Chapter 18

“Dear Flint,” Tasslehoff began, stroking each letter with great relish. He stopped and held the paper up for inspection. The kender was very proud of his penmanship. Tas tapped the tip of the borrowed quill against his chin, not quite sure what to write next. He’d never written a “solongforever” letter, as Ligg had called it when he brought the quill, ink, and parchment Tas had politely requested.

Woodrow and Winnie lay in the shadows on the far side of the pillars, still asleep this morning after the previous night’s delicious meal of marinated, grilled chicken, fresh, boiled turnips, bread pudding, and home-brewed ale. Actually, Woodrow had passed out, having finally taken Gisella’s advice — “Let loose, Woodrow!” — to heart. By his own confession, the freshfaced young man had never done more than sip ale at the family table, so it hadn’t taken much to lay him low.

Woodrow’s arms stuck out at odd angles, his left cheek was pressed to the cold floor, and blond hair fanned his face as it rose and fell with his snoring.

Propped on his elbows on a straw mat, Tasslehoff kicked a syncopated rhythm against the stone block wall. The large, empty room was quiet except for the sound of his boots against the hard wall, Woodrow’s ragged snoring, and Winnie’s deep, even breathing.

Tas chewed the end of the quill, then pressed its tip to the parchment again. “So long forever.” He shook his head immediately and scratched through the words. Too depressing, he decided. Tasslehoff crumpled the paper up and threw it into the center of the room.

He pulled up the next sheet, quickly penned the greeting, then, “You’re my best friend and I’ll miss you a lot.”

He shook his head again, his topknot bouncing on his thin shoulders. Too mushy. The gruff, old dwarf would surely hate that. Tas crushed the note again and sent it flying.

Flint was a hard one, Tas decided. He would have to think about the letter to the dwarf a little more before writing it.

The kender pulled out another sheet of paper and noticed with alarm that he had only three more left.

“Dear Tanis,” he began anew. For some reason he knew that he could say anything to the halfelf, and Tanis would understand.

Woodrow and I — you met Woodrow, do you remember? He’s the human who works for Gisella Hornslager, the redhaired dwarf who came to fetch me back to Kendermore. He can talk with animals, and he knows a lot about boats, and he doesn’t yell at me like Flint.

Tas paused, then carefully crossed out the yelling part in case the dwarf read the note over the halfelf’s shoulder. He could picture them by the fire at the Inn of the Last Home, tears flooding their eyes, clinking their mugs together and toasting his memory.

A few interesting things have happened since I last saw you. We met a bunch of gully dwarves who dumped everything out of the wagon as it was going down the cliff, then we got in a shipwreck and nearly drowned.

But the most exciting thing was riding on a dragon!

You’d like riding a dragon, Tanis. This was not a real one, it was built by a gnome named Bozdil — or maybe his brother Ligg built it. I never asked. They made this machine called a cara… carus… a round thing that plays really loud music and has statues of animals that go up and down and around in circles.

Tas looked over the description of the carousel. He was not completely satisfied with it but he couldn’t think of an easy way to make it better, and he did not want to start the whole letter over again.

So I was riding the dragon at Oktoberfest in Rosloviggen and it took off! Bozdil won’t tell me how he made it come to life, and I know it didn’t really, but it was neat anyway.

The bad part is that the dragon brought us to this tower way up in the mountains where those two gnomes I mentioned live, and they are going to kill me and put me on display in a glass case to fulfill their Life Quests. They’re going to do the same thing to their pet woolly mammoth, Winnie, which I think is terrible!

Ligg is bigger and gruffer than his brother, and he builds everything around here. Bozdil is more sensitive, but he’s the one who usually collects the specimens.

I asked Woodrow whether a person could see things after dying, if he’s been stuffed. I mean, will I be able to see the people who stare at me in my display case the way I stared at the dinosaurs? Woodrow didn’t think so, but I think the next few centuries might be more interesting if I could.

With only one sheet of paper remaining, Tas decided to conclude his good-bye.

I’m running out of paper, so I have to go now. It was really nice knowing you. I had a lot of fun with everyone (even Raistlin, I guess), while we were all together in Solace, Please tell Flint that I never believed him when he called me a doorknob and that I really like him, too.

Tas read that sentence over and decided he liked the way it sounded. He knew he was going to have to close soon, or he’d burst out crying, which would smear the ink and he’d have to do it all again.

