Macster - The Missing Links

Opening the door of Prince Wendell's chamber with a gentle push, so as not to wake His Majesty with the creaking of hinges, Chancellor Griswold stepped softly inside the room. He closed the door behind him, turned--and saw to his surprise that the bed was empty, the sheets stripped off it.

Circling the bed uncertainly, he froze in place. Prince Wendell lay on the sheets in front of the fireplace with his head on a bolster, curled up with his knees to his chest. Soft whimpers came from him, and as the chancellor watched, he lifted a hand to scratch at his ear, as if he were a dog.

The chancellor approached warily, hand trembling as he reached out to wake the prince. The longer he was around Wendell, the more uncomfortable and worried he became. His mannerisms, his actions, his words...everything cried out that the Prince was unstable. In the last week since Wendell's return to the palace, Griswold had begun entertaining the notion that the prince had been enchanted. He had been gone on his trip across the kingdom far too long...the Queen was still unaccounted for, and Viscount Lansky, who had gone to find Wendell in the Disenchanted Forest, had never returned.

Something was horribly wrong.

"Sir, wake." He touched the prince's shoulder.

The prince flinched and awoke. He turned back to look at the chancellor, who started. His tongue was lolling from the corner of his mouth in a pant. "Is it breakfast?"

The chancellor backed away toward the bed. "You're not yourself, sir. What is the matter?"

Wendell stared at him in confusion, but his expression quickly changed to one of helplessness and fear.

Chancellor Griswold sat down slowly on the bed. A deep and pervasive chill filled his heart. He had to test him. "Sir, what is my name?"

Prince Wendell's discomfort and fear heightened. His mouth worked silently. He clearly could not answer his question.

"Sir, I've known you all your life." Griswold's voice hardened. "I even helped bring you into being. And you do not even know who I am, do you?"

Wendell whimpered again, and then he seemed to make some sort of decision. He leaped off of the sheets--but instead of getting to his feet he started crawling around the carpet on all fours, and babbling rapidly. "Okay, I'm just...I'm a dog. I'm just a little dog, that's what I am! I want to go home. I want to stay on all fours. Please, help me out, old chap! I'm just a poor little dog. I'm completely out of my depth here!"

The whole time he spoke, Chancellor Griswold stared at him with rising disbelief, shock, and pity. Finally he swallowed with difficulty. He had feared the truth. He had thought Wendell might be mentally disturbed, or ensorcelled. But to not actually be Wendell at all...to be a dog in human form. It was unthinkable, immoral! And clearly a product of the Queen's demented mind. Viscount Lansky had been right to warn the Council of her.

"Magic!" he proclaimed firmly. "I suspected as much." The transformed dog looked at him hopefully, but then an expression of horror crossed his face as he looked past him. Chancellor Griswold began to turn toward the window, where the velvet curtain was rustling. "I must get a message to--"

The knife blade slashed with deadly efficiency across the chancellor's throat. Blood filled his trachea, and he began to choke. Clutching at his neck, Griswold collapsed back onto the bed, the fluid of his life spurting between his fingers and staining the silken sheets. But just before his life ebbed away and his face went slack with despair, his clouded eyes saw the Queen standing over him, a smirk of triumph on her lips...

"Get up from there." The Queen glared down at the Dog Prince, who cringed back away from her and stumbled to his feet. "Get dressed." She smiled cruelly as she replaced her knife in its golden engraved sheath. "It's time to show our hand."

As the Dog Prince hurried to his wardrobe, the Queen turned back to the bed and sighed. That had been a close call narrowly avoided. But the chancellor had been silenced, and his absence would be easily explained. Anyone searching for him would be told by her men that the chancellor was indisposed, laid up in bed by illness and unable to attend the ball, but that he gave his best wishes to the Prince. No one would think to check on him until after the coronation.

Smiling again, the Queen secreted her dagger back within the folds of her dress.

And by then, one dead chancellor would be the least of the Nine Kingdoms' worries.