by Gary Gygax
The work would have been far simpler had he not been constrained by the need for discretion and confidentiality-his need, of course, not that of the owner of the nine sapphires. If Gord boldly inquired in the seamier establishments of the town, he could have soon come up with the name he wanted. But then, however, every government informer, thief, and assassin in Dyvers would have known him as well. The trick was to gain information while revealing none about yourself. That required more time, great skill, and considerable expense. Gord had all three commodities at his beck and call, so in a few days he had what he needed.
“I shall be departing for Veluna City today, landlord. May I please have my reckoning?” Gord made a production of it all, paying, leaving a good sum in addition for the proprietor, ordering his horse, and then departing. He was sure the landlord would not forget him for a long time. In fact, Gord actually did leave the city by its western portal, stopping there a moment to chat with the sergeant of the guard, complimenting him on his community and remarking with a wink on the looks and friendliness of the women. Of course, that last remark rubbed the fellow the wrong way, just as Gord had intended.
When the sergeant countered with a protest and demanded an apology, Gord sneered, called him an ignorant yokel from a backward city, and cantered away. “The folk of Veluna are better and brighter too,” he drawled over his shoulder with a disdainful air. That man would remember him, too.
Several days later, on a different horse and garbed as a traveler from distant Keoland, Gord re-entered Dyvers by one of its southern gates. He found a low hostel where no questions were asked as long as payment was made in advance. Now his real work could begin. If by the slightest chance someone recalled his earlier inquiries about a person most likely to be interested in rare and precious gems, because that worthy soon thereafter lost the most valuable prize in his collection, the individual who would be sought after was the one who would be found to have departed Dyvers days prior to the theft.
Gord as he appeared now was older, hair streaked with grey, and was noticeably taller than the fellow he had been before. The young thief grinned to himself, thinking of how well a bit of dye, built-up boots, and a hat could so easily deceive the untrained eye. The observation of skilled eyes was another matter, but he didn’t plan to expose himself to any such scrutiny.
Gord went out early in the evening and returned to the hostel before midnight reeling drunk. He sang and stomped his way boisterously to his quarters, attracting the attention of several other patrons along the way, slammed and locked the door, and collapsed noisily on his bed. In a few minutes he was cold sober, clad in black, carrying all the thieving gear he figured to need, and creeping out a window on the way to seek his prize.
A lot of trouble to go to? No-too much caution could not be used when a rogue thief was planning to invade the Temple of Nerull and steal from its high priest a necklace of inestimable worth… particularly when that very same high priest had announced that the nine black stones of the piece meant more to him than could be guessed!
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 y
oung 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…
“No stone of the passage meshes with those of the chamber!” It was an exclamation of discovery, albeit uttered in a hushed voice.
Darting back into the room, his mind working faster than his hands or feet could move, Gord turned his attention to the high-set sconces, ancient affairs with long prickets for the setting of massive candles. Bronze they were, and each of the four polished too.
“This is the one,” he murmured, noticing that the one immediately to the right of the tunnel entrance was more worn than the other three. Gord gave it a tug, then a push upward, then tried to twist it from side to side. It was unmoving, solid and firmly set.
“This cannot be…” Gord started to lament, his hands still working, and the words were barely out of his mouth when he hit the right combination, first pressing down the spike of the pricket and then pushing upward on the sconce. Accompanied by an almost inaudible grinding, the whole circle of the chamber slowly pivoted through a half-turn. Gord was briefly disconcerted, but because he had half expected something like this, he was not so startled that he forgot to draw his weapons as the chamber turned.
“Who dares intrude in my master’s sanctum?!” It was a question and a challenge at once. The voicing of it caused a foul graveyard odor to fill the little place where Gord stood, the reek nearly gagging him.
There was no choice available to him. Gord’s ears told him the sound of the voice had come from his right. Not eager to be trapped inside the small chamber, he sprang out into the left-hand area of the larger room that the rotation of the chamber had revealed. He hit the ground and spun to face the direction the voice had come from.
The body he saw before him looked at first glance something like a relatively small ogre-a monstrosity with a bulbous, barrel-like torso supported by thick, bowed legs. Its flesh had the pallor of death and a charnel stench to match its appearance. In the next instant he saw an even more gruesome aspect. Long, writhing worms issued from all over the creature’s head-mouth, eyes, ears, nose. They waved blindly. Independently, as If offering their own challenge to the foolish human who had violated this place.
