"Why is it difficult?" ask Timaeus.
"Don't have it any—I say, look, put that down. I'll make you a greep spritzer, if you like."
"What?" shouted Timaeus.
"Greep vhat?" asked Kraki.
"A greep spritzer," said Stantz. "A blend of soda water and syrup of greep. You won't find a better or more healthful quaff. Well I know, for I came to maturity in Hamster-Dzorzia, where elven magic lingers, where the finest greeps in all the world are grown. It seems so long ago . . ."
"That statue!" said Timaeus. "What about—"
"Wait!" said Sidney.
But they were too late: Stantz was on a roll.
Syrup Of Greep
It seems so long ago, so long ago that I roamed the hills of Hamster-Dzorzia. The world was young then, always green, soft spring winds wafting eastward with the hint of rain, young flowers nodding in the meadows, the greeps putting forth their first green fruit. Oh, I suppose it wasn't always so; were there not winters? And scorching days? And hours of labor totting up figures in dusty rooms? But that isn't what sticks in the memory, from that distant time. No, it is the skirl of pipes, the coolness of the gloaming, the scent of the greeps' new blossoms.
For that land had once been elven, long time past; and here and there, about it, traces of elven magic lingered still. There was power, hither and yon, slowly dying with the elves' absence, but enough of it present to support the greep.
I see you do not comprehend. It is simple enough; the greep is a magic plant. It draws sustenance not only from rain and earth and sun, but from the magic energy that permeates certain soils. It will not grow in mundane ground.
And its fruit; ah, its fruit. If you have not tasted the fresh greep, new-plucked from the vine, you have no inkling of nirvana. This side of the grave, there is no closer taste of paradise. It is tart, but not too tart; sweet, but not too sweet; words betray me. It is trivial to describe a sight, not much harder to describe a noise, but taste-the language does not suffice.
The greep perishes quickly; it is a delicate fruit, and cannot withstand much handling. It must be preserved, if it is to become a commodity: They pickle it, can it, turn it into jelly. They make greep vinegar, greep schnapps-and, of course, greep syrup. Well I know, for my father was an haut bourgeois, a trader in products of greep. He shipped the fresh fruit, by fast pony, sometimes by pegasus or dragonelle, to Hamsterburg, where gourmets dined on itsexquisite flesh. There was great demand for greeps among true connoisseurs, for different soils breed clear differences in taste: Greep grown by a magic spring tastes of the cool freshness of the waters, while that grown where a basilisk nests has a pungent, earthy scent. My father was always on the lookout for magical places where the greep could be grown, for practically each new site meant a slightly different taste, a new variety for his demanding clientele.
Because of this, I saw him little, for he was constantly on his rounds, and only briefly in the little market village we called home. His absence, indeed, gave me my freedom. I was sixteen that spring, old enough that, my father gone, no one in the household could impose his will on me. I was too old to be biddable any longer; too young, yet, to be encumbered with a share of the family's financial burdens. And so, oft of a soft spring morning, I would sneak away from my chamber, before the hour at which I was required to meet my tutor, and roam the hills at will.
More often than not, I would meet with Rudy. He was a year or two older than I, of equally respectable family; and I had worshiped him from boyhood. He had a quality of sober joy I found ceaselessly fascinating, a keen intelligence he applied to our amusement, and a reckless daring that kept me in awe. In the best of circumstances, I think he would have wound up dead, or imprisoned, for he was the sort of boy who steals the clappers from the bells of the town clock, makes off with women's clothes while they bathe, and casually pockets merchandise while the shopkeeper looks elsewhere; not, I think, the sort to make a success of himself in the sober world.
We climbed the hills, swam in the streams, taunted bulls, played jokes on the local yokels, and otherwise amused ourselves. His skin was fair, his arms speckled with a light golden down, his face chiseled in such exquisite lines that, more than once, despite our friendship, I was overwhelmed by shyness in his presence, a diffidence his sudden grin would instantly shatter. Together, we roamed the spring-soft hills, and took pleasure in each other as we found it.
One of our favorite places was an oak grove, down in the fold between two hills, where a little stream ran. The stream, I think, marked the boundary between two peasants' properties, which may, perhaps, be why the grove had not been felled to make room for crops; that, or perhaps they, superstitious as peasants often are, felt some sense of the power there.
The oaks were tall, centuries in age, undoubtedly dating from the era of elven dominion. The ground was carpeted with soft leaf mold, dotted with harder acorns. The trees abounded with squirrels, chipmunks, and various birds who survived on the mast the oaks produced; it was a veritable little forest, one of the last great stands of trees in all the cultivated land. Even in the hottest days of summer, the high branches of the trees cast a cool, green shade within the grove, a shade we found inviting. Often, in the afternoon, we would go there, drink at the stream, make a rude lunch of bread and cheese, and lie together in the green dimness of the grove.
Oh, there was magic there, sure enough; the everyday magic of the play of leaf-dappled light on earth, of the purling of the stream, of squirrels chattering from the branch. But I had not realized that there was more, not until the evening I went to see Rudy there, later than we usually met.
