by Mark Acres
“No, no,” Bagsby interjected, leaping to his feet and swiping the viscount’s mug from his hand. “I forbid any more tributes to my humble self. I am but a grateful guest of your lordship, and did no more than any honorable man of any station would do in the same situation.”
“Hah!” the viscount interrupted. “My servants told me you were swinging from window to tree to balcony on a rope improvised from the sheets of your bed. A dagger toss dropped one assassin, and the second you wounded with the first’s bow—and all in the blinking of an eye. No false modesty, Sir John.”
Bagsby raised his hands with palms forward and tilted his head to one side, averting his eyes from the approving stares of the assembled lords. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I risk an accusation of ingratitude by daring to disagree with my gracious host. But I must insist that this salute go to the Viscount Marco D’ Alonzo, a man of distinguished family, whose services to the crown of Argolia are such that some enemy, as yet unknown, thought it essential to slay him. A man whom the enemies of his country would slay should be honored by his countrymen.” Bagsby raised the mug in the viscount’s direction and smiled. “I give you that most valuable servant of His Majesty, the King of Argolia, the Viscount Marco D’ Alonzo. Long life and noble service!”
“D’ Alonzo!” came the joyous answer from the lords, and more draughts were drained.
“It may be, Sir John,” wagged one of the looser tongues of the assembly, “that the unknown enemy you name has shown his hand and his identity already.”
“Eh?” Bagsby responded. Concerned glances shot back forth and up and down the table. The idle rich did not welcome serious talk in the midst of their carouses. Still, Bagsby knew it was essential for him to know everything relevant to his cover story. “What enemy is that?”
“Have you not heard? The Black Prince of Heilesheim has marched an army against the Count of Dunsford. It is only a matter of time until Dunsford’s envoys arrive at our court to ask for aid under the terms of the Holy Alliance,” the drunken lord explained.
“I had not heard,” Bagsby said, his eyebrows knitting together in concern.
The lords fell silent, each staring at his own cup.
“It is true.” D’ Alonzo broke the awkward stillness. “I had not wanted to trouble my guest with these rumors of war. But you should know now, Sir John, that two days hence I am commanded to appear at the king’s court to give counsel after the reception of Dunsford’s envoy. All those at this table have been so commanded to appear.”
Noble heads bobbed silently up and down, acknowledging the truth of D’ Alonzo’s words.
“By the gods!” D’ Alonzo said, a sudden inspiration bringing light to his face and fire to his eyes. He leapt to his feet, pointed at Bagsby, and said, “You, Sir John Wolfe, shall attend our council and provide your opinion to our king!”
Cries of “Aye!” and “Great idea!” rang out from the lords.
“My lords, my lords,” Bagsby protested. “I am but a humble stranger in your land. You overvalue my poor opinion. I know nothing of war or politics.”
“Nonsense,” the viscount responded for the entire group. “You are a man of action and discernment. Did you not just reveal to us that the attempt on my life was part of a plot by an enemy of the crown? Who else among us could have arrived at that conclusion from the meager evidence on hand? You shall attend, and we shall have your counsel.”
“My lords,” Bagsby said humbly, cocking his head again with feigned modesty, “I bow to your judgments, which are wiser than mine. I am but a robbed, beaten stranger in a strange land. Here I have received wonderful hospitality. If I can repay but a portion of it by offering my valueless opinion on your matters of state, how can I refuse?”
A round of applause rose from the lords, and six voices rang out for the serving wench. It was time for more wine.
The evening’s revels lasted into the dark hours of the night. Bagsby’s head was reeling as he tumbled through the doors of the club and, with guidance from two charming ladies, fell face-down upon the soft orange and blue pillows of the litter provided for him by the viscount. “Home,” he muttered, waving a drunken hand randomly at the bearers. He felt the first motions of the litter as it rose and started forward, and began to drift toward drunken sleep.
An instant later, pain shot through his scalp as his hair was grabbed and his head pulled backward and upward. He felt the cold, needle-sharp point of a dagger pressed just behind his left ear.
