Sir Christian de Galis and the Fish Gravy

The worst choice is sometimes the best choice. Such was the case of Sir Christian de Galis, for thirty-plus years the absolute worst choice to do anything in his particular kingdom. Jesters told jokes about him. Heroes avoided him. Bullies humiliated him. The king got real tired of having him around. What suddenly made him the best choice to go on a quest with the kingdom’s scariest lady who looked harmless? As Sir Christian rode to the rescue of the lady’s grandson with her equally scary-yet-zany retinue—an ancient archer with more disabilities than arrows, a loquacious niece with the realm’s longest first-name, and a nephew with a speech defect and bad hair—an even scarier fact slowly dawned on him: This grandson didn’t need rescue from anything, and the true object of the quest was him and his sudden, prayerful discovery of his father’s long-lost substance of great power. Disguised as a food condiment—that blows up, burns up, or makes people sick, depending how you add sugar—it had the most innocent sounding name. Yet upon such might depend the survival of the kingdom.