Chapter 6

“Order! Order!” Mayor Merldon Metwinger’s gavel bounced off the hard wooden table that served as the Kendermore Council’s Bench of Authority. The council met every fifth Thursday, and every Monday with a two in its date. Every Friday with an oddnumbered date, the mayor held Audience, the day when criminal cases were tried and domestic and community disputes were settled. Today was such a Friday.

Rounding up council members to serve as the jury for criminal cases on Audience Day was a mayoral duty. Though the city books listed sixty-three elected council members, representatives of the most important trades in Kendermore, Mayor Metwinger was seated beside just five council members today. He’d managed to find six of them during his morning roundup, but one had apparently wandered off on the way to City Hall.

The venerable kender rubbed his forehead distractedly and let his hand wander up to scratch the scalp under his graying topknot.

Beneath his cheek braids, which marked him among kender as having noble blood, his skin was flushed from his council member search and the exertion of calling the meeting to order. Still, he felt chilled and damp from a draft and pulled his purple, furlined mayor’s robe up closer to his pointed chin. Glancing to his immediate right, two feet beyond the end of the Bench of Authority, he eyed the source of the draft. The council chamber was missing its exterior wall. At that moment, light autumn rain and damp leaves swirled around the mayor’s feet. Before too long, snow would blow in and form a thick bank on the edge where the wall should be, making it difficult to determine where the building started and stopped. Metwinger made a mental note to have something done about it eventually, although he would surely miss the view.

The chamber was only one of many rooms on the second floor of the four-story building, housing all of Kendermore’s public works and government offices. Located near the city’s center, the structure had been built more than a century before. Following a kender tradition -or building tendency — each floor was less finished than the one below it, so that the top floor looked as if it were still under construction. The first floor — two grand ballrooms — were intact though had long ago been stripped of anything valuable. The second floor was basically complete, except for the missing exterior wall in the council chamber. The third floor had all the necessary outside walls, but was without a number of crucial doors: kender builders preferred to complete a room before allowing for doorways, so that openings might be located for the convenience of the occupant rather than arbitrarily placed. (More than one kender builder has found himself trapped inside a room with no doors!) The fourth floor was mostly exposed beams, window frames, and the occasional interior wall.

Not surprisingly, a problem arose with the design of the building shortly after its completion. The original builders had forgotten to include a stairway linking the four floors. Occupants of the upper floors were forced to scale the stone walls and climb in through tiny windows, which made the missing wall in the council room something of an asset. Complaints of deaths, though, particularly among mayors, brought about the construction, some ten years later, of a very elegant, polished wood central staircase that spiraled upward in an everdecreasing circle (things got pretty tight up on the third floor).

Kender were a very political people, but they were dedicated to no cause as stridently as their need for constant change. Mayor Metwinger was Kendermore’s 1,397th mayor. Not all of them had been kender. Nailed to the wall in the council chamber was a portrait of the 47th mayor, a leprechaun named Raleigh who reportedly had been an excellent mayor, having successfully held the post for nearly a year.

Rumor had it that Raleigh resigned after a dispute when a pot of his gold mysteriously disappeared. Thirteen hundred fifty mayors had worn the coveted purple mayoral robes in the intervening three hundred or so years. Merldon Metwinger had been in the position for a little more than a month, which was longer than average, if no great achievement.

Accidentally elected when the populace confused his moneylending advertisements for campaign posters, he found that he enjoyed the vaunted position. He particularly liked the purple velvet mayor’s robe with its many secret pockets.

Looking out at the occupants of the council chamber, Mayor Metwinger rubbed his hands in gleeful anticipation; it promised to be an exciting Audience Day. Two old, white-haired kender were struggling over a bony, wide-eyed-with-fright milk cow, each tugging on one of the animal’s ears, which poked out of holes in a ratty straw hat.

Metwinger would liked to have watched them get the cow up the narrow flights of stairs to the council chamber, which no doubt had contributed to the cow’s anxiety.

Also waiting for a turn with the mayor were a male and female kender, obviously married from the way they were glaring at each other. A matronly looking kender angrily shook a floury rolling pin at a red-faced child, whom she held by his pointed ear. While Metwinger watched, another kender, probably in his mid-fifties and looking strangely content, straggled in and sat quietly. Behind him came two attractively dressed, angry-eyed misses, clomping and bobbing awkwardly, since each wore one of an obvious pair of red shoes.

Metwinger couldn’t wait to hear their story.

“This Audience is now in session,” the mayor proclaimed, giving the table another rap with his gavel.

“Who’s first, then, hmmm?” he asked eagerly.

“Me!”

“Me!”

“Us!”

“Them!”

“I’ll take the two with the cow first,” Mayor Metwinger instructed. The others sat down with grumbles and thinly veiled comments about the mayor’s mother.

The two farmers stepped forward respectfully, both insisting on keeping a hand on the cow’s collar. They introduced themselves as Digger Dunstan and Wembly Cloverleaf.

“You see, Your Honor, Dorabell is mine —” Digger began.

“Bossynova is mine, Digger Dunstan, and you know it!” the other protested, giving the cow’s collar a possessive tug. “Dorabell — what a silly name for a cow! And take that stupid hat off her! She prefers feathers tucked behind her ears!”

“Well, you should know about stupid, Wembly Clo verleaf,” the first taunted, “you lame-brained, drainbrained excuse for a farmer.

You borrowed her from my field —”

“Only after you took her from mine!”

“Did not, you oaf!”

“Did too, you ogre-lover!”

“DID NOT!”

“DID TOO!”

Rather predictably, a scuffle broke out. The farmers reached for each other’s throats over the bony back of the frightened cow. Soon, the audience chose sides and got in on the fight; the members of the council and the mayor cheered them on.

It was the cow herself who settled the matter. Mooing frantically, she bolted through the throng of kender, right past the Bench of Authority, heading toward the open wall. Splaying himself on his stomach across the right corner of the table, the mayor managed to get a hand on her collar and jerk her to a stop just inches before the precipice.

“So,” he panted, “you both claim you own her.”

“She was mine, first!” both of them howled, hurrying forward to calm their cow.

Metwinger straightened his robes and sat back down, wheezing heavily. Watching them fawn over the cow, he was struck with an idea.

“Then you shall both have part of her,” he proclaimed, thinking his decision not only brilliant, but incredibly fair.

The two kender looked at him, puzzled. “You want us to cut her in half?” Digger finally managed.

“Oh!” the mayor looked startled. “I hadn’t thought of that solution. Hmmm — well, anyway, what I meant was that you must share her. You, Digger, will have her on odd days, and you, Wembly, shall have her on the even ones.”

