"Not a chance, Nabjor," Althalus called back. "You should know by now that nobody ever catches me. Is your mead ripe yet? That batch you had last time I passed through was just a trifle green."

"Come on in and try some," Nabjor invited. "This new batch came out rather well."

Althalus and Gher rode forward into the clearing, and Althalus looked at his old friend with a peculiar sense of sadness as "then" and "now" clashed in his mind. He knew that Nabjor was long dead in the world from which he and Gher had come to revisit the past, but there was Nabjor the same as always-big, burly, squinty eyed, and dressed in a shaggy bearskin tunic.

Althalus dismounted, and he and Nabjor clasped hands warmly. "Who's the boy?" Nabjor asked curiously.

"His name's Gher," Althalus replied, "and I've sort of taken him under my wing as an apprentice. He shows quite a bit of promise."

"Welcome, Gher," Nabjor said. "Sit you down, gentlemen. I'll fetch us some mead and you can tell me all about the splendors of civilization."

"Ah, no mead for the boy," Althalus said quickly. "Gher's got an older sister who doesn't realty approve of drinking. She doesn't get upset about lying, cheating, or stealing, but she can go on for weeks about some of the simpler pleasures of life. If word happened to get back to her that I was leading Gher astray, she might haul him back home."

"I've met a few like that," Nabjor said. "Sometimes women get a little strange. I've got some cider that hasn't turned yet. Would that be all right for your apprentice?"

"I don't think she'd find any fault with cider."

"Good. Mead for us and cider for Gher, then. That's a haunch of forest bison on that spit over the fire. Help yourselves to some of it. I'll bring a loaf of bread, too."

Althalus and Gher seated themselves on a log by the fire and carved some chunks of meat from the spitted haunch while Nabjor filled two cups with foaming mead and a third with golden cider. "How did things do down there in civilization?" he asked.

Althalus realized that this was the important moment. This would change things. "It went beyond my wildest expectations, Nabjor," he replied expansively. "My luck was smiling at me every step of the way. She still absolutely adores me." He took a long drink of his mead. "You got a good run on this batch, my friend," he complimented Nabjor.

"I thought you might like it."

"It's good to come home where I can get mead to drink. Down there in civilization, they don't seem to know how to brew it. The only thing you can buy in their taverns is sour wine. How's business been?"

"Not bad at all," Nabjor replied expansively. "Word's getting around about my place. Just about everybody in Hule knows by now that if he wants a good cup of mead at a reasonable price, Nabjor's camp is the place to go. If he wants the companionship of a pretty lady, this is the place. If he's stumbled across something valuable that he wants to sell with no embarrassing questions about how he came by it, he knows that if he comes here, I'll be glad to discuss it with him."

"You're going to fool around and die rich, Nabjor."

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather live rich. All right, since that's out of the way, tell me what happened down there in the low country. I haven't seen you for more than a year, so we've got a lot of catching up to do."

"You're not going to believe just how well things went, Nabjor," Althalus replied with a broad grin. "Everything I touched down there turned to gold." He laid an affectionate hand on Gher's shoulder. "This boy here has luck that's at least as good as mine, and when you pour both of them into the same pot, we just can't possibly lose-as we discovered when we got to Deika. After we'd looked at all their fancy stone buildings, we just 'happened' to overhear talk about a rich salt merchant named Kweso. I'm positive that it wasn't really a coincidence. My luck was herding us from one direction, and Gher's was coming from the other. Anyway, if you've bought any salt lately, I'm sure you can understand how a salt merchant can end up richer than any gold miner in the world."

"Oh, yes," Nabjor agreed. "They're the worst gougers there are."

"Well," Althalus went on, "we located this Kweso fellow's house, and I sent Gher up to the door to ask for directions to the place where one of the neighbors lived-and to have a close look at the latch on Kweso's door."

"It wasn't much of a latch, Mister Nabjor, " Gher added. "It looked big and strong, but I could have sprung it open with my thumbnail."

"Is this boy that good?" Nabjor asked Althalus.