“Make no sound. The tip of this blade is envenomed, and you will die instantly from the slightest scratch,” a vaguely familiar voice whispered in his ear.
“You don’t want to kill me or you would have already,” Bagsby said. “I may be drunk, but I’m not stupid.”
“Hmmph,” the voice answered, but the pressure of the dagger point was removed. “We must talk, and then we must act.”
Recognition finally filtered through Bagsby’s drunken brain. “It’s you,” he groaned, “the crazed elf.”
“Elf, yes, crazed, no,” Shulana replied.
“That’s a matter of opinion. Why don’t we tell everyone what you want me to do and take a vote?” Bagsby snapped. “And let go of my hair. It hurts.”
Shulana made the slightest gesture with her right hand, and Bagsby’s head flopped down into the pillows.
“Oohh,” he moaned. Then, suddenly concerned, he rolled over and sat up. “Hey, how did you manage to grip my hair? It’s too short for anyone to grab.”
Shulana stared into Bagsby’s eyes and raised both eyebrows, her face crinkling into an expression of disdain.
“Oh yeah, magic,” Bagsby muttered, falling back into the pillows. “Go away, elf woman. You’re crazy, and I’m in the middle of a good thing right now.”
“We have an agreement. I’m here to see that you get started on our task. Immediately.”
“Look...” Bagsby said, trying to be patient. Why he didn’t just draw his dagger and... the Covenant, he remembered. Can’t kill an elf because of the Covenant. Big trouble, even for a professional. Especially for a professional. “Look, I don’t want any trouble with you. I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you. All I know is you want me to steal the treasure of Parona, which is the single most stupid idea I’ve heard in my life. I’m not going to do it.”
“You agreed,” Shulana persisted.
“Yeah, I agreed,” Bagsby said. “Big deal. You’ve learned a valuable lesson. Never trust the word of a thief, especially when given under duress. Leave your address and I’ll send you a bill for my professional advice.”
“You want to do it,” Shulana said.
“I want to do lots of things. I can’t do all of them. I want to fly, but I’m not going to hurl myself off a cliff and hope for the best. It’s called being realistic. Maybe you elves have heard of that.”
“I could just kill you right now if you don’t agree to what I demand,” Shulana said. She was truly puzzled now. Just a few days ago, he’d been willing enough. Now she was resorting to ridiculous threats to get him to do what she knew in his heart of hearts he wanted to do. Humans! How frustrating to deal with!
“Yes, but you won’t,” Bagsby said tiredly. “I’m only of value to you as a thief. I’m worthless to you if I won’t do what you want—which I won’t—and I’m worthless to you dead. It’s the same either way. So there’s no reason to kill me.”
“Spite. Revenge,” Shulana shot back.
“Human traits, not elven. You’d be more likely to kill me if I did steal that accursed treasure for you. That way, you wouldn’t have to pay me. Now go away and leave me alone.”
Shulana sat silent for a long time, thinking. The litter bobbed up and down a bit as the servants bore it through the dark streets. The occasional shouts of drunks and laughing cries of lovers penetrated the curtains, but not Shulana’s thoughts. How could she persuade
this creature? She concluded that she could not.
“Very well. Let Valdaimon gain the treasure. Let the world be destroyed by war. Or let you rot. I’ll find another thief,” she said in frustration.
Bagsby sat bolt upright, his brain suddenly clear. His arm shot out and his hand grasped the elf’s thin arm so tightly she flinched.
“Valdaimon? What has Valdaimon to do with this?”
“He is the royal wizard of Heilesheim, the principal advisor to the Black Prince,” Shulana responded, surprised at having to state what was common knowledge.
Bagsby shook his head vigorously. He grabbed the elf by the shoulders and shook her harshly. “I know that! Everybody knows that. What has Valdaimon to do with the treasure of Parona?”
“Unhand me, human!” the elf barked, her thin arms snaking between his and her right fist smashing into his sternum. Bagsby fell back, clutching his chest. The pain was immense.
