That tidbit of information had been gained from the steward of a rich and degenerate aristocrat of Dyvers. The man’s master was a worshiper of the evil deity Nerull, for whatever reasons he had. That aside, this same man, the noble worshiper, was the collector of gems whose agent had obtained the nine sapphires. Only he had not kept the necklace, as Gord had supposed he would. Instead the piece had been given to the chief cleric of Nerull as an offering. No matter-whether they were held by aristocrat or priest, Gord would this very night have the black stones from whatever repository they were locked in.
The squat temple of basalt lay on the edge of the district of the city that was given over to places of devotion. But unlike the other temples, the House of Nerull had no buildings close to it. The streets nearby were deserted, and the place seemed lifeless. Gord knew better. Night was the time for the followers of this evil being to pay their duty to their deity. Somewhere below ground, in a dark and foul chamber, the devotees of the vile god of death would be chanting their praises and making blood sacrifices. Such activity was good for him, for all inside would be busy, and Gord could operate undisturbed. He would enter, burglarize, and leave before the fools knew what had occurred.
Thanks to a dweomered blade he had gained In his eastern adventures, Gord was able to see in utter darkness as if it were dim dusk, while in starlight his vision was as sharp as if it were early twilight. Thus the low wall surrounding the grim temple and the sentries silently prowling the open ground between wall and temple were nothing to him. Any skilled thief could have scaled the wall, of course, despite the clawed spikes atop it. Wickedly planted iron spears and a dense hedge of dwarf yarpicks on the inner verge of the wall were a matter to be dealt with carefully. Still, the stationary obstacles would not have been insurmountable. His biggest problem was the padding guards with their accompanying beasts. Each sentry was matched with a black ape!
“Now there’s a type of vicious killer I’ve never seen before,” Gord said to himself as he studied the area beyond from a precarious position between the spikes atop the wall. Now he understood why the points hooked both outward and inward too. These apes were undoubtedly carnivores and man-killers. The result of one or more running loose in the city would bring severe repercussions to the temple’s master priest.
“I could fall upon man and beast,” Gord ruminated. His acrobatic ability was sufficient for him to clear the abatis of metal and thorny growth without difficulty, and he could land ready to fight. His short sword and long dagger were sufficient armament for the young thief to dispatch both adversaries quickly and with possibly no sound-or at most some stifled cries.
“No, the pairs meet and exchange soft words at intervals. The priests have covered themselves well,” Gord reflected. So he changed his thinking. If this place was a typical one of its sort, and there was no reason to think it was not, he knew that there would be some hidden subterranean way inside, a secret passage meant to be a death trap for anyone foolish enough to trespass. Gord stayed still a few minutes longer, watching the movement of the sentries, the snuffling and peering of their apes. Then he acted.
As the guardian pairs moved away, Gord vaulted outward and tumbled into a somersaulting roll as his feet touched the sward surrounding the squatty pile of the evil temple. Quickly gaining his feet again, the young thief crouched, opened a small bag at his belt, turned, and tossed a handful of red pepper back over the area he had just been. Then he dashed toward the grim building itself, sprinkling the powder behind him as he went. The sharp-smelling stuff was meant to irritate and confuse guard dogs, but he knew it would likewise confound the nose of any ape that came near to where he had landed.
The big blocks of basalt comprising the outside of the temple were smooth and closely set, and it required his utmost effort to ascend the nearly sheer face quickly enough to avoid being seen. Gord had no more than grasped the top edge of the first tier of the temple when he heard a barking sneeze from below. Without a sound, he pulled himself up onto the ledge and flattened his body. The primate was sneezing, pawing at its nose, teeth showing white in its inky-face as it did so. Gord watched as two more pairs of sentries hastened to the scene. The men exchanged whispers, the two new apes began snuffling, and then those creatures were taken with sneezing fits too.
As the men sought to discover the reason for the trouble, Gord decided it was time to move. He would have only a short period of relative safety, of that he was sure. Soon the guards of Nerull would be searching for a possible intruder. He mustn’t waste the interval, or his opportunity would be lost-and possibly his life as well!
He discovered a door leading to a balconylike area, and the portal had been carelessly left open. Or perhaps, he corrected himself, the denizens of this place did not bother to lock out intruders-otherwise, how could they have fun dismembering the curious and foolish who dared to enter? That was not a pleasant line of reasoning, so Gord forced it out of his mind.
The young adventurer slipped inside the temple and hurriedly descended a nearby flight of steps. This brought him to the main floor of the place, in a location obviously reserved for the clerics. Light showed here and there from beneath doors, warning him that many of the rooms along the long series of corridors were occupied-by lesser priests, acolytes, and the like, as well as guards perhaps. He didn’t bother with any doors, however. Gord kept his eyes on the stone flags, seeking a telltale sign. The temple was old, and countless sandaled feet must have walked these flagstone passages over the centuries. Such traffic would take its toll.
What had seemed to be a blank wall a moment before revealed itself as a concealed door under the young thief’s scrutiny. He had been led to it by an almost imperceptible path worn into the stone, a path that ended where the “wall” began.
“Not so much a secret, now, is it?” he observed under his breath as his dagger blade found the hidden catch and the door swung inward. Here was the way-or one of the ways, anyway-that the priests of the vile god of darkness got to the altar below. “And here too,” Gord said softly as he went rapidly down the steps, “is where the chief priest will have his most privy sanctum. Let us hope he is busily engaged in some foul rite.”
A low, indistinct, but somehow obscene chanting came up the staircase. The farther Gord went, the louder the sound became, but he could still discern none of its meaning even when he finally arrived at the bottom of the flight of steps. Deep-throated iron horns suddenly bellowed, adding to the noise at odd intervals, while great drums rambled as an underbeat to the chant, and discordant sounds like the random plucking of monstrous harps accentuated the strange rhythm. The sounds came from his left, so Gord went to his right into a narrow passage.
The darkness was deeper than black, but he had no difficulty making his way, of course, and the enchanted vision granted to him by the sword he had gained while adventuring with Gellor even enabled the young thief to distinguish which passages were the most traveled. When he had a choice, he always selected the least-trod way. After a dozen false leads and dead ends, Gord came to a small, circular chamber at the end of the corridor he had chosen. The only feature or ornamentation inside it was a quartet of ordinary-looking candleholders, each one set into the wall equidistant from the ones adjacent to it.
“This is strange,” he said quietly to himself. “A place like this has no purpose, not even benches, a lavatory, an idol… What might it be?” His actions were not those of someone searching for a place to rest, wash, or worship. Gord was checking the walls, rapidly, using eyes and fingers. Finding nothing remarkable, he worked his way back out toward the corridor. He finally realized that where the tunnel entered the little circle of space, there was a gap between walls, which meant…