Chapter Nineteen

EAVY WITH THE FEAST that the thief had ordered spread before them, Steven had difficulty focusing on what was being said. There had been considerably more ale served than Steven was used to. Pablo convinced Steven that in order to establish their position in the inn, they should arrive as a gentleman and his page. Since Pablo knew more about the conduct of civil affairs than Steven, he would be the gentleman, and Steven would be his page and confidante. As the gentleman’s page, it was up to Steven to pay the innkeeper for the feast and lodging while the thief continually invited others to join at their table.

As Steven cut his food, the thief noticed the knife with the dragon pattern.

“Steven George,” said the thief at last. “The company is in need of a story. As you owe me a story debt, I call upon you to tell us the story of that knife you use at the table.” At once, all eyes fell upon the knife that Steven held in his hand and there were exclamations over the beauty of the knife. Steven had prepared a story about his hat for the company and was surprised at the request.

“Wouldn’t you rather hear about my hat?” he asked. Those gathered at the table laughed.

“My poor page is recently from the country where stories are often told about the fantastic adventures they had with their hat,” laughed the thief. “No, fair page. No peasant hat stories for this company. Tell us instead of this beautiful knife, and how a simple page comes to have it.”

Steven looked around the company and in his state of disorientation brought on by too much food and ale they reminded him of nothing less than gathered predators descending on their prey. He took another sip of his ale and rose uncertainly to stand by the table.

The Miser’s Gift

NCE UPON A TIME, when grandfathers were young and paths had not yet wound away from the Castle of Minor Ordam, there lived a miserly despot named Grouse who ruled over all the land with a tight fist and a sharp tongue. Grouse was hated by all his subjects and by his overlords as well. He had many treasures in his castle and guarded them with fervor. It was said that the miser’s treasure room would be a sight to behold if only one could get to it. But the room was located in the center of the castle dungeons. It was locked by a huge padlock and chains held the bar in place. This room, in turn was reached by a staircase that had a locked door at both the bottom and the top. The staircase was in a private locked chamber that could only be reached through a door hidden in the master’s bedchamber. No one had ever been in the mysterious vault except the master, but tales of its glory circulated far and wide.

The peasants of Minor Ordam were so pressed that after their pleas to the miser had failed to win succor, the sent a delegation to the miser’s overlord, who in turn summoned a council of the lords around. They listened to the peasant’s complaint—how they were unable to feed their families because of the heavy taxes the miser imposed, how their children were unclothed in the winter because the miser took their wool.

First the lords thought they would tax the miser, but the miser just threatened more stringent duties on his people. Then the lords thought they would make war on the miser, but the cost of war is high and if the miser closed his gates they would have to siege the castle for months or maybe years before they could breach the walls. Finally, the lords came up with the idea to infiltrate the castle with their own man who would gain access to the miser’s treasury and distribute it back to the people with, of course, a fair share going back to the overlords. They searched far and wide for the right person when they found, at last, a thief who was willing to undertake the mission.

Now this thief had been known to the lords for many years, but had gone unpunished for his deeds because he could never be found with the stolen property. He continued to prosper amidst them as he continued steal from them. So they reasoned together that they could kill two birds with one stone by getting the thief to break the miser’s treasury, then to convict the thief at last for his crimes.

The thief had not survived for so long through idiocy. He was clever and saw through the lords’ plan immediately. But how could he avoid their clever trap? If he failed to breach the miser’s treasury, his clients would surely banish him. Yet if he did breach the treasury, they would convict him of theft and he would lose both his hands.

This thief’s name was Bárcenas. Bárcenas approached Castle of Minor Ordam with caution late one night. He silently scaled the walls of the castle and peeked over the parapet. All was dark and silent. He raced across the rooftops looking for guards and trying to find the master’s bedchamber. But looking from the outside was vain and as dawn began to clear the eastern skies, Bárcenas slipped out of the castle and away. This happened for two more nights with the same results. The thief was discouraged as he had found no way into the inner fortification. This would require a different approach.

The next day the thief went to the market in the city. He looked long and hard for something special. At last, in the back chamber of a metalsmith, the thief finally saw his salvation. It was a golden goblet. Runes were engraved around the lip of the beautiful goblet and the stem was fashioned in the shape of a dragon with unfurled wings. The golden flames that shot from the dragon’s mouth were so cunningly crafted that they looked hot to the touch. This was the pride of the smith’s workshop and he was cautious showing it to Bárcenas.

