Before he knew it, Grince had erupted from the shrubbery and was back in the open once more. Thanks be to the Gods! He could move faster now. Somewhere behind him, he could hear the cries of guards and the shrill whistles of the dog handlers, spurring on their charges, but he paid them no heed. About a hundred yards below him, down a sloping stretch of lawn, he could see the torches on the edge of Pendral’s jetty, guarding the drop from careless feet in the darkness—but if the thief could run fast in the open, the dogs could run much faster. One by one they burst out of the bushes behind him. In seconds they were snapping at his heels.
He felt a tug on the back of his tunic, and heard material tear. Somehow, Grince forced himself to one last, desperate burst of speed. If this failed, he would have nothing left, and death would follow swiftly. Time seemed to spin out to an eternity. He was conscious of each labored breath, each aching stretch of muscles that propelled him forward. The river was nearer, now—but even as he heard the hollow drumming of his feet on the wooden jetty an immense weight hit his back and he felt tearing agony in his upper arm and shoulder, where the hound’s great teeth ripped through muscle and skin. The momentum of thief and dog carried them forward, rolling over and over.—Abruptly, Grince felt himself falling.
He would have hit much harder, had the hound not broken his fall. Nonetheless, it was a sheer drop of about fifteen feet from jetty to ground, and enough to deter the remainder of the pack, who clustered on the bank above, barking and whining. The impact knocked the breath from him, but he knew the soldiers would be there at any second. Wheezing and gasping, he started to crawl away on his hands and knees, to hide beneath the shadow of the overhanging bank before the soldiers arrived above him. There was no time to lose—the minute they found a way to bring the dogs down, they would be after him again.—Already, Grince could hear voices on the bank above him. He started to creep away, keeping well beneath the jutting side of the gully, out of their line of vision. A blood-chilling noise stopped him dead in his tracks. Fearfully, he glanced behind him—and discovered that the worst had happened. The hound, stunned by the fall, was beginning to awaken. He could see it looking at him, its yellow eyes blazing in the lamplight reflected from above. Its lips were skinned back from fearsome white fangs in a menacing snarl. Grince swallowed, his mouth gone suddenly very dry. Moving with extreme slowness, and praying to every god he could think of, he began to inch cautiously away from the killer.—Slowly, stiffly, the dog rose to its feet, its baleful eyes fixed unblinkingly on the thief.
“Look—the dog has seen something,” came a shout from above. “Go on, boy—get him! Kill!”
Grince’s plan to sneak away down the shadowy watercourse evaporated into thin air. As the dog came at him and leapt for his throat, he unhooked the heavy sack from his belt and swung it, with all his might, at the beast’s broad skull. It impacted with a resounding crack, and the hound dropped back, yelping and shaking its head. He fumbled for his knife to cut its throat—and found nothing. At some stage in his flight, he must have dropped the weapon.—Bugger!
Once again, fear forced Grince’s aching body to run—not down the gully but along the side, until he could see the great cliffs of the Magefolk Academy rearing their shadowy bulk above him. He came to the first bend, and here, as he had hoped, the stony bank sloped more gently, and could be climbed. Even as he scrambled upward, he heard the dog snarling in the river bottom as it resumed its chase, and the shouts of approaching soldiers on the bank.—Despair swept over the thief. They had him cornered now. He could have wept—it was so unfair. He had outwitted his pursuers so many bloody times—yet he just couldn’t shake them completely.
“There he is!”
“Get the little bastard!”
“Grab him when he comes up!”
The soldiers were clustering round at the top of the slope, unwilling to risk a descent of the slippery gradient. Their voices drowned out the scrabbling of the dog’s claws on the bank behind him. Grince was trapped, with nowhere left to turn. Dazzled as he was by the lanterns of the many guards above, he didn’t see the hole until he fell into it—and found himself in a peculiar tunnel whose walls and floor were smooth, curved, and sloping slightly upward.—Grince’s forward momentum took his feet right out from underneath him on the slippery floor, and he fell full length, covering himself from head to foot with slimy muck. Rubbing the stuff from his eyes, he turned his head to see the hound’s massive silhouette, blocking the entrance behind him. He was finished. Grince tensed himself and closed his eyes, whimpering with terror, waiting to feel the hound’s sharp teeth tear his flesh....
Nothing happened. With a weird, dreamlike sense of utter disbelief, he realized that the men were calling off the dog.
Grince opened one eye in time to see the great brute back out of the tunnel, and slink reluctantly away. What in the name of all the Gods is going on, the thief wondered. The bastards almost had me—why stop now? Then he heard a shred of conversation as two men walked to the edge of the bank above him:
“... and send some men down into the gully to watch the hole in case he comes out again.”
“Lord Pendral won’t be too pleased that we’ve lost him—not to mention the jewels.”
“I’m not here to do his fetching and carrying—I’m a soldier, not a bloody servant. If Lord Pendral wants his damned jewels he can send a menial in for them—or go in there and fetch them himself. Maybe the ghosts wouldn’t bother him. The thief is finished, so I’ve done my job.”
“How can you be sure?”
Grince heard the first man sigh. “Look, you idiot. He can either starve in there, or come out and face the consequences—I’ll leave some men stationed around the outlet. Or he can follow that drain as far as it goes, which is straight to the Academy and its ghosts. They’re welcome to the little sod, after all the trouble he’s caused us....”
The voices drifted away, out of earshot. The thief couldn’t believe his luck.—He didn’t care about the ghosts—he didn’t believe in them, and was far more afraid of Pendral’s wrath than he was of the so-called shades of the Magefolk.—If the Lord of Nexis sent someone to collect his stolen property, he would find Grince and the jewels long gone. He had escaped after all! Relief made him light-headed. Had it not been for the slippery floor, he would have danced. As it was, he couldn’t keep a huge grin from spreading across his face. I can go home via the sewers, and they’ll never get me, he thought. This may turn out to be the best night’s work I’ve ever done.
Chuckling, Grince shouldered his sack, and set off into the tunnel. Above him on the hilltop, the Academy waited.
Shia, Khanu, and the Mage struggled up the switchback road that led to the Academy’s upper gates. Though Aurian chafed at their slow and careful pace, she knew she could go no faster. The climb, which in former times had been made so easy by the gentle gradient of the zigzag roadway, was awkward going now—especially in the dark. The road’s surface was badly worn and pitted. The cracked, loose paving stones left projecting shards and unexpected holes, and tilted sharply at the pressure of an unwary tread, with an ever-increasing risk, for the Mage at least, of breaking an ankle or trapping a foot.—Aurian didn’t know what she really expected to find in the Academy, which was clearly a desolate ruin now. Surely, though, Eliseth and Miathan must have left some clue as to their whereabouts? I only hope so, the Mage thought.—Right now I’m truly lost—I don’t know what to do next or where to turn.—Desperate for reassurance she touched the Staff of Earth at her belt, feeling comforted, a little, by the warm glow of power that pulsed beneath her hand.—The Harp of Winds was slung on her back as Anvar had always carried it, and it thrummed unhappily, protesting its new ownership. Aurian could feel its magic reaching out longingly in search of Anvar, its true wielder. The Artifact, lacking a conscious intelligence, had no way of knowing that the Mage was gone.