“But her birthday is on an odd day!” protested Wembly.

“And All Cows Day is on an even day!” complained Digger.

“Well, then I’d say that makes you even,” said the mayor, with an apologetic smile at Digger. “Next !”

“Brilliant judgment,” whispered council member Arlan Brambletow, who secretly thought he would look nice in the velvet mayoral robes.

Mayor Metwinger beamed with pride at his own cleverness. Never before had such a brilliant and impartial mayor presided over Kendermore’s council, he told himself. Fairly bursting with self-importance, he waved forward the next case, the contented-looking kender, who began to state his complaint against the city.

“Well, it’s not really a complaint, Your Highness,” the kender began, clearly nervous now in the presence of the mayor.

Metwinger flushed with pleasure. “You may call me Your Honor.

I’m not a king, you know. Not yet, anyway.” He chuckled modestly.

“Continue with your story.”

“Well, you see, the city recently completed cobbling a new street near my home — extremely near my home.”

“Let me guess,” the mayor began, having heard such complaints before. “The construction crew was too noisy, too quiet, or too sloppy. Or perhaps your taxes were raised too much?”

The kender looked surprised. “Oh, no, none of those things.

Well, maybe the taxes were a bit high…. But the workmen were most pleasant, considering that they built the street through the middle of my home.”

The mayor slumped back in his chair, suddenly bored. “So what’s your point?”

“Your Honor, I don’t think the street was supposed to go through my house,” he said. “At least no one mentioned it to me.”

The mayor sat forward. “The city is very busy, you know, and can’t be expected to contact just anyone about every little thing.” He sighed. “I suppose you expect the city to disrupt its plans and reroute the street?”

The kender looked alarmed. “Oh, no, Your Honor!

I’ve never had so many friends! In, out, in, out — carriages from all over the world! What I’d really like is a permit to open an inn.”

The mayor shook his head sympathetically. “You’re in the wrong place, then. What you want is the Department of Inn Permit Issuing. Up the stairs, first room on the right — or is it left?” The mayor waved toward the door at the back, in the left corner of the room.

But the kender did not move. Instead he shook his head. “Oh, no, you’re wrong. I went there and they told me that you issue permits.”

“They said that?” the mayor squealed. “Well, what do they do, then?” He turned to the council members, who all shrugged, except for one.

“Aren’t they in charge of new streets’” Barlo Twackdinger, the bakerman council member, ventured helpfully.

Metwinger shrugged. “Well, if they say we do it, then I guess we do it. OK, you can have a permit. Next!”

While the kender with the permit danced happily out the door, the domestic case shuffled forward, and a balding, paunchy human slipped inside the room. Phineas Curick sat at the back of the chamber and tried to calm himself. It had taken him hours to reach this spot.

He thought he knew where City Hall was, but somehow he’d got turned around and had to stop and ask for directions. Those directions had led him to the outer fringes of Kendermore — practically out of the whole region of Goodlund, he fumed.

But he was most perturbed, because his desperation had caused him to lose his own good sense. He knew better than to ask a kender for directions!

It also galled him that, in the end, he’d only found City Hall because he nearly ran into it. Head bent, mumbling in disgust as he marched back toward where he thought his shop was, he’d nearly smashed into the side of the building. Somebody had run a street right up to City Hall’s west wall! Dazed, he didn’t even realize where he was until a concerned kender, wearing a badge and a uniform that was so small its buttons were straining, scraped him up and brought him into the building for a drink of water.

“Who in Hades put a building in the middle of a street?” Phineas had growled.

“Oh, all roads lead to City Hall,” the kender guard had explained.

Phineas had shaken his head stupidly. “Never mind. Where do I find the prison?”

“Kendermore doesn’t have a prison — no point in it,” the guard said mildly. “Why, are you a prisoner?”

“No, I am not!” Phineas sputtered, more than a little aggravated. The human was sure Trapspringer had said he was a prisoner! Frowning, Phineas decided to take a different approach.

“If Kendermore had a prisoner, where would he be held?”

“Well, that depends…,” the kender said. “Say, you wouldn’t have any candy, would you?”

If it hadn’t been for the guard’s genuinely innocent expression, Phineas would have thought he was being asked for a bribe. In the end, it amounted to the same thing. “I’m not sure, let me look.” Phineas reached into his pocket and pulled out its contents: two steel pieces and a pocket knife. Sighing, he placed them in the guard’s outstretched palm anyway. “Sorry, no candy. Now, what does it depend on?”

“Huh?” the guard said, his attention riveted by the spring-action latch on Phineas’s knife. “Oh, where he’d be at depends on what he did and who he did it to. “What’s his name?”

“I believe his name is Trapspringer Furrfoot, but I don’t know what he did to get thrown in prison.”

The kender looked at him. “You’re not sure where you’re going or who you’re going to see, and you don’t know what he did.”

Phineas felt stupid and annoyed at the same time. The only thing Trapspringer had said, other than that he was in prison, was that his nephew was going to marry the mayor’s daughter. Phineas brightened. “I think it may have something to do with the mayor.”

“Considering how little you know, you’re lucky I’m around to help you sort through this,” said the guard, puffing up his chest, straining the buttons to the bursting point. “Today is Audience Day, so Mayor — let’s see, it’s Metwinger this month, isn’t it? I’m not sure, since I’m just sitting in for my brother today. Our honored mayor is holding Audience on the third floor. If you hurry, perhaps you’ll be allowed to address him.” With that, the kender wandered back outside City Hall, Phineas’s knife in his small hands, Phineas’s coins jingling in his pocket. Glowering at the guard’s retreating back, Phineas gulped down his water and rushed up the evernarrowing circular stairs to the third floor. He searched every room there, growing more desperate with each, until he reached the last. There he found a kender cleaning woman, from the mop at her side and the overturned bucket upon which she sat, who seemed more intent on her game of marbles than tidying. She told him Audience was being held on the second floor, not the third. Sure enough, on the second floor Phineas found the council chamber where Audience was being held.

He was not sure how things proceeded, so he sat back to observe.

There appeared to be a number of cases before him anyway, including a married couple who was presently stating their complaint.

“— So, I said, ‘these are my special rocks — my agates, my amethysts, and my very reddest rubies’ — I collect them, you see -‘so don’t touch them,’ ” said the wife, a dower-looking kender whose age was difficult to guess, since her face was very wrinkled but her hands were smooth. “So what does he do?”

“He touched them,” the mayor supplied.

“Not only did he touch them, but he put them in his rock tumbler!” Her face was a mixture of outrage and astonishment.