But the thief had no intention of stealing such a fine piece, for surely this would be known anywhere that he might try to sell it, and in his line of work collecting lovely art pieces was not practical. Instead, Bárcenas paid for the goblet. The price nearly beggared the thief, but he knew where he could get more coins. There was only one dragon goblet, however.

The next day, Bárcenas arrived at the Castle of Minor Ordam when the first peasants were entering with their goods for sale in the market and paying their taxes to the guards on duty. He took with him a young man he had bribed on the streets of the city to act as his page. As they approached the guards, the page stepped boldly forth and declared, “Make way for my master, the honorable Duke of Skulheleton, heir to the kingdom of the underlands and ambassador to the fabled Castle of Minor Ordam. We seek audience with His Glorious Lordship Grouse to pay him honor and bring him gifts.”

The guards nearly fell over one another in attempting to usher the thief and his page into the presence of Lord Grouse. They were offered wine and food, given a fine room and were encouraged to bathe before they met with the master. The thief briefly considered slaying the lord and claiming the castle for himself, but the power of the overlords made him cautious. They would not willingly suffer a man of his reputation as an underlord. At last, they were summoned to the hastily cleaned throne room of Lord Grouse.

The master was seated on an elevated chair that the thief saw was thrown together on wooden boxes to give it more height. It had been covered by what appeared to be nothing less than a feather blanket retrieved from a long-unused bedchamber.

The thief politely knelt before the throne as the page announced his presence. Then he rose to address the master.

“Oh most elevated master of this most glorious house, your humble servant is honored by your gracious hospitality. I bring greetings from Glendal, King of all Skulhelletan and your faithful servant. The king has long sought to have audience with the honored Lord Grouse, but has been ill for many years and cannot travel. Therefore he bade me as his heir apparent to seek the wisdom and counsel of the famed Lord Grouse in his stead.” The thief was most eloquent in his address, quite overwhelming Lord Grouse who had not in his memory received an ambassador from any other lord, duke, or king of any land. The flattery worked well.

“My Lord Duke,” said Grouse, “I am pleased to welcome your visit and ask that you bring what matter you will to my judgment and I will advise you with the experience of my years.”

Then Grouse stood from the throne, which nearly toppled with him as his foot caught in the blanket as it slipped between the crates and his dignity was barely rescued by the guards who caught him and set him on his feet. He joined the thief and asked him, “What counsel would you seek from me, good sir Duke? Let us walk in the garden and talk as friends.”

And so they left the banquet hall and walked in what Grouse called his garden. It was so overgrown with weeds and briars from lack of attention that the two soon gave up trying to fight their way through the brambles and sat together on a rickety bench out of earshot of the guards who were still picking stick-tights out of their armor.

“Soon, indeed I am afraid all too soon,” began the thief, “I shall ascend to the throne of my esteemed ancestor, King Glendal. He is old and ill and the time will come soon that he will pass to the overlands as a free soul. But my ascension to the throne is not uncontested, for there is a widespread belief that we have not the ability to establish alliances with kingdoms outside our borders and that in this changing world we will be asked to come to blows with nations who suspect our strength is less than what can be safely overcome. Therefore I have journeyed to you to find some means of establishing an alliance that will dissuade them from aggression.”

“And you seek that alliance from me?” asked Grouse, incredulously. “I am not powerful. I do not have an army that can assist you. How can I be of use.”

“Ah,” said the thief, “what you have and are so modest about is fabled wealth. For we do not seek an alliance of strength, but of treasure. In this we believe we can make a grand alliance.”

Now the miserly Grouse was cautious at the mention of his wealth, but the flattery of the thief was such that he let his caution slip.

“How would my wealth be of help to you?” he asked.

“Well,” said Bárcenas, “our vaults in Skulhellitan are the strongest in the world. Our army is strong and able to withstand assault because they are wraiths and spirits that are not easily slain in battle. What we need is to show our enemies how that army is trusted by our allies and they will be discouraged from attacking us. Therefore, I would propose that we store your wealth in our vaults so that our enemies can see that you have created a strong alliance with us and cannot possibly breach our defenses.”

“But my vault is secure,” said the miser. “It has a bar an chains on the door and I have the only key.”

“Our vault,” said the thief, “has a door carved out of solid rock that takes four strong men to move when six golden locks have been released by the six gatekeepers of the underworld.” The miser was impressed.

