“Thank you for the suggestion that I wear my boots,” the princess replied. She felt a shiver of excitement as they started down the dingy stairway. Sir Marckus held his torch before him, revealing slimy, uneven slabs of limestone descending down a narrow, stone-walled shaft. Water thick with ooze trickled from step to step, gurgling toward the dark, unseen bottom.
Smoke from the torch rose along the low ceiling, stinging Selinda’s eyes. She coughed and ducked her head. For the first time she wondered about the wisdom of her request, but she would not humiliate herself by changing her mind, even as Sir Marckus stopped near the bottom of the stairs and turned to regard her.
“You sure you want to go on?” he asked.
She nodded resolutely. Her foot splashed down in a puddle, and she reached out a hand to brace herself on the slippery surface. The stone of the wall was slick, mossy, and cold. Grimacing, the Princess of Palanthas continued into the dungeon.
Now there were solid doors to each side, iron doors with massive locks and narrow slots that presumably allowed the passage of food and drink. Something moved at one of those hatches, and she clasped a hand to her mouth at the sight of taloned fingers, long and flexible and tipped with curving, sharp claws, reaching out. A knight hacked down with his short sword, slicing off one of the digits before the hand disappeared. Selinda heard a deep- chested growl that made her think of a very large dog, and something banged hard into the door. The iron slab rattled in its frame, the thumping echo suddenly amplified by a piercing shriek.
“He’ll remember us, that one,” said the knight with the bloody sword. Despite his brash words, his tone was uneasy, and he cast a wary glance at the door as the procession came to a halt.
Selinda was about to remind the captain that she wanted to see a goblin when he pulled out a large key and handed it to one of his men. The fellow unlocked the metal door, pulling it back with a creak of rusty hinges to reveal a barrier of close-set iron bars.
“There’s the goblin. Look all you want,” said Sir Marckus. “Don’t get close.”
The princess stepped forward, as the captain raised his torch. Her first reaction was: What’s all the fuss about?
The goblin looked wretched, pathetic, grotesque… but utterly harmless. It stared up at her with vacant eyes, dull even in the flaring torchlight as it squatted close to the bars. Its lower jaw hung slack, exposing the curl of a fleshy tongue. Its nostrils were wide-set, flaring outward and raised nearly flat against the low-browed skull. The goblin kept its arms wrapped around its skinny knees, clutching its bleeding hand. Glaring at her suddenly, it raised the wounded hand to suck on the stub of its severed finger.
She noticed a flare of green light in its hand, like a dull phosphorescence, and asked about the source of it.
“Ah, they call them their godstones,” one knight explained. “They worship Hiddukel, lots of these ugly ones do. That green chip can’t do no harm, but they fight like banshees if you tries to take it away. Easiest just to let him have it.”
“Does it always glow like that?” she asked.
“Glow? I don’t see no glow. Do you, Hank?”
“No,” replied another knight. “The dark plays some tricks, though.”
The goblin stared at Selinda as it sucked on its finger, the stone close to its black lips. In a momentary gesture-she wondered if she imagined it-she thought she saw the goblin kiss the glowing green stone. She was sure that the stone was brighter than normal, illuminated by some internal source.
Then she saw the same light, in the goblin’s eyes, and it penetrated her flesh, leaving her shivering. In that look was the Truth, and Selinda gasped.
She saw herself sailing north in her galleon, departing from Caergoth on a course for home. A storm, an unnatural brew of cosmic violence, came roaring in from the west, overwhelming the ships, smashing the sturdy hulls… drowning them all.
It was the Truth, somehow she knew.
If she sailed from here, she would die.
CHAPTER NINE
Dawn found the dwarf and the warrior sitting on the low stone wall surrounding a fountain at the intersection of four narrow, twisting streets in the Gnome Ghetto. Apparently water had once flowed from the mouth of the chubby-cheeked cherub, immortalized in bronze, who balanced on one toe in the middle of the shallow bowl. The fountain and the bowl were dry now. In fact, when Dram peered over the edge, he discovered a pair of gully dwarves curled up on the inside of the fountain, snoring loudly.
He raised his foot to thump them awake and shoo them off, then slumped onto the wall with a sigh without delivering a kick. “I guess if I don’t bother them they won’t bother me,” the dwarf said, rubbing a gnarled hand over the back of his neck. “I just need to sit a spell and catch my breath.”
Looking equally weary, the man sat beside him, nudging the blade of the concealed sword to the side so he could stretch out his long legs. They had only begun to work out the kinks when the dwarf elbowed his companion in the side. “Look-but don’t look,” he whispered hoarsely, indicating the narrow street to the left.
The man leaned back, from the corner of his eye catching a glimpse of two knights. Each wore the emblem of the Rose on his breastplate. They sauntered side by side down the narrow way, forcing the few gnomes who were about at this early hour to scamper onto the curb or get knocked out of the way. In another dozen steps they would reach the little plaza with the fountain.
With elaborate casualness, the dwarf and the warrior rose to their feet and ambled up one of the side streets. The pair stepped into an alley, ran a short distance to a connecting alley, and ducked around the corner. They made their way through a maze of filthy hovels and twisting paths with scummy liquid puddles, finally emerging on another street-which wasn’t much bigger or nicer than the alley.
“What do those Salamis have against you, anyway?” asked Dram, looking around to make sure the place was clear of knights.
The man shrugged. “It’s not them, it’s me. I can’t stand the bastards. I see ’em, I just want to fight ’em.”
“Why? Did one of them steal your girl? A couple of them beat you up in a bar? What is it? It’s getting on my nerves, not knowing.” The dwarf glared at his companion, but the warrior simply kept walking. With a strangled oath, Dram fell back into step, his face locked in a glower.
The narrow street took a sharp bend, and they found themselves at a small market-another wide intersection where, instead of a dry fountain, a half dozen shabby carts and tents occupied the central open space. Vendors hawked fish, eggs, and fruit. Judging from the stench, the fish and much of the produce had already passed the point of spoilage in better markets and had been brought here to the ghetto in a last attempt to unload it.
“Damn,” cursed the dwarf in a husky whisper. They had already been noticed by a couple of knights among the several roaming the market, clad in leather armor, towering over the residents of the ghetto as they looked watchfully around.
“Hey, you two-what’s your hurry?”
It was the same two knights from earlier, the ones they had spent so much time trying to evade. One beckoned the pair while the other attracted the attention of the other knights in the little market. Within a few seconds, six armed men converged on them near a loosely pitched tent where a hunchbacked human was selling wrinkled, moldering apples.
“Why are you fellows so jumpy? What’s that on your back-hey, are you carrying a sword?” demanded the accosting knight. His hand moved to the hilt of his own blade at his belt. “You must have been informed that goes against the duke’s edict!”
Dram’s eyes were wide. “Gosh, not the duke!” he said innocently.
The dwarf spun around and started to run. The warrior reached out, seized one corner of the hunchback’s shabby tent in his hand, and jerked it hard. The billow of canvas came free, enveloping the advancing knights,
