This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“Well, I can tell you what I’m looking for,” said Mergan as he flipped through more of them. “I’m looking for stories, I’m looking for books with illustrations, I’m looking for sciences, I’m looking for magic. The two biggest markets for dungeon books are, broadly, entertainment and education.” He stopped in the middle of flipping through one particular book and gave it a closer look, then set it over to one side. “The problem here is that I’m both the appraiser and the buyer, which isn’t a good situation for you, and I don’t want to put you at a disadvantage, because as I’ve said, I like up-and-comers bringing their finds to me. Now, you’ve got two options. The first is that you just trust that I’m a good guy, which I don’t think I’d do, if I were you. You’d appraise them yourselves, obviously, but respectfully, you have no idea. The second option is that you bring someone in to take a look.” He had been looking through the books as he talked and setting aside perhaps one in every twenty of them. “Now, options are limited in Tarchwood, and so far as I know, there are only two or three people who’d be qualified to check my estimations. The entad shop, that’s run by a husband-and-wife couple, but they trade in henlings and such too. The wife, that’s Eddel, she’s got a head for numbers, and I’m sure she’d be willing to take a look and maybe give you a counteroffer, if you want to fetch her.”

Alfric nodded. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll go get her,” he said.

“Of course,” said Mergan.

“I’ll stay with the books,” said Isra. There was distrust in her voice, and Alfric didn’t like that, not when it was so obvious. They had just met this man, Mergan, but from what he knew of small towns, the proprietors had too much to risk if they tried to swindle or cheat someone.

He took off, hoping that she would be okay on her own.

After finishing the dungeon, Hannah was left feeling a bit rootless. She hadn’t quit the temple, because she’d said that she would still help out from time to time when the dungeons weren’t calling, and Lemmel, the older cleric of the Church of Symmetry, had graciously allowed her to keep her room until she found some other lodging. So after an exciting time in a dungeon with a promising party, she found herself right back where she’d started the day before. There was nothing to show for the adventure, because she was waiting on Alfric to sell it all, and she hadn’t gotten an entad out of the dungeon, which was a bit of a disappointment. It would be another six days before the party channel opened up, so she couldn’t even talk to the others, not without physically tracking them down, and both Alfric and Isra would be gone for at least a day, maybe two. The one thing she had, the sole proof that she’d been in that dungeon, was the key with a raccoon on it, but that could hold her attention for only so long.

“Alfric seems a good sort,” she said to Lemmel. “Hardheaded, but that’s what you need sometimes, and a bit of a goof when it comes to people, or at least these people, ay? Too rigid, is my thinkin’, where what he should be is generous and friendly. My opinion, for what it’s worth, is if you treat people like friends, then friends is what they’ll end up bein’. What he shoulda done, when we finished, was to take us to the tavern and buy a round of drinks, and I know you’re thinkin’ that if I thought that was somethin’ that needed doin’, it’s somethin’ I shoulda done myself, but a party can’t have two leaders, ay, the math doesn’t work, and I never fancied leadin’ anyway. I just wish that he were better at it.”

“I hope that it works out for you,” said Lemmel, which was the kind of empty-headed nothing he was always saying. It was kind and polite, but it wasn’t helpful, if it was meant to be. Words always seemed to come out of his head like mud from a pipe, which wasn’t to say that he was a bad sort, just that he was quite dull.

“There was a sermon I was plannin’, which I guess I won’t do now, about reflection, ay?” asked Hannah. “There’s a line in the Book of Garam Ashar, ‘We find ourselves reflected in others, and reflect them into ourselves’, section two, verse seven. My thinkin’ is that how we should look at people, the best way of it, is to stick ourselves in their shoes to see how things would look from their perspective, and then stick them in our shoes to see how they’d do things different, ay? So I was thinkin’ on Alfric and what it might be like if we reflected into each other’s shoes, and I think I’d do a better job than he’s done so far, no offense to him, because I have a better handle on what the others want, what helps keep a party together, ay?”

“Perhaps,” nodded Lemmel.