Myth-Told Tales m-13

by Robert Asprin

  I sniffed through the bars of the door, to the discomfiture of the guards both inside and outside the vault I could tell that the day's takings had come from a multitude of dimensions. The pile of gold gleamed invitingly. I am afraid that the avid gleam in my eyes made the Klahds on duty very nervous. Quite a quantity of it smelled of dragon, meaning that at one time it had come from a hoard possessed by one of my kind. Since dragons never give away any of their amassed wealth, I only hoped that it had been obtained by stealth that did not result in harm or death to its possessor. To put it mildly, I would take against that. Still, the strange scent was not that of a dragon. It seemed that it should be familiar to me, but I just could not place it.

  “Sirs, sirs!” A squeaky chorus of voices came from above. I looked up to see a small flight of Shutterbugs sail out of the air and land on the colorful display of story-books beside the Treasury.

  “There you are,” Guido said, greeting the black and silver insects. These were denizens of Nikkonia. Their especial talent was the ability to capture an image on the sensitive film that lined their wings. A trained magician could transfer these images to larger pieces of parchment. “How come you didn't report in when I got here, Koda?”

  Koda, the largest of the Shutterbugs, rubbed at his nose with the tip of his foreleg. “That Klahd is distrustful of us, sirs. He swats at us.”

  “Yeah, he's a regular xenophobe,” Guido said. “I already caught that. Anything new to report?”

  Koda turned to his number. They each spread out one wing, and small scales sifted down onto the bookshelf. “Nothing of much helpfulness, good sirs. The sight lines are not good, and the light levels are low. On the night of the last attack, we saw nothing at all, though we have taken many images, as you see. We wish to please Don Bruce!”

  “You're good employees,” Nunzio said, soothingly, to the agitated Shutterbug. “Just keep on doing the good work you've been doing.” He and Guido picked up the small, translucent cells and held them up to the light “I don't get it. What kind of monster have you ever heard of that can't be seen or smelled or heard, but can crunch up a stone pillar?”

  “I dunno,” Guido said. “One thing I learned, once we started workin' with the Boss, and here I am not speakin' of Don Bruce, is that there's way more out there than either of us will ever find out in our lifetimes. This, though, is not one of those things. We need to figure this out, and pronto!”

  I turned back for one more scent of gold, but I felt a tug at my leash.

  “C'mon, Gleep, boy,” Nunzio said. “We will stake out this place tonight. In the meantime, I know a little place that does wyvern parmigiana like Mama used to make.”

  At precisely the evening hour of nine, gargoyle mouths attached to pillars and sconces around the vast shop all emitted the following announcement at once.

  “Attention, please, guests of his royal majesty, King Petherwick. Thy visit, alas, draws to a close. Within five minutes the doors will be locked, and for security's sake, thou must be on the other side of it. Pray carry the goods thee wishes to purchase to any of our willing servants at the desks near the front, and they will count up thy expenditure for today. We wish to tender to thee our most sincere thanks that thou have visited King-Mart, and prithee have a nice day.”

  Guido put down the ceramic Kobold-shaped nightlight that he had been examining at the head of aisle 2.

  “Anything, Gleep?” he asked.

  The two enforcers, knowing the keenness of my sense of smell, had instructed me to sniff the inside and outside of the Treasury, and to compare the scents I found there with those of any of the customers. Nunzio's assessment was that the criminal would be unable to resist returning to the scene of the crime.

  “Especially with all that nice gold piling up,” he said.

  “Too temptin',” Guido agreed. “How about it, little fellah?”

  “Gleep,” I said, ruefully.

