Myth-Told Tales

by Robert Asprin

  “His majesty likes the public to see the amassing of King-Mart profits,” Howadzer said, with a grimace. “I think it is a risk, especially under the circumstances.”

  He took his leave.

  “We’ll be right over there,” Guido said. “Just go about your business like we wasn’t here.”

  We withdrew to a point that Guido had identified as an excellent coign of vantage inside a tent in a display of camping gear several yards distant. We had a good view of the entrance to the lighted tower. The guards were notably nervous, knowing that they would be under constant scrutiny. They fidgeted and glanced at one another, whispering. Guido put up with this for fifteen minutes or so, then he stormed out of the tent, and lowered his face until it was nearly touching theirs.

  “Awright, you mugs,” he barked. “Tenn-HUTT! Eyes forward! Backs straight! No talking’ in the ranks. I don’t want to hear another peep outta you guys unless it’s to tell me that the monster’s eatin’ your leg. You got me?”

  “Yes, my lord!” they chorused.

  “I ain’t your lord,” Guido snarled. “I work for a livin’! Now, pay attention! You’re guardin’ the king’s gold!”

  He stomped back to the tent.

  The guards became stalwart, silent, and upright. If they slewed their eyes sideways at one another now and again, Guido pretended not to notice.

  Up in the rafters, my keen hearing detected the rustle of the Shutterbugs’ wings as they flew about taking images.

  Hours passed. Dinner was long past, and my stomach emitted rumblings audible in the silence of the aisles. At each emission, Guido and Nunzio removed themselves to the extreme other end of the tent. At the sound, the guards shifted from foot to foot, but they kept their eyes forward, and their right hands on sword hilt or spear haft. If they had been responsible for the theft of gold, they would not repeat their pilfering tonight, not with the eyes of the enforcers upon them. I was more curious to see the beast that had left the scent on the aisle floor and on the pillar of the king’s audience chamber.

  In the darkest hour, I heard the hiss of feet on the tiles. I sprang up and shot out of the tent. Guido and Nunzio barely had time to don their hats and follow me.

  WHAM!

  By the time they caught up with me, I was standing on the intruder’s chest, glaring into his face. Guido held a torch aloft and looked down into the perpetrator’s face.

  “Lord Howadzer! Gleep, let him have some air.”

  I realized my mistake and hastily vacated the chancellor’s ribcage.

  “Gleep!” I said, and licked his face by way of apology.

  “Pthah!” he said, wiping his visage vigorously. “I was only coming in to see if everything was all right! Is this how you run a security check, by jumping on your employers?”

  “When they come upon us unawares in the middle of the night, we do,” Guido said, replacing his miniature crossbow in his inside breast pocket. “Gleep did exactly what I would have expected him to do. You didn’t announce yourself, and I would have heard footsteps louder than a tiptoe myself.”

  “I still don’t like it,” the chancellor said. With a disdainful look at me, he turned on his heel and marched away. His retreating footsteps were twice as loud as the approaching ones. Nunzio and Guido looked thoughtful.

  “I do not like that guy,” Nunzio said. “He is just too self-righteous for his own good.”

  No further intrusions marked our night of surveillance.

  In the morning, the blare of trumpets heralded the arrival of King Petherwick. With heralds and pages trotting ahead of him, his majesty made a visit to the Treasury. He was accompanied by Lord Dalhailey and a handful of attendants.

  “We are most pleased to see that no one was hurt overnight,” he said. “And my gold is safe!”

  He patted the pile of coins. With a clang, it shifted and collapsed in on itself. It was hollow! Petherwick let out a wail.

  “My gold! The monster must have come up through the floor and stolen it!” He rounded upon the enforcers. “You were supposed to prevent this! I want reimbursement for every coin that went missing! Lord Howadzer will make up a reckoning. Your organization will make me restitution, as per our agreement.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Nunzio said. “Naturally, we hope to recover your gold.”

  The Chancellor of the Exchequer looked harried, but the Minister of Marketing looked secretly pleased. I remarked upon the expression. Perhaps it was a sign of a rivalry between the two lordlings.