“He put them in an ale flagon?” asked the mayor, perplexed.

“You know,” the husband said merrily, “everyone thinks that when I tell them I collect rock tumblers.” His age was no more discernible than his wife’s. His hair was dishwater brown and wisps poked out of his tightly stretched topknot, giving him a disheveled look. He had a slight, stubbly beard, unusual for kender.

The husband stepped up closer to the Bench of Authority, addressing the mayor directly. “Did you realize that the history of the rare gnome rock tumbler — a drum-shaped, crank-driven device used to reduce stones to sand — is long and very interesting? No, I’m sure you didn’t. In fact, many experts believe that throughout the ages, rock tumblers have played a large part in the development of the world as we know it. None of us might be alive if there weren’t rock tumblers! Many people don’t know that, but —”

“I know it!” the wife complained, clapping her hands to her ears. “It’s all I ever hear, especially after he pulverizes my prettiest rocks!”

The man turned to his wife. “It wasn’t my fault that your rocks got tumbled,” he said defensively. “You left them sitting out where just anyone could take them, so I put them in my tumbler for safe keeping. Only I forgot they were in there the next time I tumbled some rocks.”

“Out where just anyone could find them? They were locked up in two boxes and hidden under a loose floorboard before the fire!” she cried, giving his arm a vicious punch.

“Exactly!” he exclaimed, rubbing his arm and pulling away.

“Everyone knows to look under floorboards! Nobody would think to look for gems in a rock tumbler! Don’t you agree, Mayor?”

“Huh? What?” Metwinger asked, looking up guiltily from under the table. He’d found their argument tedious and had turned his attention to the shiny buckles on councilman Barlow Twackdinger’s boots. “Oh, yes. It’s obvious to me that one of you must develop another hobby.

Perhaps rock gathering isn’t the wisest hobby for a woman whose husband collects rock tumblers.”

The mayor was about to suggest a specific solution when, to his surprise, the couple proclaimed in unison, “A brilliant idea!”

Hand-in-hand they walked through the door at the rear of the chamber, though their voices could be heard rising even as they descended the stairs. “Now, honey, you should be the one to find a new hobby,” the wife could be heard saying brightly. “At least my gems aren’t worthless!”

“Worthless, dear! Why, rock tumblers are the most valuable investment —”

But the council was on to other business. Phineas looked up as a kender burst through the door, pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks, his brow sweating. The kender began to explain how his neighbor had been tossing the bricks from his window and into the kender’s own house one story down. It seemed he didn’t mind, since he could use the bricks. However, they had not stopped at his home, but had fallen through his apparently thin floor to the house below his, and he was having a difficult time getting them back from the neighbor below.

Phineas let his chin drop onto his chest, and he promptly fell asleep.

“Hey, where are my boots?” Barlo Twackdinger demanded suddenly.

He glared down his redveined, flourdusted nose at the mayor seated to his right on the Bench of Authority.

“Oh,” mumbled Mayor Metwinger, surprised to find the thick, furred boots in one of his many pockets. “You must have put your feet in my vest, and somehow your boots fell off.” He handed them over, letting his fingers linger on the shiny buckles near the plush toes.

“They’re very nice, even with the flour on them.”

“They ought to be,” said council member Windorf Wright, snatching them from Barlo’s expectant hands.

“They’re mine!” claimed the leader of Kendermore’s farmer’s union. Stockier than the average kender, his bright red vest looked too tight to be comfortable. His head was shaved right up to his thinning topknot to show his delicately pointed ears to their best advantage.

“Not until I get those chickens and turnips you promised me for these boots!” said Feldon Cobblehammer, a blue blur as he leaped across the meeting table to pluck the coveted boots from Windorf’s hands.

A scuffle broke out on the table, and soon three pairs of boots were flying. Scrabbling happily among the throng, the mayor found some pointy animal teeth, sixsided, wooden gaming dice that looked just like a set he’d been missing, and some tasty-looking sweets. He barely had them in his pocket before someone grabbed him by the topknot and conked him soundly on the head with his own gavel. Metwinger sank to the floor behind the Bench of Authority.

Phineas awoke with a startled snort. Looking around quickly, he realized that he was the only one in the room not involved in the brawl, which was rolling like a huge, living ball, toward the door -and his chair! Standing, he dove to his left, away from the door, and landed on his stomach between the last two rows of chairs — a scant distance from the precipice of the open wall.

Propping himself on his elbows, he looked behind him toward the door. The chair he had occupied was smashed into firewood in the wake of the melee. Bottlenecked by the door, the mass of bodies tumbled apart, arms and legs flailing to the accompaniment of savage, joyous shouting. Leaping to their feet in unison, the constituents of the living ball threw the door open and dashed out into the hallway to resume the riot.

Alone in the chamber, Phineas stood slowly and tried to shake away the fuzziness inside his head. He’d been led a merry chase, then nearly crushed by kender, and for what? Nothing! He still had no idea where Trapspringer might be!

“I say, what a splendid Audience Day!” a voice said weakly from behind the Bench of Authority. A small hand grasped the edge of the bench and pulled up the owner of the voice. Phineas recognized the disheveled head of Mayor Metwinger, his topknot completely undone.

“Oh, hello!” he said, spotting Phineas at the rear of the room.

“Hello, Your Honor,” the human said politely. “You mean the fight wasn’t so very unusual?” His tone was incredulous.

“Oh, it certainly was. The brawl usually starts after the second or third case,” the mayor responded, his voice breathy as he smoothed his tangled hair. His head was throbbing, and he didn’t feel quite right. “The last thing I remember is getting thumped on the noggin with my own gavel.” Drawing himself up, Mayor Meldon Metwinger brushed off his sleeves and noticed that his purple mayoral robe had somehow been exchanged with a bright blue cape that looked just like one Feldon Cobblehammer had worn at the start of the Audience.

Straightening the collar, the mayor decided the color looked very nice on him.

Phineas hurried forward to take advantage of this unexpected turn of luck. “Your Honor, I understand you might know the whereabouts of a, uh —” he treaded lightly, in case the mayor was sensitive on the subject — “a person named Trapspringer Furrfoot.”

“Trapspringer, Trapspringer,” the mayor muttered. “I know quite a number of Trapspringers. Can you describe him?”

Phineas’s eyebrows puckered as he concentrated. It had been dim during much of his talk with the eccentric kender. “Um, he wears a topknot, his face is very wrinkled, I guess, and he’s short.” Which describes every kender ever born, Phineas realized with dismay. “I believe he collects rare bones,” he added desperately.

“Oh, that Trapspringer!” the mayor said cheerfully.

