a cool, shadowy room. The Princess knelt beside him, putting aside a basin ofcool water and a rag.
“Am I in the dungeon?” he whispered.
“It depends on how you see it,” the Princess said. “This is the room reserved for my lady companion. Daisy prefers to go home to her husband, so it is empty. After what I’ve been through, no one is terribly worried about guarding my virtue.”
“Ah,” he moaned.
“Now, what happened to you?” Rissa asked. “As best as I can tell, you were poisoned. I administered purgatives then fed you activated charcoal to absorb the residue.”
Lemml Touday gaped. “I was in conference with Prince Rango. I…”
He stopped. This lovely woman was the Prince’s fiancee. She had just saved his life and hidden him away, but could he trust her? She studied him and he remembered the steel within that lovely breast.
“Princess, I have been the Prince’s spy within the Temple…”
He told her the whole story, not even omitting the monies he had received or those he had kept. He told her his suspicions that Evil was looming and that somehow the Prince had an interest in hiding the rise of that Evil. Princess Rissa listened, a frown furrowing her brow.
“I, too, have worried about the Prince,” she confided when Lemml finished his tale. “He has not been acting like himself. He takes pleasure in bookkeeping, accounting, and meetings. When he rides or does sword practice he does it as one would a duty, not a pleasure. I do not know what ails him, but I dread this wedding as no bride should dread her wedding and dread this coronation as no Queen-to-be ever has.”
Lemml sipped the cool, clear water she poured for him from an earthenware pitcher. His mouth still tasted like the sour remnants of a dog’s dinner, but his head was clearing.