"Why do you think I took him on as my apprentice?" Althalus replied. "Well, to cut it short, we went to Kweso's house along about midnight a couple of days later, undid that latch, and went on inside. Kweso's servants were all asleep, and Kweso himself was filling all the comers of his bedroom with snores. He stopped snoring when I set the point of my knife against his throat, though, and he was very cooperative. There's nothing quite like a knife point to get somebody's attention. A few minutes later, Gher and I came into a great deal of money. We thanked Kweso for his hospitality, tied him up, and stuffed a rag into his mouth to keep him from disturbing the sleep of his servants. Then we left the splendid city of Deika. We even bought some horses. Now that we were rich, we didn't have to walk anymore."

"Where did you go next, Althalus?" Nabjor asked eagerly.

"We made our next stop in Kanthon," Althalus replied. "That's a city up in northern Treborea. There's a new ruler in the city, and he's got some peculiar ideas about taxes."

"What are taxes?"

"I'm not entirely sure. The way it seems to work is that people have to pay to live in their own houses and breathe all the precious air that the ruler of the place so generously provides. Breathing's very expensive in Kanthon-about half of everything a man owns usually covers most of it. The local rich men seem to think that it's not a very good idea to look rich. Shabby, broken-down furniture's very expensive in Kanthon, and rich men take lessons from stonemasons to learn how to lay flagstones very neatly, so that the tax collectors can't identify the flat rock that covers the hole in the floor where the rich man hides his gold. My luck-and Gher's-herded us into a tavern where the stonemasons of Kanthon did their drinking, and they just happened to be talking about a fellow who'd just inherited a fortune from his uncle. Those masons were laughing themselves sick over the sloppy job he'd done laying that particularly important rock. From what they were saying, the fellow was one of those ne'er-do-wells who spend all their nights carousing around in the seedier establishments down by the river, and I guess his hands were a bit shaky the day he set the stone in place. To make things even better for us, the fellow's servants had appetites of their own that were the same as his. They'd piously promise to look after things while he was out enjoying himself, but a quarter of an hour after he went out the front door, his house was deserted."

Nabjor chuckled. "What a shame."

"Well, Gher and I just happened to come into more money that very same evening. By now, we had so much money that carrying it was turning into quite a chore, so after we left Kanthon, we found a secluded place and buried it-and that wasn't the last time, either. We've got money buried in a half dozen places down there, because we had more than we could carry, and every time we turned around, more of it kept piling up on us."

Nabjor laughed. "You know, I just can't seem to remember the last time I had that problem."

Althalus glossed over his encounter with paper money, since the concept was a little exotic for Nabjor. "I could go on for days telling you about all the swindles and robberies we pulled off down there, but our biggest success was in Arum, of all places."

"I've heard that they've struck gold down there," Nabjor said. "Don't tell me that you finally broke down and started digging your own gold."

"Not this old dog," Althalus replied. "I let somebody else take care of that for me. Gher and I'd come up out of Perquaine and we were hotfooting our way back here to Hule. Well, we stopped in a wayside tavern, and there was this fellow who had a splendid tunic-wolf skin, it was, and the ears decorated the hood of that tunic."

"I see that some ownership got transferred," Nabjor said, eying the tunic Althalus was wearing. "Did you swindle that fellow out of it, or did you just break down and buy it from him?"

"Bite your tongue! I steal gold, Nabjor; I don't spend it. Anyway, the loafers in the tavern were talking about a rich man called Gosti Big Belly who owns and operates a toll bridge that just happens to be the only way to cross a certain river that stands between the rest of Arum and the region where gold's just been discovered. The price Gosti charges to cross is outrageous, but people are glad to pay it, and this Gosti is getting richer by the hour. Well, I'm not one to pass up an opportunity like that, so I decided to look into the matter."

"After you'd transferred some ownership?" Nabjor asked slyly, looking at the wolf-skin tunic.

Gher smirked. "That didn't hardly take no time at all, Mister Nabjor. The fellow in the tunic went outside the tavern after a while, and Althalus followed him, popped him on the head with the handle of his sword, and took his tunic and his shoes."

Nabjor raised one eyebrow.

