Dragonsign                                         - C. 2016 M.H. Johnson

Gold and Glory

It was a warm spring day as so many were in these parts, a fine morning for a walk through the hilly pasturelands. The sun blazed high above, but comfortably so at these elevated altitudes. A fresh spring breeze blew softly through the seas of grass below, invigorating the three excited youths that had appeared but moments before. The mercurial wind caressed their silvery golden locks and silken finery with its gentle kiss, highlighting the exquisite artistry of the youth’s attire. The abstract designs seemed to flow with a life of their own in the gentle breeze.

That few people in this fertile Dutchy had ever seen silk mattered not at all to the youths in question. As far as they were concerned, it was what princes wore in all the stories they had been regaled with as youngsters, snuggled up in a warm bundle, their rooms silent save for the fierce roaring of the winds outside their mountain home. That and their cousin’s hushed melodic voice, a gentle counterpoint to the fierce hunger of the angry storms battering their snug domain, enchanting them with many an animated story to pass away those long winter nights so many years ago.

And so perhaps it was only fitting that they too should be dressed in silken finery on their own grand escapade, worlds away from anything they had ever known before. Standard de rigor for the adventuring prince, so to speak, along with long shirts, hauberks really, of fine elven-made mithril mail. That the armor’s spell forged links were of a durability guaranteed not to burst from the blow of any mundane blade would alone have made them worth a king’s ransom. Even more noteworthy, the armor was of a magical nature such that it would also meld effortlessly into any other form the wearer might take were the wearer an arcane shape-shifter as opposed to say, simply a boy who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet neither of these facts were such to give these three graceful youths a moment’s pause. Indeed, it would almost seem as if they took their armor and finery both for granted, as an actor would the stage props that allowed him to best assume his role.

Accompanying the haut de rigueur were sets of elegant looking sabers made from the very same mithril alloy as was their armor. Said blades had a deadly looking grace which was more than just appearances as the youths and the irked looking crow lecturing them both knew, for the blades were not only durable, but razor sharp as well. They were weighty enough to hack through an opponents arm, keen enough to cut through any accompanying light mail guarding said arm, and well balanced enough to be used with the grace and speed of an acrobat, dancer, or master swordsman.

All in all the arms and armaments looked to be of a quality best suited to grace the forms of a king’s most deadly champions or the most fearsome of gladiators. Perhaps adorning even the heroic physique of the heir to a lost kingdom ready to tear legends from the bedrock of fate under his name.

Which of course made it all the more odd, thought the crow, who was at that moment favoring the boys before him with a particularly malevolent glare, to see such elegant attire on what looked like, to him, no more than a trio of eccentric spoiled princelings.

"And I tell you three again that we are completely unprepared!" exclaimed the crow, who was presently pacing back and forth before the three youths in question. “We have no packs, no equipment, no tents… we don't even have any food! And did any of you think to bring a change of clothes?" The angry little bird had begun to flap his wings in agitation, his outraged voice sounding more like a squawk than ever. "Oh that's right, this whole event was unexpected! You were dressed to costume and everything after that point was an accident!"

The crow, the three youths observed, appeared to be working himself up into a tirade of unusual proportions. Not for the first time either it seemed, as evidenced by the sighs directed the bird's way.

"Well,” continued the crow, “if you were so dead set on wrecking a master summoning, you could at least have thought to prepare a little more thoroughly for what might lie ahead, especially considering the fact that we can never go back home! And did you ninnies just have to bring me with you? I mean really, what were you thinking? And what, for goodness sake, do we do now? Did you guys even bring anything we might use to buy ourselves an edge in this land? Silver? Gold? Jewels? Anything!?" The bird in question emitted one final outraged caw before puffing up his feathers and turning his back on the three youths that had so pricked his ire.

"Oh let it go, Sorn," sighed one of the youths, sapphire blue eyes flashing in exasperation. "We told you we were sorry. I mean, it's not like we meant to bump into you or anything. We were just making a point, a demonstration if you will, that this world conquest idea wasn't the best thing to be done here.”

"Hanz has the right of it, and elegantly put indeed!" agreed a second youth, seemingly the mirror image of the first.

"Why, thank you Fitz!" said the first youth happily.

