“Aye, Cap’n-how’s the gout?” shouted a one-eyed scarecrow of a man in the first cell. “Yer lookin’ fit, aye you are.”
“And the lovely missus?” croaked another fellow, lurching upward from a filthy straw pallet. He came to the bars of his cell and extended an imploring hand. “You give her that bauble o’ mine, I trust? I tol’ ya, give it to the missus!”
“Sorry, Barthon,” answered Marckus, and Selinda was surprised that he did seem genuinely regretful. “That would be against regulations. Recovered booty is to be returned to the rightful owner or turned over to the garrison’s purser for recording.”
“Ah, too bad.” Barthon slumped in his cell, the picture of dejection. “It woulda looked nice an’ sparkly on her wrist, I tell you,” he said, shaking his head slowly.
The men in the other cells were not as talkative, watching the procession with a measure of apprehension or, here and there, undisguised hatred in their eyes. True to Marckus’ prediction, none of them made any sound or gesture to harass them. At the end of the long, dark row of cells, the knight captain held his torch high. This batch of cells was guarded by a pair of men-at-arms. They were long armed, low-browed ruffians, so far as Selinda could tell-they looked nothing like any of the Knights of Solamnia she had known all her life. They gave a martial salute as Marckus approached. At his command, one of them opened the door while the other stood back, his sword at the ready.
“These here are a bit of a rougher crowd, my lady,” the captain explained. “Rapists and murderers, mostly. More likely to feel a rope around their worthless necks than ever to breathe the free air again. I urge you to reconsider your sight-seeing.”
“Nonsense,” Selinda replied. “I am not afraid. Lead on, good captain.”
The ranks of knights pressed annoyingly close to either side of Selina, until she elbowed one in the ribs-it hurt her elbow more than it did his leather-shielded belly-and he backed off enough that she could see smaller, dingier cages with walls of dark, wet stone.
One scowling, black-bearded fellow lurched to his feet and lunged at the door, reaching a paw of a hand through the bars, trying to strike one of the knights. The warrior was ready, rapping the prisoner’s fingers with the hilt of his sword, and with a yelp the wretch pulled his fist back and shrank away. On the other side a weasel-faced fellow mumbled and cried, clutching his arms around his frail chest, rocking back and forth.
Selinda was relieved when they reached the end of this passage. The last few cells were empty, and she pressed forward with the guards, waiting as Marckus took out a large key and unlocked a portal, which, unlike the others, was made of solid iron. “Now, watch your step, my lady,” said the knight captain. “We’ll be going down some stairs that get kind of slippery, and down at the bottom there’ll be mud and slime and nasty stuff underfoot.”
“Thank you for the suggestion that I wear my boots,” the princess replied. She felt a shiver of excitement as they started down the dingy stairway. Sir Marckus held his torch before him, revealing slimy, uneven slabs of limestone descending down a narrow, stone-walled shaft. Water thick with ooze trickled from step to step, gurgling toward the dark, unseen bottom.
Smoke from the torch rose along the low ceiling, stinging Selinda’s eyes. She coughed and ducked her head. For the first time she wondered about the wisdom of her request, but she would not humiliate herself by changing her mind, even as Sir Marckus stopped near the bottom of the stairs and turned to regard her.
“You sure you want to go on?” he asked.
She nodded resolutely. Her foot splashed down in a puddle, and she reached out a hand to brace herself on the slippery surface. The stone of the wall was slick, mossy, and cold. Grimacing, the Princess of Palanthas continued into the dungeon.
Now there were solid doors to each side, iron doors with massive locks and narrow slots that presumably allowed the passage of food and drink. Something moved at one of those hatches, and she clasped a hand to her mouth at the sight of taloned fingers, long and flexible and tipped with curving, sharp claws, reaching out. A knight hacked down with his short sword, slicing off one of the digits before the hand disappeared. Selinda heard a deep-chested growl that made her think of a very large dog, and something banged hard into the door. The iron slab rattled in its frame, the thumping echo suddenly amplified by a piercing shriek.
“He’ll remember us, that one,” said the knight with the bloody sword. Despite his brash words, his tone was uneasy, and he cast a wary glance at the door as the procession came to a halt.
Selinda was about to remind the captain that she wanted to see a goblin when he pulled out a large key and handed it to one of his men. The fellow unlocked the metal door, pulling it back with a creak of rusty hinges to reveal a barrier of close-set iron bars.
“There’s the goblin. Look all you want,” said Sir Marckus. “Don’t get close.”
The princess stepped forward, as the captain raised his torch. Her first reaction was: What’s all the fuss about?
The goblin looked wretched, pathetic, grotesque… but utterly harmless. It stared up at her with vacant eyes, dull even in the flaring torchlight as it squatted close to the bars. Its lower jaw hung slack, exposing the curl of a fleshy tongue. Its nostrils were wide-set, flaring outward and raised nearly flat against the low-browed skull. The goblin kept its arms wrapped around its skinny knees, clutching its bleeding hand. Glaring at her suddenly, it raised the wounded hand to suck on the stub of its severed finger.
She noticed a flare of green light in its hand, like a dull phosphorescence, and asked about the source of it.
“Ah, they call them their godstones,” one knight explained. “They worship Hiddukel, lots of these ugly ones do. That green chip can’t do no harm, but they fight like banshees if you tries to take it away. Easiest just to let him have it.”
“Does it always glow like that?” she asked.
“Glow? I don’t see no glow. Do you, Hank?”
“No,” replied another knight. “The dark plays some tricks, though.”
The goblin stared at Selinda as it sucked on its finger, the stone close to its black lips. In a momentary gesture-she wondered if she imagined it-she thought she saw the goblin kiss the glowing green stone. She was sure that the stone was brighter than normal, illuminated by some internal source.
Then she saw the same light, in the goblin’s eyes, and it penetrated her flesh, leaving her shivering. In that look was the Truth, and Selinda gasped.
She saw herself sailing north in her galleon, departing from Caergoth on a course for home. A storm, an unnatural brew of cosmic violence, came roaring in from the west, overwhelming the ships, smashing the sturdy hulls… drowning them all.
It was the Truth, somehow she knew.
If she sailed from here, she would die.
CHAPTER NINE
Dawn found the dwarf and the warrior sitting on the low stone wall surrounding a fountain at the intersection of four narrow, twisting streets in the Gnome Ghetto. Apparently water had once flowed from the mouth of the chubby-cheeked cherub, immortalized in bronze, who balanced on one toe in the middle of the shallow bowl. The fountain and the bowl were dry now. In fact, when Dram peered over the edge, he discovered a pair of gully dwarves curled up on the inside of the fountain, snoring loudly.
He raised his foot to thump them awake and shoo them off, then slumped onto the wall with a sigh without delivering a kick. “I guess if I don’t bother them they won’t bother me,” the dwarf said, rubbing a gnarled hand over the back of his neck. “I just need to sit a spell and catch my breath.”