"I'll admit it went a little far," Althalus conceded apologetically, "but my shoes were just about ready to fall apart. That fellow didn't really need shoes all that much: he wasn't too likely to walk very far away from that tavern. Anyway, Gher and I mounted up and rode on. After a day or so we stopped at another tavern, and the people there were talking about Gosti Big Belly, the same as the ones in the other tavern had been. Gher and I picked up some more details, and I began to realize that robbing Gosti might go a little further than a simple "smash and grab" sort of thing, so we were probably going to need some help. That's where our luck stepped in again. My luck's always been sort of sneaky, and Gher's is even worse. There were two other fellows in that tavern, and I'd noticed them the minute we walked in, because I could tell by their looks that they weren't Arums. Their eyes lit up like torches every time somebody said the word 'gold,' so I was fairly sure they were in the same business as we are. We talked with them after we all left the tavern, and we decided to go into partnership instead of competing with each other."

"We went into Gosti's place separate, though," Gher- added. "Our idea was to tenlike we didn't know each other. The other stealers was named Ghend and Khnom, and we didn't even go near them-not out where any of Gosti's people could see us, anyway-but we'd meet late at night in the stables or the hay barn to make our plans. We spent a whole winter there and got to know every log in the place by its first name. Then Althalus happened to hear a couple of old coots arguing about a back door to the barn with one coot saying there was one and the other saying there wasn't, even though all they'd have had to do was go to the barn and look, but they was having so much fun arguing that they didn't want to spoil it. Me and Althalus weren't having no argument, though, so we did go look, and it turned out that the coot who said 'was' was right, and the coot who said 'wasn't' wasn't-except that there was a haystack piled up in front of that old door. I was the one who got to move that haystack, because Althalus told me I was supposed to tenlike I wanted to jump out of the loft into it. I wasn't too happy that I was the one who was going to have to do all the work-except that it didn't turn out that way at all, because all the Arums heard what I was doing, and they thought that jumping in the hay might be funner than just sitting around watching Gosti eat and get fatter. So they pitched in and helped me move the haystack, but even though I did a lot of the work, I didn't get to jump in the hay more'n two or three times, 'cause the Arums was lined up clear out into the courtyard waiting for their turn to jump. I don't think that was very fair at all, do you?"

Nabjor was staring at Gher with an awestruck expression. "Doesn't he ever stop to breathe?" he asked Althalus.

"I haven't looked too closely, but I think he might have gills or something under his collar. I've heard him talk steadily for two straight hours without stopping once to catch his breath. Once he starts, you'd better lean back and get comfortable, because he's likely to go on for quite a long time." Althalus paused. "Well, to continue, spring finally rolled around, and Gosti's cousin told me that they always celebrated Gosti's birthday when the last of the snow melted off, and that fit into our plans perfectly. The trails would be clear, and everybody in Gosti's hall would be so drunk that an earthquake or a volcano wouldn't attract much attention."

"Beautiful!" Nabjor chuckled.

"We sort of liked it. Anyway, Gher and Khnom went to the stables to saddle the horses while Ghend and I stepped over the two sleeping men who were supposed to be guarding the strong room. We undid that latch that looked very impressive but that a child of four could have opened. Then we went into Gosti's strong room to have a look at our new gold."

"Was there very much?" Nabjor asked eagerly.

"More than we could carry, that's for sure."

"I could carry a lot of gold, Althalus."

"Not that much, you couldn't. It took me a while to explain to Ghend that a robbery isn't a success until you've gotten away. He had wild ideas about stealing horses to carry the excess and other absurdities, but I finally managed to persuade him that staying unhung was going to be a major goal in our lives after we'd taken a few bags out of the strong room, and that attracting attention wouldn't be the best way to achieve that goal."

"Whatever happened to that Ghend fellow?" Nabjor asked.

"I'm not entirely sure. We split up after we left Gosti's fort-to confuse anybody who might decide to follow us-but if they managed to get away, he and Khnom are supposed to meet us here. Back at Gosti's fort, Ghend was telling me that he might have a business proposition for me, and I'm always interested in business."

