'Binding spells, see page 10,582,' Payge intoned.
'Yes! I couldn't see a thing until we were inside, but now I can see everything!'
'Keep it down,' I growled, as Tananda tied Buirnie to Zildie's side. 'Let's not attract the attention...'
'Who goes there?' a voice demanded. 'Hands up!'
I turned, a big smile on my face. Three long-snouted guards came toward us with their spears pointed in our direction.
'Well, hello, there!' I said. 'We got a little lost on the tour. Can you direct us to the gift shop?'
'Guardsmen, ho! We've got a big, ugly one here!' the first guard yelled.
'Who are you calling ugly?' I yelled back. 'You look like your mother stuck your nose in a vise!'
The guard captain poked me in the ribs with the spear.
'OW!'
'No talking!'
In a moment, we were surrounded by at least twenty men-at-arms. Their heads were draped in chainmail coifs, out of which their long, pointed faces grinned toothily.
'I can blast their ears off,' Buirnie declared.
'I have just the spell,' Payge said. 'If you repeat after me...'
'Potions, anyone?' Asti asked.
'Which treasure is Calypsa on?' I asked.
'Still on Chin-Hwag,' Kelsa said, gaily. 'My goodness, how Barrik dances with impatience. It's almost elegant for a creature like him. I didn't think Diles had any sense of rhythm.'
'No talking!' the guard barked, prodding me with a spear.
'Have we got enough time to get into the dungeons and
out again?'
'Oh, you're going to the dungeons, all right,' the chief guard hissed, as more of the contingent appeared and surrounded us. 'You're just not getting out again.'
'How cliche,' Payge sighed.
'That's all right,' I said. 'We want to go to the dungeons.'
'It's very convenient,' Tananda said, flirting her eyelashes at him. 'It saves us asking directions.'
'I could give you directions,' Kelsa said, sounding hurt.
'You must be crazy,' the guard captain said, his snout bobbing. He waved his free hand at the Hoard. 'Confiscate those... things!'
'We're not 'things,'' Asti said, peevishly.
The captain turned to me. 'Make them shut up,'
'Buddy,' I sighed, 'If you can get them to shut up, you're doing better than I am.'
'Now, move it! March!'
'May I give you an update on conditions in the audience chamber?' Payge asked.
'Just the dialogue, okay?'
'Certainly. Chin-Hwag emitted a noise that sounded like 'Ptoo.' 'Beautiful, beautiful,' said Barrik, wizard and conqueror of Walt.'
'Save the editorializations,' I growled.
'It is like that in the archives,' the Book said, sounding hurt.
'Well, save it.' I turned to the guards. 'Can we get a move on? We're running on a schedule, here!'
'They are crazy,' one of the guards commented. 'His Enchantedness is going to want to know about them as soon as possible.'
'Go report,' the captain said.
'Stay here!' I ordered. 'We're too dangerous for a reduced squad to handle.'
'What?'
Tananda wound herself around the guard and fondled the toothy jaw with a finger. 'Look, I'm escaping.'
'Back in line, stranger!' the captain commanded.
'That's no way to talk to a lady,' she said. She stiff-armed the guard in his long snout, knocking him backwards off his feet.
The whole contingent surrounded us, prodding us with the point of their spears.
Tananda lifted her hands in surrender. 'Easy, easy! I don't mind playing rough, but I do draw the line at toys.'
If the Dile guards could have blushed, they would have.
'March,' the guard captain said, more hoarsely than before.
'Calypsa had better stay on schedule,' I said.
THE DUNGEONS WERE about what I would have expected from someone who had read the Tyrant's Guide to Oppression, or Despotism For Dummies. A heavy iron door with a grate the size of my hand creaked open onto a downward spiral stairway so narrow that we could only walk down it single file. The guards at the front and rear lit torches, which smoked like five-pack-a-day addicts, and shed just enough light that you couldn't really tell the difference between shadows and solid objects. The place smelled of blood, fear, eau de unwashed prisoner, rotten food and rat droppings. Considering we were nowhere near the dimension where rats had originated, I took a moment to marvel at the ubiquitousness of the vermin species.
My thoughts took my attention away momentarily from Payge's nonstop commentary.
'His efforts to spur Chin-Hwag to greater speed in producing money have failed. He has threatened Calypsa's life, but the Purse is pretending she can't hear him. He's assigned a flunky to catch the coins when she spits one out.
'Let me know when he runs out of legitimate items, willya?' I asked.
'Silence in the ranks!' the captain's voice echoed up to us.
At the bottom of the staircase, they pushed me and Tananda up against the wall. The jailor grinned at us, showing gaps in the rows of hundreds of stunted, yellow teeth.
'Guess the lack of dental hygiene among cell-keepers is pretty universal dimensionwide,' I commented.
'Silence!'
Payge broke it. 'The wizard eyes the Sword. He signs to the Walt maiden to hand it to him. She is reluctant. 'If you do not give it to me, your grandfather will die a long, slow, terrible death' he said.'
'Will you pay attention to your cases?' Kelsa said peevishly. 'You keep jumping in between present and past tense.'
'Forgive me. I am not accustomed to reporting something so recently recorded into the archives. The tenses change.'
'What do we do with the gold?' one of the guards asked his captain.
'What do you think? We save them for His Enchantedness! He knows everything that goes on around here.'
'Not everything,' Kelsa said. 'Why, he doesn't know that you have made up a song about him. It goes, 'Barrik is a squint-eyed boob, his nose is like a spiky tube...'
'Say, that's snappy!' Buirnie exclaimed. 'Give me the rhythm, Zildie!'
RAT-TAT! RAT-TAT!
'Silence!'
'You really know how to hurt an artist,' Buirnie complained.
'Knock it off,' I told him. 'You'll have plenty of opportunity in a minute.'
'Can I dose them now?' Asti asked me. 'They are getting on my nerves almost as much as you do.'
'Not yet,' I said.