“Why didn’t you say so? He’s my dear friend and soon to-be in-law! His nephew is birthmated to my daughter Damaris, you know.

Yes, I know where he is. ‘ had to put him in prison.” Only Metwinger didn’t sound the least bit concerned or remorseful.

“You put your daughter’s future uncle in prison?” Phineas asked the question despite the little voice in his head that told him he probably wouldn’t understand the answer anyway. “What did he do?”

“Oh, he didn’t do anything,” Metwinger said lightly.

“His nephew is late for the wedding, so we sent a bounty hunter after him — standard operating procedure concerning wayward bridegrooms, actually. We had to do something to ensure that he would return, so we locked up his favorite uncle. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I have a concussion.” The mayor looked toward the door and swayed unsteadily.

“I’m sorry to bother you with this, Your Honor,” Phineas said quickly, blocking his path. “But there’s a small matter of a debt which is owed me.”

The mayor looked up, his eyes glassy. “If I have a bill, then I should pay it.” He reached into his robes. “How much —”

“Not you, Your Honor,” Phineas said, willing himself to remain calm. “Trapspringer Furrfoot. If I could just speak with him, I’m sure we could clear the matter up.”

“He’s not here,” the mayor said, grabbing the edge of the table as the room began to swim. What pretty colors! he thought.

“Yes, I know that, Your Honor,” Phineas said with forced patience. “Where is he being held?”

“Prison, dear,” the mayor mumbled incoherently, crawling onto the table. “At the palace. We’re having a party tonight. Wear your blue dress to match my new cape….” Laying his cheek on the cool wood, he closed his eyes.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Phineas breathed in relief. He was about to dash out the door when he felt a twinge of guilt. He looked at the snoozing mayor — could he leave him like this? He was a doctor, after all — well, sort of. Phineas didn’t think Metwinger would die; at worst, the mayor’s head would feel like a pumpkin when he woke up. Still…

Just then, several giggling kender padded through the door; Phineas recognized them as council members who’d been seated with the mayor. Thinking fast, he bolted by them and shouted, “There’s been a terrible accident! The mayor struck his head. Keep an eye on him while I get help!”

Phineas rushed out the door, knowing full well that they’d do no such thing; waiting patiently was not one of their better skills.

Before long, they’d decide the mayor needed to be submerged, or perhaps needed a slice of wumpaberry pie, and they’d hustle him off.

Metwinger would be all right. Phineas flew out the door and down the stairs.

He was going to find Trapspringer after all.

“Gee, an ocean?” Tas repeated Woodrow’s words. “Are you sure, Woodrow?” He scrambled down from the wagon and headed for the dense screen of shrubs and trees.

“I wouldn’t bet my last silver piece that it was an ocean,”

Woodrow conceded. “It might be a sea,” he continued seriously, following on the heels of the kender. “How do you know, unless you have a map?”

Gisella pushed her way past Woodrow to dog Tasslehoff through the brush. “Ouch! These damned branches are tearing my sleeves!” she complained bitterly, swatting foliage from her path. “The last few miles have almost wiped out my wardrobe!”

Tasslehoff burst through the last of the shrubs. He stood on a flat, dirt-caked, cracked expanse of slate, which met the horizon about thirty feet away. Waves crashed far below in the distance.

The kender hastened to the brink of the barren, rocky cliff and looked over the edge. Below was the shoreline of a vast body of gray-green water. Tas scooped up a piece of chipped slate and flung it out to sea. He lost sight of the stone, and thus concluded that i the water was very far off indeed.

Looking to his left, the kender saw that the cliff cut back farther inland, obscuring the view of the coastline to the north.

Gulls, their wings tipped, soared and dived around Tasslehoff’s head.

“Woodrow has a good point,” Tas said at last. His eyebrows shot up. “How does the first person to make a map know if it’s a sea, an ocean, or just a really big lake ?”

“You’re the mapmaker,” Gisella growled near his side. “Why don’t you tell me? While you’re at it, tell me where this body of water came from? Maybe it was hiding behind the mountain range your Uncle Bertie overlooked! And while you’re explaining things, tell me how we’re going to cross this really, really big lake with a wagon?”

“Let rr.e think,” said Tas soberly, his young face scrunching up in thought.

“Indeed,” Gisella snorted humorlessly.

“You know, I believe that trek through the swamp caused us to turn a bit south of Xak Tsaroth,” Tasslehoff said. “Maybe someone in the city knows where this water came from —”

“You think that ocean is going to dry up a few miles north of here?” Gisella shrieked. She immediately regretted showing a crack in her composure. Painfully digging her fingernails into her fists, she regained control. “Perhaps someone in Xak Tsaroth could tell us where we are, and direct us to the best east-bound road. If we can actually find Xak Tsaroth, that is.”

Gisella wiped her eyes with the back of her hand in a gesture of fatigue. “But I can’t move another inch tonight. We’ll make camp here,” she said, indicating the wide expanse of level slate with a wave of her hand. “Woodrow, be a dear and get the wagon. My head is split ting!”

“Yes, Miss Hornslager.” The straw-haired young man sprinted across the ledge to the row of shrubs and disappeared.

One arm hugged tight to her waist, the other supporting her chin, Gisella looked down at the distant shore. She smirked mirthlessly and shook her head.

“Isn’t it ironic? All that water, and I can’t even get to it to take a bath.”

Tasslehoff first heard the noises before dawn.

Curled up by the smoldering remains of the fire across from Woodrow, he was having the most delightful dream, and he did not want to wake up before it ended. He was in a merchant’s shop, and its walls were lined from floor to ceiling with jars of all sizes and colors, each crammed with more interesting objects than the last. There were jars of stained-glass marbles and pretty stones, jars with balls of brightly colored string, jars overflowing with confections and wind-up toys.

There was a whole shelf devoted to jeweled rings, and another just for ruby-studded brooches.

The owner of the shop, who hadn’t been in the dream just a moment before, turned to Tasslehoff and said, “You must take everything and hide it, before someone steals it. I can trust only you!”

And then Tasslehoff heard the noise again, just at the edge of his consciousness. He scrunched up his eyes and focused his mind on the shelves in the shop. But there was that noise again, like raccoons rattling a trash barrel. He jerked awake against his will, irritated and out of sorts.

In the dim light of dawn, the kender saw three sets of dark, overly large eyes peering at him from around the edge of the wagon.

Infiltrators! Bandits! They were under attack! Tasslehoff jumped up and assumed a kender fighting stance, legs spread and braced. Holding the “v” of his hoopak in his left hand, he pivoted his hips and swung the straight end of his weapon around with his right hand.