  “We were supposed to keep an eye out for a monster that was causing loss of life,” Guido said. “The Shutterbugs saw nothing. We saw nothing.”

  But I smelled something. That elusive scent touched my nostrils, and I went on alert. Determined to track it to its source, I dragged Nunzio behind me on my leash.

  Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff!

  The enforcer’s voice behind me was encouraging. “Find anything, boy? Whatcha got there, eh?”

  Guido and the chancellor followed in our wake as I raced up the aisle. A memory was stirring. I couldn’t really place my claw upon it, but I know I had smelled it before. But in a moment I should see the source, and my mystery would be solved!

  Just before the display of cleaning products, the scent terminated without a clue as to whence it had come. I looked around forlornly.

  “What’s the matter, boy?” Nunzio asked, dropping to a crouch beside me.

  “I lost the scent,” I said. My woeful admission came out as “Gleep!”

  Howadzer turned up his fleshy nose.

  “Hmph! His majesty told you that cuddly-looking dragon would be of no use.”

  “So, tell me about the guys who were killed,” Guido said, loitering about on ale break with a few of the Treasury guards.

  “Like us, they worked for my lord chancellor,” said a neatly turned out Klahd with a dark mustache. “Each of them went out to respond to noises we heard in the aisles, and didn’t come back.”

  “Both of them were on nights when we had guys from Marketing with us, wasn’t it?” asked a ginger-haired fellow.

  “That’s right,” the mustachioed male said. “They went out, too, but they weren’t hurt, or even killed.”

  “Interestin’,” Guido said. “I’ll have to keep an eye on the marketin’ department.”

  Two more nights passed, uneventfully except for worrying withdrawals of gold from under our noses. I myself lay upon the threshold of the Treasury to forestall the arrival of the monster. My presence did little to instill confidence in the hearts of the guards, since they seemed to find me more of a threat than the invisible menace that had killed two of their fellows.

  Guido’s words about the marketing department had aroused my interest. As a result, any time new personnel came on shift, I inspected them and the weapons they bore closely. None of them bore the scent of Klahdish blood. None of these men were involved. The second night, four Klahds whom I did not recognize from previous visits took up their stations. Guido, Nunzio, and I made ourselves comfortable on woven lounge chairs from the outdoor furniture department. Nothing seemed to be happening. I was disappointed that our vigilance was failing to pay dividends in intelligence.

  In the early hours toward dawn, voices at a distance from us in the dimly lit store broke the silence. Guido and Nunzio rose as if to check out the disturbance, but I recognized the voices. They were Lord Howadzer and Lord Dalhailey. I made a point of cocking my head, then stretching luxuriously and settling down again upon my rattan couch.

  “Guess it’s nothing’ to worry about,” Nunzio said, sitting down again. “Ugh! We have to speak to King Petherwick about real, live pest control.” He stamped his shiny shoes down on the tiles.

  “What’s the matter?” Guido asked.

  “Bug ran right over my foot!” He continued to step, but his quarry eluded him. “Fast little monster!” CRUNCH! “There.” He pointed triumphantly. “Got it.”

  I caught the scent and scooted forward to slurp up the
squashed body. ‘Never miss an opportunity to try a new taste sensation’ is my motto. I swallowed the morsel, and stopped, jaws agape.

  “You okay, little buddy?” Nunzio asked.

  I turned to lick his face in delight. Light had dawned!

  I realized I should not have been inspecting only the customers, but the merchandise! One of the rakes smelled of Klahdish blood. It had been washed, but that was not enough to remove the scent for one with such as sensitive a sense of smell as mine.

  I hearkened back upon my earliest dragonlet memories. The flavor of the titbit had reminded me of a lesson my mother had taught me and my siblings when I was but fresh out of the egg. She had brought some of these creatures back to our nest to teach us that there was a beast that was feared even by dragons for its insidiousness.

  Goldbugs!

  Goldbugs are the scourge of dragons, because they eat gold. They do, in fact, consume and digest it. They crave even tiny, minuscule morsels of the precious metal, and can winkle it out of even the tightest confines, destroying anything that might keep them from their favorite comestible. I realized in a flash of enlightenment that would explain the “bite mark” that had been taken out of the pillar. If someone who had handled gold, such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had touched the wall, it would have left a trace that was irresistible to the little pests. They would have swarmed up to the handprint, invisible to all but them, and chewed the stone until they had every atom of gold safe in their bellies.

