And An Explanation Of The Supremacy Among Them, Universally Accepted, Of Money

Eagerness to join the crowd and enjoy praise of his scoring layout, this time in Dvanj, pushed Dirant right into Posmeterin Igwodan-Tin, who had an analytical eye on his students' work. Naturally a product of a respected Greater Enloffenkir institution of ritual learning could be analytical as well, to say nothing of thoroughly critical, and just as naturally he accepted his older colleague's invitation to contribute an outsider's opinion. When they reached the outermost courts, with “outer” defined as the ocean and “inner” as the land in a most Adaban fashion, astonishment disordered Dirant's bodily systems, and not because of a remarkable tennis court. The reason was that he saw a weird little guy looking out to sea.

The Ritualist blinked and saw Holzd even farther out, still gazing oceanward. Certainly there was some meaning to it, but before he ran into the ocean in a fit of religious ecstasy, he sought Posmeterin's opinion on the divine manifestation. “Pardon me, Sajaitin. Would you look over there for a moment?” Dirant, expecting to be called upon to correct marred lines regardless of his instructions to the competitors, had in hand a staff which he swung to direct attention toward the blessed advent.

Posmeterin Igwodan-Tin, recently awakened and rubbing the buildup of sleep from his eyes, looked over and awakened to the fullest extent. “Sajaitin! This is the honor of honors!” He dropped to his knees, or rather sank to them, not being a rash man, and lowered his head toward Holzd, who reached over from yards away and patted his head without turning away from his maritime vigil, much like a lighthouse which sends it rays both landward and seaward.

The two Ritualists embarked on a miniature pilgrimage to offer their devotion with hesitating steps as if they feared to intrude on their god's numinous meditation. A bystander able to perceive not just their behavior but their very emotions, Holzd for instance, would have known their genuine fear, which was that they might be given some ridiculous task. By their shared worry and anticipation evident in their glances back and forth as well as the tremors felt in each other's arms they grabbed for support, they understood with nothing being said that both had been assigned some such before.

By no means was the priestly life one of unrelieved trepidation. For instance, the god may have appeared to assure Dirant the danger to Delaosant Paspaklest had passed or to celebrate the temple's escape from ruin. If so, his actions contradicted his intentions. Like some sort of philosophical experiment, they never reached Holzd no matter how much they decreased the distance. Farther and farther they walked until the god disappeared altogether, and looking up at the edge of the ocean they saw something more earthly yet more startling still.

It was a ship out of the Akard-Velgsin shipyards, and her progress toward the shore so resembled that of an earlier vessel that none but those so ideologically devoted to drawing no conclusions that they refused to admit the sun would rise the next morning did not forthwith imagine the troupe of mounters below, hurrying her along with their terrible suckers and claws.

“I hear also the powerful lungs of Seifis Desabas Aesyo whose acquaintance the gods permitted me to make,” Dirant told Posmeterin. “Please cover your ears as well as you are able, for I intend to raise my voice.”

A peal of thunder. Boulders tumbling down, shaken by the ever-shifting earth. The roar of disappointed gamblers in Egilof. Dirant approached none of those in volume, but he yelled loudly enough and ran with sufficient speed that the ship's haulers had for their reception not a parade of their fellows as they may have expected, if monsters had the capacity to expect, but rather a host composed of fighters eager to excel in some undertaking. The games they had been playing each allowed but a single victor, and even second place rankled for those types.

The day's third battle was the shortest, against the advice of rhetoricians but consonant with the highest ideas of military strategy. Prince Ozovramblidaj committed none of his reserves and the Ritualists and Subjugators stood idle. So swift was the victory and so unresisted the human combatants that they subdued the foe to the utmost without needing to burn the ship.

“You were going to destroy my ship? There are limits to courtesy, I hate to say!” Desabas Aesyo's dismay at the proposed action when informed of it was soon mollified by an explanation of the recent events. She appreciated even more when Chisops Bodan-Tin declared why he opposed the burning while behind them her crew disembarked, kissed the beach, and sometimes cried a little.

“Gentlemen, ladies, Your Highness, we now have a manmade monster station. I don't have the eloquence to describe properly the possibilities this opens to us, but by the blessed contrivance of the eternal captains, I can rely on you men and women of repute as witnesses of the variety of monsters who surrounded the ship before and how simple it was to control their numbers after the one skirmish. The research that can be done, ah, my tongue isn't long enough. Yes, our own monster station, and one we can move about to attract monsters of different environments and, as a consequence most to be desired, cease to inconvenience Stanops Bodan-Tin or his splendid Koshat Dreivis.” There he clasped his hands and addressed Desabas Aesyo directly. “I will be very surprised if your name, Seifis, is not remembered forever in the field of monster research. Eizeur Nifkleskir will also be much thanked, posthumously.”

