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  Elwood didn’t blink. “Right,” he muttered to himself, “don’t say I didn’t ask.”

  No one saw it coming. No one saw the great axe until it cleaved the table neatly in half, sending foul ale and fouler foods showering through the air.

  Orcs spilled onto the floor. One tried to catch himself, flailed his arms about, and tumbled off the tier into a horde of halflings down below. The dwarf was momentarily forgotten, as angry halflings scrambled up the gallery, swinging clubs, chairs, and mugs at the startled orcs.

  Elwood cut through the crowd, spotted Snails and the elf, walked up, and tapped his friend on the back.

  “What?” Snails blinked in surprise. “What are you doing down here?”

  Elwood didn’t answer. He grabbed Snails by the belt and hauled him toward the rear of the inn. Norda followed quickly on their heels.

  An orc flew through the air and landed senseless at her feet. Norda stepped nimbly out of the way and ran into a large, angry human with a tattooed face. The man snarled at her and shoved her roughly aside.

  “Hey! Stop that!” Snails shouted, pulling away from the dwarf. “I’m deeply in love with this person, and I won’t stand for that!”

  Elwood made a face. “With an elf? They think humans are a joke.”

  “This one doesn’t. This one doesn’t care if we’re different. She cares about me.”

  “Sure she does.” Elwood took a sharp turn to the right. He’d spotted Damodar’s brutes bulling their way through the crowd.

  The whole inn was in a uproar now, everyone fighting or running for the doors.

  Cleaving his axe through the air, the dwarf carved a wicked pathway to the back door. An orc came at Snails, swinging a notched sword. Snails ducked under the blow and kicked the orc squarely in the gut. The brute gagged, clutched at his belly, and retched on the floor.

  One of Damodar’s henchmen slashed at Snails, who was busy fighting another orc at the moment, but Elwood stepped in and struck both with the flat of his axe, sending them smashing through a wall.

  Jerking the door open, he held it while Snails squeezed through, then slammed it shut with the heel of his boot.

  Half a second later, three barbed arrows thunked into the panel, followed by several more.

  Snails followed Elwood, stumbling through the foul-smelling alley in the dark. It irritated Snails that the dwarf could run so fast. He thought of himself as a fairly good sprinter. As a full-time thief, he had run a great deal in his life.

  Elwood wound through one twisting passage then the next, finally barreling through the city gates and coming to a halt in a thick growth of reeds near the murky waterway. Trees hid the stars and cast deep shadows across the water.

  Snails pulled up beside him out of breath. “I hope you’re happy now,” he said. “I wait all my life for the perfect love, then you and your orcs come along and foul it up!”

  “Next time I won’t, you damned fool. Did you happen to see who was after you back there? Damodar it was, and you moonin’ over an elf.”

  “Damodar? Truly?”

  “Truly indeed. Only somethin’ horrible has happened to his head. It’s all twisty-like, and there’s awful things a-hanging out.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Things I never saw the like of, friend, and I’ve seen a lot.”

  Snails felt the side of his belt. His sword and dagger were still intact. “I’m grateful for your help, Elwood, but I’ve got to go back. I expect things have settled down some at the Rusty Sword, and I have to see that Norda’s all right.”

  “Don’t be a bigger fool than you are, Snails.” Elwood shook his head, and offered Snails the kindliest look he had. “I know you won’t believe it, but I’m sure she’s just fine. I don’t care for their ways, but an elf can take care of herself.”

  “That’s easy to say, us standing safe out here ourselves. Talk all you want, friend, I’m going back.”

  “I could stop you, I guess, but I won’t. It’s your hide, and if y—Hey, now! Stop it! Quit doin’ that!”

  Snails backed off, reaching for the weapon at his side. The scroll stuffed in Elwood’s belt began to jerk and twist about. Elwood cursed, then pulled the paper loose and tossed it on the ground.

  Twin wisps of steam hissed up from the scroll. The steam disappeared, and Ridley and Marina stumbled out, dizzy as drunken cats.

