The Colonel stood in the large bay windows of the Gentlemen's Club, leaning heavily on his cane and looking with some trepidation at the tumbler of brandy his man, Carstairs, had brought him. Slowly he raised the glass to his lips, inhaling the heady aroma. He tasted, and grimaced.

"Blast!" he thought, not for the first time, "Elves simply can't make brandy."

Setting his tumbler on the sill, he unfastened the window clasp and threw open the panes. Immediately the Colonel wished he hadn't, the sounds and smells of High street, Greenhaven's main thoroughfare, wafted through the windows, assail~ .g his nostrils.

"It was too late," he thought, "the damage had already been done.'

He sighed deeply in his "put-upon" state and leaned on the sill to gaze out at the organized confusion on the street.

"How like London!" he thought, as he did every time he looked at the scene. Carts of all shapes and sizes rocked ponderously up the street, laden with any number of produce, headed for the market on Pickerel Street, a few blocks away. Costermongers vyed for space with the many and varied street hawkers shouting curses and extolling their wares.

From the Dragonfly,the local and infamously popular tavern/pub, a straggling parade of disheveled patrons staggered into the morning's brightness, shielding their squinted eyes and gritting their teeth against the owner's wife. Her abrasive voice castigated the hapless drink-besotted wretches for falling asleep in their beer and not at home with their poor wives in bed. A small army of rag-tag beggars worked the streets as well, wondrous wrecks lurching about in a most alarming and piteous way, in an effort to elicit some small sympathy from the honest folk of Greenhaven.

The Colonel thought of Harrowgate and the Seven Dials back home in London. How many times had he gazed Out his comfortable flat's windows, smelled the roasted chestnuts of that far away place. In truth, if he closed his eyes, he could just imagine being there and how it was, before he" strode into their lives, taking the Colonel and his man servant, Carstairs, on the "damn fool adventure" that caused them to be in their present state...castaways in a strange land.

The Colonel longed for the days when he'd held his audience, his peers at the Royal Explorer's Club, wrapped in fascination at his colorful accounts of travel in far-off and even bizarre lands. How wonderful a glass of English brandy and a true Gentleman's cigar would be. He realized it was the little things he missed, and the infuriating customs of the "little beggars" that drove him to distraction. Just then the Colonel's eyes were drawn to an all too familiar sight.

He shuddered. At the far end of the block coming from the direction of the docks, Captain Binky hobbled toward the Club, swaying wildly and cursing mightily as he gained his land legs,or "leg' as the case was. For the good captain had lost his left leg in an epic sea battle with a, in his words, "great and monstrous clam, like nothing ever seen before or since". The Colonel suspected Captain Binky had been drunk in his cabin and the ship ran aground but had the good manners not to give vent to these suspicions, at least not when the good Captain was in the same room. He watched in growing dismay the Captain's progress down the street. He became truly disappointed when the stocky elf turned and pushed his way through the crowd in an unmistakable course that would lead to the hallowed front doors of the Gentlemen's Club and, inevitably, the Colonel's liquor cabinet.

"Avast!" bellowed the Captain from the Street below, before the Colonel had the presence of mind to duck his head inside, "I bring news from afar, and it be not so pretty I be thinkin'!"

The Captain was directly under the windows and bellowed unmistakably up at the Colonel, who'd certainly lost his chance to discreetly hide, and now was forced to deal with the blustering swagger in public no less. He felt his ears start to go red as he leaned out to answer the Captain.

"WeIl then, my good chap, perhaps you'd best come ahead up and we'll have a go at discussing it, hey wot?"

But the Captain, being a bit of a showman, wasn't finished quite yet.

it's gold I be speaking of!" bellowed the Captain, much to the interest of anyone within earshot, "Gold and treasure, a king's ransom I'd wager or I'm a lubber!"

This last bit caused such a sensation within the ranks of the beggars that the Colonel began to tret even for the Captain's life.

"Jolly good show then," he said, cutting the Captain's bluster oft, "come ahead up then, there's a good chap!"

But the Captain was having nothing to do with it, he'd worked himself into a state and very little would serve to slow him,

"I be tellin' ye mate thar be buckets o' gemstones, diamonds and gold. Avast! Keelhaul me fer a land lubber if I be tellin' a tale!"

The Colonel realized that the Captain seemed to use more seagoing slang the more excited he got, and feared he'd soon become completely unintelligible if it went on. He imagined the Captain a horrid useless babbling wreck, marooned on his doorstep forever babbling his seagoing nonsense to passersby and thus completely embarrassing the high standards of the Club that he and Carstairs had worked so hard to establish in that blighted place.

"Go on yer honor," urged a particularly disturbing street wreck, "tell us more about this here treasure!"

"Aye and where it can be found!" piped another.

The Colonel noticed the local street boys - an unsavory pack of filthy, scabby, lice-infested cut purses - manoeuvring into positions around the Captain.

"0!!" called one of them, presumably their leader, "Is there a map then?"

