Douglas Niles - Lord of the Rose

“Excuse me,” said the warrior.

“What?” asked the gnome, blinking in confusion. “You are most certainly excused. But… do I know you?”

“No-I’m a stranger here,” the warrior said patiently. “I’m hoping you’ll help me with some directions.”

“Directions?” The little fellow scratched his head. “Not my specialty, directions. What are you looking for around here?”

“Who, not what. I’m looking for a gnome named Brillissander Firesplasher, or anyone who might know something about him.”

The gnome’s eyes went wide. “Oh! Oh. Do you mean the Brillissander Firesplasher?” he asked in a tone of awe.

“I think so,” the dwarf confirmed.

“Never heard of him.”

With that, the earnest pedestrian was off, muttering to himself once again.

The welcoming banquet was a great success, despite the absence of the dukes of Thelgaard and Solanthus. Patriarch Issel began the occasion with an overlong invocation but spoke many beautiful words in praise of the Lord Regent in Palanthas. Duke Crawford also made a splendid speech, and Lady Selinda and the duchess, Lady Martha, got a little tipsy on the bubbly wine.

“I remember Palanthas,” the duchess said dreamily. “Such a beautiful city. Not like Caergoth, all walls and towers and forts.”

“I suppose any place can get tiresome,” Selinda replied, thinking of her private delight at getting out of her own city.

“That Golden Spire!” Martha said. “It was breathtaking! Is it true that it’s your father’s gold up in that tower that makes it glow like that?”

“Oh, yes. He wanted it displayed so the people could see it as a measure of our prosperity,” the princess explained. “Of course, he’s the only one with a key to the room!”

“Nobody ever tries to steal it?” the duchess inquired, sipping more wine.

“They couldn’t possibly,” Selinda replied. “Lady Coryn, the white wizard, has placed spells of protection around the tower. No one can remove so much as a speck of the gold-not even another wizard-without my father’s permission.”

“They say the Duke of Solanthus is very rich, too,” Martha noted, a little blearily. “Not gold, in his case.”

“Yes, he has control of the Stones of Garnet,” Selinda explained. “They are gems the merchants of Solanthus have gained in trade from the dwarves over more than a thousand years. Each to their own, I say, but my father prefers his riches in gold.”

A little later, the hostess leaned over and whispered rather wickedly to Selinda that the dinner owed some of its success to the fact that the two argumentative lords of Solanthus and Thelgaard were absent.

“They are certainly late arriving. I do hope that nothing is seriously wrong,” the princess replied. “I am looking forward to speaking with both of them.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” the duchess said, swallowing half of her glass of wine in one gulp. She held out the vessel for a passing steward to refill. “The fact is, I wouldn’t trust either one o’ them.” Lady Martha blinked, as if surprised at what she had just said.

To Selinda’s left, the duke was arguing loudly with one of his nobles over the manner of some criminal’s execution. The duke had paid little attention to the princess after they were seated, which had given her a chance to get to know her hostess.

Now Selinda leaned over, delighted with the duchess’s frankness. “Tell me more! I barely remember them. The Duke of Thelgaard… a big bear of a man? The Lord of the Crown…?”

Frowning in concentration, Lady Martha nodded. “Yes, big Lord Jarrod. Don’t let him hug you. He’ll crack your ribs.”

“Hug! Oh, my.” Selinda was a little taken aback.

“Only after he drinks too much. He’s polite enough ’til then, but he drinks every day. All day. Starts when he gets up in the morning.”

“I will keep that in mind,” said the princess. “Perhaps, therefore, we should schedule the most important conferences for early in the day.”

“Drinking makes him grumpy,” Martha admitted, “but then, so does everything else. Not that he doesn’t have a few good excuses, you know.”

“For being in a bad mood?”

“Yes. After all, Rathskell in Solanthus has got all the money. That’s what they say. My own Crawfish-” She gasped in mock astonishment and clapped a hand over her mouth with a glance at her husband. The duke was still engaged in his conversation, and hadn’t heard his wife’s use of the detested nickname. “He has this great big army. While Thelgaard is so very poor.”

“What about Solanthus? You haven’t said very much about him so far. Does he drink a lot, too?” Selinda wondered.

“The Duke of Solanthus,” the duchess began, enunciating her words with great care, “is a scoundrel and a cad. It is whispered”-her voice dropped to a breathy whisper-“that he might even be a murderer!”

“No!” gasped Selinda. She took a small sip of her own wine. It was a southern vintage, sweeter and little more fruity than she was used to. Although she liked it very much, she made sure to drink less than her hostess. “Tell me, who is he supposed to have killed?”

“Well, the duchess, his wife-his young wife-was once married to a lord, subject of the duke himself. That lord perished mysteriously on a hunt in the foothills of the Garnet Mountains, a hunt where it just so happens that the duke himself was leading the riders. Of course, the duke made a great display of grief and spoke high honors about the dead man. Very convincing. Less than a year later, he took the beautiful widow as his wife.”

“I should think the scandal would have cost him dearly,” Selinda remarked disapprovingly.

“Well, you don’t know Solanthus,” Martha declared. “He took over there two years after the War of Souls. He’s about as rich as the Lord Regent himself-oh, excuse me. Your papa, I mean. But Rathskell has made sure that, if you don’t like the way he is doing things, you don’t stay around.”

“You mean, he has killed other people?”

Martha shook her head. “No, but they find reason to leave. Many of ’em left, the ones who didn’t approve of his rule. Lord Lorimar was their leader-good man, Lord Lorimar,” she noted sadly.

“Yes. I always admired the way he rode horseback through the streets, not like the other lords in their fancy carriages and buggies. He was very handsome, dignified. He looked you right in the eyes when he talked to you. His daughter Dara and I were friends-though she was a little older than me. Such a terrible tragedy, their deaths. And the assassin still at large!”

“That assassin-oh, he’s slippery as a ghost,” Martha said. “Everybody looks and looks for him. He hasn’t been heard of for a time now. It’s as though he’s disappeared from the world!”

Selinda suppressed a shudder. Dara Lorimar had been a good-hearted, vivacious young woman. When the news of her and her father’s death had reached Palanthas, the lord regent had been enraged that one of his most loyal lords had been cruelly slain. Selinda had grieved over the death of a friend.

“My father has offered a thousand steel crowns as reward!” the princess murmured.

“Whoever brings him to justice will earn their reward,” Martha said, clearly a little bleary from the wine. “He’s a bad one.”

“My dear,” the duke said sternly. He had risen, unnoticed, from his seat and was now leaning over his wife’s shoulder. “I need you to come with me.”

“Oh,” Martha replied. She blinked her watery eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said to the princess, before rising unsteadily.