"No, thank you Hanz!" replied the second. "In any case, its not like we meant to bump over your stand when we were doing our ‘Death of an Empire’ scene! And we certainly didn't mean to spill the Water of Zervourchec all over the Portal of Power…"

"Besides, Sorn," chipped in the third youth, "at that point you had already landed smack in the middle of the portal and the spirits would not have opened the doorway were you not also of the true blood like us, so you should be happy!” The third youth, also a mirror image of the first two, smiled happily with his chain of thought. “See, it doesn't matter that no one knows who sired you. You still were potent enough to be accepted through the doorway and not immolated on the spot. So if anything, you should be thanking us!"

The three lads beamed at the crow in unison, seemingly well pleased with the line of reasoning.

“Why, you!…” the crow could barely sputter, and indeed seemed almost to be puffing up with outrage. Muttering what sounded like strangled oaths, the strange bird began growing before the suddenly hesitant youth’s very eyes. They were in fact barely able to step back in time before a fourth youth stood before them. Silky dark hair a contrast to their silver gold, heir to the same aristocratic features and sapphire blue eyes, their kinship was obvious, for all that he wore plain woolens to their silken finery. He was taller, however, and lacked their fluid grace, replaced as it was with the gawky stance of late adolescence. The exquisite, almost inhuman beauty of his fey countenance, similar to that of the boys before him, was also marred by a modest case of acne. His somewhat gangly appearance was deceptive, however, as shown by the startling speed with which he charged into his third cousin, sufficient to do any sprinter proud.

"Lieberman, I could kill you!" he screeched as he grabbed his cousin and tossed him a good twenty feet, an action born of utter exasperation which sent the trio of younger boys laughing, the one on the ground included as he tumbled end over end harmlessly, his light-hearted grin giving evidence that he was none the worse for wear.

The now dusty youth grinned, looking up at his irked cousin. “Sorry Sorn, didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers!”

Even Sorn cracked the barest of smiles, warmed as he was by the infectiousness of his younger cousin’s humor despite himself. He could only shake his head in wry disbelief at what the antics of his younger cousins had gotten him into this time.

"It’s not that I felt particularly good about the idea of our elders taking this world myself," Sorn conceded. "That's why I was taking the stance of the crow."

The crow, as even his somewhat silly and clueless cousins knew, was a classic symbol of caution for his people. A self-reminder that even incredible power would not leave one invulnerable to disaster if it was matched by unreachable arrogance. Not only a cautionary figure, the crow had, over time, also come to symbolize wisdom for his people. The crow was, in fact, the closest proxy that their people had to the idea of compassion for outsiders, as the bird was also given symbolic credit for weighing the strengths and weaknesses and overall worth of other cultures in total.

It was a form rarely taken, however. This was not simply because very few of his people had the raw talent, let alone years of disciplined training, necessary to take on the form of the crow, but also because to do so under such circumstances as he had done so would result in a blow to one’s social standing best not thought of, one that could take years to recover from, if ever.

Still, as his cousins well appreciated, this cause was important enough to Sorn that he was willing to take the form to plead his case before the High Tribunal. Thus, out of respect for both his form as well as his maternal heritage, the court did indeed give consent to listen to Sorn’s plea, despite his very young age.

It had been a doomed gesture, Sorn had known that from the start. It was, however, all he could do. To hold fast to the vain hope that he would be able to touch someone’s heart regarding the beauty and majesty of this place, this land that he had so often studied himself through orb and scrying pool alike. The joy and beauty it held, the wonder and majesty of the various members of its races, their capacity for hope, laughter, sorrow and love… similar in all ways to his people save in form. All this he had desperately hoped to be able to convey, somehow, to the steely-eyed tribunal that had been gazing at him at that moment with such bemused contempt.

And so Sorn had waxed long and eloquent, doing his best to touch those steely hearts, noting with a fierce sense of satisfaction that at least one or two heads had condescended to give an infinitesimal nod in deference to one or another of the points he had made.

