The Danger Gang Plants a Bunch of Magic Beans; Chrysopolis Acquires Some Unusual Roadside Attractions

First, some Round Four-related business: Eorl convinces Basil II to dub Kolya a knight of the realm (he is now Komes of Bandon) and lend his armor for the next bout...and possibly the Labrum, a big ol' spear that was Constantine's standard when he founded the city? B2's thinkin' about it. Then newly-even-bardier Arben relates rumors and scuttlebutt he's heard about various objects:

• The ring a wang-crowned Ilya Muromets gave to Kolya he got from a dwarf in Switzerland, and it does indeed summon an air elemental to serve you.
• A candle discovered with some beehives in Armenia opens a pass-wall while it burns.
• Lord Evelake's soul-sucking sword is named Azoth (Arabic for mercury, but also roughly "no life" in Greek). It once belonged to a Welsh undersea-elf-king type, and it's said Evelake has a particular affinity for it, and that he hides things in the pommel ("things" should be understood as being written in 1960s horror-movie lettering).
• Kolya's magic horse Mirtaghiz would turn back into a figurine if slain, and could turn back into a healthy horse again, but it might take a realllll long time.

Then: blah blah politics, blah blah big picture, THERE'S MAGIC BEANS TO PLANT!!! For like, 24 hours of shenanigans, well on the outskirts of Chrysopolis. Highlights and lowlights created by the legumacious magicks include:

• An area where time doesn't move!
• A giant bean pod containing a six-month-old half-elf baby boy! Al, as progenitor of sorts, dubs him Al El-Bean.
• A pretty flowering bush that produces fruit, containing MOAR BEANS!
• A field of 81 12-foot hands!! (They are friendly now.)
• Entangling vines full of rot grubs! (Now fireballed.)
• A 10-foot magnetic cylinder that oozes acid! (Who doesn't dream of having one of those?)
• Gershom fights his doppelganger for the Sword of Methusaleh, and gets the symmetrical crap beaten out of him!
• Kolya (with one of Gershom's remaining beans, him having lost the taste for it after being drubbed into unconsciousness) gets a pretty pretty pony, white with brown patches! BECAUSE IT WAS A PINTO BEAN GET IT
• Arben becomes adoptive father to a nine-foot stone golem! He's kind of an emo kid.
• Marcella conjures up a sweet-ass campground (tents, rations, blankets, oats, firewood, swords, complimentary books of great Greek prose works, and BOOZE) just in time for bedtime! Oh, and there's totally a vein of gold underneath the campfire in the morning.
• Zombres, after bitching like all afternoon about how this is DANGEROUS and IMPRUDENT and stuff, gets the bean fever and gains himself a lean-to! Which becomes a hut, then a bungalow...perhaps to continue growing into a manse or something?
• Arben also acquires an adorbs little mobile beanstalk-dog! Though apparently he needs to keep it alive or the ensuing consequences to him will be dire.
• A beehive containing a royal-jelly-rich honeycomb, enough for four healing potions that also prevent aging for a year!

FUNNEST ADVENTURE EVER.

OK, now back to the grind. They magic-mirror the only two Danes they know for the scoop on likely Jew-containing (or, barring that, just Old and Weird) locales in Denmark. Havelock and Ogrid agree there are no Jews at all in Denmark, but the former tells of the island of Samsø, haunted by berserkers and home of the cursed sword Tyrfing, and the Dark Tower of Malin where the princess of the same name was imprisoned by her father, no doubt for nefarious purposes. He also tells us that the current King, Sweyn Forkbeard, has a hat that controls the weather, but warns of the evil Godard (probably not Jean-Luc, but WHO CAN TELL), who killed Havelock's sisters at Linholm and is Bad News. A ferociously drunk Ogrid, on the other hand, gathering ever more discomfiting details on Stuff Hebrews Like, remembers an "underground scroll place," where people get beat up by a guy made out of clay. Promising! Directions in head, they prepare to depart.