Reaching the corner where the avenue met the square, Garth looked about. The open area was clearly a marketplace, with taverns and inns standing dark and vacant on all sides, the canopies and tents of various merchants scattered in the dust before him. It was a good fifty yards square, perhaps more. The dusty and disarrayed awnings and such numbered in the dozens.
Almost the entire opposite side was occupied by a single building: the palace, glistening white marble that remained spotless despite the city's current depopulated condition. It had a single great door in the middle of its faзade, a gem-encrusted expanse of beaten gold at the top of three steps of some rich red stone; the ground floor had no windows or ornaments except this portal, set in the smooth, blank marble.
Upper stories were another matter; half a dozen evenly spaced slits served as windows for the second floor, while the third had a dozen broad casements of elaborately leaded glass. The gently sloping roof was edged with innumerable gargoyles, carved of the same white marble as the walls.
Garth studied the situation. Shang was in there somewhere, presumably, but the structure was large enough that most of its interior would undoubtedly be out of sight and sound of the door. Unless the wizard were lying in wait for him, the odds were he could simply walk in the front door unnoticed-unless there were some sort of alarm. If there were, he would hear it, and could simply turn around and walk out again.
Although the boldest course, this was also the simplest, and therefore most likely the best; he had no way of knowing where in the palace he might encounter the wizard, so one point of entry was as good as another, making it foolish to risk climbing in windows where he could easily slip and break his neck.
His course of action decided, Garth strode across the square, dodging the collapsed tents. The sun, setting somewhere over his right shoulder, glittered redly on the gems that studded the palace door. Marching up the three steps, he grasped the handle and pushed; nothing happened. He pushed harder; the door still refused to yield. He could see no sign of lock or bar, yet it gave no more than would a mountainside; either the palace had been designed to withstand a siege or there was sorcery at work here. In either case, Garth did not care to press the issue. He considered trying to cut through the door with his axe as he had the city gate, but he rejected the idea. If anything would annoy Shang, the ruination of his front door would. Furthermore, the noise attendant upon such a proceeding would be vastly greater than that of his intended surreptitious entry, so that even if the wizard were in the far corner of the palace he might hear it.
Therefore another entrance must be found. Garth descended the red stone steps and turned right, to make a circuit of the building. This led him through a rather malodorous alleyway perhaps six feet in width, where he found the south face of the palace to be as totally blank and featureless on all three floors as the front was on the first. Then, some forty yards along, he found himself in a broader, more wholesome street at right angles to the alleyway. The back of the palace, he saw, had the same casements and gargoyles at top, the same slits on the second floor, the same smooth faзade at ground level, save that where the golden door was in the front, the back had a large arch, perhaps fifteen feet wide and a dozen high, filled with an oaken gate.
A brief attempt showed that this barrier was as solidly closed as was the golden portal, if not more so, and the arguments against hacking it down still held; so Garth continued to the northern face, into an alleyway of perhaps eight-foot width, which was almost black in the gathering twilight. Here the palace was again utterly blank and featureless.
Emerging once more into the market-square, Garth realized that daylight was fading rapidly and that he could not afford to waste much more time if he wanted to be able to see what he was doing; therefore he discarded his consideration of such possibilities as concealed doorways, lock-picking, tunnels from adjacent buildings, and other unlikely means of ingress, and set his mind to reaching the third-floor windows...One, he could see, was not closed completely; perhaps an inch separated the metal casement from its frame.
A single attempt convinced him that the palace walls were not readily scalable; the smooth marble provided no hand or toe-holds, nor did he care to waste time and energy noisily making such holds with his axe. He did not care to attempt lassoing or grappling a gargoyle and clambering up the rope, because he doubted either the gargoyles or the rope were strong enough to hold him, and knew that he was no expert at either throwing or climbing ropes. No, the best approach, he saw, would be to get onto the roof somehow and lower himself down to the window from above, with two or three lengths of rope securely fastened to whatever could be found.