"It sounds to me as if you've made enough money this past year to retire on."

Althalus laughed. "I wouldn't know what to do with myself, Nabjor. Sitting around growing moss isn't my style."

"More mead?" Nabjor suggested.

"I thought you'd never get around to asking that," Althalus said, holding out his empty cup.

Nabjor took their cups back to the narrow crevice between two standing boulders where he kept his mead crocks.

'Nicely done, pet,' Emmy's voice murmured approvingly. 'You managed to mix this time and the last time together so smoothly that it's almost impossible to separate them.'

'It's a gift, Em. Always mix a certain amount of truth into your lies. Of course, according to Gher, the story I told this time is the truth and last time was the lie.'

'Quit showing off, Althalus,' she chided.

Nabjor brought their cups back, and the three of them sat by the fire talking until well after nightfall. Althalus noticed that his friend had a new wench in camp. She had wicked eyes and a provocative way of walking, and he thought that under different circumstances, it might be sort of nice if they got to know each other a little better. Emmy probably wouldn't approve, though.

After a while, Gher dozed off, but Althalus and Nabjor talked until almost midnight. Then Althalus fetched the blankets he and Gher had carried rolled up behind their saddles. He covered the boy without waking him, and then he rolled up in his own blankets near the dying fire and fell asleep almost immediately.

Gher rose early the next morning, but Althalus slept late. There wasn't really anything very pressing to take care of, so he felt that it was a good time to catch up on his sleep. He was fairly sure he'd want his wits about him when Ghend and Khnom arrived, and a man who's been missing sleep for a while tends to be a bit fuzzy-minded at times when it's important for him to be on his toes.

It was about midmorning when he finally arose, and when he was going to the brook to splash some water on his face, he saw Gher seated on a log beside the naughty-eyed wench. The boy's hair was wet as if it'd just been washed, and the wench appeared to be darning one of his socks. Althalus shook his head in bafflement. There seemed to be something about Gher that made every woman he came across automatically want to mother him. Andine had done it, and to a lesser degree, so had Leitha. Emmy didn't really count, of course, because Emmy mothered everybody.

Althalus and Gher loafed around Nabjor's camp for at least a week, and then one blustery day when the racing clouds overhead were blotting out the sun, Ghend and Khnom rode into camp.

"Well, finally," Althalus said by way of greeting. "What took you so long to get here?"

"I thought you were supposed to keep Galbak off our tails, Althalus," Ghend replied, wearily swinging down from his exhausted horse. "He was hot on our trail before the sun was fully up."

"The devil you say!" Althalus replied. "Are you sure you stayed away from the Hule road?"

"We did everything just the way you suggested," Khnom told him, "and none of it worked the way it was supposed to. I think that accursed Galbak's part bloodhound. Every time we passed over soft ground, we were careful to brush out our tracks, but he followed us anyway. This has been the worst summer in my life. We even tried wading twenty miles up a river, and Galbak still followed us. How did you two get away?"

Althalus shrugged. "It was easy. We rode south a ways-leaving plenty of tracks-and then we picked a rocky place to leave the road, crossed the mountains into Kagwher, and came to Hule from that direction. We were positive that you two had gotten away clean, too. Why would Galbak follow a road with no signs, instead of the one that was littered with tracks?"

"I think he outsmarted us, Althalus," Ghend said mournfully. "Maybe we were just a little too obvious. Evidently Galbak's shrewd enough to be suspicious about a trail that jumps up and hits him right in the face."

"I can't for the life of me see how Galbak was able to get on your trail so fast," Althalus said. "He was dead to the world when I left the dining hall. I was positive he wouldn't wake up before noon, and when he did wake up, he should have been too sick to even care about Gosti's gold."

"I think we both overlooked just how big Galbak is," Ghend said. "A big man can soak up a lot more strong drink than a smaller man can."

"Well, at least you two were finally able to get clear, and that's what matters. You're safe here, so you can sit down and relax." He turned slightly. "Mead, Nabjor," he called, "and keep it coming. These are the two friends I told you about, and they've had a very bad summer."

