the afternoon’s waning. The one-eyed man went off to find a comfortable place to spend the night near the docks, while Gord finished up a few errands and then made for the stable not far from his lodgings. The dust from his cantering mount made a golden plume in the last rays of the setting sun as he left Greyhawk behind on his way to Dyvers.
Chapter 17
The city of Dyvers was like Greyhawk in many respects, but the differences were significant. Dyvers was older, not quite so large in area or population, more crowded with strangers. The buildings were different, squarer, the towers squatty with even thicker walls than those of Gord’s home city. The place had no new and old cities; Dyvers was one municipality. It had slums and poor sections, but none so bad as Greyhawk’s, just as its finer portions were not so grand as those of its rival to the east.
The hilltop villas and mansions of Greyhawk looked out over the snaking waters of the Selintan. In Dyvers, similar palatial structures had vistas of the Velverdyva River or the endless-seeming expanse of the Nyr Dyv. Beautiful and ugly were intermixed, poor and rich, just as in great cities everywhere, Gord supposed.
His journey here had been rapid and relatively uneventful. After arriving in Dyvers, Gord had spent a day simply relaxing and refreshing himself. He chose a middle-priced inn near the middle of the city where most of the clientele seemed of middling sort. It was drab, dull, and quiet-just the place he wanted for his coming work.
Being an able scholar was a boon indeed. It didn’t take long for Gord to locate a seller of books and maps, and there he found a fairly accurate map of the city. He retired to his room to commit the map to memory, using key features as landmarks. That night, his second at the inn, he ventured forth and began making the rounds of taverns and inns frequented by the wealthier folk who dwelled in Dyvers or came regularly to the city to do business. That excursion gained him nothing, but Gord wasn’t discouraged. He had expected nothing, even though it was worth the chance anyway.
The detective work required several sets of new clothing and extensive drinking and frequenting of various high-class establishments of many sorts to accomplish fully. A slim lead was obtained here, a possibly false name there. There were only a handful of people in the whole of Dyvers able to afford a costly piece of jewelry of the sort Gord was looking for, and of those, most wouldn’t have agents traveling around to find specific pieces.
The work would have been far simpler had he not been constrained by the need for discretion and confidentiality-his need, of course, not that of the owner of the nine sapphires. If Gord boldly inquired in the seamier establishments of the town, he could have soon come up with the name he wanted. But then, however, every government informer, thief, and assassin in Dyvers would have known him as well. The trick was to gain information while revealing none about yourself. That required more time, great skill, and considerable expense. Gord had all three commodities at his beck and call, so in a few days he had what he needed.
“I shall be departing for Veluna City today, landlord. May I please have my reckoning?” Gord made a production of it all, paying, leaving a good sum in addition for the proprietor, ordering his horse, and then departing. He was sure the landlord would not forget him for a long time. In fact, Gord actually did leave the city by its western portal, stopping there a moment to chat with the sergeant of the guard, complimenting him on his community and remarking with a wink on the looks and friendliness of the women. Of course, that last remark rubbed the fellow the wrong way, just as Gord had intended.
When the sergeant countered with a protest and demanded an apology, Gord sneered, called him an ignorant yokel from a backward city, and cantered away. “The folk of Veluna are better and brighter too,” he drawled over his shoulder with a disdainful air. That man would remember him, too.
Several days later, on a different horse and garbed as a traveler from distant Keoland, Gord re-entered Dyvers by one of its southern gates. He found a low hostel where no questions were asked as long as payment was made in advance. Now his real work could begin. If by the slightest chance someone recalled his earlier inquiries about a person most likely to be interested in rare and precious gems, because that worthy soon thereafter lost the most valuable prize in his collection, the individual who would be sought after was the one who would be found to have departed Dyvers days prior to the theft.
Gord as he appeared now was older, hair streaked with grey, and was noticeably taller than the fellow he had been before. The young thief grinned to himself, thinking of how well a bit of dye, built-up boots, and a hat could so easily deceive the untrained eye. The observation of skilled eyes was another matter, but he didn’t plan to expose himself to any such scrutiny.
Gord went out early in the evening and returned to the hostel before midnight reeling drunk. He sang and stomped his way boisterously to his quarters, attracting the attention of several other patrons along the way, slammed and locked the door, and collapsed noisily on his bed. In a few minutes he was cold sober, clad in black, carrying all the thieving gear he figured to need, and creeping out a window on the way to seek his prize.
A lot of trouble to go to? No-too much caution could not be used when a rogue thief was planning to invade the Temple of Nerull and steal from its high priest a necklace of inestimable worth… particularly when that very same high priest had announced that the nine black stones of the piece meant more to him than could be guessed!
That tidbit of information had been gained from the steward of a rich and degenerate aristocrat of Dyvers. The man’s master was a worshiper of the evil deity Nerull, for whatever reasons he had. That aside, this same man, the noble worshiper, was the collector of gems whose agent had obtained the nine sapphires. Only he had not kept the necklace, as Gord had supposed he would. Instead the piece had been given to the chief cleric of Nerull as an offering. No matter-whether they were held by aristocrat or priest, Gord would this very night have the black stones from whatever repository they were locked in.
The squat temple of basalt lay on the edge of the district of the city that was given over to places of devotion. But unlike the other temples, the House of Nerull had no buildings close to it. The streets nearby were deserted, and the place seemed lifeless. Gord knew better. Night was the time for the followers of this evil being to pay their duty to their deity. Somewhere below ground, in a dark and foul chamber, the devotees of the vile god of death would be chanting their praises and making blood sacrifices. Such activity was good for him, for all inside would be busy, and Gord could operate undisturbed. He would enter, burglarize, and leave before the fools knew what had occurred.
Thanks to a dweomered blade he had gained In his eastern adventures, Gord was able to see in utter darkness as if it were dim dusk, while in starlight his vision was as sharp as if it were early twilight. Thus the low wall surrounding the grim temple and the sentries silently prowling the open ground between wall and temple were nothing to him. Any skilled thief could have scaled the wall, of course, despite the clawed spikes atop it. Wickedly planted iron spears and a dense hedge of dwarf yarpicks on the inner verge of the wall were a matter to be dealt with carefully. Still, the stationary obstacles would not have been insurmountable. His biggest problem was the padding guards with their accompanying beasts. Each sentry was matched with a black ape!
“Now there’s a type of vicious killer I’ve never seen before,” Gord said to himself as he studied the area beyond from a precarious position between the spikes atop the wall. Now he understood why the points hooked both outward and inward too. These apes were undoubtedly carnivores and man-killers. The result of one or more running loose in the city would bring severe repercussions to the temple’s master priest.
“I could fall upon man and beast,” Gord ruminated. His acrobatic ability was sufficient for him to clear the abatis of metal and thorny growth without difficulty, and he could land ready to fight. His short sword and long dagger were sufficient armament for the young thief to dispatch both adversaries quickly and with possibly no sound-or at most some stifled cries.
“No, the pairs meet and exchange soft words at intervals. The priests have covered themselves well,” Gord reflected. So he changed his thinking. If this place was a typical one of its sort, and there was no reason to think it was not, he knew that there would be some hidden subterranean way inside, a secret passage meant to be a death trap for anyone foolish enough to trespass. Gord stayed still a few minutes longer, watching the movement of the sentries, the snuffling and peering of their apes. Then he acted.
As the guardian pairs moved away, Gord vaulted outward and tumbled into a somersaulting roll as his feet touched the sward surrounding the squatty pile of the evil temple. Quickly gaining his feet again, the young thief crouched, opened a small bag at his belt, turned, and tossed a handful of red pepper back over the area he had just
