I rode for the inn my map indicated was close by to the north. As I reached the main trail going down from the pass, I was halted by a fast-riding soldier.
“Please, make way for the Prince,” he said in a polite but commanding voice. His Greek was understandable, but even more heavily accented than my own. (I tend to forget and fall into the ancient version.) The two of us waited beside the road as if some sort of procession were about to go by. How odd! A procession at sunset in November in the middle of the wilderness? Curiosity more than anything else held me from objecting.
Fully two minutes later, when impatience was about to get the better of me, a handsome, richly dressed man appeared, masterfully handling a magnificent horse and surrounded by six men: Five soldiers dressed identically to the one who had accosted me, and one dignified man who rode with his face covered by a scarf.
As soon as the party saw their outrider and me, another soldier galloped ahead to take the lead and the remaining riders closed more tightly around their apparent Prince. When the party had swiftly passed, my soldier thanked me for my patience, then hurried on to catch up with the Prince and his procession.
As he rode away to the north, I smiled. About the time he passed from sight, I started laughing. I could see by how the man looked and acted that he had been made a Prince by magic! Not something a person sees every day, even a person who like me is well-versed in magic. I was very curious! But it was clear that this Magic Prince was very nervous, though I could not guess what he feared. I imagined myself walking up to him and saying, “Good day, Magic Prince! How do you do?” and began laughing again. As I straightened from my bow there’d be five or six swords menacing me. My curiosity would have to bide its time.
I set off again, following the Prince’s party at a more leisurely pace.
Half an hour later I was at the inn, in a village nestled at the base of the pass. Unsurprisingly, so was the Prince. One of his soldiers was at the stable guarding the horses and making sure the young ostler tended them well. I could see two interesting facts: First, that they were eight identical horses, matched as close as twins, and second, that they had been ridden hard and were now very tired.
“You’re really going to ride them more tonight?” The boy shook his head at the guard. “I’ll do what I can, but you’re pretty sure to have eight lame horses by morning,” he sighed.
“Just do your best,” the soldier said crisply.
At that point the ostler stopped long enough to take my horse and ask if I would be staying the night.
“Yes,” I said and walked into the inn.
The Prince’s soldiers sat at a big table wolfing down a meal, the Prince and his advisor at a small table talking earnestly until their food arrived; they ate fast as well. Another big table was empty, and at the fourth one a man was drinking beer and watching the Prince very carefully, as if he knew him and didn’t like what he knew. I sat down at the other end of that fourth table, and ordered dinner.
The beer drinker was not in a conversational mood, so we learned only that neither of us lived nearby and that both of us found the weather gloomy but tolerable. After that the conversation tailed off until the beer drinker got a fresh look of disgust.
“Prince, my arse!” he muttered. He downed the rest of his beer, wiped his mouth, and quietly declared, “I’ll show him a prince or two.”
He put a coin on the table and left the inn, clearly with evil thoughts on his mind. The serving woman took the coin when she brought my meal and seemed satisfied.
“Who was he?” I asked her. “He seemed in a great hurry.”
“Calls himself Georgios. I don’t know him well. He comes through once a month or so, doesn’t talk much when he does.”
“How about him?” I gestured at the Prince.
“Now he’s a sight, isn’t he! This is the first time we’ve seen him, but I hope he comes back. He spends like a sailor on shore leave and pays with gold.”
The Prince had watched the beer drinker go. As soon as Georgios was out of the room, he had whispered to one of his soldiers and the soldier left as well. Now I saw the Prince looking at me. He must have decided that he didn’t recognize me and that I was no threat, for he went back to hasty eating, talking to his advisor with his mouth full.
The first soldier to finish got up and went out. He was soon replaced by the soldier I’d seen by the stables, who wolfed his food even faster than the rest. Clearly this Prince was traveling in style but begrudged the necessary time for food. He had a rendezvous with Destiny and he was determined to meet her on time.
The new soldier hadn’t been two minutes at his meal when there was a shout outside, some protest in response, then a scream suddenly cut off. We all ran outside, most of us with swords drawn, and found Georgios in the darkest corner of the stable, his head only half attached, on his knees beside a horse. Standing over him the Prince’s soldier was wiping blood off his sword.
“He was laming that horse,” he said. Indeed, it had a visible wound on its lower leg.
