His gold was still there, every bar of it, stacked just as it had been when he left it that morning. A quick glance across the neat stacks confirmed that not a single ingot had been stolen.
Coryn the White emerged from behind one huge pile of gold bars. Her robe, as pure alabaster as a layer of new fallen snow, glistened in the sun-brightened hall. Silver symbols, etched in thread-thin wire, winked and sparkled as the light shone on the robe.
“How did you get up here?” the duke croaked before glancing again at the gold. With a strangled gasp he lunged forward, running his hands over the bars, insuring that it was not some cruel illusion. “Are you threatening my treasure?” he demanded.
“Of course not!” the white wizard replied. “If you’ll remember, the magic protection I cast upon it makes it proof against theft. Even from myself. I am not interested in your gold.”
“That spell is still in effect?”
“It is permanent-it will outlast me, and you. Your gold cannot be stolen so long as you keep it in this room,” assured Coryn.
“What do you want here then?”
“I come to bargain with you.” She let her fingers trail across several smooth, gleaming bars. He resisted the urge to rush over and wipe off the smudges he was sure her touch had left.
“Now, Lady Coryn. As always, it is a pleasure to see you, even if I would prefer that your visits take place in another, er, locale. Also, I am in the midst of pressing affairs. May I ask you to be as direct as I know you are capable of being?”
“Of course, Excellency,” Coryn said, bowing slightly. Her black hair gleamed like satin, falling over her shoulders, framing her face and matching the indigo of her eyes. She was very beautiful, the Lord Regent reflected idly. He respected the fact that she did not use this beauty as a weapon, as so many women did. While he himself, of course, was immune to such charms, he knew they reduced many men to whimpering fools.
Still, Coryn the White had other weapons at her disposal, and the regent resolved to remain alert. Once a useful ally during his reclamation of Palanthas, she had an increasingly annoying way of sticking her nose into matters where it didn’t belong. More than once she had insisted upon courses of action that had had serious repercussions for the regent’s profit margins. She had proven herself to be a populist at heart, and du Chagne had no fondness for populists. Bad for business, bad for maintaining law and order, bad for progress, they were troublemakers, every one of them.
“I have been to the estate of Lord Lorimar,” she said without preamble, causing his eyes to widen. “I went to retrieve a document that should have been there-the Compact of the Free. No doubt you recall it, as you, yourself, were one of the signatories. He kept it in a strongbox with the six green diamonds.”
“Yes, of course I recall it,” said the Lord Regent, trying to keep his tone neutral even as he felt a surge of irritation. The compact was a populist document if ever there was such a thing! “He also had that ancient banner of the three orders. We all know it was his goal to restore a united Solamnia-he would use the diamonds in the crown, and the banner of the Crown, the Rose, and the Sword would be the new royal sigil. So what about all this?”
“The compact, the six green stones, and the pennant are all missing. That is, I could not locate them in the ruin, where they should have been, and I come to ask if you know what happened to them.”
Du Chagne’s jaw flapped, and he stammered like a peasant before he gathered his wits and replied. “It was a parchment document, by Shinare! Why, that place burned to the ground! What makes you think it could possibly have survived?”
“Because I know where the lord secretly kept it, and it was proofed against fire. Furthermore, he told me that only two other people knew where it was kept. One of those people was you.”
“My dear Lady Coryn, I assure you I have no idea what you are talking about!” protested the regent. “I once saw his strongbox-knew that he wanted to make those six stones into a new crown-but it’s ridiculous to assert that I knew where it was hidden! Now, if you will excuse me, I have matters in the real world to address! Mundane things like road repairs-if you want the people of Palanthas to have anything to eat this winter! And those repairs will cost me more of this gold than I should like to part with.”
That last statement was true.
“No doubt,” Coryn replied. “If you insist you know nothing about the lost compact, then I shall ask the same question of your dukes. Do you think they know where it is? And the green diamonds?”
“They’re gone, I tell you!” Du Chagne blurted.
“Gone?” Coryn blinked, and he wondered if she was stupid-or was mocking him. “You mean, just like that?”
She snapped her fingers, and all the gold, the more than twelve thousand bars in the treasure room, vanished. Du Chagne screamed in horror and spun around, staring in disbelief at the room that was utterly empty. There was no longer any brilliant reflection, no warmth-suddenly it felt very chilly and looked very dark in here.
“What did you do?” shrieked the lord regent. “Where did it go?”
“Oh, your gold is still here,” Coryn said. “I told you, it can’t be stolen.”
“Where is it then?” he demanded, taking an angry step toward her, his fingers clenched.
“Here,” she said, apparently unafraid.
Du Chagne groped around, feeeling a solid mass of a block of golden bars. He fumbled, lifted one, felt the solid weight of an ingot. He hefted it but could see right through it-as if it wasn’t there!
“I can’t see it!” he whined.
“Neither can anybody else,” the wizard told him. “It’s invisible.”
“I can’t trade with invisible gold!” cried the lord regent.
“Perhaps not. Perhaps your partners will take payment on trust?”
“Nobody takes payment in trust, as you well know!” snapped the duke. He glared at her, breathing hard, trying to gain control of himself. “What do you want?” he asked.
“I want to find that compact and the missing strongbox. I want to know who killed Lord Lorimar,” the white wizard answered.
“I don’t know where any of it is!” protested du Chagne. “The Assassin killed Lord Lorimar! We all know that!”
“Perhaps your invisible gold will help you rethink these events,” Coryn said calmly.
“How can it do that?” he demanded.
Instead of answering, the enchantress murmured another word, a strange-sounding utterance that echoed in the air for several seconds after she disappeared.
“My dear!” cried Lady Martha, embracing her husband, Duke Walker, as he came striding through the doors of the castle. The troops of his Ducal Guard were still filing into the courtyard, and the streets beyond rumbled from the weight of heavy wheels as the freight wagons of Walker’s personal baggage train rolled across the drawbridge and into the castle’s yard. “I did not expect to see you back so soon! Have the goblins been vanquished?”
“Not entirely,” the duke said with a dismissive shake of his handsome head. “There were difficulties between Solanthus and Thelgaard-not too surprising-and I was unable to force them to cooperate.”
“But Thelgaard-is he all right? I heard there was a terrible battle?”
“He is a moron!” snapped Walker. “He lost the better part of his army and came in to my camp like a drowned rat after swimming the Upper Vingaard. If I hadn’t provided him with an escort, I doubt that he would have made it back to his keep in one piece!”
“He went back to Thelgaard?” Martha was perplexed. “So the war is over, then?”
“No, I keep telling you,” snapped the duke, growing more vexed. His sleep had been troubled by terrible dreams during the whole expedition “Thelgaard lost a battle. He is back in his keep with such few survivors as got away with him. I doubt they will be sallying forth any time soon. After Duke Jarrod’s men and the Crown knights were defeated, Duke Rathskell and his own force fell back to Solanthus. They are quite safe there-for you know that is the mightiest fortress anywhere on the plains.”