Jorian shook his head. "I thank you, Mistress Vanora, but I have other plans. It has been very interesting to know you. Na, na, weep not, lass; 'twill but redden thy nose to none avail. A needs must forth the morn, and ma nag can bear but one."
He ran up the steps and presently reappeared with Vorko's hat on his head.
"How got you into his room?" asked Goania.
Jorian smiled. "Know you not that I do but make a mystical pass, and all locks open unto me?"
She glanced over to where Vanora sat beside Boso with tears running down her face. Vanora and her companion both stared morosely into space. "I take it she asked to become your leman again, and you denied her?"
"That's right. Thrice I've come close to being killed on that young woman's behalf, and that is twice more than enough. I'm no hero— merely a simple craftsman—oh, all right, Father Karadur, I won't say the rest."
The glare that Karadur had given Jorian softened, and the old magician said: "But the hat—how—"
"Come out into the marketplace in a little while, and you will see how I do it. Did not the philosopher Achaemo say that the superior man uses his very faults and weaknesses to advantage? Fare you well!"
Half an hour later, Karadur, Goania, Boso, and Vanora strolled out to the marketplace. The rain had ceased, although puddles among the cobblestones still reflected the yellow light of link and lanthorn. A crowd was gathered around the Fountain of Drexis in the center of the open space. When the four approached, they saw that the crowd surrounded Jorian, sitting on the curb of the fountain. As they came up, he was saying:
"… and so ends the tale of King Fusinian the Fox and the enchanted shovel. And the moral is, that more woe is wrought by stupidity than by villainy."
Jorian fanned himself with Vorko's hat, for the night was warm. "Would you like some more? Let's say, the tale of ex-king Forimar and the waxen wife? Yes? Then let us see if you cannot prime the pump a little, to spur my sluggish memory…"
He passed the hat around the circle, to the clink of coins. "A little more priming, good gentles; money is the grease that lubricates the storyteller's clockwork. Ah, better.
"Well, it seems that after King Forimar the Esthete had abdicated in favor of his brother Fusonio, a man set up an exhibition of waxworks in Kortoli City. This man, whose name was Zevager, asked the former king to allow such an effigy to be made of His Highness and displayed with the rest…"