For the first time, O'Leary took a good look around at the scrub woods that seemed to have sprung up where the south gardens ought to have been. His eyes went to the ruined tower of chipped pink stone looming above the treetops, the only structure in sight. Broken cut-stone blocks and drifted rubble were scattered all about, glowing pale pink in the moonlight. It was the east tower, where Nicodaeus' old laboratory occupied the top story—all that was left of the palace, Lafayette realized with a sinking feeling. He stooped and picked up an egg-sized fragment of pink stone, polished flat on one side, and felt a pang of regret as he realized that it had once been a part of the radiant facade of the palace; he dropped it into his pocket, silently vowing revenge on the vandals.
"I'm wasting time," he told himself sternly. "The poor kid is probably alone, scared—or worse yet, not alone and scared."
"Daphne!" he said aloud, and took a step past Trog and toward the ruin.
"No, you don't, Al," the seated man barked. "Hey, Marv, Omar! Where in Tophet are them bums which they're pulling the duty tonight?"
"In the lower dungeon, Your Lordship," O'Leary supplied.
"So you really are Allegorus, eh?" Trog grumbled. "Wit' duh second sight and all—"
"One sight was enough," O'Leary countered. "What happened to the palace?" He stooped and picked up another crumbling chip of pink quartz, seeing at once that it was severely weathered. Whatever had happened, it appeared, had happened a long time ago. That being the case, he must be suffering from amnesia, and Daphne couldn't have been caught in the collapse of the great building.
"Still," he said aloud, "that's where she was last seen —or almost seen: it was pretty hazy. So that's where I've got to start."
"Nix, Bub," Trog came to his feet, an unwashed gnome less than five feet tall, wrapped in foul-smelling half-cured hides; but he had the arms of a weight lifter and oversize, scarred-knuckle fists, which he thrust under O'Leary's nose. "One more step and I'll summon the boys, which dey'll trow yuz inna lion pit."
"Nope, lower dungeon, remember?" Lafayette said, and delivered a sharp kick to the boss's left kneecap. "Anyway, I don't have time to be bum-rapped right now," he added as he pushed past Lord Trog, now hopping on one leg and holding the other knee in both hands. O'Leary ran across the expanse of rubble-littered weeds past the last of the trees. He had reached the cracked and tilted slabs of the former terrace when a boulder struck him on the side of the head and sent him spinning down into a coal-black fog.
He was back in the gray room, back in the same dumb dream, he saw, except that the angry fellow had calmed down and was sitting across the table from him, speaking reasonably—or almost so:
"... cut you in for a full share; I'm not greedy. Don't be a spoilsport." A serving-wench came up and put a full tankard before the fellow; as she turned away O'Leary realized it was Daphne, a drab cloth tied around her once-lustrous dark hair in place of the diamond-studded coronet. He jumped up, knocking over the table on the man in gray, who yelled and leaped clear. His limbs strangely heavy, Lafayette tried to clamber over the fallen table, but it seemed to grow and elaborate under him. Daphne was gone.
It seemed to Lafayette that he had been climbing for a very long time, an exhausting ascent of a vertical wall, in total darkness. He paused to catch his breath, wincing at the ache in his head, and tried again to remember just where it was he was going—and whence he had come. But the problem was too complex; with a groan, he gave it up and reached up for a new handhold on the cold, wet wall against which he clung like an exhausted fly. He dug in his fingertips for a better purchase; they merely slipped painfully; then his other hand, groping upward, encountered something different from the unyielding texture of the stone wall. Cloth, it felt like, and under it, tough stringy flesh, which recoiled at his touch.
"Come on, pal, gimme a break, OK?" an aggrieved voice which O'Leary had heard before broke the stillness. "How's about you just relax now, and leave me do the same."
"Marv," O'Leary said aloud and, remembering his precarious position clinging to the wall, made a wild grab and secured a firm grip on a spongy mass of whiskers.
"Cripes!" Marv's voice yelled. "Come on, lay off the rough stuff, which me and Omar handled you wit' kid gloves all the way, right?"
"Pray accept my apologies, gentlemen," Lafayette said. "I have no intention of savaging you. Actually, I came along simply to assist you in escaping the unjust punishment visited on you by your ungrateful master."
"Yeah, after all we done for him," Omar agreed. "Right, Marv? The kid's got something there. We din't do nothing but follow orders, and—by the way, kid, how do you figure on springing us outa here?"
During the exchange, Lafayette had gradually become aware that, rather than crawling up a rough, damp stone wall, he had been creeping across a rough, damp stone floor. He relaxed gratefully and worked on getting his pulse and respiration back down into a range more characteristic of a patient with a positive prognosis.
"There's the way we come in," Marv suggested without enthusiasm, "only I for one can't jump no forty feet straight up and hover long enough to undo a tricky latch onna trap door before I start back down."
"Before we go," Lafayette said, "suppose you gentlemen fill me in on some details, such as what happened to the palace and all the people in it, especially Daphne? Are you sure you didn't grab her just before you waylaid me? And who is this Trog fellow, anyway?"
"Geeze, kid, we musta conked ya a little hard at that; sounds like you don't know nothing."
"Precisely," O'Leary agreed. "Start with Daphne. Did she escape up the stairs, or what?"
"If she done," Omar said gloomily, "it's curtains for sure for the poor broad, which you said she was a looker, right, Al?"
"Why do you fellows keep calling me 'Al'?" O'Leary demanded.
"Meaning no disrespect, Yer Honor," Omar said hastily.
"Just meant to be friendly-like," Marv added reassuringly. " 'Allegorus' is too long fer a name, anyways. No offense," he added.
"Suppose I assure you, once and for all," O'Leary said, "and for the last time: I'm not this Allegorus person."
"Ya must be, Al," Marv said persuasively. "Otherwise how could you of aced old Trog inta letting ya in here to help us out?"
"Oh, I know a few tricks, I'll admit," Lafayette acknowledged. "Who is Trog, and where'd he come from? Does he have anything to do with the palace being in ruins?"
"Slow down, Al," Omar suggested. "You're getting ahead of us. Trog is just Trog, which Frodolkin hisself put him onna job guarding the Tower, they say."
"Which brings us to the question of who is Frodolkin?" Lafayette persisted.
"He's a shot which he's so big, nobody don't ever get to see him. He stays out at his fort, a few leagues west o' here, wit' a big army of, like, henchmen and cronies and guys like that," Marv contributed.
"What happened to the palace?" O'Leary demanded. "Was it destroyed by this Frodolkin?"
"Naw, nothin' like that," Omar replied. "I mean, according to tribal legend and all, this here bunch o' busted rock useta be some kind o' palace, like, maybe three hunnert years ago; then it fell into roon, like they say, all but the Dread Tower, and you got that sealed off pretty good, Al. Now you tell me one: What's so hot about that crummy Tower, ya wanna stay in it alia time, huh?"
"Yeah," Marv echoed. "What ya got in there, anyways?"
"Nothing much," Lafayette conceded. "It's just that apparently Daphne's in there. Three hundred years, did you say? That's ridiculous! It was perfectly all right less than an hour ago."
"Now," Marv said, "let's get back to how you're going to spring Omar and I. And we better get moving, which I got a idear His Lordship has got something on his mind, like that message he got from Frodolkin."