Biting the tip of his tongue in concentration, he signed it, “Your friend, Tasslehoff Burrfoot.” Choking back a sob, he fanned the last page to hasten its drying, then stacked the pages and folded them in half as one. On the back of the last page he wrote “Tanis Half-Elven, Solace.”

He knew that someone there would get the letter and hold it until Tanis returned from wherever he was.

Tasslehoff was not crying because he was afraid of dying; there was very little any kender feared. Though they did not welcome it, they thought of death as the last big adventure. Still, Tas hated the thought of leaving his good friends, Tanis and Flint, forever.

Just then there came a knock at the door, which seemed ridiculous considering that the occupants of the room were prisoners. The wooden door swung open and Bozdil’s head appeared around it.

“Time for the kender’s jar fitting!” he said merrily.

Woodrow and Winnie both snorted themselves awake at the sound of the gnome’s voice.

“Jar fittings” Tas repeated dully. “What’s that?”

“LiggandIweretalkingaboutwaystoimprovetheexhibits, somethingtomakethemmoreinteresting.” He was speaking very quickly, avoiding Tasslehoff’s eyes.

“We thought perhaps putting more of the specimens in interesting-looking jars might help.” Bozdil’s voice trailed off, and he continued to fidget.

“Uh oh,” Winnie mumbled in the shadows. The sound reached only Woodrow’s ears. “This is just an excuse to get him out of here without suspecting anything. No one ever returns from a fitting.”

Woodrow looked up through bleary eyes and gulped.

“Oh.” Woodrow’s foggy brain began to slowly clear, and he was frozen with helpless indecision.

“Come with me, Burrfoot,” instructed Bozdil. Seeing the kender reach for his hoopak he said, “Leave your forked weapon here. You won’t need it where you’re going. You can retrieve it later.”

“Where’s Ligg?” Tas asked the smaller of the two gnomes, peering past him into the silent hall.

“He’s preparing some things,” Bozdil said vaguely, “but he’ll be along shortly.”

Tasslehoff set his chin firmly, said good-bye to Winnie and Woodrow, who seemed to be a bit muddled still, then followed Bozdil into the torch-lit hall. The kender walked without his usual bounce, his arm held firmly by Bozdil’s small but strong hand, a torch sputtering in the gnome’s other hand.

“So, how are you going to do ‘it’?” the kender asked.

“Bonk me over the head, poison my food, hold a pillow over my face?” He’d been thinking about “it” very clinically in the last hours.

Bozdil cringed. “Don’t you think talking about ‘it’ is, well, in bad taste?” He patted Tas’s hand. “You’re better off not knowing.”

They fell silent. Tas heard a rooster crow in some fardistant room. He could hear the near-silent “swishswish” of a pendulum slicing through air.

The kender did not know how far they’d walked when they stopped before a closed door. “This is it. The jarfitting room,” Bozdil said, his voice clipped. He pushed open the small, simple wooden door.

Tasslehoff ducked his head in hesitantly. He let out a high whistle of wonder and delight. Multicolored glass from thousands of jars winked and sparkled in the torchlight.

“They look like gems,” he breathed. The kender dashed into the room and skipped between two rows of kneehigh jars of all shapes and colors, gaping at every one in unabashed fascination: sky blue, bird’s egg blue, water blue, sea green, grass green, leaf green, amber, ruby, and dozens of other colors. “I haven’t seen this many colors since the stained-glass windows fell out of the Rainbow Inn in Kendermore. I didn’t know glass jars came in so many shades!”

“They don’t generally,” Bozdil said smugly. “We blow our own glass, so it’s very clear and sturdy, but thin enough so you can still see through it clearly. Nothing is too good for our specimens. Do you see anything you like?” He waved a hand to include the whole area.

The room was so full of jars that it was impossible to tell how large the room was, or even to hazard a guess as to how many jars were actually there. Tasslehoff sprang from one to the next like a bee between flowers. He stopped momentarily by a long, low amber jar with a wide mouth cocked up at an angle.

“Go ahead, try it on for size,” Bozdil encouraged the kender.

Nodding happily, Tasslehoff hitched up his vest, leaned over sideways, and slipped a foot into the mouth of the jar. He was in to his hips when his feet scraped the bottom.

“I’d have to lie down to fit in here, and I don’t think I’d like lying down forever,” he said, looking about for another jar to sample.

