"Yah, Pinkus." Gord figured if Chert's words had not done any damage, his two cents' worth wasn't going to hurt anything after the fact. "If the Grand Count of Fizziak is determined to blame us for his recent loss of favor with the king, how much more so if we usurp his prerogatives and kill his nephew here!"

The huge enjure stared at Gord with bloodshot, yellow-pupiled eyes, snarled, and ceased his threatening approach. "Sometimes I wish I were of the savage stock of pre-ancestral sort found on this world rather than the enlightened race we have become. Frankly, I don't give us one chance in a hundred regardless of what we do to that little monkey," Pinkus concluded, with a casual sweep of a monstrous arm that dismissed the huddling Lord Maheal as not worthy of consideration.

Gord had to agree in his heart. If Lord Fizziak valued his nephew, the young noble would never have been thrown into the same cell with himself. Chert, and the creature calling himself Pinkus, a seeming ogre-magus. The affair would be laughable if their current situation were not so dire.

The terrible ruin made by their precipitation over the Grand Hall when the transportation device failed was not so easily dealt with. When Gord had been surrounded by guards, and the ogre, Pinkus, knocked unconscious. Chert had done his barbarian best to prevent the guards from putting him hors de combat it was a valiant fight, but eventually Chert, too, had been laid low.

Grand Count Fizziak was humiliated and in his ire quite prepared to put the lot. including Lord Maheal, on the gibbet instantly. But King Archbold, covered from head to foot with the food he had hoped to offer his guests, decreed that punishment would be less swift. He ordered Lord Fizziak to confine the offenders in the dungeon of the castle until further notice. As theirs was an offense against his person, a crime of lese majeste, as it were. Arch-bold III would make it his personal responsibility to decide the eventual sentence to be meted out.

Although beside himself with his own desire for revenge, the grand count had no choice. Stripped of all weapons, the four offenders were tossed into the cell they now inhabited. A full week had passed since, and the bread was more stale and the water more foul than when they began their incarceration. The cell was constructed to hold prisoners of special sort — those capable of employing spells and magic. No dweomer would function within the confines of the place. The walls were solid stone, and the bronzewood door was bound in silvered bands of iron, triple-locked, and watched constantly by a hard-eyed turnkey. The prisoners would remain securely in their cell until the king decided their fate; of that there was no question.

Lord Maheal had alternately wept and cursed the others during the first day or two. Meanwhile, Gord and Chert learned a bit about the ogre-magus. It seemed that this creature was from an alternate world, a place where humans were nothing more than savage, apelike creatures living in forests and jungles. Ogres, too, were animals, but the monsters known on Oerth as ogre-magi were the civilizing-force of that world. The creature introduced himself as Pinkus, claiming that he was an agent for a firm that imported and exported goods from many worlds and planes.

"Why help Plincourt attack us?" Chert had inquired mildly.

"I owed him a favor — besides, I don't like either of you!" Pinkus had said with a snarl. Fortunately, the civilized ogre-magus was not nearly as big or as strong as the monstrous sort that plagued Oerth, although he was large enough to be threatening, being a span more than eight feet in height and weighing about five hundred pounds or so.

For the last few days, the Szek of Dohou-Yohpe had been nagging and threatening his fellow prisoners with terrible punishments. The noble had recovered sufficiently to imagine that somehow he would prove that he was blameless, gain his uncle's forgiveness, and thus be able to visit his wrath upon the heads of those he held responsible for his current pass.

Gord had to laugh at the whole. Childless, Lord Fizziak had shown great favor to his nephew Maheal, and it seemed that for some time all the grand count's court had presumed that Maheal was the heir apparent to all the Fizziak fiefs and holdings. So too, the young Szek of Dohou-Yohpe had aspired. But no longer! The grand count had made a point of sending a page to read a pronouncement naming a distant cousin of Maheal's as chamberlain. This position was the most likely one for the heir of the family to hold, and Maheal fell into a deep depression and was silent for nearly a whole day after hearing the news. Then he had begun his hysterical tirade that culminated in the near-attack by Pinkus. Gord waited for the creature to calm down some before addressing him again.

"Even if you were a real ogre-magus, this cell would prevent you from using magic to escape — or even give that twit the comeuppance he deserves," Gord said to the still angry creature. "But then again, maybe you can do something! What sort of stuff can you civilized ogre-types do. anyway?"

"None of your business, you hairless little monkey," Pinkus said, going back to his own corner of the cell to brood darkly.

"That's no way to talk to your comrades!" Chert admonished the fellow with a grin. "We're willing to let bygones be bygones and help you out, so why not return the favor?"

"Go roll yourself in ryxzotilofuul!" Pinkus countered in triumph. The evident delight on his hideous face spoke volumes, and the humans could only guess at what sort of insult he had delivered, but it pleased him mightily, no doubt.

Any further exchange was cut short just then by the sudden noise of tramping feet. A whole squad of armored guards came marching down the passageway, led by a brightly clad officer and the new chamberlain. Lord Preppyn. The latter had such a smug expression on his round, chubby face that Gord feared the worst. It turned out to be something other than what was expected, however, for the doughlike visage was wearing its look due to the man's station, not his message.

"You are ordered to appear before His Lordship, Grand Count Fizziak, immediately! Maheal — and you other curs, too — come along quietly and smartly. If you cause the least bit of trouble, I am authorized to deal with you in most rude fashion!"

The Szek of Dohou-Yohpe was ashen-faced and shaking with indignant rage at the tone used by Preppyn, who had been a mere thegn of a petty territory before his recent elevation. "How dare you speak to me in such a tone, you . . . you . . . dearly beloved cousin!" Maheal managed to blurt out. For all he was, the Nyrondel nobleman was not totally stupid. Without any power at the moment, Maheal thought twice and attempted to use family ties to gain favor with this distant relative.

"Don’t mention our kinship, distant as the consanguine ties are. You bring shame to all who have the noble blood of the Fizziaks in their veins!"

Maheal clamped his mouth shut and stepped out of the cell. The other three prisoners followed, each having a trio of guardsmen with ready weapons to assure meek and prompt compliance with the chamberlain's commands. In a few minutes they were out of the dark and dank labyrinth below the castle and were heading for a wide archway that led.

Into one of the lesser chambers of the administrative area of the sprawling chateau. While the four stood in a line, sharply pointed steel held against their spines, the plump Preppyn strutted to a small door in the opposite wall and rapped softly. "Noble nuncle," he cried respectfully, "the prisoners await your disposition."

The door flew open, nearry smacking the unctuous chamberlain's pudgy face, which he jerked back most hurriedly to avoid the panel. Sputtering over the loss of dignity, Preppyn quickly smoothed his doughy features into blandness, the closest he could come to stern authority, as the grand CQunt strode forth, his expression hard and his bearing harsh. Preppyn trailed after Lord Fizziak like a fly trying to catch up with a platter of sweetmeats.