A Princess of Landover by Terry Brooks Page A

and informed her that she had a visitor—a G’home Gnome, he advised with obvious distaste.
    At once she had the answer to her dilemma.
    She rushed down to greet Poggwydd, who stood uncertainly at the front entry, gnarled hands clasped as gimlet eyes tried to take in everything at once, his posture suggesting that he had every expectation of being thrown out again momentarily.
    “Poggwydd!” she shouted at him with such exuberance that he nearly dropped to his knees in fright. She rushed across the room and embraced him like an old friend. “So you
were
paying attention to me when I told you to come see me!”
    He stiffened and gave her a halfhearted bow. “Of course I was paying attention! I took you at your word and then decided to see how good that word was!”
    “Well, now you know.” She smiled, took his hand in her own, and dragged him forward. “Come see the castle. But don’t try to steal anything, all right?”
    He mumbled something that she took to be an assent, and for the next hour they wandered the halls of Sterling Silver, looking in all the chambers—(save those her mother and father were occupying)—and talking of how life in the castle worked. She only caught him trying to take something once, and since it was an odd little silver vase, she let him keep it. Gradually, he relaxed and began to act as if he belonged, and they were soon talking with each other like lifelong friends.
    As the tour finished and the urgency of her intended mission to escape began to press in upon her, she suddenly had a brilliant idea.
    “Poggwydd, can I ask a favor of you?” she said.
    He was instantly suspicious. “What sort of favor?”
    “Nothing complicated or dangerous,” she reassured him. She shrugged disarmingly. “I just want to give you some clothing to keep safe for me until I need it. Can you do that?”
    He frowned. “Why would you give your clothing to me? Why would you need to keep it safe?”
    She thought quickly, and then leaned in close to him. “All right, I’ll tell you why. But you must agree to keep it a secret.” She waited for his nod. “I have some clothes my parents gave me that I want to give to someone else who needs them more than I do. But I don’t want my parents to see me taking them away because it will make them feel bad.”
    He struggled with this a moment, his monkey face screwed in thought, and finally he said, “Oh, very well. I can keep them if you want.” Then he stopped abruptly. “Wait. How long do I have to keep them? I don’t have anywhere to put them where they will be safe, you know.”
    She nodded. “You just need to keep them safe until tonight. I will come meet you after it’s dark and take them back from you. All right?”
    She could tell it wasn’t, not entirely. Taking things in the course of scrounging or stealing was perfectly all right, but taking them any other way seemed odd. Poggwydd was clearly thinking that this could somehow come back to bite him, taking the personal clothing of Landover’s Princess, whether it was her idea or not.
    “Poggwydd,” she said, taking his hands in her own. “You won’t be getting into any trouble, I promise. In fact, this would mean I owe you a favor in return.”
    He seemed to like the sound of that, and he gave her a crooked smile. “All right, Princess. Where are these clothes?”
    She took him to an anteroom off her bedchamber and had him wait while she pulled out travel clothes and packed them in a duffel bag she could sling over her shoulder. Not much, but enough to see her through the few days it would take to reach the lake country and her grandfather. She added a compass, a virtual map ring (really a handy tool for nighttime travel), a small fairy stone (a present for her grandfather), and a book on wizard spells that Questor had given her before she left for Carrington, which she had only just started reading again. This last might offer something useful in the days ahead, and since it was