“No, no,” Bozdil said agreeably. “I’m not sure amber is your color, anyway.”

Tas buzzed around the room and located some taller jars. He slid into and out of all shapes and sizes. He eliminated the fishbowl shape quickly; he was afraid he would slop from side to side in it, which was not the impression he wanted to give of kender. He liked the elegant design of the ginger-jar. Its narrow bottom gently, curved out toward the top, then closed back up again at the mouth. But he hated the way it felt on his neck, like he was suffocating. He discarded the straight, thin style as too conventional. Besides, sitting down in it would be impossible, he reasoned.

Weighing the options carefully, he wandered back to a jar he had considered early on. It was cobalt blue, with simple but classic lines: sleek yet roomy, from its slightly flaired mouth to its tantilizingly rounded bottom. This was a jar a kender could be proud of. Tasslehoff studied it and tried to picture himself in it. Would he look happy in this jar? he wondered.

“Ah, hah!” Bozdil exclaimed, clapping his hands in delight. “I thought you’d select blue. It looks so nice with your leggings. By the way, is this pretty typical dress for a kender?” he asked bluntly, plucking at Tasslehoff’s clothing.

“Sure. I guess,” the kender said haltingly, caught off guard by the question. But looking at the rich blue shade made him happy again. “You think blue is my color?”

“Oh, definitely!” Bozdil declared vehemently. He locked his fingers together to form a step and nodded toward Tasslehoff. “Here, let me help you up.”

Enraptured, Tas eagerly placed his foot in the gnome’s clasped hands. He reached for the top of the jar and nimbly swung himself up to sit on its wide lip. Then, with his arms at his sides, he straightened his body and slipped to the bottom with a sharp “tink.”

The kender’s breathing echoed in the jar. Tas shuffled his feet softly, and it sounded as if his feet were right next to his ears. He pressed his hands and nose to the blue glass and yelled, “What do you think?” Reverberations rang in his ears, so he muffled the sound with his fingers.

“Perfect!” Bozdil clapped his hands again happily.

‘You don’t even need a size adjustment. Absolutely perfect!”

“Huh?” Tas squinted through the glass. He could see the gnome’s lips moving but all he could hear was a faint murmuring. Eternity might be a little indistinct and difficult to understand from inside this jar, Tas decided. But this thought was interrupted when Tas felt the jar shudder, as if the ground, or at least the building, were shaking. The expression on Bozdil’s face turned to confusion.

When it happened again, much more violently, the gnome’s expression turned to anger and he spun and bolted from the room, his puffy sleeves billowing behind him.

Tas pounded on the glass anxiously. “Wait, Bozdil!

What’s going on? Where are you going? I can’t get out!”

The sound of his own shouts ricocheted around the inside of the jar.

Something exciting was obviously happening, and Tas was not about to sit inside the glass bottle and miss the fun. The problem was how to get out. While the jar itself was roomy enough, the opening at the top was quite small, barely large enough for Tas to slip through. He reached up and grasped the edge and pulled himself up.

With his head and shoulders through the opening, there was too little space left for his arm. No matter how he twisted and pushed, his elbow just wouldn’t fit through the jar’s mouth.

Irritated at the delay, Tas dropped back into the jar.

Pointing his arms straight above his head, he sprang from his toes. His eyebrows came level with the rim of the glass, then he dropped back into the jar. Undaunted, he sprang again. This time his shoulders cleared the lip of the jar and as they did, Tas threw his arms to the sides, catching the rim of the glass under his armpits. He then proceeded to wriggle and squirm his way up and out.

Then, suddenly, the castle shook even more violently than before, and Tas heard a terrific crashing from somewhere nearby. The jar, now impossibly top-heavy, teetered and rocked menacingly. Tasslehoff froze. The jar did not. It swayed and tottered, wavered and wobbled across the small, low shelf on which it stood. Just as it tipped over the edge, Tas sprang clear to land on his fingers and toes. The jar smashed into the floor behind him, showering Tas with broken fragments of glass.

A hasty inspection proved to Tas that although he was blanketed with tiny slivers and a fine powder of glass, he was unhurt. Snatching a polishing rag from a nearby shelf, he quickly brushed away the splinters, then dashed through the door after Bozdil.