The Captain turned to the grinning youth and realization slowly dawned on him.

"And if there be such a map, mate, do ye think me foolish enough to be carrying it with me with the likes of you walkin' the streets?"

The Colonel winced at the insult. The Captain was not a youngster and with one leg and a bad eye he was left with a distinct disadvantage.

The young tough drew himself up to his full height and glared at the Captain.

"This is if!" thought the Colonel, "The damn fool's gone and sealed his doom!'

Suddenly the door beneath the windows flew open and Carstairs was there.

"Why Captain Ginky, bless me! thought I heard your voice out here. What kind of friends must you think we are, leaving you out here on the stoop? Come in, my good man, please come in!"

The Colonel watched Carstairs hustle the Captain past the startled crowd and into the safety of the Club.

"I say, good 0!' Carstairs," thought the Colonel, `~always there in a pinch!"

He bustled off to greet his friend.

Kerri oadded along the smooth cobblestones of Side Street lugging his bulky bundle and sweating. He was in a foul mood and the heat of the mid-summer's day was oppressive.

It was Kerri's duty, twice a week, to deliver a bundle of supplies to the Gentlemen's Club, a place the little elf found, at best, weird. Kerri was a page boy in the Royal Court of King Hawk Erickson, and felt that carting a bag of hand-outs to a group of scary old men was beneath him. He stubbed his toe on a rough corner of a flagstone and cursed. His dainty velvet slippers were not made for walking on such streets, his satin tights clung to him uncomfortably, and he itched beneath his silk blouse.

He felt so done in, and it was with that feeling prevalent in his mind, Kerri turned the corner onto High Street and plodded up to the front doors of the hated Gentlemen's Club. He set his parcel down on the stoop to catch his breath and pushed his damp golden bangs off his brow. It would be a long hot walk back to the calm, safety of the Palace, and he would undoubtedly suffer the jeers and taunts of the gangs of less-lucky boys, who were not chosen as pages and seemed to spend alt their time thinking up ways to torment the castle boys.

"Jealous sods!" Kerri muttered to himself.

He was just about to heft the awkward bundle again and pull the door chime when he caught sight of a figure stalking down the Street in his direction. He froze!

The dark figure towered above those unwary enough not to see him coming. His black robe swirled around him disguising his true size and shape. Merlin glided easily through the crowded streets. In fact, the people parted before him usually with a startled expression that the wizard had grown accustomed to.

The dark wizard was just about to sweep through the Gentlemen's Club doors when he noticed the boy huddled there.

"That's a damn fool place to be cowering child!" he said in a voice that chilled Kerri to the bone.

Merlin stood looming over the little elf as if poised to strike. Kerri felt as though he would simply faint; in fact, it was what he wished for.

"Welt come along lad," boomed the wizard, "either deliver those goods or push off, we cant spend the day standing on this stoop!"

Kerri scrabbled at the door handle till it mercifufly opened and he all but felt into the vestibule.

"I say the boy from the palace is here with our supphes," came a rather pleasant voice from down the dimly-lit hall.

Carstairs stepped from the kitchen, wearing an apron and took the bag from the page.

"Good afternoon, Master Merlin," he said cheerfully, "the Colonel is upstairs with Captain Binky right now. I'm sure they'd be delighted if you'd loin them."

He looked down at the boy who was trying to make himself smaller.

Take the Page up with you, if you don't mind, so that the Colonel may place another order. Doucely kind of His Majesty, Hawk Erickson, to keep us stocked up and aH."

Merlin scowled down at the quaking boy and grapped his thin shoulder in a vice-like grip, propelling the lad to the foot of a stairway.

"Up you go, boy, and no dawdling!"

Kerri scampered up the steps.

In the spacious drawing room on the second floor, the Captain and Colonel sat facing one another on fat, overstuffed easy chairs; their legs, all three of them, propped up on foot stools. Both of them held a large glass of port and puffed away on their pipes, filling the room with smoke.

"Avast there, me hearties, and look sharp; the Wizard be a-callln'!" rumbled the Captain, pointing with the stem of his pipe.

"Splendid to see you again, my good man," said the Colonel rather formally as he struggled to his feet, making use of his cane.

"Is this to be a social call then? We have some almost palatable elfin brandy."

He hobbled toward the liquor cabinet.

"No, please...l really don't have much time!" said Merlin in a voice that brought the Colonel up short.

"It be business then, or I'm a mackerel!" rumbled the Captain.

"Yes!" the Wizard continued turning to the Captain, "and it concerns that map you've been waving alt over Greenhaven. Do you have it?"

The Captain peered at the tall wizard suspiciously.

"Aye it be safe with me," he said, his bushy eyebrows raised in an unasked question. The Wizard leaned against the rooms great fireplace and fished out his own pipe.

"Good, I'm afraid it's alot more than you could ever imagine, but I can't explain just yet."

Silence filled the room, and Kern could almost feel the tension. He didn't move. He didn't dare! He knew for certain that something truly heinous was about to happen!