For once in his life, Tas was caught speechless. His jaw sagged. He had never heard of such creatures in all his travels.
With a flourish, the shaman minotaur unscrewed the top of the jar and let the bees rise into the air. They hovered momentarily a few inches above the jar before collecting into a swarm and buzzing up and off in an easterly direction.
"Wow!" exclaimed Tas, "When I was coming back from Southern Ergoth, I sent a magic message to Raistlin—that's probably how he knows where we are—but all I had was this dumb old bottle that I had to throw into the ocean, and who knows whether it sank to the bottom of sea? If I had bees like that, I could . . . except where would I put them? I don't think it would be a good idea to carry them in my rucksack in case the jar broke, and—"
Pleased with the kender's ceaseless flow of information, Fesz wrote this new tidbit down as Tasslehoff rattled on. It would be part of his next report to the Nightmaster.
By now the minotaur shaman had a quite thorough description of Raistlin Majere and the half-elf and the dwarf who would likely be accompanying him. He had a sense of the young mage's flaws and weaknesses. Disguised assassins—minotaurs would be too conspicuous—would be dispatched to Solace in the event that Raistlin was still there. But if Raistlin was on his way to the minotaur isles, the Nightmaster would be forewarned and ready.
This Raistlin was not a genuine threat, Fesz felt certain, but it couldn't hurt to be vigilant.
On the eighth day of the kender's evil transformation, Fesz entered Tas's quarters, looking puzzled. He was carrying a parchment bearing a message he himself had transcribed. It was a message from the Nightmaster, delivered to Fesz by the super-intelligent bees.
Always happy to see his friend, Tas bounced up and down, greeting him with an elaborate salute he had devised. Then he snatched the message from the shaman's hands:
Have captured a lone female on the shore. She is well armed, obviously a warrior. She refuses to tell me her name or how or why she has come here. We are holding her for sacrifice. I suspect she is the one we have been awaiting. Ask the kender if he knows who she is.
The Nightmaster
"The bees brought this message today," said Fesz, his bullish brow knit in thought. "Do you have any idea who this woman could be?"
Tas didn't have to think about it for very long. "Why, it must be Kitiara!" he exclaimed. "Although how she got to Karthay so fast is beyond me."
"Who is Kitiara?"
"Kitiara Uth Matar," said Tasslehoff. "Didn't I tell you about her? Well, I tend to forget her about half the time because she's only Raistlin's half-sister. No pun intended, but if she's here now, that must mean that Raistlin contacted her, so he can't be very far behind . . . ."
Fesz scribbled it all down as fast as he could.
* * * * *
Fesz and Tas became such good friends that sometimes, in the late afternoons, they would get into a cart pulled by human slaves and travel to various sites around Lacynos. These amiable trips always put Tas in a talkative mood, Fesz discovered—not that it took much to do that—and the shaman minotaur learned more and more about the aspiring mage, Raistlin.
Naturally these two were always followed by one or two minotaur guards, who kept some distance behind them not only out of a sense of protocol, but also because they didn't want Tasslehoff throwing stones at them or otherwise harassing them.
On these trips, Tas got to know the entire city. He especially liked the evil, smelly places, like the slave pits and the arena of games.
A number of slave pits were scattered around the city. They were deep holes carved out of the ground for use as primitive living quarters for the thousands of slaves who carried out the day-to-day labor of Lacynos. During the daytime, only about one hundred slaves might occupy these pens—those too ill or too young to work. Their numbers swelled to seven hundred or so in each pen at night, when those slaves who were still alive after a hard day's toil returned.
The ranks of slaves consisted mostly of persons captured by minotaur pirates, sold by professional slavers, or condemned to a period of indenture for criminal offenses. There was an occasional luckless elf or dishonored minotaur, but nary a kender. In Lacynos, Tas observed, humans predominated as the oppressed race.
Dozens of minotaur guards lined the perimeter of each pit. The only access was a wide ramp, up whose slope the slaves marched, six or seven abreast, every morning, then down again at nightfall. To guard against an uprising, several retaining walls rimmed the pit. These could be collapsed, dropping tons of earth onto any rebellious mob.
Tas was very impressed by one slave pit that he visited.
He praised the ingenuity of the setup and asked a lot of questions.
"If I ever go back to Solace," he told Fesz, adding quickly, "not that I really want to, because I'm having such a good time here in Lacynos. But if I do ever go back to Solace, I think it would be a fine idea to have a slave pit just like this one in the middle of the town. Teach 'em all a lesson. Of course, Solace is up in the treetops, and speaking technically, I'm not sure that you can build a pit up in the trees, so that is a minor problem I'll have to work out. But I sure do love these slave pits!"
The kender stood on a walkway, peering down into the
