"What are you up to, Althalus?" Albron asked suspiciously.

"I want to prove to you that I really do have the wherewithal to hire the clans of Arum."

"You're keeping your gold in my armory?"

"Not exactly. We have to go through the armory to get to the place where I keep it, though. Take us through the door, Eliar."

"We go through here, my Chief," Eliar said, opening the armory door. Then he led them across the threshold into the tower room of the House.

"This isn't my armory!" Albron exclaimed, looking around in astonishment.

"No, it's not," Althalus replied.

"Where are we?" Albron's eyes were wild.

"It's a different sort of place, Albron. Don't get all excited. You're perfectly safe."

"We just took a sort of shortcut to get here, my Chief," Eliar said. "There's no danger here. This is probably the safest place in the whole world."

"This is what I brought you here to see, Albron," Althalus said, gesturing at the stout wooden kegs lined up along the curving north wall. "After you've seen what's in those kegs, we can go back to your castle."

Albron was still wild-eyed, and his hand was on the hilt of his sword. "What sort of-" He broke off quite suddenly when Bheid opened one of the kegs, reached in, and lifted out a handful of gold coins. The priest raised his hand and slowly let the tinkling coins cascade back into the keg.

"Pretty, aren't they?" Althalus murmured.

"Are all those kegs filled with-" Albron broke off as Bheid scooped more coins out and once again let them fall in that musical cascade.

"Why don't you look for yourself, Albron?" Althalus invited. "Open every keg. Pour them out on the floor, if you want. That's why we came here. It doesn't really matter how we got here. That's a little detail you don't need to concern yourself with. The point of this morning's excursion is to prove that I'm not trying to hoodwink you and the other Clan Chiefs. I do have gold, and I am prepared to spend it. Feel free to examine the coins. Bite them or tap them on the wall to make sure that they really are gold. I've been told to present my credentials to you, and I thought this might be the quickest way to do that."

Albron was thoughtfully bouncing one of the coins on his palm. "The weight's right," he mused. Then he examined the coin. "Newly minted, too. Are they all the same?"

"Look for yourself. It might take you a while, but we've got lots of time."

Albron let the coins in his hand spill back into the open keg. Then he opened several of the others and slipped both hands into each one. "Your credentials are very convincing, Althalus," he said. Then he laughed. "I feel like a little boy in a candy shop," he admitted. "Money's just a word, really. The actuality of this much gold is sort of staggering." He kept lovingly sliding his hands into the kegs. "I love the feel of it!"

"You're convinced that I've been telling you the truth?" Althalus asked.

"How could I not be convinced?" Then Albron almost reluctantly drew his hands out of the kegs and looked out the north window at the mountains of ice beyond the End of the World. "We aren't in Arum, are we?" he asked shrewdly.

"No, we aren't. We're a long ways from Arum." Althalus laughed. "Don't get any ideas, Albron. You can't lay siege to this House, because you'll never be able to find it."

"I wasn't thinking about that-well, not too seriously, anyway. It isn't wise to show an Arum that much gold all in one place at one time, Althalus."

"Would you like to see some of the rest of the House?"

"I think I would, yes. You've managed to stir my curiosity."

"Good. I'll give you the grand tour then, and we can talk about this and that as we go along."

"We'll wait here," Bheid said.

"I was just about to suggest that" Althalus replied, leading Albron to the door.

The two of them went down the stairs, and Althalus showed the kilted Arum Chief the dining hall and the bedrooms. "Quite luxurious," Albron observed.

Althalus shrugged. "Places to eat and sleep," he said indifferently.

"You seem to be in a peculiar mood today, my friend," Albron noticed.

"It's the House," Althalus replied, leading Albron down a long corridor. "I always feel different when I'm here."

"Do you come here often?

"This is only about the third time, but the first two visits were quite extended."

"That's a cryptic sort of answer."

"I know. It almost has to be that way, though. The House is something on the order of a temple, and I've been firmly told not to make an issue of that."

"You're taking orders from that young priest?"

"No. He takes orders from me. I get mine a bit more directly. You're a skeptic, Albron, and I've been ordered not to tamper with that. I didn't bring you here to try to convert you."

They continued down the corridor, opening doors and looking into empty rooms. "This is a very peculiar place, Althalus," Albron said. "It seems to go on forever, but almost all the rooms are empty."

"Only when I don't need them. If we happen to get company, I can furnish them."

"Don't you have any servants?"

"No. I don't need any."

"Trying to get information out of you is like trying to squeeze water out of a stone," Albron accused.

"I'm sorry. I've got quite a few restrictions hanging over me right now-trade secrets and all that sort of thing, you understand."

