Page 17 of The Dungeon Book

“Magic is loose change.”

I did not take his meaning at the time, as I was gnawing through a rope tied around my wrist. He returned to the topic when I took a breather.

“It’s like dropped coins. Sometimes, you find a gold coin lying on the road, and it’s a singular wonder. A miracle, bright as a fallen sun. But you snatch it up and spend it, and it’s gone.”

“It has been a while,” I said, plucking strands of hemp from between my teeth, “since either of us happened upon a gold coin by chance.”

“But when we do, we squander it, yes?” said Orphir.

“ ‘Squander’ strikes me as overly judgemental. We put both specie and sorcery to the best possible of uses; to whit, filling our bellies.”

“Most of our magic is passing copper off as gold,” grumbled Orphir. “We take the pettiest of spells and convince people that these are wondrous enchantments.”

“Keep your voice down, in case someone takes that as a confession.”

Let me reveal the context of this conversation: chronologically, it was forty or fifty years ago. Geographically, it was in the heart of the settled lands, on the road between Vellisgard and Crowhaven, and, if even more precision is desired, it was in the back of a wagon transporting prisoners to judgement at the travelling Court of Assizes. Orphir and I were among that rabble of pickpockets, sheep thieves, footpads and poachers, although we stood accused of a much more erudite crime: sorcery.

“Anyway,” I continued, “petty spells are all that anyone can manage in this age of the world. Maybe there was once an age of sorcerer-kings and wonder-workers, but that age is past. It’s my considered opinion that half the histories are bunk. Old Pentsable may have believed them when he was drunk, but in the sober light of historical enquiry—”

Let me add yet more context: Master Pentsable was the wizard who initiated both Orphir and myself into the arcane arts. A lovely old man, but when it became clear that magic involved vast amounts of mental effort, the focusing of the totality of one’s will, and all manner of sacrifices and exceedingly precise ritual to evoke the smallest supernatural effect, Orphir and I decided on a simpler method of conjuring wealth. We waited until Master Pentsable’s head drooped into his grimoire and he began to snore, then liberated everything of value from his little cottage, sold what we could and set ourselves up as travelling fortune tellers, medicine sellers, eminent astrologers, alchemists, wizards, exorcists, prognosticators, removers of warts, physicians extraordinary, cosmic sages, wonder-workers on commission.

It turned out to be a short road to the assizes and the noose.

“My contention,” said Orphir, “is that the histories are largely correct, but that the wizards of old spent most of the magic, and we’re left with the inert dregs. That wonders were once possible, but are now unaffordable. Our collective inheritance is spent. All the magic’s gone.”

“A sad state of affairs,” I said, returning my attention to the rope. In retrospect, I should have realised that Orphir was on to something, but my mind was occupied by the thought of the noose that likely awaited us at the end of the road.

“But there might be some lost coins still out there, so to speak. Buried treasure troves. Money hoarded in a secret place. Coins lost under floorboards or down the back of the settle.”

“And in this metaphor, the couch is . . .”

“The unknown regions where no man goes, where no one has looked under the cushions of reality in generations. Unmapped wilderness, perilous lands and suchlike.”

This was, I thought, a singular couch.

Around a mouthful, I said: “That’s as maybe. But the quality of money, dear Orphir, is that it’s portable. One can take a coin to market and buy what one desires. What good to us is magic in some far-off wilderness?

It’s possible that the rope in my mouth impeded my lyricism, for Orphir did not respond, but fell deep into thought.

“My patience,” interjected the minotaur, “is not inexhaustible. Get on with the tale.”

A crowd had gathered at the assizes to see the king’s justice done. Orphir and I were the main attraction, and hence we were kept until the end. One by one, the thieves, rapists and murderers were tried, sentenced and hanged. I have seen horrible things in the dark depths of the Dungeon, but few as ghastly as what I saw that afternoon under a dull grey sky at Crowhaven Cross.

As our doom approached, I composed what I felt to be an eloquent and persuasive argument for our innocence. From what I recall, my point was −

“Irrelevant,” interjected the minotaur.

Before I could speak, Orphir fell to his knees before the judge, and dragged me down with him. He pleaded guilty (on my behalf, too!) to the charge of sorcery, and begged that the sentence of death be commuted to a lifetime of service in the border watch. The same option had been offered to one of the sheep thieves – a giant of a man, hairy and battle-scarred, the sort of fellow you would not merely cross the street to avoid, but leave town entirely – and he had turned it down, preferring the quick end of the noose to freezing to death on the frontier.

To this day, I’m convinced that the judge only agreed because it amused him. He took one look at Orphir and me – a scrawny pair of ne’er-do-wells, neither of whom had ever done an honest day’s work – and decided that we’d suffer more on the road. “To the border with ye!” he roared, and so the king’s justice was done.

Back in the cart for us, and off down the road to the borderlands.

I thought the last item of business in our relationship would be deciding which one of us ate the other when we ran out of food in some border fort. But Orphir was still convinced that we were on the path to greatness. On the long trek to the border, he chewed over tales that Old Pentsable had taught us.

“It’s written that the Master Yrn Kyos had a tower in the mountains above a ruined city. Cornelius, I’m willing to bet that ruined city—”

“You have made that bet,” I grumbled, “with our lives.”