Kendermore

by Mary Kirchoff

  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.

  Chapter 7

  “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 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 me 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 splitting!”

  “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 in 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 cro
wd 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 bewildered 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 pre-Cataclysm! 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—”