“B-but,” stammered the dwarf, “why can’t they build a roadway inn in the Drear, master?”
Zulkeh leaned back in his seat, clearly taken aback. “Why, because—” A moment’s silence. “Quite amazing. I don’t know the answer to that question. Most amazing.” He stroked his beard thoughtfully, gazing out the window onto the barren vastness of the Drear.
For many long minutes did the wizard muse after this fashion, until the Caravanserai had long since disappeared below the southern horizon. At length, Shelyid became so bold as to make a whispered suggestion to his master.
“Maybe you could ask one of these people on the coach, master. They’ve probably lived here for years.”
“Bah!” oathed Zulkeh. “Am I to waddle about in the swamp of empiricism, like a child in his sandbox? No, dwarf, the truth is found in books. The question is—which book?”
More long moments of silence. Then did the gleam of understanding come into the wizard’s eyes.
“Of course!” he spoke. “Shelyid, fetch me the Chronicle of Edward the Confusor.”
Shelyid blanched. “B-but . . . but.” He gulped. “Do I have to, master?” This last in a piteous wail.
A frown gathered on Zulkeh’s brow as quickly as the storm clouds of the north amass themselves about the awesome granite slabs of Mount Pud. “Do you question my command, gnome?” he demanded.
“N-no, but—but—” stammered Shelyid.
“Silence!” stormed Zulkeh. “Perform your duty as I bade you!”
Realizing that all resistance was useless, and quite obviously regretting the innocent question which had led him to such a pass, Shelyid sighed, gathered up his courage, and went to seek out the appointed tome in the wizard’s sack.
Now, the gentle reader is no doubt perplexed by this attitude on the part of the dwarf. Of course, it will have become transparent to the gentle reader through his perusal of the preceding pages of this chronicle that the dwarf Shelyid was not, shall we say, blessed with leonine audacity. Nonetheless, it must appear bizarre that Shelyid should exhibit such cravenness when faced with the routine task of extracting a volume from a sack.
Ah, dear reader, do not so malign the poor dwarf! His fear was well-founded. For remember, this was no ordinary sack! No, no. Any comparison between the wizard Zulkeh’s sack and the traveling pack of any common voyager would be mistaken in the extreme.
For this pack was a wizard’s pack, and that of a well-traveled and prodigiously learned wizard to boot. Thus not only was it voluminous—nay, huge—nay, elephantine—in its proportions, containing as it did every single item of every bizarre description which the mage had accumulated in his long and varied lifetime; not only was the internal ordering and arrangement of that multitude of sorcerous materials mazelike in its dimensions; not only was it filled with many a noisome specimen, many a sharp instrument, and many a perilous artifact; not only was all this true, but Shelyid must have known as well, dim-witted though he was, that the many days of arduous and jostling travel would inevitably have rearranged the objects of the interior into a new kaleidoscope in which he stood a fair chance of losing his way for days, and would as well have brought to sullen life the divers intelligences (not all of them animate) which lurked therein.
Mind you, in most instances no problem was posed in extracting the object of Zulkeh’s desire from the pack. For the wizard, like all professional men—though he would have bitterly challenged this statement—relied for the most part upon only a small portion of his accumulated treasures. For just as a scholar may have shelf after shelf in his library lined with the most obscure tomes, journals and scrolls, yet does he still rely for the most part on a handful of essential works: the encyclopedias, the classics, and so forth. So it was also with the wizard, and when Shelyid had packed up the sack, he had taken great care to place these items of common usage at or near its surface. But now, it seemed, his preparations had been in vain. Into the heart of the interior must he go!
And so it was that Shelyid went into the sack, in that bouncing coach on its way to Prygg, and did not emerge for many hours. Alas, dear reader, our tale lengthens overmuch already, and so we cannot chronicle Shelyid’s adventures that day. Alas! For verily those adventures were epic in their scale!