“Stay back, whoever you are!” he warned. Suddenly, more sets of eyes appeared. Without looking down, Tas drove a toe into Woodrow’s ribs.

The sleeping human snorted, raised himself on his elbows, and finally looked up through bleary eyes. He saw only Tas’s battle stance before jumping to his feet and reaching for the first thing at hand, which was the unlit end of a small, smoldering branch in the fire.

Only then did he spot the eyes, glowing like the neutral, golden moon, Solinari, in the dim light of dawn. There were eyes under the wagon, at the back of the wagon, on top of the wagon.

Suddenly the wagon’s back door flew open and Gisella stepped out in a thin, silky, red wrap. Whatever stood at the rear of the wagon jumped back and giggled.

“Oh, for heavens’ sake,” Gisella moaned. “What’s this, now?

Shoo, shoo, you little beasties!” she clucked, taking a step down and waving the backs of her hands toward where the eyes had stood.

“Miss Hornslager, get back into the wagon!” Woodrow called.

“We’re under attack!” He swung his branch at the eyes in a gesture meant to look brave.

“By gully dwarves?” Her voice cracked on a high note. “Don’t be ridiculous. They’re as annoying as horseflies, I’ll grant you that, but they’re harmless.”

She turned back to glare in the direction of the stillaproaching eyes. “I said shoo!” She waved the hem of her nightshirt at them like a farmer’s wife scattering chickens with her apron.

“Gully dwarves?” Tas asked, lowering his hoopak. He took a step toward the wagon and squinted into the darkness. The air was filled with the sound of uncontrollable giggling. Finally, Tas could see eleven or more short creatures who looked vaguely like dwarves gathered before the door. Instead of “shooing,” they were looking up at Gisella expectantly, like pigeons waiting for breadcrumbs in a city square.

Tas knew from his mountain dwarf friend, Flint, that gully dwarves, or Aghar, were the lowest caste in dwarven society. They were very clannish, keeping to themselves and living in places so squalid that no other creatures, including most animals, would live in them.

Which would leave them with a lot of privacy, Tas supposed.

Tasslehoff hadn’t seen many gully dwarves up close, except for a few who had been cleaned up and recruited into domestic labor by ambitious but notoriously cheap merchant middle-class Kendermorians, as they called themselves. (Gully dwarves made miserable servants, as they tended to pick their noses continually and attracted dirt as if by magic.) Their features varied little from one to the next. They shared a typical thick, bulby nose, scruffy whiskers — even the females — and sported ratty, wild hair that looked like it had been combed many years before with a stick.

The males wore torn, dirty vests and pants cinched up with frayed rope, and the females wore torn, dirty, sack-shaped dresses, and they all wore shoes that were three sizes too big.

“Get rid of them, will you, Woodrow dear? The little beggars will undoubtedly steal us blind,” Gisella said, drawing her wrap closer. “And we really must be on the road.”

In the growing light, Woodrow looked helplessly at the crowd of gully dwarves continuing to gather around the wagon. They stared with awe at Gisella.

“What would you like me to do, ma’am?” asked the be wildered human.

Gisella, looking exasperated, took a step back from the pressing throng of gully dwarves. “I don’t know! Do something manly, like wave your sword at them.”

The human looked dismayed at the suggestion, Vexed by his hesitance, Gisella jammed her hands on her hips. “So, belch in their faces; that’s manly!” she added with disgust.

Woodrow looked from the stick in his hand to the two dozen or more curious, grubby gully dwarves. They looked at Gisella reverently.

The boldest of the bunch, a male, judging purely from the fact that he wore shapeless pants rather than a shapeless dress, reached up a hand to the dwarf’s red hair.

“Stop that!” Gisella said, slapping his hand away. Holding her wrap closed, she nearly tripped while scrambling backward up the steps into the wagon.

“Where you get hair?” the gully dwarf spoke at last, not the least put off by her slap. He leaned forward, his stubby fingers reaching out. The silly grin on his smudgey face revealed that he had a big, dark hole in his mouth where one front tooth should have been.

“What do you mean?” she snapped. “I grow it, of course!” She slapped his hand again.

The gully dwarf shook his head stubbornly. “Not that hair. Hair not come that color.”

Gisella bristled. “I assure you, this is my natural hair,” she said staunchly, giving him an appraising glance. “I might add that yours would look better if you washed it instead of ripping it out in clumps.”

The gully dwarf smiled up at her hair. “It pretty. You pretty.”

Gisella’s eyes shifted. “You like it?”

“It pretty,” he repeated reverently. The crowd of gully dwarves chorused his words, then giggled.

“Thank you,” Gisella said hesitantly. “Your hair ain’t so bad, either,” she added generously.

“Should I get rid of them now for you, Miss Hornslager?” Woodrow asked.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about your hair myself,”

Tasslehoff chimed in. “Is it real — the color, I mean? Personally, I see nothing wrong with a little cosmetic overhaul. Why, once, when I was younger, I drew some lines on my face because I was embarrassed that I had no wrinkles yet. Of course, they weren’t red wrinkles. But it’s the same difference.”

Gisella only glared at Tas and announced in an icy voice, “I’m going inside to get dressed now. And when I come out, we’re leaving.”

“Leave?” The male gully dwarf’s ears perked up. “I thought maybe you here for pulley job,” he said.

“A pulley job? Why, I haven’t had one in —” Gisella got all tingly at the memories of an inn long ago and far away. Well, at least a week and a hundred miles…. Abruptly she caught the human’s and kender’s innocent expressions, and she realized that the gully dwarf couldn’t possibly be talking about the same kind of pulley job.

“Pulley job?” she repeated.

“Oh, boy!” The head gully clapped his hands in delight, taking her question as confirmation. “Pulley job! How you pay?”

“No, no! I’m simply asking, what is a pulley job?” she explained with forced tolerance.

“Fondu show you,” he offered, taking her hand before she could protest. He led her off the steps, directing her to the north, where the cliff cut back farther inland, obscuring the view. Woodrow and Tasslehoff followed closely, the rest of the gully dwarves dancing in joyous circles around them, their big, floppy-toed shoes slapping noisily on the slate cliff. A short distance up the coast, out of view of their camp, Fondu pointed to a huge, lone cypress tree that dangled out over the edge of the cliff.

“So what?” Gisella said, starting to get annoyed.

“You led me barefoot over rough ground to look at an old tree?”

Wincing, she steadied herself with one hand on Fondu’s shoulder while she plucked pointy pebbles from her tender heel.

Tasslehoff scampered to the base of the tree. Looking up, he launched himself at a low, sturdy branch, and began scrambling up hand over foot like a monkey.

