“Bowls!” cried Greyboar, slamming the door in the soldier’s face. You could hear them falling like tenpins beyond. The door now closed, Greyboar sealed it by the simple expedient of wrenching the frame out of shape. He had a way with doors, Greyboar did. On those occasions when we found ourselves guests of the porkers in the Durance Pile, they kept us in a special dungeon equipped with sliding stone slabs instead of the usual gate and grill. “At great expense to the State,” Judge Rancor Jeffreys sourly noted.
The preliminaries accomplished, Greyboar and I burst through the right-hand door. This new room was obviously a sleeping chamber. But the bed and all other items of furniture had been shoved against the walls, leaving the center of the room empty. Even the carpet that would normally have covered this portion of the floor was rolled up and standing on end in a corner. The purpose of this unusual arrangement was clear. For there, in the center of the room, squatting in a pentacle drawn on the bare floor, was a man who could be none other than the sorcerer Dhaoji.
I won’t attempt to describe him. Wizards are usually bizarre in their appearance, and this was a wizard among wizards. Even at that very moment, the fellow was bringing some fearful-sounding incantation to a close, which I had no doubt would have transmogrified us right proper. Mind you, I’ve no use for their extravagant theories, mages, but there’s no denying the better ones can wreak havoc on a man’s morphology.
“My job, this,” said I. A moment later, two of my darts were sprouting from his neck. Dhaoji cried out and clapped his neck. He broke off his incantation and tried to remove the darts. But the potion was already at work.
Nor did Magrit fail us. A dire potion, indeed.
“Horrible!” gasped Greyboar. For even now was Dhaoji locked into his doom.
“Yet ’tis clear as day,” we heard him whimper, quivering, hunched like a hamster, eyes gazing into The Terror, “that an arrow can only travel its course by traveling half the distance first. But then, to cover the second half, it must cover half of that half first. And in order to cover half of that half, ’tis necessary that it first cover half that distance again. How, then, can it ever complete its course? Yet it does!” A hideous moan ensued.
Xenophobia hastening our steps, we entered the room beyond. At last, the royal chamber, no doubt about it. Luxuries like sand on the beach. And our prey stood before us.
Or rather, lounged before us. Astonishing sight! Here we had a mighty king, his death at hand, all his protectors destroyed (save one—a moment, please), and all he could do was laze about on a divan, chewing a fig. I was rather offended, actually.
But we’ll get back to him. First, there was the matter of the final bodyguard. Even as foretold, this wight was there: a smallish man, though very well-knit in his proportions.
“You’ll be Iyesu, master of the martial arts,” said Greyboar. The man bowed courteously.
“Well, be on your way. There’s no point in a useless fracas. It’s your boss we’ve business with.”
Iyesu smiled, like an icon.
“I fear not,” he replied. “Rather do I suggest that you depart at once, lest I be forced to demonstrate my incomparable skills upon your hapless body. For know, barbarian, that I am the supreme master of all the ancient arts of the South—I speak of the blows, the strikes, the kicks, the holds, the throws, the leaps, the bounds, the springs, eschewing not, of course, the subtle secrets of the vulnerable portions of the musculature and nerves. Observe, and tremble.”
And so saying, Iyesu leapt and capered about, engaging in bizarre and flamboyant exercises. Many boards and bricks set up on stands to one side of the room were shattered and pulverized with sundry blows of well-nigh every part of his body.
“As you can see,” he concluded, “your crude skills cannot begin to compare with mine.”
“No doubt,” replied Greyboar, “for I possess no such skills, other than professional fingerwork. Of the martial arts, as you call them, I am as ignorant as a newborn babe. A simple workingman, I, who worked as a lad plucking chickens, as a stripling rending lambs, as a youth dismembering steers. A meatpacker, employed now in a related but much more lucrative trade.”