16

HUNTERS OF THE HORSE

The day that followed turned out pretty topsy-turvy. I went round to a dozen different places in order to put a couple of ideas into action. If everything went well, the night ahead was going to be a pretty dramatic one, although the actors still had no idea of the roles they were destined to play. What I had to do now was put the final touches on the production and warn the last few partic.i.p.ants about the imminent performance. And so I paid a visit to Archmagician Artsivus's house.

The archmagician wasn't in, and I asked Roderick to pa.s.s on his invitation to the friendly little party. The young lad looked rather astonished, but he promised to relay the message in detail.

And then, having done everything that had to be done, I set off with an easy heart to For's place, to while away the long hours until night.

But my teacher was not in, so I was left to my own devices in his apartment. After spending a couple of hours wandering round the rooms from one corner to another, I finally realized that I was far too nervous altogether and it was not doing my fragile health any good.

I studied For's wine vault and pulled out a bottle of wine. After twirling it thoughtfully in my hands, I regretfully put it back. The last thing I needed now was to arrive at the inn drunk and spoil the party. I would just have to sit here going quietly out of my mind while I waited for night to arrive.

I sat in an armchair for a while, checked my crossbow for the hundredth time, even shaved, since I had more than enough time on my hands. Then I gazed vacantly out of the window, wondering what I could do to keep busy. But unfortunately, not a single decent idea came to mind, and I almost started howling out loud in my anxiety and impatience, until I was suddenly struck by the thought of reading the papers I'd retrieved from the Tower of the Order. Greatly encouraged by this brilliant idea, I was all set to immerse myself completely in the lake of knowledge.

But the papers had disappeared without a trace.

I turned everything upside down, starting with For's writing desk and ending with the mattress on his bed. I even looked under the bed, but apart from a rather impressive layer of dust and a startled spider, there was nothing there.

I had to pause for breath and try a different approach. There was no doubt that the papers were somewhere in these chambers. For wouldn't have taken them anywhere else unless something really terrible had happened. So I started the search all over again, trusting to my own experience and my knowledge of my friend's habits.

I tapped the floor with the handle of a knife until I heard the dull sound that indicates a secret hiding place. And I actually heard it twice. But my discoveries were disappointing. When I pried up a stone slab under the table, I discovered a rather fine casket packed with royal gold pieces. A little nest egg set aside for a rainy day.

I discovered the second hiding place beside an old bookcase, where the floor was covered with a mosaic ill.u.s.trating the sins of man. Good old For had decided to demonstrate his distinctive sense of humor by concealing his riches under the tile bearing the inscription GREED. There was rather more gold here than in the first hiding place and I a.s.sumed I had discovered the secret treasury of the servants of Sagot. To my professional eye, it looked like six or seven thousand gold pieces. A huge amount of money. Enough to build your very own castle, if you wanted. But, as ill luck would have it, the papers I was looking for weren't there. I spent about an hour examining the floor, and then started looking for hiding places in the furniture. In one of the drawers of the writing desk I discovered a double bottom, where my dear teacher kept his correspondence with the priests from Garrak. I don't think it was really secret, otherwise For would have hidden the letters somewhere more secure. These papers had probably been left there to distract the attention of fools from something much more important. Feeling that the solution to the mystery was already close at hand, I returned to the search with renewed zeal and carefully sounded out all the chairs, and even the carved headboard of the bed. Not a thing. Might as well try to find a dwarf who smokes! Now came the most difficult part-checking the walls.

This time lady luck smiled on me, and when I tapped on one of the frescoes with the soft cushions of my fingertips, I heard a faint sound that was very slightly different from the usual one. Now I had to figure out how to get into the hiding place.

Make a hole in the wall? No, that would be vulgar, to say the least. I'm a master thief, after all, not some potbellied petty burglar; I don't like doing things the crude way unless there are good reasons for it. And I wasn't stealing, I was simply taking my own papers, which the solicitous For had hidden. I thought my teacher would be rather upset if I ruined this original set of frescoes and left him a hole in the wall as a memento.

I had to feel every single inch in the hope of activating some secret lock. Of course, if the lock of the hiding place involved magic, I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. I would just have to wait for For. ... Although I did have something in the stores that I bought from the greedy master Honchel that might do the trick for me.

I got my bag, rummaged about in it for a moment, and eventually fished out a little bottle containing a milky-white elixir. A skeleton key for various kinds of magic locks. I splashed a generous dose of the sharp-smelling liquid on the wall where I a.s.sumed the hiding place was concealed. When they landed on the fresco, the drops flared up for a moment like brilliant rubies and melted away into the air, as if they had never been there at all. But the wall became transparent, and then the fresco with the picture of a bull slid smoothly to one side, revealing the entrance to the hiding place, a ma.s.sive metal door of gnome workmanship.

