The shadows had disappeared into hiding places. Now, as the sound subsided, they crept forth again, cautiously.
"What that?" one or more whispered.
"Who knows?" the answer came. "Gone now, though. Come on."
Again the shadows moved, hurrying toward the light. Again splashing…
"Stop!" the lead one ordered. "What this stuff on floor?"
"Dunno. Wasn't here before." "Not water. What is it?"
"Smells funny. Tastes good, though. What is it?" Slurping sounds. "Who knows? Stop wastin' time! Let's go!"
The Off Day was never planned. Like most historic events in This Place during the long and lusterless reign of His Boisterousness Gorge III, Highbulp By Choice and Lord of This Place and Maybe Some of Those, the Off Day just happened.
It began innocently enough, with a question posed by the Highbulp's wife and consort, Lady Drule. The lady, accompanied by a gaggle of other female gully dwarves, had just returned from an expedition into the Halls of the Talls, in search of something — some said it was roast rice and stew bones, which could sometimes be scrounged from the kitchens when the Talls were distracted; some said it was feathers; some said nice, juicy mice; and most simply didn't remember what it was.
Some things — as far as the Aghar were concerned — were worth remembering, and some were not. Reasons for actions already taken rarely qualified as worth remembering. It was the excursion itself that mattered.
Lady Drule and others had gone as far into the halls as they dared — through middens and pantries, rooms and shops, through a dining place where Talls were having a meal and talking about someone's birthday, and into interesting places where there were cots, personal effects cabinets, and various things just lying about.
The Aghar ladies, instinctively adept at scurrying through half-open doors and under tables, at hiding in shadows and creeping unobserved among the ranked feet of larger species, had quite a successful expedition, by gully dwarf standards. Most of them returned before nightfall — whether all of them returned was not known, because none of them knew for sure how many had gone in the first place — and the treasures they brought back to This Place were a source of great excitement for at least several minutes.
There were two clay pots with morsels of food in them; an assortment of gnawed bones; an ornamented sandal far too large for the foot of any Aghar; two white linen robes, each of which would make marvelous clothing for eight or ten Aghar; a keg nearly half full of Tall ale; half a roast duck; a mirror; a footman's pike three times as long as the height of Gorge III himself; two loaves of bread; a heavy maul; a potato; fourteen feet of twine; a chisel; a Tall warrior codpiece, which would make an excellent tureen for stew; and a complete dressed elk hide, with skull-pan and antlers attached.
This final treasure so delighted Gorge III that he claimed it as his own… after the scuffle.
Tossing aside his rat-tooth crown, Gorge pulled the elk hide over his shoulders, squirmed about beneath it for a bit, then emerged with the skull-pan on his head, huge antlers jutting above him. The remainder of the hide trailed far behind as he moved.
Never in his life had he felt so regal. He strutted around in a circle, demanding, "See! All look! Highbulp impres… pres… lookin' good!"
He was so insistent on showing off that a crowd gathered around him, elbowing aside Lady Drule and the others who had actually acquired the treasure. Murmurs of "See Highbulp," "Mighty Gorge," and "Who th' clown in th' elk suit?" arose among them.
"All kneel!" Gorge demanded regally. "Make obei… obe… make bow to Great Highbulp."
A few of his subjects dropped to their knees obediently, though most had lost interest and wandered away by then. Some of those behind him, kneeling on the trailing length of the elk hide, discovered that it was a very comfortable mat. Two or three promptly lay down upon it and went to sleep.
"Pretty good," Gorge nodded, satisfied at the attention he was receiving in his regal new garb. Then, "Uh-oh!" The weight of the great antlers above him tipped forward, off balance. The nod became a bow, the bow a cant, and with a tremendous clatter of antlers and oaths, the Highbulp fell on his face, buried completely beneath the great hide.
The opportunity was too much for some of his loyal subjects. Noticing those already asleep on its rearward expanse, others now crawled aboard and curled up for their naps.
With the hide thoroughly weighted down by sleeping gully dwarves, it was all that Gorge could do to crawl out from under it.
