by Robert Evert
“What’s wrong?” Edris asked again. “Is everything okay?”
His father shook the letter. “This! This is what’s wrong. The bastard just sent it to me. I’m sure he’d deny it, but I’d wager your mother’s life he did it on purpose. The arrogant son of a bitch.”
Edris unfolded the crumpled paper.
It was a royal proclamation announcing that the next quest was to find the Sacred Scarab. The competition started two weeks earlier.
“Bollocks!”
“Exactly!” Lord Elros snatched the proclamation and throttled it. “You see, Edris? This is what you’re up against. Petty assholes who will do everything in their power to prevent you from winning.” He threw the letter across the room.
“Let’s not waste time lamenting our fortune,” Edris said, sounding much like his older brother. “Let’s get to work.”
His father smiled at him. “Good. That’s exactly the attitude I want you to have. What do you know about the Sacred Scarab?”
“Nothing. Other than the fact that scarabs are bugs, I believe.”
His father searched through a crate of musty tomes. “Alas, then you know as much as I.” He selected a large leather-bound book and rifled through its pages. He stopped and turned the book in his son’s direction. There was an illustration of black beetle with a thick, round body and long, jagged legs.
“It says they live in the desert,” Edris said, reading the text under the picture.
“The desert…” Lord Elros mused. “That’s a long way away. Maybe that’s why the king needed to give Markus a head start.”
“Trust me, Markus has had more than a two-week head start on this. He’s probably been searching for this scarab for a month or more.”
The Lord of Bend paced the cluttered room. “The Sacred Scarab…The Sacred Scarab… I’ve never heard of it.”
“I bet it’s a statue of some sort.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It can’t be an actual bug. There are loads of them. And if it’s sacred…well, what do people pray to? Statues.”
For the second time, Lord Elros smiled. He patted Edris on his muscular shoulder. “Those are my thoughts as well.”
The door opened. Edros hurried into the library, heaps of books under each arm.
“Find anything?” Elros asked.
Panting, Edros piled everything onto the desk. He opened to a page showing a rendering of the same type of beetle they’d examined.
“So, it is a bug?” Edris asked.
“It’s a statue,” Edros said, trying to catch his breath. “It’s shaped like a bug. Evidently, it was about the size of an apple and made of solid gold.” He consulted the passage. “It had jade for eyes and was considered to be a holy relic by the Hamumomi people of the Arid Waste. It was over four thousand years old.”
“Poppycock,” Lord Elros said. “Nothing is that old.”
“I’m reading what the book says.”
“Does it say anything about what happened to it?” Edris asked.
“Not this one.” Edros consulted another text he’d brought. “However, I did find this.” He perused several pages. “Here it is. Apparently, the Sacred Scarab disappeared some three hundred years ago. Two hundred and seventy-eight years, to be exact. Let’s see. The Hamumomi were more or less nomadic. They roamed from realm to realm, establishing temples to their gods.”
He scanned the passage.
“Okay. This is what’s important…two hundred and seventy-eight years ago, a band of marauders came down from The Step, raiding what is now the kingdom of Green Hill, burning and pillaging as they went. They took everything they could find, including the scarab.”
He closed the book.
“And that’s all you know?” Edris asked in dismay. “How can anybody find the blasted thing? No wonder it has been lost for three hundred years.”
“Giving up should not come so easily to one of my sons,” Elros said coldly.
“Yes, sir.” Edris sighed. “So, what happened to the bandits? Know anything about them?”
“If I remember correctly—” Edros flipped through a third book. “—the Step raiders were led by…” He tapped his finger on a page. “Yes. His name was Gubli-gan.”
“I recall reading about him.” Lord Elros went from crate to crate, inspecting several large volumes. “He was a military genius for his time.”
“He was,” Edros agreed. “His men rode small horses. They weren’t fast, but they were tough and capable of a long day’s work.”
Lord Elros referred to one of his books. “He used to send his younger forces into a town, set everything ablaze, steal what they could, then flee. The pursuing cavalry would chase after them only to run into a more rested veteran force.”
“It says here,” Edros said, reading, “their riders were skilled marksmen and would shoot the horses out from under their opponents. Then, they’d circle their grounded foes and pick them off one by one.”
“What happened to this Gubli-gan?” Edris asked.
“He was finally brought to justice by King Pembroke,” Lord Elros said. “Pembroke’s cavalry pursued the raiders for months. Eventually, Gubli-gan turned homeward and tried to reach The Step.”
“But Pembroke had stationed a company of lancers and archers at the pass,” Edros said. “When Gubli-gan’s men rode up, they were ambushed and forced to retire the way they came.”
“By that time,” Lord Elros cut in, “Pembroke caught up with them. There was a terrific battle, all on horseback. Pembroke’s men were the victors, though at heavy cost.”
“Then,” Edris said hopefully, “it’s likely that Pembroke reacquired all the treasure the raiders had taken.”
“If Pembroke had acquired the Sacred Scarab,” Lord Elros said, sitting on the edge of his desk, “there wouldn’t be much of a quest. His descendant, King Pendergast, would have it.”