The litter stopped suddenly and the curtains parted. One of the servants looked inside to see Bagsby lying on the pillows, clutching his chest, and a red-faced, angry looking creature the likes of which he had never seen before staring at the little man.
“Sir John, is everything all right?” the servant stammered.
“Perfectly.” Bagsby coughed. He waved his right hand in an impatient gesture. The servant eyed him questioningly, then closed the curtains. Bagsby could hear the man muttering to his fellows, but in a moment the litter was raised and was moving again.
“Elf,” Bagsby said at length, “I beg you, tell me what connection there is between Valdaimon and the treasure of Parona.”
Shulana tilted her head and smiled wryly. She lifted one eyebrow and gave Bagsby a look that, had she been human, he would have taken as coy. “Steal it for me,” she said in a whisper, lowering her face to only inches from Bagsby’s, “and I’ll tell you.”
Bagsby looked into her dark elven eyes and felt a strange, drunken desire stirring. “Will it...” he whispered back, placing a hand gently on the back of the elf’s head, feeling the fine texture of her dark hair with his sensitive fingertips, “will it hurt Valdaimon if I do this?”
“It will.” Shulana said. She raised a single, white, thin finger to her full lips, then gently touched it to the aching spot on Bagsby’s sternum. Bagsby’s pain evaporated. “It will hurt him very much. And my name,” she added, her lips brushing Bagsby’s ear as her whisper grew even softer, “is Shulana.”
The rotund little man’s plain gray robe hung down to his sandaled feet. The top of his head, no higher than Bagsby’s, was clean shaven, with a ring of soft brown hair around the rim. He whistled a cheerful air as he maneuvered a ladder against the bookshelves that formed the back wall of the crowded room, and scrambled up it to retrieve a heavy, leather-bound tome.
Bagsby glanced around at the remainder of the tiny hole in the wall that served as the sage’s place of business. The room was no more than ten feet square, and so filled was it with wooden shelves laden with books, table tops piled as high as seven or more feet with parchments, ancient scrolls, recent leaflets, with still more piles of books, papers, and parchments stacked on the floor that Bagsby hardly dared to move for fear of toppling something.
The little man scampered down the ladder, carefully picked his way over and between the seemingly unarranged stacks and piles, and made his way to a stool behind a small reading stand. He removed the three open books and, glancing about for a convenient vacant spot and finding none, handed them to Bagsby.
“Hold these for a moment, will you? Won’t take long now,” the little man said.
“Hmmph!” Bagsby snorted. “You don’t look much like a sage, and you certainly don’t act like one.”
“Hey,” the little man snapped, his head popping up from scanning the large opened tome. “I’m the best in Clairton. Twelve years in holy orders before I quit the religion business and went into this. Twelve years of deep study, and I’m a fast study at that. I know a lot, and I know where to find out a lot more. What were you expecting, anyway?”
“Well,” Bagsby said, “I’m not sure. Someone a bit more, more...”
“You expected a soft-spoken wise old man, tall, skinny, with white hair and soft white beard, right?” the little man challenged, his eyes twinkling.
“Something like that.”
“Well, forget it. Never met a sage who looked like that. Now, I get ten crowns an hour, whatever we talk about. Do you want to know about me, or do you want to know about the treasure of Parona? Makes no difference to me—I’ve seen your gold.”
“Keep your voice down!” Bagsby commanded, irritated. He turned his head this way and that, looking for a clear place to set down his burden of books. “I told you, this is a strictly confidential inquiry. No telling who’s listening around here.”
“Nobody’s listening around here,” the sage said offhandedly. “Elven magic—paid for it years ago. Cost me a small fortune—part of the reason I get ten crowns an hour. Nothing said inside this room can be heard by anyone outside this room. This room is proof against scrying, clairvoyance, clairaudience—all the usual magical means of spying. And we’re alone.” The sage reached into the reading stand and pulled a bare-bladed dagger from a small shelf. The blade glowed with a greenish-gold hue. “Magic. Protects me when I’m alone in here with folks I don’t trust, just in case you were getting any funny ideas.”
