Myth-Gotten Gains

Hylida clapped her hands. "I have seen a wonder today! A sword that talks! Is that your request, green-scaled one?"

I felt doubly stupid, now. "Uh...yeah. That is it."

"Then I am happy to tell you you have succeeded! Chin-Hwag is here."

"Oh, yes, Aahz," Kelsa said. "I told you I saw her. Would I lie?"

"Lie, no," Asti said, exasperatedly. "Be mistaken, constantly."

"I always see true! Much better than someone who poisons people by accident!"

"If you don't mind," the Book said, aheming for attention, "but I have a record of all of your errors over the centuries..."

"More wonders!" Hylida said, happily. "A Book that talks! Brothers and sisters, we must celebrate!"

The Toadies jumped up again, and began dancing, more vigorously than before. The people outside rose and started shouting. They banged pots and pans together, shook mara-cas, and danced all around the square.

Bam! Boom! Zing! Bom!

"Stop it!" I shouted. No one paid any attention to me.

"Hey, this is fun!" Buirnie said, through his little window. "Mind if I join in? Zildie, from the top! A-one, a-two, a-three..."

The spotlight hit his case. The nimble leg of the drum flicked it open, and the Flute joined in the chanting on the backbeat. The people stared at the solid-gold Fife for one moment, then accepted it as yet another miracle to celebrate. He led them in singing a rondo with a catchy rhythm. I sat with my arms folded, waiting for it all to blow over, but Calypsa

started to get into it. She sprang up and started to dance, kicking and twirling. The locals grabbed her hands and swung her into their circle. The noise reached epic levels.

"Enough, already!" I bellowed.

Buirnie's playing died away with a whine.

The crowd paused to stare at me.

I glared at Sister Hylida. "If this is what you call private, then I want to see what you call an open town meeting!"

"Oh, it is an event of even greater enjoyment," the Toady nun said. She signed to her people to sit down. They groaned their disappointment, but they sat. Buirnie glared at me from underneath his spotlight. "But you were asking about Chin-Hwag. She has been my companion for several years now, and a great help to me in my mission. We help the poor and serve the hungry here. You see?"

She waved toward another ragged curtain. Beyond it was a room larger than the one we sat in. Several Toadies stirred huge, dented kettles over glowing embers. Steam rose from the pots. The aroma we had noticed on the way in came from there.

"We share good fortune as well as bad here," Hylida said, placidly. "But do not worry. No one will speak of what they see and hear in this place."

I didn't believe that, but I didn't have time to argue. We had business to accomplish and a road to hit. I cleared my throat.

"Abbess, we want to be fair. What will you take for the Purse?"

At my question, protests rose from the Toadies squatting in the house and outside the broken walls.

"Sell Chin-Hwag? I could never sell her!" Sister Hylida rose and removed a slab of plaster from the wall next to the altar. Behind it was a small alcove. I nodded approval. It would be hidden from potential thieves—who would suspect that the greatest fortune in any dimension might be concealed in those crumbling walls?—but easy to grab if the sister had to

evacuate her soup-kitchen in a hurry. "You must see her, of course. Here she is."

I expected a kind of shapeless bag, but the Endless Purse of Money was an inch-thick octagon of leather about six inches across, stitched together from strips of a very smooth hide that had been dyed ochre. A good deal of the surface was covered with silk embroidery so fine that it would take a magnifying glass to admire the detail. It wasn't pretty, but it was intricate. I realized that it was studying me as keenly as I was studying it. Just like the other treasures, Chin-Hwag's intelligence was out there where anyone could see it. A couple of embroidered horizontal ovals above the pull-strings around the mouth narrowed, and the purse-strings moved.

"By all that jingles, a Pervert! You keep your scaly hands off me, greenboy!"

Hylida looked scandalized.

"Watch your language, Chin-Hwag, he is a visitor!"

The embroidered eyes shifted.

"I can see what he is—a member of one of the greediest races in all the dimensions, after Deveels and a few other born felons. Find out what he wants, then send him away, swiftly."

"You misunderstand him," Calypsa said. "Aahz is most kindly helping me. He has no thoughts of wealth on his own behalf."

"Oh, don't listen to her," Asti interrupted. "He is out for money."

"Only what he is owed, by a debt of honor which I incurred," Ersatz said. "On behalf of our employer, whom you will come to know as a worthy being."

"Thanks a lot," I said.

The embroidered eyes moved around. "By clink and clank, Ersatz! I thought I felt my insides twisting! How many of you are here?"

"Five of us," Kelsa said. "Almost all of us who still exist."

"How peculiar and unwelcome a notion!" Chin-Hwag said.