Since the palace itself was unscalable, he would have to get onto the roof from one of the adjacent buildings; to the right was an inn some three stories high, almost as tall as the palace, with overhanging eaves that Garth doubted he could get past, while to the left stood a house of two stories, the upper floor overhanging the lower so that its roof ended not more than two yards from the palace wall and perhaps ten feet below the level of the palace roof. That might serve as a jumping-off point, though the jump itself would be a difficult one.
Reaching that first roof, however, would be easy; an unfallen merchant's canopy sloped away from the house, supported by a fairly substantial wooden frame. Without further consideration, Garth grabbed the lower edge of the canopy, mere inches above his head. Moving as quickly as he could, he swung himself up onto it. The cloth gave, straining dangerously, and a cloud of dust arose, making his eyes water, but the canopy held-at first. He scrambled rapidly up the sloping homespun, feeling it give as he did so; the cloth was tearing loose from its framework. He rolled sideways onto the cloth-covered wood, only to hear the frame creak and feel it start to sag under his weight; but then he was at the top, clinging to the rough facade of the house. It was not rough enough for a proper hold, however, and he knew his grip was insufficient to save him if the rickety canopy were to collapse. Although the fall would probably not hurt him, it would ruin his planned approach to the palace, as well as make a considerable and undesirable racket.
He waited for the swaying and creaking to subside, spreading his weight as best he could, as he considered his next move. The eaves would be within easy reach if he were to stand up, but such an action would undoubtedly bring the tattered merchant's stall down in complete ruin. Perhaps if he could get a toe into the wall of the house he could let that carry the strain; there was an opening between two badly cut stones almost an inch high and four inches long. Carefully, slowly, he brought his left leg up and wedged the pointed toe of his boot into the flaw.
Thus anchored, he pulled himself up the wall a few inches at a time, his right leg resting on the wooden frame, until he was kneeling, his left leg braced against the wall, his hands, with all four thumbs digging in, clinging to the wall above his head. Then, in a single sudden surge, he flung himself upward, catching himself with his arms up over the eaves almost to his shoulder, then swinging his leg up onto the roof. From that perch he pulled up his other leg as he saw the canopy frame below him pull loose from the wall and slowly, quietly fall to the ground, the cloth forming a sort of parachute that both broke the fall and muffled the inevitable clatter.
He paused briefly to catch his breath but dared not wait, lest Shang had heard the noise; the collapse could have been caused by wind or wear, but Garth still had to get out of sight. Wasting no time in preparation, he stood and ran for the roof-edge facing the palace, and launched himself into the short gap between buildings. His run had been hindered by the slope of the roof and he had not fully caught his breath after gaining the rooftop, so the leap was short and sloppy, but his outstretched fingers reached one of the projecting gargoyles and wrapped around it automatically. To his surprise, the carving held; he had underestimated the local masons.
Carefully, he worked his fingers up across the stone until his hold was less precarious; then he swung his feet forward to press against the smooth white marble of the palace wall and give him sufficient traction to shift his grip, so that he could once again swing a leg up. This time it took two attempts to hook a toe over the parapet behind the grinning sculptures; Garth blamed it on the rapidly fading twilight rather than admit that he was tiring already. He was not as young as he once was, having lived more than a century. Though overmen could anticipate a lifespan of about two hundred years, Garth had long since lost the first bloom of youthful vigor.
Having finally gained the security of the palace roof, he moved well back from the edge, out of sight of the market-square if he kept his head down, and rested. Looking about him, he realized that the palace, which he already knew to be almost square, was a hollow square; a large courtyard occupied its center. Though he could not be seen from the market, he was in plain view of a third-floor open gallery that ran the length of the courtyard's opposite side. He crouched lower instinctively, though he knew that there was nowhere on the roof he could conceal himself completely; even the various chimneys were low, little more than holes in the roof. He lay motionless, waiting for a sound that would indicate Shang's whereabouts.
None came.
He remained where he was for several minutes, considering his best course of action. It would be much
