Chapter 20
We ate our stew; I’ve had – and indeed, I’ve cooked – better, but it was edible, not unpleasant, and hot food was heartening. The cave was not cold, but nor was it warm.
“Now, show me this hoard,” I said.
“I would like to see it too,” said Beretrulle.
Chessina giggled, and skipped off deeper into the cave. She had apparently already cast a lux aeternum on a projecting rock which we went around to see the hoard.
I don’t quite know what I was expecting; a few coins on the floor, I suppose. I was not expecting a veritable pile of coins, gems, jewels, knick-knacks, random pieces of clothing; I presumed that had come from packs, of which there were several intact, and other bundles.
I suspected we should have enough bits and pieces to open one of the mythical adventurer’s shops, and said so.
Chessina looked thoughtful.
“Or we could put together kits for promising young people,” she said.
That was a good idea.
Everyone has to start somewhere. And I really wanted agents in every city, and the best way to get agents was to win their loyalty by helping them out. It’s a friendlier form of bribery, if you will.
And this was more gold than I had ever seen in one place before, even taking into account that most of the pile was copper and silver. Travellers tend to convert their travel money to large denomination coin for convenience of carrying, and the dragon had been preying on generations of travellers.
Actually, some of the copper coins were probably worth more than a gold sun, being very early indeed. I would certainly ask for my share in the coin, not the equivalent weight in metal; there were collectors who would pay a small fortune for a complete set of the coinage of King Adalgrim the First. Not that there were any copper coins in his reign, all coins were silver, some of them tiny, and those in circulation tend to wear down considerably. There were some here which were almost as crisp as if they had just been minted. I have no idea why they were not worn from being slept on by a dragon for hundreds of years, or even tarnished; I could only assume that dragon belly skin exudes something which preserves them.
Sets which were set into presentation boxes lined with dragon belly skin would do very nicely. I said as much to Chessina.
She stiffened, and then squealed with delight.
“I’ll teach you to be aware of value and marketing yet,” she crowed in delight.
Bother. I’d been avoiding her lectures on how to sell myself at true value, and not short.
It wasn’t just coinage, there were goblets and plate, candlesticks, and any number of untouched mercantile packs and bundles. I have to say, I found the mystery of those more exciting than the gold, because it would be a window on the microcosm of trading practices through the centuries.
We should have to document everything carefully before permitting anyone in to bag it up.
Chessina smiled at me lovingly and without even a hint of exasperation, and Beretrulle looked confused.
“Why would anyone care?” she asked.
“It’s an amazing resource for the historian,” I told her. “We can glimpse into the lives of the very earliest days of the kingdom.”
“We do have written history,” said Beretrulle.
“Yes, but only about the so-called significant events, the nobility, kings, and so-on,” I said. “This is a look at what was traded in the west, and the lives of those who traded it. And who knows? It might give us some insights into whether there was a time when the lands to the west were less dangerous, and whether anyone traded there. Which might be of military advantage too.”
“I see,” said Beretrulle. “Well, I don’t suppose Ogier or my brother would mind waiting a little for their unexpected cut. Ogier, poor man, has little joy in life, but he is a scholar, and he might even find it of interest.”
“Perhaps we should bring him here when this is all over,” I said.
“What a good idea!” enthused Chessina. “He’s such a nice man, so sad he lost all his family.”
She was contemplating Beretrulle thoughtfully.
I was going to stay out of all her machinations of match-making.
Though if Ogier could produce another heir it would be good for the kingdom, and nobody would doubt that Beretrulle could hold a regency for a juvenile duke.
No! None of my business. Bad Castamir!
I am not greedy; and I would be happy enough if dragons did not have hoards; but I transferred the anti-scrying spell to a runic array, which would deflect normal sight from noticing the hole in the rocks.
It would be nice to be able to research anything I wanted without stopping to worry if we could afford it. And Chessina would take care of it, so the weight of wealth would not have to worry me. She enjoyed things like that.
She has her faults; she likes to outshine those who try to use their wealth and position to intimidate, but as I enjoy her doing so, I can’t really call it a fault. And neither of us is so obsessed by wealth that we would be likely to go looking for dragons just for their hoards.
What would be the point, when one has enough to embark on any project one wishes, without having to add up the cost? Enough is plenty.
We used the rug to sleep on, because it was better than the rocky floor of the cave. The packs which held the oatmeal, and were quite recent, also had the bed rolls of the merchants with them. They were a little singed, but useable, and gave us a more comfortable night than just cloaks. Mutton stew for every meal got boring, but we knew better than to complain, as it stood between us and going very hungry. I won’t say starvation; I’ve seen that, and none of us were in danger of it. There was a spring inside the cave which gave us fresh water, so we sat out the storm comfortably enough, if in some impatience. Chessina scratched a chequers board on the rocky floor and we used gold and silver coins as chequers to take turns in playing to pass the time. Beretrulle was a brilliant player, and was soon up several games on us, even when we combined forces to try to force her to a draw. I could see why she was a general; her tactics and strategies were aggressive and she used clever ideas even in a simple game. We learned a lot.
