Yet, when he introduced himself, he still had to recount his entire list of feats – at least those he could remember – and even after he described the felling of the Acherian Giant, most people simply turned away in indifference. The only ones interested in him were the thieves eyeing his heavy purse and the guides who, hearing the name of the one he wished to find, scurried away without naming a price.

As the Thrasson neared the entrance, the sentries reached over and pushed open the doors. They gave no salutation or comment, and their faces betrayed no hint of either respect or disdain. They were simply holding the doors for a man burdened with a heavy amphora.

That anonymous courtesy made the Thrasson's belly bum with indignity. Still, as it was the burden of fame to suffer ignorance in good grace, he paused long enough to utter a few sentences of thanks.

"Bar that, pal," answered the tallest guard, a square-chinned fellow with a two-day growth of beard on his cheeks. "We'd do the same for any blood. Now get on with it." He jerked his head toward the entrance. "Madame Mok don't like us letting in drafts."

The Thrasson stepped into a murky foyer of blue marble, where he found himself standing at the end of a serpentine visitors' queue. The line switched back and forth a dozen times until it finally stopped before a high, looming counter of black marble. The massive desk stood directly beneath a glowing chandelier of blue-green beryl crystals. It was flanked by a pair of silver, hand-shaped braziers, from which rose two plumes of pink, apple-sweet incense smoke.

Behind the lofty counter sat a single bespectacled clerk, hunched over the bench and using quill and ink to scratch notes into a parchment ledger. From the wooly nap atop his head rose the double-curled horns of a bariaur, a sort of goatlike centaur that roamed many of the multiverse's planes.