  I had just finished escaping for the eighth time from a family of Deveels who had been shopping for a birthday present for their daughter, a four-year-old future diva who screamed out her displeasure at anything offered to her by her increasingly desperate parents. She had decided upon first entering the store and spotting me that I would be the ideal present, and nothing she had been shown in the interim, a very long forty-five minutes, had dissuaded her. At the moment, she was hanging over her father's shoulder, crying and pointing at me, as he paid for an expensive doll and a lace-trimmed dress. I was forced to assume the Deveels' innocence on two counts. First, that they bore no scent that I could associate with the ravaged Treasury, and second, that the parents, unless they were geniuses at dissimulation and advanced multitasking, could not possibly have been “staking out the joint,” as Guido put it, while they were trying to control their brood. I examined once again the area surrounding the Treasury and the aisles leading up to it. Nothing seemed out of place. I was perplexed.

  The little Deveel and her family were at last ushered out and the door locked behind them by exhausted-looking guards. A couple of young women with brass cones on poles snuffed out three out of every four sconces. A team of sweepers in cross-gartered trews and floppy leather shoes swabbed the floor and emptied all of the wastepaper baskets. A matched team of four men in mail and tabards marched in formation around the Chancellor of the Exchequer as he gathered up the day's take from each of the sales desks and shut them into a small strongbox. Within half an hour, an armed team of guards arrived, escorting a wagon with a locked chest upon it, the proceeds from the other thirteen King-Marts spread out across the Bazaar. Howadzer counted up the proceeds and escorted it to the cage at the rear of the store.

  We followed. In the gloom, the Treasury stood out like a beacon. The crystal walls had their own sconces, unextinguished, which caused the whole thing to glow brightly. The gold inside glittered in the flickering torchlight.

  The lead escort came to the barred door of the Treasury and stamped his left foot twice.

  “Who goes there?” asked the first guard.

  “Me, Willis the Cobbler.”

  “No, you're not a cobbler tonight,” Howadzer said, impatiently. “You are a guard!” He shook his head. “Try again.”

  The sentry at the door of the Treasury scratched his head. “Er, all right. Who goes there?”

  This time the erstwhile cobbler rose to the occasion.

  “Willis the Guard! And some friends. Marit, from the sheep farm, only he's a guard tonight, too. Braddock from the Fishermen's Guild, and Corrie the Woodworker. He's my neighbor, and a dab hand with a chisel, let me tell you.” At an exasperated “ahem!” from Howadzer, he added, “They're guards, too.”

  “Well, pass, Willis, Marit, and you other two, and you, my lord,” added the sentry. “He sort of forgot to mention you, but hell get it next time, won't you, Willis?”

  “Sure, sure. Sorry, my lord.”

  “Not one of 'em was ever in uniform, or I'll eat my hat,” Nunzio whispered to his cousin.

  “Your hat is safe,” Guido whispered back. “While you were runnin' a check through the aisles a little while ago, I was readin' the employee roster, such as it is. To tell you the truth, it consists mostly of a list of names, professions, and villages, plus some comments penciled in on the side. Not real systematic, and it don't take into account strengths and weaknesses, not like what we keep in the Mob. These are all what you might call the little people who make everything possible.”

  We watched as the newcomers replaced the daytime guards, who stamped their left feet in unison, and marched away. The four night guards took up their posts as Howadzer upended the little chest and spilled coins on top of the pile already there.

  “Wouldn't it make more sense to leave the money in the boxes?” Guido asked the chancellor.

  “His majesty likes the public to see the amassing of King-Mart profits,” Howadzer said, with a grimace. “I think it is a risk, especially under the circumstances.”

  He took his leave.

  “Wel
l be right over there,” Guido said. “Just go about your business like we wasn't here.”

  We withdrew to a point that Guido had identified as an excellent coign of vantage inside a tent in a display of camping gear several yards distant. We had a good view of the entrance to the lighted tower. The guards were notably nervous, knowing that they would be under constant scrutiny. They fidgeted and glanced at one another, whispering. Guido put up with this for fifteen minutes or so, then he stormed out of the tent, and lowered his face until it was nearly touching theirs.

  “Awright, you mugs,” he barked. “Tenn-HUTT! Eyes forward! Backs straight! No talking' in the ranks. I don't want to hear another peep outta you guys unless it's to tell me that the monster's eatin' your leg. You got me?”

  “Yes, my lord!” they chorused.

