"So the crystal, the cup and the book...?"

"Aye, the ring, the flute and the endless purse of money also are members of our order. I am the eldest. The great shield is all to brast," the sword added. "He gave his all for the Liberation of Klahd, four thousand years past. The harp was crushed, stringless, in the rout that followed the Taming of the Centipede Giants. The Great Key was melted down in the fire that destroyed the treasure house at Nox. Yet, that is our fate. I have seen great treasures join us, only to depart this existence, yet satisfied that they had been crafted for just such a moment."

"Weren't there some more treasures?" I asked. "I heard about a golden mace some guy was hauling around some years back. It was supposed to be part of the Golden Hoard."

"We have an ongoing problem with wannabes," the sword said, with a sigh. "For a while, Heroic Treasures were coming out of the woodwork, so to speak. No mace was ever part of our number. There was a claim from the Bagpipes of Fear, but it turned out there was really nothing magikal about them. Their sound just naturally made anyone hearing them turn and flee, something any one of ten billion sets of bagpipes could do."

I shuddered at the thought of ten billion bagpipes. I examined the sword again.

"Looks like katae," I said, admiring the metal. It had been folded over itself again and again to make layers katae that were many times stronger and more flexible than any poured blade could be.

"Katae!" the blade shrieked. "My smith predated katae by ten thousand years! He devised and forgot about more techniques than any swordsmith since his day!"

"Don't get your quillons in a braid," I said, continuing my examination. The sword, "Ersatz," was once famed as the sharpest, most intelligent sword around, but so many fakes were made that the name became a byword for cheap and shoddy. "You look like you can still hack with the best of them."

"I'm still as sharp as I ever was," the sword insisted. "But I can't get anyone to believe it. YOU didn't believe it."

"The jury's still out, as far as I'm concerned," I said, but I was starting to take his word that he was what he said he was. "Where are the others?"

"I know not where most of my companions be," Ersatz admitted, the steel-blue eyes dropping slightly. "Many of us haven't seen one another in over a century. If truth be told, most of us don't care for each other. Kelsa—she is the great scrying crystal, the most accurate viewer of the future ever crafted, and she has never made a direct statement since the day she was carved. When time is of the essence, she cannot get to the point!"

"That's your specialty." I grinned.

"You have a sharp wit yourself, my friend."

"So, what am I supposed to do with you?" I asked. "I don't really need a trophy for my wall, especially not a talking trophy."

The blue eyes looked alarmed. "Nay, friend, I wouldn't want to be a fixture. For a time I was embedded in the wall of yonder eating establishment," the sword managed to glance in the direction of the street. Out the inn's door I could see a red-walled hut with customers emerging carrying flat, gooey comestibles that were this dimension's equivalent of pizza. "I lived side by side with a wain's worth of junk from all over this dimension. I was only freed from the endless chatter of 'tonight's specials' and 'two-for-one dinners' when the patrons

finally decreed that they would no more sit at the table beneath my prisoning brackets. I think they did not like my comments upon the resemblance between their meals and the guts of enemies I have slain. That is when I was vended unceremoniously to yonder merchant."

"They just didn't appreciate good dinner conversation, I said, grinning. "I know a couple of pretty good swordsmen who would take care of you in your old age. Keep you all buffed up, listen to your stories."

The sword got huffy. "I do not need shielding! I need to be cast forth into fate's way once again, so that I may end up where I am needed next. Friend, you have proven to be an intelligent being who sees more than a few ducats at the end of the next trade."

"Who says?" I interrupted him.

"I need your help."

"Mine?"

"Aye, yours."

"Forget it, bud," I said. "I'm on vacation. I'll take you as far as the next war, then we part company."

For the first time the eyes bore an expression of appeal.

"Honorable master Pervect, I beseech you. Listen to my story. Then, if you must place me in the hand of some mudstained lad who is throwing himself into the battle, I will accept it."

"Fine. Suppose you can't buy me a drink." I glanced around for a likely spot.

"Nay, such is not my talent. I am sorry. I have been waiting for one such as you. I have heard word from a passing dagger that my fellow Hoard members are being collected. One greedy individual is gathering all of them up. This must not happen. We cannot gather dust upon a shelf for all eternity. We must be free to blow in Fate's wind."

I chugged the last of my second bucket and signed to the lass for a third one. She delivered it with some dispatch, and retreated. Guess that not many of her customers took a table

for the purpose of talking to their weapons. "Sorry, skinny, but I stopped doing freebies, especially big, legendary freebies, not long after I stopped being an apprentice myself."

"Did I mention that one of our members is the Endless Purse of Money?" the sword asked, the reflected eyes gleaming.

I stopped in mid-gulp, entranced by the memory of that legend. There wasn't a Pervect child who heard it in school who didn't have itchy palms and avaricious dreams about it. "Well, yes..."

"Whatever you can get out of her, that shall be your reward."

"I've heard offers like that phrased before, and not just about money," I said. "Forget it."

The sword's eyes dipped with understanding. "Very well, I shall persuade her to give you whatever sum you require. On my honor, we will reward you more than adequately. Thousands of gold pieces shall be yours. Tens of thousands. But, first, we must find her."

The offer sounded better the longer I hesitated. "Well...all right. What do we do first?"

"You must take me to Kelsa. She is the only one of the Hoard whose location I know, and the only one who could tell us the location of the others. Then we will find each of them and free them from their captivity."

"Not part of the deal," I said, seeing visions of money bags winging away from me. "Forget it. I'm not going off on a quest just because you want to put the band back together. You wanted out of the flea market, and you're out. From my point of view you owe me a hundred gold pieces. That's all."

"But...care you nothing for the greater good?"

"Just because you and your buddies get cabin fever?" I snarled. "I don't think so. I'm just going to hang out here and have a little snack, then I'm..."

At that moment, the door burst inward. In a flurry of hair, the crowd from the square came rushing inside, the junk merchant at their head.

"There he is!" the Ittschalkian exclaimed. "The one who cheated me! We'll tear the hairless one apart!"

I had already sprung to my feet. Somehow the hilt of the sword sprang into my hand.

"Draw me, friend!" the sword shouted. "Let me drink of their blood. We will be victorious! Have at you, varlets!"

The mass of Ittschalkians was closing in. As a matter of course I have all the exits from a place scoped out in advance in case of just such a moment as this. I made for the rear of the establishment, only to come face to face with the local gendarmes bounding toward me with purpose in their eyes. One of them was raising a particularly nasty-looking magikal wand from its hip holster. I had no choice. I reached into my pocket for the D-hopper that had brought me there to Ittschalk, and hit RECALL.