“Hells’ handles!” Gord hissed, springing back in horror from the sight.
That move was fortunate, for the massive thing spat the worms out of its mouth at that moment, and where they fell to the floor the stones hissed and bubbled for a moment. Gord noted with a combination of awe and revulsion that where the things had struck and splattered, the floor was pitted. They were small holes, but if that had been his flesh…
“Hackkahhkk,” the terrible, rotten-fleshed beast coughed. It was bringing up more of the worms from inside its massive chest. And as it did so, it began to lumber toward the young thief, its splayed feet making a meaty, slapping sound on the stone floor.
Gord whirled to his left, slashed out and down with his sword, dived into a somersault, and came up behind the monster’s right shoulder. He was too far away now to strike effectively with either of his weapons, but at least he was safe for a moment.
“Plaaht!” The thing reflexively spat forth another mouthful of the worms, spraying them in an arc that was nowhere near him. Gord saw that but paid no attention. He flashed his gaze toward where he had felt his sword’s blade strike home, needing to know what his slash had done to the foul flesh of the thing’s thick, distended leg.
The yellow-gray flesh had parted under the edge of his weapon, all right, and a wound resembling an open mouth, with its lower lip drooping, was plainly evident there. But the cut shed no blood and oozed no ichor. The squat creature from the pits of the netherworld seemed totally unaffected by the wound. It was now shambling around, turning and hacking deep inside its throat once again.
Gord went into a circling, dancing, diving routine that kept the thing turning and lumbering. After a half-dozen attempts to splatter the young thief with the corrosive worms, the monster gave up that strategy-whether in frustration or because its innards were exhausted of the foul, writhing tubes, Gord neither knew nor cared. During that process he had managed to score several more hits upon the great beast’s legs, but although bone showed when one of these attacks had scored heavily, the monster still came on undaunted.
Now Gord was dismayed, even horrified, to find that the monster had weapons other than its foul worms. From somewhere beneath its mouldering garments the thing pulled forth a pair of sicklelike weapons. Its long arms and the curved blades gave it a reach of some six feet or more on either side. Then it spoke, the first words it had uttered since its initial challenge, while holding the sickles at the ends of its upraised, outstretched arms.
“Now, human, I shall have the pleasure of hacking you into small strips before I feast on your flesh and blood and bones!” Its voice was clogged-sounding, the words slightly mushy, as if the lungs of the creature were rotted and worm-infested too.
The thing was overconfident and, for all its fearsomeness, slow. As it gurgled the last words of its threat, Gord darted in toward the monster’s right side yet again, holding his dagger ready to parry a possible sickle-blow. With a backhand motion of his sword, he chopped at the bone exposed in the monster’s wounded leg and then tumbled away. As he sprang erect behind the creature, he slashed at the leg again and gave a speech of his own.
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“Ogre-ghoul! Fiend! Whatever your spawning, I think clean steel will serve to blot your foulness from the world.”
The monster tried to pivot and slash out with the sickle in its left hand at the same time. The blade cut harmlessly through the air just above Gord’s head. Then the thing fell heavily, the weapon in its right hand clattering away as it toppled down upon the stones. The leg that Gord had chopped at repeatedly had finally given way!
As the thing floundered and attempted to support itself on the bloodless stump of its severed leg, Gord leaped in and struck the creature’s neck with all of his strength. The strength of his arms, coupled with the momentum of his leap, gave the short sword tremendous force. Its keen blade cut cleanly through the dead-hued flesh, sheared bone almost as easily, and still had most of its force unspent as it came out the other side of the neck to clang on the stone floor.
The severed head of the foul thing fell to the floor and came to rest a short distance away. A gush of the maggoty worms spouted forth from the body’s severed neck, just as blood fountains from a decapitated corpse. The stream of vile stuff engulfed the ghastly head as the body spewed forth its corrosive contents, and worms and head vanished in a cloud of noisome fumes. The body thrashed and jerked for a couple of minutes while Gord watched it warily, but the thing showed no signs of having regenerative powers. Then the corpse was still.
Carefully avoiding the stinking remains, Gord began a quick search of the area beyond the chamber where the battle had taken place. There were several rooms nearby-in fact, a whole suite of lavishly appointed subterranean chambers fit for the habitation of a great priest of Nerull.