The lock looked pretty serious. I cleared my throat and moved a table up to the wall, since the safe was set rather high. I climbed up, sat in a comfortable position, took my faithful lock picks out of my bag, and started fiddling about. It was more than twenty minutes before the final spring reluctantly clicked and the door opened slightly, moving a mere hair's breadth away from the wall. I laughed happily and reached out my hand, but then jerked it back again.

I really ought to check the secret safe for traps set for impatient fools. For was quite capable of installing some horrible device out of old habit. But no-there was no hidden spring or loaded crossbow or any other nasty little trick.

The safe proved to be small. No valuables. Only papers. I didn't start delving into the secrets of the priestly brotherhood-the lads had their own little games and it wouldn't be right for me to go sticking my curious nose into them. I simply took what was mine and closed the door. The moment the lock clicked, the magical fresco reappeared, concealing the ugly opening in the wall. A casual observer would never have guessed that there was a safe hidden there.

I dragged the table back to its former position and sat down to study the doc.u.ments thoroughly, since I still had four hours left. I glanced quickly through the rhymed riddle and then turned to the map of Hrad Spein.

But the progress I made in all that time was hardly worth a bent penny. Corridors, halls, entryways, rooms, hidey-holes, tunnels, caves, and underground palaces. And it was all woven into some kind of tight tangle of snakes suffering agonizing deaths from their own venom. A labyrinth thousands of years old, the foundations of which were laid by someone unknown at a time when the orcs, the first race of the new age, had not yet appeared in Siala.

When it was almost evening and my eyes were tired and good old For still hadn't put in an appearance, I tore myself away from the maps and put the doc.u.ments in my bag. I felt too lazy to fiddle with the secret fresco again, and I didn't want to waste any more of the magical liquid either, so I thought my old bag would be a safe enough hiding place.

It was time to be off.

In principle, I didn't really have to go anywhere. But I was tormented by a mixture of doubt and curiosity-would my plan work? And would Artsivus believe what I had asked Roderick to tell him? Because, if the archmagician ignored what I had said, the rhole plan would all go to the Darkness, together with the demon who managed to s.n.a.t.c.h the Horse with his clawed fingers.8/p>

Evening sas drawing on.

That time of day had arrived when the world is colored in every shade of gray. The sun had not yet sunk behind the hOrizon, but it was ready to retire, and the moon looked like a snow owl. For just one hour the gigantic, drowsy bird known as twIlight had spread its wings over the city.

A suspicious silence had spread along the Street of the Sleepy Dog. This meant that some dark business was in the offing and somebody's blood might be spilled. Therefore the inhabitants of the houses in the area had gone scurrying off on highly important, but imaginary business, with an air of serious haste, and it was hardly surprising that as the lazy twilight's gentle hands felt their way along the stone walls of the houses, they found almost no one in the street.

Ah, but that was just it-almost no one. no one.

The street was not actually empty. There were a few lads about with an appearance that was quite easily recognized-the kind of appearance possessed by certain individuals who are at odds with the law and prepared to slip their hands into the pocket of Baron Lanten himself.

Markun had taken the trouble of posting lookouts in order to spot any unusual developments in the form of Frago Lanten and his faithful lads, or even Harold, if it came to that. Well, well.

Thank Sagot, the lads didn't notice me, and I turned onto the next side street, intending to get into Gozmo's inn through the service entrance. Or exit-it all depends on which way you look at it. But there was a stroke of ill luck in store here, too. As if to spite me, there were a large number of angry-looking Doralissians hanging about nearby, keeping an eye out for suspected enemies, and I got out of there in a hurry. The goats were also pretending to be peaceful lambs and acting as if this was their home territory. The local inhabitants were not objecting.

I'd have to do it the old-fashioned way, over the roof. Using the cobweb, I was soon standing on the roof next to the roof of Gozmo's inn, and with a hop and a skip I was on the other building. I dived into a little attic window ... and almost ended up in a lovingly positioned mantrap.

These hunters, may the dark elves roast me alive! You could catch an adult obur in a trap like that! Nothing could possibly be more dangerous than the hospitality of my best friend Gozmo!

As I expected, the attic was dusty and dirty, and so it cost me quite an effort to find the hatch in the floor; I had to sc.r.a.pe away a heap of old rags, and the dust almost made me sneeze. The trapdoor was locked from the other side, and I cursed the lock, and Gozmo, and Markun's lads, and the stupid Doralissians a dozen times before I finally managed to get it open.

There were no steps, so I simply jumped down onto the floor of the second story, almost colliding with Gozmo as he strolled along the corridor. The innkeeper squealed in surprise and jumped back against the wall.

"Harold! You'll be the death of me!" he exclaimed and spat when he recognized me. "Couldn't you choose a less eccentric way of visiting?"

"Did you do as I said?" I asked, ignoring his question.

