Exchequer

The adventure is nearly over but for the counting.

Deep beneath the data mines lie the stone-lined vaults of the exchequer, pale and patterned gray, echoing and empty. For years we have maintained a contract with a dwarven lord, complete with provisions against bad stars and ruinous undoings, subsidizing his excavations in exchange for his fiscal expertise. Each month we navigate the maze of tunnels that lead to the hall of this mountain king where his agents pay our factors with script and promissory notes until more ore is processed and new coins minted.

From atop his granite dais, he directs an empire of which we are only an insignificant acre, arranging payments, brokering munitions, procuring provisions all discounted in bulk. He negotiates like a miser, mean as a magpie atop its pile of sparkles. He engages a syndicate of mischievous German house gnomes, moneylenders, coin-changers, pawnbrokers, who dole out silver to impatient lines of mercenary henchmen and sorcerers' apprentices. They are immune to threats and coercion, demanding precise protocol in their interactions.

We receive regular reports as transactions are booked and parchment pushed from pile to pile. Every newt's eye is classified, each ounce of bat's wool catalogued. Adders' forks are coded and blind-worms' stings collimated. Golems and trebuchets are itemized down to the eyelashes and strands of hemp. Each herb, each poultice, every potion that boils and bubbles is checked and cross-referenced to ensure the proper procedures and eliminate duplication before it garners the appropriate mark on the appropriate page of his personal Doomsday Book, where even jots and tittles bear a price.

Like a crouching spider at the center of this web of collation, the byzantine Nibelung lord remains still and sensitive to the vibrations of each strand and cross-thread of his financial network, his beard barely twitching as the confetti chaos flies around him, sprinting into action only once gold brushes against his sticky snare.

Practicing a proxy war game, he pits supply against demand on our behalf. His ink-smudged clerks, armed with quill and abaci, perch atop their desks, islands in a tumultuous sea of paper. Singing pirate ditties and brandishing their pencils, they prepare to hop island to island along the archipelago and storm the coastal fortress constructed of account books, their battle-map resembling Kafka's office, if Kafka were Bedlam's official CPA.

Each month we emerge from the maze slightly more befuddled and confused, never remembering the precise progression of tunnels in or out. The surface air clears our heads and slowly brings contentment. No wizards pound the postern gate, no mercenaries tap swords to hands upon the bailey, no pitchforked peasants threaten to storm the castle walls. Somehow the accounts of the exchequer remain in balance with this dwarf's twirling slight of hand choreographed like a ballet company of tiny angels pirouetting on a pin.

Slaying this particular dragon brings no hoard of treasure, no gold or magic rings, only reams of fine-printed, twenty-four pound paper that previously lined its cave.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III