The gnome stood in the hallway, his back tumed to Tasslehoff, his gaze fixed on the end of the hall. There was a loud thump, the castle shook slightly, and the door creaked and groaned, followed by a tremendous crash. Pieces of splintered door showered the floor, along with chunks of rock smashed from the stone door frame. Through this jagged breach stormed the woolly mammoth, Winnie. The slight human, Woodrow, was spread-eagled across the mammoth’s back, hanging on by two handfuls of fur.

“Whatisthemeaningofthis?” shrilled Bozdil. “Thisisamuseum, notanarena! Inthenameofscience, stopthisrampage!”

Woodrow sat up unsteadily. “We’re leaving,” he announced, “and we want Mr. Burrfoot.” The human shook the kender’s hoopak over his head threateningly.

“Youcan’thavehim,” Bozdil shot back.

“He’sanexhibit,” added Ligg, scrambling over the wreckage behind Winnie. The skin of some small lizard, complete with feet, tail, and head, was clasped in his left hand. “It’sanhonortobeanexhibit. It’slikeimmortality!”

“You haven’t pickled him already, have you?” Woodrow asked anxiously.

“Yes, you’re too late,” Ligg said quickly.

Woodrow gasped, swallowing a lump in his throat.

“Now give this foolishness up, and we’ll deal light!y with you,” the bigger gnome continued, pushing up his spectacles.

Winnie shook his head furiously, forcing Woodrow to tighten his grip. “I won’t make any deals,” the mammoth said firmly.

“Look at all the damage you’ve caused,” implored Bozdil. “At least help us repair this and clean up the mess.”

“We may be too late for Tasslehoff,” Winnie sobbed, forcing his voice to be firm, “but Woodrow and I are coming through anyway. I’ve decided I don’t want to be pickled for posterity. Don’t make me hurt you, Ligg, or you either, Bozdil. You’ve treated me pretty well these fifteen years, but I’ve decided I want to leave, and I’m taking my new friend with me. I’ll do what I have to do to get free.”

Winnie advanced rapidly toward the two brothers, who were now side-by-side in the hall. Just then Tas emerged in the hallway from the jarfitting room. He could immediately see how angry the mammoth was. Fearing for the two gnomes, who stood resolutely in the path of the charging behemoth, but anxious to get away with his friends, Tas made a quick decision. Dashing into the hall behind the brothers Ligg and Bozdil, the kender used his favorite trick: he knocked their heads together, which clunked like two coconuts. The startled gnomes slumped into Tas’s arms, and he dragged them to the wall, out of Winnie’s way.

“Tasslehoff!” both human and mammoth cried at the sight of their friend. “We thought you were dead!” The woolly mammoth slowed down, allowing Tas to grab two handfuls of thick fur and haul himself up the animal’s flank. The kender plopped down behind Woodrow, and Winnie continued to hurtle down the hallway.

“Boy, am I glad to see you guys, too!” Tasslehoff exclaimed, craning his head around to get his bearings.

“Which way is out?”

Woodrow grinned foolishly with relief. “We don’t know. But if we try enough doors, we’re bound to find one that leads outside.”

“Wahoo!” screamed Tasslehoff as Winnie lowered his head and smashed through another doorway.

“Uh oh,” said both Tasslehoff and Woodrow as the dust cleared and they saw what was in the room they had just broken into. On the far side of the room was a large door that appeared to lead outside. Between the door and the woolly mammoth stood a giant cat — a mountain lion, guessed Tas — connected to the wall by a thirty-foot chain. “Turn around. We’ll find another door,” urged Tas.

But Winnie stood fast. “C’mon, Winnie, that’s a mountain lion,” pleaded Woodrow. “You’ve been locked up in here all your life. You don’t know what a mountain lion can do. Just back up and we’ll find another way out.”

But Woodrow underestimated the woolly mammoth.

In spite of years of imprisonment, Winnie’s instincts were still honed. He charged straight toward the mountain lion, which had never seen anything as massive as Winnie. The cat crouched on its belly and slinked to the side, expecting to leap on Winnie’s flank when the wall forced the mammoth to stop. Winnie passed the lion, hit the wall, and kept right on going, smashing completely through the brick and out into the sunlight beyond.

And he did not stop there, either! The frantic woolly mammoth bounded down the slope, away from the castle, skidding in the dirt, whooping and hollering and waving his trunk.

