The massive beast put his tongue away, narrowed his eyes, and gave me a suspicious look, sensing a trick. Then he lay down on the floor and lowered his head onto his front paws:
“Ah, what a handsome dog,” I coaxed. The dog’s eyes glazed over with boredom. “Let me go, eh?”
The dog snorted. He wasn’t going to tear me to pieces, even though that would be no problem for him. The beast had decided to wait until his master came into the room and I was caught red-handed.
So where does that get us? Nowhere. I couldn’t reach for my crossbow, this hound cursed by the darkness had been trained. If I tried to grab my knife, he’d probably snip off some part of my body.
So what did that leave? I had a few battle spells in my bag, in case of an absolute emergency. It was worth a try.
The beast responded to my attempt to reach into the bag with a menacing snarl. I jerked my hand away in a hurry.
“Listen, what do you want me for? Why don’t I just bring you a bone?”
The hound only yawned at that. I pressed my back against the windowsill and hissed through the window.
“Kli-Kli! Kli-Kli!”
“Yes!” said a squeaky voice below me. “What’s taking so long?”
“I’ve got problems!”
“Oh!” said the voice. “What kind?”
“A dog.”
“I thought dogs were man’s best friend.”
Was he trying to be funny?
“Well, he doesn’t know that!”
“Then get rid of him!”
The dog listened curiously to the squeaky sounds coming from the window, turning his head this way and that.
“I can’t even raise my hands! Find the elves, maybe they can help!”
“Where am I going to find them now? All right, don’t go away! I’ll only be a moment.”
What was that he said? “Don’t go away”? Yes, I think I’ll take his invaluable advice.
The jester was gone for a long time. A very long time. The dog was clearly bored, waiting for someone to come and praise him for cornering his quarry. I was quietly oozing sweat. When a short figure wrapped from head to toe in a black cloak appeared in the doorway, my heart dropped into my boots. I thought the guards had arrived.
“Mmm, he’s a big one, all right,” Kli-Kli said warily, approaching the huge beast without hurrying.
The beast jumped up, snarling menacingly, and backed off, trying to keep one eye on me and one on the goblin.
“Where are Egrassa and Ell?”
“I couldn’t find them. Nice little doggy!”
The hound snarled even louder. He had obviously never been insulted like that in his life. Somehow the word “doggy” would never have occurred to me, let alone “nice.” No doubt about it, goblins are strange folk.
“Do you want me dead? Don’t make him angry! Where have you been roaming all this time?”
“I haven’t been roaming, I’ve been trying to get you out of trouble,” the jester said in an offended tone of voice. “Now we’ll fix him.”
The hound pricked up his ears and showed us his teeth. Kli-Kli just smiled at him and brought out what he had been holding behind his back.
A cat! A fat ginger cat, as sleek as a fattened hog! Where did the goblin manage to get hold of that?
The goblin opened his fingers, and the cat flopped onto the floor. I don’t think he’d realized yet just what a crucial and unpleasant turning point had arrived in his catty life. The dog howled like an evil spirit that has just seen an exorcist and forgot all about us as he made a dash for his natural prey.
The cat might not have grown up out on the street (he was too well fed and pampered for that) but he was no fool, that’s for sure! The ginger butterball pulled in his claws and took off like greased lightning—which was quite incredible with his figure. And the hound followed, just a few steps behind.
“Where did you find him?” I gasped in amazement.
The fool gave a cunning smile.
“In the count’s kitchen, of course! You saw how well fed he was!”
“Right,” I replied stupidly, still not believing that an idiotic trick thought up by Stalkon’s fool could have been so effective.
“What do you mean, ‘Right’? Have you got the Key? Then in the name of darkness, why are you just standing there gaping? Do you want to wait for that crocodile to eat the cat and come back for our livers? Let’s get moving!”
We slipped out into the corridor, galloped past the pictures, flew out into the hall, and then hurtled into the next corridor.
“Shhhhh,” I said, putting one finger to my lips.
Kli-Kli nodded and started moving along on tiptoe. We stopped beside the vases where I had hidden earlier.
“Where to now, Harold?”
I thought hard. The route I had followed on my own was no good for two. Especially since it led out onto the balcony through the countess’s room. Creeping through any of the other rooms was out of the question; we’d probably run into a ferocious baron with a sword who wouldn’t think twice before he ran us through.
“Kli-Kli, how did you get into the house?” I asked with a sudden flash of insight.
“Through the basement window.” The goblin made a wry face. “You’re too big to get through it. But I could cut you into pieces and stick you through.…”
“Kli-Kli, this is no time for jokes.”
“It’s exactly the right time. But if you can’t even manage a polite ‘ha-ha,’ then don’t bother! We can try to get through the kitchen.”
“The kitchen?” I didn’t have a plan of the first floor, and I only had a vague idea of its layout.
“That’s where they cook the food,” the little wretch explained. “It’s on the way to the basement.”
“Lead on.”
The door of the room where Paleface and his friend had been sitting was wide open. The room was empty, apart from a faint smell of charm-weed. Paleface had already received his orders to find Harold.…
Kli-Kli led me to a stairway that went down to the first floor. It took us into the servants’ wing. The walls here were gray and not so looked-after as on the second floor. There were no rich furnishings here. No pictures, no carpets, no statues or vases in niches. Even the oil lamps had been replaced by smoky torches that left black trails on the walls.
“Now where?”
“Right.”
Behind the kitchen door we could hear dishes clattering and voices talking.
“There’s someone there,” I said, stating the absolutely obvious.
“You think I don’t know that? How easy do you think it was to steal that cat from the fat cook?”
Why hadn’t I realized that the kitchen would be working? The cooks in houses like this rarely went to bed. One kept the fire going in the hearth, another one decided what delicacies to prepare for Balistan Pargaid this fine morning, and another cooked for the guests.… With all this fuss and bother, I’d completely forgotten about that.
“Then why in the name of darkness did you bring me here?”
“You asked me to, so I did. And don’t you look at me like that, Dancer in the Shadows! As if I didn’t know you’ve got three little bottles of muck for putting people to sleep in that bag of yours! Or are you just too plain cheap to use them? You carry that stuff around for much longer, and it’ll go sour!”
One of Kli-Kli’s little weaknesses is that he likes to rummage through other peoples’ things while the owner isn’t there. So it’s not surprising that the goblin knew all about the contents of my bag.
