Lord Galt’s return to the Castle of the Mountain Kingdom was sudden and unexpected. It had to be so. The King had been vocal in his criticism of his uncle. His words stopped short of condemnation, and yet were poison in the minds of his loyal subjects. He may as well have pronounced the Syllables of Doom. But Galt made it through, and brought with him the Board of Inspection, rescued from a garbage heap in Maldenar, each of its seventy hooks still bearing an iron latchkey. The King, delighted at the retrieval of his keyboard, forgave his uncle everything.

I wrote “Homecoming” in response to the Story-a-Day Challenge (storyaday.org). The prompt for today required using ten specific words in a story. I chose to write a drabble, a story of exactly 100 words.

Here is the story with the ten words bolded in the text:

Lord Galt’s return to the Castle of the Mountain Kingdom was sudden and unexpected. It had to be so. The King had been vocal in his criticism of his uncle. His words stopped short of condemnation, and yet were poison in the minds of his loyal subjects. He may as well have pronounced the Syllables of Doom. But Galt made it through, and brought with him the Board of Inspection, rescued from a garbage heap in Maldenar, each of its seventy hooks still bearing an iron latchkey. The King, delighted at the retrieval of his keyboard, forgave his uncle everything.