The Prince’s advisor hurried to kneel and examine the horse’s leg. The Prince himself looked at Georgios with a sour look on his face.
The advisor stood up, declaring, “We are lucky. The damage is superficial.”
Though there was still a large blood stain on the horse’s leg, the wound had disappeared. The Prince’s advisor’s skills in the healing arts were literally magical. Were they also the source of the Prince’s appearance?
The Prince turned toward the serving woman, who was about to return inside, and snapped his fingers. From under his cloak, his advisor produced a fist-size purse that jingled as he handed it to his Prince, who handed it to the woman. She needed both hands to hold it up.
The Prince said, “I am sorry for what has happened here. Please take out the price of our stay as well as your expenses for cleaning up this mess, and give the remainder to his family or his scruffy fellow bandits—whichever show up first to claim his remains.”
The woman and the other inn workers stared speechless as the Prince and his men mounted and continued their journey to the north. I was astounded myself, at the smoothest walk-away from a murder that I’d ever seen!
A man, presumably the innkeeper, directed some of the others to deal with the body, and the woman went back into the inn. I followed her and said, “I am Baron Iglacias Rostov, the ruler of the Kalzov Valley a few days’ ride north of here. Please tell me what we have just seen.”
I was prepared to set a small spell that would make her franker than she had been, but my title and imperious manner proved enough. Her mouth opened and shut only a few times before she started talking.
“Georgios was born near here, Your Excellency, but his family disowned him years ago. Like I said, he showed up here every month or so. He had money to pay and didn’t cause too much trouble. Most of the time, anyway. We let him keep coming, though word was that he was a bandit.
“As for the Prince … I have this feeling I’ve seen him before, even though I’m sure he’s the first prince I’ve ever met!
“Beyond that, sir, you know what I know.
“Except that I’m damned worried about this money. Someone is going to die over it, mark my words! I just don’t want it to be me or any of our inn-folk!”
“Will you know who to give it to?” I asked.
“No, Your Excellency. That Prince is an idiot. I’ve no way of knowing who he traveled with, if anyone, but some other rough customers do pass this way. If word gets out that I’m holding a bag of gold for whoever claims Georgios’s body …
“I know the village where all his brothers live and I’ll send them a message. They can have his body and divide the gold.”
“I think you’re making a wise choice,” I said. “In the meantime, let me give you another gold coin to worry about. Then show me to your best room.”
I sat in that room thinking about the Magic Prince, whom both Georgios and the serving woman seemed to recognize.
Was laming a horse just a vengeful act, or did it have a purpose? Was Georgios trying to slow the Prince up? If that was the point, did it mean that he expected some sort of trouble to show up soon for the Prince? Who or what in the area was powerful enough to trouble a Magic Prince and his soldiers, and why would they want to? The why might be gold; where there was one heavy purse, there must be several. That suggested a Dragon—I smiled at the fancy of a she-Dragon kidnapping a prince instead of a princess—but a band of bandits seemed more likely. The idea of a hundred or so armed and dangerous men descending on the inn got me out of my chair and seeking out someone to warn.
I found the serving woman banking the fire in the common room. “I’ve been thinking more about the Prince,” I told her. “It is very possible he’s being pursued by angry bandits. Can you fortify this place? Can you deal with them?”
“Of course I can deal with bandits!” she said. “I treat them like the gentlemen they aren’t, and they mostly treat me like the lady I’m not. I don’t turn them off because that would be a poor way to do business. They don’t rob or kill us because that would turn the whole countryside against them, making them vulnerable to the Turks. Preying on travelers is different; you could say we do that ourselves.” She laughed to show that she was joking. I laughed because I knew she wasn’t, not entirely.
“I’m glad the Prince is gone. If he and his soldiers were still here and they got into a fight with bandits, then Heaven protect us!”
Then she smiled gently at me and said, “But thank you for the warning, Your Excellency.”
I returned to my room, determined to do a better job of thinking through my own next move.
Before I went to bed, I summoned two Invisible Stalkers—intelligent, tough, roughly human-shaped creatures from the Ethereal Plane who can see into the Prime Material Plane, the plane we humans exist on, and have some physical effect here. But the things they do best and most easily here are to scout, spy, and act as messengers. I sent one out to find and follow the Magic Prince and the other to go back and see who or what was following him toward the inn.