slingstone shot far upward, straight toward Malys, and struck her square between the eyes. It bounced off her scaly hide and fell out of sight without even slowing her flight. She drew a great breath into her cavernous breast.
“Oh, drat,” Kronin muttered.
The fleeing kender were almost to the sheltering forest when the roar of flames caught their attention. They turned in their tracks, to see a column of fire streak down from the dragon’s gaping jaws and strike Woodsedge like a burning fist. Looking to the palisade, Kronn and Catt saw a figure silhouetted against the bright orange glow, clutching a hoopak in his hands.
“What does he think he’s doing?” cried Catt.
“Hero stuff,” murmured Kronn.
As they watched in horror, the figure flared and vanished amid the flames.
“No!” Catt cried. She started back toward the village. Kronn caught her arm.
“Catt!” he shouted. “We’re not done here! We’ve got to get these people to safety!”
She looked at him blankly for a moment, then blinked. The thunder of the firestorm was growing steadily louder, and a hot wind blew outward from Woodsedge, carrying ashes and embers. “You’re right,” she said. “Into the woods, everyone! Quickly, while she isn’t looking!”
It took some doing-Catt wasn’t the only kender who tried to turn back toward the town-but with the help of Giffel and the other guardsmen they managed to herd the villagers into the forest. Behind them, Malystryx continued to blast Woodsedge with her fiery breath. Houses and shops blew apart. The protective palisade became a curtain of flame. Kronn and Catt crouched at the edge of the Kenderwood, watching the whole town become a raging inferno.
At last, Malys’s jaws snapped shut, her breath expended. She wheeled above the town for an hour after that, fanning the flames with her wings. Then she turned, her golden eyes gleaming in the moonlight, and stared straight at the Kenderwood. It seemed to Kronn and Catt that her gaze bored right through them.
She laughed, a cruel, mocking sound. “Run now, little kender!” she taunted. “Much good it will do you! When I am done, there will be nowhere left for you to flee!”
With that, she wheeled majestically and flapped away over the Blood Sea. It was some time before any of the hiding kender emerged from the forest.
For the whole day after the attack, and the night after that, Woodsedge continued to burn. The kender who had escaped the blaze could do little but watch as their homes and all their possessions, went up in flames.
Houses and trinkets were not all that were lost, though. While Kronn and Catt’s swift action had gotten many of the villagers to safety, some had not been saved. Those who had passed out from food and drink, the few guards left on duty atop the palisade, and anyone who was otherwise too slow to nm-the sick, the crippled, young children, old people-had perished in the conflagration. Of the thousand or so kender who had dwelt in Woodsedge, more than two hundred did not survive.
Including the great kender hero, Kronin Thistleknot.
At last, on the second morning after the attack, the flames died down enough for the kender to start sifting through the rubble. They waded ankle-deep in ashes, trying to find something-anything-to salvage.
Late that afternoon, Catt-her yellow dress and pale face smudged with soot-found her brother on his knees at what had been the north edge of town. Stubs of charcoal, which once had been the palisade, smoldered before him. He rocked slowly back and forth, cradling something in his arms.
“Kronn?” Catt whispered.
He shook his head, moaning angrily. She hesitated, then stepped forward, leaning in to see what he clutched to his breast.
It was almost unrecognizable, scorched and blackened by dragonfire. Part of it, however, had been untouched by the flames, and her eyes clouded when she realized what Kronn held.
It was a shoe, purple and faded with age.
Chapter 2
The door of the Inn of the Last Home cracked open, then flew wide as the wind caught it. The tavern’s patrons glared, huddling over their drinks. Their expressions softened, though, when they saw the massive form that squeezed through the doorway. Caramon Majere stomped in, carrying a load of firewood that would have stooped a man half his age. Sweating and panting, he lugged the wood to the hearth and dropped it with a clatter into the firebox. Moving stiffly, he lifted the poker and stirred the fire. A storm of glowing cinders rose up the chimney. Satisfied, he shuffled away from the hearth and slumped into an armchair with an old man’s aching grunt.
Caramon had a right to that grunt. On the downward slope of sixty he’d already seen more years than the Inn’s previous owner, Otik Sandath, had when he’d retired. He folded his hands over his girth-he’d fought its spread all his life, but was finally losing-and leaned back, letting his eyelids droop closed.
The next thing he knew, old Rhea, the Inn’s cook, was shaking him. Snorting, he wiped his eyes and peered blearily up at her. “What’s the trouble?” he asked.
Rhea, who was more than seventy years old, was a severe-looking woman at the best of times. The look she gave him now made it seem as if she’d just taken a large bite of a lemon. “Well,” she said pointedly, “for one thing, the windows were about to break, you were snoring so loud.”
Chuckles filled the tavern. Caramon glowered at her. “I don’t snore,” he grumbled.
“Of course you don’t,” Rhea snapped sarcastically. More chuckles. “I also brought your supper. Think you can stay awake long enough to eat?”
“Keep talking like that,” Caramon warned. “You’ll see how awake I am.”
With a mocking laugh, Rhea signaled to one of the serving girls, who brought out a sizzling platter and placed it on the table before him. Rhea set a tankard of tea beside the plate, then bustled away.
Not long ago, it had been rare for Caramon to take his supper at a civilized hour. The Inn had been too busy, with travelers on their way south to Haven and Qualinesti, or north to Crossing and the New Sea. “Blackguards and barmen dine ‘neath the moons,” the old saying went.
The moons were gone now, though, replaced by a single orb that hung, pale and strange, in the night sky. It seemed the old proverbs no longer applied, either. Since the Summer of Chaos, Caramon had found time to dine with the Inn’s patrons three days out of four. That was because there were few patrons to dine with anymore.
For such a big man, Caramon ate little nowadays, and what there was on his plate, he picked at listlessly. He took sips of tea between mouthfuls of marjoram-rubbed rabbit and spiced potatoes, but most of the time, he just stared around the tavern.
There had been a time, just a few years ago, when the Inn had been packed at this hour. The tables and booths had been full, people had lined the bar shoulder-to-shoulder, and the air had rung with talk and laughter and cries for ale. Caramon had wished, on more than one occasion, that business would cool off so he could have some rest. Now he looked back on those days and wondered if, maybe, he hadn’t wished too hard.
Tonight, he could count the folk in the tavern without taking off his boots, as Tika was wont to quip. In the back sat two hooded elves, probably refugees from the ongoing troubles in Qualinesti. Clemen, Osler and Borlos- regulars who’d hang in till either the Inn closed for good or someone dragged them out feet-first-were drinking mulled wine and playing a game of cards over by the kitchen door, cursing and laughing loudly. A weary-looking tinker, who had found less work in Solace than he’d hoped and would surely move on soon, hunched over a bottle of dwarf spirits. And that was it.
Things just hadn’t been the same since that terrible summer. True, the Knights of Takhisis no longer ruled this part of Ansalon, but their absence was a double-edged sword. They’d been hard masters, and Caramon had hated every moment he’d lived under their sway, but at least they’d kept the bandits and goblins from running rampant. Now the road were more dangerous than they’d been in many years, and no one seemed to travel much anymore. On top of that, the world seemed to have slowed down since the Second Cataclysm. At first, folk had been preoccupied with rebuilding the damage wrought by the Dark Knights and the armies of Chaos. Now, though,
