‘There it is,’ Emmy said after they’d ridden for a couple of hours.
‘There what is?’
‘The place where you do some honest work, pet.’
‘I wish you’d stop rubbing my nose in that.’ He looked across what appeared to be a long-abandoned field at a kind of knoll, sparsely covered with stunted, tired-looking grass, ‘Is that it?’ he asked.
‘That’s the place.’
‘How can you tell? It’s just a hill. We’ve passed dozens of others just like it.’
‘Yes, we have. This one isn’t an ordinary hill, though. It’s the ruins of an old house that’s been covered with dirt.’
‘Who buried it like that?’
‘The wind. The ground’s very dry now, so the wind picks up dirt and carries it along until it comes to something that blocks it. That’s where it drops the dirt.’
‘Is that the way all hills get built?’
‘Not all of them, no.’
Althalus squinted at the rounded hillock. ‘I think I’m going to need some tools. I’ll dig if you insist, Em, but I’m not going to do it with my bare hands.’
‘We’ll take care of it. I’ll tell you the word to use.’
‘I still think it’d be easier just to rob somebody.’
‘There’s more gold in that hill than you’re likely to find in a dozen of the houses we’ve passed. You say that you’ll need gold to buy Eliar and the Knife from Andine. All right, there’s the gold. Go dig it up.’
‘How do you know there’s gold there?’
‘I just do. There’s more gold in those ruins than you’ve ever seen before. Fetch, boy, fetch.’
‘That’s starting to make me a little tired, Em.’
‘If you’d do as you’re told the first time, I wouldn’t have to keep telling you over and over again. You’re going to do what I tell you to do eventually anyway, so why not just do it immediately instead of arguing with me?’
‘Yes, dear,’ he gave up.
‘Good boy,’ she said approvingly. ‘Good boy.’
She gave him instructions on how to manufacture a shovel with a single word and then directed him to a spot about fifty paces up the south side of the slope. As he led his horse up the hill, he saw some very ancient limestone building blocks half buried in the soil. They’d obviously been sawed square when the house had been erected, but wind and weather had rounded them to the point that they were almost indistinguishable from native stone. ‘How long ago was the house abandoned?’ he asked.
‘About three thousand years ago. The man who built it started out in life as a plowman. Then he went up into Arum before anybody else went up there. He wasn’t really looking for gold, but he found some.’
‘Probably because he got there first. Why did he go to Arum if he didn’t know there was gold there, though?’
‘There’d been a slight misunderstanding about the ownership of a certain pig. His neighbors were a little excited about it, so he decided to go up into the mountains for a while to give them time to calm down. I’m sure you understand. This is the place, pet. Get down off the horse and start digging.’
He dismounted, lifted Emmy out of the hood of his cloak and set her on his saddle. Then he took off his cloak and rolled up his sleeves. ‘How deep do I have to dig?’ he asked.
‘About four feet. Then you’ll hit some flagstones, and you’ll have to pry them up. There’s a little cellar under the stones, and that’s where the gold is.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quit wasting time and start digging, Althalus.’
‘Yes, dear,’ he sighed, and very reluctantly thrust his shovel into the dirt.
The drought had made the soil very dry, so digging wasn’t really as hard as he’d thought it would be.
‘I wouldn’t throw the dirt so far down the hill, pet,’ Emmy suggested after a while. ‘You’ll have to shovel it all back in the hole when you’ve finished.’
‘What for?’
‘To keep somebody from finding the gold you’ll have to leave behind.’
‘I’m not going to leave any, Em.’
‘How do you plan to carry it?’
‘You’re sitting on him, love. He’s a strong horse.’
‘Not that strong, he isn’t.’
‘How much is there here?’
‘More than our horse can carry.’
‘Really?’ Althalus began to dig faster.
After about a half hour, he struck the flagstones Emmy had told him about. Then he widened out the hole he’d dug to give himself some more room. He leaned his shovel against the side of the hole, knelt on the stones, and began to probe between them with his bright steel dagger. ‘Exactly what am I looking for here, Em?’ he asked. ‘These flagstones fit together so tight that I can’t get my knife into the cracks.’
‘Keep looking,’ she instructed. ‘The one you want to find fits a little more loosely.’
He kept poking until he found it. The dirt the patient centuries had blown in had sifted down into the cracks between the stones, and it took him a while to dig it out with his dagger-point. Then he resheathed his dagger, took the shovel and began to pry.
The stone lifted out rather easily, followed by a rush of stale-smelling air. There was an open space of some kind below the flagstones, but it was too dark down there to see anything. He pried up another stone to let in more light.
There were tightly piled stacks of dust-covered bricks in the cellar, and a hot surge of disappointment came over him. But why would anyone take so much trouble just to hide bricks? He reached down through the hole and brushed the dust away from one of the bricks.
He stared at it in absolute disbelief. The brick which had been concealed by centuries of dust was bright yellow.
‘Dear God!’ Althalus exclaimed, brushing away more dust.
‘He’s busy right now, Althalus. Could I take a message?’
‘There must be tons of it down here!’
‘Told you,’ she reminded him smugly.
The gold had been cast into oblong blocks, each about the size of a man’s hand and slightly thicker. They weighed about five pounds apiece. Althalus found that he was trembling violently as he lifted the blocks out of the hole and laid them on the flagstones.
‘Don’t get carried away, Althalus,’ Emmy suggested.
‘Twenty?’ He said it with a great reluctance.
‘I don’t think the horse would want to carry any more.’
Althalus forced himself to stop at twenty of the gold blocks. Then he replaced the flagstone, shoveled all the dirt back into the hole, and uprooted a number of nearby bushes. He replanted the bushes in the freshly dug-up dirt to conceal his private gold mine.
Then he fashioned a couple of bags, put ten blocks of gold in each, tied them together and hung them across his horse’s back just behind his saddle. Then he remounted, whistling gaily.
‘You’re all bubbly this afternoon,’ Emmy noted.
‘I’m stinking