The Stoneholding

Silver Palace.

Frysan swallowed hard and fell in behind Baldrick, nursing his limp. He followed the big man's swift step down a barrel-vaulted corridor of rough-hewn stone, glancing at the guardroom adjacent to the great oak entrance door where the two gatekeepers had returned to their game of dice. From this passageway he and Baldrick emerged into the heart of the Silver Palace, an enclosed courtyard lit bright by lanterns fixed atop fluted stone posts. These were spaced at even intervals around a magnificent fountain in the shape of a harp that splashed crystal jets of water from its forepillar into a wide marble basin. They reached a covered portico at the far end of the courtyard, where a doorway opened into an elegant parlour with a lofty ceiling that rose into one of the palace's turrets.

They passed through this room, then turned into another hallway with smooth marble floors and elaborately wainscotted walls that boasted beakhead mouldings in silver leaf beneath a frieze of river scenes. They had reached the royal lodgings. Baldrick had remained silent, almost pensive.

Frysan would need to take some kind of decisive action fast, but it would have to wait until he gained admittance to the Queen. No other way.

Midway down the passage, hazy with the soft light of low-trimmed oil lamps, two guards dressed in the livery of the Mindal ...