The tunnel went on, twisting and turning for miles. In some places, such as where the companions had entered, the passage was pristine, but elsewhere it was in disrepair. Piles of loose dirt covered the floor where sections of walls had crumbled, and buckled shoring timbers creaked ominously. The Plainsfolk quickly became acutely aware of the weight of earth that hung above them. Swiftraven in particular, who had spent much of his life on the open Plains and had slept more nights beneath the stars than under a roof, grew downright edgy whenever he heard the timbers’ weary groans.
After an hour of walking, they reached a fork in the passage. A sign stood between the two branches, marked with runes the Plainsfolk didn’t recognize. “It’s Kenderspeak,”
Kronn explained. “It says Kendermore’s to the left.”
“What about the right?” Brightdawn asked.
“That way leads east,” the kender said, pointing. “There should be a few villages that way-Sprucebark, Myrtledew, Deerfield-but everything else belongs to Malys and the ogres now. Actually, now that I think about it, if the ogres are at Kendermore, just about everything must belong to them by now. They’re probably stomping around above our heads right now.”
Impelled by that grim thought, they quickened their pace as they followed the left branch. Another hour passed.
“We must be getting close by now,” Swiftraven grumbled, squinting ahead as though he could somehow bring his eyes to penetrate the darkness beyond the torchlight.
Not long after, the passage narrowed, then branched off in several directions at once. Kronn read the runes on the signs, twisting his cheek braids between his fingers, then nodded and chose a passage. He cocked an ear as they pressed onward. “There,” he said. “Do you hear that?”
For a moment, the others couldn’t hear anything other than the sounds that had followed them during their walk through the tunnel-the scuff of their soft boots on the dirt floor, the crackle and pop of the torches, Catt’s pained mutterings as she tossed and turned upon her stretcher. In time, though, the humans detected what Kronn had heard. The faint sound of voices murmured from somewhere ahead of them. They frowned, straining to make out what was being said, but the distance and the eerie echoes of the tunnels made it impossible.
There was, however, no mistaking who was talking. The shrill, lilting voices belonged to kender.
The voices slowly grew louder as they walked. Soon, there was something else. Torchlight gleamed dead ahead. “Hey!” Kronn shouted. “Over here! We need some help!”
The voices suddenly fell silent, and the light snuffed out. Kronn, however, refused to douse his torch. Instead he held it high, raising his other hand to show that it was empty.
“Hold,” a voice answered from the darkness. “I have an arrow aimed at you right now.”
A delighted grin spread across Kronn’s face. “That would impress me more if you could hit an ogre’s bare backside at twenty paces, Giff,” he said sarcastically.
There was a short silence, then the voice ahead of them called out again. “Kronn Thistleknot?”
“No,” Kronn quipped, “it’s the ghost of Fewmaster Toede.”
With a suddenness that nearly made Riverwind and Swiftraven drop the stretcher, a tall, burly kender with short-cropped yellow hair loped out of the darkness. Kronn had just enough time to toss away his torch before the big kender tackled him. They flung their arms around each other, then fell laughing in a brightly colored heap.
They wrestled on the ground for a few seconds before the tall kender pinned Kronn to the ground. “All right, I give,” Kronn said.
With a hearty laugh, the big kender rolled off him and stood up, brushing the dust from his leather armor. Then he saw the Plainsfolk and blinked in astonishment. “Great Trapspringer’s ghost!” he swore. “You brought humans with you!”
“Of course I did,” Kronn answered. “That’s what Pax sent us to do.”
“But I never thought you’d actually find someone who was willing to come or find your way back through the army of ogres.”
“Thanks for your confidence in us,” Kronn said. “Riverwind, Swiftraven and Brightdawn, this is Giffel Birdwhistle.”
But the tall kender wasn’t listening. His eyes fell upon the stretcher and the figure who lay upon it. “Oh, no!” he cried, lunging forward. “Catt!” He stopped beside her, took her uninjured hand in his, and looked back toward Kronn. “What happened to her?”
“She had a bad fall,” Kronn answered. “Broke her arm, and took a nasty crack on the head. We need to get her to a healer.”
“Of course,” agreed Giffel. “Come on. Follow me,” he said, already walking off down the passage.
As they hurried after him, Kronn turned to the Plainsfolk and grinned.
Paxina Thistleknot stood upon the east wall of Kendermore, the setting sun stretching her shadow across the field below. The wind blew in her face, whipping her silver ponytail and ceremonial purple robes behind her. Her gaze settled on the edge of the forest, where large shadows moved among the dying trees.
“Why don’t they attack?” she wondered aloud, talking to no one in particular.
“They don’t have to,” answered Brimble Redfeather, a grizzled, old kender who was the closest thing Kendermore had to a warlord. He chewed hard on a licorice root, spitting the juice on the flagstones beside him. “Time’s on their side. Makes more sense for them to wait, anyway. The scouts say there’s more ogres coming out of the east all the time. And then there’s the dragon to consider.
“Thorns and nettles, the dragon,” Paxina groaned. “What in Reorx’s name can we hope to do about her?”
Brimble shrugged and spat again. He reached to his back and patted his chapak reassuringly, as if yearning for the chance to bury the weapon in Malys’s scaly hide. “I can send another man to Blood Watch, if you want.”
Paxina shook her head firmly at the suggestion. The kender had already dispatched three different volunteers to scout the dragon’s lair. None had returned. The rosters listed them as Missing, Presumed Eaten.
“Save your men, Brimble,” she told him. “If the entire ogre army is on its way, and it sure looks like it is, we’re going to need everyone we can spare.” She heaved a sigh that came all the way from the soles of her bright green shoes. “What about those riders your men saw cross the field this afternoon? Has there been any word of them?”
“Nothing new,” Brimble answered. “I’ve had some people ask around. Near as I can tell, there were three humans and two kender. They came from the south, made for the gates, then realized we weren’t going to open them and rode north like their hair was on fire. The ogres chased them, of course. Some of the men say one of the kender didn’t make it.”
Paxina bowed her head, pressing her lips together to keep from cursing. “Did anyone-did they get a good look at them?” she asked.
Brimble nodded, a wry smile on his lips. “They were tall, they were short. They had light hair, they had dark hair. They rode brown horses, they rode black horses. You know how it goes-if I could gather together everyone folk think they saw, we’d have an army big enough to rout the ogres from the field right now.”
“Your Honor!” called a voice from the courtyard below. “Paxina! Come quickly!”
Turning, Paxina and Brimble looked down, toward the base of the wall. Someone was sprinting toward them, waving his arms in the air: a tall, stout kender with yellow hair. They both recognized him immediately. “Giffel!” Paxina shouted.
“What are you doing up here, Birdwhistle?” Brimble demanded. “You’re supposed to be down in the tunnels, keeping an eye on things.”
“I
“Who, Giff?” Paxina asked. “Who did you find?”
Giffel looked around him. Paxina and Brimble weren’t the only ones listening. Just about every kender within earshot had turned to look at him curiously. A modest span of the wall was, in effect, unguarded because the sentries manning it were all staring his way.
