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instead.”
    Ah. Now it all made a bit more sense, Blivet decided. “Business. Yes. So, have you a lot of gold?”
    She laughed again. Blivet couldn’t help noticing she was actually rather pretty—in a serious, mature sort of way—and even prettier when she was amused. “Ye gods, no!” said the witch. “I haven’t a ha’penny. How would I, with all of my customers gone to Rutland County and points south? No, I haven’t got any money at all. Walk with me now, and let’s talk about this.”
    Blivet dismounted, although he couldn’t quite see the sense of it. Still, he found himself willing to spend more time in the company of this attractive woman. She had a personality that wasn’t what he would have expected from a witch. “But if you haven’t any money, what are we going to talk about? I mean, business-wise?”
    Now it was her turn to shake her head. “Silly man. As if gold was the only valuable thing in the world. My name is Hecate, by the way. Named after the goddess.”
    “Pleased to meet you, Mistress Hecate.”
    “I don’t have a cent—but I am the owner of this forest by fee simple. I did a favor for the local lord—cured his daughter of the pox—so when he moved out (well, fled, really) he gave it to me, mostly to keep me from undoing his daughter’s cure, I suspect.” She cleared her throat.
    “Which means I am, as is sometimes said, cash-poor but land-rich, handsome Sir Blivet, and I would like to offer you and Sir Guldhogg a mutually beneficial alliance.”
    It took them a year and a surprisingly large fraction of their savings to build a fence around the forest, which although not large was still a forest. Workers had to be trucked in by wagon for all the jobs that couldn’t be performed by redcaps and hunkypunks. Then they needed another year for clearing and building, with the result that the Dark Ages had almost ended by the day the grand opening finally arrived.
    “I still don’t think it’s fair,” the dragon was saying in a sullen tone. “After all, it was my idea. I led you to each other. I arranged it all, more or less. And you’re still going to call it Blivetland?”
    “Don’t sulk, Guldhogg,” said Hecate. “You haven’t seen the surprise yet.”
    “He’s always that way,” said Sir Blivet. “He doesn’t drink, either.”
    “And neither should you,” said Guldhogg, still grumpy.
    “Don’t be mean, Guldy,” the witch said. “My Blivvy’s been very abstemious lately.”
    “Too bloody busy to be anything else,” the knight agreed. “Do you know how much work it was just setting up the concession stands and teaching boggarts to count?”
    “Well, it was either that or putting them on display, and you know what they did when we tried that. We can’t have them flinging boggart dung at the paying customers, can we?”
    “Well, I think it’s time for us to get out and meet the public,” Blivet said. “Come on, Guldhogg. I’ve got something to show you.”
    Considering how deserted this entire stretch of the north had been only a couple of short years ago, it was quite impressive to see the crowds lined up hundreds deep all along the great fence, waiting to enter through the massive front gate. The dragon was all for letting them in immediately—“Money is burning a hole in their pockets, Blivet!”—but the knight forbade it until a last chore had been done.
    “Just pull this rope,” he told the dragon. “Go on, old chum, take it in your mouth and yank.”
    Guldhogg, who had been gazing with keen regret at the carved wooden sign over the gate, the one that read “Blivetland,” shrugged his wings and pulled on the rope. An even larger sign, this one painted on canvas, rolled down to hang in plain view of the entire assembly.
    “Oh,” said Guldhogg, sounding quite overcome. “Oh, is that...is that really...?”
    “Yes, silly, it’s you,” said Hecate, elbowing him in his substantial, scale-covered ribs. “Well, except we’re calling you