  They left a mark that played well into the grasp of the thief or thieves, who were able to spread rumors of a monster on the loose, and so distract attention from the series of burglaries that had been committed directly under the nose of the employees and lords of King-Mart! Since the bugs had been intercepted before they had walked very far, that spoke of a mortal agent, one of above-animal intelligence. Since all the robberies took place at night, the culprit could not be a customer. It had to be one of the staff. Guido was quite correct when he stated that he believed this to be an inside job. Somehow an employee, or more than one, had brought it to bear upon King-Mart and commit depredations against same for the purposes of theft.

  But whom?

  I was so excited at my discovery that I went in search of more of the insects. Entirely absent in the light of day, they abounded at this hour. I scented hundreds of them on the floor, scurrying away from me. I could not run them down without accidentally running them over. I swallowed a few by accident.

  “What is it, boy?” Nunzio asked. I sucked up the nearest bug and spat it into the hand of the Mob enforcer.

  “A bug?” Guido asked.

  Nunzio’s eyes lit up. I thought that his knowledge as a naturalist would not let him, or me, down. “Not an ordinary bug, cousin,” he said. “It’s the key to the whole conspiracy. Good boy, Gleep!”

  He rumpled my head.

  “Gleep,” I exclaimed in relief.

  “Since the two of you understand one another so well,” Guido said, dryly, “perhaps you will let a poor ignorant Klahd in on your secret knowledge.”

  “Well, Guido, it is like this.”

  What followed was a learned discourse upon the biology and habits of the Goldbug. Nunzio had studied far more about Genus Arthropoda Aureliphagus than I ever dreamed he could absorb. Guido listened carefully, his eyes narrowing more and more as his cousin expounded.

  “That explains it all,” he said. “Now all we have to do is work out a means of exposin’ the culprit. Now that we know what we’re lookin’ for, it should be a piece of cake.”

  We huddled for the rest of the night to work out our plan.

  King Petherwick was extremely displeased that more of the gold had been abstracted from the Treasury, and none of the Klahds could explain it to him.

  “I swear, your majesty,” the leader of the knight-shift said fervently, when the king and his entourage inspected the Treasury the next morning, “nothing got past us, yet gold is gone again. We all swear we had nothing to do with it. You may search us. You will find no gold secreted about our persons. We will take a test of loyalty to you. The monster must have cast a spell upon us, and robbed us unaware.”

  Petherwick turned to my associates. “I take it that no spell was cast upon you. So, where is this monster?”

  “We haven’t found any evidence of a monster,” Guido said. “At least, not a demon kind of monster, like you’re thinking.”

  “What do you mean?” the king asked, aghast. “Of course, there must be something. The gold is gone! Men are dead!”

  “Well, if a monster exists,” Guido said smoothly, “then it never left the Treasury, because we’ve been watchin’ it every minute. So, if it was here, it must still be here.”

  “But, where?”

  I could not ask for a better cue. As the guards shifted and looked around nervously for a hidden monster, I crouched and began growling.

  “Do you see it, boy?” Nunzio asked. He let go of my leash. The guards gasped and stepped backward.

  I gathered my haunches and sprang upward, onto the roof of the Treasury, and clamped my jaws—half-open. I let out an eldritch wail from the depths of my chest, simulating the sound of another monster. My head twisted to the left, as if my prey was struggling, then I fell backward, flailing my claws.

  “Gleeeeeep!” I wailed. I landed with a deafening jangle in the heap of money. The gold cushioned my fall. I was up in a moment, at bay, my eyes turned upward toward the an unseen enemy. The guards backed out of the small room in fear. I continued to do battle with my invisible foe.

  It was a terrible battle, though the Klahds, and the customers looking astonished over their shoulders, only saw the half of it. I tore at the air, batting as my opponent appeared to fasten its teeth in my stubby right wing. I rolled painfully on one side and rabbit-kicked. The grimace on my face showed what efforts I was putting out as my third kick dislodged my foe and sent him sailing across the round room, where he must have landed near the wall. I flung myself onto the spot I had chosen, and turned over and over, gnashing and clawing, and occasionally letting out a yelp to indicate I had been bitten or clawed myself.