Somehow I didn't enjoy visiting Gozmo as much as I used to.

"Yes, may you be cursed three times over! Markun and his lads have been here for more than an hour already."

"My sympathies." The head of the Guild of Thieves was as impatient as ever. He had decided to turn up well in advance of the set time. "What sort of mood is he in? Bad, as usual?"

"Bad?" Gozmo wrung his hands despairingly. "I'm done for! The moment he learns that there isn't going to be any deal, those lads of his will have our guts!"

"Stop whining," I said good-naturedly. "You've got nowhere to fall back to now."

What's true is true. Even if Gozmo betrayed me, he was a dead man. The fat slug who through some mistake of the G.o.ds had become the leader of the Avendoom Guild of Thieves never forgave anyone who tricked him. The hospitable water below the piers was waiting for Gozmo.

"Curses on that night when I listened to you," Gozmo muttered.

He had probably been visited by thoughts about the water under the piers as well.

"Don't panic. It's bad for the job. Better think about something pleasant. Have you already received your share of the gold?"

"No," Gozmo said with a frown. "That cursed fat man promised to pay after he closes the deal."

"You'll get a deal. At exactly midnight. Meanwhile, pour the lads some beer, so they don't get too bored. Or they might get upset and start trashing the place."

"Who's going to pay for it?" There was no more warmth in the old thief's eyes than in an icicle on the S'u-dar Pa.s.s.

"You are, of course, or did you think I'd pay a bra.s.s farthing to help fill Markun's belly?"

Gozmo didn't think so, and he spat on the floor again.

"Go and keep them busy, give them some beer. I'm going into the office."

"The Darkness take you," Gozmo muttered, and set off toward the staircase leading down to the first floor.

I was under no illusion about Gozmo's feelings for me, but it really wasn't in his interest to sell me out. It was better for him to count on Harold coming up with something to make everything turn out all right.

The office was a little room directly above the main hall of the inn. Something like a closet with a magical floor that was transparent from one side, so that you could see what was going on underneath your feet.

As far as I'm aware, Gozmo acquired the inn without the magical floor. But one day a magician who had been expelled from the Order locked himself in the closet with a young maiden, and this was the result. I won't even try to imagine what they got up to in there, but the outcome was a very convenient observation point. I found out about it completely by accident. That day good old Gozmo had taken a drop too much, and his tongue was flapping faster than the sails of a windmill. The next day the innkeeper denied everything, of course, but I cornered him, and he had to admit I was right. So today I was going to watch the show with every comfort and, most important, in absolute safety.

Just as I had antic.i.p.ated, no customers were expected that day. No man in his right mind-or even out of it-would go barging straight into a hornet's nest, especially when the chief hornet was Markun himself. Better to spend the day at home and go without drink. Or visit the inn on the next street along.

Gozmo, of course, did not share the opinion of those regulars who were too timid to visit his establishment today but, to do him justice, he suffered in silence.

The role of customers had been usurped by Markun's faithful jackals. There were about two dozen of these items spread around the tables. I call them items rather than men because these lads were no more than the living appendages of their swords; they were a brute force that simply carried out the instructions of the head of the Guild of Thieves. And they were even more hard up for brains than the Doralissians.

The lads were downing the free beer provided by the generous Gozmo, who flitted from table to table filling the orders of the insolent bandits. The entire gang was very heavily armed; they looked as if they had just dropped in for a minute before going off to make war on the Nameless One.

It looked like I was in for a genuine fireworks show.

His Majesty, Milord Fat a.s.s, the head of the Gang of Corpse-Eaters that was unworthy to bear the t.i.tle of the Avendoom Guild of Thieves, was sitting at a separate table straight below me. If there had been no barrier between us in the form of the floor, I would have been absolutely delighted to spit on his bald, shiny head-something that he deserved a thousand times over.

The fat leader of the guild was decked out more richly than the peac.o.c.ks in a sultan's courtyard. The dark brown suit of fine velvet was fit for a king, not the owner of three chins and a pair of little rat's eyes drowning in fat. I found Markun repulsive. He was a slug who had managed to crush the once beautiful and all-powerful Guild of Thieves under his own vast carca.s.s through crude deception.

There was a time when we could still pa.s.s each other by on the narrow path of our personal interests and Commissions, but now the day had arrived when the path was too narrow for both of us.

There was a man in black sitting opposite Markun, with his back to me. It was Paleface, of course. They were talking about something and the killer began waving his hands about in nervous irritation, but Markun took no more notice of him than a gkhol would take of a well-gnawed shinbone.

"What are you so nervous about, Rolio?" asked Markun.

"I'm not nervous!" Paleface hissed. "I'm just saying that I don't like all this."

"What don't you like about it?" The argument seemed to have been going on for some time already, and Markun was beginning to get irritated.

"The buyer. How did he find out that you had the Horse? And where would he get so much money from?"

