“What other reason is needed?” Gord shrugged in retort. At the best of times, big male cats make for uneasy feeling, even in alliance, for whatever reason. “I seek the den of the gloam-lich and his pack now, Hotbreath. Gather your pride members and follow.” Without watching to see if the great shadow-lion complied, Gord walked on, intent upon what lay before him.
The deep-chested roar of a male lion came suddenly from ahead. Gord set his body into motion, a bounding run that ate up the intervening distance between him and the location of the roar. There was the bulk of Smokemane, with a handful of large lionesses nearby. The massive male had his head thrown back and was voicing yet a second mighty roar when Gord came springing into the place where the lion stood. “Why do you send forth your challenge?” he demanded.
“I scent the evil reek of gloams,” Smokemane answered in deep growls of most ferocious sort. “I announce my intention to seek out such prey to any who would join me in the hunt.”
“Now I am come,” Gord said to him and his females. “I will lead the way, and you and yours will follow with Hotbreath and his mates. In what comes, Imprimus is mine alone. All others are yours-for any who care to set their fangs and sink their claws. Remember in the stalking and chase that the killing of that one, the gloam-lich, Imprimus, is for none other than me.”
“As you order, lord, but let us stop this speaking and seek the prey!”
Feline noses led them to the place where powerful illusions masked the entrance to the gloam’s hidden place of safely. The way was barred by a massive slab of shadow-steel. Not even the claws of the huge lions could penetrate such stuff, but Gord’s enchanted dagger could. The long-bladed poniard was in the young thief’s hand immediately, its magical metal cutting away the hard steel as a whittling knife slivers oak. The flat surface was broken by a rivet-held box that contained the locking mechanism of the portal. It was certain that the door would be barred inside as well, but first he must remove the initial closure. The dagger’s edge pared the steel away, sending metallic curls falling furiously, and then the box’s face fell away, and the lock was exposed. Next came the thick cylinders of the rivets. They were cut through, driven loose. The lock’s inner plate clanged on the floor beyond, and Gord had a square hole he could reach through.
“I have it!” he cried as his groping found a heavy rectangle of metal on the inner side of the portal. Gord pushed upward, and the bar moved, then fell with a louder clanging to join the steel plate already lying on the stone flags beyond. Gord then tried to shove the heavy door inward, but the thing moved not. “Wait,” he told the impatient lions. “The gate is held by more than a single bar.”
It was difficult, but by straining Gord was able to reach down and locate a second piece of steel securing the door at its bottom. This time he was careful to hold the slab of steel, maneuvering the heavy rectangle so that it leaned upright against the portal it had barred. “Now, one last bit of work, and we should be free to pursue our foe!” The lower bar became a lever for the one Gord had been sure was above. Fortunately, the lockplate had been low on the door and the bars that held it fast were long. The tool served well, and with considerable effort Gord managed to employ it to free the uppermost fastening.
There was a third great clangor, then a fourth as the young thief discarded the bar he had held. When he shoved on the portal this time, the sheet of steel swung smoothly open on well-greased hinges.
“The eclipse of Mool and all the luminaries accompanying it above nears its conclusion, prince,” the huge lion named Smokemane growled to Gord as the young adventurer paused before the open entrance. “You must hasten if we are to take these enemies at their ebb!”
At that urging, Gord moved, stalking into the deeper darkness of Imprimus’ lair, followed by ten lions and lionesses. The hallway beyond the steel portal was wide and went straight into the low hill, angling downward rather steeply as it went. The man and his company of big cats had proceeded some distance, going mostly by touch and an innate sense that enabled them to move within the total gloom, when the floor beneath them collapsed.
Chapter 22
Great claws scrabbled as the lions tried to stop their precipitous slide down the polished stone sides of the trap. Gord, as he fell, set his mind, thinking that perhaps the whole thing was some form of illusion.
Neither feline nor human succeeded. The slide continued despite outthrust claws and positive thinking. In seconds all eleven victims were dropped from the steep chute into a circular pit no less than twenty feet deep. The lions landed on their feet, shaken but unhurt. Gord also came through unscathed, for his training as an acrobat enabled him to handle the fall without difficulty and immediately move thereafter to the far wall in order to avoid being crushed by a plummeting lion.
The lightlessness in the circular pit was so extreme that not even the eyes of the shadow-lions could penetrate its murk. Then a pale luminosity issued forth, casting a soft, pale green light all around the small chamber. Some vestige of the talisman’s force still lingered within Gord’s ring, as he had suspected. The young adventurer had wished idly for light by which to see, and in the next instant a dim radiance began to issue forth from his eyes.
The two great male cats snarled and their hackles rose at the phenomenon. Gord spoke soothingly, and both Smokemane and Hotbreath calmed down, even culling their respective females to show the lionesses that all was well and to restore their own lost dignity. That was a very important thing to the big cats.
“This is good… perhaps too good to be true!” Gord exclaimed.
“You think a death trap is good?” old Smokemane growled.
Gord could not restrain himself from taking the head of the big lion and roughly stroking it. The gesture was both one of affection and reassurance. “This place was designed to catch intruders and imprison them in its depth until the guardians within the stronghold could come and deal with what they had caught according to need. Now, at Snuffdark, no sentry stands, no warder watches. I will leave this place in a moment, and soon I’ll have all of you out too!”
The lions stood still, Smokemane’s tail showing jerky twitches of uncertainty. Gord, meanwhile, took his dagger and went to work on the hard and polished stone with which the cylindrical hole was faced. He needed but scant niches for fingertips and toes. The work was simple, and soon indeed he was high above the upturned heads of the lions, legs disappearing over the pit’s rim.
He had pretended confidence at his ability to release his companions, but Gord was deeply worried that he would not be able to do so. The males weighed six or seven hundred pounds each, conservatively. The females were only slightly smaller. How could he ever manage to get such massive cats out of a well that was more than twenty feet deep?
A narrow walkway circled the pit. Opposite the place where the victims were precipitated into its depths by the smooth-floored chute, there was an arched opening, a tunnel of about six paces width and somewhat lower than it was wide. Although the radiance cast from his eyes was waning, Gord could still see well enough to manage a rapid exploration of the passage. There were rooms on either side of the tunnel, and behind a heavy grill the young adventurer spied several wooden shapes that could only be ladders.
The lock of the iron grating was easily dealt with, and in no time at all Gord was dragging a thick-timbered ladder back along the way he had just come. He slid the thing over the lip of the well, guided its end to the floor below, and then ran back up the tunnel once again, returning with a second ladder. This he placed beside the first, then slid down it to the bottom of the pit.
“I have placed these two ladders at as gentle an angle as possible,” Gord said to Smokemane. “You and your mates must use them to get out of this place, placing half of your weight on each. Go up the incline, and when the uppermost portion of the ladder is reached, it will be necessary to use your forepaws to draw yourselves over the rim. Don’t worry-the stone there is rough and cracked.” Gord looked into first Smokemane’s big eyes, then Hotbreath’s. “Can you and the lionesses do that?”
Before either male could growl in reply, a sleek female shot past them, leaped upon the pair of sloped ladders, and clambered up. “Yes,” she growled, and then gave a scrabbling leap and was atop the pit’s edge, peering down with feline hauteur. While Gord watched, all the remainder of the lionesses then climbed upward and out. The great males followed, with the wood groaning and bending under their weight, but not breaking despite the strain each of them placed upon the timbers. Finally Gord scampered up, doing so as easily as if he were serenely