  I had to congratulate myself on a masterful performance. When at last I “bested” my foe, I stood atop the heap of gold. I took an invisible mouthful and shook it vigorously, let it drop, then turned my back on the “corpse.” With my rear foot, I raked a few clawsful of gold over the body to show my disdain, then trotted obediently to Nunzio to have my leash reattached.

  “What a good dragon!” the enforcer said, reaching into his pocket for some dried earthworms. I slurped down my treat.

  “Gleep!” I acknowledged with pride.

  The rest of the onlookers were silent in awe.

  “There you go, your majesty,” Guido said, waving a huge palm. “Gleep took care of your monster for you. It’s dead. You won’t have to worry about it stealing from you anymore. You’re gonna have to move the body, but that should be no big deal.”

  “But . . . but there is no body,” Lord Dalhailey said. Then he realized his mistake. “I mean, I can’t see anything. I’ll have to get a closer look.” He started toward the pile of gold. I slithered quickly to cut him off and sniffed him closely, from the toes up. I ended up peering into his face. He blanched. Klahds have said time and again that they do not like my breath, which if I may say, is rather sweet for a dragon. I did not like his smell, which reeked of Goldbug. He was the master of the metal-eating insects!

  I growled.

  Guido and Nunzio caught on in a trice (I told you that they were bright for Klahds), and surrounded him, two crossbows pointing at the daunted lordling’s ribcage.

  “So, there’s no monster, huh? Just exactly how do you know that?”

  Cornered, Dalhailey babbled.

  “I mean, I don’t see one, and though I’ve never heard of an invisible monster, I’m sure that maybe they exist in some dimension, but what is it doing here?” Terrified, he turned to Petherwick. “Help, my liege!”<
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  “You see,” Nunzio said, “he was using Goldbugs to steal the money right out from underneath your noses. They can’t get far on their own, so he must bring them in on nights when there’s a lot of gold in the Treasury. He knows when you’ve had a successful promotion; it’s his job.”

  “Traitor!” Petherwick spat.

  “So that’s what you were doing in the store last night!” Howadzer boomed. “You were spying out the Treasury, planning to steal more of our hard-earned receipts!” He turned to the Treasury guards. “Seize him!”

  The guards hesitated. Howadzer’s face turned crimson with fury.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “They’re all in on it,” Guido said. “Those bugs are kind of hard to see in the dark, but this tower is very well lit. You couldn’t miss a swarm of the size that can eat a pile of gold in a single night. I bet that he started turning them to his side a long time ago. It don’t pay good to be a guard, and you’re risking your life for someone else’s coins, right? A few more coins here and there would help make life much more comfortable. Wouldn’t it?”

  “Kill them,” Dalhailey gritted through his teeth.

  The guards turned toward us. Guido and Nunzio swung the points of their crossbows to cover the quintet. I showed my teeth. It was clear that though we were outnumbered, we were not outmatched. The guards’ hands dropped from their hilts.

  “All right,” Guido said. “Are you gonna surrender, or am I gonna have to call someone for a cleanup on aisle 3?”

  The customers of King-Mart applauded.

  “Great show,” said a Deveel with a goatee. “That’s why I shop here.”

  “Turns out,” Guido said, after a satisfying pull at a big mug of ale brought to him by Bunny upon our return from Deva, “that Dalhailey was settin’ up to finance his escape from King Petherwick’s service. He bought a few of Lord Howadzer’s men to get them to go along with his plot. Usually it was the same guys night after night, until Petherwick got the idea to teach everybody all the jobs. When a newcomer wouldn’t go along with the scheme, well, by morning he was in no shape to tell anyone about it. About the whole Treasury guard staff was in on it. Howadzer never knew. You think he was unhappy before. I think eventually Petherwick’s gonna have to pension him off and ask Hemlock if he can go live in his old home town, he’s so homesick. But Dalhailey’s in big-time trouble.”