  “I thought we’d lost you two for sure,” Snails said, brushing dust off his friend’s coat. “Wait’U we tell you what happened back there. I met this very nice elf, a woman the Fates simply dropped into my lap. I’ve got to go and get her now.”

  “What we’ve got to do is move, and move fast!” Elwood broke in. “It’s Damodar, and he’s after us.”

  Ridley rolled his eyes. “We’ve got a lot more trouble than that.” He blinked, getting his bearings, aware of exactly where they were now. He quickly explained their encounter with the wraith and showed the others the crude map that led to the Dragons Eye.

  When Snails saw where they were going, he groaned and slapped a hand against his brow.

  “Andus City? Are you out of your mind? That’s Xilus’ stomping ground. Nobody goes there.”

  Ridley looked hurt. “Hey! I’m a thief, too. He’ll be glad to see us. He’ll likely give us that Dragon’s Eye, if he knows where it is.”

  “It’s a solid ruby,” Marina said, “the size of your hand, or so the wraith said.”

  “Oh, fine,” Snails said, “he’s got a map from a wraith. Our troubles are over now.”

  Ridley turned to the dwarf. “What about you, friend? Do you care to come along? You’d be right welcome, you know.”

  “I don’t see as I’ve got any choice,” the dwarf muttered. “The Empress wants me for murder, and Damodar wants my head. Say, did I tell you about his head? Like nothin’ you ever saw or hope to see again.”

  “Tell me later. As you say, we’ve got to get out of here.”

  Snails hesitated a moment, after the others were gone. He looked back into the darkness, thinking of Norda, a picture of her elven beauty so clear in his head that he could almost feel her presence there.

  I can’t go back, Snails thought. I know that. You’ve got to stick to your first friend and look for your true love after that. Lousy rules, but you’ve got to stand for something in your life, you truly do.

  After a moment, he sighed and followed the others, unaware of just how close that presence had really been.

  CHAPTER

  16

  Antius was a city even older that Sumdall itself, a city built atop a city and a myriad of cities under that, going back to even before the great war. Antius contained all the faults, all the smells, all the dangers of Sumdall, and few of its benefits. It was a cramped city with a crumbling fortress wall perched atop a steep hill. The place had nowhere to go but up. A stranger approaching this kingdom of thieves was awed by the towers and keeps that seemed to push one another aside, stretching high into the low clouds, struggling like thirsty plants, fighting for a single drop of water, a single breath of air.

  No one in Antius, it seemed, had ever had a bath. Everyone, man, woman, and child alike, was so filthy and covered with ragged clothes that there was often no way to tell what sex they might be.

  Ridley thought the citizens of Antius were, if possible, an even louder, coarser, more vulgar breed than the worst ruffian of Old-town Sumdall.

  In the humid marketplace, everything imaginable was for sale—vipers, vegetables, swords, dirks, flagons, food, and pots. Melons, birds, monkeys, and frightened slave girls were all crammed into rickety stalls topped by gaudy awnings.

  Marina was horrified. She had scarcely dreamed there were people who lived like this. If there weren’t bugs of every sort crawling beneath her clothes, there might as well have been, for she truly imagined they were there.

  Elwood looked longingly at a booth selling wines and ales where a big-bellied man was squirting wine down his throat from a bloated leather bladder. Much o
f the liquid entirely missed his mouth.

  “Forget it,” Marina said. “We don’t have time for that.”

  “I’m a dwarf,” Elwood said. “Dwarves have a great thirst at least several times a day.”

  “Some dwarves do. You don’t.”

  “Hmph. Humans. I don’t see why the gods had to make ’em at all.”

  A few steps ahead, Ridley poked Snails in the ribs, and Snails stopped to look. A brute with three bloodshot eyes, his great body thick with purple skin, very deftly snatched a heavy purse from a merchant passing by.

  “Huh-unh, I don’t think so,” Snails said. “Not him.”

  “Yeah, him,” Ridley said. “We don’t have time to look for handsome thieves.”

  Before Snails could stop him, Ridley stepped up and grinned at the ragged horror, choking on his ghastly smell.

