narrowed her eyes, blinking away the tears on her lashes.
'I have to try,' she said. 'If I keep studying the books, I might find an answer. Just keep that beast quiet and let me see what I can learn.'
'She's back to giving orders,' Ripple said, her sympathy evaporating.
'And you promised us some magic,' Trap reminded her.
'Got food?' Umpth asked.
'The kitchen is along the passage, to the right, up five steps,' Halmarain told Ripple. 'You fix it the meal. Don't let those stinking creatures near the larder or they'll be wearing pig's heads on their shoulders. And don't try to leave. Orander wove protective spells over all the other doors.'
'If we try to go through the doors, what will the spells turn us into? It might be nice to be something different,' Trap said.
'You'd be burned to a crisp,' Halmarain said, then returned to her studies.
Trap decided that a crisp was not the most lively thing to be, since crisps didn't wander. He woke the little merch-esti and led him down the passage, following Ripple and the gully dwarves. They walked along the passage beyond the door where they had entered the wizard's lair. At the end, a second narrow hall led into a large scullery.
A huge hearth filled the far wall. To the right, wide shelves held more than twenty large, overturned kettles of various sizes. More than half were too large for the ken-der to lift. In the center of the room four tables, twenty feet long and six wide, provided a work space for an army of cooks. The tables had been made for the comfort of standing human cooks and their surfaces were at eye level to the kender. Umpth and Grod, short for gully dwarves, were no better off.
Ten tall stools stood around each table as if the workers had just stepped out. Fifty pottery jars bearing the names of spices, sat in a rack across from shelves of pots. Through an arch they could see huge earthen storage vessels standing rank on rank.
A small fire burned in the big grate. The merchesti gave a gurgle of pleasure when he felt the heat and was soon curled up on one end of the hearth.
'What a big place!' Ripple looked around.
'Let's explore,' Trap suggested. He followed Ripple into the larder where the torches lit by themselves as the two walked in. Most of the huge jars were empty, but in the smaller ones they found a good supply of staples. Before long Ripple had made a maize pudding while Trap sliced rashers of bacon and had them sizzling in a skillet.
Just as Trap was taking up the bacon, Halmarain entered the chamber. She was still reading one of the red- bound books. She sniffed from time to time as if following her nose.
'Have you found out how to open the portal to the other plane?' Trap asked. He was already bored with the underground caverns.
'I may be coming to the answer,' she said. 'Let me read this and I'll tell you.'
She ordered the gully dwarves back to sit on stools and reached up over her head to put the book on the table. She climbed the rungs of a stool, perched on the seat and continued to read.
The two kender brought the food to the table in bowls and trenchers. They brought spoons for the pudding, but the gully dwarves grabbed the bowls and shoved the pudding into their mouths with their dirty fingers.
Disgusted by the Aghar's lack of table manners, Trap searched for a topic of conversation to help cover the slurping. As he glanced at the wizard, he thought of a question he had wanted to ask.
'You're a dwarf,' Trap observed. 'What kind? Are you a Neidar or Klar?' His uncle had told him dwarves were suspicious of any magic that wasn't innate to their race. He doubted she could be from one of the Hylar clans, since they usually stayed in their deep caverns in the mountains, though they were sometimes seen on the surface if they were on a mission of some importance.
'I'm not a dwarf,' she answered, too absorbed in her reading to sound irritated. 'I'm human, believe it or not.'
'A full grown human shorter than us?' Ripple was astonished. Halmarain was stouter, but shorter than a twelve-year-old kender.
'Some humans don't grow very much. We're rare, perhaps one in a hundred thousand.'
'Big cook place,' Umpth spoke up.
'Wizards eat lot maybe,' Grod suggested to his brother.
Halmarain ignored the gully dwarves, but Trap was also curious about the huge, well appointed kitchen.
'It's a wonderful place,' he said. 'Interesting. I liked exploring it. Does it have other rooms?' He was looking forward to exploring some of the large earthenware jars they had not had time to open.
'No, this is it. Before the cataclysm these chambers were the scullery, larder, and storage for the keep,' Halmarain said, pointing toward the ceiling. The earthquakes collapsed the upper passages. The people in the keep must have thought all the underground caverns were destroyed. They never tried to dig them out.'
Trap wanted to ask more questions, but the gully dwarves had emptied their bowls and were off their stools, heading for the hearth. Halmarain glanced up and threw the kender a hard, warning look. Trap hurried to head them off. He refilled their bowls and his own while he was at it. Ripple's maize pudding was delicious. It was famous in Hylo.
Halmarain continued to study as she finished her meal. She was just closing her book, ready to leave the table, when she noticed the expectant look in the kender's eyes.
'I'll do some magic for you, but afterward I'll expect you to clean the scullery and keep an eye on the merchesti and the dwarves.'
Halmarain reached into the salt cellar and carefully counted out twelve grains. She scattered them on the table, waved her hands and spoke an incantation. Twelve grains enlarged, broke apart, and from each stepped a glowing little man. They appeared to be made of small blocks and those at the hips, knees, shoulders, and elbows appeared hinged as the little men began to dance around the top of the table.
The kender clapped their hands, the gully dwarves' grins nearly split their faces as they reached for the tiny cavorting figures, but their fingers passed through them and the little men kept dancing. They cavorted for nearly five minutes before disappearing.
'Now remember your promise in return,' Halmarain warned and returned to the wizard's work room. The kender stayed behind to clean up the kitchen. The dwarves emptied the pot of maize pudding and Beglug ate two of the trenchers.
When the kitchen was clean, the dwarves sprawled out on the floor. Since the merchesti was shivering with cold, the kender built up the fire. He slept on the hearth and they wrapped themselves in their blankets and stretched out on the big kitchen tables.
The next day Halmarain studied her books. The kender were bored. They could not induce Halmarain to do any more magic for them, though she promised she would after she found the answers to her questions about the portal. Trap and Ripple explored their own pouches, showing each other their possessions. Somehow, Ripple had regained possession of the single gate stone. An hour later they did the same job again. Trap regained his possessions that had somehow found their way into Ripple's pouches and she took back hers.
Part of the morning passed pleasantly enough when in their third exploration of the underground caverns they found a chest pushed well back under Orander's bed.
It had not occurred to either kender that as well as a lock, a wizard might put a spell on his personal belongings. The lock was child's play for a kender, but the spell blew them across the room and singed Trap's eyebrows and the knees of his leggings. Luckily, he had been slightly to the side of the chest and escaped the worst affects of the fireball. Halmarain had closed the heavy door of the laboratory and had not heard the noise.
They spent another pleasant hour exclaiming over rings and vials and brooches. They examined small, carefully fastened pouches filled with powder, and two strange knives. They were fascinated by three golden rings. When they were finished with their explorations, Trap carefully re-locked the chest so no one could get into it and steal Orander's belongings. Neither noticed the chest was considerably emptier than it had been when they opened it, or that three rings, one of the knives, and several vials had not found their way back into the chest.
Later the same afternoon they rearranged their pouches again, this time trading back and forth, so they both had new items. Trap inspected a knife his sister gave him in return for one he had found in his belongings after they left the ship.
