“We can’t stay!” Phineas wailed, frantically straining against the bonds at his wrists.
“And why not?” the ogre demanded, gnarly hands on his hips.
“Not now, Phineas,” hissed Trapspringer. As a rule, the elder kender wasn’t particularly cautious. But he was a little concerned that the human’s rising hysteria might bring an abrupt end to what might prove to be a very interesting experience—the remainder of his life.
“What Phineas means,” Trapspringer explained, “is that we wouldn’t want to intrude or take advantage of your good nature.”
The ogre smiled broadly, displaying a mouthful of uneven, jagged, and broken teeth. “You wouldn’t be intruding! I love company! That’s why I’m here!”
“You’re here just for the company?” Even Trapspringer was confused by that.
Vinsint put a whole golden, dried fish on each of four tin plates. “Indirectly, yes. You see, many years ago, I came to this area with a raiding party from the Ogrelands, just north and east of here.” He ladled a steaming white sauce over the fish. “I was wounded by an arrow from one of my own people, and they left me to die. I don’t know how long I lay there, delirious with pain.
“Anyway, the next thing I knew, I was lying in the softest bed on Krynn. Some kender had found me, brought me to their home just beyond the Ruins, and were healing me with herbs.” Vinsint’s eyes misted over with the warm memory. He shook his head happily, and a tear splashed onto a plate.
“My wound was serious and took a long time to heal. The kender treated me like family and taught me their language, which answers your earlier question,” Vinsint said, looking at the blond-haired female.
“Why didn’t you go home after you were healed?” Damaris asked, taking a bite of the delicious, steaming fish.
Vinsint winced. “You kender certainly are nosy, aren’t you? Well, if you must know, it was no accident that one of my own people shot me.” The thought obviously still pained the ogre. “Apparently my people thought I wasn’t bloodthirsty enough for an ogre. Killing and terrorizing is OK every now and then, but I don’t live for it the way they do, you know what I mean?” The ogre hunched his massive shoulders. “They took the opportunity to get rid of me.” He sighed heavily. “So, you see, there was nothing to return to.”
“But that still doesn’t explain why you ended up here,” Damaris pointed out a bit snottily. She didn’t like being called nosy.
Vinsint glared at her and spoke to Trapspringer. “I decided to help the people who had helped me. And what better way than to rescue kender from the magical effects of the grove? I’m sort of a self-appointed sentinel.”
At the mention of the enchanted grove, each of Vinsint’s visitors colored and squirmed. Phineas was a bit hazy on the subject, but he was fairly certain he’d been barking like a dog when Vinsint found him and dragged him into the tunnel. The human closed his eyes slowly now and shuddered.
Trapspringer and Damaris both suddenly realized that the ogre had caught them in the middle of something very intimate. Remembering now, the kender locked gazes, then looked away uncomfortably.
Phineas pushed aside his shame to say, “But I thought you said you wanted to help kender. Doesn’t holding them captive sort of work against that?”
“I don’t keep them forever,” Vinsint said darkly. “Besides, I think keeping me company is a small price to pay for being saved from the grove. I get lonely here! I’m always polite and friendly, and I serve good food.”
“I suppose it’s important to be polite when you’re plug-ugly,” Damaris agreed with a kender’s usual alacrity.
Vinsint looked at her ominously. In silence he laid out dinner, and everyone but Phineas ate with great enthusiasm.
After dinner, the ogre pushed his tin plate back and belched loudly. “What shall we do after dinner? Cards? Dice? Marbles? I have them all.”
“Let’s play ‘Let the prisoners go’,” Phineas suggested under his breath. Trapspringer flashed him a look of warning.
“You name the game,” Vinsint insisted of Trapspringer.
The elder kender glanced uneasily at Phineas. “All right. Pick-up sticks!”
Vinsint clapped his hands together with a crack that reverberated in Trapspringer’s chest cavity. “I love pickup sticks! It’s my favorite game!”
The ogre leaped to his feet, knocking over his stool and rattling the room, then clomped toward a pile of boxes in a corner. Vinsint pawed through the boxes, flinging all manner of things to the floor in his haste. Trapspringer saw manacles, a jeweled necklace, a scroll case, a chunk of a mildewed saddle, and other things that he could not identify. When Vinsint stomped back, clutching an intricately carved ivory tube in his enormous hand, he cleared the dishes from the table with one swipe of his large hand.
“Ahhhhh,” he crooned, easing his bulk back onto his righted stool. “I’ll bet you’ve never seen a pick-up sticks set like this one.” With exaggerated care, he slid the lid off the tube. Then, with a flourish, he slowly upended the cylinder until the long, slim sticks tumbled out onto the table. “Gold plated!” purred Vinsint.
Damaris, Trapspringer, and Phineas stared at the painted sticks on the table. After a long moment’s pause, Trapspringer said, “Those aren’t gold. They aren’t even painted gold.”