  “Fraternal greetings, Brother,” Ridley said, using the thieves’ hand signals as well. “I’m Ridley Freeborn, fellow practitioner of the larcenous arts.”

  Three-Eyes blinked and spat on Ridley’s boot.

  “Yes, well, at any rate, I’m looking for your esteemed Guild-master Xilus. We thought perhaps you might know him?”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  The enormous purple man—or whatever it might be—bent down and breathed on Ridley.

  “I said no. The only thing I know is you oughta take your business out of town before you end up with the words ‘Outsiders Not Appreciated’ branded where your nose used to be. Got it?”

  “No, but thank you for your time. I appreciate that.”

  The giant stomped away, leaving behind an odor of sewage, muck, pollution, slime, and stomach disorders of every kind. Ridley held his breath as long as he could, but it didn’t seem to help.

  “Nice going,” Marina said. “That worked out rather well.”

  “You can’t get along with everyone. That fellow doesn’t have a lot of social grace. I expect he comes from a bad home.”

  Marina made a face. “I imagine he comes from a hole in the ground.”

  “I hope he didn’t hear that. He’s got feelings like everyone else.”

  Marina blew out a breath. “You are hopeless, Ridley.”

  Ridley turned to look at a shop full of cages. There was every sort of creature there—everything that made a hoot or a hiss, a jabber or a squeal. The place reminded him of the room full of crawlies and slitheries in the mage’s back room.

  “There, look at that,” Snails said, nodding toward a shabby looking structure made of rotting timber and mud. “That three-eyed what’s-it just went up those outside stairs.”

  “Good work,” said Ridley. “That’s him. Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” Marina said.

  “Wherever he’s going. You can bet he’s on his way to report us to Xilus right now.”

  “He’s going to get a big club, is what he is,” Elwood said.

  Marina moaned. “He doesn’t need a big club.”

  Ridley looked her in the eye. “You want to get that big ruby or not? We can turn around right now.”

  “All right, let’s go. I never could say no to a charmer like you.”

  “Keep it up,” Ridley said. “You’re doing fine so far.”

  * * *

  Ridley sniffed the dusty air. The odors inside the ancient structure were worse than the miasma outside. The stairway led to an empty room, and the empty room led to a hall. The hall led nowhere at all.

  “There’s got to be a way in somewhere,” Ridley told Snails softly. “A monster like that can’t vanish in the air.”

  “Even if you want him to,” Snails replied.

  They had studied all the walls twice and then twice again. If there was any way in or out of the place, no one could say where.

  “All right,” Ridley concluded, “if it’s not in here, it’s back in that room somewhere.”

  “I don’t think so,” Marina said.

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I don’t. Stand back a minute, will you?”

  Ridley gave her a bow and a wicked smile. “Please, be my guest.”

  Marina closed her eyes, turned around twice, shivered, gasped, and put her hands across her mouth, then took them down again. Without even opening her eyes, she walked straight toward the dwarf. Elwood got out of her way, and Marina touched the stone wall, ran her hands up, then down, then far to the left.

  A tiny green light flickered in the gem on her wrist. The wall gave a rumble, a ragged line appeared among the stones, then swung back to reveal a wooden door.

  “Hey, now how’d you do that?” Ridley gasped.

  “I’m a mage, Ridley, as you’ll likely recall. Only a student, but we learn to do things like that the first year.”

  “Did you ever think about the burglary trade?”

  “No, of course not.” Marina sniffed the air. “Mages use their powers only for good.” Everyone’s eyebrows raised. “All right, most of them do.”

  “Elwood,” Ridley said, “I’d be grateful if you’d stay here and keep an eye on our back. You never can tell in a place like this.”

  “Good enough, friend.” Elwood licked this thumb and ran it across the blade of his axe. “I can handle anything that comes from the front or the rear, sideways or upside down.”

  Ridley suddenly felt extremely tired, weary of dragons, rubies, wraiths, and mysterious rods.

  “It was your idea to break into the magic school,” Snails said, guessing his friend’s thoughts.