Farther down the mountain, Gisella and Denzil rode single file, Gisella in the lead, along the narrow, winding trail. As they rode out from the shadow of a towering boulder, Gisella looked ahead and spotted the silhouette of a tower against the morning sky. She halted, waiting for Denzil to catch up.

They rounded yet another bend in the twisting, rockstrewn trail. Gisella spotted something and stood in the stirrups to get a better look. A structure, or series of structures, like no other she had ever seen — four towers thrust upward from the side of the mountain, staggered irregularly. Beneath the towers, a castle appeared to grow out of the side of the mountain, or perhaps the mountain had crumbled down on top of the castle. She thought she saw two figures riding atop a boulder. Then she realized that the boulder was, in fact, some sort of enormous, shaggy animal. In a few moments, Denzil reined up alongside her. He, too, straightened up and shaded his eyes with his hand.

“Some sort of creature, carrying two riders,” he said.

“They seem to be running from that stronghold. Could they be your companions?”

Gisella squinted. Fortunately, the sun was behind her.

“It’s hard to be sure at this distance. The one in front looks a lot shorter than the other one… and he’s definitely carrying a hoopak. OK, that’s Woodrow and Burrfoot. Do you suppose that’s another wooden animal they’re riding?” Gisella laughed girlishly at her own joke.

Denzil ignored her question, saying only, “We’ll wait for them here.”

“Want to make the time pass more quickly?” Grinning, Gisella slid her hand across Denzil’s leg and patted his rump.

Denzil lowered himself to his saddle. Gisella snatched her hand away to keep it from being pinned beneath him.

“No,” he replied. With a flick of the reins, he directed his horse forward to a spot where he could edge off the trail behind an outcropping.

Pouting slightly, Gisella rode up to him. “What’s the matter with you? You’ve been acting strangely all morning.”

“Get off the road,” ordered Denzil. “Back here, behind me.” He unslung his crossbow and cocked it, then drew a bolt from a pouch attached to his saddle. “Keep your mouth shut and stay out of the way.”

Gisella’s arms dropped to her lap and her petulance disappeared, replaced by indignation. “When did I enlist in your army? And what have you got in mind here, anyway? Those are the people we came up here to rescue.

Start waving that shooter around cocked and loaded -and you’ll end up hurting somebody.”

“Hurting people is what I do best!” he snarled. “Now get behind me unless you want to be the one hurt.”

“Well, isn’t this typical?” fumed Gisella. “Give a guy a tumble and right away he thinks he’s been knighted. I’ve got some news for you, Dunce-el. Gisella Hornslager doesn’t bow, scrape, or take orders, especially from somebody whose eyebrows meet in the middle. Now you can either change your tone with me or turn around and trot back to town.”

Denzil swung the crossbow to point directly at Gisella’s chest. His face betrayed no emotion. “I’m here for the kender. As long as I leave with him, what happens to everyone else is unimportant. Whether you live or die is the same to me. Now toss the little dagger I know you keep strapped to your thigh on the ground, be quiet, and keep out of sight, or I will silence you.”

Gisella sucked in her lip for a long moment. Was this real? She had spent a terrific night with this man and a moment ago she was looking forward to quite a few more. Now he was pointing a crossbow at her and telling her he would pull the trigger with no remorse. He was also talking about Tasslehoff as if the kender was a valuable commodity. Was Denzil some kind of bounty hunter? Gisella decided that defiance might be inappropriate, for now. Cursing herself for getting involved with someone she knew so little about, she obediently dropped her weapon and guided her horse into the nook behind Denzil’s.

Ignoring her, Denzil pulled a strip of cloth from his pocket and tied it around the leather protecter on his left forearm. Fishing a handful of crossbow bolts from his saddle pouch, he deftly slid them, one by one, under the cloth band. With growing horror, Gisella realized that Woodrow and Burrfoot were riding into an ambush.

Heroics were not Gisella’s stock in trade. In her travels, she’d had to defend herself more than once. But drunken guildsmen and starving goblins were a far cry from a trained killer. Wistfully, Gisella eyed her dagger, lying on the ground. There was nothing she could do.

Tasslehoff was laughing.

“Did you see the look on that mountain lion’s face when Winnie smashed the wall? It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. He looked like he’d bitten into an overripe skunkberry.”

“I wasn’t scared!” wheezed Winnie. “I was sure I’d be scared, but I wasn’t. I just put my head down and, smash!”