Ghend wearily seated himself on one of the logs by the fire pit and rubbed at his face. "I could sleep for a week," he said.

"This is a good place for it," Althalus told him. "How did you two finally manage to shake off Galbak?"

"Pure luck, more than anything else," Khnom replied. "Arums do a lot of hunting in those mountains of theirs-deer, bear, and those big stags with huge horns-so they're expert trackers. No matter what we did, we couldn't seem to shake them off. We holed up for a week in a cave that was back behind a waterfall, and then one of those summer storms came along-the kind of storm that even rains straight up. I'm sure we left tracks when we rode out of the cave, but our tracks were gone almost before we put them down. We made it up to the ridgeline, and after that, it was easy."

Nabjor brought mead, and Ghend and Khnom started to relax. "Help yourselves to a bit of that haunch on the spit," Nabjor told them.

"How much is it going to cost us?" Khnom asked.

"Don't worry about it. Althalus has already taken care of it."

"Why, thank you, Althalus," Khnom said. "That was considerate."

"Well, I did sort of invite you two to come here," Althalus reminded him. "Besides, since we're all so stinking rich now, the money doesn't really mean anything, does it?"

"Bite your tongue," Khnom said. "Did you two actually bring your share of that gold into a place like this?"

"Do I really look that stupid, Khnom?" Althalus replied. "We just took out enough for current expenses and put the rest in a safe place."

"Oh? Where might that be?"

"It wouldn't really be a safe place if we went around talking about it, now would it?"

A sudden flash of bitter disappointment crossed Khnom's face before he could conceal it, and Althalus smiled inwardly. The knowledge that four bags of gold were hidden somewhere nearby and that there was no way he could find out exactly where was probably causing Khnom more pain than Gher's bucket had.

They had a few more cups of mead and several slabs of roast bison, and after Ghend and Khnom relaxed a bit, Althalus decided that it was time to get down to business. "You were saying something about a business proposition last winter, Ghend," he said. "Has that fallen by the wayside, or would you still like to discuss it?"

"No," Ghend replied, "it's still roaming around in the back of my mind. As it happens, there's someone in Nekweros who's holding some obligations over my head, and he's not the sort of fellow anybody in his right mind wants to disappoint-if you take my meaning."

"One of those, I take it?"

"He's the one who invented 'those,' my friend. People who cross that one usually live just long enough to regret it. Anyway, there's something he really wants, and he strongly suggested that he'd like to have me go get it for him. Unfortunately, the thing he wants is in a house over in Kagwher, and that puts me in a very tight spot. I'm not terribly popular in Kagwher just now. Khnom and I had a very successful season there a couple of years ago, and Kagwhers tend to hold grudges. There are a couple of fellows over there who make Galbak look gentle by comparison, and those fellows would really like to see me again."

"I can see your problem, Ghend. There are quite a few places that I should probably avoid, too."

"Exactly. You're a very good thief, Althalus, so I know I can depend on you. I think you're just the man I've been looking for."

"I'm the best," Althalus said with a deprecating shrug.

"He's right about that, Ghend," Nabjor said, bringing them cups of fresh mead. "Althalus here can steal anything with two ends."

"That might be a slight exaggeration," Althalus said. "I've never stolen a river. What exactly is it that this terror over in Nekweros wants you to steal for him? Is it some jewel, or what?"

"No, it's not a jewel," Ghend replied with a hungry look. "What he wants-and will pay for-is a book."

"I like the word 'pay' well enough," Althalus said, "but now we come to the hard part. What in blazes is a book?"

Ghend looked sharply at him. "You don't know how to read, do you?"

"Reading's for priests, Ghend, and I don't have any dealings with priests if I can avoid it."

Ghend frowned. "This might complicate things just a bit," he said.

"Ghend, old friend, I don't know a thing about stone cutting, but I've stolen a lot of jewels in my time; and I haven't got the faintest idea of how to cook gold out of rocks, but I still manage to pick up quite a bit of it from time to time. Just tell me what this book thing looks like, and I'll go steal it for you-if the price is right, and if you tell me where I'll find it."