  “I ain't your lord,” Guido snarled. “I work for a livin'! Now, pay attention! You're guardin' the king's gold!”

  He stomped back to the tent.

  The guards became stalwart, silent, and upright. If they slewed their eyes sideways at one another now and again, Guido pretended not to notice.

  Up in the rafters, my keen hearing detected the rustle of the Shutterbugs' wings as they flew about taking images.

  Hours passed. Dinner was long past, and my stomach emitted rumblings audible in the silence of the aisles. At each emission, Guido and Nunzio removed themselves to the extreme other end of the tent. At the sound, the guards shifted from foot to foot, but they kept their eyes forward, and their right hands on sword hilt or spear haft. If they had been responsible for the theft of gold, they would not repeat their pilfering tonight, not with the eyes of the enforcers upon them. I was more curious to see the beast that had left the scent on the aisle floor and on the pillar of the king's audience chamber.

  In the darkest hour, I heard the hiss of feet on the tiles.

  I sprang up and shot out of the tent. Guido and Nunzio barely had time to don their hats and follow me. WHAM!

  By the time they caught up with me, I was standing on the intruder's chest, glaring into his face. Guido held a torch aloft and looked down into the perpetrator's face.

  “Lord Howadzer! Gleep, let him have some air.”

  I realized my mistake and hastily vacated the chancellor's ribcage.

  “Gleep!” I said, and licked his face by way of apology.

  “Pthah!” he said, wiping his visage vigorously. “I was only coming in to see if everything was all right! Is this how you run a security check, by jumping on your employers?”

  “When they come upon us unawares in the middle of the night, we do,” Guido said, replacing his miniature crossbow in his inside breast pocket. “Gleep did exactly what I would have expected him to do. You didn't announce yourself, and I would have heard footsteps louder than a tiptoe myself.”

  “I still don't like it,” the chancellor said. With a disdainful look at me, he turned on his heel and marched away. His retreating footsteps were twice as loud as the approaching ones. Nunzio and Guido looked thoughtful.

  “I do not like that guy,” Nunzio said. “He is just too self-righteous for his own good.”

  No further intrusions marked our night of surveillance.

  In the morning, the blare of trumpets heralded the arrival of King Petherwick. With heralds and pages trotting ahead of him, his majesty made a visit to the Treasury.

  He was accompanied by Lord Dalhailey and a handful of attendants.

  “We are most pleased to see that no one was hurt overnight,” he said. “And my gold is safe!”

  He patted the pile of coins. With a clang, it shifted and collapsed in on itself. It was hollow! Petherwick let out a wail.

  “My gold! The monster must have come up through the floor and stolen it!” He rounded upon the enforcers. “You were supposed to prevent this! I want reimbursement for every coin that went missing! Lord Howadzer will make up a reckoning. Your organization will make me restitution, as per our agreement.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Nunzio said. “Naturally, we hope to recover your gold.”

  The Chancellor of the Exchequer looked harried, but the Minister of Marketing looked secretly pleased. I remarked upon the expression. Perhaps it was a sign of a rivalry between the two lordlings.

  “We were supposed to keep an eye out for a monster that was causing loss of life,” Guido said. “The Shutter-bugs saw nothing. We saw nothing.”

  But I smelled something. That elusive scent touched my nostrils, and I went on alert. Determined to track it to its source, I dragged Nunzio behind me on my leash.

  Sniff, sniff sniff sniff!

  The enforcer's voice behind me was encouraging. “Find anything, boy? Whatcha got there, eh?”

  Guido and the chancellor followed in our wake as I raced up the aisle. A memory was stirring. I couldn't really place my claw upon it, but I know I had smelled it before. But in a moment I should see the source, and my mystery would be solved!

  Just before the display of cleaning products, the scent terminated without a clue as to whence it had come. I looked around forlornly.

  “What's the matter, boy?” Nunzio asked, dropping to a crouch beside me.

  “I lost the scent,” I said. My woeful admission came out as “Gleep!”

  Howadzer turned up his fleshy nose.

