The Hidden City

down.
    ‘What’s so funny?’ Bergsten asked him.
    ‘We have good news from home, your Grace,’ Komier said. ‘Tell our beloved Patriarch what you just told me,’ he instructed the messenger.
    ‘Yes, my Lord,’ the blond-braided Thalesian said. ‘It happened a few weeks back, your Grace. One morning the palace servants couldn’t find a trace of the Prince Regent anywhere at all. The Guards tore the place apart for two straight days, but the little weasel seemed to have vanished entirely.’
    ‘Mind your manners, man,’ Bergsten snapped. ‘Avin’s the Prince Regent, after all—even if he is a little weasel.’
    ‘Sorry your Grace. Anyway, the whole capital was mystified. Avin Wargunsson never went anywhere without taking a brass band along to blow fanfares announcing his coming. Then one of the servants happened to notice a full wine barrel in Avin’s study. That seemed odd, because Avin didn’t have much stomach for wine, so they got to looking at the barrel a little more closely. It was clear that it had been opened, because quite a bit of wine had been spilled on the floor. Well, your Grace, they’d all worked up quite a thirst looking for Avin, so they decided to open the barrel, but when they tried to pry it open, they found out that it had been nailed shut. Now nobody nails a wine barrel shut in Thalesia, so everybody got suspicious right away. They took some pliers and pulled out the nails and lifted the lid—and there was Avin, stone dead and floating face down in the barrel.’
    ‘You’re not serious!’
    ‘Yes, your Grace. Somebody in Emsat’s got a very warped sense of humor, I guess. He went to all the trouble of rolling that wine barrel into Avin’s study just so that he could stuff him in and nail down the lid. Avin seems to have struggled a bit. He had splinters under his fingernails, and there were clawmarks on the underside of the lid. It made an awful mess. I guess the wine drained out of him for a half an hour after they fished him out of the barrel. The palace servants tried to clean him up for the funeral, but you know how hard wine-stains are to get out. He was very purple when they laid him out on the bier in the Cathedral of Emsat for his funeral.’
    The messenger rubbed at the side of his face reflectively. ‘It was the strangest funeral I’ve ever attended. The Primate of Emsat kept trying to keep from laughing while he was reading the burial service, but he wasn’t having much luck, and that got the whole congregation to laughing too. There was Avin lying on that bier, no bigger than a half-grown goat and as purple as a ripe plum, and there was the whole congregation, roaring with laughter.’
    ‘At least everybody noticed him,’ Komier said. ‘That was always important to Avin.’
    ‘Oh, they noticed him all right, Lord Komier. Every eye in the Cathedral was on him. Then, after they put him in the royal crypt, the whole city had a huge party, and we all drank toasts to the memory of Avin Wargunsson. It’s hard to find something to laugh about in Thalesia when winter’s coming on, but Avin managed to brighten up the whole season.’
    ‘What kind of wine was it?’ Patriarch Bergsten asked gravely.
    ‘Arcian red, your Grace.’
    ‘Any idea of what year?’
    ‘Year before last, I believe it was.’
    ‘A vintage year,’ Bergsten sighed. ‘There was no way to save it, I suppose?’
    ‘Not after Avin had been soaking in it for two days, your Grace.’
    Bergsten sighed again. ‘What a waste,’ he mourned. And then he collapsed over his saddlebow, howling with laughter.
    It was cold in the Tamul Mountains as Ulath and Tynian rode up into the foothills. The Tamul Mountains were one of those geographic anomalies which crop up here and there, a cluster of worn-down, weary-looking peaks with no evident connection to neighboring and more jagged peaks forested by fir and spruce and pine. The gentler slopes of the Tamul Mountains were covered with hardwoods which had been stripped of their leaves by the onset of winter.
    The two knights rode carefully, staying in the open and making enough noise to announce their presence. ‘It’s very unwise to startle a Troll,’ Ulath explained.
    ‘Are you sure they’re out there?’ Tynian asked as they wound deeper into the mountains.
    Ulath nodded. ‘I’ve seen tracks—or places where they’ve tried to brush out their traces—and fresh dirt where they’ve buried their droppings. Trolls take pains to conceal