Vangerdahast broke a length of rib bone off the skunk carcass, then illuminated it with a quick spell of light and tossed it down the corridor. A tall, manlike silhouette ducked quietly down the great staircase, and a chill ran down the wizard’s spine. The thing looked far too robust and human to be Xanthon, but there had been no hint of a tunic or cloak covering the smooth outline of its shoulders-and the wizard was all too certain of what that meant. Ghazneths could not wear clothes, for their bodies caused fabric to rot almost instantly.
The skunk suddenly lost its taste, but Vangerdahast forced himself to cut another piece and eat it. He was going to need his strength.
The goblins hurled themselves at the wall of force for only a few moments before concluding they could not get at their invisible thief through the doorway. They posted four guards in front of the portal and retreated to their table, then fell into a heated discussion. Keeping a watchful eye in both directions, Vangerdahast remained where he was and cast a spell to eavesdrop on their conversation. With a ghazneth lurking somewhere in the palace, he did not want to move until he had eaten his fill and recovered some of his energy.
“This thief we must find,” rasped one goblin, a particularly broad fellow in a crimson loincloth. “The Grodd Palace he must not have the run of.”
To Vangerdahast’s great dismay, it sounded to him as though the goblins were speaking some corrupted dialect of the same ancient Elvish in which Nalavara had spoken her name.
“One jill it is only,” said another. “Let the sneak have it and choke. Later we will smell him out.”
“Nay, later there will be more.” This speaker seemed to be female, and the others remained respectfully silent when she spoke. “Has the Iron One not spoken of these human things? If one is abided, a thousand come. We must smell him out before others follow, or the way of Cormanthor will we Grodd go.”
“As Otka commands.” The male who had spoken pointed toward a door in the back of the room. “Ghislan and Hardy, through the kitchen with your companies, and the alarm sound. Pepin and Rord, at the wall with yours.”
With chilling efficiency, Pepin and Rord gathered twenty of the diners and began to chink at the powdery mortar in the walls. Ghislan and Hardy took the rest and rushed off through the kitchen, leaving only Otka and the white-cloaked servers standing alone in the center of the banquet hall. Vangerdahast had no idea whether Ghislan and Hardy or Pepin and Rord or their subordinates were male or female. The only hint of their sexes he had been able to identify was their voices, and now they were too busy working to talk.
Vangerdahast managed to wolf down only half of the skunk before he heard the companies of Ghislan and Hardy charging up the great staircase. Deciding this particular tribe of goblins was too efficient to toy with, he wrapped the remaining carcass in its fur and stuffed it inside his cloak, then cast a spell to help him see in the dark and scuttled away down the corridor.
At the first intersection, Vangerdahast turned down a small side passage, circling toward a secondary staircase he had seen at the rear of the palace’s great foyer. The skunk meat sat in his belly like lead, though he suspected this had more to do with the condition of his neglected stomach than the Grodds’ skills as chefs. This particular tribe was unlike any he had ever seen before, being much more organized and-it made him shudder to think such a thing-civilized. His thoughts leaped to the forlorn keeps scattered throughout the Goblin Marches, but he could not see how the Grodd were related to those ancient structures, which had stood abandoned long before there was a Cormyr. Of course, he did not see how he had failed to notice Otka and her band earlier, and yet here they were in the grand goblin palace. Both mysteries, he suspected, had more to do with Nalavarauthatoryl the Red than he would have liked.
When Vangerdahast finally started down the final passage toward the stairs, he was dismayed to find a reddish, manlike silhouette crouching atop the landing. The head and body remained distinctly human, but the thing’s pearly gaze shone with the same faint light the wizard had seen in the eyes of Xanthon Cormaeril and the other ghazneths. Moreover, the figure was definitely naked, and he was peering across the foyer toward the skunk bone Vangerdahast had illuminated earlier. Though only a few minutes had passed since the spell was cast, all that remained of the magic was a faint yellow aura.
Vangerdahast cursed silently, then burped under his breath and retreated back up the corridor. He was already feeling stronger-but not yet strong enough to battle a ghazneth. It would be better to take his chances with the goblins.
He had scuttled nearly to the front of the palace when the soft hiss of sniffing goblins sounded around the next corner. Quietly, he retreated to the previous corner and started up another passage. This corridor was the smallest yet, so cramped he had to crawl on hands and knees. Had his life depended on it, he could not have turned around. The first goblins, silent save for the snuffle of their noses, passed the corner behind him. When none of them sounded the alarm, Vangerdahast breathed a silent sigh of relief and kneeled on his haunches, peering back beneath an arm to watch the rest of the group pass.
The sigh came too soon. The line had almost passed when a goblin stopped and squinted into the cramped passage, then chittered in excitement. With a sinking feeling, Vangerdahast dropped a shoulder and craned his neck to look down along his back. Where he should have seen nothing but darkness, he glimpsed a faint patch of blue. Like all magic he cast in the city of the Grodd, his spell of invisibility was wearing off prematurely.
Vangerdahast started to reach for a fire wand, then had a terrible thought. If his magic was not lasting as long as it should (and it was not), perhaps that meant something was draining it. If that something was what he feared, the last thing he wanted was to start spraying magic bolts around like arrows. Deciding his brain was starting to work again now that he had something in his stomach, he shoved the wand back in its sleeve and scurried down the passage as fast as his hands and knees would carry him.
The goblins quickly began to close the gap. Given the choice of being spitted on an iron sword or using another small bit of magic, the wizard allowed himself a single wall of stone. The goblins hit the barrier at a sprint, then bounced away into the murky warrens to find another route to their quarry.
They must have known the labyrinth far better than Vangerdahast. It was all he could do to reach the front of the palace and crawl out onto a tiny balcony before the little warriors caught up. The first one rushed out after him, nearly piercing a kidney before the wizard hurled himself over the balustrade into the darkness.
Vangerdahast experienced a flash of pain as his weathercloak’s magic triggered itself, and he began to flutter toward the ground as slowly as a feather. The wizard allowed himself to descend slowly, secure in the knowledge that there had been no time for the goblins to fetch crossbows, then he felt his stomach rise as he began to fall faster.
He rubbed the commander’s ring on his finger and said, “King’s light.”
A sphere of purple light sprang up around Vangerdahast, revealing the startling fact that he was not only picking up speed, he was drifting away from the Grodd Palace. He twisted around to look toward the center plaza and was even more startled to find Nalavara’s huge eye rearing up before him, slowly blinking and still bearing a strong semblance to the dark basin it had been when Vangerdahast arrived in this strange city.
The spell failed entirely then. The wizard plummeted to the ground and hit hard, then rolled to his knees and found himself looking up at Nalavara’s reptilian jaw. As he shook his head clear, the dragon pulled another two neck scales out of the ground, and Vangerdahast knew he had guessed right about what was happening to his magic.