Tale of Tales – Part II by Nikola Stefan

Author:Nikola Stefan [Stefan, Nikola]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Action & Adventure, Epic Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction, High Fantasy, Myth & Legend Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery
Publisher: Vitor Publishing
Published: 2023-06-05T22:00:00+00:00

– Chapter 8 –

Troubles of Thieving

Vuk tried to move as silently as possible – the last thing he wanted was for all the thieves in the city to know that he was coming, if he really was so close to the entrance of their secret hideout. And as soon as he looked through his wolf eyes, he could spy what had before been unseeable: on that narrowest of walls, which made the passage into a blind alley, was set the secret entrance. It was well masked; in fact, almost perfectly, since he had been unable to detect it despite looking directly at it with his human eyes. In daylight, it was very likely just as imperceptible, as Vuk could assume that the place had been chosen precisely on the basis of it remaining in the thick shadows of the three walls throughout the day. Just the faintest hint of a four-sided contour could be made out in the mass of the wall, a barely contrasting nuance making the rectangle distinguishable from the surrounding surface – though scarcely, if at all, to most people. Vuk’s snout curled into something that might be called a smile, for this man-beast had not only noticed the location of the entryway, but had also recognized how it functioned: the door was the type that opened in when pressed at a lower part from the outside, remaining always on its hinges on top. This part of the “wall” had surely once been exactly the color of its stony surroundings, but the touch of many thieves who had time after time brushed grimily against it had gradually darkened it just slightly.

And without much more thought, for which this form of his was not quite suited, the intruder simply jumped straight up, holding himself up there fast with his four stretched limbs at the peak of his leap, about twice as high as a man above the ground, a height to which normal thieves would have had to climb patiently. Now it was time to see if he had been right – his pressed his wolf’s head lightly on the lower point of the off-colored part of the wall (just at about the same time as his former master Žarko was leading his off-colored horse by its reins, with Senka on it, on his way back to the gathering place of their party). Even at this close distance, with his head pressing against it, the spot still resembled the surrounding stone; but at the point of contact, he heard a slight creak of hinges, and the lower part of the door slowly turned inwards. A few moments later, in the narrow tunnel which led off downward behind the door, now crept the most unusual thief likely to have ever set foot past this hidden border and into the principality of thieves.

He bumped right into the first trap completely unprepared – he had failed in his wolf form to remember Marena’s warning about the numerous snares, and he had

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