  “Don’t remind me,” Ridley said. “You do, I’m likely to brain you with Elwood’s axe.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  The vast, underground chambers of the Thieves’ Guild were a maze of many rooms. They were designed to delay, confuse, and trap unwelcome intruders. A stranger might wander about for days and go virtually nowhere at all.

  Ridley grudgingly had to admit that without Marina’s magic skills at discovering secret doors and the right paths to take, they could have wandered about forever. Both Ridley and Snails marveled as they passed through one torch-lit room after another, crowded to the ceiling with stolen goods of every sort. Here was a sample of everything a stealer could possibly steal. And some, Ridley saw, that no one but a master of the art could have managed to spirit away.

  “I feel awful,” Snails confided. “It doesn’t make apples and barber shears look like much, does it?”

  “And chairs,” Ridley added. “Don’t forget ordinary chairs.”

  “You can shame me no further, Rid. I can see my failures all around me. I might as well have gotten a—a job somewhere, like a clerk or a worker on the docks.” Snails stopped and looked at Ridley as if his heart had skipped a beat. “What am I saying? I could never do something as hideous as that!”

  “Never fear, friend. You never will. You’ve given yourself a fright, is all. You’ll be yourself again soon.”

  Marina, walking just behind them, shook her head and sighed. “I have never heard quite so disgusting a conversation in my life.”

  “Really?” Snails looked bewildered. “Oh, I have. Any number of times. You really should get out more, you know.”

  They could hear the babble long before they reached the vast chamber, a noise so deafening, so raucous, so rife with chaos and strife, the very stones of the corridor trembled with alarm.

  The sight that met their eyes left them stunned. None of them had ever seen so many thieves before. All Ridley could think of was an ant hill someone had stirred with a stick. Brigands, hooligans, outlaws, and felons by the score. Villains, smugglers, robbers and muggers, crooks of every sort and every kind. Crooks buying, crooks selling, crooks stealing from other crooks as well. Crooks so caught up in the game, they were even stealing from themselves.

  “Look at that!” Snails said. “This is thief heaven, Rid. There’s nothing like it anywhere.”

  “Over there.” Ridley pointed. “That’s the great Toland himself. He stole a glass eye right out of a princ
e’s head, and the fellow was wide awake as well.”

  “The Toland?” exclaimed Snails. “The Toland who kidnapped the Duke of—?”

  Marina frowned. “Who’d want to steal a glass eye?”

  “There’s a market for those things,” Snails told her. “Praise the gods, why, everyone’s here.”

  “Good. Then one of these characters can help us find Xilus. I’d just as soon get that ruby and haul out of here.”

  “That’s what I told you to do: Get out of here. But you wouldn’t listen, would you, two-eyes?”

  Ridley started as the purple three-eyed creature suddenly appeared at his side.

  “Say now, great to see you again,” Ridley said. “I thought we’d lost you back there. Just the fellow I was looking for. I’d like to ask you again, do you know where—Ulllp!”

  The three-eyed creature lifted Ridley by the collar, jerked him off the ground, and breathed the essence of sewage in in his face.

  “You goin’ to see Xilus right now, little fool. An’ I can tell you for sure, you’ll wish he hadn’t seen you.”

  With that, the odorous giant dropped Ridley to the floor, turned to several large brutes, and said, “Take ’em away!”

  “See,” Ridley said, “I told you we’d make a connection. You’ve just got to know the right people to see.”

  * * *

  Xilus, Guildmaster of Thieves, was a wiry, bleary-eyed fellow with a cock-eyed jaw. He was festooned with rings—rings on his fingers, in his ears and in his nose, rings on his dirty bare toes, rings everywhere a ring might me, and possibly places no one had thought about before.

  He lay in trashy splendor on the pelt of some very large creature—a beast, Ridley was sure, that had died of some terrible skin disease. Behind him was a blinding array of gaudy loot from every corner of the Empire and beyond.

  “Well,” Ridley said, poking out his hand, “you must be Guildmaster Xilus. It’s an honor and a privilege, sir. I’m Ridley Freeborn, practitioner of the larcenous crafts, member in good standing of the Sumdall Guild. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”