Stone Dragon (The First Realm) Read Online Free Page A

of decades. I’m starting to believe this is true—I had no idea my mentor was a part-time genealogist.
    Although there hadn’t been a royal sex scandal since King Lavin the Loverboy (not as famous as King Fingol the Finger…biter) Valandil reasoned every prince had to have an affair or two, because who wouldn’t?
    I had to agree. If you have money, power, and a title, all you need to get women are working genitalia. Sometimes you don’t even need those—witness King Cameron the Straperon.
    Valandil interviewed every associate of Prince Errol’s, hoping to uncover some secret assignation or drunken encounter. He sent letters to consuls, base commanders, and even former squires. Nothing. Errol had been no Prince Charming.
    “No women in his life? How about men, then?”
    Valandil grimaced. “If only. There is precedent for transferring title to the heirs of a same-sex lover—recall Princess Iminye—but the Crown Prince had no lovers of any kind.”
    My mentor then decided to look at the elder Lissesul, who presumably had more time for close encounters of the sexy kind. It took decades, but Valandil finally tracked down everyone who’d ever spent time in the royal palace. In the end, he did find something: Queen Orlinde, Galdor’s wife, had once sent a chambermaid to the dungeons for stealing silverware.”
    “That sounds like something a queen would do, back in the good old days.”
    “Actually, such a small offense would warrant a flogging at most. And stealing silverware? That’s something a scullery maid would do. How could a chambermaid manage it, when she’s strictly an upstairs maid?”
    “How am I to know what goes upstairs and downstairs? I’m just a country gentleman.”
    “A chambermaid takes care of bedrooms.”
    “Ah,” I said, leaning back.
    It seems Rosemary the Chambermaid had been very pretty and very young (only sixty-four.) What’s more, she had the sort of body you didn’t often see on elves—we’re talking dangerous curves. She was an orphan rumored to be part-halfling. She was certainly wild enough.
    “She was willing, attractive, and had access to the king’s bedchamber,” Valandil said. “The fact that the queen sent her to the dungeons indicates something happened.”
    “And what happened to her?” I asked, leaning forward.
    “She was branded a thief and thrown out of the palace.”
    I grimaced. “Branded on the face? ”
    “The queen was certainly mad about something. A stigma like that would bar Rosemary from any decent work. My guess is she became a camp follower, and when the royal army passed through Corinthe she stayed there as a prostitute. This was fifteen hundred years ago.”
    “Sad story,” I said. “When does my family enter the picture?”
    “That’s the interesting part. Your great-grandfather Dermethor brought home a baby at around the same time and acknowledged the infant as his son. His only son. I understand the wife wasn’t pleased.”
    “Great-Grandma never warmed up to Grandpa Feanaro, but there wasn’t much she could do since he was her husband’s official heir. Hey, is that why he died at just nine hundred and twenty? Because he was a quarter halfling? And—hold it—does this make me part halfling?”
    “Only one-sixteenth. It shouldn’t be a problem when you take the throne.”
    “No wonder I hate elves,” I said. It was a beat before I realized—
    “Damn, you’ve convinced me!”
    Valandil stroked his mustache and smiled. “The evidence is persuasive. As the last of your line—your parents being dead—you are automatically the crown prince.”
    “But what if I don’t want to be king?”
    “What you want doesn’t matter! Finally, after almost a thousand wretched years, Brandish can once again be a kingdom. It doesn’t even matter that you’re descended from a half-breed whore—not if we mate you to a queen of the most exalted blood.”
    “After a few generations, nobody will be able to tell the difference,