His wrath abated somewhat when a sturdy young Aghar came running from somewhere, shouting at the top of his lungs, and skidded to a halt before him. The youth was soaking wet and stained from head to toe — a deep, purplish red.
"Highbulp!" the newcomer gasped, panting for breath. "News from royal mine!"
"You from mine?" Gorge squinted at him. "What is mine?"
"Yes, Highbulp." The red-stained one grinned. "I Skitt. Work in royal mine."
"Fine." Gorge thought a minute. "What is work?" Shrugging, he turned away, trying to recall what had so irritated him just a moment before. Peering around, he walked into a splay of elk antlers and found himself thoroughly tangled.
Lady Drule hurried forward, shaking her head. "Highbulp clumsy oaf," she muttered, and began extricating her lord and husband from his dilemma.
"Highbulp listen!" the red-dripping miner insisted. "News from mine!"
Gorge was in no mood to listen, but Drule turned to the newcomer. "What news?" she asked.
"What?"
"News! News from mine! What news?"
"Oh" Skitt collected his thoughts, then stood as tall as a person less than four feet in stature can stand. "Hit pay dirt," he said. "Mother load. Real gusher."
"Pay dirt?" Gorge was interested now. "What pay dirt? Mud? Clay? Pyr… pyr… pretty rocks? What?"
"Wine," Skitt said.
Gorge blinked. "Wine?"
"Wine," Skitt repeated, proudly. "Highbulp got royal wine mine, real douser."
Drule finished the untangling of His Testiness from the elk antler trap, then strode to where Skitt stood and moved around him, sniffing. "Wine," she said. "From mine?"
"Whole mine full of wine," he gabbled. "Musta hit a main vein."
Drule stood in thought for a moment, then turned to the Highbulp. "What we do with wine?"
"Drink it," Gorge said decisively. "All get intox… intox
… inneb… get roarin' drunk."
"Dumb idea, Highbulp," a wheezy voice said. A tiny, stooped figure, leaning on a mop handle, came out of the shadows. It was old Hunch, Grand Notioner of This Place and Chief Advisor to the Highbulp in Matters Requiring Serious Thought.
"Drinkin' main-vein mine-wine not dumb, Hunch," the Highbulp roared. "Good idea! Got it myself!"
"Sure," Hunch wheezed. "Drink it all, then what? We all wind up with sore heads an' nothin' to show for it. 'Stead of drink it, trade it. Get rich."
"Trade to who?"
"Talls. Plenty of Talls pay good for wine. I say make trade. Get rich better than get drunk."
Drule found herself thoroughly taken with the idea of becoming rich. Visions of finery danced in her head — strings of beads, unending supplies of stew meat, matching shoes… a comb. "Hunch right, Gorge," she said. "Let's get rich."
Outreasoned and outmaneuvered, the great Highbulp turned away, grumbling, and began reclaiming his elk hide by kicking sleeping Aghar in all directions.
"Calls for celebration," Drule decided.
Hunch had wandered away, and the only one remaining to discuss such matters with her was the wine-stained mine worker. Skitt stood where he had been, not really paying much attention, because he had caught sight of the lovely Lotta, a pretty young Aghar female quite capable of making any young Aghar male forget the subject at hand.
Still, he heard the queen's statement and glanced her way. "What does?" he asked.
"What does what?"
"Call for celebration. What does?"
"Ah…" Lady Dr
ule squinted, trying to remember. Something certainly called for celebration. But she had lost track of what it was. Like any true Aghar, Drule had a remarkable memory for things seen, and sometimes for things heard, but only a brief and limited memory for ideas and concepts. The reasoning of her kind was simple: Anything seen was worth remembering, but not much else was, usually. Ideas seldom needed to be remembered. If one lost an idea, one could usually come up with another. She had an idea now. Turning, she shouted, "Gorge!"
A short distance away, the Highbulp kicked another sleeping subject off his elk hide, then paused and looked around. "Yes, dear?"
It was then that Lady Drule asked the question that led ultimately to that most historic of episodes in the legends of the Aghar of This Place: the Off Day. The question came from a simple recollection of something she had heard in the Halls of the Talls, during her forage expedition with other ladies of the court.
"Gorge," she asked, "when your birthday?"
