From his small chamber rich in ornament he entered a larger room, many-doored, lacking in furnishings but not less as to its paints. The walls, and the floor and the ceiling as well, showed waves and drifting clouds in every color, not blue and white only, and all of them bright. But to study it all was hard when the uncommon door closed again behind him, a worrisome thing. More than that, he was not alone there, for he saw two denizens that were startled to find him without his room. They were shorter than Sir Poemen, as most are, but shorter also than all other men, which they were not. Though they wore clothes suited for servants and swords worthy of the hip of a knight, their size, their hairiness, and their teeth that had much of sharpness about them belonged doubtless to gobelins.
So too did their harsh speech. “Go back, go back! Wait in your bed like a guest who is good. Who knows how things are done, which here means you must wait to be brought before the master. He will host you very warmly in his belly. Or do you wish to give us an arm or two like an open-handed guest? Never worry over that. We will be fed sure enough, for so many of you there are, and all abed but you.”
Never had Sir Poemen spoken before to gobelins and had doubt whether they were bent wholly on ill or could be steered to a better course by well-meant words. He made a try of it regardless, deeming it right that a knight should give men and beasts the chance to avoid the bitter fate of foes. “Lands are not alike, nor are their customs. I know that as well as any for the travels I have had. Yet I hold to this claim, that you are mistaken in the duties a host owes to his guests, and also whether a guest seized by strange means ought to be called such. But even a prisoner deserves better than to be meat. My advice is this, that you go to your master and tell him it will fare better for him to rouse less of hatred than he does by what he orders.”
The gobelins did not bear that but drew forth their eager blades and rushed to the fight. Sir Poemen thrust at the foe to his right and was hindered by nothing when he passed the point through the belly and ended the life of that gobelin thereby. As for the other, the knight punched him and stunned him by the might of his fist, and soon his sword met that second gobelin to his woe.
Out of all the victories Sir Poemen had, he deemed that the least, but he did not feel shame at it or linger. Instead he searched for some key they might have, for he saw no way he was able to leave but through chambers blocked by doors as thick and as strong as that he had opened not by force but by wit. He found no such keys as men and women use, but they had in their belts these, two wands of thin wood. He took one and tapped it on the silver slab which rose again, not as he judged likely but as he had hoped.
He let that door fall again, having no wish to enter the room where he woke, and chose which of the others he liked to dare. One had a sign above that named it the Room of Daisies, and thinking he knew the solving of that from his own chamber, if puzzle there was, tapped and went in. The sun on the floor was the same and much else, but the furniture was not alike as to its design. There was though a bed, canopied and used by a knight, who was Sir Lanfranc of Beauval. That man of wind and vigor was not deep in happy rest, but rather searched all over for some weakness in the canopy and fabric that held him.
“Stand back, sir knight. The puissance of this sword is too much even for the uncanny beds of gobelins,” Sir Poemen told him, and he split apart the curtains that the prisoner might be free of them. That was done so well smooth that Sir Lanfranc praised him for that first before he thanked him, which he also did.
When the rescued knight had done with that, he asked, “I know little enough of gobelins, but you say this is a place of theirs? I will not go against you in anything even for a town of my own and all its revenues, Sir Poemen, but are you sure of that?”
“Not at all, and I deem you wise to doubt it, whatever is true in the end,” Sir Poemen said in answer. “But that there are gobelins about, I am sure. That cause urges me to some hurry, and I hope this wand will help.” He tapped the door which withstood it as it did not when struck from the side beyond. “If even their wands are not full able to do the work in this place, that gobelins built it not is more likely. Now I will draw petals on this circle, unless, sir knight, you have some better thought.”
Sir Lanfranc had startlement from that and knew not what to say. Hearing nothing against his plan, Sir Poemen turned to artistry and carved out petals so many that the very floor seemed to bloom, and the door opened at that. He chose then another room while Sir Lanfranc wondered at the corpses of the two gobelins slain by Sir Poemen earlier, which was the Room of Like Things.
Inside there was Sir Henryk of Bagnad. That young and doughty knight he freed and was thanked for it, but they left the chamber not so swiftly as he had the other. For the floor had not what he hoped to see, which was a design on one side he might remake across from it by means of his stone-splitting point, a thing common in Argetych. Rather, two tables inside hosted the puzzle, he guessed from the things they held. On one there was a mirror, clear and polished right well in a frame of dolphins that raced through the swelling waves, a bowl larger than what two hands could enfold that bore on it the building of a long-hulled ship, and plates that were hard to see for all the food on them, pork well-honeyed and berries and grapes like bubbles in boiling water. On the second, across the room, were goods of an unlike sort. A crown was there, silver, that had set in it amber and pearls. Beside that was a scabbard, a sword hidden within aside from the hilt, all aglow with rubies and lapis. Last sat there a ring that had on it some sigil which perhaps had use as a seal or sign to mark a thing as the will of some lord.
