> The scarred warmage paused and stretched out his hand.  He concentrated for a
> moment, and an apple appeared.  Leaning precariously far forward, he proceeded to
> feed it to his horse.  "Do you remember, Twilight, one of the first things I
> taught you when we first started to campaign together?  The story of the Thief and
> the Archmage's Dagger?"
>
> Startling in the heat and wind-driven sand, Twilight's delighted laugh rang out
> like a spring breeze rustling wildflowers.  "Aye, Milord Balefire, I remember it
> well."
>
> Grinning a -- for him -- rare boyish grin, Balefire chuckled pleasantly.  "While
> we wait for our last party member, then, swordsister, be so good as to tell the
> tale to our companions.  I warrant Alduin already knows it, and Elfiran has likely
> heard it told by storytellers in the Porcupine or in some other tavern, but mayhap
> not all know it, and K'tarin, especially, should appreciate it."
>
Twilight looked around at the circle of adventurers, smiled, and began her tale.

"Know, then, that long ago in a land whose name has long been forgotten, there
dwelt a famous Archmage, said by many at the time to be the most powerful
wizard in the world.  As his power grew, he became arrogant and heartless at
first, no longer willing to use his skill in the Art to help those in need.  As
time went by, his arrogance turned to tyranny, and his heartlessness to greed
and arrant lust.  His vile deeds grew more and more oppressive, and the ruler of
the land sent at first heroes, then parties of heroes, and finally armies
against him, to no avail.  The evil archmage was too powerful, too steeped in
the foul lore of unspeakable grimoires, and all who strove against him perished
in the most hideous agonies imaginable.  The ruler himself was turned to stone
when he rode against the evil mage, along with his entire household guard.  The
realm became a blighted, fearful place, and the neighboring rulers, though they
banded together to attack the fell Archmage, perished with their armies before
the sheer power of his overwhelmingly potent spells.

The other mages of the day watched these proceedings with horror, but they
feared to attack him singly or as a group, having heard of many of their number
who, even in the days when the evil mage was much less powerful, had gone forth
bravely to attack him, but returned -- when they returned at all -- as blasted
corpses, or as frogs or insects, or as ashes in intricately carved boxes no
bigger than a child's fist.

Then, one day when the mages were in council, wringing their hands in despair at
new tales of the evil archmage's excesses, a slim young woman, lithe and quick,
dropped from the rafters into the center of the great table in their chamber of
deliberations.

Astonished, the assembled mages demanded at once the reason for this outrageous
display of lack of respect.  One of the cleverer of the mages  (and they were
all rather clever, but these things are, of course, relative), asked the young
woman who she was and how she had entered the room past all of their magical
wards and alarms.

In  moves too quick for the eye to follow, she snatched a wine-filled goblet
from in front of one mage, and then a sweetmeat from the plate of another.
Chewing and sipping, she said, "My name is my own, and ye shall not have it.
Neither shall I give thee lessons in *my* art, when ye are not sufficiently
versed in thine own to curb the depredations of one of thine own bretheren.  Ye
only need know that I am the greatest thief in the world.  That ye have not
heard of me is a tribute to my skill.  For a fee of my asking, I will undertake
to rid the world of this evil mage.  Ye need pay nothing 'til the deed be done.
After, ye will pay without complaint.  What say ye?"

The mages -- being mages and by their natures contentious and argumentative --
debated long.  At last, however, they agreed to the thief's proposal, and with a
leap and a bound she disappeared from their chamber.

A week went by, and then another, and the mages met once again in council,
having decided that the thief had failed as had so many before her.  They were
astonished, upon entering their locked chamber, to find her sitting at the
council table, drinking wine from their own cellar.

Laughing at their bemused expressions, she said, "To save ye the trouble of
asking, let me assure you that I have succeeded.  With no fear of retribution,
any one of ye may scry the late evil mage's keep and verify that 'tis true."

Somewhat timidly, the most powerful among the mages did just that, and his oath
of amazement testified to the truth of the thief's statement.  "But how," asked
the stunned mage, "could you succeed where puissant mages and stolid heroes,
even mailed armies, failed?"

The thief shrewdly spoke.  "First ye will affirm that I shall receive what
payment I ask, and that ye shall let me be after this, unhindered, unharmed, and
unsought.  And ye will all swear to it on thy lives and on thy Art."

"Yes, yes," said the mages one and all, and they each so swore.

"Very well," smiled the thief.  "I entered thy enemy's keep by stealth, but I
did not immediately attack him, for such would be suicidal.  I knocked politely
at his study door, and he let me in..."

"Preposterous," bellowed one of the assembled mages, "he would have burned you
down without warning, or turned you into something loathsome, knowing that you
had evaded his wards."

"Not so," quoth the thief, "for I had sent him a message, a very polite message,
informing him that I would be visiting, that I would be verifiably unarmed, and
suggesting that he would be well advised to hear me out should I succeed in
entering his keep by stealth, lest the details of how I'd done it be made
public, as I'd arranged for in advance in the event of my untimely demise."  The
thief shrugged, grinning at the circle of astonished, unbelieving faces.  "Black
Arts or White, he was a mage.  A scholar.  Like all of ye are.  Curious.  And
more than usually arrogant, as ye all have cause to know.  He felt that he had
nothing much to lose by listening to me, and perhaps some knowledge of his
defenses' weaknessess to gain.  He let me in."

"And then?" asked one of the assembled wizards, wonder in his voice.

"And then I told him how I had gained access to his keep, in exchange for being
allowed to choose how I would die.  I told him in detail, and wrote it all down
for him with the quill he gave me for the purpose."

"What?!" bellowed one of the mages.

"Surely ye can see that he would never let me leave his keep alive?  >From his
point of view, I was dead meat already.  His curiousity caused him to hear me
out; his arrogance caused him to let me choose the way of my dying.  I told him
I wished to be turned to stone, since as ye all know, that is a particularly
difficult spell, which only the most learned and adept mages can hope to cast
correctly.  I told him I wished to be killed in a manner worthy of his command
of the Art."

"And then?"  "And then?" "What then?" The mages clamored.

"Then," the thief laughed, "While he was barely started muttering and gesturing,
I drove the writing quill through his eye into his brain.  He was a mage.  A
powerful and arrogant mage.  He relied on his skill at magic, and forgot that in
the hands of someone resourceful, just about anything can be a weapon.  To him,
that quill was a writing implement, no more.  To me, it was the Archmage's
dagger, and he gave it to me himself.  There are no deadly weapons, gentlemen,
only deadly people.  Whether blasted by magic or stabbed by a quill, dead is
dead.  And now, about my payment.  I will have of ye a pardon, attested to by
each and all of ye, and binding on thy liege lords.  I have already looted the
late archmage's keep, and I would have no unseemly claims hereafter."

Twilight smiled as she ended her story, and, unstoppering a wineskin, drank a
long draught.  She looked around at the assembled companions, her gaze lingering
with amusement on Alduin as he eyed his writing quill suspiciously.  "I think
Balefire wanted to remind me, and you, that magic or no magic, we can be deadly
as long as we all keep our heads and our nerve."