The Dragons of Winter (36 page)

At Aristophanes’s urging, Uncas flipped on the projector and drove them through a slide to an out-of-the-way spot where they could catch their collective breath and locate the next object. The badger chose a grassy field in Finland. Other than the Duesenberg, the only thing that broke the monotony of the fields was a small fishing shack that stood on the top of a cliff in the distance. “It’s th’ calmest place I knows of,” Uncas said as they got out of the car. “Nothing exciting ever happens in Finland.”

Aristophanes inserted the second parchment into the Machine Cryptographique and carefully typed in a question. As swiftly as before, the Infernal Device returned the answer: “Pohjola.”

Uncas rummaged through the maps and stopped on the second to last. He stared at it with a bewildered expression and looked up at Quixote and Aristophanes. “I, uh, I have it. I think.”

“So?” said the detective. “Will we be able to find it?”

Uncas nodded. “I’m pretty sure.”

Aristophanes waited. “Well? Where is this ‘Pohjola’?”

The little mammal pointed at his feet. “Right here. We’re
standin’
on it.”

“Give me that!” Aristophanes exclaimed, snatching the map out of the badger’s paws. A moment later, though, his expression changed. “Well,” he admitted, handing the map back to Uncas, “this might be easier than we thought.”

Quixote was dumbfounded. “You mean he’s right? That we just happened to pick a place to hide from that mob, and we ended up coming to the very place we needed to go next?” He shook his head. “That’s just too incredible to believe.”

“That’s Zen for you,” Aristophanes said, shrugging. “Let’s go see if anyone’s home.”

The little old fisherman who answered their knock at the hut acted as if they were expected and invited them in. “Would you like some
sima
? Sweet mead?” he offered as they sat on the pelt-covered benches inside. “I have just made it, fresh. But,” he added ruefully, “I have no lemon. It would be lemonless
sima
.”

Quixote gave Aristophanes a look that said what they were both thinking—the old fisherman had spent way too long inhaling the salt air. But Uncas cheerfully accepted, and with shaking hands, the old man poured them all a drink.

“I assume,” he said, sipping mead from his own cup, “that you’ve come to ask for the Sampo. Well, I have some bad news for you—I have no idea where it is.”

“Is that some sort of, uh, magical object?” Uncas asked, winking at Aristophanes, who rolled his eyes and groaned
inwardly. The badger had no sense of subterfuge whatsoever.

“It is,” said the fisherman. “Everyone thinks I have it because of those cursed stories in the
Kalevala
. ‘Ask Kullervo,’ they say. ‘Go seek Kullervo—he’s bound to have it.’ And on and on. As if I’d end up with a magic box that grants you all you desire. Not after the life I’ve had, I wouldn’t. Every time something good started to happen, someone evil would turn my cows into bears, and my family would get eaten while they were tending to the milking. Very frustrating.

“Even this,” he continued, standing up. He set down his mead and walked to the corner, where he lifted up a long, black sword. “I finally won something valuable—a magic sword—but every time I remove it from the sheath, it starts singing. Do you know how embarrassing it is to go into battle with a singing sword that won’t shut up?”

“The sword of Turambar,” the detective murmured, making a mental note to remember where it was. “Interesting.”

“We’re sorry to hear about your troubles,” said Uncas. “We’ve actually come looking for a different magical object.”

“Well, you won’t have much luck here,” said Kullervo glumly. “About the only other thing I’ve got is a brooch—but it’s not worth very much. Would you like to see it?”

“Yes,” Uncas said, and nodded. “We would, please.”

The fisherman reached into a basket of straw hanging on a hook and, after rummaging around in the straw, removed a small, red brooch. “Here you go,” he said, tossing it to Uncas. “If you’re interested, I’ll part with it for cheap.”

“How cheap?” asked Aristophanes, suspicious. Easy was acceptable, once in a while. But this was going a bit too smoothly for his liking.

Kullervo shrugged. “I’d really like some fish.”

Uncas blinked. “Aren’t you a fisherman?”

He shrugged again. “Not a very good one, I’m afraid. And the fish aren’t as plentiful here as they once were.”

Aristophanes leaned over and looked at the object Uncas held. It was indeed the Ruby Brooch.

“We don’t have time to go fishing,” he whispered. “I think we should—”

“Don’t sweat it,” said Uncas. “I got this.”

The badger stood up. “I got six bottles of pickled trout in my car,” he said brightly. “Is it a trade?”

Kullervo thought it over. “Is trout like herring?”

“It’s fish,” said Uncas, “what’s been pickled.”

“Deal,” said Kullervo. “The brooch is yours.”

“Why in Hades’s name,” Aristophanes asked as they drove away in the Duesenberg, “would you have
six jars
of pickled trout in the boot of the car?”

