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. 'Steadof 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 G.o.ds 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 rea.s.sured, he climbed the stone steps to the catwalk and returned to the sample port of VatNine. 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.

Slowly, on shaking legs, he made his way to the sealed portal of the cellar vault. A hundred thoughts besieged him - approaches to explaining what he had found, to formulating apologies for such an unthinkable disappearance, to the wording of a plea for clemency - but none had any merit. There was only one thing for him to do. He must simply report the disappearance of Vat Nine's wine and pray for the best.

"Wizardry," the second warder muttered, staring into the empty vat. "Evil and chaos. Mage-craft. Spells."

"Mischief of some sort," the high warder agreed, "but ... wizardry? Within the very temple itself? How could that be? There certainly are no mages here ... save one, of course, but he is sanctioned by the Kingpriest himself. The Dark One would use no such mischievous spells. All the other wizards are gone-driven to far Wayreth. All of Istar has been cleansed of their foul kind."

"Then how can you explain this?" a senior cleric from the maintenance section insisted. "An entire vat of wine - four hundred and, ah, eighty-three barrels' count, by yesterday's inventory - it certainly didn't get up and walk out by itself, and there has been no cartage below the third level for the past week, not even porters."

"Thieves?" a junior cleric suggested, then turned pink and looked away as scathing glances fell upon him. It was well known that the Temple of the Kingpriest was inviolate. In all of Istar, in all of Ansalon, there was no edifice more theftproof.

"Only dregs," the second warder muttered, still staring into the drained vat. He prodded downward with a long testing rod. Its thump as it tapped the bottom of the vat was muted. "Waist-deep, drying dregs. How could this have happened, unless ..." He lowered his voice. "Unless by magic? Dark and infidel magic."

From below the catwalk a curious voice asked, "Brother Susten, are you aware that you are wearing only one sandal?"

"I can't find the other one," the chief warder snapped.

"Please concentrate on the matter at hand, Brother Glisten.

This is no time to count sandals."

Far in the distance, beyond the vault doors, a loud, exasperated voice roared, "I'm tired of this game, you bubbleheads! I want to know who took it! Now!"

Heads turned in surprise. Several clerics hurried away toward the sound, then returned, shaking their heads. "It's nothing, Eminence," one of them said to the chief warder.

"A captain of temple guards. He, too, has lost some part of his attire, it seems."

Again the irritated voice rose in the distance, "This has gone far enough! What pervert took my codpiece?"

"Gone," the second warder muttered, staring into the emptiness of Vat Nine as though mesmerized. "All that wine, just ... just gone."

"Sorcery?" The keeper of portals rasped, staring in disbelief at the a.s.sembled clerics before him. "Magic?

Don't be ridiculous. This is the Temple of the Kingpriest.

Mage-craft is not allowed here, as all of you very well know!"

"Our acc.u.mulated pardons, Eminence," the chiefwarder said, shifting his weight from sandaled foot to bare foot and back, "but we have given this matter the most serious of study, and we can arrive at no other explanation."

The keeper of portals glared at them in silence for a long moment, then spread his flowing robes and seated himself behind his study table. He sighed. "All right, we shall review it once again. One: Even if magic were somehow introduced into the temple - and what mage would dare such a thing? - what purpose would be served by draining a vat of blessed wine?"

"Evil," someone said. "The purposes of evil, obviously."

"Two: His Blessed Radiance, the Kingpriest himself, oversaw the evacuation of the Tower of High Sorcery in Istar. Every last mage and artifact was removed, and every magic-user of any degree driven away - not just from Istar but from the nine realms. The tower is empty, and its seals are intact."

"Dire evils have their way," someone said.

"There is the ... Dark One," someone else whispered, then blushed and lowered his head, wishing he had not spoken.

"Three." The keeper of portals continued grimly, pretending not to have heard. "It is patently impossible for that wine to have disappeared - " He stopped, scowled, and blinked.

" - by any device other than sorcery," the chief warder finished softly, trying to look pious rather than victorious.

"Wizardry?" the master of scrolls whispered, shaking his head. White hair as soft as spidersilk trembled with the motion. Here in the shadows of his deepest sanctuary, where few beside the keeper of portals - and of course the Kingpriest himself - ever saw him, he seemed a very old man. Very different from the dignified and reverent presence who sat at the foot of the throne when the Kingpriest gave audience in the sanctuary of light.

