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keep encountering him—and his strange story. As an interested observer, I would like to know the ending of that tale. No, if you are kindly disposed toward the fellow, you need have no fear that he is going to suffer harm because of anything I do.”
    “You intrigue me.”
    “I should not. His story is not mine to tell.”
    Gelimer shrugged, doing his best to revert to an attitude of indifference. “Ardneh enjoins us to be kind to everyone. But I have no particular reason to wish this fellow well or to wish him ill, for that matter. If you told me he was a thief, though, and that you were trying to bring him to justice, I would be inclined to believe you.”
    “Why so?” asked Chilperic.
    “Because of the strange and jealous way he treated the peculiar bundle that he carried. As if—perhaps it had been stolen. Because of—well, because of a certain furtiveness in the fellow’s manner.”
    “Ah, yes, you mentioned a peculiar bundle. And you said it was of an unusual size and shape?”
    “Yes. Well…” And Gelimer gestured vaguely, measuring the air with his two hands. “A package wrapped in rough cloth. A weighty thing. It might have held a small shovel, or an axe.” Surely an honest seeker would come out openly now, and say I am looking for a Sword.
    “And I suppose you never saw the bundle opened?”
    “That is correct.” Ardneh was not picky about the letter of the truth, Gelimer had always thought; rather it was the underlying goal of speech that counted with the benign god. “He stayed in my house for a single night, ate sparingly, and was on his way again at first light, taking his bundle with him.” That of course was the point Gelimer had been anxious to establish if he could. “Although the weather was foul at that time and the trails exceedingly dangerous, nothing I could say would induce him to delay his departure.”
    “You say the weather was foul, good hermit. On the night when this visitor came to you, was there in fact a notably heavy snowstorm, with enough wind to make it almost a blizzard?”
    Gelimer tried his best to give the appearance of a man trying to remember, succeeding a little at a time, recovering something he had thought of small importance when it happened. “Why, I suppose that is a fair description of the weather, now that I think about it.”
    “And was this strange visitor traveling mounted or on foot?”
    “He had a riding-beast. Yes. I didn’t really notice much about the animal—but yes, that visitor traveled mounted.”
    “And in which direction did he go on his departure?” All pretense of a merely casual interest on the questioner’s part was gradually being discarded.
    “He was heading downslope, as I recall, toward the river. Of course he could easily have changed directions once he was out of my sight. He never said anything about where he was going. He did not even give me his name, which I thought odd.”
    “But not surprising, in his case his name, or at least the name I have known him to use, is Cosmo Biondo, and he is a great rogue.”
    “A rogue, you say.”
    “I do. You may count yourself fortunate, Sir Hermit, that he didn’t cut your throat while you were sleeping.”
    Gelimer, blinking to give his best impression of being mildly shocked, brought out from under his robes an amulet of Ardneh, which hung always around his neck. He held the talisman in his hand and rubbed it. “Then I truly wish that I were able to tell you more about him. I wish that you were indeed trying to bring him to justice.”
    Chilperic shook his head, dismissing that idea, and sat back in his chair once more. But presently he leaned forward again to pose another question: “As I recall, you said you have been visited by two other travelers this month as well?”
    “Yes. They were two pilgrims, who came through here only yesterday. The riverboat they were traveling on, they said, had come to grief on the rocks below. The crew, I understand, were trying to tow the