“Tasslehoff, you get down from that tree this minute!” Gisella cried in alarm. “You’ll plunge to your death, and I’ll have nothing but bloody bones to trade to the council.”

“So nice of you to be concerned about my health,” he said sweetly.

“What do you see up there, Mr. Burrfoot?” Woodrow asked.

There was a brief pause as Tasslehoff swung from branch to branch in the tree. “Well, it’s three pulleys… no, it’s four pulleys. Hooked together in pairs. Only really it’s six pulleys, because two of them are two pulleys hooked together side by side. And they’re all linked with ropes as thick as my wrist, only real short.

My guess is it’s Fondu’s pulley job.”

Gisella turned to Fondu. “No doubt.” But she was doubtful.

Gisella could not believe that a bunch of gully dwarves could have rigged up such an apparently elaborate system.

Fondu’s face crinkled up into a glassy-eyed smile. “Many men come and build pulley job. They funny little men.” Imitating them, Fondu frowned up at the tree, stroking an imaginary beard. Abruptly he marched around, stumbling over his floppy shoes and swinging his arms.

Giggling, the crowd of gully dwarves marched in small circles, slapping their feet up and down.

“They sound like gnomes, because gnomes like to build things like this, but they look like dwarves,” Tas said, laughing at the antics of the gully dwarves. He swung down out of the tree.

“No self-respecting dwarf looks like that,” Gisella scoffed, watching their parade out of the corners of her narrowed eyes.

“These ‘men’ just put up the pulleys and left?” Woodrow asked Fondu.

The gully dwarf gave Woodrow a calculating stare.

“No, they bring up big boxes from there.” Fondu pointed to the cliff and downward. “Then they leave.” He suddenly looked suspicious.

“Too many questions! You want pulley job or no?”

Gisella shuddered, stretched her wrap tightly around her curves, and turned back toward the camp. “I hardly think so. Now, if you’ll just point us toward Xak Tsaroth, we won’t trouble you further.”

“You want come to Zaksarawth? You meet Highbulp! No one come to Zaksarawth since so long!” cheered Fondu. The rest of the gully dwarves started yelling and flinging handfuls of dirt in the air.

Gisella, Tas, and Woodrow ducked away from the whirling dust cloud. “Why are you acting like that?” shouted Gisella.

“We happy,” said Fondu. “No one come to Zaksarawth anymore except Aghar, but you special. You like our city under ground. It beautiful.”

“An underground city?” Gisella gulped, turning to Tasslehoff. “I thought you said it was a big, bustling place!”

“It is!” Tasslehoff cried defensively. “At least that’s what my map indicates.” He pulled the map from his vest and spread it out on the ground.

Gisella glowered. “Oh, yes, your wonderful map.” Woodrow crouched down next to Tasslehoff. “What does ‘P.C.’ mean?” he asked, pointing to the letters inked after the title “Krynn.”

Gisella snatched up the map and stared at the letters. “

‘Pre-Cataclysm,’ you idiots! It means preCataclysm! We’ve been following a map that predates the Cataclysm!”

“Really?” Tas said dubiously. “I thought it stood for ‘positively confirmed’.”

Dazed, Gisella just shook her head. “Serves me right for listening to a kender. Pre-Cataclysm, indeed!” “That changes things, does it?” Woodrow asked innocently.

“A little,” Tas gulped.

“A little?” Gisella gaped at the kender. “New mountain ranges erupted, and whole sections of land slipped into the ground and formed seas!”

Tasslehoff looked subdued. “Well, most of the cities stayed in the same places,” he moaned.

“Yeah, those that weren’t sucked up by rushing waters, mountains, and volcanoes!” Gisella rolled her eyes and sighed heavily in resignation. “Well, that about hangs it — we can’t sail this wagon on the sea.

We’re going to have to backtrack, and there’s not a chance on Krynn that we’ll reach Kendermore in time for the Autumn Faire. This is going to set me way back.”

“Sail wagon on sea,” Fondu remarked.

Gisella ignored his mocking voice. “Come on, Woodrow,” she said wearily, starting for camp. “We’ve got a long trip ahead of us.”

But Fondu stumbled along at her side, tugging at her wrap. “Sail wagon on sea!” he repeated.

She stopped and brushed him off. “Wouldn’t that be nice, Fondu,”

she said patronizingly. “Come on, Woodrow, Burrfoot.”

But Fondu would not be put off. “Wagon no float, but boat float!”

“What are you trying to tell us, Fondu?” Woodrow asked.

The gully dwarf scowled at Woodrow. “I tell pretty lady. Your hair weird — look like noodles.” Fondu grabbed Gisella’s hand again and tugged her to the ledge. He pointed down. “See? Boat.”

Gisella brushed off her hand disdainfully. “Well, I’ll be!” she exclaimed, looking over the edge quickly. “The little bug-eater — uh, gully dwarf — is telling the truth! There is a boat down there.”

“Let me see!” cried Tas, moving to Gisella’s side, along with Woodrow. “But why would anyone leave a boat anchored here?”

“I don’t know,” answered Gisella, “and I don’t know what difference it makes, anyway. Everything I own is in that wagon, and I’m not going to leave it here,” she finished firmly.

Fondu tugged at Gisella’s wrap. “Take wagon on boat.”

“Woodrow,” said Gisella, “would you please try to explain that we can’t possibly get this fully loaded wagon down a sheer, five hundred-foot —”

“Oh, it’s got to be at least eight hundred feet — at least,”

chimed Tas, on his stomach, looking over the cliff.

“— six hundred-foot cliff and onto a rocking boat,” finished Gisella. “You’re making me terribly nervous, dear,” she added, addressing the human.

Woodrow, who had crawled out on a cyprus limb overhanging the ledge, cleared his throat. “Excuse me for saying so, Miss Hornslager, but I’d bet that whoever —”

“— whoever owns that boat made the pulley job!” Tas finished for him. “They had to get up here somehow, and I’ll bet they used the pulleys. We could use their equipment to go up and down the cliff!”

“Exactly,” said Woodrow.

“Pulley job! Pulley job!” screamed Fondu, jumping up and down beneath the cyprus tree.

“Wait just one minute,” Gisella said, refusing to get caught up in the excitement so easily. “Do we have enough people to lower a swinging wagon six hundred feet? And do you think we could then load the wagon onto the ship and sail it away?”

“Maybe,” Woodrow said. “But I don’t think we should. That would be stealing.”

“It wouldn’t be stealing!” Tas disagreed. “We would just be borrowing it. They’re not using it now, and we don’t know when they’ll be back. When will they be back, Fondu?”