I snuck away after dinner, out into the gloaming. The sky was that strange indigo that painters cannot seem to capture, the luminous fading of the light, a time almost magical in itself. I knew the grove as a place of green dimness, but in this already dim light, it now seemed dark, mysterious. As I entered it, I heard the sound of voices: Rudy's, and—a girl's.
Surprised that he would bring a wench to our privateplace, I crept softly toward the stream, hiding behind the trees. And there was Rudy with—with a creature. Oh, female, to be sure; but hardly human. Her skin was pastel viridian, her hair bedecked with long, fine, willow-like leaves, her eyes of an elven cast. She moved with a catlike litheness and she, and Rudy, were obviously entranced.
Astonished, I could hardly move, but watched, crouching behind the bole of an oak, while they murmured to each other, Rudy mustering the full force of his enormous charm. It hardly seemed necessary, for she intended much as he, and by the time full darkness fell, they were in each other's arms. It was black, by then, in the oak grove, no moon that night, and the trees obscuring even the meager light of the stars; I saw little of them, hearing only their soft breathing.
I stumbled away, half in pain, half in rage. Rudy had defiled our place, had defiled what we had together, and had done it, moreover, with a creature not of our kind. Why did I react with such intensity? It is hard to say, now, so long after. Certainly, Rudy had had wenches before; he was a careless, charming lad, of respectable family, and had induced many of the local girls to spend a hour or two with him, in a hayloft, or amid the soft greenery of the meadow. And that had never bothered me, for I had known that they meant nothing to Rudy, nothing more than an afternoon's pleasure, nothing by comparison to what we shared. But this, I sensed, even from that moment, this was different.
And it was. With me, he grew distant; the intimacy we once had shared was gone. Never did he tell me of his lover, but I could see it in his eyes, his attention far away; he would gather wildflowers for no apparent purpose, and take them to the grove. He would bring nuts and berries for the squirrels, lie there, his back to an oak tree, for hours at a time, staring upward into the leaves and sighing. Never would he speak to me of his new passion, but it was clear, not only in his actions, but in his lack of action, his unwillingness to roam with me, to play the games that were our wont. Perhaps I should have confronted him with what I knew, but t
hat seemed fruitless. What could he say? What could he have done? It was true, I knew; he had been captivated by that creature, enraptured in her spell, and what we had once shared was gone forever.
I began to hate him, as only one whose love is betrayed can hate; hate him nearly as much as I loathed that inhuman, green thing with which he lay. And I began to plot my revenge.
The grove was magical; I knew that now. A dryad lived there, Rudy's love. That information had value.
Great value. For the greep grows in magical soil, and even in Hamster-Dzorzia, there were few enough patches of that, few places where the fruit could be grown. Fell those trees, and the grove would be a perfect place for a stand of vines—rich bottomland, well watered by the stream, the soil imbued with magic. Moreover, none of the greep orchards from which my father bought were .planted in a dryad's former grove; greeps planted there would possess a novel taste, would provide my father with a new variety to titillate the jaded palates of the urbs.
And as it happened, he was home.
I told him what I knew. Oh, not of Rudy, nor what had passed between him and the dryad; but of the dryad's presence, of the grove's power. My father slapped me on the back and, I think, for the first time in my life, was proud of me. Canny merchant that he was, he began at once to ponder how best to acquire the property, how to obtain it from the peasants who tilled the adjoining fields without raising their suspicions as to its value.
I slept soundly that night, savoring my victory. If I could not have Rudy, I could serve him as he had served me, betray him as I had been betrayed. The next day I methim, on the hill overlooking the town, and told him what I'd done.
All color drained from his face. "No," he said, "you can't have done." When I insisted I had, and provided corroborating detail, he struck me, a sudden vicious blow. I had not expected it, and it flung me to the ground. I think I lost consciousness for a while, and when I awoke found a reddening bruise about one eye.
That very afternoon, I went out to the grove in the company of my father, with two woodsmen and a sorcerer, the former to fell the grove; the latter to protect us if the dryad proved to have unexpected powers. They set to work on the outer trees, while I went with my father inward, to show him the stream, the largest oak wherein, I thought, the dryad made her home—
Oh, what dolor greeted us there. Where there had been green coolness was warm blood, almost black in the darkness of the grove; gray steel, deep in Rudy's belly, pale flesh lifeless on the moss beneath the tree. The blood ran everywhere; it was hard to believe one man could hold so much gore. I cried out, ran to him, cradled his head; but it was too late. Life had departed his form hours before.
My father scowled, cursed under his breath, hauled me away from Rudy, saw the tears coursing down my cheeks, and slapped me, hard. I think he understood it all, in that moment, understood that Rudy and I had been more than friends, understood what Rudy had done with the creature of the wood. He was disgusted; he despised me, as I think he always had, an unforgiving man. But worse, from his perspective, was this:
The grove was ruined. Rudy's blood would taint the soil, would taint the greeps, if we grew them there. They would taste of metal, of blood, of death; they would win no praises at the tables of the city.
He called the woodsmen to a halt, and hauled me roughly away from Rudy's form. He swore to kill me if I let the townsfolk know of my—unnatural desires, he called them; odd how natural they seemed, by comparison with Rudy's, Rudy's love for something beyond nature. And he told me he would send me to university, banish me from my home. I hardly cared.
