"If they come, Lhauntur," Taeauna said quietly, "I'll swing a sword right beside you."

"And your goodman, here?" the warsword asked, just as quietly. "What will he do?"

"Wonder if you have a spare hayfork," Rod offered calmly. "I'm getting pretty good at forking Dark Helms."

A hard and sudden silence fell, and Rod felt the back of his neck prickling. He hadn't noticed more armsmen approaching, nor Lord Eldalar with them.

And then Lhauntur started to wheeze as if he were choking, a rattling convulsion that grew and grew until Rod's mouth fell open in alarm, and the warsword slapped the table and burst into an open roar of laughter.

Laughter that spread, all around Rod, and included Taeauna's high, lacy mirth.

Lhauntur shook his head at last, pointed a finger at Rod, and said, "You're not a wizard. You're worse than that: you're a jester!"

There were groans and some chuckles and mutterings, and then the warsword and the Lord of Hollowtree said, more or less in unison, "Untie him."

Someone hastened to do so, at about the same time as a stout and aging maidservant rushed up to Taeauna with a frilly gown in her hands, spread it out down herself, and asked breathlessly, "Will this do? 'Tis all we could find, lady, seeing as you're as tall as…"

The Aumrarr made a face. "Thank you, but no. I'd rather go naked."

"I'd rather you went naked, too," Rod muttered to the table in front of him in little more than a whisper, but Lhauntur heard him and plunged into fresh bellows of laughter.

Which was when the maid screamed, and men whirled and cursed all over the chamber, and Rod lurched around in his seat in time to see what they were all staring at.

High up amid the guttering candle-wheel lanterns overhead in the lofty-beamed hall, a dark, flickering shape had faded into view. To Rod, it looked like the ghostly images that sometimes faded in and out of view on an old black-and-white television set he'd once owned, way back when; there one moment, and gone the next.