Vinsint flicked at the end of his nose self-consciously. “No, they aren’t,” he agreed, “except for these two.” He mauled the delicate sticks with his melon-sized hands, eventually plucking out two that were vaguely gold colored. “The real gold sticks disappeared one by one over the years. These two are all that I have left. But it used to be a complete set of gold-plated sticks. It sure was something to see.”
Vinsint scooped up the sticks and stood them on their ends, ready to begin the game. But then his head twisted to the side abruptly. “Did you hear that?” He smiled and clapped his hands. “Someone else is walking through the grove. More company!” He jumped up and began leaping excitedly in circles.
Vinsint stopped suddenly, and his smile fell. “I must hurry before they somehow find their own way out.” He stomped over to a large cupboard that sat on the floor. Opening the door, he hauled out yard after yard of heavy, rusty chain, coiling it about his arm. His three guests cringed, thinking he meant to tie them up. Instead he took the chains to the door and dumped them on the other side, in the tunnel.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said in a sing-song voice. “You’re thinking, ‘why does he need so many chains to lock this door?’ I’ll tell you. I’ve left a lot of kender in here in my time. Always when I went into the grove I’d lock the door, come back not ten minutes later, and they’d be gone, ‘poof!’ ” He snapped his big-knuckled fingers.
“Maybe they escaped another way,” suggested Trapspringer.
“There is no other way,” the ogre said simply. “The funniest thing is that the kender always lock the chains back up again, and they don’t even look like they’ve been touched. So, I add more chains each time. Maybe I can slow ’em down enough until I can get back.”
He took the last of the chains from the cupboard and slipped through the door. “I’ll just be gone a few minutes, and when I come back we’ll have a fifth player for pickup sticks. Don’t try to get away, now.” With that, Vinsint closed the door, and they could hear chains being strung on the other side.
Phineas stood up and began to pace nervously. “Do you suppose he’ll let us go now that he’ll have new people to keep him company?”
Damaris shook her head and her blond hair flew in a half-circle. “It didn’t sound to me like he had any intention of letting us go. You go first,” she offered Trapspringer, pointing to the jumbled sticks on the table.
“Are you just going to sit there and wait for him to come back?” squealed Phineas.
“No, we’re going to play this game,” said Trapspringer, concentrating on lifting a stick perfectly from the tangle.
“Why aren’t we looking for another way out?” the human dema
nded, glaring at the kender on the floor.
Trapspringer shrugged. “Vinsint said there wasn’t one. But it would be interesting to explore the rest of this place,” he had to admit.
“You’re just saying that because you made that blue stick move and have to give up your turn,” sulked Damaris.
Trapspringer laughed. “I did no such thing! That was a clean draw.”
The blonde kender stuck out her lip in what she hoped was an adorable pout. “Well, at least I can beat him!” She pointed at the red-faced human.
Trapspringer’s laughter turned into full-blown snorting. He liked the way the torchlight brought out the yellow in Damaris’s hair. “Sure you could, but humans are lousy at pick-up sticks. Vinsint could probably beat him, and Vinsint’s hands are bigger than my head.”
“That’s not the point,” she said with mock indignation.
Phineas rolled his eyes in disgust. “If you two would stop billing and cooing at each other, we might find a way out of here!” He looked to the stairway. “Those steps have to lead somewhere!”
Trapspringer helped Damaris to her feet. She self-consciously rubbed at her cheeks with her sleeves to remove any grime and straightened the broken feathers in her hair.
Phineas and Trapspringer each took a lit torch from the walls. “After you,” the human said, jerking his head from Trapspringer to the steps.
The older kender, holding Damaris’s hand, set off at a carefree pace up the stone steps that spiraled upward beyond the reach of the torchlight. Moss and fungus grew through cracks in the stone walls. Phineas followed closely, hunched over defensively, his eyes darting everywhere at once.
“You know, from the circular shape of it,” Trapspringer said, “I’ll bet this is the Tower of High Sorcery. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier.” Damaris gave his hand a squeeze.
“Does it matter?” Phineas asked cynically.
“It means we might run into some leftover magic,” Damaris said, obviously excited by the prospect.
Phineas stumbled over a loose stone in the ancient stairs and grabbed for the wall. “Leftover magic? What does that mean?”
“His voice is getting more shrill than a harpy’s,” Damaris pointed out to Trapspringer.
“This single tower is all that’s left of the complex that was created here at the dawn of time,” explained Trapspringer, “along with the other four Towers of High Sorcery—Wayreth, Palanthas, Istar, and some other one I can’t remember now. Several of them are still used as centers of magic, but this one was abandoned shortly after the Cataclysm.”
“Which means?” Phineas asked impatiently.