Poiskops added his own heavy influence in support of not antagonizing a daughter of a prominent Yean Defiafi family so long as he might also avoid antagonizing important personages of Swadvanchdeu and Noiswawau. “That's how it is, Seifis, if even Eizesl Dogai-Brein says so. You've had a rough time, and us no less, which is as good a message as the higher heads ever send that all your people should join us in a celebration of fortune good and undeserved. Behold the play fields intricate traced by peerless sajaitins! Eizesl Paspaklest is getting big scores, but he can be beat, I think.”

Anyone able to resist an invitation such as that never purchased experimental ships and sailed them along the coasts of foreign lands. The adventurous Survyais enlivened the proceedings yet more, not only because of their own boisterous nature but also the responsive enthusiasm of Onkallant and other Aesyo admirers who became so energetic that the earlier year's end festival seemed merely a practice run. Then there was the way Helsodenk and Essar glared at the proceedings from their aerial stations, which moved everyone to amusement. Even the bonfires danced sprightlier than before.

Seeing the mess the fierce competitors made of his lines while they exerted themselves to win Survyaian attention, Dirant began to contemplate a new theory which he promptly proposed to Posmeterin Igwodan-Tin. “Sajaitin, is it plausible that the Divine Guidance (Hunch) ability may bundle together several matters of varying severity? For example, a feeling of misfortune might refer to domestic problems and assassination together.”

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“Sajaitin, I would be surprised if it did not,” Posmeterin answered. “I've found it so when I use it, at least. I try not to, but when focus unshakable I attain . . .”

Any more fellow feeling between the two Ritualists and they would have merged into one being. No argument against unfolding the entire history from that Hunch in cultured Isarpezoltk came to Dirant, and therefore he did exactly that. Takki came over to assist in the telling after some respectable if not prize-winning stone tosses. By the end, she had more questions about the narrative than Posmeterin did. “Ressi, are we done, do you think? Has the emergency expired?”

“Just before Miss Desabas's arrival I would have said yes, and so I must admit to knowing nothing without a sign. Ah, and there it is.” His stomach and kidneys seemed to exchange positions, his spine felt like a post used by cats to sharpen their claws, and he saw a small figure nearby stretch one limb higher than an Ottkir clock tower and bend it double for it to dive down and pick popcorn out of a bowl. Holzd looked at his priests and winked.

“We can take that as authoritative, I think,” the older concurred.

“What is it? What's the sign?” For all her swiveling and craning, Millim Takki Atsa, Battler, saw no indications or portents, even when one waved at her.

“Its visibility is class-specific.”

“Oh, all right. That's great, Ressi. I know you were worried.” There was the smile of the runner-up in a poetry contest who understood the importance of good sportsmanship, intellectually.

“I was,” Dirant said. His desire to inspire cheer in others notwithstanding, he had to be honest. “Enough so that my determination is that Divine Guidance (Hunch) is properly used as a last resort only. Still, there are adventures before it and after it also.”

“Always after it,” Posmeterin Igwodan-Tin lamented, his thoughts far away. “Always, always, always.”

That suggestion of an unspeakable history restored Takki's spirits entirely, rendering her suitable to assist in the powerful revelry necessary to repel the curses the captives were trying to inflict by means of malice alone. Perhaps such a thing was possible; Tands possessed exotic abilities after all, and Helsodenk might have learned a few.

“It is only too bad we cannot have Mr. Helsodenk, all peace upon him, perform his Acrobat tricks for us,” Dirant was remarking to Stansolt Gaomat when Takki shook his sleeve.

“That's true, but Ressi, I just got Drastlimez (Intermediate).”

“Congratulations,” both Grenlofers said, but that, it seemed, was not the vital point.

Takki sidled closer to Dirant and lowered her voice after looking around. “And I still don't know what seffif means. Has anyone found out?”

“Some circles of society twist words a bit to make them sound cuter and smaller both. Seffif is the juice when seifis is so pulped, Seifis.” Takki's precautions amounted to hanging a sign saying “No Crime Here” over the door to the counterfeiting operation when the keen ears of natural detective Loigwin Nein-Cadops-Bain happened to pass nearby. The sole fact which saved her was that wondering about vulgar slang carried no legal penalty. Loigwin went on to address another case after congratulating Takki on her achievement. “Short-sighted as I am, even I see northerners apart, clustered together like veins rich amid plain rock. What mattock may we raise to extract you?”

