"It is not uncommon for guards to sleep at their posts," Jotan said impatiently. "Let us get started before other of Vokal's guards discover the gates are unguarded and rouse the palace defenders."
"I think we should make sure we are not going blindly into some trap," Tharn demurred. "This entire thing is suspicious ... too easy."
But Jotan waved the cave lord into silence. "Can't you understand," he said crisply, "that we don't have time for that? I say let's get on with our plan and not spend time worrying about things that will never happen."
In this both Garlud and Tamar agreed, and so Tharn shrugged and said no more. He was in league with these Ammadians for only one reason: to make it that much easier for him to snatch Dylara from this strange city and return with her to the caves of his own people. What had happened to her, once he and Trakor had fled Vokal's palace earlier that night, leaving her hidden within the building, was something he could not know. But there was no other place in all of Ammad he knew where to look for her, and so he must act in the belief that she still was behind the palace walls, either hidden there or once more a captive of the rascally nobleman.
Less than half an hour later all of Jotan's band of warriors squatted behind the belt of foliage just within the walls of Vokal's sprawling palace. In the dim light of stars they could look out between the interstices of growing things, seeing the many windowed bulk of stone rising four full floors above the neighboring terrain. No where in all that vast expanse was there a sign of life. No candle showed its brief flame at any window. Silent and dark and somehow a place of brooding danger.
After another whispered conference, Tharn left the other leaders of the band and flitted across the open ground, moving like a black shadow toward the same doorway through which Trakor had raced to join him only an hour or two earlier.
Those watching him from the shadowy foliage lost sight of him almost at once; and when, a few moments later, he seemed to rise from the ground almost under their noses, a startled gasp from a dozen throats made a rustling sound against the heavy silence.
"The door is still unbarred," Tharn reported, frowning. "I am even surer now, noble Jotan, that we are heading straight for a trap set up by the wily Vokal."
"He could not know our plans," Jotan said impatiently. "It means simply that they forgot to bar the door after the excitement you and your friend caused them earlier. Things are working out well for us."