“Magic was once performed here regularly. There might be some of it still lingering, like a spell that never met its mark—”
“—Or magical monsters might still be guarding the upper floors!” Damaris suggested enthusiastically.
“Spellbooks, scrolls, magic rings, bracelets, potions, wands, staffs, gloves, swords—”
“I get your point,” Phineas gulped. Perhaps he’d been rash to suggest exploration. They continued spiraling upward.
“Maybe a wicked sorceror, abandoned—banished, that’s better!—by his peers lives at the top of the tower,” Damaris continued her daydream. “Lonely and bitter, he’s practicing his art on kender! Maybe we’ll get magicked!”
“Except for the magic, you just described Vinsint,” Phineas scoffed.
“I knew I heard it somewhere,” Damaris mumbled.
“I haven’t been magicked since I tangled with that goat-sucker bird,” Trapspringer said wistfully.
“You met a goat-sucker bird?” Damaris asked enviously. Goat-sucker birds were legendary among kender. “I’ve never known anyone who’s seen one! I didn’t realize they were magical. What did it look like? Did it try to peck your eyes out?”
“Oh, yes!” Trapspringer said, a swagger in his voice. “Of course they’re magical! That’s why they’re so fierce. This one came at me out of a murky swamp—they live in them, you know. Well, it …”
Phineas’s legs ached, and he was finding it difficult to catch his breath. They’d been climbing for some time before he thought to start counting, and even without that he estimated they’d covered more than three hundred steps without a rest. Wheezing, he collapsed on a step.
“I’m beginning to think Vinsint was right: There is nothing else in here. Maybe we should turn back. There’s no telling what he’ll do if he returns and sees that we’ve slipped away.” The human shuddered, picturing the ogre’s bulging muscles.
But the eager kender were already out of earshot. Afraid to get too far behind, Phineas struggled to his feet and forced himself to continue upward. Holding the torch aloft, he thought he could see a ceiling at last.
Abruptly, the stairway emptied out into a chamber that was slightly larger than the one far below. There the human found Damaris and Trapspringer running to and fro in the sumptuously appointed room.
Phineas frowned. Wasn’t it odd that this place, so obviously visited by light-fingered kender for centuries, still had any furnishings at all? He placed his torch in a sconce on a wall and looked about the room. One thing quickly caught his attention.
The human stared, open-mouthed, at the large, wooden, intricately carved desk against the wall to the right of the stairs. Behind it was a stuffed leather chair with a wooden carving of a dragon’s head on its high back. On the desk’s blotter was a quill and a dried-up bottle of ink, a pair of spectacles, and a wine glass, all covered with an inch of dust.
He looked in admiration at the leather-bound volumes that circled the room. They were all dust-covered, too, but undamaged. Twisting his head to read the spines, he spotted one called “Herbal Medicine,” which sounded interesting. He took it down and slipped it under his arm.
Damaris and Trapspringer both were busy tapping here and there in search of hidden drawers, which they hoped might hold gems or other interesting items.
Suddenly, Trapspringer snapped his fingers. “Something about this place looked familiar, and now I remember what it is. This room looks just like the drawing on the other half of the map I gave Tasslehoff.”
Damaris looked up from behind the desk with a self-satisfied grin. “I found a lever for something!”
Phineas’s eyebrows rose. But before he could form a question he heard a loud “ping!”
Suddenly, the room filled with roiling, purple mist streaked with rich emerald green. The mist extinguished the torch in the sconce, then Trapspringer’s as well. But it produced a dim glow of its own.
“What did you do, Damaris?” thundered Phineas, crawling behind the desk.
“I’m not sure,” she breathed anxiously. Even in the fog her eyes looked as big as tea plates. “But isn’t it pretty?”
A vicious wind grew on the other side of the mist, evaporating it in seconds, leaving behind a huge burn scar that seared a large, rectangular hole through the stone wall. Beyond, more purple and green mist roiled in a shapeless tunnel.
Hand-in-hand, Trapspringer and Damaris were advancing toward the hole.
Phineas watched in horror. He could not move his feet. He could only scream. “Stop! Don’t go in there!”
Being kender, of course, Trapspringer and Damaris did not stop. “We’re going to be magicked!” was all they said as they disappeared into the fog.
Though the human was physically frozen by fear, his mind raced. He saw himself with two optiòns. He could either go back down the tower and face a very ugly, very angry ogre who didn’t seem to like humans as much as kender to begin with.
Or, he could throw himself into the mist after Trapspringer and Damaris, who seemed to be inordinately lucky, at least where life and death were concerned.
Biting his lip, Phineas ordered his legs to move around the desk. Unconsciously drawing a deep breath and holding it, the human flung himself into the cold, swirling mist.
Chapter 18
“Dear Flint,” Tasslehoff began, stroking eac
h 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 fresh-faced 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 half-elf, and Tanis would understand.
Kendermore Page 21
