Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda (Guardians of the Flame #10) - Softcover

Rosenberg, Joel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765340127 ISBN 13: 9780765340122

Publisher: Tor Books, 2004

Synopsis

Kethol is an adventurer with an easy smile, a man who is quick with a quip and quicker with a sword.

His partner, Pirojil, the ugly one, looks impressive and deceives people into thinking he's stupid to their sorrow-for his might and loyalty are worth a kingdom.

And the fledgling wizard Erenor, a man who tries to stay two steps ahead of his enemies, as well as one step ahead of his friends.

Loyal retainers they are, sworn to Jason Cullianane, a man who walked away from a crown, and who has been trying to convince all the almost-warring factions that he doesn't want the job back. Their lives aren't very easy, what with keeping Jason from getting killed by yet another conspiracy, rescuing some damsel or whatnot in distress, and squirreling away something for the ever-diminishing prospect of retirement.

And now it looks like our heroes might wind up succeeding in none of their schemes, for there are plots within plots, and Kethol has been forced into a disguise not of his own making. There is magic aplenty in the air (and on the ground), and in order to save a kingdom, they may have to pull off a complicated scheme that could kill them all--or land them in positions of supreme power.

But, hey, whoever said that a soldier's life was a cakewalk?

Set in Joel Rosenberg's bestselling Guardians of the Flame series, Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda is the third adventure of the journeymen soldiers of Castle Cullianane (and their sometimes ill-fated leader) in all their raucous glory. A fun, fast-paced read, it's a rollicking roller coaster of a book that will have fantasy fans reaching for more.