“Miss Onerid's whereabouts are unknown,” Dirant answered. Most judges would not have recognized that as a cooperative response to a question, but Loigwin accepted it with a smile.

“They say there is true accord where the crew and the captain can be silent and the ship yet sail.” He looked around for the next clue, and if only he saw Holzd or some other god who visited the shore, he might have had one.

Observing that set Dirant to musing about complications, ramifications, and the importance of cutting through them all with sharp purpose. “Ah. It is best that I search her out also, and for the very simple reason that it is my plan, and I say so openly because the respect and affection I bear for all of you forbids untruth, to spy on certain people in the hope of learning secrets of financial significance. Already I regret not inventing a pretext, but it is late and all are merry.”

He was wrong to regret it. Stansolt Gaomat approved of spying generally, while the explicit mention of a pecuniary motive precluded Loigwin from conceiving unnecessary fears. Takki, for her part, wanted to check on Onerid and cared little what the act was called. Therefore she accompanied Dirant while the other gentlemen went their own ways.

Dirant's highest expectations met their fulfillment. Onerid was easy to find from the sound of Keiminops Bodan-Tin's sales pitch outlining his grand entrepreneurial scheme, his only precaution against company spies being the distance from the beach tennis courts. A handy boulder provided cover with cooperation from deepening night.

“. . . because what most travelers want is predictability. A price within the budget. A dish he knows, if not the most gastronomically appealing. The menu items are in the same order every time. A drink that won't set him to heaving later. The entire world is crying out for a restaurant like that in every city, every town, and probably not every village. When I put my ear to the ground, like this, I can hear it say, 'Sell maps and gazetteers there too.'”

He elaborated on his plans even while recumbent, a scene an artist might recreate in oil and label “The Triumph of Fervor Over Dignity.” As for his listeners, Dirant strained just as fervently to hear and Onerid at least looked interested. Takki alone had more dignity than fervor, a fact which suggested certain explanations for Pavvu Omme Os's relative economic situation.

Though Dirant silently resolved to withdraw if the conversation became excessively personal, the determination of when it crossed that imaginary but nevertheless significant threshold being left to him and no one else, the presentation ended shortly after with a short question and answer session, following which Onerid promised to consider the matter. Keiminops strode away as if triumphant, Onerid went elsewhere with a thoughtful step, and Takki complained.

“This is going to sound awful, but I just don't believe there's anything romantic about finances. Every Drastlifar says there is, that 'Will you record my expenses, darling?' is a proposal, and I don't want to call them all liars, but they don't really carry on like that, do they? Adabans love money as much as anyone, and you don't do that. You don't, right, Ressi?” Takki's sudden stare mixed supplication and accusation into an indescribable compound dangerous to drink.

Dirant laughed instead. “Not at all. The opposite is popular in novels of a romantic character, I understand. Often in the final pages the hero confesses to the heroine, who likely is called Ledasmir even though I have never met anyone of that name, how consumed he was with the pursuit of money to the exclusion of human warmth before he came to know her. Many acquaintances of mine have learned from humorous experience, humorous to their friends that is, how ineffective is the formula when attempted by someone not already wealthy.”

“We're exactly the same, only she's named Joffgi.” Her smile of relief and tug on his arm to guide him back to the well-partied quarter of the beach discouraged Dirant from admitting he was thinking about business right then, in particular the potential he saw in the standardized menu plan of Keiminops and what his options were as far as stealing the idea, pushing for a portion of profits as part of a license, setting up a joint venture between Keiminops and Stadeskosken, or some other profitable maneuver.

So absorbed did he become in his theorizing that his guts began to squeeze themselves. Recognizing the signs, he broke himself out of the reverie which threatened to invite another divinely guided hunch by asking about the literary implications of various Omme names while at the same time offering a prayer.

“Long-winding Holzd, for the reward of overhearing what I wanted to overhear if indeed it was a reward I thank you, and otherwise I thank you regardless while thanking also the god responsible, and further the relief of Delaosant Paspaklest is my relief also. I beseech you not to think my gratitude less if never again do I use that one ability as my present intention is.”

His god heard the prayer and appreciated the circumspection of his priest in not vowing absolutely not to use Divine Guidance (Hunch), since such a vow would be impossible to keep.