Myth-Told Tales

With that as his exit line, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Shoalmirk in exile, turned on his heel and strode away.

'He is right about the value of money,' Nunzio said.

'But people, no matter of what stripe or shape, will do very strange things for money. In my experience, few creatures without pockets see much use in gold.

'Excepting dragons, of course,' he added, reaching into his pocket for a strip of jerky for me. I accepted it, and forewent my usual sluip in gratitude for his recognition of my species' affection for the imperishable and noble metal.

Dragons and gold have been inseparable in legend for millenia, but no one has ever asked us why we accumulate hoards of it in our own as well as other dimensions. We do not prize it for its purchasing value, since we do not buy that which we need. No, gold occupies a much simpler stratum in our culture. When dragonlets hatch out from their eggs, our mothers care for us while our fathers seek prey to feed us. During our earliest days, we can only consume soft meat, such as eggs and flesh pre-chewed for us by our doting parents (Yes, in spite of their fearsome reputation, dragons are as devoted to their offspring as any other intelligent being.) Soon, though, our baby teeth grow in. To hone them sharp enough to pierce skin, bone, and armor, we need substances to teethe upon that are resistive yet not hard enough to break juvenile dentition. Our mothers seek out and obtain soft metal for us to chew. Most minerals available are either toxic, like lead, or are prone to rust or corrosion, such as copper and steel. Therefore, the metal of choice is gold. A clutch of active youngsters can go through a large quantity until they are large enough to leave the nest. Even afterward, the sight or smell of the metal brings us back to times when we were happy and protected, so we amass a hoard of treasure to keep that feeling alive. We prize gold because it reminds us of Mother.

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