by Dan Crawford
in Issue 136, May 2023
They were coming at him from all sides! Fingers outstretched, they could hardly miss him. With bare seconds to choose his course, he threw his hands up in front of his face.
This kept the dust out of Olki’s eyes as the stack of black velvet gloves flipped and flapped toward the floor. He sighed. All he’d wanted to do was move the sugar pigs to the end of the shelf. How was he supposed to remember that they were propping up the Blighted Shield of Throm?
“Blight the Shield of Throm,” he muttered, stooping to snatch up black hands right and left. What he really should have remembered was that you couldn’t move one thing around here without moving seven. He thrust them back into the box that the shield had shoved from the shelf. He paused. Should he pair them all up again, or let them stay like that for a while, to teach them a lesson? He slapped a couple together, and coughed away the dust. The next ones he picked up seemed to be a left, a right, and a middle. He put them back in the box.
Nose wrinkling, he glowered at the shelves, cluttered as they were with things which were supposed to fit into proper categories, or at least fit on the shelves. Surely he’d promised himself he was going to shift those flowerpots to the porch about ten years ago. And that oversized fan was disarranging the display on the second shelf: that was meant to be in another room entirely. His lips shrank and tightened. He turned.
Marching to the end of the row of bookcases, he threw open a battered tin chest. The leather bucket was unlikely to have rusted through, so he yanked that free, along with a sponge which still showed some of its original color and a duster with a few, at least, of its feathers left. Girded now for battle, he marched back to the box of gloves, still on the floor. No more excuses! Today—now!—he was going to make some progress straightening up.
Olki paused, his head cocked to the right. In four centuries and a half, such a decision had never failed to produce a knock on the door. And THAT was during the Blizzard of ’47.
Three thumps, like the fleshy part of a fist striking wood, reached to his ear. Sighing with relief, he set bucket, duster, and sponge just around the corner from the aisle. A customer came first, always.
“Coming, coming!” Three more thumps, with knuckles, gave evidence of impatience. Unless his caller was especially afraid of large red frogs.
His customer was a woman, he decided: tall, thin, and a bit haggard, though most everyone who made it this far through the swamp looked like that. She wore dented armor, rich but not well-matched, and with large scars here and there on the surface, where jewels had once been set. Something about her nose, ears, teeth, and hairline spoke of a long lineage of royalty.
“Come in, Ma’am.” Olki bowed low. “Let me know how I can be of service.”
Her eyes on him were a bit dubious, but after a glance back and a brief shudder, she stepped inside gladly enough. “I am Dorendi of Husson,” she said. “I seek the relics of the House of Husson.
”Monarchs of the isles of Nujius and Amcosur,” said Olki, bowing her far enough inside so he could close the door. “And the isle of Elms, I think, for a while.”
She had been gazing at the shelves, but turned now to stare at him. “How could you know that? It’s been seven hundred years since my ancestors were deposed, and the islands themselves are so small they don’t show on one map in eleven!”
Olki shrugged. “I have a lot of time to read, this season. Not many visitors get through when the Hloktrees are in blossom. Which relics were you looking for, My Lady?”
She blinked a bit, from embarrassment, amusement, or dust. “I don’t really know. Any of them will do. See, after a century or two it seemed unlikely we’d ever need them again, so my ancestors, um, sold them for rice and sausages.”
Olki nodded. “Dangerous indulgence, getting rid of things when there’s still a possibility of use.” He waved a hand toward the back of the shop. “I have a whole trunk of irrelevant diamonds around here someplace.”
The extent of the room made her eyes widen. “I, er, brought this book.” She reached back and pulled her pack around. Drawing out a bundle wrapped in oilskin. “One of my longfathers drew pictures of the symbols of royalty as they were disposed of.”
The book was thick, laden with clasps and gilding. Olki’s eyes sparkled. “What wisdom, to keep the book, at least!’ he rose on tiptoe. “What does it say?”
She stooped, the book cradled in one elbow well, and opened to the first picture. “There were three ancient swords, which he claimed our ancestors took from the barrows of kings from even more ancient families.”
“Hand-colored illustrations! Excellent!” Olki turned and looked down the aisle between bookcases. “Provided the colors haven’t faded, this will be a great help! Come, My Lady! I have a chamber just for magic swords and battle axes!”
