Chapter 15

Woodrow watched the animated dragon stretch its wings below the kender. “That thing will take Mr.

Burrfoot over my dead body,” he announced unconsciously. He wished he’d chosen other words as he sprang forward, the centaur obligingly ducking its head. The straw-haired man flailed desperately at the dragon’s swishing tail. Rough scales and pointy horns slashed and scraped at his exposed flesh but he held on, thinking only that if he lost the kender, Miss Hornslager would be furious.

The dragon seemed to grow larger as it flapped its mighty wings and rose higher. Moments later, when Woodrow came to his senses, it was far too late to think about jumping off. He clung with all his might to the thrashing, flicking, mighty tail.

Tasslehoff, meanwhile, had already overcome his initial shock and was sitting upright in the saddle. He happily bounced and kicked with his heels as the dragon climbed into the morning sun. Suddenly, the creature lurched and the wings stopped flapping. Its climb leveled out and the beast nosed to the left and began to dive furiously back toward the carnival. Tasslehoff squealed and Woodrow shrieked as the wind screamed past their ears.

Tas’s long hair whipped into Woodrow’s face, and probably would have obscured his vision if Woodrow’s eyes had been open. If anything, Woodrow’s eyes were shut tighter than his grip on the dragon’s tail.

Faster and faster they dove, straight down toward the carousel. Dwarves scattered in every direction as the terrifying beast plummeted toward them. At the last moment, the dragon pulled out of its dive and raced across the green, raising a cloud of leaves and dust in its wake.

Tasslehoff had spotted the tiny gnome dancing a jig near his controls. “I guess it’s working the way it’s supposed to,” he hollered to no one in particular. Mere inches from the ground, the dragon expanded its wings and pulled up into a nearly vertical climb. Tasslehoff threw his arms around the saddle to keep from falling off backward.

The piercing scream from behind alerted Tas that he was not alone on the wild ride. Twisting in the saddle, he saw Woodrow, white as an elven shroud, wrapped around the dragon’s tail. Directly behind Woodrow was the ground, receding at an alarming rate, and Gisella, shaking a finger at the gnome. “Woodrow! What are you doing here?” bellowed Tas. “Hey, Gisella looks much smaller from way up here! Isn’t this great!”

But Woodrow knew that if he opened his mouth he would scream. So he just shook his head furiously, until he felt himself rolling over on his back. Too frightened to keep his eyes closed, he opened one to find out what was happening. He saw the dragon’s back, Mr. Burrfoot -who had apparently gone quite insane from terror — and the sky, which rolled past from top to bottom. Then the sky gave way to ground, but the ground seemed to be coming from above. If I don’t scream, I am going to vomit, thought Woodrow, and I don’t have any idea which way it will fall. He opened his mouth, but all that came out was a hoarse, croaking sound.

“What did you say?” shouted Tas. As the kender leaned back in the saddle, the dragon finished its roll and once again dived straight down toward the ground.

“C’mon Woodrow, loosen up.” shouted Tas, tugging at the human’s shirt. The dragon leveled out, eight feet off the ground, and shot down a narrow street with buildings crowding in on both sides. It turned a corner, sideswiped a row of flowerpots right off a balcony with the tip of its wing, and then rose just enough to swoop across the rooftops and slalom between chimneys.

“This is better than going over a waterfall,” shrieked Tas. “What a ride! That gnome is a genius! Here we go again!”

The dragon climbed steadily, its wings beating rhythmically. Long after Tas expected it to swoop or roll again, it continued climbing. Tas looked back over his shoulder and let out a long whistle. “We sure have covered a lot of ground. I can barely see Rosloviggen anymore.”

“Where are we?” Those words were the first Woodrow had spoken since leaping onto the dragon’s tail several lifetimes ago.

“I’m not sure, but we’re way above it,” Tas said mat terof-factly. As if that was its signal, the dragon banked steeply and circled to the right, spiraling down toward the mountains. Moments later, Tas could make out the silhouette of a tower against the white snow background. Then he spotted another tower, jutting out from the face of a cliff, then three more structures: another tower, a square keep, and what appeared to be the front half of a castle, built into the side of the cliff.

The dragon skidded to a stop on top of the second tower. Tas looked back to check on Woodrow, who raised his head and looked at the kender with swollen eyes, as if he had just woken up. Both of them blinked at their surroundings.

The top of the tower, where the dragon had landed, was flat and surrounded by a raised wall about two feet high. The tower itself was cylindrical. Rising behind the tower, however, was a sheer cliff that topped out at least sixty feet above Tas.

“I think it brought us here on purpose,” said Tas.

“What makes you say that, Mr. Burrfoot?” Woodrow asked weakly.

Tas knocked his fist against the dragon. “Because our mount is plain, old wood again. I wonder where we are.”

The kender swung his left leg over the front of the saddle and slid down onto the dragon’s wing, then jumped from there to the stone floor. Woodrow followed, clutching his stomach and leaning against the dragon for support.

“Who’shere?” sounded a hasty, nasal voice from the far side of the dragon. “Doesmybrotherknowyou’vebeenridinghisdragon?”

Tasslehoff peered around the front of the dragon. He saw a gnome, dressed in baggy, green pants, a dirty, yellow shirt, a blue apron, and an orange hat. A pair of spectacles balanced on the tip of his nose. The pockets of his apron were stuffed full of carpentry and stonecutting tools. He stood near an open trap door, peering over his spectacles at the dragon.

“Comeon, comeon, thedragonnevercomesbackbyitself. Youmightaswellshowyourself.”

Tas watched from behind the dragon, fascinated. He knew that kender were distantly related to gnomes, and he could see a little of it in this one’s slender hands.

“You really should speak more slowly, particularly if you’re going to be that bossy,” said Tasslehoff, stepping around into the gnome’s view, followed by Woodrow.

“Oh ho!” chortled the gnome. “We seem to have an airsick human and a short, wrinkly, humanoid thing.

Hmmm, wrinkles, topknot, rude, lots of pouches and pockets, short; must be either a kender or a meerkimo.

No, meerkimos have been extinct since before the Cataclysm. Must be a kender. We’ve been looking for one of those for decades — not many of them around here. You might as well come in; no sense standing around up here exposed to damaging sunlight.”

“Tasslehoff Burrfoot,” said the kender politely, extending his hand. “And you are — ?” The gnome took his hand, peered at it intently, found it empty, and dropped it without interest. Turning, the gnome clomped back down the staircase and out of sight.

Tas and Woodrow stood for a moment, trying to digest what was happening to them. The gnome’s face reappeared above the stairs briefly. “Come on, I said.

There’s no other way down except the quick way,” he noted, looking over the side of the tower. “And very few specimens of any sort choose that.” He disappeared again.

Woodrow cleared his throat, then spoke to Tasslehoff in a low tone. “I don’t have a good feeling about this, Mr.

Burrfoot.”

The gnome reappeared again, this time dangling an apple on a stick toward them. “I’ve got foooooood,” he chanted, waving the stick from side to side. “Red, juicy aaaaaaaapples. Caaaarrots. Raaaabbits. Dishes of buuuuugs. Whatever you kender eat, we’ve got it. Just follow me.”

“Apples?” Tas was not actually hungry, but he was always ready to eat. “I love apples. I could use something to eat, come to think of it.” Tasslehoff headed toward the door.

