"What message?" Omar demanded. "I never heard nothing about no message."
"You know," Marv replied glumly. "The usuaclass="underline" about the sacrifice to the vampire-god and all. Like every year. Only this time ..."
"Yeah, what, this time?" Omar persisted. "I guess we'll hafta round up some o' the local churls and villeins and ship 'em over, like always. So what?"
"So, Master Wise Guy, if you'd care to refresh yer membry, ya might recall we ain't seen none o' the local clods fer some time now, what wit' the tide of battle, like, surging back and forth acrost their farms. Ain't nobody left in these here parts except us loyal retainers; including the hit squad, about forty souls in all. So who's gonna get to go and meet the vampire-god, except whatever guys happen to be on the gig-list at the moment? Here's three of us, onney four to go to make up the quota. We prolly got until daylight tomorrow."
"Have you went nuts, Marv?" Omar demanded without conviction. "You think a swell boss like Lord Trog would send his faithful boys off to a horrible end, just to save his own neck?" After a moment's thought he added, "Let's get outa here." He turned to O'Leary, "Now's yer chanst, bo," he said, "to get on our good side by working that nifty breakout you was telling about."
Lafayette heard sounds of fumbling in the dark. Then, with a sharp scratch of flint on steel, a spark glowed, and a moment later a candle-flame ignited, shedding a mellow glow on the stone walls. It showed a mildewed gray here in the tower base, rather than the soft pink of the outer structure; in its radiance, Marv and Omar squatted, heads together, a pair of hairy troglodytes eyeing O'Leary with inscrutable expressions on their rough-hewn features.
"Let's sum up," O'Leary proposed briskly. "I'm still in Artesia, although Lord Trog called it Aphasia—I'm not somehow shifted off into another continuum like Melange, or Colby Corners; but I've gotten myself shifted in time, three hundred years into the future, and this pile of rubble is all that's left of Adoranne's beautiful pink palace. I'll worry about 'how' later. And Daphne's here, too, probably hiding up in Nicodaeus' old lab at the top of the Tower, poor kid. But wait a minute: If it really is the palace, then the system of secret passages is still there, inside the walls. So—just where am I now, in relation to the palace? Marv, show me where this dungeon is in relation to the Tower." He smoothed the mud on the rough stone floor to create a sketching surface. "Draw me a map," he urged the barbaric ex-guard.
"Well, Al," Marv began reluctantly, "I ain't much of a one fer drawrin' pitchers, but if this here"—he made an X with a blunt forefinger—"is the Tower, the upper dungeon is over here to the side, like this here ..." He added a rectangle adjacent to the X.
"On which side?" O'Leary demanded. "Which way is north?"
Marv hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "I got a keen sense o' direction, Al, but so what? Inside this hole, the onney direction innersts me is up."
"I mean on the map," O'Leary explained testily. "Now, if we're to the west, that's where the wine cellars used to be. And if the lower dungeon is under the cellars, say, that would put us just about in the unused storeroom where Goroble had his stolen equipment stashed; and if that's so—" O'Leary rose unsteadily on legs which felt as if they had been freshly molded of papier-mâché; he staggered, but righted himself and went across the room to study the crudely mortared blocks of rough-hewn masonry which comprised the partition. He identified the faint arrow he had scratched on the stone so long ago, reached, pressed, and felt the apparently solid masonry yield and swing inward, exposing a pitch-black passage beyond.
"Come on, boys," he said, and without waiting for a response, stepped through.
At once, he was at home, and memories came flooding back:-creeping through dark passages behind Yockabump as the court jester led him for the first time through the system which gave covert access to practically every room in the great pile; later, exploring alone and finding the false king's hidden store of stolen high-technology gear; then, still later, leading Princess Adoranne and Count Alain to the ballroom just in time to cut short Quelius' bold attempt to usurp the throne of troubled Artesia. It was like the old days, Lafayette tried to tell himself—the bad old days when he was, at first, a displaced pauper in flight from the law and an outraged populace, and later, when he was a pampered favorite of the sovereign, in flight from the cops as well as from a gang of cutthroat wayfarers plus the Central Security Forces, all determined to cut him to small bits without trial. Compared with those days, he assured himself, this was a cinch: All he had chasing him now was Lord Trog's hit squad—and he was inside the ruins of the palace, with free access to the Tower, of all places, the one place he was likely to find some key to this mad situation; and surely Daphne was up there, waiting for him to rescue her.
But, he reminded himself sternly, he had promised Daphne to stay away from the lab, and now she was gone, poor trusting girl ... But she had to be in the Tower, unless Trog and his boys were better liars than seemed likely ... So all bets were off: His promise didn't count. And the pivot-stone opening on the narrow passage to the Tower stair had to be right along here ...
He found it and slipped through onto the landing outside which he had first been grabbed by Marv and Omar, which reminded him ...
"This way, fellows," he called heartily. "Stick with me and we'll be out of here in maybe a trice and a half."
"Where are we at?" Marv demanded sullenly from the darkness hiding him.
" 'Where' means 'at what place', Lafayette told the uncouth fellow. "So you don't need to hang that 'at' on the end of your sentence; it's redundant."
"Skip all that jazz, bo," Marv returned. "But whereat are we?"
"Where we are at," O'Leary replied with dignity, "is right back where you two clowns clobbered me in the first place."
"You mean—?" Omar's voice choked up before he could utter the thought.
"I mean," Lafayette confirmed. "It's a lot better than the lower dungeon, right?"
"Excuse us, bo," Omar's voice floated back as the two exited hastily into the night.
"Daphne," O'Leary yelled up the stairwell, but only a sardonic echo returned. He started up into darkness, brushing aside cobwebs, tripping over small objects on the stone steps; doubtless, he thought, items dropped by thieves as they hastily looted the ruin. He paused to yell again: nothing, not even a good echo this time. But she had to be up there, didn't she? he thought desperately. There was one way to find out. He started up, one step at a time. Round and round the spiral stairway climbed. The steps continued to be littered with loose objects. It was strange that the Tower had survived, essentially intact, when all the rest had been reduced to rubble; but that was a good sign, he thought contentedly—that Central still maintained an interest in their only permanent point of contact with Locus Alpha Nine-Three, Plane V-87, Fox 221-b, known to its inhabitants as Artesia.
He was halfway up when he heard the first sounds of pursuit from below. Apparently Lord Trog had offered his loyal hit squad a fate even more dismal than the Dread Tower to any who failed to enter the latter in pursuit of the quarry. He sat on a step and listened. The pursuers seemed to be moving rather slowly. But even so, he'd be trapped at the top and would be able to do nothing but await their arrival.
O'Leary rose and went on. At last he reached the big iron-bound door. A ragged hole gaped where the big combination lock installed by Nicodaeus had formerly served to bar intruders. It was just as welclass="underline" he wasn't sure he could remember the combination. He called once again for Daphne as he pushed the door open wide. For a moment he thought he had elicited a response, if only a faint sound of movement within, but as he stepped eagerly forward he saw that the room was empty. Of course, the old lab equipment of Nicodaeus was long gone: the tables covered with alembics and retorts, the shelves containing eye of newt and best mummy-dust, the crackle-finish panels crowded with dials, indicator lights, and flickering oscilloscope traces. Now it had the appearance of some ancient tomb, deep with dust, festooned with cobwebs, eerie in the moonlight streaming through the double doors which opened on the small balcony from which he had been forced more than once to flee to safety.