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Sir Poemen looked over all that and said, “Sir knight, we may be longer in this one room than I weened when I came in. I solved two such wondrous rooms as this before, and I had more pride from that than I earned in truth. Now I feel the bit in my mouth as this puzzle reins me in before I am able to overrun the borders of my wit. Is it a test of skill as to whether my sword will draw well enough what I see on those tables? Is it that what sits on the tables is a lure for the mind when I ought to think on the tables themselves, and how they are like and how unlike? Two thoughts I say there, but there are more that I have, and more still the canny mind of a wiser man might fashion.”
“I know this room only, sir knight,” Sir Henryk said. “Whether it is safe or full of peril to put my hands on these things to look at them closer is nothing sure to me, but it might be a help if we did it.”
“I have not learned that either.” Sir Poemen spoke in that way with unsure words, and as for his eyes, they led him first to the sword that he picked up and slid out from its scabbard. “There may be some secret hid inside here.” He looked within the scabbard and all over the blade, which shone and showed no chipping or other flaw.
“Do you see aught, sir knight?” Sir Henryk asked that.
For his answer, Sir Poemen said, “Nothing, and yet I hear perhaps the tale this sword tells.” He sheathed it fast and walked to the table across where he lifted the bowl and put in its place the scabbard. The bowl took the spot of the scabbard, and straightaway the gracious door gave those within the room leave to depart. “It speaks to the merits of its owner, who keeps his arms in good repair, while the mirror does the like as far as his cleanliness and the fit of his clothes. The plates meanwhile show this, what his guests and household will have from him. Which is praiseworthy and unlike what the gobelins do in no small degree. As to the other table, those are now all things that rather are a proof of what esteem others have for the owner or what they will suffer him to have, for crowns, rings, and empty bowls have no use save in the display of them. I do question still the subtleties of this room, and whether the portal opens at other ways of solving this array, but we have before us much else more of moment.”
Sir Henryk agreed and followed Sir Poemen out where he greeted Sir Lanfranc and joined him in looking over the gobelins and guarding against more, should they come. Sir Poemen went on to all the rooms around, though one he left for later when the portal seemed to open on another many-doored chamber. He rescued more knights and sailors as well, and no puzzle or riddle overcame his wit. The body of them moved on and added to itself to the number of ten in all when it found what it feared or else hoped, each man's mind going where it would.
Gobelins equipped like those earlier were in one chamber, six of them, and beside them were five companions heavier in their arms, with helms, greaves, and daggers next to their swords. Those gobelins challenged their prisoners with fierce words. “We have never seen or read of such unkind guests, such uncouth guests, since first we learned to make out the writing in the library here. Out of your beds against the wishes of our prince? I suppose some footmen sought to stop you and were stopped themselves, but do not think all of us so weak. We are gobelin squires who know much of war. You should be afeared of us and rest in your beds like men who obey.”
In answer to that, Sir Poemen assayed again words of peace. “You know well from such great learning as you have that a host ought to act better. You know as well that squires, most of them, are overmatched by war-bloodied knights. For those reasons, if no others, I advise you to bethink yourselves how better to behave or, if an evil will holds you back from that, to gather what knights you have all together and face us in one strife-ending battle that will settle the matter as the Lord above other lords would have it be settled.”
The gobelin squires had no liking for that, but instead said this. “Our ways are the gobelin ways, and best for us for that. As to knights, those loathsome knights, we have no love for them and never will. They have at all times been heavy against us and slay us, but today otherwise will the battle fare. A great triumph for all gobelins it will be, and our stomachs will thank us full well.”
The squires then readied their knight-hating swords and had no mind for an end to that meeting that was other than fell. The knights raised their own warlike weapons, and the sailors as well had in their hands such daggers and more as the heavy-armed men were able to spare. “We knights will be the vanguard, and do you follow,” Sir Poemen told them, unsure of the need for it but unwilling to lose any man to wounds without reason. He went against the squire in the center and hurt him sore with his first strike, and Sir Henryk beside him did more than that when he crushed the foe facing him hard enough with his mace that the gobelin could never withstand it, and he turned to the next forthwith. Sir Lanfranc used his might as well, and Sir Taskay, and soon the gobelins died after doing little more than men in training suffer.