It is at times a puzzle to me how the common folk of Edazzo keep all their gods straight. It is the duty of bards and priests to know such things, but unaccountably even the meanest denizen of the city can rattle off the names of thirty or so gods whom he honors. Pointless as such a feat seems to me, it proved most useful to an acquaintance of mine when he ran into trouble with an Uste priest, an anecdote which my readers may be interested to hear.

Elerias was a dealer in lamps and in oil, whom I had met when I was searching for something to replace a lamp I had broken in some fashion I do not remember at the moment. I am fairly certain it was an accident, though, as I am not so much of a fool to break a lamp on purpose. There was, I believe, a war on at the time, but Elerias was and is no warrior. He speaks of a wife and children who would starve if he went off into foreign lands, but I, at least, have never seen them.

To give you an idea of his superstitious nature, although he constantly complains about the weather, he always adds a “Teleks most gracious.” (He says Teleks instead of Teleko because he is a native son of of Phlę̄ri, not Edazzo.) He gives a drop of oil each day to beautiful Lagulai, bows his head whenever he sees a shrine of never-sleeping Horoso, wears a bracelet for muttering Adāī, and has gone so far as to be initiated into the mysteries of both Teleko and Sattao. Indeed, he refuses to swear by the name of any god lest he be stricken down, though this may reflect more his lack of honesty than his piety.

I happened to be in his shop when a man entered and at once began arguing with Elerias over a somewhat large container of oil. He was strangely dressed, wearing robes decorated with all kinds of sigils and flaps of cloth. “I cannot pay what you are asking,” he insisted repeatedly. “On me I have these Zurro marks only. I vow before the all-seeing Arraliturom that they are good.”

Elerias laughed at this and called me over. “What do you think of these marks?” he asked me. Let me explain that the lords of this land have not yet begun to mint coins, so the currency in common use consists of metal ingots for larger quantities and various tokens for smaller quantities. Although I had been to the Zurro realm, I had never seen anything like the clay tokens that Elerias put before my eyes now. There was something written on them, but the Bird doesn’t translate writing for me, and although I have a fair amount of mastery over the arcane symbols used in the writing of the Parako and a few other languages, I was able to get very little out of the writing on these tokens. In short, the result was that I could only shrug and confess my ignorance.

“I vow before Arraliturom that they are good,” the strange man said again. He had, for some reason, shaved the hair of his head so as to leave a ring around a bald spot on top, though I am hardly in any position to criticize the choices of others with regards to the decoration of one’s head. On one finger he wore a ring bearing an amethyst, and he touched this often as he spoke.

“I have heard of many gods, but never Arraliturom,” said Elerias.

“Oh, but he is a mighty god, who wherever one of his servants travels is powerful. See!” The man lifted one finger to draw a circle in the air, then breathed on the imaginary figure until it seemed to burst into flame. I, myself, am not a superstitious man, but I felt a chill in the air when he did this.

Elerias, on the other hand, made several complicated motions with his own fingers before saying dismissively, “A juggler’s tricks!” I watched this contest of charms and spells with enormous interest.

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“Ah, my friend. How much are you risking in this transaction? Compare that paltry amount to the weight of my soul that I have wagered here on my sacred promise.” He tapped his bald spot and drew from it (or so it seemed) a purple thread a few inches in length.

“You are an impudent juggler, but I need something besides your promise.”

“I am mortified that you doubt my honesty. But I have no doubt eventually that you will convince you of my trustworthiness. I will return tomorrow. My name, if you need it, is Metsinaram.”

As the man walked away, no doubt bearing the weight of his unwieldy name on his shoulders, Elerias turned to the west and invoked Anu, the god of madness, to protect us. “What did you make of that?”

“A strange man, with strange deities.”

“Well, so are you, my friend. The difference is that you are prompt to pay your debts. We’ll see if this Metsinaram returns.”

Despite my grave doubts that Metsinaram’s word was worth anything more than a broken branch in the dirt, he did come back at the same time the next day, carrying a large bag that bulged at the bottom. My curiosity had drawn me there to see the results of Metsinaram’s promise, where I hope I didn’t make too much of a nuisance of myself asking Elerias’s customers about Arraliturom. Elerias did seem moderately more testy than usual, but no doubt this was a natural reaction to his and my uncertainty. In any case, Metsinaram did come, relieving us both.

“By the power of the great god Kolodrinam, I bring you something worth more than the marks I carry, so that you may behold and be satisfied,” Metsinaram proclaimed. Elerias said nothing, merely looking at Metsinaram with crossed arms in what I believe to be one of the bargaining tricks of the Phlę̄ri. “Doubt earth, doubt sky, but doubt never Kolodrinam.” And reaching into the bag, Metsinaram withdrew a thin golden ring a cubit in diameter, with smaller interlocking rings within it.

“Now where did you steal that?” Elerias asked.

“From the treasury at the beginning of the world, from where all things come. May I now have those lamps I asked for?”

“May I see? Ah, this seems to be worth a great deal more than what we agreed on. You do not object if I weigh it?”

“Kolodrinam is generous beyond measure.”

“And Horos is suspicious to a fault. It is lighter than I thought at first, but still a worthy ornament for a lady to wear. I’ll ask again, where did you get this?”

“Kolodrinam gave it when I asked to me. This I swear by Arraliturom so that you may know it is true.” Elerias did his crossed-arm trick again. “You may in earthly terms say that I went to the local shrine and there received it from the hands of the priest. Kolodrinam rewards all his followers.”

“And he does so with a kingly largess, it would seem,” Elerias said aside to me. He told Metsinaram then, “All right. I will take this and you may have your oil.”

Metsinaram smiled, showing teeth as white as pearls. “A pleasure.”

After this peculiar Uste man had left, Elerias asked me again what I thought of the entire matter. I pondered all the things I had seen before giving my judgment. “A strange man, with strange deities. Speaking only for myself, though I do consider myself an excellent judge of character, I trust neither him or them.”

“My feelings are much the same as yours. But if I am a good judge of gold, this is genuine.” I offered to take a look at the rings, but he merely ignored my offer, making sure to put his body between me and the rings. Trust is probably the rarest of wares to come by among the merchants of Edazzo. Since I could sense the atmosphere becoming tenser between him and me, I bade him farewell and returned home.