It was the acolyte Pitkin who discovered that Vat Nine had been drained of its blessed contents — drained down to the murky dregs, which were beginning to dry and crust over. At first, he simply could not believe it. Making the sign of the triad, he closed the sampler port and backed away, pale and shaking, reciting litanies in a whisper.
"I have been beguiled," he told himself. "It is only an illusion. The vat is not empty. The vat is full."
Murmuring, he knelt on the stone floor of the great cellar and did obeisance to all the gods of good, waiting while his prayers eased the tensions within him, letting the light of goodness and wisdom flood his soul. Still shaken then, but feeling somewhat reassured, he climbed the stone steps to the catwalk and returned to the sample port of Vat Nine. With hands that shook only slightly, he unlocked it again, muttered one further litany, and opened the lid.
The vat was empty. Candlelight flooded its dark interior, illuminating the draft marks at intervals on the inner wall. A dozen feet below, shadowy in the reeking murk, drying dregs lay crusting, inches below the lowest draft mark. Pitkin's pale face went ashen. The vat could not be empty. It was not possible. Yet, there was no wine within.
Easing the sampler lid down again, he locked it and stared around the cavernous vault. From where he stood, on the catwalk, the great vats receded into shadows in the distance. Nine in all, only their upper portions extended above the hewn stone of their nestling cradles. Each of them was many times the size of Pitkin's sleeping cell four levels up in the Temple of the Kingpriest. The huge flattop vats seemed a row of ranked monoliths of seasoned hardwood, their walls as thick as the length of his foot. Each one nestling into a cavity of solid stone, the vats were like everything else in this, the greatest structure of Istar, the center of the world. They were the finest of their kind… anywhere.
The wines they held were blessed by the Kingpriest himself. Not personally, of course, but in spirit, in somber ceremonies performed by lesser clerics on behalf of His Radiance. For two and a half centuries the wines had been blessed. Every Kingpriest since the completion of the temple, at every harvest of the vines, had blessed the wines of the nine vats.
Symbolic of the nine realms of the Triple Triad — the three provinces ruled directly by Istar, the three covenant states of Solamnia, and the Border States of Taol, Ismin and Gather — the wines were part of the holy wealth. The best of vintage, produced entirely by human hands and made pure by the blessings of the sun, these were the wines of the nine vats.
The wines that were supposed to be in the vats, Pitkin corrected his thought. The wines that vats number one through eight did indeed hold — Pitkin had inspected them himself, as he did every morning — and that Vat Nine somehow did not.
His mind tumbled and churned in confusion. How could Vat Nine be empty? No vat was ever empty. These were no table wines. Readily available elven wines were used for routine. No, these wines were sacred, used only on rare occasions and only in ceremonial amounts. What was used was replenished by the stewards at regular intervals — always by the finest of human vintage from each of the nine realms.
Made of sealed hardwood, cradled in solid rock, no vat had ever leaked so much as a drop of precious fluid. And there was no way to remove any wine from any vat except by unlocking the sampler port. And only he had the keys. Pitkin wanted to cry.
Slowly, on shaking legs, he made his way to the sealed portal of the cellar vault. A hundred thoughts besieged him — approaches to explaining what he had found, to formulating apologies for such an unthinkable disappearance, to the wording of a plea for clemency — but none had any merit.
There was only one thing for him to do. He must simply report the disappearance of Vat Nine's wine and pray for the best.
"Wizardry," the second warder muttered, staring into the empty vat. "Evil and chaos. Mage-craft. Spells."
"Mischief of some sort," the high warder agreed, "but
… wizardry? Within the very temple itself? How could that be? There certainly are no mages here… save one, of course, but he is sanctioned by the Kingpriest himself. The Dark One would use no such mischievous spells. All the other wizards are gone-driven to far Wayreth. All of Istar has been cleansed of their foul kind."
"Then how can you explain this?" a senior cleric from the maintenance section insisted. "An entire vat of wine — four hundred and, ah, eighty-three barrels' count, by yesterday's inventory — it certainly didn't get up and walk out by itself, and there has been no cartage below the third level for the past week, not even porters."
