A Darkness at Sethanon by Raymond Feist Page B

the grounds. If you stay
alert you should be safe enough while I snoop around. I’ll
report back as soon as I have a hint.”
    Arutha indicated
permission for Jimmy to withdraw. Quickly Trevor Hull and his first
mate followed, leaving a troubled, seething Prince alone with his
thoughts. Arutha sat back, balled fist held before his mouth as his
eyes stared off into nothing.
    He had faced the
minions of Murmandamus near the Black Lake, Moraelin, but the final
contest was yet to come. Arutha cursed himself for becoming
complacent over the last year. When he had first returned with
Silverthorn, the key to saving Anita from the effects of the
Nighthawks’ poison, he had been nearly ready to return at once
to the north. But the affairs of court, his own marriage, the trip to
Rillanon to attend his brother’s wedding to Queen Magda, then
Lord Caldric’s funeral, the birth of his sons, all these had
come and gone without his attending to the business north of the
Kingdom. Beyond the great ranges lay the Northlands. There lay the
seat of his enemy’s power. There Murmandamus marshalled his
forces. And from that seat far to the north he was reaching down
again to touch the life of the Prince of Krondor, the Lord of the
West, the man fated by prophecy to be his undoing, the Bane of
Darkness. Should he live. And again Arutha found himself struggling
within the confines of his own demesne, the battle carried to his own
door. Striking his palm with his fist, Arutha voiced a low, harsh
curse. To himself and whatever gods listened, he vowed that when this
business in Krondor was finished, he, Arutha conDoin, would carry the
struggle northward to Murmandamus.

    The darkness hid
a thousand treasures amid a million pieces of worthless garbage. The
waters in the sewers flowed slowly, and often large clumps of debris
would gather in a jam called a tof. The tofsmen who picked over such
floating refuse earned their living gleaning valuables lost into the
sewers. They also kept the refuse flowing by breaking up the jams of
garbage that threatened to back up the sewers. Little of this
concerned Jimmy, save that a tofsman was standing less than twenty
feet away.
    The young squire
had dressed all in black, save for his old, comfortable boots. He had
even purloined an executioner’s black hood from the torture
chamber. Beneath the black he wore more simple garb, needed to blend
into the Poor Quarter. The tofsman looked directly at the boy several
times, but for all his peering, Jimmy did not exist.
    For the better
part of half an hour, Jimmy had stood motionless in the deep shadows
of an intersection, while the old tofsman picked over the smelly mess
passing by. Jimmy hoped this wasn’t the man’s chosen
location to work, otherwise he could be there for hours. Jimmy even
more fervently hoped the tofsman was real and not a disguised
Nighthawk lookout.
    Finally the man
wandered off, and Jimmy relaxed, though he did not move until the
tofsman had had ample time to vanish down a side tunnel. Then, with
stealth bordering on the unnatural, Jimmy crept along the tunnel
toward the area below the heart of Fish Town.
    Down a series of
tunnels he travelled silently. Even as he stepped into water, he
managed to disturb it only slightly. The gifts of nature -
lightning-fast reflexes, astonishing coordination, and the ability to
make decisions, to react nearly instantaneously - had been augmented
by training from the Mockers and forged in the harshest furnace: the
daily life of a working thief. Jimmy made each move as if his life
depended upon remaining undetected, for it did.
    Down the dark
conduits of the sewers he journeyed, his senses extended into the
darkness. He knew how to ignore the faint sounds coming down from the
streets above and how the slight echoes, of rippling water rebounding
from the stonework should sound; the slightest variation would warn
of anyone lurking out of view. The noisome air of the sewer masked
any potentially warning odours,