the two thieves were: The darkness was thicker there, and so it would be much easier for a scoundrel like me to hide.
But I wasn’t able to skip in through the door, since the thieves were coming out of it at that very moment. I managed to dart to one side and press myself back against a wall. But master thieves are masters because they can hear the very slightest rustle.
“There’s someone here,” Shnyg whispered, and I drew my dagger out of its scabbard with a quiet rustling sound.
Nightingale and Shnyg started listening, but then they noticed the approaching stranger whom I had already seen. “Shhh. Look,” Nightingale whispered.
There was certainly something to look at. The figure approaching us was a man. A perfectly normal one. Except that he was semitransparent—the tower and the stones of the roadway were quite clearly visible through him. He was wearing a magician’s robes and leaning on a magic staff. . . .
“Look at this,” the phantom muttered to itself. Its voice sounded twice or even three times, creating a strange echo. “They’ve all abandoned me. The traitors. Where are they? Where? I wander and wander, searching for them. I’ll find them.”
The phantom repeated this little jingle over and over, turning its head from side to side and examining the area, evidently hoping to find the aforementioned traitors. It had a blurred spot instead of a face, but I didn’t have the slightest doubt that this magician could see everything perfectly well. I was scarcely even breathing. And neither were Shnyg and Nightingale, standing a little farther away.
The phantom halted a few yards away from us and began turning its semitransparent head again.
“I wander and wander. I’ll find them. I’ll find them.” It paused for a moment and then said in a very perplexed voice: “I’ll find them. Aha! That’s where they are! They’re hiding! I know you’re there! I’ll find you. I’ll find you.”
He held out his staff and started waving it from side to side, like a blind man, and slowly moving closer. That was when I realized that if I didn’t do something quick, the crayfish sleigh would be coming for me. In another ten seconds he would reach me, and that would be the end. I had just one chance, an incredibly stupid one, but I decided to take it, especially since it was time to get rid of my unwanted competition in the shape of Shnyg and Nightingale. I stepped forward out of the darkness onto the moonlit street so that the thieves were behind my back, and I heard one of them swear in amazement.
“Fire!” I yelled, and then dropped onto the surface of the road, putting my hands over my head.
Without even pausing to think, the magician fired a spell at the spot where I had just been standing. Something went screeching through the air above me. A intense impact, screams of terror and pain from the unfortunate thieves. The phantom had hit the target—which was not me. I didn’t wait to see what had happened to the servants of the Master, and there was certainly no point in loitering in the street in front of this new danger. I leapt up, darted round the muttering magician, and set off across the square toward the tower, zigzagging and hopping like a hare driven insane by the spring sunshine.
The screaming stopped: I don’t know whether the thieves were dead or they had enough sense to stop making noise, but I personally didn’t feel the slightest pity for them. It was them or me. Or that damned mumbling phantom would have done for all of us.
Oh yes, about him. The mumbling behind my back stopped, the air howled again, I leapt to one side and saw a sphere of mist go flying across the square, leaving a smoking tail in its wake, hit the surface of the street and bounce like a child’s ball, then explode with a boom against a house in the distance, leaving a fair-sized hole in its wall.
I changed tactics: forward, hop, sharp left, forward, hop, sharp right, hop, a sudden stop, sharp right, forward again. Like a flea on a frying pan.
Surprisingly enough, this tactic worked. Another three balls of smoke went hurtling across the square and exploded far away from where I was. Once I had to flop down on my belly again in a most inelegant fashion, when a magical charge struck the Tower of the Order, but didn’t explode, and then bounced back on a changed course directly toward me.
I saw the misty charge growing bigger as it flew straight at my face. There was no time to jump aside, so I dropped, and as soon as the sphere flew over my head, I jumped up again, because the tower was already very close.
The damned phantom, may the gkhols gnaw on his bones, was howling over by the Street of the Magicians, while I feverishly searched for the door. I had to run along the wall illuminated by the moonlight, and expose myself in full view to the raging specter. It was closing rather rapidly, muttering malevolently, intent on finishing Harold off.
Yet another charge flew into the building just above my head but, like the previous one, it bounced off and flew back in the opposite direction. Evidently the tower had retained some of its magic even after the cataclysm that had overtaken it, and nobody could knock down its walls simply by flinging spells at them.
Sagot be praised, I finally found the door! I tugged feverishly at the bronze ring. . . . But the door wouldn’t budge. There weren’t any locks at all, so lock picks were no good here, and that cursed phantom, who was hidden from me behind the wall, would soon appear again and continue his wild bombardment.
I tugged at the door again, then kicked it and swore angrily. Time was running out. On one hand there was the phantom, and on the other, morning was already treading on my heels. I cast a quick glance at the stars. Only the Northern Crown and the Summer Bouquet were still bright in the sky, the other constellations had faded and were barely visible. The moon was growing paler, literally before my eyes, and a few moments later the light illuminating the square became diffuse and pale.
In twenty minutes it would be dawn.
It was the end. Without some kind of miracle, I would never leave the territory, that was certain. I could already consider myself a dead man! If that insane phantom didn’t finish me off first. The magician’s muttering was very close now.
Could I hide in the tower? Perhaps I would be able to hold out there until the next night! I clutched at a final slim straw of hope and strained every last muscle in a desperate attempt to open that damned door at least a crack.
Hopeless. No, I couldn’t get in there; all my efforts had been in vain. I was just about to run for the shelter of
