“No? You have a further perverse motive?”
“It is simple: the rat-folk are nothing if not clever! Whoever entices two others into the cave wins his own freedom. You represent one item to my account; I need furnish a second and I go free. Is this not correct Zaraides?”
“Only in a broad sense,” replied the old man. “You may not tally this man to your account; if justice were absolute you and he would fulfil my score; did not my parchments bring you to the cave?”
“But not within!” declared Fabeln. “Here lies the careful distinction which must be made! The rat-folk concur, and hence you have not been released.”
“In this case,” said Cugel, “I hereby claim you as an item upon my score, since I sent you into the cave to test the circumstances to be encountered.”
Fabeln shrugged. “This is a matter you must take up with the rat-folk.” He frowned and blinked his small eyes. “Why should I not claim myself as a credit to my own account? It is a point worth asserting.”
“Not so, not so,” came a shrill voice from behind a grate. “We tally only those items provided after impoundment. Fabeln is tallied to no one’s account. He however is adjudged one item: namely, the person of Cugel. Zaraides has a score of null.”
Cugel felt the collar at his neck. “What if we fail to provide two items?”
“A month is your time; no more. If you fail in this month, you are devoured.”
Fabeln spoke in a voice of sober calculation. “I believe that I am as good as free. At no great distance my daughter waits. She is suddenly impatient with wild leeks and hence redundant to my household. It is fitting that by her agency I am released.” And Fabeln nodded with ponderous satisfaction.
“It will be interesting to watch your methods,” Cugel remarked. “Precisely where is she to be found and how will she be summoned?”
Fabeln’s expression became both cunning and rancorous. “I tell you nothing! If you wish to tally items, devise the means yourself!”
In disgust and contempt, Cugel turned to Zaraides. “And what is the basis of your method?”
Zaraides gestured to a board where lay strips of parchment. “I tie persuasive messages to winged seeds, which are then liberated into the forest. The method is of questionable utility, luring passersby to the mouth of the cave, but enticing them no further. I fear that I have only five days to live. If only I had my librams, my folios, my work-books! What spells, what spells! I would rive this warren end to end; I would convert each of these man-rodents into a blaze of green fire. I would punish Fabeln for cheating me … Hmmm. The Gyrator? Lugwiler’s Dismal Itch?”
“The Spell of Forlorn Encystment has its advocates,” Cugel suggested.
Zaraides nodded. “The idea has much to recommend it … But this is a forlorn dream: my spells were snatched away and conveyed to some secret place.”
Fabeln snorted and turned aside. From behind the grate came a shrill admonition: “Regrets and excuses are poor substitutes for items upon your score. Emulate Fabeln! Already he boasts one item and plans a second on the morrow! This is the sort we capture by choice!”
“I captured him!” asserted Cugel. “Have you no probity? I sent him into the cave; he should be credited to my account!”
Zaraides cried out in vehement protest. “By no means! Cugel distorts the case! If pure justice were done, both Cugel and Fabeln should be tallied to my score!”
“All is as before!” called out the shrill voice.
Zaraides threw up his hands and went to writing parchments with furious zeal. Fabeln hunched himself on a stool and sat in placid reflection. Cugel, in crawling past, kicked a leg from the stool and Fabeln fell to the floor. He rose, sprang at Cugel, who threw the stool at him.
“Order!” called the shrill voice. “Order or penalties will be inflicted!”
“Cugel dislodged the stool, to send me sprawling,” complained Fabeln. “Why is he not punished?”
“The sheerest mischance,” stated Cugel. “In my opinion the irascible Fabeln should be placed incommunicado, for at least two, or more properly, three weeks.”
Fabeln began to sputter, but the shrill voice behind the grate enjoined an impartial silence upon all.
Food was presently brought, a coarse porridge of offensive odor. After the meal all were forced to crawl to a constricted burrow on somewhat a lower level, where they were chained to the wall. Cugel fell into a troubled sleep, to be awakened by a call through the door to Fabeln: “The message has been delivered — it was read with great attention.”
“Good news!” came Fabeln’s voice. “Tomorrow I shall walk the forest a free man!”
“Silence,” croaked Zaraides from the dark. “Must I daily write parchments for everyone’s benefit but my own, only to lie awake by night to your vile gloating?”
“Ha ha!” chortled Fabeln. “Hear the voice of the ineffectual wizard!”
“Alas for my lost librams!” groaned Zaraides. “You would sing a vastly different tune!”
“In what quarter are they to be found?” inquired Cugel cautiously.
“As to that, you must ask these foul murids; they seized me unawares.”
Fabeln raised his head to complain. “Do you intend to exchange reminiscences the whole night through? I wish to sleep.”
Zaraides, infuriated, began to upbraid Fabeln in so violent a manner that the rat-folk ran into the burrow and dragged him away, leaving Cugel and Fabeln alone.
In the morning Fabeln ate his porridge with great rapidity. “Now then,” he called to the grating, “detach this collar, that I may go forth to summon the second of my tallies, Cugel being the first.”
“Bah,” muttered Cugel. “Infamous!”
The rat-folk, paying no heed to Fabeln’s protests, adjusted the collar even more tightly around his neck, affixed the chain and pulled him forth on hands and knees, and Cugel was left alone.
He tried to sit erect, but the damp dirt pressed on his neck, and he slumped back down on his elbows. “Cursed rat-creatures! Somehow I must evade them! Unlike Fabeln I have no household to draw from, and the efficacy of Zaraides’ parchments is questionable … Conceivably, however, others may wander close, in the fashion of Fabeln and myself.” He turned to the grate, behind which sat the sharp-eyed monitor. “In order to recruit the required two items, I wish to wait outside the cave.”
“This is permitted,” announced the monitor. “Supervision must of course be rigid.”
“Supervision is understandable,” agreed Cugel. “I request however that the chain and collar be removed from my neck. With a constraint so evident, even the most credulous will turn away.”