And it was then, of course, that his cousins had made their entrance. Sorn could only sigh at the painful recollection of how one awkward debacle had quickly followed another as a result, wherein a highly ordered tribunal had quickly been reduced to a chaotic outraged mob, the final disaster having catapulted the four of them from their comfortable if at times exasperating lives to this strange and exotic world. It was a place Sorn had been willing to give his all to protect, a world he had long admired from afar, yet not a place he had exactly planned on being marooned on for the next hundred years.

'And so here we are', thought Sorn, with that mixture of utter exasperation and bone weary tolerance only to be found in young people forced to do way too much caretaking for their younger relatives.

"Alright." Sorn said, once again bringing his mind sharply to focus on the present, as Lieberman stood up once again to join his cousins, whilst slapping the dust off of his fine silk pantaloons.

"Enough with the horseplay. We have some serious planning to do. First off, do any of you really understand what it means to be here as we are now?"

"Of course." Hanz replied with the same enthusiasm with which he always answered Sorn's frequent queries when they went over tomes of one sort or another. "We accidentally catalyzed the portal and it sucked us here. And now, we have a whole world to explore! We can go forth and do noble deeds just like in the stories you read to us! Defeat and eat noble knights, capture evil wizards and suck out all their power, and free the animals from captivity!"

"Um… Hanz," Fitz interjected hesitantly, "I pretty much agree with you on the wizards part, sucking out essences might be fun, but I think the knights are supposed to be the good guys, and the animals are for eating. I don't think we are supposed to free them… I think we are supposed to eat them, or something. Right Sorn?"

"Nonsense!" exclaimed a suddenly irked Hanz. "Of course the knights are the bad guys! They're always trying to spear us in all the stories! And they ride their horses, they don't eat them. So of course we're not supposed to eat the animals!"

"Um, Hanz, I don't think it’s the horses they eat. I think its the cows, and the chickens I think are for milking or something, and I am not sure what they do with the pigs." Fitz replied uncertainly.

"Eggs," Lieberman answered sagely. "The pigs are for the eggs. I believe they cut them open to get the eggs out and then, hmm… I guess they resow them with their tails. It explains why they are so springy, the tails I mean."

"You guys are idiots"! Sorn couldn't help shouting. "The cows are for milking, the horses are for riding, the chickens are for the eggs, and the pigs are for eating!”

"Ah ha!" exclaimed Lieberman with a note of triumph in his voice. "You think you know everything! Well, it can't be the chickens that have the eggs, because they don't have the springy tail to sow them back up with, only feathers! So how could it possibly be the chickens?"

"That's right!" Fitz said gleefully "You must be wrong, Sorn. Unless you think the pig shares his tail with the chicken? And why would they share? They need their own tails when the farmers cut the pigs up for their own eggs! Or else why would they have them?"

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"Excellent point Fitz!" exclaimed Hanz happily.

"Why thank you Hanz!" Fitz replied warmly

"No, thank you Fitz!" smiled Hanz.

"You guys are totally whacked in the head!" Sorn screeched. "It's the chickens that have the eggs, and they don't need to be cut open to get them, they just lay them! And the pigs, for the last time, don't have any eggs at all. The farmer just cuts him up and eats him!"

"But Sorn," Hanz queried politely, "if the pig doesn't have any eggs, why does he have the curly tail? It makes no sense!"

"This whole conversation doesn't make any sense! Heck, this whole day doesn't make any sense!" Sorn replied hotly. "As to the tail… I don't think anyone knows."

"Then you could be wrong!" Lieberman declared happily. "If you don't know why the pig has a tail, then you don't know why the pig might not have a tail, and maybe he doesn't not have a tail because he doesn't not have eggs, so maybe pigs have eggs after all, and we'll be the first ones to discover that pigs have eggs. Then we'll be famous!"

"Excellent point, Lieberman!" declared Fitz

"Yes excellent point indeed!" Hanz chimed in happily

"Why thank you both!" Lieberman warmly replied. "Now we just need to find ourselves a pig, cut him open, pull out his eggs, and we’ll be famous!"

"Good idea!" declared Fitz. "But you have to do the resowing!"

At this point Lieberman's face screwed up in an unpleasant frown. "But that could be icky, and I would get my nice silks dirty. I'll tell you what, you do it, and I'll watch!"

"I don't think so!" Fitz replied hotly, "It’s your tail, you do it!"

"No you!"

"No you!"