Woodrow took the kender’s arm and swung him around. “This sounds very bad to me, Mr. Burrfoot,” he whispered. “What kind of place serves bugs?”

“Well, it’s not the Inn of the Last Home,” Tas conceded; he liked the gnome. But, noting Woodrow’s concern, he forced himself to be serious. “There’s only one way to find out where we are.” He stepped through the door before the human could protest further.

Abruptly, they were in a very narrow, dark stairway that leveled out into a long stone corridor. Ahead, waving them on impatiently, was the gnome.

“Come on, come on! I have things to do, too, you know.” He pushed up his spectacles distractedly.

Tasslehoff skipped ahead to his side. “Where are we goings And who are you, if you don’t mind me asking again?”

“Well, I do. Didn’t my brother tell you anything?” the gnome growled. “He’s always leaving that to me. Well, I just won’t do it this time. You’ll have to wait until he gets here,” he said petulantly.

“I sure hope he’ll be here soon,” Woodrow said earnestly, “because we really must be getting back to Rosloviggen. Miss Hornslager must be very angry with us for leaving.” He followed the gnome and the kender around a corner into a cavernous room.

“Wow!” Tas gasped. “What is this place? It looks like the museum in Palanthas.”

Every inch of the large room, except for its narrow aisles, was covered with long, horizontal, glass display cases set up on high, thin legs. Row upon row of dead insects lay on white velvet cushions inside the cases. There were five cases filled with nothing but blue butterflies, each one slightly different, each with its name neatly penned on a card next to it. Then there were whole cases of red butterflies and white butterflies, then another case of red and white ones. Every color in the rainbow was represented.

There were two cases with black ants.

Two more for red ants.

One for dragonflies.

Ten for wasps.

And on and on.

“Do you collect insects?” asked Tas, running from case to case, pressing his nose to each.

“What makes you ask that?” the gnome said sarcastically, rolling his eyes. Using his sleeve, he rubbed nose prints from the cases after Tasslehoff had passed.

Tas opened his mouth to respond when Woodrow leaned into him and whispered, “I think he was joking, Mr. Burrfoot.”

Tasslehoff’s brows knit in confusion. Oh, a joke!

Gnomes sure are funny, he thought.

The gnome hustled them through an archway with a letter “C” above it at the far end of the room, and into an even larger room with a ceiling at least three stories high.

The display cases here were much taller and held one stuffed creature each.

“These are all dinosaurs,” Tasslehoff said, breathless with awe. “I never realized they were so big.” He threw his head back to run his gaze the full length of the largest dinosaur, its incredibly long, muscular neck fully extended. He took note of the plaque at its feet: ‘Apatosaurus.’ Next to it was the number 220.

“You collect dinosaurs, too? What does that number mean?” Tas asked.

“Of course we collect dinosaurs,” the gnome said in exasperation. “We collect everything. The number means that it, uh, came into the collection in the year two hundred twenty.”

“But that was more than one hundred twenty years ago!” Tas gasped. “You can’t be that old.”

The gnome beamed. “Why, thank you for saying so!”

He lifted his orange hat and slicked his hair back with his hand. “I’m not.” Suddenly his eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to get answers out of me, and I told you you’d have to wait for my brother.”

“You could at least tell us who you are and why that dragon came to life and what this place is,” Woodrow demanded, his voice shaking.

In reply, the gnome clamped his lips shut and herded Tas and Woodrow into a small, torch-lit laboratory off the dinosaur display room.

Water dripped down the cold, stone walls in the circular room. From floor to ceiling on the walls were shelves.

The shelves were packed with empty glass jars, and seemed to be organized by color more than shape or function. Tall, thin, red ones were perched next to short, squatty bowls, which ranged in size from one inch in diameter to two feet. Every color imaginable was present.

In the center of the laboratory was a tall alchemist’s table cluttered with more colorful jars, though these were filled with little creatures of one sort or another suspended in liquid. White wisps of smoke bubbled from the tops of two beakers. The room had a faintly unpleasant, medicinal smell.

Woodrow looked around aprehensively, feeling a shiver tickle his spine. “On second thought,” he said hoarsely, “we don’t really have any questions we need answered. If you’d just be kind enough to show us the door, we’ll be on our way back to Rosloviggen and won’t trouble you any further.” Latching onto Tasslehoff’s arm, the human began backing toward the door.

“Good!” someone exclaimed from the doorway behind them. Tasslehoff and Woodrow jumped straight up and spun around as one. “Youmadeitsafely. Whatarelief.”

The gnome from the carousel stumbled in, looking exhausted. Removing a pair of tight, black leather gloves one finger at a time, he collapsed into a chair next to the door. “Whataday!” he wheezed, his speech slowing as he relaxed. The gnome pulled a pair of goggles from his eyes and let them snap down around his neck. “How are we going to get the carousel back, Ligg? I forgot. It wasn’t working right anyway, then that teleport ring misfired and I ended up in —”

“Whatdoyoumean?” the bigger gnome with the baggy, green pants demanded, his voice reaching proper gnome velocity in his agitation. “Itwasworkingjustfine! Youweren’tfiddlingwiththemusicagain, wereyou? Well?”

His brother looked sheepish.

“You did!” the second gnome clutched his head and spun around in anguish. “Oooh, that makes me so mad!

Which one did you bash through the ceiling this time, Bozdilcrankinthwakidorious?” His face fell as a thought struck him. “Not the kobold?”

His brother looked even more sheepish.

“He was my favorite!” the second gnome cried. “That’s it! From now on I, Oliggantualixwedelian, will get the specimens!”

“Are those your names?” interrupted Tas.

“And what’s wrong with them? They’re very common first names,” Bozdil said defensively, toying with his goggles.

“But they’re so long,” Tas complained.

“Bozdil and Ligg?” the one named Ligg said, puzzled.

Woodrow’s mind was locked onto one terrible word.

“Specimens?” he squeaked, repeating Ligg.

The others turned to him, and three sets of eyebrows arched in surprise.

“What do you mean, ‘specimens’? “

Ligg gave Bozdil a perturbed look. “I’ve been waiting for you to get back to explain things to them. I think I’ll go build another display room or something.” He turned to the kender and the human. “Nice knowing you.”

Bozdil reached out a hand without looking and caught Ligg’s collar as he tried to leave. “You’ll forgive my brother, but this part is always so difficult,” he began with an apologetic smile to Tas and Woodrow. “I know, we’ll show you! I find visual aids so helpful, don’t you?”

he asked pleasantly.

“Actually,” Woodrow said, looking around the room frantically, “we would find the front door most helpful right now. I don’t know why you’ve brought us here, and I’m not sure I want to know. Live and let live, I always say.” He tried to shield Tasslehoff.

“It’s my job to keep Mr. Burrfoot safe. No offense, Mr.

Bozdil, Mr. Ligg, but this is all very strange — and unacceptable. It would be a good idea if you allowed us to leave right now, before we have to hurt you.” Flexing his muscles, Woodrow wished his voice had not cracked as he spoke.

‘Yeah, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do!” Tasslehoff cried, leaping around the human in his excitement. “Like … like how you made that dragon fly — did I tell you how much fun that was — better than —” Woodrow jabbed Tasslehoff in the ribs. “Clunk ‘em, Woodrow!”

Ligg gave Woodrow a severe look. “There’s no need for any clunking around here. Let’s at least be civilized about this.”