Her mouth opened as if to object to the existence of another room like this one, but he had already trotted up the aisle, turning at the seventh row. A battered door stood in the wall beyond these bookcases. “There are some new arrivals on other shelves, of course, but as yours have been missing so long, they were surely in the collection last time I sorted.”
He bowed again as his customer followed slowly to the door. He swung the door open and a massive room was revealed to her, with an immense wall of swords, some pointing up and some down, at the far end. Sheathed, unsheathed, crossed at the hilt or along the blade, swords of a dozen centuries and a score of designs awaited her hand. Gold winked from figured patterns on some, while other blades bore dark stains, surely not rust. As she stepped toward this display, she realized that other walls of weapons slanted back from this, while bins like umbrella stands bristled with miscellaneous weapons on the floor.
“What are the distinguishing marks of the swords of your fathers?” Olki inquired, breaking into her reverie.
She cleared her throat. “The…the sword of the Copperhawk has the sun and moon on its hilt.”
“I have sunswords here.” Olki strode to the right. “Now, which have moons?” he lifted a cloth that covered a case and let it drop quickly. “Not while that eye is open,” he said. “Ah!” He lunged at a hilt and raised the sword from its bracket. “Here!”
She took it with an ease which showed handling a weapon was not new to her. The sun and moon swapped sides on some kind of pivot.
Olki reached for it. “Well, that’s not yours.”
Still holding she sword, she pulled back, trying to check it against the blade shown in the book. “How can you tell?”
“Blue flowers would have burst out of the pommel had the rightful owner taken it.” He set it back and took up a red sword with a pearl moon and ruby sun displayed in the pommel. “And this…. No, not that one, either.”
Her nostrils flared as she flourished it. “Red flowers?”
He shook his head. “A black fish would have bitten your thumb off.” She let go, but Olki caught the hilt before the treasure could drop far. “I forget which dynasty was known as the
House of Thumbless Kings. It could have been the House of Husson.” He set it in its place again and, wiggling his fingers, selected a third sword.
Her eyebrows came down. “Would you warn me about such spells beforehand?” She reached for this sword.\
He pulled it back. “That book say anything about your arms and legs sprouting long, silky purple hair?”
Her nose shrank as far as it could toward her eyes. “No.”
“No sense even bothering with that one, then,” Olki murmured, setting it away. “Pity. Kind of wanted to see that sometime.”
The potential princess licked her lips. “I suppose there are some which will react if I’m the WRONG person?”
Olki shrugged. “We’ll find out.”
She took a step backward and thumbed a few pages in the book. “What about scepters? We might find the Scepter of Tintakar.”
“Very well, My Lady. Scepters can be dangerous things, but they are a bit more individual.” The storekeeper stepped along the wall of swords on his right, knowing she had to follow. Would she be interested in a throne? Devilishly difficult to drag through the swamp, of course.
He swept aside drapery from what seemed to be a bookcase but proved to be another door. Dust dropped from the drapes. A few small shadows skittled toward bigger ones on the ceiling. “This is for the categorized regalia: scepters, orbs, chalices, shoelaces….”
“Shoelaces?” demanded the once and future princess.
Olki peered at the odd little lock under the knob. “King Tsimi was captured by mermaids, and the second thing he showed them to prove landkind were superior convinced them not to invade, after all.” He pressed a finger to the top button and his thumb to the button at the bottom. “Shoelaces became the symbol of his house.” He glanced at his customer, who was blocking the light.
She stepped to the left. “How did you get them?”
“Tsimi’s grandson angered the mermaids and the land was engulfed by desert six hundred years ago; the royal shoelaces blew out of the hands of the last prince and landed in the mouth of…ah!” He flung the door wide and stepped inside.
This room was lit by sunlight from some hidden opening in the ceiling. His customer’s eyes widened. “Where does one, er, stand?”
Olki bowed. “Step up on the casquets, My Lady. If the scepter you need is in the casquet we’re standing on, we step up to the next.”
He hopped onto what appeared to be a blackened and crumbling chest, and extended a hand to his guest. Dorendi thought about it, looking at her boots. Shrugging, she took his hand and joined him on the curved lid.
From here, she had more benefit of the light, and could see shelf after shelf in the shadows, with probable shelves beneath them blocked by rows of wooden, iron, and brass casquets. “Categorized, did you say?”
