"But I don't know what to do," Azzie said. "And even if I did, I have no money to carry it out with."

"You paid the old woman," Hermes pointed out.

"That was fairy gold. It vanishes after a day or two. If I want to make an entry in the contest, it calls for real money."

"I know where some is," Hermes said.

"Where? How many dragons do I have to slay to get it?"

"No dragons at all. You merely have to best the other players in the Founder's Day Poker Game."

"Poker!" Azzie breathed. "My passion! Where's the game?"

"It is taking place three days hence in a graveyard in Rome. But you must play better this time than last, else you'll be returned to the Pit for a few hundred more years.

"In fact," Hermes said, "you need what gamblers of a later day will call an edge."

"An edge? What is that?"

"Any device that helps you win."

"There are watchers at these games to prevent cheating."

"True enough. But there's no law, heavenly or infernal, against a good-luck charm."

"But they're rare indeed! If only I had one!"

"I can tell you where to get one. But you will have to inconvenience yourself to get it."

"Tell me, then, Hermes!"

"In my nocturnal wanderings around the city of Troyes and its environs," Hermes said, "I have noticed a place at the edge of the woods to the west where a small orange flower grows. The people hereabouts know it not, but it is Speculum, which grows only in the presence of felixite."

"There's felixite around here?" Azzie said, marveling greatly.

"You must find that out for yourself," Hermes said. "But the indications are good."

Chapter 5

Azzie thanked Hermes and took his leave. He walked through a low field, toward the woods that sur­rounded the city. He found the rare flower, which was low and inconspicuous. Azzie sniffed it (the odor of the Speculum is delicious) and then bent low and put his ear to the ground. His preternaturally alert sense of hearing brought to his senses the presence of something belowground, something 'that moved and thumped, moved and thumped. It was, of course, the characteristic sound a dwarf makes as he cuts a tunnel with his pick and shovel. The dwarves are well aware that the sound of their digging gives them away, but what can they do; a dwarf needs to dig to feel alive.

Azzie stamped his foot and sank into the earth. This is a talent that most European and Arabian demons have. Living in the earth is as natural for them as living on the earth is for men. The demons experience earth as something much like water, through which they can swim, though they much prefer to walk in tunnels.

It was cool underground. The lack of light did not prevent Azzie from seeing around him very nicely, in a dim infrared sort of way. And it is rather pleasant underground. There are moles and shrews near the surface, and other creatures glide along the differing densities of the soil.

At last Azzie came out in a large underground cavern. Phosphorescent rocks gave off a dim glow, and he could see, at the far end of the cavern, a solitary dwarf of the north European variety, dressed in a well-made green and red mole­skin suit, with tiny jackboots of gecko hide and a little mouse-skin cap on his head.

"Greetings, dwarf," Azzie said, adjusting his height up­ward as far as the rocky ceiling allowed so that he could loom over the dwarf impressively.

"Hail, demon," the dwarf said, sounding not too pleased at stumbling over one. "Out for a stroll, are you?"

"You could say so," Azzie said. "And what about you?"

"Just passing through these parts," the dwarf said. "On my way to a reunion in Antibes."

"Is that a fact?" Azzie asked.

"Yes, it is."

"Then why were you standing here digging?"

"Me? Digging? Not really."

"Then what were you doing with that pick in your hand? "

The dwarf looked down and seemed surprised to find the pick there. "I was just tidying up." He tried to rake a few rocks together with the pick, but of course, since it was never intended for that purpose, it didn't do a good job.

"Tidying up the earth?" Azzie said. "What'dye take me for, a moron? Who are you, anyhow?"

"I am Rognir, a member of the Rolfing Dwarveria from Uppsala. Tidying up the earth may seem absurd to you, but it comes naturally to dwarves, who like everything to remain the same."

"Frankly," Azzie said, "what you are saying makes no sense to me at all."

"That's because I'm nervous," Rognir said. "As a rule I talk quite sensibly."

"Then do so now," Azzie said. "Relax, I mean you no mischief."

The dwarf nodded but looked unconvinced. He didn't trust demons, and you couldn't really blame him. There are many rivalries in the spirit kingdom which are unknown to man, since a Homer or a Virgil wasn't around when something was going on. The dwarves and the demons had been having quite a tense time of it recently, due to territorial disputes. Demons have always had a claim on the underground, despite their distant birth as fallen creatures of the Light. They love the underground ways of Earth, the deep caverns, bogs, and sinkholes, caves and declivities, the passageways that present vistas of beautiful strangeness to their poetic but gloomy imaginations. The dwarves had their own claim on the underworld, considered themselves children of it, born spontaneously out of the chaotic fiery writhings of the deepermost regions of primal flame. They were romanticizing, of course; the true origin of the dwarves is interesting, but there is no time to go into it here. What is important is the power of imagination, to take an idea and cling to it stubbornly. Thus the dwarves, and their insistence on being free to wander the underground ways as they pleased, without stint or restraint. This wasn't to the demons' way of thinking, however. They preferred territories. Demons like to stomp along alone, and other creatures tend to get out of their way. Not so the dwarves, who trooped along in their bands, white whiskers flowing, pickax and spade always ready, pounding and chanting (for they are great chanters), often passing directly through a demon convocation: for demons are always holding meetings on crucial points of doctrine, though their discussions are rarely noted by those who really dispose the power. Be this as it may, they hate being disturbed, and the dwarves had an uncanny power of choosing just the wrong place and time to dig to disturb a demon sitting deep in thought, motionless on a block of basalt, hands to his ears, as we see in some of the family portraits done in stone on the turrets of Notre Dame. The demons feel the dwarves are crowding them. Wars have been started on lesser issues.

"I believe," Azzie said, "our tribes are currently at a state of peace. In any event, I have come only for something which will not even interest you, since it is not a precious gem."

"What exactly are you looking for?" Rognir asked.

"Felixite," Azzie said.

In those days, charms and talismans still had great power in the world. And there were many of them about, though the dwarves hid them in secret places, to keep them from the dragons, without much luck, since dragons knew that where you find dwarves, you find gold. Dwarves and dragons go together like lox and bagels, herring and sour cream, good and bad, memory and regret. The dwarves worked hard to extract felixite luck stones from the depths of the earth. Felixite is found only in small quantities, in beds of Neptunic basalt, the very oldest and hardest kind.

This stone of good omen, felixite, was much in use back when everything was happier, better, dearer, truer, the Golden Age, which ended just before true humans came on the scene. Some say that the deposits were laid down by the ancient gods who ruled the earth in the distant long-ago time before things had names. Even then felixite was the rarest mineral in the world. A tiny amount of it could transmit its own inherent joyous and buoyant karma to the holder thereof, thus predis­posing a favorable outcome to whatever enterprise he was en­gaged in. That was why men killed for it.