“Ohdearohdearohdear,” muttered Bozdil nervously.

“We’re handling this all wrong! Just come with us, and you’ll understand everything.”

“I’d like to understand something!” the kender said, shaking his head. “Come on, Woodrow, they’re not going to let us leave until we look at whatever it is they want us to see. As long as we’re here, what’s the harm of taking a little peek?

Woodrow pursed his lips. “OK,” he said at last. “But we’re leaving right afterward.” What choice did he have, really?

The gnome brothers looked at each other, giggled conspiratorially, then grew serious.

“Now, is it under ‘K’ for kender, or ‘D’ for demihumans?” Ligg asked Bozdil.

“No, I think it’s under ‘T’ for ‘things with thirty-two ribs,’ or perhaps ‘B’ for ‘upright bipeds’. “

“Wouldn’t that be ‘U’?”

“Oh, you’re right, you’re right,” muttered Bozdil. He scratched his balding head. “Let’s look it up.” Moving a lit candle closer, he pulled a big, cobweb-covered tome from a shelf, sending dust flying. He coughed, and Ligg patted him on the back. Chewing his lip, Bozdil flipped the book open and ticked his index finger down the table of contents until he found what he was looking for. “Ah ha!” He licked his thumb and flipped to the appropriate page. ” ‘K’ for kender!” He let the book thump shut.

“No, that’s where it used to be,” Ligg said wearily.

“Don’t you remember? We reorganized everything ten years ago, so we could keep track of inventory better?

After I built the third tower…?” he continued, trying to jog his brother’s memory.

‘Yes!” Bozdil said. “Now I remember! We put it in Display Room Twelve.”

“So is it ‘D’ or ‘U’ or ‘B’ or what?” Tas nearly exploded.

Ligg looked at the kender as if he were a bug. “Why would it be any of those?”

“But you said — oh, never mind!”

Bozdil led the way and Ligg brought up the rear through at least twelve rooms filled with display cases of all sizes. Tasslehoff stopped in a room that contained aquatic specimens displayed floating in liquid-filled jars.

He paused before the jar containing an Eye of the Deep.

The evil creature’s large central eye in its round, blobbish body and its two small eye stalks looked so deadly, floating like that in its natural environment, that it brought a shudder even to the fearless kender.

Woodrow lingered by a display of stuffed and mounted hunting birds. The hawks reminded him of his training as a squire, and he stood in front of the rows of unblinking owls and falcons, remembering his time at his Uncle Gordon’s home.

Tas and the gnomes didn’t miss him as they stopped in a room whose glass cases varied in size, shape, and color.

They walked slowly past stuffed creatures with plaques proclaiming their species: dryad, gully dwarf, wood sprite, mountain dwarf, and elf.

Bozdil stopped before an empty display case with a plaque at its base that read “kender.” He smiled ruefully and said, “Now do you see why it’s so difficult?”

“I see an empty kender case,” Tas said stupidly.

“Not for long,” Ligg sang.

Tasslehoff still looked puzzled.

“Don’t make me say it!” Bozdil cried in anguish. “It’s nothing personal, mind you,” he continued quickly, noting Tasslehoff’s growing awareness. “But it’s our Life Quest. One of everything on Krynn, so generations from now our descendants will know what a kender looked like, just for instance.

“Oh, don’t look so revolted!” he continued, noting the expression on Tas’s face. “You think we like doing this?

This isn’t what I would have chosen as a Life Quest! How about you, Ligg?”

Insulted, his brother snorted, “Certainly not! I’d almost rather count the number of raisins in muffins, like Cousin Gleekfub, for the rest of my life’s Hmmphh!” He lifted his nose imperiously.

Bozdil peered at the captives accusingly. “You have no idea how difficult this job is. Take trolls, for instance.

What do you do with a troll? It can only be killed by burning or immersing in acid —,” he snickered without humor “— and you can well imagine what that does to their appearance.” Bozdil’s hands raised in a gesture of helplessness. “And if we kill one, we certainly can’t display it. So how can we get a proper-looking troll for display without killing it?” He frowned. “I still haven’t figured out a solution to that one. Have you been thinking about it, Ligg, like you said you would?” Bozdil cocked one eyebrow at his brother.

“Troglodytes!” Ligg barked suddenly.

“I beg your pardon?” said Tasslehoff, startled.

“Troglodytes!” Ligg repeated. “They can change color at will, you know. If the one we select decides to make itself green at the last moment and we’ve selected a nice green jar, we’d have to change it.” He grew very serious.

“Selection of water and jar color is very tricky, and can change at the last minute.”

“Details, alwaysdetails!” Bozdil had worked himself into a real frenzy on the subject. His face was beet red, and he was hopping about in his ill-fitting shoes. “New breeds, half-breeds — it’s impossible to keep up! But we have to try.”

“You mean you’re going to pickle me?” Tasslehoff exclaimed, sucking in his breath.

“Oh, heavens no,” Bozdil kindly reassured him.

Tasslehoff exhaled.

“We always stuff the mammals. Now, I’ll need your full name and date of birth for our records.” He watched disbelief grow in the kender’s face. “I told you,” Bozdil said slowly to Tas, as if speaking to a child, “it’s nothing personal — you seem pleasant enough. But it’s what we do.”

“Well, I’m taking it personally.” Woodrow squeaked hysterically from the doorway, his face pale, his eyes wide.

Bozdil peered darkly at the straw-haired man. “I didn’t even want you — we already have a human male specimen. You just sort of latched yourself onto my dragon and barged your way in uninvited.”

Woodrow didn’t know how to react to that statement.

That there wasn’t an empty display case bearing a plaque with his race on it was only marginally good news. He knew he had to do something. He could think of only one thing to do.

“Run for it, Mr. Burrfoot!” the human screamed, grabbing the kender and yanking him out of the room, into a hallway. Stunned, Tasslehoff stumbled over his hoopak, recovered, and then landed on his feet. Woodrow ran down hall after hall, the kender in tow. Then, he came to a door, twisted the knob, and flung the heavy wooden door open. For a moment, he saw sunlight, then he heard the most awful roaring. Into the doorway shot the open, drooling maw of an enormous mountain lion.

Woodrow slammed the door shut and leaped away from it, panting, waiting for either the gnomes to reappear or the mountain lion to shred the door while he thought.

“What are we running for?” Tasslehoff asked, never one to flee a fight. “I’ve got my hoopak — well send that lion packing!” Tasslehoff reached for the doorknob.

Woodrow’s hand stayed him. “I have nothing to help you but a tiny dagger i A lion would tear us apart and eat us for dinner, hoopak or no hoopak! No offense,” he panted.

“I’m not afraid,” Tasslehoff said, jutting out his chest proudly.

“That’s good, because I’m frightened enough for both of us,” Woodrow said seriously. “What I can’t figure out is where Bozdil and Ligg are.”

“They’re probably tired from running and haven’t found us yet,” Tasslehoff suggested.

“Good guess.” Woodrow pulled the kender after him.

Woodrow and Tas tried five other doors and were met by a crocodile pit, a huge ape with fangs like daggers, something that looked like a walking lump of garbage, a five-foot-long scorpion — Tas wanted to stop for a good look at that oddity but Woodrow forbade it — and a room so filled with spiderwebs that Woodrow did not even want to know what was living there. They saw no sign of Ligg and Bozdil.

