"Whoever feels like taking over this particular set of mounds. Unless you're interested in setting yourself up as Queen of the Fae?"
    "I don't think so."
    "As you wish," he shrugged.
    "I see. Well, then. We will be happy to hold them in the meantime."
    "Very much so," Conner nodded eagerly.
    "That was the royal we, not the collective we," Meara informed him. "Sorry. But you're really nice, we'll let you look at them."
    "No, we won't," I snapped. "What the hell's wrong with you?"
    "All sorts of things, according to my parents and my teachers," she grinned.
    "I'll have to have a word with them." I gave my attention back to His Lordship. "So."
    "I'm going to be going now, if you don't mind."
    "Of course not."
    He walked down the stairs, leaving smoking marks on the steps where he passed. Limping, by all the gods. His blood ate holes in the floor.
    "At the risk of being presumptuous my lord, would you like a bandage?" Meara offered. "Maybe some goldenrod?"
    "I have a healing salve," Llweder spoke up.
    "No, thank you, quite all right. Thank you, both of you." The very picture of gentility.
    "How 'bout some whiskey?"
    "I'll take that." He walked out with Llweder's bottle. A glance out the window a few minutes later revealed him leading a limping horse toward the maze.
    "I wonder where he got away to," Conner said when the air had cleared a bit.
    "Elsewhere," I shrugged. "Where are we?"
    "We might want to investigate that," Llweder agreed.
    We could spend some more time looking around the place now, and did. The mages absolutely ransacked the library. I wandered down to the weapons chamber, wondering what use he had them for when he had that damn sword. The stuff there was somewhat more showy than I consider necessary. Meara, who was beginning to resemble an overladen pack horse, found some armor that she thought she could rework to fit Gannon, and packed it up.
    "Hey, I can see the chickens from here," Conner observed, looking out the window. The others were slowly trickling down, having exhausted the looting possibilities above.
    Gannon had run his trained eye over the room and looked at the back of a table that had been hidden under a dustcloth. He found a locked drawer with a matched pair of long knives. They'd probably been made by the same person who made the chained sword; the hilts were steel and leather, the blades had the same night-sky look.
    "How do you do that?" Conner demanded.
    "People try to hide line-items in taxes all the time." He tucked them into his belt.
    "Can't wait to see what happens when you stick them in something," I mentioned, looking through more drawers at random. In one of them was a ring. Rings are not innocuous things; I looked at it carefully but didn't recognize it.
    "Castellan's ring," Meara observed, looking around me.
    "It would let you control the stuff in the castle," Conner suggested. It might also be something more binding.
    "Interesting." I turned it over a few times.
    "Why don't you just put that down?"
    "Might as well take it with us." I put it in a pouch. "We already have the crown and the sword."
    He snorted. "So when the next one in line comes along we can interview them, vet them for the position, and then hand it over?"
    "Well, we don't want it to be another Wynn....."
    Meara collected another bow on our way out, and a handful of gems.
    I didn't take anything, except for the ring. I just didn't like the idea. In the courtyard we were greeted by the stench of burned roses; the moat creature was dead and the rain had put out the fire. Dead faerie hounds carpeted the ground, and there were a couple of horses as well. We surveyed the devastation, impressed. Wynn's horse was gone from the stable.
    "We just have to find a bright shaft of sunlight," Conner sighed.
    "It's likely to follow him around for a while," Meara grinned.
    "Would that spell that you have tell us which way to go?" I asked; he was already beginning to cast it.
    "If we're really lucky he'll forget about us, and we'll all be dead and gone," Meara said.
    Conner laughed hysterically. The rest of us just laughed.
    "Us, the people who were instrumental in his near-destruction?" Llweder looked skeptical.
    "Twice," I added.
    "East and much north," Conner reported the results of his spell. "What's east and much north of here?"
    "Sweden. Stonesgate," Meara said. "Shall we go there next?"
    "I like Sweden better....."
    "It's on the way to Sweden. I think that we should go home and break the news to Rhonwen that we're still alive."
    "And then head north?" I nodded.
    "Retire, peacefully?" Conner said hopefully.
    "Head for Stonesgate." Meara smiled.
    "There was something I was saying, but for some reason it got drowned out," the mage sighed.
    "I suppose it would be better to take him on when he's weakened," Llweder shrugged.
    "I'm taking the crown to Stonegate," I told Conner.
    "You're planning that that's going to somehow control me for the rest of my life?"
    "It seemed like a good bet."
    We returned through the familiar maze, back down the village, through the autumn woods.
    Autumn? We had lost some time, it appeared; we just hoped it was the same year. Most of the gold and silver the others had taken turned to leaves and dust, as expected; the jewels did not, and nothing else seemed changed. The ring was on my hand when I woke up; I swore mildly but didn't see any sense trying to argue with the thing by taking it off again. The crown and sword lurked quietly in my pack, fortunately.
    When we got there, the outlines of a castle were visible where the old keep had stood.
    "Hey, you're alive!" Artos greeted us.
    "How long has it been?" Meara asked.
    "Six months or so."
    We all agreed it could have been much worse.
    "We were worried."
    "At moments, so were we," I told him.
    "Well, we were. You vanished into the hills, a couple of nights ago the Wild Hunt rode."
    "Yeah, we were there for that," Conner nodded.
    "Got good news, bad news on that one," Meara said.
    "It's almost always bad news when the Wild Hunt rides on Samhain."
    "I see the stonemasons came by," Meara observed.
    "Yes, the castle's coming along nicely. Rhonwen hopes it should be set up for you to take residence in about a year or so."
    "Is she still doing that?" I sighed.
    "It's not her castle," he shrugged. "It's your castle. Well, if you want it."
    "It's a castle," Conner decided.
         

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