“My vault is reached by a staircase of two hundred steps with a locked door at each end,” said the miser.

“My vault,” countered the thief, “is in a sheer mountain cliff one hundred feet above a raging ocean.” The miser was again impressed, but unwilling to give up.

“My vault can only be reached through a secret passage in my own bedchamber,” said the miser.

“My vault,” boldly lied the thief, “is guarded by a fiery dragon that must be passed in order to get to it.”

“How do you do that?” asked the miser, astounded.

“I thought you would might ask that,” said the thief, “and so I have brought with me the secret that will allow a man to pass the dragon for you to hold in safety until such time as we agree to transfer the wealth once again.”

“You have this with you?” exclaimed the miser in unbelief. “Show me. Show me!”

His excitement was so great that the guards took notice and began to approach. He frantically waved them away, but the thief feigned sudden caution.

“Let us not expose ourselves in this public forum,” he said.

“I have it,” said the miser. “After dinner this evening, you will come to my chamber. I will take you with me to my vault. You will show me there the key, and if it is true, we will transfer my wealth to your vault where it will surely be impregnable, and I will keep the key here in my vault as security.” It was agreed.

Now the thief went hastily to work and called upon confederates to execute his plan. That night, the thief and the miser dined on an impressive array of dishes that were served by somber looking peasants in ragged clothes. After they had eaten and drunk their fill, they retired to their bedchambers. When the bell in the great watchtower tolled the middle of the night, the thief knocked softly on the miser’s door and was admitted. The miser pulled a drapery aside behind his bed and opened the first door with a key from a great ring of keys at his belt. Then they descended two hundred steps into the darkness until the miser stopped to open a second door with another key. Then they entered a chamber lit by only a single torch. In front of them was the barred and chained door. This required the miser to use three different keys before the bars were released and the door creaked open.

As fortunes might be measured, the miser’s hoard was pitiful. He had gold coins and silver cups. A few precious stones decorated plates or circlets, but the thief’s heart sank at the thought that he had taken such a risk for so little.

But, there was only one way he could save his hands from the overlords, so he continued to play his game. He reached into his coat and withdrew the marvelous golden dragon goblet. The truth be known, it was much finer than the miser’s wealth. When the miser’s eyes lit upon it, they brightened for he had only once seen a treasure that matched it.

“This is the key to the dragon vault?” cried the miser. “It is beautiful.”

“Yes, well,” said Bárcenas, “if you will proceed with this trade, you will keep the dragon key in this vault while we take your vast hoard for safe-keeping. Thereby we will cement our alliance and show our enemies how powerful we truly are.” The miser readily agreed. Then, remembering his manners, he rushed to a corner of the vault.

“I must send a gift to King Glendal,” said the miser, overwhelmed by the beauty of the goblet. “I have only one treasure that can possibly merit this great honor that the king has paid me.” With that he revealed a sword and knife that made the thief’s heart stop with their beauty. Emblazoned on the blade of each was an engraving of a dragon that seemed to glow from the blue steel as the thief looked at it.

“This sword and dagger,” said the miser, “were all that were left to me by my father. All this treasure has been earned by my own hand, but this. This knife was forged by the fabled dwarves that live near the haunted lake high in the mountains of Evandor. Their workmanship is unlike any that has ever been known and it is said that they are so sharp that they might pierce a man and leave no mark. These will I send to your king as my gift and will exchange them with him again for the dragon goblet when I retrieve my treasures from your vault.”

This having been said, the two conspirators exchanged their gifts and set to bundling the miser’s treasure up into bags and hauling it out of the vault. All this time, the miser thought, “you will never see the goblet again, for with it in my power, I can go into your vault at will and take not only what is mine, but what is yours together.” At the same time, the thief thought, “you will never see the sword and dagger again, for the overlords will retrieve your treasure, but I will keep these weapons. So, deceiving each other they proceeded to a cliff that the thief knew to store the treasures.

When they approached the cliff and saw the raging water beneath it, the thief instructed the miser to fill the goblet with water and when he saw the fire of the dragon, he was to cast the water at it, this would allow them to pass. Soon as they wound their way up the cliff by a narrow path, fire burst from the rocks ahead of them.