At last, they entered a large, one-story chamber that was empty except for huge, regularly spaced support pillars. It appeared to be an unused display chamber.

“There’s no way out through here,” Tas warned. But the door had already slammed shut, practically in their faces. Kender and human rocked back on their heels and both felt a sense of dread.

“We’re sorry you made us do this.” Bozdil’s whiny voice filtered through a small grate in the large, wooden door. “We would rather you had been a little more civilized about all this. You could have remained free to wander about the place and dine with us this evening. We certainly would have given you a nicer room, too. I would have liked that — we don’t get too many visitors who can talk, you realize.”

“But you’ve ruined it by being selfish,” finished Ligg in an accusing, nasal tone. “We can’t be blamed.” Tas could see Ligg’s shoulders through the grate, shrugging. “Now we have things to prepare.” With that, they disappeared.

“I’ve got to say, Woodrow, that this sure makes getting married look attractive,” Tas sighed, sliding down the wall into a heap.

Woodrow parted his limp, sweat-soaked hair from his eyes and collapsed next to Tasslehoff on the floor. “You could say that again, Mr. Burrfoot.” He was quickly asleep.

For once, the kender seemed to know a joke when he heard one. Tired beyond caring, he extinguished the spark in his brain, like a flame snuffed out by wet fingers.

Suddenly, Tas heard something.

What was that noise?

Something was whimpering behind the pillars. Tasslehoff crept past Woodrow’s sleeping form and tiptoed from pillar to pillar, peering carefully around each. Near the back of the dark room, he leaned around a pillar and gasped.

Lying in the shadows in a disconsolate heap was a large — enormous, actually — hairy elephantlike creature! It lay on its side, thumping its trunk in an unhappy rhythm, while tears coursed down its thick, gray coat, settling in a puddle by its fierce-looking tusks. Suddenly it raised its head and peered at Tasslehoff around the pillar.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone was in here,” it said in a highpitched, sing-song voice.

“You can talk!” gasped Tas, stepping from behind the pillar.

“Of course I can. Don’t all woolly mammoths talk?”

Tasslehoff blinked, taken aback. “I — I’m not sure. I’ve never met one before. Still, I’m fairly certain they don’t talk, as a general rule.”

A sigh like a trumpet blast erupted from the mammoth’s trunk. “I’ve never met one either.” The creature’s head dropped back to the stone floor, and a big tear squeezed out of one large, pink-rimmed, gray eye.

The tender-hearted kender knelt by the animal’s massive shoulder and patted it comfortingly. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Don’t cry, you’ll flood the place and we’ll all drown!” he giggled.

Another large tear plopped onto the ground. “What does it matter if we drown? The gnomes’ll kill us eventually anyway,” the mammoth moaned.

Tas was beginning to understand. He patted the creature again. “Don’t worry, well find some way out of here,” he said hopefully. “Then Woodrow and I will take you with us.”

The mammoth’s eyes opened wider. “You would do that?” he said shrilly, then slumped back down unhappily. “It wouldn’t matter if you did think of a way out.

I’m too big to get through the doors. This is the only room left in the whole place that’s big enough to hold me.”

“Then how did they get you in here?” Tas inquired, looking from the enormous mammoth back toward the tiny doorway.

The mammoth raised itself half-heartedly up onto one knee-joint, and the floor shook. “I was brought here when I was very little,” he said simply, his voice weary.

“How long ago was that?”

“Bozdil and Ligg tell me it was more than fifteen years ago.”

“They’ve kept you locked up in here for fifteen years?”

Tasslehoff was incredulous.

The mammoth’s eyes clouded with concern. “Oh, it’s not their fault,” he said unexpectedly. Seeing Tas’s confusion, he said, “Let me start from the beginning….”

Tas made no effort to interrupt.

“Bozdil found me on one of his specimen expeditions fifteen years ago. I was just a pup at the time, wandering around in the hills south of Zeriak, or so he says, with no sign of my mother. He brought me back here, and he and Ligg thought I was too small to be their woolly mammoth specimen. So they just decided to let me grow up.”

The mammoth let out another buglelike sigh. Tas took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to the end of the creature’s trunk.

“Thank you,” it sniffed. “Anyway, they fed me and played with me — so I wouldn’t become too flabby to be a good specimen, they said. And I learned to speak. They treated me like the family pet!” Another shattering snort of anguish ripped through the room.

The noise jolted Woodrow awake. Moments later, his white head poked tentatively around the pillar. “Mr.

Burrfoot?”

“Woodrow, meet — ?” Tas looked at the mammoth blankly.

“The gnomes call me Winnie,” it said. “Even I can’t pronounce the full name they gave me.”

Tasslehoff patted one of Winnie’s flat-bottomed feet in a modified handshake. “Tasslehoff Burrfoot.”

“Woodrow,” the human said dubiously, eyeing the mammoth.

“Glad to meet you,” replied the long-haired mammoth courteously.

“Woodrow, we’ve got to think of a way to help Winnie escape! Bozdil and Ligg mean to kill him!” the kender said earnestly.

“That seems to be their overall plan, all right,” said the human. “Us included.” He began pacing, his hands clasped behind his back.

“I know! Let’s jump them when they come back with our dinner, and clunk their heads together!” Tas suggested.

Winnie perked up at that, and his eyes opened wide in fear. “Oh, I couldn’t let you do that to Bozdil and Ligg.

They’re all the family I have!”

Tas’s lips pursed in irritation. “Well, they’re ready to pack you full of cotton!”

Winnie’s large head shook slowly from side to side.

“That’s just the problem. They haven’t been able to bring themselves to do it! I can’t get out; they can’t kill me. But they still need a woolly mammoth specimen! They haven’t spent much time with me lately, so I think the end is near. Oh, it’s all so hopeless!” Winnie pressed his trunk to the ground and wailed and wailed, until every cloth Tasslehoff had was soaked with mammoth tears.

This has to be much worse than getting married, Tas thought unhappily. “We’ll do something, Winnie, don’t worry.”

The kender only wished he knew what that something might be.

Cpapter 16

“You don’t actually expect me to believe this is real silk,” Gisella scoffed, casually tossing a robin’segg-blue bolt of cloth to the side, boredom on her rouged face.

“But of course it’s silk,” the hairy old dwarf said. He hefted the bolt and lovingly held a corner of cloth in his hand. “Look at how few imperfections are present,”

he said, flicking a small, thick, raised nub in the fabric. “You don’t usually find such perfection in cotton weaving.”

Gisella knew he was right. Cotton was coarser and often contained many more thread imperfections, which professionals called slubs. She wanted that fabric — badly. The airy, genuine silk would feel like butter against her fair skin, and its rich hue would complement her fiery hair. In her mind’s eye she saw herself in a clingy gown of blue-green, not to mention that she could sell the remaining fabric at a substantial profit. The vision made her smile like a cat in the sun.

But she didn’t want to pay what the merchant was asking.

She had gulled this old, buck-toothed dwarf, but she feared he was reaching the limit of his patience and his greed.

She wanted that fabric.

“OK, three steel, but not a copper more,” she exhaled.

“Three and a half,” he intoned, wagging his head.

“Sold!” Gisella hugged the fabric to her chest. It was not the best deal she had ever made, but the fabric was worth the cost. Now all she had to do was get him to extend her some credit until she could bargain her way into some cash. She was wetting her lips for the performance, when she heard shrieks.

