XIXCunneglassus, king of the middle lands, leaned on the gilded arm of his great chair, his pendulous lips bright with wine, his carved emerald to his short-sighted eye. Medrawt noted with envy the moulded arm-rings and the heavy bracelets that adorned this libertine’s wrists, the pearl he wore in the fleshly lobe of his right ear—worth a hundred horses, Medrawt computed. Cunneglassus was about to speak, and all other talk fell away to fearful silence.
“But, young man,” he wheezed, swaying a little with drunkenness already, though the night was yet but halfway through. “But, young man, we have talked of this scheme of yours for three days now, and still I cannot agree with the reasons you put forward.”
He paused to take a breath and Artos, who had been drumming with impatience on the tab
