My opponent seized his opportunity and twisted from my grip. He was as hard to hold onto as a slippery eel, that fellow! In a swirl of his black cape he melted into the shadows of the chamber and had all but vanished as swiftly and mysteriously as he had entered it.
And this, no doubt, he would have done, had it not been for Ergon. We all slept in the same room, you see, but it was a large and capacious chamber with silk-draped couches scattered about, which afforded us considerable privacy. My Princess slept in a couch we had drawn into a niche of the wall, and, for her greater privacy, Ergon and I had rigged up a curtain which veiled the alcove. But Ergon sprawled on a couch across the room from me, snoring lustily.
The muffled sounds of the struggle had roused the faithful fellow. And, even as my slippery adversary wriggled free of my grasp and slunk into the deeper gloom, the burly Perushtarian was upon him with a tigerish lunge. He dealt the cloaked figure a stunning buffet and dragged him out into the moonlight where I stood, clutching my middle, and gasping for breath.
Tossing the limp figure to the floor in a swirl of black, ragged cloak, Ergon growled, “I believe this is yours, Jandar?”
“Indeed it is,” I panted. “Ergon, strike a light to yonder candelabrum, and let us see what we have caught.”
The hunched little figure huddled at our feet whined and sniveled as Ergon strode to an ivory-inlaid taboret and touched a flame to the many-branched candlestick. In the milky light we perceived a scrawny, bent little man wrapped in the greasy folds of a ragged, patched cloak of black fabric.
“Cry you mercy, lords!” the little man snuffled. “If it be I have come into the wrong chamber by mistake, why―why―”
Ergon stripped the black cloak away and we peered down in amusement and curiosity at the whimpering, miserable creature that groveled before us. He was thin and scrawny and looked half-starved, with bony shanks and a huge beak of a nose, comical in a seamed and wizened face. It was impossible to guess his age, but his place in society was unmistakable.
Ergon grunted sourly, pointing to a brand burnt into the brow of the whimpering little man. “A thief,” he growled. The little fellow peered up at us fearfully, his one good eye shrewd and sharp and bright as a ferret’s, the other concealed by a black eye patch that lent him a rakish appearance. Lank, greasy locks fell in a tangle over a high bony brow. His thin-lipped mouth worked in stammering terror, a pointed chin adorned with a stringy tuft of ill-kempt beard. His hollow cheeks were stubbled, and the raw stench of cheap wine, raw onions, and sour garlic hovered about him, mingling with the odors of his unwashed body, and of the filthy, dilapidated rags that barely covered it.
“Not so―not so, lords, on my honor!” the one-eyed little rogue squeaked fearfully. “I am Glypto, an unemployed chanthan, at your honor’s service!”
Ergon chuckled and cocked an amused eyebrow at this. The brand on the scrawny little rogue’s brow was the Thanatorian character for chark, or “thief.” But a chanthan is quite another thing, indeed. The term denotes a certain class of landless but wellborn gentlemen of the chanar, the warrior-caste. The term is often stretched to lend a degree of spurious dignity to the more furtive classes of Callistan society, however.
No wonder it roused a chuckle from glum, glowering Ergon. Our greasy, whimpering little captive referred to himself as a “gentleman adventurer,” which was an overly polite euphemism for any sort of slinking rogue.
The scuffle had aroused Darloona. Clutching the coverlet of her couch about her, she asked what was toward. Spying her, our captive fell on his scrawny knees and lifted imploring―and none too clean―hands to her.
“Mercy―mercy for poor, starved Glypto, noble lady! Glypto meant no harm to the noble lords! Glypto mistook his way in the black of night, he―”
“Jandar, what in the world is this?” Darloona queried, her surprise giving way to amusement. I shrugged, laughing.
“An unexpected ally, my Princess! A friend who has come to extricate us from our predicament…”
Ergon frowned, wrinkling his bald scarlet pate. Nudging the groveling little rogue with a toe, he growled. “‘Tis but a thieving rascal, Jandar! Call you this whining horeb `friend’?”
“I do indeed, Ergon,” I smiled. “I will hail any man as my friend, who shows me a way to get out of this gilded cage in which we are locked.”
Darloona looked at me puzzledly. “But how can this little man help us?” she murmured.
“My darling,” I grinned, “he got in here somehow―and unobserved, since thieves are seldom invited to ply their trade in palaces. And however he got in―surely we can get out by the same route.”
Ergon’s brow cleared at my words and his surly gaze sparkled with zest at the thought of freedom. “Of course! Devil take me for a witless fool! Here, you―whatever your name is―we’re not going to kill you or turn you over to the guards―so cease your everlasting whimpering before you summon them hither with your uproar.”
Glypto’s snuffling was cut short, as he suddenly realized he was in no danger from us. His shrewd little eye peered up from where he crouched, sharp yet furtive, as if hardly daring to believe his good fortune.
“Glypto the chanthan, my masters!” he chirped brightly.
“Nay, ‘tis Glypto the Thief, I’ll wager,” smiled Darloona.
He ducked in an obsequious little bow.
“And you will have it so, gracious lady! Glypto the Thief―the son of Glypto the Thief―the grandson of Glypto the Thief―at your service, my masters!”
It was hard to keep a straight face when talking to the little fellow; everything about him was innately comical, from his ferretlike, twinkling one eye to his enormous beak of a nose which dominated his famished, wizened face as if in its growth, the prominent proboscis had drained his other features of their vitality in order to sustain itself. And his whining little voice, which either croaked like a frog or chirped like a sparrow, itself made you chuckle. For he spoke his Thanatorian with a drawl on the vowels and a rasp of the consonants that sounded for all the world like the Callistan equivalent of Cockney.
“See here, Glypto,” I said severely, “you are in no danger of harm from us, so long as you do our bidding. We are held captive here, and if you assist us in making our escape, a rich reward will be yours… ”
He crawled to his feet, nimbly retrieving the little hooked knife I had wrested from him, which he restored to its accustomed place within the bundle of sour rags that clothed his scrawny form. Even standing, the hunched, sidling little man scarcely came up to Ergon’s collarbone.
“At your service, noble lords! How can Glypto the chanthan be of service?” he chirped inquisitively.
“We want to know how you got in here, guttersnipe,” Ergon grunted. In answer, Glypto rolled his one good eye eloquently skyward. We followed his gaze. Ergon growled a curse and I groaned.
For a black opening yawned in the ceiling!
Earlier, Ergon and I had searched every inch of the apartment, thumping every foot of the walls, hoping to find a secret panel or a concealed passage of some sort, as the palaces of Thanator are often honeycombed with such. We had even rolled back the carpets and tested the floors.
But it had simply never occurred to us to try the ceiling!
The little rogue grinned and strutted, preening himself in our eyes.
“An hereditary secret, my noble lords and masters!” he crowed. “Handed down over the generations from father to son! Aye, none less than the closely guarded secret of the House of Glypto!”
“And the meal-ticket of a family of thieving rascals, I doubt me not,” grunted Ergon, making as if to cuff the swaggering little fellow with a clout from the back of his hand.