The Magus spoke a few words, and the air was suddenly charged with power. A nimbus of light appeared around the Magus's right hand, which he held out in Tasslehoff's direction.
'Show the ring,' said the Magus.
Tasslehoff reluctantly held up his hand, hoping the spell would not blast his arm off. With gentle confidence, the Magus reached out and touched the ring.
A blinding flash of green light filled the room, followed by a loud thump. Tasslehoff jerked his hand away in surprise, but he was uninjured. When his vision cleared, Tasslehoff watched as the Magus slowly crawled into an upright position on the other side of the room. The flash had tossed the Magus away like an old stick.
'Wow!' said the kender, his eyes widening. 'The ring did that? I had no idea…'
A long hiss escaped the Magus's lips. Tasslehoff stopped speaking immediately. For perhaps a minute the Magus said nothing, then he dusted off his robes and looked at the automatons.
'Take him,' the Magus whispered. His voice reminded Tasslehoff of the closing of a mausoleum door.
'Well,' Tasslehoff said to himself, his voice echoing from the walls of his cell, 'I guess I've been in worse predicaments.'
Unfortunately, he couldn't think of any worse than the one he was in now. He almost believed that the gods of Krynn were angry with him and that they were toying with his final punishment even now.
He racked his brain for some sin he may have com mitted, other than cursing or borrowing things without putting them back where he found them. Other people called it theft, but that term made him wince. It was handling, borrowing, not stealing. There was a difference, though the distinction was rather hazy to Tasslehoff and he'd never quite worked it out.
He rolled over and sat up. The automatons had cast him in the cell after leaving the Magus's chamber, and he had only a low-burning candle for light. Tangled spiderwebs hung from the ceiling. Listlessly, Tasslehoff tapped his hand against the floor, and the ring clicked out a lonely rhythm.
Tasslehoff had often tried to make his own maps, but he had no head for the exacting patience it took to draw one accurately. Instead, he thought of himself as an explorer who didn't have to make accurate maps, relying on those who came after him to clear up such details as the direction in which north lay. Being there first, not drawing it up afterward, was what counted.
For years now, he'd walked the world and remembered many sights, great and small. On a high gray mountain, he had watched a golden chimera fight a bloody-tusked manticore to the death. The Qualinesti, the elven people of the high meadows, took him to witness the coronation of a prince of their wooded realms, dressing Tasslehoff in silver and silk of rare design. He'd spoken with wayfarers of a dozen nations and all polite races, and a few races not so polite.
Once in a while, Tasslehoff would run into an old adventuring friend from years ago, and they'd travel together. He'd sketch crude maps of his journeys to show his friends, elaborating on his adventures for effect, waiting for the listeners to smile. He loved story-telling over a map.
Mapmaking was not his only hobby, however. Occasionally, Tasslehoff would see something small and interesting within easy reach. When no one was looking, he'd borrow the item to admire it; oftentimes when he finished looking at it, the owner was gone. With a sigh, he'd drop the item in one of his many pockets and move on. He never meant to steal anything. Things just came out like that.
A week ago, Tasslehoff found the ring.
Tasslehoff scratched his nose in the dim light and remembered. He was in his home town, a farming community called Solace. He'd gotten up early to get hot pastries from a nearby bakery. While waiting for the shop to open, he heard two men having a shouting match in an alley.
Argument turned to scuffling, then came a hideous cry that made the kender jump. Three watchmen walking past immediately rushed toward the alley as the killer fled from it.
The thin-faced murderer was almost too hasty to escape. He stumbled on a loose rock and opened a clenched hand to catch himself. A glittering bauble fell from his palm and bounced beside Tasslehoff, who was hiding behind a wooden box by the bakery door. With a slight move, Tasslehoff covered the ring from view. The murderer hesitated, cursing the ring's loss, but continued fleeing upon seeing the watchmen advance his way. Within seconds, both pursued and pursuers were out of sight. Tasslehoff pocketed the ring with a careless flourish and went off to examine it.
It was very impressive, no doubt about that: solid gold, inlaid with small green emeralds, topped with a great faceted emerald that made Tasslehoff's head spin.
Undoubtedly, the ring was worth a fortune and could alone buy a small mansion or virtually anything Tasslehoff could imagine. Out of curiosity, he compared his left ring finger with the ring's diameter, then put the ring on to admire it.
It was then he discovered that the ring would not come off. He tugged, pulled, and used soap and water, all to no avail. A few minutes after he gave up a last attempt to remove it, the ring flashed, saturating the kender's vision with velvety green light. At the same moment, it teleported him into the ocean, which was supposed to be hundreds of miles away.
The change was so sudden that he almost drowned before he had the presence of mind to paddle to keep himself afloat. He struggled, growing wearier with each passing minute. Then a tall wave slapped him and he choked, and the ring flashed green again and teleported him away-into a woodland full of scratchy briars.
This process continued for days. Every few hours the ring would send him off to a new place he'd never seen before. If danger threatened, the ring would jerk him out of it and carry him elsewhere. He knew that the ring was cursed and uncontrollable and that he'd better find a way to stop the teleporting before he was dropped into a volcano. At least, he was learning to swim quickly enough.
It didn't take long before he noticed the distance between hops was decreasing; eventually, he was tele- porting only a mile or so at a time, though more frequently. By making a mental note of landmarks, he also judged that he was moving in a straight line; and this heartened him: the ring was taking him somewhere. An adventure, indeed!
This pleasant feeling was lost completely when the giant thunderhead came into view over the horizon. Below it, illuminated by flickering lightning, was a vast and barren mountain capped by a black stone citadel. He was heading straight for it.
Tasslehoff said a word he'd once heard an angry barbarian use. He liked adventures, but there were limits. As if piqued by his comment, a second later the ring teleported him to within a mile of the mountain itself.
Kender know no fear, but they know a bad thing when they see it. Judging the thunderstorm, mountain, and citadel to be such bad things, Tasslehoff scrambled over rocks and debris in a mad attempt to flee. The ring flashed again, and he reappeared within fifty feet of the pitiless walls of the castle.
'No, no! Stop!' he yelled as he tried to bash the ring with a fist-sized stone. 'Whoa! Let's go back to the ocean! I don't wanna g-'
A green flash in his cell cut the kender off in mid thought. A spider eyeing Tasslehoff from the safety of the cell's darkened ceiling coiled its legs in surprise. It was now the cell's only occupant.
At first Tasslehoff thought he had teleported into a cave. The flash blinded him as usual, and when the effects wore off, he was still unable to see a thing in the darkness. By feeling about with his hands, he could tell he was in a narrow, square tunnel only three feet high. He crawled slowly in a random direction, testing the floor for traps or deep pits (of which there seemed to be none). Soon he saw a faint light ahead and quickly made for it.
A small, barred opening resembling a window was set in the wall to his right; carefully, he peered through it. Beyond the opening was a vast carved chamber, perhaps a hundred feet across and half as high as it was wide. The window was set two-thirds of the way up from the floor. Logic told Tasslehoff that he was in some sort of ventilation shaft; he had noticed a gentle air current while crawling along but had paid it no heed.
Within the chamber, light flickered from dozens of firepots laid out in a broad circular pattern on the floor. As he stared at the pattern, Tasslehoff realized it was a conjuration circle, such as wizards used to call up spirits from the invisible worlds. Faint traceries of colored chalk faded into the shifting darkness around the motionless flames