“Yes, indeed!” Olki nodded. “Each has a little silver tag with its category written on it.”
Extending her book behind her a bit for balance, she leaned in to peer at a frosty crystal orb waisted with silver. A slender sliver of silver depending from it clearly said “Orb.”
Straightening, she looked around the intermittently lighted room. “What order are they in?”
Olki’s nose wrinkled. “Haven’t gotten quite that far yet. But they ARE categorized.” He considered her expression, his head cocked to one side. “You weren’t expecting an easy quest, were you? Not after so many centuries.”
“I didn’t expect it to be easy, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this dusty. What’s that?”
A pick crystal column on the third bookcase from the door had begun to glow with a throbbing light. It rolled a little toward the end of the shelf. “It does that,” said Olki. “Misses its monarchs. What did Tintakar’s Sceptre look like? Black, wasn’t it?”
Her eyes remained on the crystal rod for a moment. She shook her head a bit, as if to clear it. “Why, yes. Yes! Black with a row of pearls and a wolf’s head cut from a single ruby! But how did you know that?”
“Sounded familiar.” Olki scanned the array. Stepping onto the lid of a square gray chest, which creaked in an irritated way, his reached out to pick up a bundle of scepters tied with a golden cord. “Wolf’s head…wolf’s head…saw a wolf’s head last time I was in here. Was that the time the werewolf…got an orb with a wolf’s head.”
He reached for an orb in a shadowy corner and had to slap his free hand to a pyramid of thick rods which had trembled. “Can’t move one thing in this place without moving seven.”
Dorendi, meanwhile, was flipping pages in her book, dipping her nose between them as she tried to make out captions in the uncertain light. “We don’t seem to have had an orb. At major ceremonies, the ruler would hold the Sceptre in the right hand, and the Harp of….”
“Harp?” Olki’s head came around and he pushed the eager orb back into its shadow. “There was a harp? Harps are much easier to find! Sometimes they answer when you call them!” He jumped back to his original spot, and then to the floor. “This way, My Lady!”
She followed, not at all unwilling to leave the uncertain light and less certain perch. The shopkeeper was moving quickly, and she nearly lost him twice as he scuttled around corners. She caught up as he stopped, a little breathless, before another door, set between two shelves of what appeared to be pink cannonballs. The door was also pink, and swung open as she arrived.
With a bow and a flourish, he waved her inside. “Almost all the harps are here, with a few flutes and whistles.” He frowned. “And one trombone, I think. But that’s not strictly royal. The mermaids used it as a summons when they wanted to, er, chat with King Tsimi.”
The room was lit with the same dust-speckled beams from somewhere in the ceiling and was, if anything, more thoroughly cluttered than the previous rooms. Harps of a hundred shapes and a dozen different sizes sat on all sides, or leaned against one another, instruments of gold, silver, and bone. Some were whole, some were broken: some had tangled strings while others seemed just a tangle of strings. She swallowed hard.
“If I become queen, I shall send you a wagonload of dustcovers in gratitude.” She paged through the big book, leaning it on the door frame. “Oh!” she cried, the syllable mingling dismay and relief. “The harp was destroyed three hundred years back!”
“Oh, I am sorry.” Olki looked across the harps, which seemed to have slumped a little in sympathetic disappointment. “No other particularly symbolic musical instruments, My Lady? The drums are….”
A rattle and a boom shook dust from the air, and she nearly dropped the book. Olki stamped a foot.
“Hush! I haven’t called anyone yet!” The sound died except for a mournful thump thump thump. He stamped his foot and sighed into the new silence. “They pay no attention, sometimes. There’s a glockenspiel here that gives me no end of trouble.”
Dorendi shifted her book to her other arm. “How do you ever FIND anything?”
The shoulders of her host slanted down. He sighed again. “People always ask that. I don’t see what makes it so funny.”
His shoulders bounced up again, and he swung a finger around at the waiting harps. “And I can’t be giving away my secrets. I do find things, My Lady…more often than not.” His hands swung this way and that, as if he were conducting a silent orchestra. “And if I fail, perhaps it was meant to be so. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to start some new royal traditions with some completely different traditional items? I could swap you half a dozen for the book.”
She frowned at him. “I can’t prove my lineage without the real ones.”