It was nice to be somewhere safe enough to sleep, all of us, deeply, and long. At least, Chessina did not need to sleep as much, and frustrated by a lack of bedroom fun, she started sorting the coins into ten piles, for later distribution. It kept her occupied, and would come in useful. I didn’t notice at the time that the two piles for Ogier and the king contained more modern coinage; well, they would probably only melt it down for redistribution anyway. It was cheating, in a way, that we would get more from our coins, but then, if there were any magic items in with jewellery and so on, doubtless the king would claim it, and it would disappear into some vault instead of being used.
My wife had already thought of that, and had sorted jewellery into magical, and mundane, for fair distribution too.
By far the most valuable piece – in the estimation of most estimators – was the heavily magical sword. Probably the sword of a renowned dragonslayer, or some such; and Chessina brought that back to Beretrulle.
“However else things are distributed, you should have this,” she said, firmly. “You can use it the most. And this ring of protection.”
“But you need…”
“We have our own magic,” said Chessina. “We can argue the toss over the rest later, you need this now.”
Beretrulle accepted. She could do the most good with a magical sword, and she knew it; and the ring had physical and magical protection which made Beretrulle into a force of nature. And it meant I did not have to worry as much about her.
It did remind her that we should keep fit and practise our footwork, but to be honest, that was no bad thing, even if we practised with ordinary sticks for swords. Chessina was a fast learner, and I had a touch of desperation on my side to progress well and Beretrulle pronounced us good students. She had no idea that we had also cast study in dreams spells, which helps with purely physical activities.
And as we were both frustrated, it meant that Chessina and I could at least spend our rest period productively in a way to keep our minds off what we would rather be doing.
We woke up to absolute silence.
The cave had mitigated the roar of the storm, but this morning the storm had blown itself out, the sky outside the cave was blue, and there was the sound of optimistic bird song. I wondered if birds feared dragons, or if they were just too small to bother with.
We had our breakfast, and got on the rug. I confused Chessina and Beretrulle again and handed myself into the hands of Arcana.
“You are such a good boy, Castamir,” she said. “You trust me absolutely.”
“Of course, Divine One,” I said. “I love you.”
“It’s one reason I love you so much. When you say that, you mean it,” she said; and I felt enfolded in love. I wondered if this was what it was like to have a mother.
“Of course it is, dear one,” said Arcana. “Magic and love are very close indeed.”
It was one of those ineffability things I did not have to understand to accept; and I leaned back to enjoy it.
I was jolted out of my reverie by a comment by Arcana.
“Getting close, dear one,” she said. “Time to bring the girls to awareness; I think that he used the storm to escape, but I fancy there are some surprises for you. Mostly nasty.”
Why was I not surprised that things would include problems. I brought the girls back – quite thankfully, as Chessina was being extremely frank about marital love – and remarked mildly that we were getting close.
Beretrulle looked at me, and blushed.
So did Chessina.
“You’ve been boasting,” I said, mildly.
“Just broadening Beretrulle’s horizons,” said Chessina.
“Time to concentrate, ladies,” I said, grimly. “I don’t know what surprises Nosy has left for us, but I don’t suppose we shall enjoy them.”
Chessina was immediately sober of mien. She knew as well as I what horrors we might face; better than the poor fools who had let themselves be used by Nosy.
Somehow I doubted that he would take the words of the cold and miserable demons who had reported back that we had been squished by a dragon. I wouldn’t. Demons lie like humans breathe. And Nosy was a seer; one had to assume that he would get a hint, at least, of reports of our deaths being greatly exaggerated.
I also doubted that he would be able to persuade his chilly and unhappy minions to stay and fight for him. He had lost three fyr… whatever they were called, attack demons, to our previous efforts, and two at least had been ‘egged’ or returned to regrow their pseudobodies. The other might have healed, but I was willing to bet it would not be happy.
I did not know how many demons Nosy could call on, but there were politics at stake. For Sekhemef to have been willing to summon hundreds to take over Ezustry disguised in an elven war was one thing, but calling on more and more to deal with an irritating wizard was probably going to cost Nosy more face than he was willing to give up. Explaining to demons that the irritating wizard has been named in prophecy was beyond the grasp of most of them.
It must have been frustrating for Nosy. Those who could understand the power of prophecy would assume that Nosy was lying for his own advantage, this being the nature of demons. And as Nosy probably downplayed my potential danger for his own advantage they weren’t wrong, just wrong in the direction of his lies.
It was uncomfortable to be named in prophecy, but on the other hand, all was a matter of interpretation.
I wasn’t bothering to interpret; just carrying on doing my job, killing demons and going where Arcana told me.
I go and do at the commands of Chessina, after all; and if Dragovar calls me ‘henpecked,’ I don’t really care.
I’m quite happy the way things are.
We were coming up on the mountain castle of Moruk now; as castles go, it was quite small, and spilled into a walled village around it with small fields on mountain terraces; but what I really did not like was the purple glowing sphere around the keep. It looked like some kind of globe of invulnerability but as we got closer, and the carpet wavered, and I felt tendrils of force reaching for my magic and trying to drain it, I sheered off in a hurry.
It was a globe of magical drain, affecting things only on the outside, of course, and that… was going to be tricky.
“Why have we gone back?” asked Beretrulle.
“Because that sphere drains magic,” I said. “And if we continue, all our magic items will cease to be magical, and one thing that means is crashing to the ground as the rug becomes no more than an ordinary mat. And I’m not sure what it will do to Chessina and me.”
“What are we going to do, Castamir?” asked Chessina.
“We’re going to call in the experts,” I said.
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