Kethol is an adventurer with an easy smile, a man who is quick with a quip and quicker with a sword. His partner, Pirojil, the ugly one, looks impressive and deceives people into thinking he's stupid to their sorrow-for his might and loyalty are worth a kingdom. And the fledgling wizard Erenor, a man who tries to stay two steps ahead of his enemies, as well as one step ahead of his friends. Loyal retainers they are, sworn to Jason Cullianane, a man who walked away from a crown, and who has been trying to convince all the almost-warring factions that he doesn't want the job back. Their lives aren't very easy, what with keeping Jason from getting killed by yet another conspiracy, rescuing some damsel or whatnot in distress, and squirreling away something for the ever-diminishing prospect of retirement. And now it looks like our heroes might wind up succeeding in none of their schemes, for there are plots within plots, and Kethol has been forced into a disguise not of his own making. There is magic aplenty in the air (and on the ground), and in order to save a kingdom, they may have to pull off a complicated scheme that could kill them all--or land them in positions of supreme power. But, hey, whoever said that a soldier's life was a cakewalk? Set in Joel Rosenberg's bestselling Guardians of the Flame series, Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda is the third adventure of the journeymen soldiers of Castle Cullianane (and their sometimes ill-fated leader) in all their raucous glory. A fun, fast-paced read, it's a rollicking roller coaster of a book that will have fantasy fans reaching for more. Joel Rosenberg is the author of the best-selling Guardians of the Flame books as well as the D'Shai and Keepers of the Hidden Ways series. He resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Home Front is the first in his Ernest "Sparky" Hemingway mysteries, a delightful new series with a wonderfully quirky character set in the land of the Cohen Brothers' Fargo . Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda Part 1 OPENING MOVES 1 The Widow's Walk Put three nobles in a room for lunch, and before the appetizers are served, you'll have four conspiracies. At least.--Walter Slovotsky  T he wind had begun to howl, threatening still more rain, but the Dowager Empress neither quickened nor slowed her already sodden pace.Beralyn Furnael simply refused to be affected; it was no more and no less than that.It wouldn't have been accurate to say that threats meant nothing to her--in fact, the truth was entirely the opposite--but she was far too old, and had far too long been far too stubborn, to let anything as unimportant as the wind move her mind or her feet from any path she had set them on, even if that path was something as familiar and trivial as that of her nightly walk around the ramparts of Biemestren Castle.Yes, there was some truth in what she said: that she needed her exercise, and that the moment that she permitted her traitor body to deny her that need, it would be time to have servants dig a deep grave, next to her husband's, on the hilltop behind the castle that had been theirs, and lie down beside him for all of eternity.Beralyn didn't mind lying, but she didn't believe in doing so promiscuously.It was also true--at least when Parliament was in session, or when there were other visiting nobles, which was more common--that her nightly walks gave her son the opportunity to spend some private time with one or more of the lords' and barons' daughters who, through no coincidence, always seemed to be accompanying their fathers to Biemestren Castle.None of them had any use for a useless old woman, after all. She would just be in the way.There was always talk, of course, about how the visits were inspired by the cultural life in the capital, about how theater and music and generally better craftsmanship could be found here than out in the baronies, and such. All that was, of course, true enough, and perhaps more than a tiny proportion of the apparently empty-headed young twits really had that as a main reason for coming to Biemestren, unlikely as that seemed.Their fathers, she was sure, invariably had other goals in mind. There were always commercial bargains to be made, and political ones, as well, besides the obvious hope: the grand prize. Her son. The Emperor.An unmarried emperor was an obvious prize, as well as both an obvious and subtle threat, and the easiest way for any of the barons to simultaneously gain that prize and neutralize that threat was to have him marry into the baron's family.She wished one of them would succeed. Any one; it didn't much matter to her, as long as the girl was fertile--and Beralyn would have the Spidersect priest make sure of that, while supposedly examining her for her virginity. Beralyn couldn't have cared less about whether a young girl had spent her years keeping her knees together, or spreading them for every nobleman with a smooth smile--but whoever Thomen married had better be able to produc