Again the master shook his head, seeming very frail and sad as long as one did not look into his eyes. "After all these years ... evil still confronts us in Istar."

"There is no other answer, August One," the keeper of portals said, sympathetically. For more seasons than most men had lived, the master of scrolls - next to the Kingpriest himself, the very epitome of all that was good and holy - had born upon his frail shoulders the weight of righteousness in a world far too receptive to wrong. Now he looked as though he might break down and weep ... until he raised his eyes.

"Evil," the old man whispered. "After all we have done, still it rears its vile head. Do you know, Brother Sopin - but of course you do - that my ill.u.s.trious predecessor, my own venerated father, died of a broken heart, realizing that even his strenuous efforts as advisor to His Radiance had not stamped out evil forever. He truly believed that such had been done, first with the Proclamation of Manifest Virtue, and subsequently by sanctioning the extermination of evil races everywhere. Hebelieved, for a time, that we had succeeded, just as the third Kingpriest and his advisors believed that THEY had stamped out evil for good the day this temple was blessed in the names of all the G.o.ds - of good, of course," he added as an afterthought.

The master of scrolls raised rheumy old eyes - they seemed so at first glance - to gaze at his visitor. "He once even believed the tenet of the first Kingpriest, that by bonding the might of Solamnia with the spiritual guidance of Istar, the forces of evil could be driven from the world."

"It is regrettable, August One," the keeper said sorrowfully.

"Yes. Regrettable. I have said it before, good Sopin.

Evil is an abomination. Evil is an affront to the very existence of the G.o.ds, and of men. Yet how to eliminate it, finally and forever?" His question was rhetorical. He obviously had the answer.

"Yes, August One?"

"We know now - the Kingpriest himself must know as well - that evil cannot be conquered by unifying states and building temples. Neither by driving away pract.i.tioners of chaos, nor even by eliminating evil acts and evil races ...

though that has yet to be thoroughly tested, I understand."

"Such things take time, August Brother. Even the vilest of races resist extermination. As to the practices of evil men, when they believe they will not be found out ..."

"Time," the master of scrolls rasped, in a voice as dry as sand. "There is so little time, Sopin. This business of the wine missing, this willful and arrogant exercise of a sorcerous spell, right here in the holiest of places in this entire world ... Don't you understand it, Sopin? Don't you see what it means?"

"Ah ... well, it might be ..."

"It is a challenge, Sopin. Worse, it is a taunt. Evil is gaining strength in the world, because we have yet to kill it at its source!" The rheumy eyes blazed at the keeper, and now he saw the fire in them, the eyes of a zealot.

"August Brother! Do you mean - ?"

"Yes, Sopin. As has been argued before. It is time to go to the root of evil. The very minds of men."

The keeper went pale. "August Brother, you know that I agree, but is this the time for so drastic a policy? People are - "

"People are children for us to lead in the true path, Brother Sopin, at the pleasure of His Radiance, the Kingpriest." The master of scrolls gathered his robes around him, shivering. He was often cold, of late. "The Grand Council of the Revered Sons, Brother Sopin ... I believe they are all present now, in Istar? His Radiance has received their respects."

"They are all present, Highest. Each of the nine realms has sent a delegation for tomorrow's festivity, and all the members of the council are present, though I have word today that one of the high clerics is ill. None have been able to heal him. Perhaps tomorrow - at the time of the festivity - he will be better."

"As the G.o.ds of good will," the master of scrolls agreed, then looked up again at his a.s.sistant. "Ill? Which of them is ill?"

The keeper looked agitated. "Ah ... it is Brother Sinius,August One. The high cleric of Taol."

The master of scrolls stared at him. "Taol? The ninth realm? The one from whose realm came the disappeared wine?"

"The same."

"By the G.o.ds of ultimate good! There lies evil's perfidy, Sopin. It lulls us with subtlety until we expect all of its machinations to be subtle. Then, when we are lulled, it strikes - simple and direct. Through the blessed wine, it strikes directly at us. None can heal him, eh? I must speak of this to His Radiance himself, Sopin. Tomorrow's council of light ... there is business to discuss."

"It is the Kingpriest's birthday, August. Is such business appropriate?"