“How will they know you don’t have the real ones if you don’t have the book?”
She scowled now, more furious that this logic seemed so reasonable than really angry at the shopkeeper. “I will NOT give up so easily!”
He pulled the door of the harp room shut, giving it an extra pull until the latch clicked. “Well, I suppose that’s the spirit we want in our monarchs. Perhaps instead of going at this a room at a time, we could sit down over a plate of toast with honey and cheese, and examine the book. I might see something I remember right away. Sometimes the more recent material is easier to find that the things I’ve filed.”
“I believe that.” Dorendi followed the shopkeeper, studying with some misgivings a sock, a pair of spectacles, and what appeared to be much too large a grasshopper leg on the shelves they passed. “But it is not our policy to allow food or drink near the book.”
Olki paused in the maze of shelves and amaze of artifacts to bow. “A good policy. But one of us can eat or drink while the other looks over the book. Then we trade occupations. After washing hands, of course. I hate book dust in my tea.” He smiled a smile that spoke of nothing more sinister than tea and toast.
She returned the smile, but her fingers tightened on the book. “You would not plot to hide the book while I eat?”
“My Lady wouldn’t plot to make off with my best cheese while I’m reading? It’s very good cheese.” The shopkeeper gestured to the door ahead of them. “I had it in exchange for an emerald ring of hair enhancement.”
Dorendi felt her body sag, and forced it into a more heroic stance. “I have not eaten since I left the village, and it would be a joy to sit down. Thank you.” She set the book under one arm, her elbow holding it tight. “No need to starve to prove the quest. You may add the value of the cheese to the price of whatever we find.”
“Done and done!” They had reached the entry area of the shop again. “And if we find nothing, the cheese is free!”
Her eyes were on a dagger and, more importantly, what it seemed to be sticking out of, but glanced down at him. “It is no part of my business, sir, but…do you make money at all this?”
“Oh, sometimes it extends to ice in the summer. Watch your step here, My Lady: the trap door likes to swing loose at this time of year.”
She chuckled, but choked. Her body froze. Widening eyes focused on the trap door indicated. Olki, seeing this, glanced down.
“My Lady? Is it….”
He had to duck as she hauled up the big book and let it fall open. She flung pages right and left with a hazardous respect for their integrity. “it…isn’t. It isn’t. It is!”
She shook the book at him, shrieking, “The Rod of the Courts of Justice!”
“I beg your pardon?” Olki was seldom, these days, surprised by any customer’s reaction, but she was being rather loud.
“The rod raised by the Ruler when dispensing Justice! Look!”
She thrust the big book into his chest, nearly knocking him over, and stooped to snatch up his feather duster. “The very thing!” She clutched it to her chest, sobbing into the scraggly feathers. “The very thing! A symbol of justice!”
Lowering the book carefully, Olki smoothed the page that had curled against him. Wooden rod, black ring at the center, feathered crest…and that gold seal at the bottom which he’d always assumed was a counterweight to the brass rings around the feathers. He nodded.
In a flurry of tears and smiles and clinks of gold, his visitor was gone, book under one arm. Olki had insisted on giving her a cracked wooden case, once from the Flute of Seven Fingers, to carry the Rod of Justice. At the speed she was going, she’d be tripping over a tree root any second. Sorry thing for her treasure to be smeared with swamp mud after so many centuries.
Olki shook his head, watching her dash heedlessly through the muck. He could have SWORN that was a duster. Good thing he hadn’t tossed it out when a few feathers broke off.
Pressing his front door shut, he looked around the room at his cleaning project. The bucket and sponge seemed bereft, somehow. Still, there were other feather dusters around here…somewhere. He studied the handiest shelf, which held a silver tea service from the lost kingdom of Ioiraos. Except for the bread knife the last king had used on his….
His head came up. She never did get any tea. Where was Tsimi’s cheese knife? He’d planned to wash it after the mermaids brought it in. If he had, it might still be somewhere near the sink, and the cheeseboard.
Nodding to the bucket as he stepped over it, he headed for the kitchen.
©May 2023, Dan Crawford
Dan Crawford is the author of three fantasy novels lost in the dust of the past century. His poetry can be found by the unwary on YouTube, and his Nobel Prize appears to have been delayed in the mail again. This Dan’s his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.