Albron looked pensive. "I think I should be alarmed about all of this, my friend, but for some reason, I'm not. I have no idea of where I am or how I got here, but oddly enough, that doesn't bother me in the slightest. I'm also getting some very peculiar notions."

"Oh?"

"It just occurred to me that you might just be the real Althalus."

"Is there an imitation one running around?"

"Very funny," Albron said drily. "All that joking about your name when we first met wasn't really a joke, was it?"

"Some of it was-but not all."

"You really are the same Althalus who robbed Gosti Big Belly some three thousand years ago, aren't you?"

"Actually it was only about twenty-five hundred. Don't make it any worse than it already is."

"How on earth did you manage to live so long?"

"I was sort of encouraged to keep on breathing," Althalus replied drily. "Are you really sure you want to hear about what happened?"

"Go ahead and tell me the story, Althalus. I'll decide how much to believe later."

"All right, then. I was a thief, Albron. That was back before men had learned how to make steel. Anyway, my luck had turned sour on me, and I was having a terrible time of it. I was passing through Arum, and I heard about how rich Gosti was, so I went to his log fort and entertained him with stories and jokes all through one winter. When spring came and all the snow melted, I robbed him-but believe me, that's not how I got those twenty kegs of gold. Gosti was a fat braggart who wanted the world to believe that he was rich. Most of his fabled treasure was nothing but copper pennies."

"I've always wondered about that," Albron admitted.

"You don't have to wonder anymore. Anyway, after I'd made good my escape, I met a man named Ghend, and he hired me to steal a book for him. The book was here in the House, so I came here. The Goddess Dweia was waiting for me when I got here. I didn't know she was a Goddess, because she appeared to be a cat."

"That same cat who rides in the hood of your cloak?"

"That's her. I called her Emerald because of her green eyes, and when she started talking to me, I was positive that I'd gone crazy. I got over that, though, and she taught me how to read. Then I spent all those years studying that book Ghend had wanted me to steal for him. I can do a lot of things that other men can't do because of all the time I spent studying that particular book. To keep this short, Emerald-or 'Emmy'-and I came out of the House last spring and started tracking down the people we needed: Eliar and the others. After we'd found them all, we came back here to the House for some fairly intense education, and that's when Dweia let us see who she rally is."

"I can't believe I'm listening to all of this," Albron said, shaking his head. "Worse yet, I almost believe it."

Althalus gave him a sly, sidelong look. "I'm a master storyteller, AIbron. It's one of the tricks I use to get close to rich people. I kept poor, fat old Gosti giggling for one whole winter just so that I could rob him." Then he looked around. The corridor seemed empty. He was almost sure, however, that it wasn't. "This is probably going to get me in trouble," he said then, "but out of courtesy, I think I should tell you that this conversation is almost certainly being manipulated."

"Manipulated? How?"

"I really wouldn't know exactly how, but you're asking all the right questions, and I'm giving you all the right answers. When Dweia told me to bring you here this morning, I thought she just wanted me to show you all those kegs of gold. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe the gold was just bait to get you here so that we could have this particular conversation. I'm almost positive that she's somewhere nearby, and that she's feeding you questions and feeding me answers. For some reason she wants you to know what happened here. She doesn't want to convert you, but she does want you to have certain information."

"Aren't you being just a bit overly suspicious, Althalus?"

"Use your head, Albron. Would anybody in his right mind believe the wild story I just told you?"

Albron laughed a bit sheepishly. "Now that you mention it..." He left it hanging in the air.

'Althalus! You stop that!' Emmy's voice crackled inside his head, and he laughed with sudden delight.

"What's so funny?" Albron asked.

"I just received some fairly snippy confirmation of what I was just saying," Althalus replied. "I was told in no uncertain terms not to pursue this any further."

"I didn't hear anything."

"You wouldn't have. Emmy talks to me in here." Althalus tapped his forehead. "She came up with that idea before we left the House last spring. I spent about half a year with this cat riding around in the hood of my cloak telling me exactly what to do. I didn't really need all those instructions; I can make up my own lies. But Dweia seems to have this overpowering urge to tinker." Althalus shrugged. "Of course she's female, and all women seem to be that way. Delegating authority seems unnatural to women. First they tell you to do something, and then they keep sticking their noses into it while you're trying to do it, and all they're really doing is getting in the way."

"Isn't talking about her that way going to get you into trouble?"

"What's she going to do to me? She needs me too much to set me on fire or turn me into a toad. She knows that I love her, and love's more important to Dweia than blind obedience or slavish fawning. She and I argue all the time, but argument's a form of playing, and Dweia spent so much time as Emmy the cat that playing's second nature to her."