“Now,” said the thief, and the frightened miser threw the water at the flames. They were extinguished immediately and the two continued up the cliff. They entered the cave and were met by six men the thief had picked as his confederates. These six unlocked six locks and four of them pushed the stone door aside.

In fact, this was the secret hoard of the thief and his confederates, and it appeared much richer than that of the poor miser. The miser’s eyes went wide as he thought of the wealth that he could now command. They stacked the miser’s miserable pile next to that of the thief, then ritually locked the door and descended the cliff. Bárcenas set Grouse on the road back to the Castle of Minor Ordam and then returned up the path to the cliff. As he ascended, the confederate who had thrown burning oil at the path on their original visit joined him and they met the final six at the cave entrance. They carefully removed the miser’s treasure and loaded it on a donkey, then they sealed the entrance of the cave so it could not be seen from the path. The thief then went into the city and to the overlords.

Immediately they seized the treasure, exclaiming over its pittance and accused the thief of stealing from the miser. But the thief protested that he had been given the entire treasure by the miser and could prove this. He instructed the overlords to ride to the Castle of Minor Ordam and ask the miser where his treasure was.

So the overlords rode to the castle and at the gates demanded that the miser address them. He stood atop a wall and called down to them.

“What will you have of me, a poor man barely able to pay his taxes to the lords and whose people are scarcely able to feed themselves?” asked the miser.

“Where is your treasure, Grouse,” called the king of the overlords, “for we believe it has been stolen.”

“It is not possible,” returned the miser. “This night past I have transferred what miserable wealth I once had into the safekeeping of King Glendal of the Underland by his faithful Duke of Skulhellitan. In token of our exchange, the Duke has entrusted me with this goblet and I have given him the sword and dagger of Ordam. There is no other treasure at this castle.”

With that the miser returned to his rooms to admire the incredible dragon goblet and the overlords returned to face the thief.

“You see,” said the thief, “I have taken nothing from the Lord Grouse that he has not freely given me. Here is his treasure, and here are the sword and dagger of Ordam that he has entrusted to me.” The overlords, being honorable men, had no choice but to leave the thief with the sword and dagger, and took the treasures of the miser. These they divided among themselves and with the people of Ordam, thinking nothing of being thieves themselves.

For many years, the miser was so enamored of the beautiful dragon goblet that he did not think again of the hoard. He was so pleased with this treasure, in fact, that he ceased to collect heavy taxes from his people and the fiefdom prospered. He had so completely forgotten about his previous treasure that on his deathbed he clutched the dragon goblet to his chest whispering, “Mine, all mine.”

As for the thief, he could not be other than he was. He continued to steal from people and ultimately was caught. The executioner used his own sword, emblazoned with a dragon, to cut off his hand, but the thief clutched the hand to his wrist and the wound was so clean that the parts knitted together and he was healed.

The knife I bear with the dragon emblazoned on its blade is the very knife of that thief, passed down through generations so that even I, the poorest of his kin, carry it with pride.

The crowded commons of the Inn of the Lost Soul was stunned by the story Steven told. Steven, for his part, felt dizzy from the exertion of telling the story and from the food and ale that he had consumed. He reached for his mug and drank off another round.

“Storyteller,” said one of those gathered, “this is a most amazing tale. But where, pray tell, is the sword that matches this glorious blade?”

“Ah that,” said Steven, nearly tripping over himself as he stumbled to his pack. “The sword is here in the pack of my glorious master, The Honorable Pablo Ibin Arriaga of far away Baghalonia.” With that, Steven drew the sword and lay it on the table next to the knife. The room was hushed in awe and Pablo asked help in getting his faithful servant to bed. Steven was led stumbling blindly up the stairs and was tucked into the bed.

The sword and knife were left beside him and he heard as the last of the guests was leaving the room, “I should like to have heard about his hat.”

When they were all gone, Pablo sat beside the groggy Steven and said, “Now, dragonslayer,” he said, “you owe me twelve gold coins worth of information. Where is the young idiot that delivered me into the hands of authorities in Baghalonia? I would repay his loyalty with a dose of my own.”

Steven was muzzy about what he was saying, but realized that the thief meant harm to Jasper. It was against Steven’s nature to lie, but in his ale-induced haze, he could not do more than mutter, “A wagon-ride to Zannopolis,” said Steven, “and four hundred ninety-six thousand two hundred forty-eight steps, across a lake and next to a river.” Then Steven passed out.

Chapter 18
Chapter 20