Part III
Two days later, Vel arrived in Garren, the capital of Tarsica. The city itself was as neat as a pin with cobbled streets and elegant townhouses lined up in rows. To her eyes, the store shop fronts gleamed and the shoppers and shop keepers were all clean and smiling—at least on the surface. The city itself surrounded a rise of land that was crowned with a ring of tall pine trees and a castle. The gray stone of the castle gleamed silver in the waning sunlight and the blue-roofed turrets sparkled like sapphires. This would be what Catonia was supposed to look like without the war, she mused. Pretty, vibrant, peaceful.
She delivered the message to the fat merchant who lived in a sprawling two-story estate filled with windows and brass doorknobs. She was given her delivery fee and feeling suddenly rich—for not only did she get paid for her job but she was now was in possession of a fair number of copper, silver, and gold coins—she decided to splurge. She loved the city with its busy and peaceful people. She had no need to take on any jobs for quite a while and found herself liking the idea that she could at last stay in one place for a little while.
After a few discrete inquiries, she found a small but elegant townhouse close to the hubbub of the market and ordered some new clothes from a dressmaker. The house and clothes, however, were not to be ready until the next day so she rented a room at a nearby tavern and inn. She ordered dinner and sat by herself in a corner, enjoying the lively folk musicians and the general hustle of a busy evening. As she ate, a wistful thought occurred to her. It would have been nice to share her sudden good fortune with someone. Alas, her own parents and siblings were busy with their own lives in Catonia and the friends she had made during the war had gone back to their own families.
"What I don't understand is, why would the Duke of Corona want to raise the taxes? Tarsica is well enough off." Vel continued to eat her dinner as if nothing was happening, but her ears pricked up at the weary voice at the next table. Two old men, each with mugs of ale, were huddled together talking in low voices.
"Some say he wants to enrich the war coffers."
"Why on earth would the duke want to do that? We're not at war."
"We might be. They say the duke is ambitious and has his sights set on other lands. The northern countries, for instance. They've been fighting for, what? Fifty years? They're in no shape to repel a sudden attack from the south."
Vel felt her blood run cold. The countries north of Tarsica were Catonia and Aldenbar.
There was a sigh from one of the old men. "King Sevris would put a stop to all this nonsense. Tarsica hasn't been to war in hundreds of years! Now isn't the time to satisfy some man's greed for power."
"Shh. Calm down about the regent. His old hag has ears everywhere and you know what happens to those who talk too much about King Sevris' return."
She went straight to her room after dinner, feeling numb and nervous. True, what she had just heard was just some gossip from a couple of geezers, but what if there was some truth to it all? Instead of staying in Garren, she should be hightailing it back to Catonia to at least warn somebody. They might not believe her, but at least she would be doing something about it. The uneasiness underneath the Tarsican's easy going attitudes hinted that the geezers were right about something. The Duke of Corona who was currently sitting on the Tarsican throne was not truly the king.
The sacks containing her belongings and her newly acquired wealth were safely stowed underneath the bed. Vel should have been tired after a full day, but her energy was still at a high level—perhaps left over from her excitement of actually getting a place of her own. She took out one of the sacks and pulled out the old battered pewter tinderbox. This time, she sat on her bed and held the box up to the light to examine it more closely. Her initial impressions were correct—it was a plain thing with nothing more but some scratches on the outside.
The sharp obsidian chip that came with the tinderbox was likewise unremarkable. The stone and the tinderbox felt cold to the touch. Experimentally, she struck the piece of obsidian against the side of the box and heard a faint scratch.
"Good evening, mistress. What may I do for you?"
Vel yelped and nearly tumbled off the bed. The small ugly dog-spirit named Meeny had suddenly appeared sitting at the foot of her bed. He cocked his head and watched her with his enormous green eyes as she regained her breath and pinched herself.
"How did you get here?"
"You summoned me with the tinderbox."
She glanced down at her hands, expecting the tinderbox and the piece of obsidian to have turned into a pair of snakes, but the objects were still their own inscrutable selves. "I struck once," she said slowly.
"Yes," Meeny replied. "That summoned me. Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Like what?"
"I can go back and retrieve some copper coins for you if you'd like. Have you run out of money already?"
"What? Oh no. I'm not that much of an idiot. Or at least I hope not." She grinned wearily. "That must be why that wizard didn't care so much about the money. With the tinderbox, he could get you to get as much money as he wanted."
"So you want me to get some money for you?"
"No. Not at the moment." She regarded the dog-spirit thoughtfully. "Could I summon the other dog-spirits?"
"Certainly. You can call up Miney if you strike the tinderbox twice and Moe if you strike three times."
"And if I don't need you any more?"
"Then just tell us so and we'll be off."
"Hm." She scratched the tinderbox with the obsidian chip two more times. Then three. The wolf-sized dog-spirit, Miney, appeared sitting next to the bed and the largest dog-spirit, Moe, appeared behind Miney filling up the rest of the inn's room.
"Good evening, mistress. What may we do for you?" the two dog-spirits intoned.
"Remarkable!" exclaimed Vel. The tinderbox was indeed magic. She would have to start keeping it with her at all times. It was like one of those magic tablecloths in fairy tales that she had heard during her childhood that could bring back whatever food the owner wanted.
Meeny yawned. "Well, do you want us to do anything or are you just going to sit there asking questions?"
"Questions do seem more prudent than suddenly wishing for more wealth," she told them. "At least, at the moment. What exactly can you retrieve besides money?"
"It can't be bigger than myself," said Meeny, "but if you want something bigger, like a bed for instance, you'd probably have to call up Moe."
"And what if I wanted a castle?"
The three dog-spirits looked at each other. "We could possibly manage it," Miney said finally. "But probably not in the way you might expect."
"Oh? Like if I don't specify what kind of castle I wanted, you might bring back a toy castle instead?"
The dog-spirits grumbled in what sounded like laughter. "You catch on quick," said Moe.
"And what if I wanted you to bring back something magical, like a tablecloth?"
Meeny cocked his head and made a sound like a sneeze. "Depends on the magic. We can probably handle something like the tinderbox."
"But..?"
"There's some magic we can't touch," said Miney. "Some magic repels each other like oil and water. I can't really tell you more than that. No one has asked us to retrieve such magic objects."
Vel leaned back on her pillows. "Can you bring back a person?"
"We can't bring back people from the dead," said Meeny wryly. "That's beyond our powers."
"No, I mean retrieve a person, if he's missing."
The dog-spirits nodded in union.
She crossed her legs underneath her and cupped her chin in her hands and stared back at the dog-spirits, her own gray eyes to their large green eyes without flinching. "Bring me the wizard-king of Tarsica."
"As you wish, mistress," Meeny, Miney, and Moe replied. And they vanished, leaving Vel alone and wondering if she had hallucinated the entire conversation.