“Yes, today the second year have anatomy,” the young lad said with a frown. “Everyone who passes will go to the Sundrop to celebrate. So there’ll be a right royal carousal tonight!”
Deler chuckled as if he had already started celebrating: “Hey, my friend Hallas! You’ve gone rather pale. Not scared, are you?”
“Gnomes don’t get scared!” Hallas said proudly, and started climbing the steps on stiff legs.
“Let’s just hope he doesn’t faint,” Kli-Kli whispered to me.
We walked into the building, down a long corridor crammed with excited students, and found ourselves in a hall.
The floor here sloped steeply away toward a desk, beside which a gray-haired teacher was making about twenty students watch as he hacked through a body lying on a stone table with something halfway between a saw and a knife.
“Professor!” our guide shouted out. “I’ve brought him!”
The professor looked from his attempt to saw open the poor corpse’s skull and squinted at us short- sightedly.
“Well, at last! What a lot of them there are!”
“He’s the only one with a bad tooth,” Deler said hastily, pointing at Hallas.
Hallas shuddered and narrowed his eyes as he glared at the dwarf.
“A gnome? Hmm … Well, that will be instructive,” said the professor, putting down his saw. “Come on down, respected sir, come on down.”
“Go on, don’t be afraid,” said Deler, giving the gnome a push. “Harold, are you with us?”
“No,” I said, “I think I’ll just sit here on the bench.”
“That’s a mistake, think what a performance you’ll miss!” said Kli-Kli, skipping happily down the steps after Deler and Hallas.
I sat down on one of the benches and started observing from a distance as they sat Hallas in a chair standing beside the table with the corpse on it. The professor washed his hands and picked up something that looked like an instrument of torture.
“Who was that man, your old friend?” Eel asked as he sat down beside me.
“You mean Bass? Is there some serious reason for your interest in my past?”
Eel paused before replying. He’s the silent type, sometimes he doesn’t open his mouth even once the whole day long.
“Both, to be honest. It’s a strange coincidence that we ran into someone who knows you. You suddenly spotted an old enemy. And then, just a few minutes later, an old acquaintance of yours turns up. Just recently I’ve started feeling wary of any kind of coincidence or chance event. And, pardon me, but I don’t trust anyone but myself. I’m feeling a little concerned about this Bass who suddenly showed up out of nowhere.”
I knew Eel’s iron character—it was practically impossible to disconcert him with any sort of surprise—and so the words “a little concerned” on his lips meant a great deal.
I paused, trying to gather my thoughts, because I didn’t like talking to people about my life. The less other people knew about you, the better protected you were against all kinds of surprises.
For had hammered that wisdom into my head a long time before, and as time passed I came to realize that my old teacher was absolutely right. No one in Avendoom knew about Shadow Harold’s feelings and attachments, and no one could put pressure on me by using my friends and dear ones. Because I didn’t chatter much and minded my own business, I wasn’t too worried about suddenly being stabbed in the back.
But I trusted the tight-lipped Garrakian.
Eel was probably one of the few people with whom I was not afraid of opening up and pouring out my soul, knowing that he would take everything he heard from me to the grave with him.
“We were friends ever since we were kids,” I began. “We lived in the slums of Avendoom, and we went through a lot together … hunger, freezing winters, raids by the guards.… We survived all sorts of things.… Bass and I looked out for each other and more or less managed to make ends meet until a master thief took us under his wing. His name was For.…
“That man taught us a lot.… For used to say I had a natural gift for thievery, and maybe he was right. Bass wasn’t quite so.… When were living on the street, I was the one who picked people’s pockets, not him. My friend had a different passion—cards and dice. For eventually gave up on my friend, and Bass got more and more involved in gambling.”
I frowned. I still found remembering this episode from the past as painful as ever.
“A couple of times he got himself into nasty situations when he was completely wiped out. Back then For was a major figure in the criminal world of Avendoom and he was able to get his pupil off the hook. But everything has to come to an end sometime. One day Bass got into really serious trouble—my friend found himself owing a large sum of money to Markun, a man who was the head of the Avendoom Guild of Thieves for a long time. Bass didn’t tell me or For anything about it. He just took our money and disappeared. He stole his teacher’s and his friend’s gold. Then the rumors spread that Markun’s lads had left him floating under the piers, but the body was never found. For these last twelve years For and I thought that Bass was dead. So you can imagine how amazed I was to see him in Ranneng, alive and well.”
“Yes indeed…,” Eel grunted. “Let’s hope that your meeting really was just coincidence.… You’re not planning to meet up with him for a talk?”
“No,” I replied without even thinking about it, and the conversation fizzled out of its own accord.
Eel and I turned our attention back to what was happening down by the lectern.
The professor was clutching the instrument of torture in one hand as he lectured the students.
“… As you can see, the dental system of gnomes is rather similar to the human dental system. But there are certain differences. The structure of the skull and the alveolar appendages is not quite the same in gnomes. This race has a straight bite, and fewer teeth than humans—only twenty-four, twelve in each jaw. They have no canines and only one set of premolars. Unfortunately, my friends, I am not able to show you the teeth of orcs or elves. But believe me, they are absolutely identical, which proves just how closely related the two races are. The hyperdevelopment of the lower canines has led to the development of a rather specific bite in the elves and the Firstborn—when the mouth is opened, the lower jaw is displaced.… But I am digressing. The reason that has brought our patient to us today is the fourth tooth on the upper right. I am inclined to believe that the factor that induced the pain was abrupt hypothermia of the entire organism. But here, of course, it would be better to take a case history, because suppositions will not get you very far. I remember I had a case in which my patient…”
“I think this will go on and on for a very long time.” Eel chuckled.
The Garrakian wasn’t the only one who thought so. Several of the students were looking quite frankly bored. Kli-Kli was gazing curiously at the glittering knife left lying beside the corpse, and Deler was yawning desperately, covering his mouth with his massive hand. Hallas was squirming impatiently in the chair, his color gradually changing from pale to scarlet. Just as the talkative professor started analyzing the tenth clinical case from his own practice, the gnome’s patience finally ran out.
“Aaah! I swear by the ice-worms!” the gnome roared, then he leapt up out of his chair and set off resolutely in our direction.
“Where are you going, dear sir?” the professor exclaimed in amazement. “What about the tooth?”
All the students, suddenly roused from their lethargy, started gaping wide-eyed at the gnome.
When he heard the question, Hallas stopped, turned round, and made an indecent gesture to everyone there. The poor professor clutched at his heart. Pleased with the effect he had created, the gnome strode on toward the exit with his head held high.
“And where to now, Hallas?” Deler asked.
“To a tavern! Maybe drink will do something to ease this damned pain.…”
The gnome strode in determinedly through the door of the Sundrop tavern. It was probably the worst of all such establishments in the Upper City. Although it was so close to the university and the school of magicians, the characters who gathered there were by no means the most trustworthy types.
My cautious glance immediately picked out a table with five Doralissians and a table with men wearing the badge of the Guild of Stonemasons. The Doralissians and the masons were eyeing each other dourly, but had not yet moved on to active hostilities. I was inclined to think that things wouldn’t get as far as a fight until the lads
