fictions. 'It will do for me, my lady,' he replied. 'Now, for matters of pay-'
Elana forestalled him by reaching into her leather coat and producing a small pouch. She dropped it on the table in front of him with a reassuring jingle of coinage.
'You'll find twenty five-crown pieces in the purse,' she said. 'Call it an advance. I now consider you to be in my employ. You'll receive the balance when you produce the book or convince me that it cannot be found in Raven's Bluff. If that is the case, I expect you to spend at least a month searching diligently for it-and I'll know whether you really look for it or not.'
'My lady, I normally require half the promised fee in advance-'
'Of course, dear Jack. And since you are so generously foregoing that requirement, I am prepared to offer the bonus of which we spoke. Generosity engenders generosity, true?'
Jack smiled. He found himself wondering whether Elana had another gold crown to her name or not, but for the moment he didn't care. If the job was as easy as he suspected, a hundred crowns was sufficient reward… especially with the bonus included. 'All who know me speak well of my generous nature, my lady. Of course I shall accept the arrangement you propose. Now, how shall I get in touch with you to report any progress I make?'
'I shall contact you when it becomes necessary,' Elana said.
'But it may be a day, or two days, or a week, or a month,' Jack said. 'I hardly know how long it will take me to find your book until I complete the task! And, to be perfectly honest, I can be very difficult to find sometimes.'
'I found you once. I can find you again when I need to.' Elana took another deep draught from her ale and stood up. She drew the back of her hand across her mouth and donned a pair of gloves, tugging them over her fair hands. 'I am afraid I have other business to attend to. I will find you when I need to speak to you, dear Jack. In the meantime… please exercise some discretion. I do not want it widely known that I seek the Sarkonagael.'
'I understand perfectly,' Jack said. Belatedly, he rose also. 'I am the very soul of discretion. You need not have any fears on that account.'
'Good,' said Elana. She drew up her hood and stalked away, graceful and purposeful all at the same time. Jack watched her go, bemused. He sensed that he was out of his depth in dealing with her, but at the same time, the Kuldath expedition had not gone as well as he would have liked, and he could always use the money. Still, something about her unsettled him. Working for competent and dangerous people was one thing, but Elana clearly regarded him as nothing but a temporary associate of no real account. She'd simply played with him the whole time, a cat toying with a mouse.
'I am not a mouse,' Jack laughed. He sat back down again and sipped at his ale, watching the crowd swirl and shout. He waited another hour and then went back to his room in Burnt Gables. A ruby, a purse of gold, a beautiful lady, and a mysterious mission, he mused. Perhaps this was not a bad night after all.
The next morning, Jack visited the disreputable sage Ontrodes, who kept his house in a particularly poor part of Shadystreets. Whistling a merry tune and dressed splendidly in soft dove gray and midnight blue, Jack pranced through the streets of the city, greeting all who passed by with mirthful grins and generous bows. The steady drizzle affected his spirits not in the least, and the mire of Shadystreet's muddy lanes and deceptively deep puddles did not slow his steps at all. He had a mystery to solve and a lady whose favors he sought. What more could he ask of a morning?
The home of Ontrodes had once been a small sage's tower, a cottage with a round stone turret nobly looking out over the Fire River across a green marsh filled with waterfowl. That had been close to a hundred years past. In the thirty-odd (or was it forty-odd?) years that the place had been in the care of Ontrodes, ramshackle wharves and rotten old warehouses had fenced in the riverbank, squalid hovels had encroached upon the sage's fields, and the tower proper had almost fallen over, leaving nothing but a tottering edifice perched precariously on the edge of utter ruin.
Jack rather liked the place; he thought it unassuming. He stepped up to the cottage door and thumped it soundly, careful not to knock too vigorously lest he precipitate the final demise of Ontrodes's home. 'Ontrodes! My friend! Awaken, and provide me the benefit of your advice!'
A long silence followed, then a clatter and a horrible sort of honking sound that might have been the old man clearing his throat. 'Advice?' coughed the old man from inside. 'I advise you to go soak your head in a piss-pot! I know your insolent voice, Jack Ravenwild, and you'll gain more wisdom in that fashion than you'll ever gain from me! Now, go away, and don't even think of returning until at least an hour past noon!'
'Have you been in your cups again, then, Ontrodes?'
'It is no concern of yours, Jack! Leave me be!' A rattle and a thump sounded from inside. The sage coughed loudly and mumbled more curses under his breath.
'Why, I am deeply concerned by the slightest illness in any of my friends,' Jack replied. 'My solicitous and compassionate nature demands no less. If you suffer from too much indulgence, perhaps I can find some way to improve your spirits.'
'That is the very problem!' Ontrodes suddenly appeared at the door, yanking it open with a grunt of effort. He stood there blinking, a short, paunchy man dressed in a wine-stained robe. White tousled hair crowned his red face, and a haze of untrimmed whiskers clung to his round jowls. 'I sell my learning for the benefit of all, yet vagrants like you come and pick through my knowledge like curs sniffing through a heap of offal, refusing even the courtesy of a proper payment. Thus am I compelled to buy cheap, miserable Ravenaar wine instead of some more noble brew from Procampur or perhaps even fair Chessenta. And I awaken with ten angry goblins holding a war dance inside my head! Now, unless you have good gold in your pockets and some cure for my screaming skull-ache, leave at once!'
Jack bowed deeply and offered his most earnest smile. He dropped a small purse with a handful of Elana's gold pieces in Ontrodes's hand, and then he drew from his blue doublet a small silver flask. 'Gold for your wisdom, and a fine elven brandy for your skull. The sublime bouquet is guaranteed to waft your perception to noble heights and charge your peerless mind with grand designs and astonishing visions.' He laughed aloud. 'If nothing else, I have improved your spirits, haven't I?'
The old sage slapped one meaty hand to his face and stood there for a moment as if to keep his brains from fleeing his head outright. Then he looked Jack in the eye. 'I can see that you have no mercy in your heart. You might as well come in, then.'
'Excellent!' Jack replied. He could feel a successful conclusion to his mission no farther away than a cheap brandy-flask and a terse, to-the-point discussion.
CHAPTER TWO
'So, my dear friend, whose wisdom knows no bounds,' Jack began, 'have you perchance ever heard of a book called the Sarkonagael?'
He lounged in a vast, overstuffed easy chair in the first (and only safe) floor of Ontrodes's tower. The tools of Ontrodes's trade-books both old and new, well-known and obscure, mundane and magical-stood in great stacks throughout the cramped chamber or threatened to spill out from crowded bookshelves. The stuffing of the chair reeked of mildew, and a pile of tiny mouse droppings was located atop one arm in the exact spot that Jack wanted to rest his hand. He deliberately noted the location of the offending material and kept his hand in his lap.
Ontrodes squinted in thought and allowed himself a swig of the brandy. 'Well, my dear boy, whose idle flattery knows no shame, I do not believe I have ever heard that name before.' The sage laughed harshly, which led to a small fit of coughing. 'You may have wasted your ten gold crowns and your cheap brandy this morning.'
Jack frowned. As far as sages went, Ontrodes was not very reliable. There was a reason he was widely known as the disreputable sage Ontrodes, but he worked for next to nothing, and for exactly nothing some of the time, since his constant dissipations required a steady stream of small amounts of cash. Adventurers, rogues, and other ne'er-do-wells with a shortage of funds could usually obtain some useful scrap of information from the sage, when a well-researched answer from a real sage might cost far more than they could afford. He waved his hand at