  “Hmph! His majesty told you that cuddly-looking dragon would be of no use.”

  “So, tell me about the guys who were killed,” Guido said, loitering about on ale break with a few of the Treasury guards.

  “Like us, they worked for my lord chancellor,” said a neatly turned out Klahd with a dark mustache. “Each of them went out to respond to noises we heard in the aisles, and didn't come back.”

  “Both of them were on nights when we had guys from Marketing with us, wasn't it?” asked a ginger-haired fellow.

  “That's right,” the mustachioed male said. “They went out, too, but they weren't hurt, or even killed.”

  “Interestin',” Guido said. “Ill have to keep an eye on the marketin' department.”

  Two more nights passed, uneventfully except for worrying withdrawals of gold from under our noses. I myself lay upon the threshold of the Treasury to forestall the arrival of the monster. My presence did little to instill confidence in the hearts of the guards, since they seemed to find me more of a threat than the invisible menace that had killed two of their fellows.

  Guido's words about the marketing department had aroused my interest. As a result, any time new personnel came on shift, I inspected them and the weapons they bore closely. None of them bore the scent of Klahdish blood. None of these men were involved. The second night, four Klahds whom I did not recognize from previous visits took up their stations. Guido, Nunzio, and I made ourselves comfortable on woven lounge chairs from the outdoor furniture department. Nothing seemed to be happening. I was disappointed that our vigilance was failing to pay dividends in intelligence.

  In the early hours toward dawn, voices at a distance from us in the dimly lit store broke the silence. Guido and Nunzio rose as if to check out the disturbance, but I recognized the voices. They were Lord Howadzer and Lord Dalhailey. I made a point of cocking my head, then stretching luxuriously and settling down again upon my rattan couch.

  “Guess it's nothing' to worry about,” Nunzio said, sitting down again. “Ugh! We have to speak to King Petherwick about real, live pest control.” He stamped his shiny shoes down on the tiles.

  “What's the matter?” Guido asked.

  “Bug ran right over my foot!” He continued to step, but his quarry eluded him. “Fast little monster!” CRUNCH! “There.” He pointed triumphantly. “Got it.”

  I caught the scent and scooted forward to slurp up the squashed body. ‘Never miss an opportunity to try a new taste sensation’ is my motto. I swallowed the morsel, and stopped, jaws agape. “You okay, little buddy?” Nunzio asked. I turned to lick his face in delight Light had dawned!

  I realized I should not have been inspecting only
the customers, but the merchandise! One of the rakes smelled of Klahdish blood. It had been washed, but that was not enough to remove the scent for one with such as sensitive a sense of smell as mine.

  I hearkened back upon my earliest dragonlet memories. The flavor of the titbit had reminded me of a lesson my mother had taught me and my siblings when I was but fresh out of the egg. She had brought some of these creatures back to our nest to teach us that there was a beast that was feared even by dragons for its insidiousness.

  Goldbugs!

  Goldbugs are the scourge of dragons, because they eat gold. They do, in fact, consume and digest it They crave even tiny, minuscule morsels of the precious metal, and can winkle it out of even the tightest confines, destroying anything that might keep them from their favorite comestible. I realized in a flash of enlightenment that would explain the “bite mark” that had been taken out of the pillar. If someone who had handled gold, such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had touched the wall, it would have left a trace that was irresistible to the little pests. They would have swarmed up to the handprint, invisible to all but them, and chewed the stone until they had every atom of gold safe in their bellies.

  They left a mark that played well into the grasp of the thief or thieves, who were able to spread rumors of a monster on the loose, and so distract attention from the series of burglaries that had been committed directly under the nose of the employees and lords of King-Mart! Since the bugs had been intercepted before they had walked very far, that spoke of a mortal agent, one of above-animal intelligence. Since all the robberies took place at night, the culprit could not be a customer. It had to be one of the staff. Guido was quite correct when he stated that he believed this to be an inside job. Somehow an employee, or more than one, had brought it to bear upon King-Mart and commit depredations against same for the purposes of theft. But whom?