Woodrow and Burrfoot! She suddenly remembered them and spun around. They weren’t in the booth. She heard the shriek again and she looked over at the thing the baron had called a carousel. Dwarves were fleeing like trolls on fire, jumping from the carousel and running for their lives. There was an empty slot in the carousel, as if one of the creatures had been ripped from its place. Hearing more shrieks of terror, she noticed that more and more people were looking up, so Gisella raised her eyes.

The beloved fabric slid from her fingers to the dusty ground. Gisella could scarcely comprehend what she saw.

Tasslehoff Burrfoot was soaring and diving over the city on the back of a red, winged creature that looked vaguely like a dragon from legend, except for the pole intersecting its body. A human — her human, she realized — clung to the creature’s thrashing tail, snapping like a weight on a kite’s streamer.

“Tasslehoff Burrfoot, I demand that you return here at once!” the flame-haired dwarf screamed, running over to stand by the carousel. She shook her fist at the sky. “You, too, Woodrow! You were supposed to watch him! You’re fired!”

Where on Krynn had the red creature come from?

“Ohdearohdearohdear,” a voice moaned nearby.

“Whereisthatring?”

Gisella looked down and saw a bald gnome in baggy pants and a long, white jacket, with goggles strung around his neck on a cord. The gnome’s hands were covered by black leather gloves, and he was frantically rummaging through the pockets on the inside of the coat and turning them inside-out.

“Are you the gnome who owns this contraption?”

she demanded. Without waiting for a response, she continued, “What on Krynn happened here?” She snatched him. “I’m holding you responsible. Where is that thing going with my friends?”

“Ah ha!” The inventor slid out from under her hand and victoriously held a small ring aloft. “Ireallywould enjoyexplainingeverythingtoyou, especiallysinceit appearsIcouldstartanywhere, butImustbegoing.” The gnome deftly lifted his goggles and let them fall into place over his eyes with a loud “snap.” “Anothertime, perhaps,” he added, poking his thumb through a neat little hole in his right glove. Quick as a flash he slipped the ring over his thumb, squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and then was gone!

Gisella’s hand dropped uselessly. She whirled around, scanning the crowd, but she saw no sign of the gnome. The dwarf squinted up into the sky at the nowdistant, black dot that was Tasslehoff and Woodrow.

Just then she spotted a uniformed dwarf with strawberry-blond hair and beard doing his rounds and swaggering in her direction.

“Excuse me, Colonel,” she began.

The dwarf blushed under his beard. “I’m just a captain, ma’am.” He eyed Gisella appreciatively.

“Isn’t that wonderful. I was wondering if you have any idea where the gnome who owns this carousel lives?” She sidled up to him, and he blushed again.

“Not officially, no, ma’am, I wouldn’t,” he said. “I know of a tower in the mountains to the east, but I don’t know who owns it. You could try the festival officials, but their office is closed until after Oktoberfest.”

“Well, someone must know who he is!” she exploded.

“I’m sure someone does,” the officer said, “but the records are locked up for the next three days.”

“One of his creatures just flew off to the east with my friends, and I have to sit for three days waiting to find out where he lives?” Gisella’s face was red with fury.

“I’m afraid so, ma’am,” the officer said apologetically. “I could send a patrol out after them, though.”

She smiled broadly and clapped him on the back.

“That’s more like it!”

“But they can’t leave for three days, however. The first team is just ten days into a three-week sweep to the south. The second team left just last night for three days to the east.”

“This is an emergency! Call them back, or whatever it is you military types do.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, either, ma’am.” The captain was looking very sad. “By the time anyone reached the group and returned, the patrol would be scheduled to arrive anyway. But if you care to lodge a complaint…”

“Never mind, Private, I’ll take care of it myself.”

The dwarf officer beat a hasty retreat from the fiery dwarf.

Damn!” Gisella cursed, stomping her foot petulantly. Now what was she going to do? She couldn’t wait three days.

“Excuse me, milady, but you look like you could use some help,” a deep, male voice suggested.

Gisella looked up in irritation. Suddenly, her eyes widened with appreciation, and she exhaled softly.

The speaker was a tall, well-muscled human. His features were strong, his jaw square and jutting, as if the bones beneath had been chiseled from cool marble.

His eyes, appraising her as well, were deep set and dark, faintly unfriendly in a challenging sort of way that excited Gisella. His hair was dark and coarse, almost bristly. His clothing — an olivecolored tunic, fawn breeches that tucked into calf-high leather boots, and skirted, scaled brigandine armor — was expensive and immaculate.

The only feature she could find fault with — and she looked hard — was his nose. Not that it was bad, she told herself, just a little less than perfect. Round and somewhat large, and turned up slightly, it gave him a slightly porcine look.

“Milady? I am Denzil, at your service.” He held his hand out.

Her eyes snapped up from his biceps to his face.

“Huh?” she grunted, tongue-tied in the presence of such physical magnificence. “Oh, hello! I’m Gisella Hornslager.” She held her hand and her breath as his lips lingered over her white knuckles. She giggled like a schoolgirl and reluctantly extracted her hand.

“Just Denzil?” she asked, batting her eyes coyly.

“Do you require more?”

“N-no!” she stuttered, off balance. “Just curious.”

“May I be of some assistance, then?” he offered. “I could not help overhearing your distress.”

The redhaired dwarf blushed.

“Were those your friends on that monstrosity?”

“Yes and no. Woodrow is my employee. The kender is baggage. I was delivering him to a customer.”

“So the flight wasn’t planned?”

She snorted inelegantly. “Not by me, it wasn’t.” She thought about that for a moment. Woodrow was too naive and innocently loyal to dream up such a plan, the kender too frivolous. It had to be the work of someone else. “The strangest thing about it is that no one is investigating the disappearance. I can’t get a patrol to go out for three days! Don’t these people think that flying away on a wooden animal is a bit unusual?”

she finished, gazing challengingly at the unconcerned crowd.

Denzil’s tone was ironic. “No one is ever surprised when a gnomish invention goes awry.”

Her eyebrows rose in agreement. “I’ve got to find.

them. I could have squeezed some answers out of the gnome who owns the carousel if he hadn’t disappeared on me.”

“Perhaps he left to find and return your, um, friends,” Denzil suggested.

Gisella shook her head firmly. “I can’t take the chance and wait. I must return Burrfoot to Kendermore in a week. If I have to find him and fetch him back by myself, I will!”

“He must be very important for you to risk your own life to find him,” Denzil said, watching her closely.

Gisella laughed with genuine mirth. “I wouldn’t say he’s that important, no. He means a lot of money to me, that’s all. I certainly don’t intend to die looking for him.”

“Then you must let me help you,” Denzil insisted.

“The mountains are no place for a lady alone. There’s no telling what you’ll encounter.”

Gisella’s eyes widened in surprise, then delight. This was an unexpected turn of events. She was not about to point out to her attractive new acquaintance that she had spent most of her life traveling alone.

“I have no money to pay you for your time,” she said coyly. “Perhaps we could make another arrangement suitable to us both?” she said, clarifying her offer with a suggestive smile.

“I’ve never found it necessary to trade for that,” he said without bragging. “Anyway, no payment is expected in this case. I was tracking someone who had a map that I needed, and my search lead me to Rosloviggen. But now I would enjoy the company — and a new mystery.”

