“How?” asked several kender at once.
Catt stepped forward. Her broken arm still hung in its sling, but she held her back straight and her head high.
“We’re leaving,” she proclaimed. “We’ll take the tunnels out of the Kenderwood, then travel across Ansalon to Hylo where the rest of our people live. They’ll take us in.”
“Leaving?” Merldon Metwinger asked. “What, all of us? That’ll take forever!”
“Well,” Catt replied patiently, “not quite that long. But it will take time. We’ll be drawing lots to see who leaves when. We’ve already sent messengers ahead to Solamnia and other lands asking for help in our journey. The rest of us have to start leaving tomorrow, so we need you to spread the word about this fast. Yes, Merldon?”
The old Councillor tilted his head back, peering at her through his spectacles. His squinting eyes looked huge through the lenses. “Just how long is this going to take?” he asked.
Catt cleared her throat. “I’ve, uh, been working on that. Allowing time for holdups, we can’t evacuate everyone in less than twenty-three days.”
The room erupted with shouts of outrage, confusion, and alarm. “Twenty-three days!” the Councillors exclaimed. Fingers pointed at Riverwind. “But he said we’ve only got twenty!”
Paxina cupped her hands to her mouth. “Quiet down!” she hollered. “All of you, shut up!”
A sulking silence fell over the audience hall. “I don’t mean to be rude,” Merldon Metwinger asked, “but where are we going to get the other three days?”
“We’re not,” Riverwind said. “There will still be ten thousand people left in Kendermore when the ogres attack.” A low rumble rose among the Councillors again, but the Plainsman quickly raised his hands. “That isn’t all!” he shouted. “Listen to me!”
Reluctantly, the kender looked to him.
“We have to fight the ogres,” he said. “There isn’t any other choice. But my mistake, until now, has been assuming we can do it like humans and elves do-defending the city wall, as if Kendermore were Kalaman or the High Clerist’s Tower. It isn’t.
“If we do it right, however, we can beat the ogres. But you need to fight like kender, not humans. We can’t afford a face-to-face battle, but we can beat them other ways. If the Kender Flight goes as planned, the city will be nearly empty by the time the ogres attack. But they won’t know that, and we can use that to our advantage.”
The murmurs that erupted from the Councillors were more hopeful but still confused. “What are we supposed to do?” Merldon asked.
Kronn cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “actually the answer was my idea, although I didn’t know it at the time. Riverwind had to point it out to me. Think about how Kendermore’s laid out, Merldon-streets going every which way, zigging where they should zag, stopping suddenly for no good reason, looping around on themselves. Honestly, it’s a mess. But that’s where we have the advantage. We can’t beat the ogres head-on, like Riverwind said, but if we can get them lost in the streets and use every dirty trick we’ve got, then we’ve got a chance at beating them.”
“What we need to do is block off the right roads and channel the ogres toward the middle of town,” Paxina said. “Then we have to hold them there long enough to destroy them.”
“Destroy them?” asked a young woman in the middle of the crowd. “How?”
Riverwind looked out over the Councillors, his eyes glinting in the lamplight. “You have to burn Kendermore,” he said. “You need to set fire to the city, then flee through the woods.”
For a second, every kender in the room was too stunned to speak.
“Great jumping Trapspringer’s ghost,” breathed Merldon Metwinger. “That’s insane.”
“Exactly,” Kronn replied, grinning. “Which means Kurthak won’t be expecting it.”
“It could work,” said a short, balding Councillor.
“It has to,” Paxina said emphatically. “While people are leaving through the tunnels, everyone else has to pitch in, preparing the trap. We can’t afford to have any doubts.”
Shouts of support and approval rang out through the audience hall. Fists and hoopaks waved in the air.
In the front of the crowd, Merldon Metwinger pursed his lips a moment, then raised his voice above the din. “What about Malys?” he asked.
Silence fell over the room like a landslide. A resurgence of dismay abruptly snuffed out the glee that had been kindling in the Councillors’ faces. The kender looked at one another uneasily, realizing they’d forgotten all about the dragon.
“We can try to flee through the Kenderwood,” Merldon went on, “but if Malys sees us, we’re as dead as if we stayed put. That forest out there is as dry as Balif’s bones. All she’d have to do is clear her throat, and the whole thing would go up like so much tinder. When she burned Woodsedge, the walls of the tunnel beneath it
“I’ve thought of that, also,” Riverwind said. “I will take care of the dragon.”
This time, the Councillors weren’t the only ones to react. Behind Riverwind, his daughters gasped in astonishment.
“What?” Moonsong exclaimed.
“Father-” Brightdawn began.
He glanced over his shoulder. “After,” he hissed.
Dutifully, the twins fell silent. Their faces, however, were pinched with worry as their father turned back to face the yammering Councillors.
“You can’t be serious,” Merldon Metwinger said. “You haven’t even seen Malystryx! She’s immense! I don’t think you could kill her with Huma’s own dragonlance.”
“I don’t mean to kill her,” Riverwind replied. “I know I can’t. But I have an idea how I can hurt her-hurt her so badly she won’t care whether you get away or not. I might be able to buy you time to escape.”
Before anyone-Merldon, the other Councillors, his daughters-could object, he went on. “Yesterday,” he said, “Kronn and I questioned Baloth, the ogre we captured during the assault on the east wall. We asked him about Malystryx, and he told us why she’s waiting so long to attack. Just before the ogres attack, she’s going to lay an egg.
“Therefore,” the old Plainsman finished, “a week before Year-Turning, I will go down into the tunnels. I’ll travel east to Blood Watch and wait for Malystryx to leave her lair on the day of the attack. Then I’ll enter her nest and destroy the egg.”
Riverwind had expected uproar, but instead the kender were subdued, shocked silent by his words.
“I don’t understand,” Merldon Metwinger said at length. “How will that save us? If she leaves her lair, it’ll be too late-she’ll be on her way to the Kenderwood. By the time she gets back and finds out about the egg, we’ll already be roasted.”
“That would be true, for most dragons,” Kronn answered, “but Malys isn’t most dragons-and this isn’t any ordinary egg.”
“What do you mean?” Merldon asked.
Riverwind nodded patiently. “From all I know of them,” he replied, “dragons lay their eggs in clutches-never singly. But Baloth was adamant: Malys has only one. That means something. Either she’s found a way, somehow, to keep from laying more, or she’s going to lay a full clutch, then choose to keep only the strongest, destroying the rest.
“Whatever the case, though, the fact remains that there will be only one egg… and it will be important to her. She’ll take greater care with it than she might with a whole clutch,” the old Plainsman added. “We already know Malys is a magic user, and a powerful one. You only need to look at what she’s done to the Kenderwood to see that. She won’t leave her nest without first forming some sort of link between herself and the egg, so she can be sure it’s safe-and such a spell would be simple for her, compared to the magic it must take to kill an entire forest. The moment the egg is in any real danger, she’ll know, and she’ll forget about everything else. She’ll return to her nest right away to try to save the egg. With that distraction, I’ll buy you time to get away.”
Again, the kender were silent, staring at him in wonder.
“You’d do that for us?” Merldon Metwinger asked softly. “Yes,” Riverwind said. He smiled as he saw the admiration that shone in the kender’s eyes. “I will try.”
