Hiccup.
A minotaur soldier felt his sword being pulled from its sheath. He grabbed at the hilt just in time and wrested it back after a tug-of-war with something invisible. The minotaur swatted at the something and missed. One by one, each of the soldiers around him swatted and missed. Then a soldier unsheathed his sword and swung wildly, cutting off the ear of the minotaur standing next to him.
Hiccup.
The noise sounded close to where Dogz knelt on both knees, guarded by a knot of minotaur soldiers. The soldiers started at the hiccup, but couldn't tell precisely where it had come from. A couple of them moved away from Dogz, gripping their weapons and sniffing suspiciously. That left three watching the turncoat.
On the scaffold, the Nightmaster turned another page, continuing to read aloud the mysterious phrases of long-ago magic in his deep voice.
"Psst, Dogz! It's me, Tas!"
Dogz's mournful eyes widened, more concerned for the kender's sake than he was for himself. The three guards stood a couple of feet away, their backs to him, watching the Nightmaster. They hadn't heard Tasslehoff.
With his eyes, Dogz showed that he had heard.
"Hey, I want to thank you for killing Fesz! That was a swell thing to do. What a friend you are! Of course, I would have done it myself long ago if only—"
With his eyes, Dogz tried to tell the kender that he ought to get away from him—far away from him—before the armed guards turned around.
"Say, Dogz, you wouldn't happen to have a small dagger or anything—"
"Fesz," rumbled Dogz as softly as he could.
One of the guards heard him. He turned and stared suspiciously at Dogz, who shrugged. The guard came over and poked around in the air with his spear, hitting nothing.
Hiccup.
The minotaur guard rammed the butt end of the spear into Dogz's gut. Dogz doubled over, gasping for breath.
Atop the scaffold, the Nightmaster turned the final page. He took a moment, breathed deeply, and pulled some dried leaves and other ingredients from small pouches he carried, flinging them out over the volcano.
A mist of particles rose from the crater, spreading out and filling the air above it, tinting everything orange-red. The mist was dry and hot.
"The jalopwort," the Nightmaster growled, nodding in Raistlin's direction, "and the last of the other ingredients called for by the spell."
Raistlin, backed up against one of the corner posts, stared straight ahead, impassive. The moment the Nightmaster turned back to the tome of spells, he resumed his desperate effort to saw through the rope by rubbing it against the wooden corner of the scaffold.
Hiccup.
On the ground, something invisible was trying to pull the katar out of Fesz's neck. Nobody was paying the slightest attention to the dead shaman, so Tas was able to put his foot on Fesz's head and pull with both hands. Nobody noticed when the katar slid out of the minotaur's body and disappeared under Tasslehoff's tunic.
Fortunately Tasslehoff had finally gotten over the hiccups.
Unfortunately he had only a few minutes of invisibility left.
As carefully and quietly as he could, the invisible Tas crawled past the minotaur guard stationed at the foot of the scaffold. Up the steps, one by one, on his hands and knees, he crept toward Raistlin.
The mage heard the odd scraping and rustling sounds on the steps behind him and froze. Even as he did so, he felt the sharp edge of a blade begin to saw through the ropes that tied his hands.
Glancing over his shoulder, Raistlin saw Tasslehoff, one step from the top, gradually turning visible. He shook his head violently to warn the kender, but, intent on his task, Tas wasn't looking at Raistlin's face. Even if he had been looking, the kender wouldn't have had the slightest idea what the mage was trying to communicate.
The Nightmaster heard a noise at his feet.
Looking up, Tas saw the Nightmaster reaching down for him.
Faster than a dart eel, Tas withdrew the katar and rolled to his left. He came up on the floor of the scaffold, stabbing forward and down. The katar sank into the Nightmaster's cleft right hoof.
The high shaman of the minotaurs howled with pain and yanked out the katar, dropping it over the side of the scaffold. Bellowing with fury, the Nightmaster ripped a strip of cloth from his cloak and wrapped it around his foot, which was streaming blood. Then he jerked his head up, nostrils flaring, looking for Tas.
As close to panic as a kender gets, Tasslehoff had frozen, trying to decide whether to stay or run, when he saw the bulging eyes of the Nightmaster fasten on him. "Uh-oh," he murmured and instantly made the decision to run.
But it was too late. The Nightmaster covered the short distance between them in an eyeblink, snatching the kender up in one huge hand. With a deafening roar, the high shaman whirled and hurled Tas far out over the mouth of the volcano.
Down, down Tas fell, toward the liquid furnace . . .
. . . only to be caught up by something that swooped beneath him.
The Nightmaster gaped in astonishment as a kyrie warrior plucked the kender from the air with its talons. The kyrie soared up and past the shaman, then back down to the ground, where he deposited an equally astonished Tasslehoff Burrfoot a short distance away.
Running from one side of the scaffold to the other, looking down, the Nightmaster saw that a small group of kyrie and humans had engaged his minotaur force in battle. Several of the minotaurs were lying on the ground, dead or wounded, while others had retreated, bunching together behind mounds of dead lava, lobbing spears and arrows at the intruders.
The Nightmaster could pick out the human female, Kitiara,