“Two day,” the gully dwarf said simply, holding up four fingers.

“How long have they been gone?” Gisella asked.

“Two day.” He held up all his fingers.

Gisella, Tas, and Woodrow looked at each other. “How many of you are there?”

Fondu looked at the dozens of gully dwarves and smiled broadly.

“Two.”

“Oh, boy,” breathed Woodrow.

“We don’t seem to be getting any real information out of this,”

drawled Gisella. “Woodrow, you’re good at technical things. What would we need to do this ‘pulley job’?”

Woodrow squatted on his haunches and poked at the ground with a stick, scratching lines at random on the slate. Within moments, all of the gully dwarves were down on their haunches, scratching and doodling on the rock in imitation of the human. Tas was enormously amused and strolled among the pondering gully dwarves.

Gisella stood over the human with her arms folded expectantly.

“Well?”

After a minute or two, Woodrow tossed his head back and looked up at Gisella. “Ma’am, I figure we’ll need the pulleys there in the tree, at least four thousand feet of rope, and for muscle, the team of horses — plus about a dozen good men. But that’s just a guess,” he added modestly.

Looking somber, the gully dwarves all nodded their heads in agreement, pointing at each others’ scratchings and chattering among themselves.

Gisella threw her arms into the air. “Well, I guess that’s that.

We don’t have a dozen good anything, and we certainly don’t have four thousand feet of rope. If I didn’t have so many steel pieces tied up in those rotting melons, I’d push the wagon off the cliff myself and smash that lousy boat into splinters.” She flopped down on the ledge where she stood, her chin in her hands.

Tasslehoff skipped back to the sullen Gisella. “As far as muscle is concerned,” he said, “we’ve got all the gully dwarves we could ever want.”

“And how many is that?” Gisella quipped. “Two?”

“I know they’re not much to look at and they don’t smell very nice, but I’m sure they’d be willing to help,” prodded Tas. “After all, this was Fondu’s idea.”

Fondu grinned broadly. “We glad to heave-ho. Heave-hoing fun! We heave-ho lots for funny men. ‘Heeeeave ho’,” he mimicked, drawing on an imaginary rope.

“That’s very nice, Fondu,” Gisella said flatly. “Now I don’t suppose you can tell us where to find four thousand feet of rope, can you?”

The gully dwarf’s chest swelled with pride. “Fondu have rope.

Big rope. Pulley rope. I show pretty-hair lady.”

The three travelers stared at Fondu, then looked at each other.

“You don’t suppose,” mouthed Gisella.

“Funny men hide pulley rope,” explained Fondu, “but Fondu find it. Me smell rope, my nose smell big.”

Gisella batted her eyelashes at Fondu. “And would you show me where it is?”

Fondu grabbed Gisella’s hand and yanked her to her feet, nearly tripping himself in his excitement. “Come come come!” he shouted, dragging the object of his infatuation behind. Tasslehoff and Woodrow ran behind the stumbling pair, followed by a tumbling, sweating mass of gully dwarves.

Fondu led the pack to an enormous, hollow tree not quite five hundred feet from the edge of the cliff. With a quick scramble, he was up on the lowest branch, and then disappeared through a basket-sized hole into the tree. His fuzzy head reappeared moments later, and he thrust the end of a coarse hemp rope back out through the opening.

“See?” he shouted. “Pulley rope! You no worry, pretty lady,”

Fondu said, petting Gisella’s hair. She batted his hand away, shivering.

In a moment, Tasslehoff was up the tree and had stuck his head through the hole for a look. When he pulled it back, he was grinning from ear to ear.

“The entire tree is full of rope!” he gushed. “Coils and coils of rope! I’ve never seen so much rope in my life, except maybe on the docks at Port Balifor. Wow! I wish my Uncle Trapspringer was here to see this.”

Gisella clapped her hands and rubbed the palms together. “All right, crew, it looks like we’ve got ourselves a pulley job.”

It took the dozen gully dwarves three and a half hours to drag all the rope out of the tree and arrange it in two orderly lines leading away from the cypress tree. Meanwhile, using a small length of rope from the wagon to practice with, Woodrow figured out how the pulleys had to be set up. When the longer rope was ready, he rigged two stout loops of rope around the wagon, one lashed to the front axle and the other to the rear axle. All of that was simpler than explaining the system to Gisella.

“We connect the two single pulleys to the ropes around the wagon. The two double pulleys are connected to the overhanging branch of the tree. You’ve got that part, right?”

Gisella nodded. “Of course. I’m not dense.” But darned if she understood it anyway!

“We used to rig up a hoist like this on my cousin’s farm when I was a boy,” Woodrow said.

The dwarf, who was now wearing a simple, green working outfit and leather gloves, sat down on the wagon next to Woodrow. She looked at the wagon, then up at the pulleys, and then back at the wagon.

“This is everything I own, Woodrow. Are you sure?” Woodrow looked up. “Reasonably sure, Miss Hornslager.”

Gisella glanced up at the pulleys again and contemplated the mass of ropes connecting them to the tree, and the wagon to them. Her gaze moved on to include the ropes that had been strung to several boulders to anchor the tree. Then she cleared her throat.

“I haven’t had much practice trusting people,” she said to Woodrow. “The few times I’ve tried it, it hasn’t worked out too well, personally or financially. I don’t have a lot of choice here, though.

If we go south, I’m ruined by the delay. If we go down the cliff -well, maybe I’m ruined and maybe I’m not. It sounds like a plan to me.

Fondu! Where’s Fondu?”

The gully dwarf tumbled out of a knot of his fellows that were wrestling over someone’s grimy cap. “Fondu here,” he announced. “You ready for pulley job?” A pair of hands reached out of the melee and hauled Fondu back into the writhing mass before Gisella could answer.

Careful not to get too close, Gisella approached the pile of gully dwarves and, cupping her hands around her mouth, shouted, “Fondu! Line them up! Line them up!”

Several seconds later, Fondu kicked and swatted his way out again and began hauling gully dwarves out of the fracas. Within minutes, everyone was sorted and lined up along the two ropes, which stretched over a quarter of a mile away from the cliff. Gisella reviewed her company, replete with bloody noses, blackened eyes, and swollen lips. No sooner did she turn her back than someone pushed someone else and the whole fray began over again until Woodrow collared the two troublemakers and held them at arm’s length.