"What difference does that make to you? I don't think Gozmo would dare try to trick me. And as for the buyer-that's not our concern," Markun laughed.

"You're right about that," Paleface muttered, getting up off his chair.

At last I was able to get a look at his face. Several burns and a ma.s.s of scratches made Paleface look like a visitor from the next world. It was not so easy to look handsome after suffering the effects of Roderick's fireball. And his arm was still in a sling-it would be a long time before he forgot that shot from Bolt, may he rest in the light.

"It's not our concern! It's your concern! Our common acquaintance gave you the Commission for the Horse. And you'll be the one to pay with your stupid head for deciding to sell the Horse to someone else and bypa.s.s the client!"

"And I seem to recall that our common acquaintance ordered you to kill Harold, but the thief is still alive, while you look like something that's come back from the dead. And I also remember very well that my best men never came back from your adventures. Two of them never got out of that nameless alley and another three were finished off by the guards in the library. And I'd like to ask what in the name of Darkness those guards were doing there in the first place. And then another three of my most experienced men disappeared somewhere in the Forbidden Territory. And they were all sent by you! Under cover of my name!"

"I didn't send your jackals into the Forbidden Territory," said Paleface, interrupting Markun. "The Master's servant did that."

"Oh, don't give me that, Rolio!" Markun said with a dismissive gesture. The expression on the face of the fat master of the guild was one of frank disdain for the world in general and for Paleface in particular. "You were the one who dragged me into your business with the Master. If only I'd known, I'd never have got involved."

"Come on, Markun, you were serving the Master long before I ever came to Avendoom. So don't go hanging all your dead men round my neck! All I did was remind you that you can't just go on taking money for nothing; it's time to repay our lord with some real service. And you have no right to complain." Paleface snorted as he sat back down at the table. "You've had more than enough gold."

"Gold won't save my head," Markun muttered.

"Nothing will save your head if you sell the Horse!" Paleface growled, beginning to lose patience.

Several of Markun's minions looked round from their mugs of beer to see what was going on at their chief's table.

"I've no intention of selling the Horse!" Markun snapped, slamming his plump hand down on the table. "We'll just take the money and leave the buyer floating under the piers! Do you really think I'm stupid enough to give that Stone to anyone except the servant of the Master? You'd do better to handle your own a.s.signment and put an end to our common problem at long last."

"I'll put an end to him," Paleface growled in a more conciliatory tone. "Harold won't be in this world for much longer."

"That's what you said five days ago," Markun said with a repulsive giggle. "I'm beginning to have doubts about your professional skill."

"You'd do better to think about how to keep the Horse safe and sound until the client comes to collect it."

"What's so hard about keeping it safe?" Markun asked with sincere surprise. "I keep it with me all the time."

The head of the guild snapped his fingers casually and one of his bandits immediately placed the Horse of Shadows on the table.

I've always said that the Doralissians are rather strange creatures. Only they could have called something that looks like the phallus of some ancient pagan G.o.d the Horse of Shadows. If that's a Horse, then I'm the emperor of the Lakeside Empire.

"Hey, Gozmo!" Markun shouted across the entire room. "Where's this buyer of ..."

Unfortunately, he never finished what he wanted to say. Several things happened at once.

Bleating repulsively with that remarkable skill that they have, Doralissians started running in through both of the doors. I could see that their leader was my old acquaintance Glok. The goat-men were in a really foul mood and looked as if they intended to make serious use of the clubs, hand axes, and grappling irons that they were clutching. There were only a couple of dozen men in the place, but about fifty goats came piling in. The inn was immediately crowded and the atmosphere was explosive.

This time the Doralissians almost managed to surprise me. Ten of the goats had been bright enough to bring crossbows, but they were still too stupid to make use of their advantage. They should have fired first and then got involved in the fighting. But as the goats always do, they got everything backward. The ones without crossbows went charging forward stupidly, leaving their archer brothers behind them. And the ones with crossbows turned out not to be blessed with the gift of patience either: They decided that the sooner they fired, the better.

So they fired. Of ten bolts, three hit the wall, six hit the backs of the charging goat-men, and only one-clearly by complete accident-pierced the shoulder of one of Markun's men.

The Doralissians just don't know how to play their trump cards. Having killed six of their own kind, the goats stopped in amazement, wondering how they had managed to hit their brothers-in-arms. Markun's lads, who hadn't been expecting to find themselves in the middle of a goat farm, jumped up from the tables-knocking over their chairs-and grabbed hold of their weapons. They had more than enough time while the Doralissians were dithering like genuine ... er ... Doralissians.

At the very beginning of the scuffle, Gozmo dived down under his counter. To be quite honest, I wasn't at all concerned about his health. I would have bet my own liver that the innkeeper had some kind of hatch hidden under a beer barrel down there and in a couple of minutes he would be far away.