Another Fine Myth by Robert Asprin

“Kid, think for a minute. If you were a doddering old wreck who couldn’t fight your way out of a paper bag, how would you protect your treasures?”

“I don’t know.”

“Terrific. I’ll explain while we gather it up.”

In short order we had a modest heap of loot on the table, most of it items I had long held in awe. There was a gold statue of a man with the head of a lion, the Three Pearls of Kraul, a gold pendant in the shape of the sun with three of its rays missing, and a ring with a large jewel we took from Garkin’s hand. Aahz held up the sun pendant.

“Now this is an example of what I mean. I suppose there’s a story about what happened to the missing three rays?”

“Well,” I began, “there was a lost tribe that worshipped a huge snake toad….”

“Skip it. It’s an old dodge. What you do is take your gold to a craftsman and have him fashion it into something with a lot of small out-juttings like fingers or arms or …” He held up the pendant. “… rays of sun. It gives you the best of two worlds.

“First, you have something mystical and supernatural, add a ghost story and no one will dare to touch it. Second, it has the advantage that if you need a little ready cash, you just break off a ray or an arm and sell it for the value of the gold. Instead of losing value, the price of the remaining item increases because of its mystical history, the strange circumstances under which it was torn asunder, purely fictional, of course.”

Strangely enough, I was not surprised. I was beginning to wonder if anything Garkin had told me was true.