About this title

About the Author

Joel Rosenberg is the author of the best-selling Guardians of the Flame books as well as the D'Shai and Keepers of the Hidden Ways series. He resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Home Front is the first in his Ernest "Sparky" Hemingway mysteries, a delightful new series with a wonderfully quirky character set in the land of the Cohen Brothers' Fargo.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda
Part 1OPENING MOVES1The Widow's WalkPut three nobles in a room for lunch, and before the appetizers are served, you'll have four conspiracies. At least.--Walter Slovotsky 
The wind had begun to howl, threatening still more rain, but the Dowager Empress neither quickened nor slowed her already sodden pace.Beralyn Furnael simply refused to be affected; it was no more and no less than that.It wouldn't have been accurate to say that threats meant nothing to her--in fact, the truth was entirely the opposite--but she was far too old, and had far too long been far too stubborn, to let anything as unimportant as the wind move her mind or her feet from any path she had set them on, even if that path was something as familiar and trivial as that of her nightly walk around the ramparts of Biemestren Castle.Yes, there was some truth in what she said: that she needed her exercise, and that the moment that she permitted her traitor body to deny her that need, it would be time to have servants dig a deep grave, next to her husband's, on the hilltop behind the castle that had been theirs, and lie down beside him for all of eternity.Beralyn didn't mind lying, but she didn't believe in doing so promiscuously.It was also true--at least when Parliament was in session, or when there were other visiting nobles, which was more common--that her nightly walks gave her son the opportunity to spend some private time with one or more of the lords' and barons' daughters who, through no coincidence, always seemed to be accompanying their fathers to Biemestren Castle.None of them had any use for a useless old woman, after all. She would just be in the way.There was always talk, of course, about how the visits were inspired by the cultural life in the capital, about how theater and music and generally better craftsmanship could be found here than out in the baronies, and such. All that was, of course, true enough, and perhaps more than a tiny proportion of the apparently empty-headed young twits really had that as a main reason for coming to Biemestren, unlikely as that seemed.Their fathers, she was sure, invariably had other goals in mind. There were always commercial bargains to be made, and political ones, as well, besides the obvious hope: the grand prize. Her son. The Emperor.An unmarried emperor was an obvious prize, as well as both an obvious and subtle threat, and the easiest way for any of the barons to simultaneously gain that prize and neutralize that threat was to have him marry into the baron's family.She wished one of them would succeed. Any one; it didn't much matter to her, as long as the girl was fertile--and Beralyn would have the Spidersect priest make sure of that, while supposedly examining her for her virginity. Beralyn couldn't have cared less about whether a young girl had spent her years keeping her knees together, or spreading them for every nobleman with a smooth smile--but whoever Thomen married had better be able to producea son, and quickly, or the poor girl might just have an unfortunate accident, some dark night.Hmm ... it would be better, come to think of it, if Beralyn didn't like the girl at first. While it wouldn't make a whit of difference in what she did, it would bother her to push somebody she actually liked down the stairs.Below, in the courtyard surrounding the donjon--what everybody else called the keep, or the Emperor's House, although she preferred the older term--the remains of the Parliament encampment looked like what she remembered from her childhood as the remains of a party.Biemestren Castle was large and roomy, certainly--easily four times the size of her late husband's keep in Barony Furnael--but it had never been intended to accommodate a meeting of even all of the Biemish barons and their entourages, much less the Holts, as well.So, once again, despite the local nobles minors' homes being pressed into service, the castle had been painfully overcrowded and cramped during Parliament, and the kitchens had worked day and night to turn the constant flow of every sort of edible beast or vegetable imaginable through the castle gate into meals for those attending, while scullery men plied their trade behind the kitchens and beneath the castle's garderobes to carry the refuse out.Now it seemed almost empty, and she wondered why that bothered her.All of the multicolored pavilions had been taken down, and the tents and floors packed away against the next Parliament. The sodden ashes of four cooking fires had yet to be removed from the gravel-covered grounds, and she frowned at that--with the kitchens working night and day, what had the barons needed with their own cooks and cook fires? What were those lazy scullery men doing?It would all be cleaned up and gone within a few days; Beralynwould make sure of that. And then it would be absolutely empty.No, it would just seem that way--the castle was really never empty of visitors.There were always delegations from Nyphien and the other of the Middle Lands coming and going--for talks, they said, but mainly to spy--as well as engineers from the Home colony, and the occasional contingent from one or more of the dwarven countries, mainly Endell, always eager to trade for what they saw as the unceasing flow of good iron and better steel from what she still thought of as Adahan City, but which had been renamed New Pittsburgh back when that horrible Karl Cullinane had been emperor. She didn't much like the people from Home--even apprentice engineers treated nobility with shocking informality, and Ranella, the Empire's chief engineer, felt free to walk into Thomen's presence whenever she felt like it--but Beralyn was willing to make allowances, given that it was the Home engineers who had built the blast furnaces in New Pittsburgh, and if the Emperor putting up with a few of the too-loud, too-self-assured swaggerers was part of the price, she could live with that.And then there were the nobles minor, some from the Emperor's own barony, but even more from Arondael, and Tyrnael, and Niphael, and every other of the Biemish baronies, and increasingly the Holtish ones. They would never have the status of the ancient noble lines, which were tied to landownership, but many of the upstart merchant lords were actually wealthier than all but the richest of the old nobility.The Imperial court was not only the commercial heart of the Empire, but the social center, as well. Most of the time, at least a dozen of the local nobles minor would be playing host to at least one young visitor from an outlying barony, usually a younger son or daughter of a father who already had an heir, and who had come to the capital for any of the number of declared reasons, and never forthe declared but usual reason of seeking some suitable mate, preferably one of good breeding, better lands, and even better wealth, but who often would happily settle on a marriage that would unite some portion of the merchant concerns of the nobles minor.Ancient laws of primogeniture forbade the division of major nobles' domains, but commercial enterprises were another matter.It would be interesting to calculate how many marriages had been prematurely consummated--often marriages that had yet to be arranged--in the guest quarters of the donjon alone. And never mind how Lord Lerna's house in Biemestren seemed to regularly have more action going on than a lowertown brothel on payday. There was something about the air in the capital, presumably, that prevented young noblewomen from visiting the Spider for the potions that would have prevented pregnancy.Pity that Thomen's own quarters were far too well guarded for that to happen there.Yet another thing to blame Walter Slovotsky for, she decided.Not that there weren't enough already.She looked out, past the town below, toward the dark horizon, and for a moment she thought she could see a speck that might be the dragon, Ellegon, carrying that horrible Jason Cullinane back toward what was now known as Barony Cullinane, but which, to her, would always be Barony Furnael.No, it wasn't. It was just some speck in her eye. Jason Cullinane and the dragon had left early in the morning, and were long gone.She had heard that the dragon would soon be back to carry the new Baron Keranahan back to his barony, as well--the Cullinanes were awfully friendly with Forinel, suspiciously so--but any time that Ellegon was gone from Biemestren was a good time, from her point of view.She had heard the dragon say, more than once, that it didn't like peeling back the mind of somebody that it didn't know, but thatdidn't mean it was true, and she kept iron control over her thoughts whenever the dragon was around, just as she kept the same iron control over her actions at all times.Jason Cullinane was gone, and he would not be back soon. Not gone nearly far enough, nor permanently enough, but there was nothing that she could do about that.At the moment.She shook her head as she walked. Others would say that Jason Cullinane had been generous in abdicating, in giving the Imperial crown to her son, Thomen, accepting only the Furnael barony in exchange. Others believed that Jason Cullinane meant what he said: that Thomen was better suited to rule the Empire of Holtun-Bieme than Jason was.Others were fools.There was nothing generous in it. Thomen had been running the Empire, while Jason Cullinane, then the heir apparent, gallivanted about the Middle Lands, enjoying himself. Thomen had not only deserved the crown by birth--he had earned the crown, by hard work, over years, serving first that horrible Karl Cullinane, and then as Regent for that eve...

Edition details

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0765340127
• ISBN 13: 9780765340122
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 384