“Nothing of the sort.” Bagsby tried to sound reassuring. But the truth was, this man was so irritating that Bagsby at this moment would enjoy slitting his throat.
“Well, a man in my kind of business can’t be too careful. You understand, don’t you, Sir John Wolfe?” the impudent, fat stranger asked.
“Of course. I’m not paying for the last two minutes,” Bagsby added.
The sage chuckled. “Well enough, you are a sharp one. Now, what is it you want to know, Sir John Wolfe, from the county of Nordingham which doesn’t exist, in the kingdom of Pantania, which doesn’t exist? Do you exist, or am I talking to thin air?”
Bagsby grew alarmed. This man could be dangerous. He pitched the books to the floor and drew his own dagger.
“Now, now, sir,” the sage said, wagging a finger at him. “It would never do to lose your temper. Your little secret is safe with me.”
“I’m not paying for the time that exchange took, either,” Bagsby said flatly, his dagger visible in his hand.
“All right then, all right,” the sage replied, chuckling. “Let’s see—the treasure of... here we go.” The little man lowered his head close to the page and read, muttering softly to himself as he did so.
Bagsby waited impatiently. In the back of his mind he pondered whether or not the sage should be killed at the conclusion of this interview. Clearly, the man wasn’t buying his Sir John Wolfe routine. He knew too much geography. Would he talk? Probably not, unless he were paid to or found something “fascinating” about the situation. Sages were usually driven by a combination of curiosity and greed. Greed was predictable; curiosity was not. Unpredictable people were dangerous.
“Well, now, this bears out what I already knew from several dwarven, elven, and ancient imperial sources,” the sage said at last. “Here, sit down, and I’ll try to put this all together for you.” The fat little man came out from behind the reading stand and began rearranging the hopeless piles until he had cleared a spot on the floor big enough for a chair. Then he popped through the one door that did not lead to the street and returned with a three-legged stool. “Here, sit, sit,” he said, his excitement growing. “This is a grand story.”
Bagsby sat.
“The treasure of Parona,” the sage began, clearly excited by the prospect of delivering a long and enlightening lecture, “also sometimes called the Golden Eggs of Parona, was first discovered some four thousand years ago by the Odenite tribe of dwarves. You know about dwarves?”
Bags
by nodded. “A bit. Short people, shorter than you and me.”
“That is a most rudimentary definition. Actually, they are not people at all, in the sense of ‘human beings.’ They are as different from us as the elves. Their race has a long and rich history—”
“Which probably is not relevant to my query,” Bagsby cut in. “At ten crowns an hour, I expect relevant information, thank you.”
“Very well,” the sage said, irritated that his erudition was not respected. “The Odenite dwarves were a tribe that lived in the extreme northern mountains, those mountains that form the northern boundary of the present kingdom of Parona. Now, these dwarves were great miners of precious stones and metals, and they had mined the northern mountains for centuries, perhaps millennia. The dwarven tales indicate millennia, but the most authoritative human sources question the dwarven tales, pointing out that legends often involve exaggerations of fact—”
“Get on with it,” Bagsby interrupted again. “These dwarves found exactly what?”
“They found nodules of gold,” the sage snapped. “They were working deep in the mountains—far north of the foothills that form the border of Parona. They were in the high mountains, where the winter cold stays all through the year, and the snow never melts. That is, on the tops of the mountains. There are valleys where, it is said, the seasons turn not unlike they do here in the temperate regions.”
Bagsby began grinding his teeth.
“All right, all right. They were mining a particularly rich vein of gold when they discovered two large gold nodules.”
“What exactly do you mean by the word ‘nodules’?” Bagsby asked, leaning forward, furrowing his brow.
“The ancient dwarven texts indicate that the find consisted of two large lumps of gold, which the dwarves termed ‘nodules.’ Later, when humans saw them, they called them ‘eggs’ because of their shape. Now, these nodules were entirely smooth and appeared to be made of gold.”
“Appeared to be?” Bagsby asked.
“Oh, yes. Even the dwarves very early determined that the nodules were, in fact, not solid gold. There is something else within them.”