"Thieves?" a junior cleric suggested, then turned pink and looked away as scathing glances fell upon him. It was well known that the Temple of the Kingpriest was inviolate. In all of Istar, in all of Ansalon, there was no edifice more theftproof.
"Only dregs," the second warder muttered, still staring into the drained vat. He prodded downward with a long testing rod. Its thump as it tapped the bottom of the vat was muted. "Waist-deep, drying dregs. How could this have happened, unless…" He lowered his voice. "Unless by magic? Dark and infidel magic."
From below the catwalk a curious voice asked, "Brother Susten, are you aware that you are wearing only one sandal?"
"I can't find the other one," the chief warder snapped. "Please concentrate on the matter at hand, Brother Glisten. This is no time to count sandals."
Far in the distance, beyond the vault doors, a loud, exasperated voice roared, "I'm tired of this game, you bubbleheads! I want to know who took it! Now!"
Heads turned in surprise. Several clerics hurried away toward the sound, then returned, shaking their heads. "It's nothing, Eminence," one of them said to the chief warder. "A captain of temple guards. He, too, has lost some part of his attire, it seems."
Again the irritated voice rose in the distance, "This has gone far enough! What pervert took my codpiece?"
"Gone," the second warder muttered, staring into the emptiness of Vat Nine as though mesmerized. "All that wine, just… just gone."
"Sorcery?" The keeper of portals rasped, staring in disbelief at the assembled clerics before him. "Magic? Don't be ridiculous. This is the Temple of the Kingpriest. Mage-craft is not allowed here, as all of you very well know!"
"Our accumulated pardons, Eminence," the chief warder said, shifting his weight from sandaled foot to bare foot and back, "but we have given this matter the most serious of study, and we can arrive at no other explanation."
The keeper of portals glared at them in silence for a long moment, then spread his flowing robes and seated himself behind his study table. He sighed. "All right, we shall review it once again. One: Even if magic were somehow introduced into the temple — and what mage would dare such a thing? — what purpose would be served by draining a vat of blessed wine?"
"Evil," someone said. "The purposes of evil, obviously."
"Two: His Blessed Radiance, the Kingpriest himself, oversaw the evacuation of the Tower of High Sorcery in Istar. Every last mage and artifact was removed, and every magic-user of any degree driven away �
�� not just from Istar but from the nine realms. The tower is empty, and its seals are intact."
"Dire evils have their way," someone said.
"There is the… Dark One," someone else whispered, then blushed and lowered his head, wishing he had not spoken.
"Three." The keeper of portals continued grimly, pretending not to have heard. "It is patently impossible for that wine to have disappeared — " He stopped, scowled, and blinked.
" — by any device other than sorcery," the chief warder finished softly, trying to look pious rather than victorious.
"Wizardry?" the master of scrolls whispered, shaking his head. White hair as soft as spidersilk trembled with the motion. Here in the shadows of his deepest sanctuary, where few beside the keeper of portals — and of course the Kingpriest himself — ever saw him, he seemed a very old man. Very different from the dignified and reverent presence who sat at the foot of the throne when the Kingpriest gave audience in the sanctuary of light.
Again the master shook his head, seeming very frail and sad as long as one did not look into his eyes. "After all these years… evil still confronts us in Istar."
"There is no other answer, August One," the keeper of portals said, sympathetically. For more seasons than most men had lived, the master of scrolls — next to the Kingpriest himself, the very epitome of all that was good and holy — had born upon his frail shoulders the weight of righteousness in a world far too receptive to wrong. Now he looked as though he might break down and weep… until he raised his eyes.
"Evil," the old man whispered. "After all we have done, still it rears its vile head. Do you know, Brother Sopin — but of course you do — that my illustrious predecessor, my own venerated father, died of a broken heart, realizing that even his strenuous efforts as advisor to His Radiance had not stamped out evil forever. He truly believed that such had been done, first with the Proclamation of Manifest Virtue, and subsequently by sanctioning the extermination of evil races everywhere. He believed, for a time, that we had succeeded, just as the third Kingpriest and his advisors believed that THEY had stamped out evil for good the day this temple was blessed in the names of all the gods — of good, of course," he added as an afterthought.
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