Woodrow was twisted halfway around on Winnie’s back, peering back up toward the castle. “I don’t see anybody following us. Why do you suppose they aren’t following us? They have a dragon, after all.”

“Maybe they’re invisible,” suggested Tas, twisting around to see for himself. “I don’t see anything either.

That’s usually a good sign that something is invisible, when you can’t see it. What do you think, Winnie?

Could they make themselves and their dragon invisible?”

Winnie considered that for a few seconds. He really didn’t know much about invisibility. “Well, I never saw them while they were invisible. Does that mean anything?”

“It’s not definitive,” said Tas. “Although, if you’d seen them invisible, then at least we’d know for sure.”

Winnie had been loping along at a good rate since leaving the tower. Abruptly, however, he slowed.

“There’s something ahead of us. I can smell it. It’s different… There is something alive up there.”

Gisella tugged a lock of her hair. Denzil, still seated on his horse, had his crossbow braced on top of a rock and was sighting on something. She could not reach her dagger, and she had nothing else to attack Denzil with. But she had to stop this foul deed.

Suddenly, she had an idea. Gisella spurred her draft horse forward, waving her arms. Denzil was caught completely off guard.

“It’s Miss Hornslager,” shouted Woodrow, pointing down the trail some fifty yards. “She found us! Hooray!”

But even as Woodrow cheered, Gisella grimaced and clutched her side. The human’s joy turned to horror when Gisella cried out, swayed in her saddle, clutched her side, then slumped backward and tumbled to the ground.

“Winnie, get over there, fast!” pleaded Woodrow.

“We’ve got to see what’s wrong with her!”

Winnie took two tentative steps forward, then stopped. “We don’t know what’s there.”

“Miss Hornslager is there, and she’s hurt.”

Woodrow swung his leg across the mammoth’s back and slid to the ground. As he dropped below the animal’s furry back, a crossbow bolt whistled past Tasslehoff’s ear and shot harmlessly through the space Woodrow had just occupied. Tasslehoff had heard the sound enough times before to know what it was.

“Crossbow!” yelled the kender as he flattened himself across Winnie’s back. Lifting the mammoth’s ear, Tas told him, “Rush forward, Winnie. If we stand back, they’ll pick us off one by one. Rush forward, now!”

The huge animal hesitated for a moment; then, with a toss of its shaggy head, bounded down the trail. Tas was almost thrown to the ground by the unexpected burst of speed. He clutched tightly to the thick fur of Winnie’s back, bouncing furiously.

As they closed in on Gisella’s still form, Tas spotted a face behind a crossbow, perched atop a rock, only a heartbeat before another bolt was loosed. Tas heard the “thud” and felt Winnie stumble slightly. Looking down, he saw the feathered shaft sticking out of Winnie’s flank, just inches from Tas’s thigh. But Winnie pressed on, and in seconds they had covered the remaining distance to the assassin’s niche.

After firing his third bolt, Denzil had dropped the crossbow and yanked his heavy, curved sword from its scabbard. The metal-shod end of Tas’s hoopak whistled toward his skull. Denzil’s scimitar deflected the attack, knocking a divit from the wooden shaft of Tas’s weapon.

But he had no easy means to attack the kender himself, as the woolly mammoth stood at least four feet taller than Denzil’s horse. The kender’s height advantage reduced Denzil to fending off attack after attack as his horse backed slowly down the trail.

Woodrow reached Gisella at last. Her horse was pawing the ground nervously several feet away. Woodrow knelt beside the dwarf and gingerly rolled her from her side onto her back. Then he saw the small, red hole in her wool vest, just below the armpit. At such short range,.

the crossbow bolt had buried itself completely in her side. Choking on his own emotion, Woodrow pressed his ear to the dwarf’s still chest, then held his cheek over her mouth, hoping to feel even the slightest breath.

But there was nothing.

Spinning around, Woodrow saw a burly man on a horrid horse — a nightmare — locked in a vicious melee with Tasslehoff. The man’s sword was not long enough to reach the kender atop Winnie, and Winnie could not get close enough to the man’s thrashing horse for Tasslehoff to strike effectively.

Leaving Gisella’s body, Woodrow dashed toward the fight, snatching up the dwarf’s dagger on the way. As Tas aimed another blow at Denzil, Winnie struck out with his trunk, wrapping it around the man’s heavy boot.

