“What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Just how would you carry half of this, and where would you put it?” He asked. “I mean, really. It’s beyond counting. I tried to count it all and gave up after several days.”

  “Then what was the purpose of the deal?”

  “It makes for a good story. The old master goes off into retirement, no longer having access to the treasury or guild business. They are very good at disappearing. And the new master can tighten down on work because he had allegedly just lost half the treasure. Nobody but the guild master and former guild masters know the truth unless accompanied in here, which rarely occurs. Usually, the outgoing guildmaster fills up a magical bag with platinum and gems, and if he runs short on cash, which is unlikely, we have a secret communication that allows more to get sent his way. It is really quite fair, and no guild master in his right mind would allow a successor to enter who did not have the right heart. In fact, the whole story is to throw you off when you look upon this vast horde, and if you were the wrong candidate, the outgoing master eliminates you and seeks another candidate.”

  “Thanks for not killing me off,” I said.

  “Hey, no problem. I owed you. Now we are even.” He replied.

  I turned to him and smiled. “I can accept that.”

  He tsked. “You are far too soft to be a good guild master.”

  “Of that we both agree. But I know an excellent candidate waiting in the wings.” I said.

  He slugged my shoulder with his good hand. “Enough schmoozing. Let me show you some highlights that you will want to know about.”

  “You have magic in all that stuff?” I struggled to come up with a word to encompass the vastness of centuries of acquired valuables.

  “Very eloquent of you. Your vocabulary will come back in a few hours. I lost mine for a couple of days. But I came from the streets and never had much. No family and nobody to watch out for me.”

  We walked among open chests of coins as he talked openly about a life before now he had never shared, perhaps, with anyone.

  “It must have been hard,” I said.

  “Very. At times, it really got to me. But a man took me under his wing and showed me a different path.”

  “It was your old guildmaster, wasn’t it?” I said.

  “You are good, kid. I’ll give you that.” He said with a grin as he led me past the coins, past the cases and cases of jewelry, to a specially marked off section of gemstones.

  “Am I seeing what I think I am seeing?” I asked.

  “Not bad, huh? I figured you’d like this.”

  There were three medium-sized chests with magical cut gemstones. The first was mostly full with 7pt gems, the second was filled halfway with 14pt gems, and the third had a few dozen 28pt gems. A podium next to the chests had two 35pt gems; one was an emerald and the other was a diamond.

  “This is amazing!” I said.

  “Sadly, if we ever had 42pt or 49pt gems, they were taken, sold, or used. I used five of the seven 35pt gems for the ring you made for me.”

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  I looked over these and said, “How do we divide this up?”

  He laughed. “You are the Gray Master. It is all yours. Until we walk out and you make me the new Gray Master at the portal, I have no say in the matter.”

  “You are my friend. What advice do you have?” I asked seriously.

  He grew serious in return. “My advice? Take a healthy supply of platinum and some raw gemstones that you can play with later. Take all these magical gemstones and save our city from that infernal and its minions. That is my advice.”

  And he was serious.

  He gestured at all the wealth as he said with passion, “These creatures are evil. They have no respect for life. If we do not stop them, we will not survive. There will be no negotiation or arbitration with them. They survive, or we survive. All this wealth is meaningless if all that remains is death and destruction.”

  I looked him in the eyes. His passion was deep and sincere. I may not agree with his methods, but he was a good man. Not exactly Robin Hood. But a more realistic version, perhaps

  “Okay. That sounds like a plan. And I can reach out to you later for more if needed?”

  He laughed. “For as long as I remain the Gray Master and after if I am lucky enough to find a replacement who has the right heart.”

  “Then I'd better fill my bags now,” I said.

  “That’s the spirit!”

  He located four magical chests that shrank from a three-foot edge length cubic shape into a chest that was only one cubic inch in size. “Let’s fill each up. I suggest platinum, imperium, gold, and jewelry. You can dump your magical gemstones into your backpack.”

  We started with that plan in mind. “How many coins fit into one of these magical chests?” I asked in awe as he quite literally shoveled platinum coins of various mints and ages into the first box. They sorted and stacked themselves as soon as they were dropped into the box.”