Rudy had known what his blood would do; how could he have not? Though there were wheatfields, apiaries, and vineyards in Hamster-Dzorzia, the lifeblood of its commerce depended on the greep, and we had known its ways from infancy. He had slain himself, not out of despair, but out of love; not in mourning for the loss of his dryad, but to protect her from the ax. He had cheated me of my vengeance, cheated me thricefold: First, of his love; second, of the despair I had wished him to feel; third, of the dryad's death. And most of all, he made me realize that I, too, had never been more than a passing fancy, for him, little more than one of his girls; would he ever have sacrificed his life for mine, as he did for the spirit of the oak?
From high in the oak's stately branches, I caught a hint of a laughing face, a sardonic glint of the eye; the dryad was there, mocking me. Had she planned this from the start? Had she known that, in this region, it was merely a time before she fell to the ax? Had she plotted all this, as a means of mere survival—betrayed Rudy as fully as I?
In rage and frustration, I darted from the grove, took an ax forcibly from the woodsman's hands, and ran back, to fell that mighty tree. At the least, I would slay that thing, that green-skinned thing, that mockery of humanity.
But my father knocked me to the ground; he forbade it. "We thrive on the gleanings of departing magic," he told me later. "Wouldst destroy what little remains, not for gain, but from sheer spite?"
A nice sentiment, but it did not prevent him from selling the grove, at a handsome profit, before the news of. Rudy's death became known. So he came out of it without loss; would that I had done as well.
For years afterward, I tortured myself with what I had done; but now, so many years later, it seems to me that we were like actors in a drama, virtually fated to do what we did. And if my motives were vile, still it was not I who slew Rudy, nor did I do more than advance the date at which the grove might have been felled. We did as we felt we must, Rudy, the dryad, and I, and I can blame myself hardly any more than they. The world is full of tragedy; much of it we cannot hope to prevent, but only to ameliorate.
"And so," said Stantz, "when I sip of the greep, I remember the bittersweet days of youth; and in this, the hour of triumph, it is meet to remember that life is not always thus. Can I fix one for you?"
"Urg," said Nick.
"No, thanks," said Sidney.
"None for me, thank you," said Jasper.
"Does it have a kick?" asked Kraki:
"No," said Stantz, "it is not an alcoholic beverage."
"Then vhat good is it?" complained Kraki.
"I'll try one, if I may," said Frer Mortise, raising one hand hesitantly.
The others stared at him, while Stantz poured syrup and water into a glass and chanted a brief incantation.
"The statue," said Timaeus brokenly. "The statue. Yes? Can we talk about the statue yet?"
"Certainly," said Stantz. "What about it?"
"Where the devil is it?" Timaeus said.
"How should I know?" said Stantz.
"You had it, didn't you?" said Sidney.
"Yes, certainly," said Stantz. "Why are you interested, if I may ask?"
"The mayor says they're the statue's legal owners," said Wolfe.
Stantz snarled a noseful of spritzer and had to be patted on the back for quite some time afterward. "How so?" he asked at last. "If legend be true, Stantius himself is the legal owner, or perhaps the Dark Lord."
"Right of salvage," said Timaeus. "We found it in the dungeon below Urf Durfal."
Stantz looked off into space thoughtfully. "Yes, there was-hmm. Just a second." He reached down and pulled open a desk drawer. It was filled with files, Sidney saw; that was reasonable enough, but the lever fixed to the side of the drawer was unusual. Stantz yanked downward on the lever, the motion of someone working a pump; with a whirr, the files spun into motion, a blur of paper inside the drawer. It was as if, Sidney thought, the drawer opened onto a wheel stuffed with files, as if working the lever spun the wheel, displaying a few feet of files to the drawer at a time, as if the small file drawer somehow contained whole cabinets of paper, accessible through the yank of a lever; impossible, Sidney scoffed to herself.
Or perhaps not, she considered. She'd heard of purses containing an infinity of coin, wineskins capable of dispensing wine eternally. If magic could create such things, why couldn't it store an entire department's paperwork in a sing
le file drawer? And wouldn't it be like the Hamsterians to put the romantic mystery of magic to such mundane function?
At last, Stantz gave a grunt of satisfaction and pulled out a single file folder. He placed it on his desk, opened it, and pulled over his light, on its pulleys and gears, to shine on the folder's contents. He read for a moment, then put his finger to a line of text. ". . . a party of adventurers in the employ of one Timaeus d'Asperge, Magister Igniti, a gentleman of Athelstan," he read.
"I am he," said Timaeus.
Stantz looked up. "I suppose you can prove that?"
Timaeus looked faintly disgruntled. "My passport isback at the pension," he said. "I had not expected an inquisition. It can be fetched, if—"
"Never mind," said Stantz, waving his enormous hand and flipping through the file. "I shall take you at your word. Now wasn't there-yes, here it is. Ah. Vincianus Polymage? How extraordinary. Is he still alive?"
"Technically," said Timaeus. "The body survives, albeit the mind has seen better days."
One Quest, Hold the Dragons Page 36