At this point Sorn could only shake his head as Fitz charged Lieberman and they immediately began pummeling each other. Not wanting to feel left out, Sorn supposed, Hanz, with a shriek of "Well I'm not doing it!" immediately joined in the now three-way brawl. After about ten minutes of fighting, Sorn judged that they had burned off sufficient energy to listen to him, and he decided it was time to act as the voice of reason once again.

"Knock it off! We've got planning to do!" At which point the three brothers, looking none the worse for wear save for dusty silks, stopped trying to strangle and pummel one another enough to pay him some mind. "And Lieberman, for the last time, pigs do not have eggs!" Sorn said with a final sqawk.

"But you don't know that, I mean for sure, do you?" queried Lieberman once again.

"Lieberman's right," commented Fitz. "You don't really know for sure, do you? I mean they might, and its not like you ever looked, did you? I mean, you mostly just read, studied lore, flew about and looked after us, right?"

"Yes, Fitz and Lieberman are right." Hanz reasoned. "I know for a fact that cook couldn't stand your sweet tooth and kicked you out of the kitchens twice. There is no way that she would have let you in there to cut up pigs and look for eggs!"

"Hanz is right!" declared his brothers in turn.

"The cook kept telling you to get your grubby little claws away from her food!" Fitz recalled happily. "The whole kitchen heard that one! Really Sorn, you should let us teach you a thing or two about sneaking!"

"Yes you should," Lieberman said to his suddenly crimson-cheeked cousin. "Your not very good at it. At the very least, you don't have any brothers to distract the guards!"

"That's true!" Hanz piped in. "If you had let us help you, we could all have gorged on sweets! You know the opening spells, and we know how to sneak!"

"And distract," added Fitz.

"Yes indeed!" smiled Hanz.

"So you see Sorn," Lieberman continued with his implacable logic, "why we have to check the pigs for eggs!"

"Let’s just drop it," requested the embarrassed looking dark haired youth, flushed face giving evidence to how disconcerting he had found this latest turn in the conversation. "Besides," he confided somewhat snidely, "you don't know about the dozen times I did get away with it, all on my own, thank you very much!"

"Wow, that's impressive!" Hanz gave Sorn a thumbs up.

"Yes, good show Sorn, good show!" Lieberman grinned happily.

"I agree!" Fitz chimed in. "But that still leaves us with one very important question."

"I hesitate to ask," Sorn asked, "but what is it?"

"Who’s going to check the pig for eggs?"

A short time passed by way of a slowly waning afternoon sun. All seemed peaceful, the long grass rippling in the gentle gusts of wind like waves cresting across a deep green sea. The youths walking along the well packed dirt road that cut through these grasslands couldn’t help but look up from time to time and admire the lone eagle silhouetted against the cloud-swept sky, shrieking his sovereignty high above.

Said eagle might have thought little about the progress made by these seemingly land bound trespassers in his domain, but in truth the youths kept a good pace, despite their animated conversation. Indeed, more than one carefully concealed rabbit, frozen to stillness by their passing, would have been more than a little disturbed by their views on livestock had they an ear for the language and a mind to understand it.

As it was, the windswept pasturelands soon fell to lowlands and the Darkwoods below. Logged according to the Duke's decree, in moderation, and only inside the woods, it had served as a steady supply of quality hardwood for shipwrights for decades without its majesty or size being diminished. Yet lately the woods had become inhabited by creatures deadlier than the innocent fox and squirrel. A creature wily enough to leave untouched the Duke's axe men and save its claws for better prey.

Even the three youths and their now once again feathered companion found their conversation muted as they approached the woods. Sorn found his lecture lessening in volume until it was no more than a soft echo of what it had been but moments before, quickly absorbed by the surrounding trees. The light mood encouraged by the warmth and brightness of the day in the pasturelands above was also muted with the shade. Ebullience and friendly banter were seemingly transformed to quiet introspection by the thick foliage above that had so quickly turned afternoon to dusk. Well, except for Sorn of course.

"In any case," the crow went on in his somewhat pedantic lecture, earning him an eye-role or two from his cousins, though they dutifully listened. "I have determined that the key to our finding prosperity and harmony in this land is that we must learn to live within the rules and constraints of this world, not just above them. If we were to hunt and eat a farmer’s cows, we would have that man's enmity and an enemy made. He could never appreciate that in the end we were seeking to save him.

