'I don't know about that,' Emilo said seriously. He chewed thoughtfully on the tail of his topknot. 'Of course, right now I don't known much about anything. But it seems to me that we have cares just like humans. And that business about being truly neutral… I'd like to think we know the difference between good and evil.
'And that we practice a little more of the former,' the kender added with a soft laugh. He lapsed into silence, and for a time, the four companions just rested. They shared cool water from Mirabeth's canteen, and finally Danyal decided he would bring up some of the things that had been bothering him.
'About these… seizures,' he said to Emilo. 'Have you had them all your life?'
'Well, yes, I think so. Actually,' the kender admitted, chewing on his topknot, 'I'm not sure. You see, I don't remember my childhood or my early life. So I've had these attacks ever since I can recall.'
'What's the first thing you remember? Where were you, and how long ago was it?'
'Well, those are good questions. I remember that I was in Dergoth, on the plains around Skullcap. I met some elves there, and they fed me and gave me water. From what they told me, I was about ready to die there in the desert.'
'When did that happen?' Foryth asked, warming to the questions with the interest of the true historian. 'Did they tell you the year?'
'As a matter of fact, they did. It was two hundred and fifty something, as I recall.'
'That's more than a hundred years ago,' Danyal said with a whistle. 'I didn't think kender lived to be that old-not that you look old, that is. But that's part of it, isn't it? You don't look that old.'
'More than a hundred years?' Emilo looked puzzled. 'I could have sworn that it was just last winter, or maybe a little before that. But not a hundred years!'
'What do you remember of where you were, what you were doing, last winter?' Foryth took over the interview. 'Were you and Mirabeth traveling together then?'
'Well…' Suddenly Emilo looked frightened. He cast a worried glance at the kendermaid and asked, 'I didn't know you then, did I?'
'No,' she said.
'But-but why can't I remember? When did I meet you? How long ago?'
'It was just a few days ago, actually,' Mirabeth said. She turned her head, including the two humans in her explanation. 'I was wandering on my own-that is, I'd been by myself for a little while. I was having some trouble, I guess you could say, and Emilo came along and helped me out.'
'Did he rescue you from bandits, too?' Danyal asked, only half teasing.
'No,' she replied with a soft laugh. The lad decided that he liked that sound a lot. 'I was trying to camp, but my lean-to had fallen over and my bedroll was soaked with rain. I couldn't get a fire going, and I was sitting in the woods, teeth chattering, feeling sorry for myself. He almost scared me out of my skin when he walked up and said-'
'Emilo Haversack, at your service?' guessed Danyal.
Mirabeth grinned at him. 'The same thing he said to you, I presume.'
'And he was-at our service, I mean. Really, you saved our lives,' declared the young human. 'I guess I haven't told you that, but you did.'
'Oh, now, tsk,' interjected Foryth Teel. 'I admit that business of being tied up was unpleasant, but I hardly think Kelryn was going to do us in.'
'Then you weren't paying attention! Do you remember Zack-the way he liked to play with his knife?' Danyal shuddered at the memory. 'He wasn't ever going to let us get away, despite what Kelryn said.'
Still, he admitted privately, it was Kelryn Darewind himself who was the scariest of all the bandits.
'You mentioned that wizard, Fistandantilus,' Emilo said, drawing the historian's attention away from Dan. 'It seems to me I've heard a lot about him. I just can't remember any of it.'
'There's a lot to know,' declared Foryth enthusiastically. 'He was the Master of Past and Present, you know. The first wizard-and one of only a very small number-who learned how to travel through time. An arch-mage who manipulated history by altering his own position in the River of Time. He had an influence on ages of elves and men, in an era before the Cataclysm-'
'And in Skullcap and Dergoth afterward,' noted the kender, bobbing his head.
'He must have been awfully old. Was he human, or perhaps an elf?' asked Danyal.
'Oh, absolutely human-in a way, human many times over,' Foryth said with a grim chuckle. 'You see, he absorbed the spiritual essence of other humans, for the most part young men who were gifted with magic. These sacrificial lambs were destroyed, and the power of the archmage was maintained and increased with the passing of years. Eventually he had consumed the essence of many men, and his power had become greater than any other mage's in the history of Krynn.'
'How?' The lad had a hard time imagining the magical power, the bizarre consumption, that the historian described.
'It's said that he used a gem-a bloodstone. That's one of the things I wondered about, but Kelryn Darewind wouldn't discuss it.'
'I saw a bloodstone once,' Emilo said.
Danyal looked at the kender and gasped in shock. Emilo's eyes had gone blank and lifeless, devoid of expression or awareness. His jaw hung slack and he sighed sorrowfully, shoulders slumping as if the air had all gone out of him.
'A bloodstone?' Foryth was apparently unaware of the kender's sudden alteration, for he pressed forward with obvious excitement. 'They're very rare, you know! Where was it? Could it have been-'
'It pulsed… hot, hot blood…' Emilo spoke sharply, visibly straining to push out the words. His lips stretched taut over his teeth, and he grimaced between each quick, bursting phrase. The voice was deep and rasping, very unlike the high-pitched chatter of the kender's normal speech.
'Yes, I remember the stone. And then the portal was there, colors… whirling. I sensed the magic. It pulled me, drew me in!' Eyes wild, Emilo backed against the rock wall, recoiling from the three companions who watched, aghast. 'And then she was there, laughing, waiting for me!'
The Kender's sudden scream of terror reverberated through the enclosed space of the cave, and Danyal instantly pictured the sound resonating through the woods and valley far beyond their hiding place.
Emilo drew another breath, but by then the youth was on him, pressing him down, a sturdy hand pressed over the kender's mouth. Only when he felt the thin, wiry body relax underneath him did Danyal release his hold, rocking back on his haunches as he tried to offer his frightened companion a reassuring smile.
Mirabeth was kneeling at Emilo's side, and she took his hand and cradled his head against her shoulder. The kender's eyes were blank again, but this time Danyal was almost relieved by the lack of expression; it was certainly preferable to the awful, haunting terror that swept over Emilo Haversack's features a few moments before.
The sun was high in the sky when at last they relaxed. After sipping another drink of water, Danyal was relieved to lean his head on a mossy log and allow himself to fall asleep.
CHAPTER 30
First Bakukal, Reapember
374 AC
Danyal awakened with a strong feeling that it was late afternoon. The air beyond the rocky niche was still, and he heard cicadas chirping, the steady droning of plump, lazy flies. It was Reapember, he recalled, though the temperature-and the hot, stuffy smell of the air-seemed more suggestive of midsummer than early fall.
He saw that Mirabeth, too, was awake. Her brown eyes were staring at him as he stretched and slowly brought himself back to full awareness of their surroundings. Foryth and Emilo still slept, leaning together against the opposite wall of their little niche in the rock wall.
'I've been thinking we should go out and have a look around… before dark, I mean,' the kendermaid
