Part Three

For days, Gavril waited in vain for an audience with King Muncel as though he were nothing more than an emissary. It was a terrible insult, and with every passing day Gavril’s temper grew more frayed. Truly he had come to a land of barbarians.

He was given the run of one wing of Count Mradvior’s palatial house, but he quickly discovered that aside from a handful of graciously furnished chambers, the rest of the building stood empty.

Denied the most basic amusements, Gavril prowled restlessly through the desolate, unheated rooms, preoccupied with finding a way to escape his trap. A trap he still blamed on Verence.

“Father, you fool!” Gavril muttered aloud as he paced up and down. “Why do you delay? Why do you not hurry?”

He’d written several letters to Verence, until he’d figured out that Mradvior was burning them.

Caged and thwarted at every turn, Gavril had thought up several plans to escape the house and round up his church knights. But every exit was guarded and when he’d drawn his sword on some of the guards, he found that they were protected by the same mysterious spell that safeguarded Mradvior. Tanengard could not harm them. In sheer frustration, he’d even tried throwing a chair through a window, but the glass would not break.