“All right, Woodrow,” Gisella instructed, “you’re in charge of the ropes. With one horse and six gully dwarves on each, you should be able to lower the wagon nice and easy. Let’s have that as our slogan today, shall we? ‘Nice and easy.’ Can everyone say that?” A ragged chorus of “nice and easy,” or variations on it, rippled up and down the two lines of gully dwarves. “Right,” said Gisella. “And Tas, you and your six husky lads have the guy lines. Your job is to guide the wagon off the edge… ” Gisella’s throat constricted slightly on the words”… and then steady it as much as you can on the way down.”

For a moment, everyone looked at everyone else. Then Gisella winked at Tas and Tas kicked away the stone that was blocking the wagon’s wheel. Slowly, guided by Tas, the six Aghar on the guy lines rolled the wagon toward the edge of the cliff. Meanwhile, Woodrow, who had three times as many gully dwarves to control and therefore three times as many problems, struggled to keep the lines taut through the pulleys.

Gisella’s breath caught in her throat as the front wheels of the wagon dropped over the edge. The ropes on the forward pulley snapped tight at once, and the tree bobbed up and down. With its forward wheels suspended over six hundred feet of nothing, the gully dwarves inched the wagon ahead.

Gisella’s heart was pounding. The wagon, the tree, the gully dwarves, all swam in front of her. Then the rear wheels of the wagon crunched across the brink, and the vehicle dropped six inches, swaying to and fro. The gully dwarves on the guy lines squealed and dug their heels into the packed dirt under the tree as the weight of the wagon, swinging out into line beneath the pulleys, dragged them toward the cliff. Gisella’s hand shot out to a nearby boulder to steady her balance, and her knees chattered together like teeth. “Hold on, hold on!” cried Tas, latching onto one of the guy lines. He realized then that the gully dwarves were squealing with delight, like children at a spook show. As the wagon reached its equilibrium the dwarves stopped sliding and the noise died down. Gisella swayed slightly, but was relieved that she was still on her feet. The wagon swung gently on its ropes, twisting slightly in the breeze.

“OK,” said Gisella, swallowing a lump. “OK, that wasn’t too bad.” Cupping her hands to her mouth, she hollered, “Now, Woodrow, start letting it down. ‘Nice and easy,’ remember?”

“Lice and squeezies,” grunted the dwarves in no particular unison. With a hand on each of the horses’ bridles, Woodrow started walking them backward toward the cliff. After the first twentyfive feet, Woodrow could no longer see the wagon and had to rely on Tas to guide him from above, where he lay on a limb in the tree, watching to make sure the ropes glided smoothly through the pulleys.

“OK… OK… slow it down a little… the back end is a little high… oops, now the back is a little low …still low… no, the back is low… the back, the back!”

Gisella sprinted to the cliff. “What’s happening?” she screamed, and then she spied the wagon, about one hundred feet down the cliff.

One of the lines of gully dwarves had gotten ahead of the other. The front end of the wagon was at least four feet higher than the back, and still rising. “It’s all cockeyed!” she shrieked, flailing her arms. “I can hear bottles breaking! Straighten it out! Straighten it out!”

But the gully dwarves, who had no concept of what was happening, continued their erratic march to the sea. In desperation, Woodrow let go of the slower horse’s bridle and was hauling vainly on the fastermoving horse, trying to slow it down. Unfortunately the other horse, with no one guiding it forward, stopped in its tracks.

The wagon lurched suddenly as something inside it broke free and crashed into the back wall. Gisella clapped her hands over her ears when a second crash echoed up the cliff face, then frantically slapped them over her eyes as the wagon’s door flew open and a potpourri of melons, cushions, and personal items tumbled out of the doorway.

Everything she owned spiraled, for what seemed to Gisella like an eternity, down the hundreds of feet to the sea.

By now, the wagon was hanging almost vertically. The door flapped in the breeze with one of Gisella’s nightshirts, caught on the latch, waving like a flag of truce. Within moments, Woodrow brought the advancing horse and gully dwarves to a halt and raced back to the stationary line, then advanced it so the lines were again even. All this was accompanied by even more smashing and tinkling from below.

Each crash made Woodrow wince, each tinkle made Gisella bite deeper into her lip.

Finally, Tas announced from above that the wagon was level again.

Peering down at Gisella, he called, “Maybe it’s not as bad as it sounded.” But when he saw her vacant stare fixed on the horizon, he gave it up. He shouted to Woodrow, “OK, try it again. You don’t have to be too careful, I don’t think there’s much left inside.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Gisella’s face twitch.

Once again the wagon started down the cliff in jerks and fits.

Gisella no longer watched. Instead, she had positioned herself on an exposed tree root and was reciting a disjointed monologue that had more numbers than words in it. She was obviously trying to determine how she would recoup her losses of the last minutes.

“Slow it down, slow it down,” Tasslehoff warned as the wagon neared the ground.

Woodrow was glad that the redhaired dwarf wasn’t watching when he was unable to appreciably slow the wagon’s momentum in the last one hundred feet. The gully dwarves clawed and tugged at the rope to little avail. The human could feel it in the ropes when the wagon landed with a heavy ‘thump!’ far below. He squinted up at Tas through one eye.

“Boy, what a landing!” the kender breathed. “The wheels look a little bowed out, but I think the wagon is OK.”

Woodrow heaved a sigh and sagged against one of the horses.

Tasslehoff spotted Gisella. Climbing down from the tree, he approached her cautiously. “Well, it’s on the shore,” he said unceremoniously. “I guess I’ll shinny down one of the ropes and unhook the pulleys so we can lower the horses and you and everyone who’s going.”

Gisella nodded her head and inhaled deeply. Tas took that as approval and hiked back to the tree. Woodrow was waiting for him. “How is Miss Hornslager?” he asked.

“I think she’ll be all right,” said Tas. “She just needs to rest for a while. I think it was the nightshirt on the door latch that did her in. It’s too bad you missed it, Woodrow. Stuff was flying everywhere. Boy, what a sight!”

“She’ll never talk to me again,” Woodrow moaned.

“I wouldn’t blame her if she fired me and left me stranded here with these gully dwarves. I don’t know how I’d ever get home then.”

“I could leave you a map,” offered Tas. Woodrow blanched. The kender began tightening his belts, equipment, and pouches in preparation for his climb.

“Anyway, it wasn’t your fault,” he added. “I’m sure Gisella won’t blame you. She’s just feeling lowly. That seems to be sort of common with dwarves. Apparently they can’t help themselves. Whenever my friend Flint gets depressed, there’s no cheering him up until he feels like being cheered up.”

Stripped to his tunic, belt, leggings, and shoes, Tas was ready to climb. He snaked across the branch to the pulleys and then swung down onto a rope.

“Good luck,” called Woodrow.

“You, too,” replied Tas with a wave as he started the long slide to the boat, six hundred feet below.