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changing from his pajamas, Mortis and Golias came in. The alchemist carried a silver serving plate covered with a mirrored glass dome; he bowed low, extending the plate to King Boniface. Mortis whisked the dome off, and there was a small bottle unmistakably containing the Wine of the Gods.
    The King lifted it reverently; there was a full glass. "It went without undue difficulty," Golias said.
    King Boniface smiled. "I shall pour five thimble cups, and as soon as your comrade returns we will all drink in celebration of your successfully completing your tasks and of my hiring you."
    There was a loud single knock. The King shouted "Come in" and the Twisted Man entered, bearing a dozen well-washed hydra heads in a huge net bag. Each might have fit on a large dog, except that they were blue-green and shaped a bit like a lizard's head, with eyes on short stalks and a single curved fang protruding from the center of each set of jaws.
    "Splendid," the King said. "Let us drink to your employment—and to my having solved some administrative problems rather neatly, for, even admitting it to have been luck, it is a good thing in a King to be lucky."
    And they all drank together and it was settled.
    It might be best next to tell quickly of what happened in all the years as Amatus grew big enough to be ready to go adventuring, so as to reach the adventures per se as quickly as possible, except that two other things of importance happened on the day the four Companions were hired. When Cedric was quite old, he ordered that those two other things be copied into his Chronicle , for looking back he thought that they probably mattered a great deal, and we will not second-guess his judgment.
    The first was that the King made the Twisted Man his Captain of the Guard, and Cedric General of All the Armies.
    The other matter, though, was more complex. Cedric and the King were going over the Royal Survey—a part of Cedric's job as Prime Minister—looking at the map together and trying to decide whether a new settlement in the northeast should be named Bonifaceburg, Bonifaceville, or just Boniface, when there was a faint, tapping knock at the door. If it was ever possible to knock apologetically, this was that knock.
    King Boniface detected that apologetic quality, and raised an eyebrow to his trusted advisor before saying "Come in." Cedric, hearing it too, sat extra straight and tall, for he had a feeling that he might need his dignity.
    Three people one would not expect to see together came timidly through the door.
    The first, Wyrna, was very old. In Boniface's father's time, she had supposedly murdered her husband, but he had been the notorious Great North Woods Ogre—that is to say, an obnoxious and ill-mannered provincial lord whose castle was near the Great North Woods and who had turned highwayman and cannibal, rather than a particularly great ogre. Since her supposed crime had been more in the nature of a public service, it had seemed inappropriate to hang her, so instead the old King had sentenced her to sweep out the castle, in exchange for room and board and a bit of pocket money, on her solemn promise not to murder anyone not equally deserving. After living with the ogre, everything else seemed so nice that she had become merry and pleasant, sort of honorary grandmother to many of the younger servants in the castle.
    But instead of her usual warm smile, now she stood before them, wringing her hands, deeply distressed.
    Beside her was Gwyn, who mopped and swept the nursery. Gwyn was a fairly but not extraordinarily pretty young woman who looked as if she should be a nurse, nanny, or governess. In fact, she had taken the job of cleaning the nursery as the first thing that came along, and after a year or so of mopping up, not only after Amatus, but after any number of children of visiting lords and kings, she had come to dislike children intensely, and was secretly hoping, just once, to find a soldier who did not want to settle down and