During the night, the leucomorph, having with some difficulty detached itself from the branches of the tree, bounded through the inn window. It had followed Evillo’s scent trail and entered the city — an act unusual for its kind — next clambering up the inn’s rickety wall.
A deal of noise resulted. Yells and curses, sounds of blows and counter-blows, the crash of furniture, augmented by warbling growls.
Next, the chamber door burst wide. Evillo and the leucomorph erupted forth, to the elaborate consternation of other guests. Within minutes, many of these rushed screaming from the inn and down the street, wrapped only in bed-sheets. Others hid below tables in the main hall where, in the general distress, a lamp was inevitably knocked from a low rafter, causing a fire. At last, Evillo and the leucomorph, still locked in combat, retired once more into the upper room, where the young man succeeded in braining the thing with the night-pot, then casting it back from the window into the canal. Here it sank amid a cloud of white bubbles. Below, the fire was extinguished. Evillo lay down, ignoring his bruises, and returned exhaustedly to sleep. Sleep was of short duration however.
No sooner did dawn tip the sky than the door of his room once more crashed open.
“Arise, villain!” roared the muscle-girt captain of a band of city militia, each man brandishing sword and club. “You are to accompany us to jail.”
Evillo, yet somnolent, still felt his mouth sparkle with words. “You mistake your man!” he cried.
“No, not we. You are a wretch who lured a filthy monster into this inn, wherewith to wreck the establishment. Worse even than this, as was earlier reported by the landlord, you have impersonated a member of the royal household.” Eloquently plead as he would, Evillo found himself disarmed of his sword and briskly conducted into the street. He was then marched away into the pillar-fallen and ruinous Old Town of Kaiin, where stood the fearsome, seven-storey dungeon errected aeons before by Gbile the Intolerant. Only when cast upon a vast and stenchful floor in semi-darkness, did he discover that Khiss had accompanied him, and still sat on his left shoulder.
There passed then an unpleasant compendium of hours. The large room was already well stocked with criminals. Some groaned, and some uttered maledictions against various persons, amulets, and gods which had failed them. Some, more energetic, brawled and rolled across the space. Some crept about and attempted unneighbourly acts on the rest. One of these even essayed the theft of Khiss, thinking it to be a jewel. Evillo dissuaded the man, telling him that the gem was worthless, and besides carried a malwill, being the very cause of Evillo’s imprisonment.
At noon, a panel was undone in the iron barrier, and a communal cauldron of lumpy, steaming gruel pushed through. On this, most flung themselves, slavering and hooting. Only those too weak, or in such despair as to be beyond nurture, desisted. Evillo numbered himself among the latter.
However, with noon some little drips of maroon light had also penetrated the prison, through an assortment of cracks. By these miserable rays, Evillo noticed a tall and well-dressed older man with sable hair, who sat to one side. Neither eating or grieving, nor complaining, he had fixed Evillo with a piercing grey gaze.
“Behold,” whispered Khiss, as if to itself, “it is the sorcerer Pendatas Baard.”
Evillo racked his now burnished wits. He did not identify the name, although, for a fleeting moment it had seemed familiar. But the man’s gaze disconcerted him, and, presently, lacking the guidance of Khiss, Evillo rose and went towards him.
The cold eyes lifted. “And do you know me?” inquired the mage.
“You are Pendatas Baard, the sorcerer. Why therefore are you in a dungeon? Do your powers desert you?”
This was perhaps too bold; the man grimaced, then smiled in superior fashion.
“My powers are formidable. I was well taught by my father, the lamented Ultra-Mage Kateraspex. Know then, I am here due to an experiment on my part, extrapolated from Phandaal’s empurpled theorem of Locative Selfulsion.”
Evillo recalled that Khiss, at their first meeting, had mentioned this particular magic.
“What does the theorem entail?” he asked.
“Surely,” said the mage, “so much is evident?”
Evillo temporized. “You will pardon me, I hope, but it seemed to me that you stared at me a while. Maybe you have some task for me to perform? Even decidedly, such a necessary task as will cause my swift liberation from this jail?”
“No, nothing like that,” replied the mage. “It seemed to me for a moment that I recognized something about you. Have you travelled much?”
Evillo must admit he had not. But then he became animated, thinking of his much-travelled hero, Cugel, and added, “But I have journeyed in my mind. My
“Quite,” interposed Pendatas Baard concludingly.
Just then, a loud clang shook the dungeon, followed by screeching. In their shoving anxiety to feed, the food vehicle had been toppled among the diners, and a man received burned legs and feet. As the unfortunate lay flapping on the floor, a curious compunction overcame Evillo. Leaving the mage, he hastened to the scalded man. Lying on the floor, Evillo commenced to crawl over his wounded legs. Cries of affronted mockery resulted, then fell still as Evillo completed his progress. The burned man bounced to his feet. “I am cured! The pain is laved from me! My skin is whole!” So much might be witnessed as a fact.
The other prisoners promptly crowded about Evillo. “You are a mighty sorcerer. Save us, great master! We are all innocent as newborn elds. Only free us, and we will be your slaves. Refuse — and mage or not, you shall die!”
Evillo stood aghast, and neither the teaching of Khiss. nor any memories of Cugel’s wit, provided him at this point with eloquence.
“Khiss! Instruct me — what now?”
Khiss murmured.
“The great master whispers a spell,” surmised the prisoners. “Let us hope it summons our release — for our sakes and his!”
“It is as you desire,” Evillo confirmed hastily. “But stand further off, or the force of the freeing mantra may smash us all to pieces.” The prisoners withdrew. Khiss then muttered again. Directed by the mutter, Evillo spun about in time to see the real magician, Pendatas Baard, wavering in and out of visibility.
Faithful to Khiss’ next injunction, Evillo raced to the mage, and flung himself upon him, grasping him vigorously with both arms and legs.
Pendatas Baard uttered a strangled roar of rage and pain, but the vacillating waver, now unstoppable, had swiftly involved Evillo also. In another second, the full trio, mage, young man, and snail, vanished from the dungeon.
There was a form of bad weather in Almery that day. The three travellers fell amid the tempest, as simultaneously on the hard eastern banks of the Xzan or Twish.
Evillo found that, rather than brush water drops from his face, he brushed off small flexible animalcules of a bluish type which, hitting him here and elsewhere, bit him.
For a short time, Pendatas Baard and Evillo were united in a frenzied dance, beating away this vicious insectile rain. Presently, the mage thought to erect by sorcery a canopy of steel that, no doubt inadvertantly, sheltered Evillo also. Here they huddled, while without the sky fell and the river popped and sizzled.