Gisella gave him her most enticing smile, which he returned. She noticed with a twinge of regret that his smile did not reach his eyes. It was something she looked for in a man. However, that he was willing to help her for nothing more than compensated for his cold eyes.

“We should waste no time,” he stated. “My horse is just at the edge of the square. We could ride to your lodgings, collect your things, and be in the mountains before midday.”

Gisella ignored the calls of the fabric merchant, whom she had no money to pay anyway, and followed Denzil to a stable just off the square. He emerged with the largest, blackest horse she had ever seen.

Something about the animal disturbed her. Its nostrils were unusually red, and its breath seemed to steam more than it should, in the cool, mountain air. It was as if the animal were powered by coal. The horse, obviously high-strung, pawed the ground. Its lips moved but no noise came from them, and when it walked, its hooves did not clatter. The animal was eerily void of sound.

The stable master stood back from the creature, counting the coins Denzil had pressed into his hands.

Meanwhile, Denzil swung nimbly into the saddle and patted the monstrous horse affectionately. Then he held out his hand to the russet-haired dwarf.

Gisella’s arms hung at her side. “Is it magical?” she asked tentatively.

“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “Scul is a nightmare.

Give me your hand and I’ll help you if you’re frightened.”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” she said with determination, taking his hand anyway. He pulled her up behind himself effortlessly, leaving her breathless. She gave him directions to the baron’s home.

Gisella looped her arms around Denzil’s waist armor and leaned into his muscular back. Drawing a long, contented breath, she filled her nostrils with the familiar, manly scent of leather and sweat, and something else — peculiarly Denzil’s. She pressed her face into the arch behind his shoulder blade and forgot about anything troubling.

Despite the nightmare’s intimidating appearance, the black animal’s ride was the smoothest she’d ever experienced. Riding Scul was what she imagined it would be like to ride on a cloud — a frigid storm cloud.

Beneath her hands and seat, the animal felt as cold as death, right through the heavy leather saddle. She snuggled into Denzil, sighing blissfully as they rode.

“We’re here.” She heard the words rumble through his chest, and she looked up reluctantly.

Gisella knew the baron and baroness would be busy with official festival duties all day. She ordered one of the servants to take care of her horse while she returned to her room, than changed into her most revealing traveling clothes — a calfskin jerkin worn without a blouse, and laced pants — gathered the rest of her belongings, and hurried back to the front step.

Two of the baron’s grooms were flanking her saddled and bridled horse, trying to keep it calm. Its eyes were wide, its nostrils flared. Every time it caught sight of the nightmare it tossed its head and pawed the ground.

“She’ll calm down before long,” Denzil announced.

“They always do.”

With that, he turned and rode from the baron’s yard. Gisella followed, thinking about what the evening might hold in store.

They climbed into the mountains, over a carpet of crunchy, fragrant pine needles, riding until late in the afternoon. Long shadows soaked the ground beneath the heavy, sweeping bows of the mountain fur trees.

Sunlight seldom poked through the thick treetops. No breeze stirred the branches. No birds chirped. Gisella became acutely aware of a growing stillness in the air, which she attributed to the nightmare, although she could not explain why.

Eventually they stopped in a small clearing. Gisella shivered in the silence and the cold. “How do we know we’re looking in the right place for this tower?”

“We don’t,” Denzil said simply. “I watched the dragon until it was a distant speck. I believe we’re on the right track.” His eyebrows knit as he squinted toward the sun, which had dropped below the summit.

“We’ll stop here tonight.” He swung down from Scul’s back, speaking a few tender words into the anxious animal’s ear. The horse trotted to a nearby tree to graze.

“That’s quite a trick.” Gisella’s voice was filled with admiration as she held out her hand demurely.

Denzil took it and helped her down. “Scul and I have an understanding,” he said mysteriously.

Turning his back to Gisella, he took stock of what needed to be done. There were plenty of pine needles and dry branches at hand, and before long a small, cheery fire blazed within a circle of rocks.

Clapping his hands to remove dust and needles, Denzil rummaged through his saddlebags until he found the bundles of dried meats and fruits that would be their dinner. Only when he was finished did he turn and notice that Gisella was nowhere in sight.

Anger, the only emotion Denzil ever displayed, flushed his cheeks.

But within moments, the dwarf stepped through the ring of trees surrounding the clearing, wearing a thin, red wrap and a smile. “I found a little mountain stream not far from here. The water was wickedly cold, butI-“

Denzil strode forward and viciously jerked her by her wrist into the clearing. “Don’t ever do that again.”

Gisella’s smile fell. “I was only gone for a few minutes. Who made you the boss, anyway?” She tried to pull her arm from him. “Hey, you’re hurting me.”

His strong fingers tightened around her wrist, until dark, finger-shaped shadows appeared on her skin.

Stifling a cry, she tugged again, and Denzil released his grip. Gisella rubbed the bruises, staring at him speechlessly.

“Your little adventure was rash and dangerous. You never know what you’ll find — or what will find you -in the woods,” was his only explanation.

The dwarf’s anger and confusion subsided somewhat. Could it be that this handsome human was worried about her? Setting her chin, she tugged her wrap more closely and arranged herself on a boulder near the fire.

“What’s for dinner?” she asked, keeping a distance in her tone.

Denzil tossed her a small, cloth-wrapped bundle of dried rations. Gisella stared at the unappetizing pile briefly, poking through it experimentally. While it certainly looked dull, it didn’t look unhealthy, and she had not eaten since breakfast. Gisella shrugged, and soon was gnawing absentmindedly on a strip of beef, made sufficiently tantalizing with spicy thoughts of Denzil.

Afterward, Denzil settled back on one of the bedrolls he’d spread before the fire, picking his teeth with a small, sharpened stick. Staring into the flames, he said, “This night reminds me of my favorite poem. Do you like poetry?” Without waiting for an answer, he began reciting in a reverent voice, speaking in lively bursts:

Easeful the forest, easeful its mansions perfected Where we grow and decay no longer, our trees ever green,

Ripe fruit never falling, streams still and transparent As glass, as the heart in repose this lasting day.

Beneath these branches the willing surrender of movement,

The business of birdsong, of love, left on the borders With all of the fevers, the failures of memory.

Easeful the forest, easeful its mansions perfected.

And light upon light, light as dismissal of darkness, Beneath these branches no shade, for shade is forgotten

In the warmth of the light and the cool smell of the leaves

Where we grow and decay; no longer, our trees ever green.

Here there is quiet, where music turns in upon silence, Here at the world’s imagined edge, where clarity Completes the senses, at long last where we behold Ripe fruit never falling, streams still and transparent.

Where the tears are dried from our faces, or settle, Still as a stream in accomplished countries of peace, And the traveler opens, permitting the voyage of light As air, as the heart in repose this lasting day.

Easeful the forest, easeful its mansions perfected Where we grow and decay no longer, our trees ever green,

Ripe fruit never falling, streams still and transparent As air, as the heart in repose this lasting day.

Denzil stopped with a sharp exhalation, still staring into the flames. ” ‘The Bird Song of Wayreth Forest.’

Quivalen Sath,” he said solemnly.

Gisella watched his stony profile from her own bedroll. What a complicated package this man was — at Chapter 17

Damaris touched the scneaming human’s shoulder tentatively. “If you don’t mind my saying, you sound a little unhinged, whoever you are.”