"I think I'd like to meet her."

"Not if you want to keep your soul, you don't. I think the reason for this particular conversation has been to enlist your aid when the conclave meets. I'm not even going to mention religion. I'm going to talk about politics instead so that this whole thing sounds like an ordinary war. I guess I'm supposed to lie to them, and you're supposed to confirm those lies. You don't have to believe anything I've just told you-actually it'll probably be better if you don't-but for some peculiar reason, you have to know about it. Look at it this way, Albron. We're going to pull off a hoax. I'm doing it for religious reasons and you're doing it for money, but we're still in partnership; so it's important that we understand each other."

"Now you're starting to make sense, Althalus," Albron said, grinning broadly. "If we keep it on that basis, we'll get along just fine." He held out his hand. "Partners?" he suggested.

"Partners it is," Althalus agreed as they shook hands.

It snowed steadily for the two weeks following Chief Albron's visit to the House, and all of Arum turned white. The passes were all clogged with snow, and Albron's messengers to the other clans were obliged to literally claw their way through the drifts to return to the castle in central Arum.

"It's more or less as I'd expected, Althalus," Albron said one snowy afternoon when the two of them were alone in the Chief's study. "Most of the Clan Chiefs are coming to the conclave."

"Most of them?"

"There are ten clans altogether, but the clans of Deloso and Agus have sent excuses. I didn't really expect them to attend. Their lands are located over on the eastern fringe of Arum, and the rest of us think of them as more Kagwher than Arum. There's a lot of intermarriage back and forth across that frontier, so those two clans have never really been pure Arum. They're small clans, anyway, and they aren't very good warriors. I don't think we'll miss them all that much." He rolled his eyes upward. "I know I won't. I don't like Deloso, and I despise Agus."

"Oh?"

"They both spend all their time toadying up to the mine owners in Kagwher, because that's where all their money originates. Their clans are wholly committed to guarding the mines in Kagwher. They don't march, and they don't fight. They just stand guard. They're fat and lazy, and they're willing to work for short pay, since just standing around isn't very strenuous."

"I think we can get along without them. Are there any peculiarities about the other clans I should know about?"

"We're Arums, Althalus. We're all peculiar. We have no culture and very few manners. No Arum has ever written a line of poetry or composed a song. We're pure barbarians."

"I think you're being a little hard on yourself, Albron."

"Wait until you meet the others. I'm sure you'll immediately notice that we all defer to Delur. If it weren't for the fact that his clan's the largest in Arum, we wouldn't pay a scrap of attention to him. He's about eighty years old, and it pleases him to look upon himself as the Chief of the Clan Chiefs. The old fool even wears a crown. His clansmen are very good soldiers, so the rest of us put up with him. He's a tiresome, senile old windbag, but I'll fawn all over him and flatter him outrageously because he's the key to what we're trying to accomplish. Once I win Delur over, the rest will probably fall in line. We don't really need him personally, but we do need the number of good men he can put in the field."

"You know him, Albron, so I'll leave him to you."

"Good. That way I'll earn my commission."

"Commission?"

"You were planning to pay me a bounty for each Chief I recruit, weren't you, Althalus?"

"We can bounce that around later. Tell me about the other Chiefs."

"Gweti's clan is almost as large as Delur's, but Gweti's not very well liked. He's greedy and very stingy. He pays his clansmen the lowest wages in all of Arum, and he makes them buy their own weapons. His clansmen hate him, but they put up with him because he's their Chief. He's a scrawny fellow with greying hair and a pinched-in face. He spends most of his time counting his money, and he's got a musty sort of odor to him."

"And you don't like him, I gather."

"Whatever gave you that idea, Althalus?" Albron replied with mock surprise. "I'm almost certain that Gweti has his good points. Just because I've never seen any of them doesn't mean that he hasn't got any.

"Oh, I think I'd better warn you about Twengor," Albron continued. "He's big, burly, and belligerent. He'll pick a fight at the drop of a hat, so be careful what you say around him. He drinks too much, and his normal speaking voice is a loud bellow. He's got a bristly black beard that sticks way out in front of him, and I don't think he's taken a bath in the past dozen years. His clansmen would follow him into Hell, though. He's unbelievably lucky in a fight, and when he hires his clan out, it's the whole clan. He won't hire out a platoon or a battalion. With Twengor, it's all or nothing, and he personally leads his men."

"An enthusiast, I take it:?"

"At least an enthusiast, and his nephew, Laiwon, is almost as bad, so we have two clans of enthusiasts."

"They belong to different clans? Isn't that a bit unusual? I thought a clan was an extended family."