night, and thought, This is not what I came here for.
The following day he was hauled before the chief magistrate. Bloody and bruised, he could only insist that he knew nothing of any robbery beyond what they themselves knew. The usurer of course demanded his execution on the spot, but that only infuriated the magistrate and swayed him toward more leniency than he might otherwise have shown his suspect.
“If I were a thief,” Loctrean explained, “would I have waited to be captured, sir? Did you capture any others of this gang waiting in the dark? Any who still had their heads, I mean. Why would I have lingered?”
The magistrate sensed that he was hearing the truth. “What were you doing there, then?” he asked. “No one has worshipped in that temple for years.”
So Loctrean explained his situation, his poverty, and how his father’s ghost had appeared in a dream and advised him to seek his fortune here.
“You mean to say you sailed all the way from Guhnavra because of a dream? You’re crazy, do you know that? Acting upon such things. I myself was visited just the other night in my dreams by a woman who told me she knew of a house where a great treasure lay buried.”
“Did you find the house?” asked Loctrean.
The magistrate sighed. “You haven’t been paying attention, have you? The woman and her treasure aren’t real. In the first place, such a house doesn’t even exist in Perla. It looks nothing like houses here. It was a square-topped place, with an old purple-striped awning and a rotted boat in one corner of the courtyard and a dried-up, broken old fountain in another. Crumbling old place, the sort of thing one sees only in dreams. Furthermore, and even more ludicrous, she insisted that the hidden treasure had come from the legendary Captain Sindebad. Well, I mean, really. It’s a fairy tale, isn’t it? Something recalled from my childhood no doubt and brought back by some turnips or bad beer.”
Excitedly, Loctrean asked, “This treasure, where was it hidden?”
“How should I know that? I woke up, didn’t I? Haven’t you heard a thing I’ve said, this isn’t . . . oh, never mind.” The magistrate saw that the matter was hopeless. He had a simpleton here who could neither have robbed the usurer nor comprehended that the world did not operate via magical dreams.
“Listen, the best thing you can do, fellow, is go home and stop attending to these fantasies. Learn a trade. Establish yourself.” He took out a small purse and placed two coins on the table. “Here,” he said, “because we beat you and I’m certain you’re innocent. Naïve, gullible, but innocent. Go home, my friend.”
Loctrean thanked the magistrate and limped stiffly out of the police barracks.
He used the coins to buy part of his passage home on the same ship that had brought him. As before it wasn’t enough, but the crew were happy to have him because his cooking had proved better than anyone else’s. All the same, they taunted him. “Didn’t find that treasure after all?” they asked. “No magic beans, no djinn in a bottle floating in that foul river just waiting for you?” He hardly paid them any mind, because he was fearful that something might have happened to his house meanwhile. However, it awaited him as he had left it, save for a few more rodents as tenants in the growing holes of its walls. The awning had finally split in two and hung down in shreds.
Loctrean entered the house and began searching everywhere. The woman in the magistrate’s dream—surely it was his mother—had said that the treasure was buried, and he pulled up every stone in every room only to find dirt or sand or mice beneath. Exhausted, he went out and collapsed in the courtyard against the boat.
From there he found himself staring directly at the fountain pedestal. Hadn’t the magistrate made mention of the fountain?
He got up, and even as he did, the stones beneath the fountain cracked, and it tilted slowly to one side.
Loctrean climbed over the retaining wall and into the dustbowl that had once been a shallow pond. He grabbed the canted pedestal and began wrenching it back and forth until it came away completely.
Pushing it aside, he stared into a dry hole where, presumably, water had once upon a time been channeled. He knelt and then lay amid the rubble and reached his arm down into the hole. His fingers touched the sides