Phineas was pressed against the wall of Vinsint’s room, still seated on the table, whimpering and gibbering with fear. When Damaris spoke to him, he closed his mouth and for the first time his rheumy eyes looked up at her. “Damaris Metwinger, I presume?”

“That’s me,” she said pleasantly. Her light blue eyes were as large as her smile. “Who are you?”

Trapspringer hastily made the introductions.

“I’m glad that’s settled,” the ogre said mildly, continuing his meal preparations as if nothing untoward had happened. “You’ll find the accommodations quite comfortable, and I’m told I’m a good cook. You’ll like it here, once you get used to it.”

“We can’t stay.” Phineas wailed, frantically straining against the bonds at his wrists.

“And why not?” the ogre demanded, gnarly hands on his hips.

“Not now, Phineas,” hissed Trapspringer. As a rule, the elder kender wasn’t particularly cautious. But he was a little concerned that the human’s rising hysteria might bring an abrupt end to what might prove to be a very interesting experience — the remainder of his life.

“What Phineas means,” Trapspringer explained, “is that we wouldn’t want to intrude or take advantage of your good nature.”

The ogre smiled broadly, displaying a mouthful of uneven, jagged, and broken teeth. “You wouldn’t be intruding! I love company! That’s why I’m here!”

“You’re here just for the company?” Even Trapspringer was confused by that.

Vinsint put a whole golden, dried fish on each of four tin plates. “Indirectly, yes. You see, many years ago, I came to this area with a raiding party from the Ogrelands, just north and east of here.” He ladled a steaming white sauce over the fish. “I was wounded by an arrow from one of my own people, and they left me to die, I don’t know how long I lay there, delirious with pain.

“Anyway, the next thing I knew, I was lying in the softest bed on Krynn. Some kender had found me, brought me to their home just beyond the Ruins, and were healing me with herbs.” Vinsint’s eyes misted over with the warm memory. He shook his head happily, and a tear splashed onto a plate.

‘My wound was serious and took a long time to heal.

The kender treated me like family and taught me their language, which answers your earlier question,” Vinsint said, looking at the blond-haired female.

‘Why didn’t you go home after you were healed?” Damaris asked, taking a bite of the delicious, steaming fish.

Vinsint winced. “You kender certainly are nosy, aren’t you? Well, if you must know, it was no accident that one of my own people shot me.” The thought obviously still pained the ogre. “Apparently my people thought I wasn’t bloodthirsty enough for an ogre. Killing and terrorizing is OK every now and then, but I don’t live for it the way they do, you know what I mean?” The ogre hunched his massive shoulders. “They took the opportunity to get rid of me.” He sighed heavily. “So, you see, there was nothing to return to.”

“But that still doesn’t explain why you ended up here,”

Damaris pointed out a bit snottily. She didn’t like being called nosy.

Vinsint glared at her and spoke to Trapspringer. “I decided to help the people who had helped me. And what better way than to rescue kender from the magical effects of the grove? I’m sort of a self-appointed sentinel.”

At the mention of the enchanted grove, each of Vinsint’s visitors colored and squirmed. Phineas was a bit hazy on the subject, but he was fairly certain he’d been barking like a dog when Vinsint found him and dragged him into the tunnel. The human closed his eyes slowly now and shuddered.

Trapspringer and Damaris both suddenly realized that the ogre had caught them in the middle of something very intimate. Remembering now, the kender locked gazes, then looked away uncomfortably.

Phineas pushed aside his shame to say, “But I thought you said you wanted to help kender. Doesn’t holding them captive sort of work against that?”

“I don’t keep them forever,” Vinsint said darkly. “Besides, I think keeping me company is a small price to pay for being saved from the grove. I get lonely here! I’m always polite and friendly, and I serve good food.”

“I suppose it’s important to be polite when you’re plugugly,” Damaris agreed with a kender’s usual alacrity.

Vinsint looked at her ominously. In silence he laid out dinner, and everyone but Phineas ate with great enthusiasm.

After dinner, the ogre pushed his tin plate back and belched loudly. “What shall we do after dinner? Cards?

Dice? Marbles? I have them all.”

“Let’s play ‘Let the prisoners go’, ” Phineas suggested under his breath. Trapspringer flashed him a look of warning.

“You name the game,” Vinsint insisted of Trapspringer.

The elder kender glanced uneasily at Phineas. “All right. Pick-up sticks!”

Vinsint clapped his hands together with a crack that reverberated in Trapspringer’s chest cavity. “I love pickup sticks! It’s my favorite game!”

The ogre leaped to his feet, knocking over his stool and rattling the room, then clomped toward a pile of boxes in a corner. Vinsint pawed through the boxes, flinging all manner of things to the floor in his haste.

Trapspringer saw manacles, a jeweled necklace, a scroll case, a chunk of a mildewed saddle, and other things that he could not identify. When Vinsint stomped back, clutching an intricately carved ivory tube in his enormous hand, he cleared the dishes from the table with one swipe of his large hand.

“Ahhhhh,” he crooned, easing his bulk back onto his righted stool. “I’ll bet you’ve never seen a pick-up sticks set like this one.” With exaggerated care, he slid the lid off the tube. Then, with a flourish, he slowly upended the cylinder until the long, slim sticks tumbled out onto the table. “Gold plated!” purred Vinsint.

Damaris, Trapspringer, and Phineas stared at the painted sticks on the table. After a long moment’s pause, Trapspringer said, “Those aren’t gold. They aren’t even painted gold.”

Vinsint flicked at the end of his nose selfconsciously.

“No, they aren’t,” he agreed, “except for these two.” He mauled the delicate sticks with his melon-sized hands, eventually plucking out two that were vaguely gold colored. “The real gold sticks disappeared one by one over the years. These two are all that I have left. But it used to be a complete set of gold-plated sticks. It sure was something to see.”

Vinsint scooped up the sticks and stood them on their ends, ready to begin the game. But then his head twisted to the side abruptly. “Did you hear that?” He smiled and clapped his hands. “Someone else is walking through the grove. More company!” He jumped up and began leaping excitedly in circles.

Vinsint stopped suddenly, and his smile fell. “I must hurry before they somehow find their own way out.” He stomped over to a large cupboard that sat on the floor.

Opening the door, he hauled out yard after yard of heavy, rusty chain, coiling it about his arm. His three guests cringed, thinking he meant to tie them up. Instead he took the chains to the door and dumped them on the other side, in the tunnel.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said in a sing-song voice. ‘You’re thinking, ‘why does he need so many chains to lock this door?’ I’ll tell you. I’ve left a lot of kender in here in my time. Always when I went into the grove I’d lock the door, come back not ten minutes later, and they’d be gone, ‘poof.’ ” He snapped his bigknuckled fingers.

“Maybe they escaped another way,” suggested Trapspringer.

“There is no other way,” the ogre said simply. “The funniest thing is that the kender always lock the chains back up again, and they don’t even look like they’ve been touched. So, I add more chains each time. Maybe I can slow ‘em down enough until I can get back.”

He took the last of the chains from the cupboard and slipped through the door. “I’ll just be gone a few minutes, and when I come back we’ll have a fifth player for pickup sticks. Don’t try to get away, now.” With that, Vinsint closed the door, and they could hear chains being strung on the other side.

Phineas stood up and began to pace nervously. “Do you suppose he’ll let us go now that he’ll have new people to keep him company?”

