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 Drule 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.