“As you know, the excuse we were always given in the nursery for why we are the way we are is that other peoples are untrustworthy and that it is always a war of resources. That ultimately it is about our own survival, and that is the reason why we must take and conquer, in order to prosper and to survive. I, however, believe that there must be a better way. If we can learn to live within the constraints of this world, as valued citizens no less, we can have our needs met as well as befriend the people we are trying to help."

"But Sorn," Fitz interjected, "if we need to eat the cow to live, and the farmer has the cow, how can we make the farmer happy so he won't be mad at us for taking his cow?"

"By paying for it!" Sorn declared triumphantly, completely unperturbed by the looks of confusion and distaste his cousins threw his way. "Yes, I know that we are given wealth as a sign of honor, or behavior in your case!" he added wryly. "And that the more wealth we are favored with by our family or our clan, the higher our prestige. Or in our cases, the more skilled and accomplished we have proven ourselves as youths to be and the closer we are to achieving adulthood status. The point is that wealth doesn't just have to be a sign of status and prestige. Wealth can be used to buy things!"

"Buy things?" Lieberman queried uncertainly. "I don't understand. When we are hungry, we are either told to wait for feasting, or it is time to eat, or if we have proven sufficient skill, we are allowed to hunt on the preserve. If we wish to study," A slight frown of distaste showed upon Lieberman's face, but Sorn had to admit that he had seen Lieberman quietly studying a tome or two upon occasion, whether he would admit it or not being another story entirely. "If we wish to study, all we need do is peruse the tomes at our disposal or ask our brood mother for others and she will give them to us if she feels we are ready. Heck, she may even give us a jewel as a sign of her approval!" he declared happily. "So what is there to buy, and why should we? Whatever we needed, it was there. Or if we wanted fine new silk clothes like these, we simply ask the Silfreig to make them for us".

The Silfreig, Sorn reflected to himself, were a spider like race of denizens, given a favored place in terms of rankings amidst the under-races for the fine silken clothes and linens they could make. Indeed, they appeared to take genuine pleasure in servicing Sorn's people, and had seemed quite pleased to speak with Sorn when he would occasionally wander down to the lower caves. Sorn had often made his way past respectful guards to the damp web-filled caves that were the home of the Silfreig. The truth was that he enjoyed talking to them and learning from them, being as they were a people so different from his own. He strove also to better understand them and perhaps, he admitted to himself, make some new friends as well, not having that many among his own race. It was a pleasure indeed to sit and dine with them, each of them eating in their own way, all the while gazing at the beautiful crystalline splendor above which served to let in light from the surface via deep fissures of quartz. Thus, the crystal-fractured light served to make many of their caverns a breathtaking sight to behold. It was as if the sky above were lit by the sparkle of a billion shining gems, the colorful brilliance of those glittering facets giving the caverns their warm glow, the beauty being only further enhanced by the miniature rainbows generated in midair from the fractured light. Truly, it was a treat to walk amongst the homes of the Silfreig.

Still, when all was said and done, and despite their apparent pleasure in his company, they were a subjugated race. A slave race to not put too fine a point on it. And although the Silfreig seemed quite content with how things were, at least for the length of Sorn's short life, some part of him wondered if they had always felt that way. Theirs was one of the happier stories, however, and in any case, Sorn hoped things could be different with the free peoples of this land.

"The point is that people don't just make things for free here." Sorn continued. "A craftsman, like someone who makes clothes, however they make them in this land, still has to eat."

"But don't they just get food from the mushroom people?" queried Fitz

"No, cousin. I’m afraid it's not that simple. First off, as you have no doubt noticed, there are not too many caves here. And from all that I have studied in books and gleaned from the scrying pools, one thing I do know with certainty is that very few people here live underground. Or, to be more accurate, the scrying pools only show, and the books only speak of people living above ground." Sorn replied. "In any case, it is farmers that grow the plants, or milk the cows, or gets eggs from the chickens!" Sorn paused to give his sheepish cousins a stern look before continuing. "These farmers then sell their produce to the craftsmen. Sometimes the craftsmen give the farmer stuff he needs like shoes or clothes or wood or chairs or whatever a farmer needs, but often…"

"But Sorn, where are we going to get enough chairs to feed ourselves?" asked a suddenly worried looking Lieberman.