“In case of a ’mergency,” said Uncas. “Also, I really like pickled trout.”

“Two for two,” Quixote said from the rear seats. “So far, so good. And it’s been Uncas who’s done all the bartering!”

“Yes, well,” said the detective. “As I said—we make a good team.”

“Just remember you said that,” Uncas chortled, “when you gets my bill.”

As the car vanished into the distance, the cloaked man stepped out of the shadow of the fishing hut and walked around to the door, which was open. Kullervo was waiting.

“Did I do it right?” he asked, the tone of his voice an odd mix of
both longing and resignation. “I did as you wanted—I took off the brooch so their machine would find me, and then I treated them like guests and gave them the brooch.”

“Yes,” the Messenger said. “You did fine, Kullervo.” He looked inside the hut. “Would you like to do it now?”

“Weeelll,” the fisherman replied. “I just came into some pickled trout. So I thought, if you wanted to join me, we could have a bite first?”

The man nodded. “Of course.”

The trout was excellent, especially with some dark bread that was just stale enough to be really good, and when they had finished, the Messenger walked the fisherman to the edge of the cliff, where he used the long black sword to lop off the old man’s head. He tossed the sword in after, then removed his watch and spun the dials.

As he disappeared, he imagined he could still hear the sword singing. It probably was.

The next piece the companions asked about was the helmet, and the machine and the map guided them to a much smaller place than a country or an island—a place even smaller than the Inn of the Flying Dragon.

“It’s a shop in Vienna,” Aristophanes said, “but what’s inside the Abraxas House isn’t quite as unusual as the building itself.”

“How so?” asked Quixote.

“You’ll see,” the detective said.

It took several hours of driving around the twisty Austrian streets before they actually found the place they were searching for. “There!” Aristophanes exclaimed, pointing through the windshield. “That’s it just up ahead.”

The Abraxas House was located mid-block just past the intersection of Laimgrubengasse and Gumpendorferstraße. The streets were lined with small cafés and pastry shops, which fronted the ground floors of stately old Viennese hotels and apartment buildings. Thus, the Abraxas House was a bit of an anomaly—but then again, as Aristophanes explained, it was an anomaly in just about every other way as well.

The first unique characteristic was obvious—the entire building was seven stories tall, but only a dozen feet wide. It was deeper than it was wide, but not by much, because it backed up to a common square used by the buildings adjacent to it and on the street one block over. That was what made it unusual from the outside. What made it unusual on the inside was that it appeared to be infinitely large; room after room after high-ceilinged room stretched away past every corner they looked around. Minuscule on the outside, the Abraxas House was massive on the inside.

The shelves were primarily full of books, but there were various other artifacts scattered in and among them: ornate boxes, weapons, earthenware, and even armor.

“It’s a Whatsit,” Uncas said, awed by the sight. “It’s just like th’ Great Whatsit, on Paralon, ’cept there are pastry shops on either side. Brings a tear to one’s eyes, it does.”

Quixote saw an elderly gentleman with an apron moving boxes in another room, and gestured to him for service. The man nodded in acknowledgment and came toward them, wiping his hands on a cloth.

“Greetings,” the white-mustached shopkeeper said, apparently unruffled to be waiting on a purple man, a badger in a
waistcoat and jacket, and a knight with all the fashion sense of a novelist. “What can I do for you today?”

Aristophanes made a judgment call and decided that in a place of commerce, he could play it straight. “We’re looking for the Ruby Helmet.”

The shopkeeper tapped his fingers on his chin and pursed his lips. “I had an ebony helmet once, but that tall, pale fellow came back for it not long after he sold it to me. I traded two houses of secrets and mystery for it, and he bought it back for seven dreams. I also had Mercury’s helmet—the one with the wings—but sold that one to a man called Garrett, or Garrick, or something like that.”

“The one we seek,” said Aristophanes, “is part of a larger set, called the Ruby Armor . . .”

“Of T’ai Shan!” the shopkeeper said, snapping his fingers. “I thought that sounded familiar.”

He walked to a circular bookcase in the next room and pulled a copy of Machiavelli’s
The Prince
out just far enough to release a catch hidden in the shelving. A panel slid back, revealing the Ruby Helmet, sitting on a pedestal.

“There have been inquiries over the years, of course,” he said as he returned to the companions, holding the helmet, “but few willing to pay an acceptable price. Pieces this old are not easy to come by.”

“How old is it?” asked Uncas.

“Nine, perhaps ten thousand years old,” said the shopkeeper. “It was a little before my time, so I can’t be certain.”

“I thought you looked familiar,” Aristophanes said cautiously. “What did you say your name was?”