Damaris shook her head and her blond hair flew in a halfcircle. “It didn’t sound to me like he had any intention of letting us go. You go first,” she offered Trapspringer, pointing to the jumbled sticks on the table.

“Are you just going to sit there and wait for him to come back?” squealed Phineas.

“No, we’re going to play this game,” said Trapspringer, concentrating on lifting a stick perfectly from the tangle.

“Why aren’t we looking for another way out?” the human demanded, glaring at the kender on the floor.

Trapspringer shrugged. “Vinsint said there wasn’t one.

But it would be interesting to explore the rest of this place,” he had to admit.

“You’re just saying that because you made that blue stick move and have to give up your turn,” sulked Damaris.

Trapspringer laughed. “I did no such thing! That was a clean draw.”

The blonde kender stuck out her lip in what she hoped was an adorable pout. “Well, at least I can beat him!” She pointed at the red-faced human.

Trapspringer’s laughter turned into full-blown snorting. He liked the way the torchlight brought out the yellow in Damaris’s hair. “Sure you could, but humans are lousy at pick-up sticks. Vinsint could probably beat him, and Vinsint’s hands are bigger than my head.”

“That’s not the point,” she said with mock indignation.

Phineas rolled his eyes in disgust. “If you two would stop billing and cooing at each other, we might find a way out of here!” He looked to the stairway. “Those steps have to lead somewhere!”

Trapspringer helped Damaris to her feet. She selfconsciously rubbed at her cheeks with her sleeves to remove any grime and straightened the broken feathers in her hair.

Phineas and Trapspringer each took a lit torch from the walls. “After you,” the human said, jerking his head from Trapspringer to the steps.

The older kender, holding Damaris’s hand, set off at a carefree pace up the stone steps that spiraled upward beyond the reach of the torchlight. Moss and fungus grew through cracks in the stone walls. Phineas followed closely, hunched over defensively, his eyes darting everywhere at once.

“You know, from the circular shape of it,” Trapspringer said, “I’ll bet this is the Tower of High Sorcery. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier.” Damaris gave his hand a squeeze.

“Does it matter?” Phineas asked cynically.

“It means we might run into some leftover magic,” Damaris said, obviously excited by the prospect.

Phineas stumbled over a loose stone in the ancient stairs and grabbed for the wall. “Leftover magic? What does that mean?”

“His voice is getting more shrill than a harpy’s,” Damaris pointed out to Trapspringer.

“This single tower is all that’s left of the complex that was created here at the dawn of time,” explained Trapspringer, “along with the other four Towers of High Sorcery — Wayreth, Palanthas, Istar, and some other one I can’t remember now. Several of them are still used as centers of magic, but this one was abandoned shortly after the Cataclysm.”

“Which means?” Phineas asked impatiently.

“Magic was once performed here regularly. There might be some of it still lingering, like a spell that never met its mark —”

“— Or magical monsters might still be guarding the upper floors!” Damaris suggested enthusiastically.

“Spellbooks, scrolls, magic rings, bracelets, potions, wands, staffs, gloves, swords —”

“I get your point,” Phineas gulped. Perhaps he’d been rash to suggest exploration. They continued spiraling upward.

“Maybe a wicked sorceror, abandoned — banished, that’s better! — by his peers lives at the top of the tower,” Damaris continued her daydream. “Lonely and bitter, he’s practicing his art on kender! Maybe well get magicked!”

“Except for the magic, you just described Vinsint,” Phineas scoffed.

“I knew I heard it somewhere,” Damaris mumbled.

“I haven’t been magicked since I tangled with that goat-sucker bird,” Trapspringer said wistfully.

“You met a goat-sucker bird?” Damaris asked enviously. Goat-sucker birds were legendary among kender.

“I’ve never known anyone who’s seen one! I didn’t realize they were magical. What did it look likel Did it try to peck your eyes out?”

“Oh, yes!” Trapspringer said, a swagger in his voice.

“Of course they’re magical! That’s why they’re so fierce.

This one came at me out of a murky swamp — they live in them, you know. Well, it…”

Phineas’s legs ached, and he was finding it difficult to catch his breath. They’d been climbing for some time before he thought to start counting, and even without that he estimated they’d covered more than three hundred steps without a rest. Wheezing, he collapsed on a step.

“I’m beginning to think Vinsint was right: There is nothing else in here. Maybe we should turn back. There’s no telling what he’ll do if he returns and sees that we’ve slipped away.” The human shuddered, picturing the ogre’s bulging muscles.

But the eager kender were already out of earshot.

Afraid to get too far behind, Phineas struggled to his feet and forced himself to continue upward. Holding the torch aloft, he thought he could see a ceiling at last.

Abruptly, the stairway emptied out into a chamber that was slightly larger than the one far below. There the human found Damaris and Trapspringer running to and fro in the sumptuously appointed room.

Phineas frowned. Wasn’t it odd that this place, so obviously visited by light-fingered kender for centuries, still had any furnishings at all? He placed his torch in a sconce on a wall and looked about the room. One thing quickly caught his attention.

The human stared, open-mouthed, at the large, wooden, intricately carved desk against the wall to the right of the stairs. Behind it was a stuffed leather chair with a wooden carving of a dragon’s head on its high back. On the desk’s blotter was a quill and a dried-up bottle of ink, a pair of spectacles, and a wine glass, all covered with an inch of dust.

He looked in admiration at the leather-bound volumes that circled the room. They were all dust-covered, too, but undamaged. Twisting his head to read the spines, he spotted one called “Herbal Medicine,” which sounded interesting. He took it down and slipped it under his arm.

Damaris and Trapspringer both were busy tapping here and there in search of hidden drawers, which they hoped might hold gems or other interesting items.

Suddenly, Trapspringer snapped his fingers. “Something about this place looked familiar, and now I remember what it is. This room looks just like the drawing on the other half of the map I gave Tasslehoff.”

Damaris looked up from behind the desk with a selfsatisfied grin. “I found a lever for something!”

Phineas’s eyebrows rose. But before he could form a question he heard a loud “ping!”

Suddenly, the room filled with roiling, purple mist streaked with rich emerald green. The mist extinguished the torch in the sconce, then Trapspringer’s as well. But it produced a dim glow of its own.

“What did you do, Damaris?” thundered Phineas, crawling behind the desk.

“I’m not sure,” she breathed anxiously. Even in the fog her eyes looked as big as tea plates. “But isn’t it pretty?”

A vicious wind grew on the other side of the mist, evaporating it in seconds, leaving behind a huge burn scar that seared a large, rectangular hole through the stone wall. Beyond, more purple and green mist roiled in a shapeless tunnel.

Hand-in-hand, Trapspringer and Damaris were ad vancing toward the hole.

Phineas watched in horror. He could not move hi, feet. He could only scream. “Stop! Don’t go in there!”

Being kender, of course, Trapspringer and Damaris did not stop. “We’re going to be magicked!” was all they said as they disappeared into the fog.

Though the human was physically frozen by fear, hi!

mind raced. He saw himself with two options. He could either go back down the tower and face a very ugly, very angry ogre who didn’t seem to like humans as much as kender to begin with.

Or, he could throw himself into the mist after Trapspringer and Damaris, who seemed to be inordinately lucky, at least where life and death were concerned.

Biting his lip, Phineas ordered his legs to move around the desk. Unconsciously drawing a deep breath and holding it, the human flung himself into the cold, swirling mist.