With a tug, he wrenched Denzil’s foot from the stirrup, throwing him off balance. Seeing his opening, Tas thrust the pointed end of his hoopak, spearlike, straight for Denzil’s chest. The metal point struck just below his rib cage, forcing the air from the man’s lungs and toppling him from his saddle. Armed with Gisella’s dagger, Woodrow stabbed toward the falling body and felt the blade sink in. Denzil hit the ground with a thump. There was blood on Woodrow’s dagger.

Tasslehoff was ready to slide down from Winnie’s spine when Woodrow scrambled back up. “Let’s go!” the human barked. “We’ve got to get out of here before the gnomes catch us again. They couldn’t have missed all this racket.”

“Oh, oh, I can’t be captured again. I just can’t,” Winnie moaned, launching himself back down the trail.

But Tasslehoff shouted, “Wait, who was that guy? And what about Gisella — don’t we have to wait for her?”

“Gisella’s dead,” spat Woodrow, fighting back angry tears, “and so is the man who attacked us!”

Tasslehoff looked stricken. “Gisella can’t be dead!

How do you know?”

“She’s dead, Mr. Burrfoot.” Woodrow sobbed. “She was hit in the side by a crossbow bolt. I stabbed the man who killed her — the one you were fighting as you knocked him off his horse. See, there’s still blood on Gisella’s dagger! Please, Mr. Burrfoot,” he begged, “let’s go!

We can’t do anything for either of them, so the best thing to do is get away.”

“He’s right,” Winnie whimpered, sad for his new friends. “We can’t let Bozdil and Ligg find us here.”

“I don’t care about the gnomes!” hollered Tas. “We can’t just leave her back there. Stop, Winnie! Turn around!”

But Winnie continued charging down the mountainside. “I can’t, Tasslehoff. I just can’t. It’s too risky. The gnomes….”

“Kender don’t leave their friends!” Tas cried in anguish. Quicker than Woodrow could react, Tasslehoff tossed his leg across Winnie’s back and was on the ground, rolling to break his fall. In a flash he was back on his feet and charging uphill toward Gisella’s body.

Woodrow’s hands shook as he tried to slow Winnie.

Every nerve in the human’s body told him to fly from this place as quickly as possible. Yet Tasslehoff Burrfoot was his friend, and if Woodrow could not go back, at least he would wait.

As Tasslehoff approached Gisella’s body, his breath caught in his lungs and his eyes blurred. Her horse trotted forward to meet the kender, who gathered up the animal’s reins. The redhaired dwarf’s limp body lay some ten paces from the man who had shot her. His horse stood over him. The animal snorted and stamped as Tas drew near. When Tas saw the wound in Gisella’s side, he knew she was indeed dead. Summoning his strength, he gently lifted the body of Gisella Hornslager into his arms and laid it across the saddle on her horse.

His steps leaden, Tas turned and directed Gisella’s horse, bearing her body, back down the trail to where Woodrow and Winnie waited anxiously. No one spoke as Tas tied the horse’s reins to Winnie’s tail and climbed back on the mammoth, behind Woodrow. Tas could hear nothing in his mind but the lone, droning drum beat of a kender funeral procession as they rode to the east down the mountainside.

They did not look back.

If they had, they would have seen a large man stir on the dusty road near the gnomes’ tower.

They buried the flame-haired dwarf by moonlight in a wooded clearing within earshot of a babbling stream.

Tasslehoff’s voice broke over the strains of the Kender Mourning Song.

Always before, the spring returned.

The bright world in its cycle spun

In air and flowers, grass and fern,

Assured and cradled by the sun.

Always before, you could explain

The turning darkness of the earth,

And how that dark embraced the rain,

And gave the ferns and flowers birth.

Already I forget those things,

And how a vein of gold survives

The mining of a thousand springs,

The seasons of a thousand lives.

Now winter is my memory,

Now autumn, now the summer light -So every spring from now will be

Another season into night.

“I’m glad Fondu isn’t here to see this,” said Woodrow.

“He’s better off rampaging through Rosloviggen.” Wiping away a tear, the human straightened Gisella’s auburn tresses and brushed the dust from her pale cheeks because it would have mattered to her.

Tasslehoff’s hoopak served as a simple marker for the grave.

“We’re going on to Kendermore — for Gisella.”

Part 3