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with blood. Upside down like that. It hurt and swelled my face. I thought it would pop like a pressed grape. What a way to perish! How cruel. Plugging a well, staring into utter darkness. My feet kicking just above the ring. A swampy stink choking me. My heart was bursting. Hours, eternities passed … I lost and came back to myself a dozen times a minute. How cruel! I saw things. Flashes. Dreams. Nightmares. I saw my parents. I hadn’t recalled them in years. My father’s defeated face. I saw him riding across the barren fields that had ruined him. (My inheritance.) He was always thin. We all were thin over there. We had the noble crest and barely more crusts than the meanest serf. Is it a wonder I desired more? That I vowed never to end as they had ended? Vowed it a thousand times. Played the fool, the wise man, warrior, plotter … What did it matter? The point was, without riches and power you were brushed aside to starve in the muck. Titles meant little. Why, there were base-born merchants who could buy kings! And honor comes cheap.
    So I cursed and spat hate into the blackness through swollen lips. My mind rambled. Pictures from my miserable past reeled through my head as my whole life melted away. I swear I heard no sweet angel voices urging me home to bliss eternal, no, nor glimpsed devils waiting with fire and ice to raze my soul forever.
    I was hardly aware of my changed fortunes until I was actually clearing the rim of that damned well. And heard a dismal, shrill voice, gasping and cursing.
    “You … bloated bastard …” I suppose that was true. Yet I was strong and nimble for my bulk. I’d been half-starved too many years not to eat well when I could. “Help me … lumped toad!” The voice hissed as I scrabbled and pushed the stones’ sides with ripped, numbed hands. I had recognized Gobble’s voice. I was amazed. Saved, by him ! How had he escaped?
    “Did you,” I asked, puffing, slumped half over the rim on my knees now (how strong that wiry little bastard had to be!) “Did you chew your way to the surface … like a mole?” It was dawn. I blinked at the pale, grayish tones and breathed the cool, sweet, strangely freshened air. Stared at the tremendous castle that we’d fruitlessly and senselessly searched. The dead Druid was still sprawled on the stone flagging, a featureless shadow in first light.
    Gobble sat on his palms, facing me. Resembled a malignant monkey: skinny, long-limbed, bent, his head restlessly tilting. My rescuer. Partner. Boon companion. But you can’t trouble to be fastidious when there’s a world to win; I might never come to love the little fellow, but I had to respect his energy and purpose in serving his legendary and ill-fated master.
    “Most like a mole,” he snarled, breathing steady and hard. He helped me untie the rope he’d bound my ankles with to hold me up. A strange bucket full of sorrow.
    “Ah,” I responded.
    “Most like.” He sniffed and hissed. He was the best contact I’d made since coming to these shores. In the bitter, bleak North Germany of my birth the only contacts available were with men dull as stones and brutish as pigs. Now, I’d been to Italy, you understand. I knew what culture was, you see. Ah, the Italian genius for song and finance. I needed a larger, open country for my talents. Italy was too refined and the best seats were all taken.
    I leaned up and peered into the well. Spat. Cocked my ear, but heard no impact.
    “But really,” I asked him, “how did —”
    He cut me off. I hate that. I hate it when people do that.
    “It was just muck at the bottom,” he said.
    He’d come up behind me, so clearly there was another exit. But whoever heard of an exit from a well?
    “I crawled,” he was saying, “aye, through slime and stink … like a worm, a slimy worm … crawled out not far from here, where a shaft had been cut into the underground streambed. “
    I stared at his restlessly shifting eyes. He spat, stood up and lurched