No, what they needed was someone who was anxious to strike at both Jack and Illyth.

"Lord Tiger and Lady Mantis," Jack said. "I am sure they were behind this. Who else would have reason to strike at both of us together, or to strike at you alone? Somehow they must have determined our identities outside the Game, and they mean to silence you and discredit me."

"Or to silence you by framing you for rape, murder, or worse," Illyth added. "It makes sense. Oh, Jack, what should we do? We have to find out who they are so that we can involve the authorities before they try again!"

Jack wasn't quite so certain that involving the authorities would be a wise move on his part, although he couldn't fault Illyth for thinking so. Best to move softly and avoid coming forward unless he absolutely had to.

"I know that you were looking forward to tonight's Game, Illyth, but do you think it would be wise to attend? If we fail to appear tonight, Tiger and Mantis might guess that their ploy has succeeded, and we might finally have them at a disadvantage. Perhaps they'll make a mistake."

Illyth looked down at her dress. "Solving the riddle of the Seven Faceless Lords doesn't seem as intriguing as it did an hour ago," she said. "I don't share your certainty that Tiger and Mantis are responsible, but I agree that attending the Game isn't a good idea at the moment. That person escaped, and who knows where he's going to strike next?"

"I intend to confront him at my earliest convenience and settle this issue," Jack replied. "The Green Lord's banquet is in four days, correct? By then I will have certainly apprehended the miscreant who borrowed my appearance, thus ending the threat." He offered Illyth his cloak and draped it over her shoulders, then helped her to his coach. "I'll stay with you awhile and keep watch, in case he returns, and we'll pass the time by comparing clues, as we'd planned."

"That's right," Illyth said, narrowing her eyes. "Jack, you were late by nearly an hour!"

"Punctuality is a virtue I never claimed to possess in abundance, dear Illyth," Jack said. He climbed into the coach behind her and signaled to the driver. "Back to Woodenhall, good man. We will be staying in this evening."

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jack passed the night comfortably stationed in the parlor of Woodenhall, ostensibly watching for any return of the doppelganger or shadow that had attacked Illyth earlier. But well before dawn he rose and slipped away, anxious to get back to the city in time to meet Anders and Tharzon. He left word with the staff that Illyth was to be guarded carefully and made his preparations for an expedition into Sarbreen's depths. He should have been trembling with anticipation, given the situation; if all went well, he might take possession of a prize so valuable that Elana's commission and the Game of Masks would pale in comparison. But Jack still couldn't help but feel that Zandria had excruciatingly poor timing. He had too many other things to think about, so, with a mind full of dark suspicions and an uneasy heart, he met Anders and Tharzon near the house rented out by the Company of the Red Falcon and followed Zandria into Sarbreen.

The Guilder's Tomb proved to be a surprisingly accessible place. From the sewers beneath Tentowers, an old vertical shaft led to a deep drain tunnel far beneath the city. Deeper tunnels and complexes intersected the shaft at various intervals, like floors of a building connected indirectly by a laundry chute or dumbwaiter. About sixty feet below the city sewers, a long, vaulted passage slanted across the vertical drop, leading to a broad chamber guarded by fierce-looking stone statues of grim dwarves. Zandria's company splashed through the sewers for a time, then rappelled down to the intersecting passage and marched only a hundred yards to reach the place. Jack, Anders, and Tharzon followed at a discreet distance.

Dwarves were hewers of rock and carvers of stone; Sarbreen, their ancient city, was bored through the rocky prominence of Raven's Bluff, in some cases hundreds of feet below the surface. The place was a maze in three dimensions, an endless labyrinth of shafts and passages, halls and chambers. In over a century and a half of human habitation on the hillside above, no one had ever mapped more than a tiny portion of Sarbreen's lost halls, but no part of Sarbreen was more than an hour's walk from the city above-if one knew the way.

If one didn't, the dwarven ruin might as well have been a wilderness the size of a kingdom. Most expeditions returned empty-handed after wandering aimlessly for hours or days through the same chambers. A few encountered old dwarven traps, hidden pits, and deadly blades that scythed out of dark alcoves, and some ran into dangerous and deadly monsters-undead things that hungered for the blood of the living, ferocious scavengers that fed from the city's effluvia drifting down from above, and horrifying aberrations that crept up into Sarbreen's halls from even more mysterious and remote depths far below the light. Jack had abandoned dungeoneering as a pastime after one such encounter. Hours of tedium punctuated by rare moments of utter terror hardly seemed like a heroic pursuit to him. Besides, the few expeditions that were successful brought their loot back to the surface, where rogues like Jack could easily help themselves to someone else's good fortune.

Following the brilliant magical lights of Zandria's company, Jack and his companions carefully tailed the band to the broad chamber at the end of the passageway. They carried no lights of their own; Tharzon's dwarven eyes were more than capable of piercing the darkness, and Jack worked a spell he knew that sharpened his own sight. Anders they led carefully along until they were close enough to see by the distant light of Zandria's expedition. The three rogues found a spot to wait about a hundred feet down the hall and settled in to watch.

"What do we do next?" whispered Tharzon.

Jack replied, "Let's see if Sarbreen's legendary perils do that work for us. Zandria is not a mage to be trifled with. She has at least two capable swordsmen with her-I met them when I visited their stronghold in the city. See, there they are." In the yellow light flooding the end of the hall, Zandria's companions spread out to search the chamber, while the Red Wizard consulted papers and notes before a gleaming slab of stone in the center of the far wall.

"Those other two in armor are probably priests," Tharzon added. He pointed to a short, stocky man and a young, athletic woman with a shaved head. "See the emblems of Tyr, there, and Tempus? Best to figure that they are both trained warriors, too, as well as potential spellcasters." The dwarf shifted slightly to change his view. "There's another fellow in dark clothes, probably a lockpick or burglar."

"That makes six to our three," Anders observed. "We should have brought a couple more stout lads to even the odds. Jankizen from Shadystreets would be useful."

"Jankizen can't add two and two twice and come up with the same result," Jack snorted. "Besides, more help means more shares." He peered down the hallway at the small pool of light.

Zandria and her allies were busy readying for a fight, checking weapons and arranging potions and scrolls so that they could be easily found in a hurry.

"They're getting ready to open the tomb. Wait here, lads. I'll creep a little closer to see what unfolds.''

"Don't get caught," Tharzon muttered.

Jack winked at the dwarf and wove his spell of invisibility, vanishing from sight. He stepped out from behind the broken columns they'd chosen for cover and advanced toward Zandria's company, picking his steps carefully. Invisibility did not make him inaudible as well, and the crunch of a thoughtless footstep on rubble or a carelessly kicked stone would alert Zandria. Mages had spells to reveal things invisible, and Jack had no wish to put the Company of the Red Falcon on its guard.