“Perhaps one of Pembroke’s men acquired the statue,” Edros said. “It was small enough to pilfer without much chance of getting caught.”
“Very possible,” Lord Elros replied. “Though his men wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught; soldiers were allowed to loot opposing armies. It was how most of them were paid.”
“One of the soldiers must’ve acquired it. Probably one of Pembroke’s officers.”
“Why do you believe that?”
“Well,” Edris said nervously, trying to determine whether his father was being sarcastic. “I’m sure there was some sort of pecking order. Right? I mean, it wouldn’t stand well with the officers if the new recruits were acquiring more wealth than they did.”
“Logical.” Lord Elros searched through his mountain of books. “I might have a list of Pembroke’s captains, though I’m not sure if they were all present at the battle before The Step.”
“There is another option,” Edros said. “Like the Hamumomi, the people of The Step are largely nomadic, and both peoples tend to bury their valuables—the Hamumomi in the desert sands, the people of The Step in the treeless grasslands.”
“The raiders might have buried what they’d taken?” Edris asked.
“It beats getting caught with it.”
“And their acquisitions would slow them considerably,” Lord Elros said, still shuffling through wooden crates. “If they were being pursued, they’d likely lighten their loads so they could get away. Treasure doesn’t buy dead men anything. Both of you should remember that.”
“Yes, sir,” Lord Elros’s sons said reflexively.
Edris attempted to wave away the great clouds of dust his father’s searching kicked up; however, his efforts only made matters worse. He coughed.
“So,” he said with an effort, “the raiders ride into town, setting fire and pillaging, then ride away. They can’t carry all of their loot home, so they bury it with the intention of returning once the pursuing cavalry withdraws. The question is—where would they bury it?”
Lord Elros gave up his hunt for whatever he was looking
for and sat in the chair behind his desk. “I believe,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table, “your summation is adequate.”
“Then again,” Edris replied, following his train of thought, “if one of Pembroke’s men acquired the Scarab, he may have sold it. There’s no sense in a military man keeping a gold statue. If he melted it down first, the quest is meaningless. If he didn’t, somebody would have the statue in their collection, and we’d hear about it. So we can rule that possibility out.”
Edros leaned against a bookshelf. “It could be that somebody has it but doesn’t realize it’s the Sacred Scarab.”
“How many gold bugs are there?” Edris retorted.
“Good point.”
“I believe you’re on the right track, Edris,” his father said. “It would seem most likely that Gubli-gan hid their treasure prior to his demise.”
“Yes, but where? They roamed hundreds of miles, ransacking every town and farmhouse they came across. Would they bury all of their treasure in one spot? Or would they bury portions of it in different locations in order to minimize loss, should somebody find one of their burial sites?”
“All excellent questions, dear brother,” Edros said. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers for you.”
Outside, the bells tolled the dinner hour. None of them moved.
“The raiders were heading home,” Lord Elros said, thinking aloud. “They would’ve buried their ill-gotten booty someplace that was easy to identify and accessible from The Step. Someplace where they could sneak in unnoticed and then quickly return to safer territory. It wouldn’t be some random place.”
“Someplace close to The Step that was identifiable,” Edris said, resuming his pacing. “That region is basically pasture, isn’t it?”
“Indeed,” his father said. “The villagers there raise mainly sheep and goats. It’s where most of Green Hill’s wool comes from. Even now there aren’t many settlements, so it would’ve been easy for the raiders to return undetected.”
“But how would a place be identifiable? One field would look like every other.”
Uncharacteristically, his father didn’t respond.
“If you want my advice,” Edros said, “I’d suggest starting where the story begins. Go to where Pembroke fought Gubli-gan. Then—see what happens.”
“You mean, mill around and pray to stumble across something,” Edris grumbled.
“That’s ninety percent of being an adventurer. If the answers were always in books, there wouldn’t be many quests and librarians would have greater honor.”
“I don’t know. Sounds like a colossal waste of time. What do you think, Father?”
Lord Elros rubbed his neck. “I think Edros is correct. Start at the site of the battle, then work your way to the Hamumomi temple where the bug was stolen.”
“It’s a shot in the dark,” Edris admitted.
“Even shots in the dark can hit their target,” his father said. “But I don’t want you going alone. Now you’re a knight, you need a squire.”
“A squire?”
“Somebody to tend to your gear and keep an eye open while you sleep. You don’t want to wake up with Markus standing over you, do you?”
“No.”
“Then take somebody you can trust. That’s the key. There’s enough treachery afoot,” his father said. “And watch out for Markus. He won’t let you win two quests in a row.”
Forty-One
Edris stood in his father’s stables, trying to determine which horse to select. He didn’t take the decision lightly. Horses were like people; each had their strengths and weaknesses. Big Red, for example, was a reliable beast. Large and strong, and not quick to startle. That was important. In a fight, he needed to know his steed wouldn’t spook and gallop away. But Big Red didn’t have the speed of, say, Breeze—or the endurance of White Foot. The wrong horse might mean the difference between winning the quest and having to walk home empty-handed.
“Which one?” he asked himself.
“Which one—what?” an aggravated voice asked.