"But often!" continued a very exasperated crow, "in big cities and such, the medium of exchange is money; gold and silver or copper coinage. What's more, you can trade valuables, like your fancy swords and mithril shirts which I know you did not ask our brood mother for before you took them out of the armory!" He paused, once again giving his cousins a stern look, receiving only sheepish grins in return.

"In any case, you could trade valuables such as those which we won't, of course, because they are artifacts of our culture and not theirs, and might contaminate their thinking or in any event piss off our elders even more if we ever get home! But in any case we could trade valuables such as those, or gems which we could safely trade but which I am sure you didn't think to bring because that would have made things too easy for us, oh no, have to take the difficult path! Anyway, one could go to a specialist shop like an armorer or jeweler, and trade our valuables for silver and gold. And assuming that we could get a fair price for what we sell, it could well equal a lot of wealth that could buy us a dozen cows easily if we had one little gem.

“And so you see, whereas the farmer might be pissed and hate us if we took one of his cows which is not ours since they are free people and not our servants, Fitz! Anyway, whereas he might be a bit peeved if we ate one of his cows, he would be more than happy to SELL us a dozen of his cows! So now do you see? We don't take the cow and gain an enemy, instead we buy the cow and gain a friend!" Sorn concluded his lecture with a triumphant flourish of his wings, always pleased with himself when his insights and deductive abilities led him to what he considered brilliant reasoning, and all the happier when his cousins could actually understood what he was talking about.

"Absolutely!" replied Fitz

"Completely!" replied Hanz

"I'm sorry, what was that about the gems again?" Lieberman queried despite playful shoving from his amused siblings.

"Okay guys," continued Sorn, "the whole point is, if we earn money from people by doing services for them we will be able to buy all the cows, or hens or 'pigs' we want. And you goofballs can do all the experiments you want on said pigs as they will be ours since we will have brought them. Just please be kind enough to make it comatose before you do so okay? And I promise you, you won't find any eggs!"

"Anyway," he continued, "I've been thinking, what if we could do even more? Guys, listen!" Sorn’s voice became, if anything, even more animated than before, as he hopped excitedly from shoulder to shoulder while continuing his lecture.

"What if instead of buying a cow from the farmer, and you know we would all get hungry again sooner or later, what if we brought the farm? Think about it! If we brought the farm, we would have all the cows and chickens and eggs and pigs we wanted, and we wouldn't have to keep getting money to buy more livestock since if we leave them alone, eventually they will make more of themselves and we can just eat a few of them at a time! We don't even have to eat the chickens, we can just eat all their eggs! And we don't even have to eat any of the cows, we just hire someone to milk them, and we have an endless supply of milk!"

At the word milk, Sorn noted that he had all of their attention. Milk was something of a tasty delicacy in their eyes, though they rarely had more than a cup in mortal form.

"Yes guys, all the milk we can drink!" Sorn continued happily. "What we have to do is get up enough silver or gold to buy a really big farm, and we could keep the farmer on to run it and let him have some of the eggs and milk or some more gold since he knows how to milk the cows and egg the chickens and whatever you do to pigs. Okay Fitz, stop giving me that look! Anyway, just think of it. A big farm of our own, and all we have to do is sit around, eat things and get big! And the great thing is that the people like us and get along with us. Best of all, everybody's happy! So guys, what do you think? Sound like a plan to you?"

"An excellent idea!" Fitz happily commented.

"Yes, a wonderful plan!" agreed Lieberman.

"Are you sure we don't eat the horses?" queried Hanz. "I mean, all their books say we eat their horses, maybe that's why their knights hate us."

And suddenly Sorn was caught between three curious sets of stares.

His reply was caustic. "The point is that THEY do not eat their horses, so neither will WE, so maybe that way we won't have any problems with their stupid knights, okay?"

"Yeah fine," said an embarrassed Hanz. "I was just checking."

Sorn groaned and shook his head. Their adventure had just begun, and already he was dreading what the future had in store for them.