  “I spent several hours stacking platinum coins into a small, strong box with an interior dimension of one cubic foot. Each of these platinum coins is just shy of an inch in diameter, so I was able to place one hundred forty-four along the bottom layer with a bit less than a half inch of extra space around the adjoining sides.”

  I tried to do the math on that, but had to pick up a coin to see how thin it was. “How many could you stack on top of each other?”

  He grinned. “The number you are trying to get to is 27,360 coins. That was 25,056 stacked upright, and 1,152 stacked sideways twice along the two edges.”

  “You counted them?” I asked with raised eyebrows.”

  “Twice, just to be sure.” He said. “I was inside here for a long time. But that is a non-magical strongbox and only one cubic foot. These magical boxes hold twenty-seven times the amount and, through their magic, somehow shift around to reduce the space between the round coins.”

  “So, each holds twenty-seven times 27,000 coins?” I asked, my mouth hanging open in surprise.

  “Twenty-seven times 27,360, actually. And a bit extra. I did not count them myself, but I made my apprentice do so three times. She came out with 750,000 two of the three times I made her count them. But as I palmed one during her second effort, her total of 749,999 pretty much ensured that it magically holds three quarters of a million platinum coins.”

  “Which is 7.5 million gold coins,” I added.

  “In each. Of course, gold and silver coins have different shapes, so there are more of them but less value, of course.” He instructed.

  I marveled at how casually he discussed such enormous wealth.

  We filled the first box to its magical capacity. When it was full, all the extra coins in the last shovel full just fell out of the box and onto the floor.

  “Try to lift it.” He suggested.

  I moved over and expected, by the way he asked me, that the magical nature of the box would make it light. I lifted and then heaved. It did not move.

  “I can’t lift it,” I said after a second attempt.

  “Nope. It weighs normally when in this size, even with the lid closed. But if you press here,” he said as he showed me a small mark on the side of the lid, “and concentrate on it shrinking, its magics kick into effect.”

  And so saying, the large chest shrank in size from a cube with three-foot length external dimensions to a miniature box only one inch cubed.

  He picked it up and tossed it to me. I fumbled to catch it, but managed to snag it between my arm and chest, so it did not get dropped.

  “It’s not fragile, lad. The magic is strong, but don’t put it into your magical backpack. Stick it in your pocket. Summoning charms can go a little wonky when you combine them.” He warned.

  “Will it be a problem in my Shoppe?” I asked, concerned.

  He thought about it. “Probably not since it works in here just fine.” He shrugged. “But I guess you’ll find that out.”

  “Your carpet bag worked okay in my Shoppe,” I recalled.

  “Yes, it did.” He replied with a twinkle in his eyes.

  I sighed as he maneuvered the second box into place. The second box got filled with gold instead of electrum or other blends since pure metals were more valuable to me. I decided to fill the third with silver and some raw gems and an assortment of jewelry he thought would sell well, since it had been so long removed from circulation that nobody would recognize them.

  I was a little uncomfortable with the treasure, but figured it was not too far removed from dungeon treasure with dubious origins. And he assured me that these treasures came from all over the realm, much of it before the fall of the last three kingdoms.

  After the third was filled, we decided to place all the magical gems and some odds and ends he insisted I include at the last minute. I wanted the larger capacity of my backpack for books because it held more than 27 cubic feet.

  Books.

  There was an actual library down here filled with shelves of books that my father, scholars, and sages could spend a lifetime studying.

  There were not many magical books that would be considered spellbooks in the traditional sense, but there were rare books of magic that I had heard of or seemed especially interesting to me. There were examples of books from all the guilds, including Psybans and Rune Lords, which I took, and necromancy and shadow magic, which I destroyed.

  He chuckled at my enthusiasm over books when I just accepted the platinum as normal.

  “If you want to separate books that interest you, I can arrange to have them shipped to you later.”

  “Yes, that may be a good idea. We need to get back out there.” I said.

  He raised his hand. “Time works differently here. Remember those couple of days I said I was down here cataloging?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wasn’t exaggerating. At least two days, my time equated to maybe twenty minutes out there. Seconds have gone by since we walked in, far less than a minute for sure. We have time.”

  So we spent a couple of hours sorting through books that I wanted to bring with me and maybe a hundred others I wanted him to send to me over the next few days to add to my library. There were a few that I thought could be exceptional presents to some guildmasters and even my father.