A boy’s head appeared above a stall wall, straw in his shaggy black hair.
“Brago!” Edris said, astounded. “What are you doing here?”
Brago stretched and stepped leisurely out of the stall. “If you recall, you told me to come here and ask for a job.”
“My father agreed to hire you? That’s terrific! He’s changed, but I didn’t think he’d changed that much.”
“It is my assumption he doesn’t know.” Brago knocked off bits of straw clinging to his patched and faded clothes. “Herschel hired me. He lets me stay in the stables and gives me a few coins here and there for various tasks somebody of my ilk can do satisfactorily.”
“He’s skimming.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“My father gives him a fixed amount to hire workers,” Edris explained. “He’s paying you less than what he’d normally pay somebody and pocketing the remainder.”
“And you’re surprised? That’s how the world works. You can’t trust anybody.”
“Can’t trust anybody…” Edris repeated, an idea taking root in his mind. He studied the stablehand.
Brago was short and slight and couldn’t fight a lick. But he was crafty and intelligent and had been living on the streets ever since his mother died several years before. He was also a skilled thief. Such skills could come in handy.
Brago stepped warily away. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“How’d you like another job?”
“That’s mighty kind of you, Ed,” Brago said, perhaps sarcastically. “What kind of animal excrement would you like me to shovel? I am well-versed in a wide variety of shit.”
“I’m not talking about manual labor. You see, I’m competing in the Kings’ Quest and I need a squire.”
“A squire?” Brago replied, offended. His dark eyes narrowed defiantly. “I will not be a servant.”
“You won’t be!”
Brago didn’t appear too convinced.
“Look,” Edris said. “You’re good with horses. And I can trust you.”
The phrase I can trust you seemed to hit some sort of mark. Brago bowed slightly.
“Thank you, Ed. You’ve always been kind to me. But what is it, precisely, you trust me to do?”
“There are going to be adventurers who will do anything to stop me from winning the quest. I need you to protect my back.”
Brago snorted bitterly. “Regrettably, I’m not exactly the fighting type. And I doubt you need protecting. What your size won’t do, your father’s well-deserved social status will.”
Edris ignored the dig at the noble class. “I don’t need a fighter…I need somebody who can keep his eyes and ears open, and maybe collect information or spy on the other adventurers. I need somebody who will make sure I won’t get my throat slit while I’m sleeping.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Brago mused, as if calculating how much he could earn for such a position.
“It may be,” Edris said. “But come with me and I’ll make sure you never have to sleep in horse shit again.”
Forty-Two
That night, Edris and Brago rode to Bend—Edris on Big Red, Brago on a smaller, faster horse named Grey. There, Edris bought Brago everything he’d need in order to appear to be a newly minted squire, including a long knife that would serve as a short sword, and fine clothes that fit his diminutive frame. He also wanted to see Beatrice.
He tapped on Beatrice’s door. She and her family lived in a small shack on the outskirts of town, and Edris always had to be careful not to batter the wobbly door down when he knocked.
It creaked open.
“Ed!” Beatrice said, delighted. Then she noted the elegant dresses he had draped over one arm. “What are you—?”
“I want you to have these.” He shoved them at her.
Beatrice fought to see over the mound of fabric. “Why?”
“I want you to have this as well.” He placed a
bulging pouch on top of the pile. “I want you to move your parents into town. Find someplace safe and respectable.”
“Ed, what’s this all about?”
“After what Markus—”
“Let’s not talk about him.”
Edris kicked the ground. “Very well. I thought…I wanted to make sure you’re okay. You see, I’m leaving in the morning. Before dawn, in fact.”
Beatrice’s eyes showed her disappointment. “Where’re you going? And when will you be home?”
“They’ve issued another quest.”
“I thought they only issued quests in the fall.”
Edris shook his head. “Usually spring or fall. But they could do it at any time. Anyway, we’re looking for the Sacred Scarab. I’m not sure where we’ll end up or how long it will take. But I’ll send word as often as I can.”
“We ?”
“Brago is coming with me.”
“Brago?” Her mood lightened. “That’s really kind of you to take him under your wing. He’s been alone for so long.”
“I need him as much as he needs me. I only hope I can trust him.”
“Oh,” she said dismissively, “you shouldn’t believe all the stories you hear about him. He’s sweet and resourceful.”
“I know. And smart. That’s why I want him to come along.”
He slipped a glance at her bedroom door.
She raised an eyebrow, knowing what he was thinking. “My parents are home.”
“Are they asleep?”
“Ed!”
“Okay. Okay. I just thought—”
“I’m well aware of what you thought, Sir Edris. And I was thinking it as well. But, as I said, my parents are here, and I have to be at work early in the morning.” She gave him a stern look. “That’s not the only reason you came, is it?”
“What? No. On my honor. I wanted to see you before I left and to give you the dresses.”
“Thank you. They’re very becoming. And thanks for the money.” She peered up at him. “But you don’t have to do this. I’m managing fine. I have been working regularly at the Hen and Duck. They pay me well enough and let me bring home scraps of food that would otherwise go to waste. So, you don’t need to worry about me.”
