feast to us.' Ugmug wavered. Well…' said he. But then his niece stepped forward. Miss Inch. She was young, fierce, beautiful, and ferociously intelligent. Ugmug fell back a pace, for he was more than a little frightened of her.
'Don't listen to these people,' said Miss Inch. 'They've got goods to trade. Swords. Jerkins. Boots.'
'Well then,' said Heth, 'I suppose I can go barefoot if I must. Would my boots buy a meal for the five of us?' Yes,' said Ugmug.
'No!' said Miss Inch. We can do better than that. Charge what the market can bear! He'll sell his boots for half a meal just for himself. He has to. He's got no choice. So why should we sell our foodstuffs cheaper?'
Woman,' said Heth, appalled at her attitude, 'have you no charity?'
'Altruism,' said Miss Inch, 'destroys the basis of economic prosperity, which is that I should be free to exchange my best for your best at terms agreeable to us both. So give us your boots! You'll get a fist of bread in return.'
'Those terms,' said Heth, slowly, 'are not agreeable to me.'
'Hal' said Inch. Wait till tomorrow! Hunger will bring you to agreement by then if not sooner.'
'Do you think to enslave me through hunger?' said Heth.
'What's this nonsense about slavery?' said Inch. You're perfectly free to come and go as you please, buy or sell, borrow and lend, go into business, open a bank or float a company. You call that slavery?! Rubbish!'
Heth thought her a cold, cruel, vicious woman. But he was wrong. She was an economist of the laissez-faire variety, dedicated to the highest principles of individual freedom and personal responsibility. She refused him charity since she knew such welfarism would undermine his initiative, take away his incentive to work, and make him into a lazy good-for-nothing dole bludger.
As Heth had never met an economist before, he entirely failed to recognise what he was up against. He still thought he could beg at least a little bread before sunset.
'Woman,' he said, 'think what you would want for yourself if you were in my position.'
'I'd never be in your position,' said Inch smugly. I'd never emigrate until I had sufficient means to support myself in a new country.'
'I'm not an immigrant!' said Heth. 'I'm a soldier, a fighting man, a patriot. A supporter of King Tor.'
'Tor!' said Inch, in a voice which made Heth realise immediately that he'd made a big mistake. The ogre?! You support him? Don't you realise his government built roads and sewers, ran lighthouses, opened a university and built a hospice in Cam?' 'Is that so terrible?' said Heth.
'Of course it is!' said Inch. 'Government should take care of the law and the defence of the realm, and that's that. Let the market look after the rest! These Flame-worshippers have got the right idea. They're not spending so much as a clipped sping on the roads.' Then the roads,' said Heth, heavily, 'will fall into ruin.'
'If they do,' said Inch, 'that will prove there was no justification for them in the first place, in terms of the market.'
This debate could have gone on all day, as Heth, despite his wretched condition, had found fresh and fiery energies for debate now that his beloved King Tor had come under attack. However, at that stage Jarl returned, and, with help from Elkin and Glambrax, dragged Heth away.
So, still hungry, and disgusted by their reception, Sarazin and his party began to trudge back the way they had come, heading for the Towers of X-n'dix. 'What happened?' said Sarazin. Heth explained.
While the doctrines espoused by Miss Inch were alien to Heth, they were well known to much of the rest of the world, for their originator was of course the great
Yan Nard, one of the Nine Immortals of history. These ideas were not entirely unfamiliar to Sarazin, for Lord Regan's own beliefs owed much to Yan Nard's teachings.
'What this ignorant peasant woman doesn't under- stand,' said Sarazin, 'is that such arguments only apply within a stable social context. They don't hold good in emergencies.'
An interesting assertion! What would Miss Inch have said in reply? It would have made, perhaps, a historic debate – but Jarl refused Sarazin permission to return to the hamlet to start it.
'We'll not get anything out of these people whatever we say or do,' said Jarl. 'So let's make do with what we've got.' 'Which is nothing!' said Sarazin.
'No,' said Jarl. 'We must have got some information, at least. Well, Heth – what did you learn?'
'A little' said Heth. 'Boats must run from here to Stokos, for all that they claim a landing's impossible on the shores of X-zox.' 'How did you find that out?'
'Because the talk turned to Stokos, and it's clear these people know what happens there. Worse, they see no wrong in Gouda Muck and his gang of lunatics.' 'Tell me more,' said Jarl.
Sarazin, now sulking, paid little heed to the conversation which followed. He was busy conjuring with fantasies in which he wrecked bloody vengeance upon the. people of X-zox. He only abandoned these play dreams when his party began the sweat-gasping climb up the near-sheer league-length heights of the Towers of Castle X- n'dix.
Evening shadows were falling by the time the five made it to the nearer of those Towers: the Lesser, which stood to the west of the Greater, and was therefore invisible to the east. Seen from a distance, the Lesser Tower looked tiny. But up close it was impressive enough in terms of size – though the style left more than a little to be desired. Sarazin thought: -It looks like a weapon. A giant's club.
The Lesser Tower was circular in section, its diameter widening from roughly thirty paces at ground level to thrice that at the top, which was ten times manheight from the ground. Those proportions made the tower seem heavy, unwieldy, overbearing. For a moment, Sarazin thought it was falling – then realised that the impression of movement came from the slow-streaming evening clouds.
Glambrax scampered ahead of the others, grabbed a dark-purple thigh-bone which projected from the tower, hauled himself up and kissed a skull the colour of polished mahogany. In the dying light of the evening, Sarazin saw the entire tower was built of skulls, bones, gargoyled heads, fangs, claws, veined wings, and other pieces of both human and alien anatomy. Painted?
His fingers caressed the nearest skull. It was dark, dark red, dark as blood drying towards black. Anatomically correct, right down to the close-stitched joints between the skullbones. His fingernail bent as he tried to scratch away the colour. He tried it with the tip of a knife. 'Metal,' he said.
'Or pottery,' said Epelthin Elkin. 'Pottery!' said Sarazin. I'm not daft enough to believe that.' 'The Dissidents,' said Elkin, 'were masters of ceramics.'
'Did they work ever in Selzirk?' said Sarazin. This reminds me of the roof of my mother's High Court. Also of a certain monument in Libernek Square.'
The Dissidents were patrons of the arts,' said Elkin. 'They may well have fostered talent which later expressed itself elsewhere.'
Sarazin – wondering if perhaps Elkin had been a Dissident himself – studied the gloomy colours of the wallwork. Waterweed green, squid purple, murder red, mahogany, lead, anthracite, pumpkin and plum.
'Whatever this is made of, one could have wished that the colour scheme had been somewhat more sophisticated. If this was the art they patronised it leaves much to be desired.'
'Ah,' said Elkin, 'doubtless they would have welcomed a maven like yourself to advise them in matters of taste.'
'Are you mocking me?' said Sarazin, the touch of anger in his voice suggesting the final triumph of hunger over wit, of fatigue over tolerance.
'Doubtless he means,' said Jarl, 'that only a fool would stand here talking colours when we've our lives to lose and a world, perhaps, to win.'
With that, he began circling the Tower, looking for a gate. He found nothing, and returned to the others disgruntled. 'Where's the door?' said Jarl. 'Right in front of us,' said Elkin. So Jarl tried the wall with a word: 'Open!' But no door opened.
'Lead friend Heth out of earshot,' said Elkin, 'and I'll attend to this.'
That he did, a single Word of his causing part of the sculptured wall to melt away. Within, red light breathed from dragon mouths in legion, showing them the interior of the Lesser Tower of Castle X-n'dix.
They entered with swords drawn, for they had no idea what they might find within.
