And the only use that is known for their ridiculous wealth is
to attract to their larder a continual supply of food. In times of
famine they have even been known to scatter rubies abroad, a little
trail of them to some city of Man, and sure enough their larders would
soon be full again.
Their tower stands on the other side of that river known to Homer--_ho
rhoos okeanoio_, as he called it--which surrounds the world. And where
the river is narrow and fordable the tower was built by the Gibbelins'
gluttonous sires, for they liked to see burglars rowing easily to
their steps. Some nourishment that common soil has not the huge trees
drained there with their colossal roots from both banks of the river.
There the Gibbelins lived and discreditably fed. Alderic, Knight of
the Order of the City and the Assault, hereditary Guardian of the
King's Peace of Mind, a man not unremembered among makers of myth,
pondered so long upon the Gibbelins' hoard that by now he deemed it
his. Alas that I should say of so perilous a venture, undertaken at
dead of night by a valourous man, that its motive was sheer avarice!
Yet upon avarice only the Gibbelins relied to keep their larders full,
and once in every hundred years sent spies into the cities of men to
see how avarice did, and always the spies returned again to the tower
saying that all was well.
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