wasting time and start digging, Althalus.’
‘Yes, dear,’ he sighed, and very reluctantly thrust his shovel into the dirt.
The drought had made the soil very dry, so digging wasn’t really as hard as he’d thought it would be.
‘I wouldn’t throw the dirt so far down the hill, pet,’ Emmy suggested after a while. ‘You’ll have to shovel it all back in the hole when you’ve finished.’
‘What for?’
‘To keep somebody from finding the gold you’ll have to leave behind.’
‘I’m not going to leave any, Em.’
‘How do you plan to carry it?’
‘You’re sitting on him, love. He’s a strong horse.’
‘Not that strong, he isn’t.’
‘How much is there here?’
‘More than our horse can carry.’
‘Really?’ Althalus began to dig faster.
After about a half hour, he struck the flagstones Emmy had told him about. Then he widened out the hole he’d dug to give himself some more room. He leaned his shovel against the side of the hole, knelt on the stones, and began to probe between them with his bright steel dagger. ‘Exactly what am I looking for here, Em?’ he asked. ‘These flagstones fit together so tight that I can’t get my knife into the cracks.’
‘Keep looking,’ she instructed. ‘The one you want to find fits a little more loosely.’
He kept poking until he found it. The dirt the patient centuries had blown in had sifted down into the cracks between the stones, and it took him a while to dig it out with his dagger-point. Then he resheathed his dagger, took the shovel and began to pry.
The stone lifted out rather easily, followed by a rush of stale-smelling air. There was an open space of some kind below the flagstones, but it was too dark down there to see anything. He pried up another stone to let in more light.
There were tightly piled stacks of dust-covered bricks in the cellar, and a hot surge of disappointment came over him. But why would anyone take so much trouble just to hide bricks? He reached down through the hole and brushed the dust away from one of the bricks.
He stared at it in absolute disbelief. The brick which had been concealed by centuries of dust was bright yellow.
‘Dear God!’ Althalus exclaimed, brushing away more dust.
‘He’s busy right now, Althalus. Could I take a message?’
‘There must be tons of it down here!’
‘Told you,’ she reminded him smugly.
The gold had been cast into oblong blocks, each about the size of a man’s hand and slightly thicker. They weighed about five pounds apiece. Althalus found that he was trembling violently as he lifted the blocks out of the hole and laid them on the flagstones.
‘Don’t get carried away, Althalus,’ Emmy suggested.
‘Twenty?’ He said it with a great reluctance.
‘I don’t think the horse would want to carry any more.’
Althalus forced himself to stop at twenty of the gold blocks. Then he replaced the flagstone, shoveled all the dirt back into the hole, and uprooted a number of nearby bushes. He replanted the bushes in the freshly dug-up dirt to conceal his private gold mine.
Then he fashioned a couple of bags, put ten blocks of gold in each, tied them together and hung them across his horse’s back just behind his saddle. Then he remounted, whistling gaily.
‘You’re all bubbly this afternoon,’ Emmy noted.
‘I’m stinking rich, Em,’ he said exuberantly.
‘I’ve been noticing that for several days now. You’re long overdue for a bath.’
‘That’s not what I meant, little kitten.’
‘It should have been. You’re strong enough to curdle milk.’
‘I told you that hard work didn’t agree with me, Em,’ he reminded her.
They crossed the River Osthos late that afternoon and made camp on the Treborean side. To keep the peace, Althalus bathed, washed his clothes and even shaved off the past month’s growth of beard. Emmy definitely approved of that. They rose early the following morning, and three days later they caught sight of the walls of the city of Osthos. ‘Impressive,’ Althalus observed.
‘I’m sure they’ll be glad you approve,’ Emmy’s whisper sounded inside his head. ‘How did you plan to gain entry into the palace?’
‘I’ll come up with something. What’s the word for “stay away”?’
‘“Bheudh”. Actually “bheudh” means “to make someone aware of something”, but your thought when you say the word should get your meaning across. Why do you ask?’
‘I’ll have to go about on foot to locate certain officials, and I’d rather not have some rascal steal my horse. He’s very dear to me right now.’
‘I wonder why.’
Althalus rode some distance away from the road and, with Emmy’s instruction, he converted five of his gold blocks into coins marked with the idealized picture of a stalk of wheat which identified them as having come from Perquaine. Then he rode into the city, where he stopped by a clothier’s shop and bought himself some moderately elegant garments to disguise his rustic origins. Emmy chose not to comment when he emerged from the shop.
He remounted and made his way to the public buildings near the palace to listen and to ask questions.
‘I wouldn’t go anywhere near her, stranger,’ a silvery-haired old statesman advised when Althalus asked him about the procedure for gaining an audience with Arya Andine.
‘Oh?’ Althalus said, ‘why’s that?’
‘She was difficult before her father’s death, but now she’s graduated from difficult to impossible.’
‘Unfortunately, I have some business I have to discuss with her. I’d planned to talk with her father, the Aryo. I hadn’t heard that he’d died. What happened to him?’
‘I thought everybody knew. The Kanthons invaded us a month or so back, and they sent their mercenaries down here to lay siege to our city. Our noble Aryo led our army outside the walls to chase those howling barbarians off, and one of the scoundrels murdered him.’
‘My goodness!’
‘The murderer was captured, naturally.’
‘Good. Did Arya Andine have him put to death?’
‘No,
