him up a little. Sturm comes from a long line of Solamnic traditional nonsense, and he doesn't respond to ordinary physical torture the way some humans might. Now, if it was up to me, I'd do something a little more imaginative.'
Fesz had moved past Sturm to pace the cell behind the prisoner. The shaman minotaur inhaled deeply, his nostrils flaring. He tilted his horned head. Fesz had already forgotten Sturm. He was memorizing the still-lingering scent of the other human, the one called Caramon, the brother of Raistlin.
Tasslehoff reached into his pouch, rummaging for something. He pulled out a small pair of scissors. With the other hand, he grabbed one end of Sturm's long, drooping mustache.
'This is what I'd do,' he cried triumphantly, slicing off the end of Sturm's mustache. Sturm winced but said nothing, glaring furiously at the kender.
'Yes!' Tas held the tuft of brown hair in the air, proudly displaying it to Fesz. 'Now, that's what I call torture! These Solamnics are very proud of their mustaches. Oh, very proud indeed!'
He leaned back toward Sturm with an exuberant grin. 'I've wanted to do that for a long time,' the kender taunted the young Solamnic. 'Yes, a very, very long time! You think you're so high and mighty just because you can grow a long, droopy mustache. Well, I could, too, if I wanted to. I could grow a mustache longer than a topknot. I-'
'I would like to see where the kyrie is held,' rumbled Fesz, cutting Tas off, 'and where the other human was last seen before he disappeared.'
'Yes, your excellency!' said the guard, hurrying to escort them. Grabbing the kender by the shoulders, the guard steered Tas out of the cell. The evil kender twisted under the minotaur's grip, shrieking over his shoulder at the tight-lipped Sturm.
'And I suppose you think we came all this way just to see you, Mr. Droopy Mustache! Hah! It just so happens that we are on our way to Karthay, where we are going to rendezvous with the Nightmaster and do a great, big, important magic spell that will bring Sargonnas into this world. And did I mention that none other than Kitiara Uth Matar is there already, being held prisoner, so we've got more important people on our schedule to torture than you…'
The minotaur guard led the way down a corridor. Fesz followed, prodding Tas in front of him.
It was Dogz who paused to gaze at Sturm. The minotaur rubbed his chin ruefully, thinking he really ought to have killed the two humans the first time he encountered them. Next time he would know better. Now he was up to his thick, bull neck in things he didn't understand. With a sigh, Dogz trailed after Fesz, Tas, and the minotaur guard.
Sturm was left with half a mustache to ponder what was going on.
The three minotaurs and Tas headed toward the far end of one of the dim corridors, where a sole prisoner was kept behind bars, manacled to a side wall.
This prisoner, Fesz explained to Tasslehoff on the way, was a kyrie, one of the fabled bird-people who lived in remote, mountainous areas of Mithas. The kyrie were sworn enemies of the race of minotaurs, rarely seen in captivity.
'Your former friend, Caramon, was a trustee who brought food and water to the other prisoners,' noted Fesz. 'He was last spotted outside the kyrie's cell. Then he vanished without a trace-like magic.'
If he was talking about Raistlin, Caramon's twin brother, Tasslehoff said sagely, then they'd have to take into account all sorts of possibilities-invisibility spells, time travel, even escape disguised as a scurrying centipede. But since it was Caramon, the kender was certain that magic had had nothing to do with it.
'This Raistlin must be a very powerful mage,' rumbled Fesz, impressed.
'Yes, very powerful,' agreed Tas, adding mentally to himself, although he isn't really a mage-yet. Aloud he added, 'As powerful as they come. I wouldn't even dare to guess how powerful, because even while I was taking the time to guess, Raistlin would probably be learning a new spell or two and becoming even more powerful!'
When they arrived at the cell of the kyrie, Tas was chagrined and disappointed. Except for his legs, which were decidedly birdlike, the prisoner didn't look much like a bird-man. The kyrie had been beaten severely, and his arms hung limp at his sides. A pathetic sight.
A slight twitch told Tas that the kyrie was alive, but just barely. From the looks of him, he might as well have been dead.
When Dogz leaned over and whispered to Tas that the ugly-looking, infected scars on the kyrie's back were where his wings had been ripped off, the kender exploded.
'What?' Tasslehoff exclaimed, turning on the dungeon guard and aiming several sharp kicks at the bull-man's knobby kneecaps. 'I get one of the only chances of my life to sneak a peek at a kyrie, and you have to bully the man practically to death and tear his wings off! Why, without his wings, he's practically human-looking-hardly worth the trip to Atossa! You could at least have waited until-'
Fesz pulled Tas away from the astonished guard, whose first impulse was to bash the kender over the head until he thought better of it.
The guard retreated up the corridor. Dogz followed him, calmly explaining in a low voice that the kender had been taking an evil potion at the behest of the shaman and such behavior was to be expected, even sanctioned.
After Fesz soothed Tas, the shaman slowly paced the width of the corridor. He peered at the abject kyrie, then studied the inside and outside of the cell, his eyes roving slowly over the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. He knelt, and with his huge, muscular hands, he felt the solidity of the stone floor. He ran his fingers along the cracks in the side wall. He cocked his head, dosed his eyes, and listened for unaccustomed sounds. Then he opened them again, a frown creasing his bull face.
'We did all that, too,' said the minotaur guard to Dogz sourly, from where he stood farther up the corridor. 'We didn't turn up anything either.'
The shaman jerked up his horns, which barely cleared the ceiling. Fesz shot the guard a withering glance. Realizing that he had been overheard, the guard lowered his eyes and stared at his feet.
Fesz stepped back, inviting Tas to take a look.
The kender was eager to prove himself. He had been watching Fesz carefully. First Tas stared at the kyrie. Then he examined the inside of the cell, his eyes darting around suspiciously. It was hard to see much in the dim light. Then he looked around the corridor outside the cell. He knelt down on the stone floor and felt for anything unusual. He ran his fingers along the walls. Like Fesz, he cocked his head, closed and opened his eyes, strained to listen.
He thought he heard a rustling sound somewhere.
'Did Caramon leave anything behind… even the slightest hint of a clue?' asked Tasslehoff.
'Nothing,' mumbled the minotaur guard from farther up the corridor. 'Just the two buckets of food and water that he had been carrying. They were overturned, almost empty.'
Fesz watched the kender carefully.
Tas paced around in a circle, coming back to a position in front of the cell. He glanced at Fesz. He looked at the kyrie again. Slowly he raised his eyes to the ceiling, which was even higher than Caramon Majere was tall-but not by much.
About two buckets and an armspan higher, Tas guessed.
'I think-' began Tas.
'Yes?' Fesz asked eagerly.
'I think,' the kender declared in a loud voice, 'that the thing we ought to do is punish Sturm Brightblade!'
'Punish Sturm Brightblade?' Fesz repeated. The emissary of the Nightmaster sounded puzzled.
'It's a matter of principle,' explained Tasslehoff, even louder. 'The principle being that Sturm must have known that Caramon was going to try to escape, and since he refuses to give us the slightest cooperation-'
'We've already done our best to torture it out of him,' offered the dungeon guard from up the corridor.
'Your best!' the kender exploded. 'You have the temerity to tell me you've done your best?'
Dogz snorted but held his tongue. Although the minotaur guard wasn't a very fast learner, he realized that he ought not to say anything else.
Turning to Fesz, Tasslehoff asked, with great solemnity, 'Are there any minotaur methods of execution that
