among the peaks, and though he had no map to guide him, Kronn moved surely, always keeping the looming shape of Blood Watch before him. Riverwind and Brightdawn watched the slopes around them as they walked, wary of rockslides or worse, unnamable dangers. Once, they had to use Kronn’s chapak as a grappling hook to climb over a house-sized boulder that had fallen in their path, but most of the journey was mercifully without event.
Finally, two days after leaving Lifesbreath, as Mark Year Day faded into night, they crested a low, jagged ridge and stopped.
They stood at the edge of a broad, bleak valley. On the far side, directly across them, loomed Blood Watch. It towered impossibly high on the edge of the red sea, dwarfing the craggy peaks that surrounded it. In the darkness that had settled over the Desolation, the fires that burned on the mountaintop outshone even the full, pale moon, lighting the land all around. Glowing red lava snaked down the sides of the spire, and a cloud of black smoke roiled above it. Ash fell like snow from the sky, swathing the land in a blanket of gray. The air stank of sulfur and soot.
“Mishakal have mercy,” Brightdawn whispered, trembling at the sight of the volcano. “How do we get in there?”
Shading his eyes, Riverwind peered across the valley. After a moment, his gaze fixed on something. “There,” he said and pointed.
The others followed the gesture and saw what he had spotted. A low cavern mouth nestled at the foot of the mountain. Even from nearly a league away, they could see the hulking shapes of several ogres standing before the cave.
“Six of them,” Kronn said grimly. “Two each.”
A shower of pebbles slid down the rocky hillside as they scrambled down into the valley. They stopped at the bottom, watching to see if the ogres had heard, but the creatures didn’t move. Blood pounded in their ears, echoing the rumbling of the ground below their feet, as they glanced warily at the fiery mountaintop.
“I don’t mind telling you,” Kronn said unhappily, “I’m starting to feel a little bit of that fear everybody’s been talking about.”
The Plainsfolk regarded him a moment. Then Riverwind rested a sympathetic hand on the kender’s arm. “So am I,” he said.
Stealthily, they snuck across the valley floor, moving from shadow to shadow in the gathering twilight. As they went, they got a better view of the ogres. Two of them were crouched down on their haunches, apparently asleep, and the others stared into space or absently scuffed the stony ground with the toes of their boots. With nothing to guard against, they were anything but watchful. Riverwind and Kronn exchanged satisfied looks as they crept closer.
A hundred paces from the cavern mouth, they stopped and hunkered down behind a sharp outcropping of stone. Silently, Riverwind strung his bow and readied an arrow; Kronn grabbed a rock from the ground and fitted it into the sling-pouch of his chapak. Brightdawn readied her mace, keeping low.
A silent signal passed between Kronn and Riverwind. As one, they rose, the Plainsman drawing back his bowstring and the kender holding his chapak poised. Then arrow and stone flashed across the distance to the cave mouth. Two ogres dropped, pierced and pummeled.
Their death cries woke the two sleeping ogres and stirred the others to action. The four spotted Riverwind and Kronn and charged.
Riverwind feathered one of them in the chest as it ran, and it crashed to the ground, rolling to a stop in a tangle of arms and legs. Kronn’s second shot hit another in the knee, slowing it, but it didn’t fall. He cursed and shifted his chapak in his hand, readying it to use as an axe. Riverwind dropped his bow and yanked his sabre from its scabbard. Then the ogres were upon them.
The old Plainsman traded blows with a wart-covered brute who wielded a great iron-headed mace; Kronn faced off with a smaller beast wielding a spear. The wounded ogre loped onward, dragging its injured leg behind it.
Steel clashed, but the kender and the Plainsman drove back their foes, dodging and parrying, then lunging in to draw blood-a nick on one ogre’s shoulder, a gash on the other’s thigh. The ogres were strong, though. Handpicked by Kurthak the Black-Gazer to guard Malystryx’s lair, they did not fall easily.
Brightdawn didn’t immediately enter the fray. She continued to crouch out of sight, watching the third ogre’s halting approach. It never saw her coming. As it rounded the outcropping, she leaped out in front of it, swinging her mace with both hands. Her weapon struck the ogre squarely in the face, and there was blood everywhere as its suddenly lifeless weight crashed down on top of her.
She wriggled out from beneath the corpse just in time to see her father slide his sabre through his opponent’s chest. Before that ogre hit the ground, Kronn buried his chapak in his own foe’s belly. It doubled over as he jerked the axe free, and he brought his weapon down on the back of his head.
Panting, the three of them paused and leaned against the outcropping while they gathered their strength. They looked around, half-expecting to see the gigantic form of the dragon watching them from above, but there was nothing. They appeared to be alone in the valley.
“That was easy enough,” Kronn said wryly. He wiped his bloody axe on a dead ogre’s sleeve. Then the three of them crossed the last, short distance to the cavern mouth.
It was dark in the cave, so Kronn pulled a torch from his pack, struck his axe against the rocky side of the volcano to light it, and shone the brand inside. The cavern was wide and deep, narrowing at the back to a tunnel that led into the heart of the volcano. The passage’s walls were rounded and glassy, reflecting the glimmer of the torchlight. In the distance, there was a dull, ruddy lambency coming from somewhere far inside the mountain. The three companions looked at one another, resolved, then entered the cavern and started down the long, snaking tunnel.
They did not see the lithe, black-cloaked figure emerge from the shadows and steal after them.
The last of the Kender Flight had to be out of the city by dawn that morning. The streets lay empty waiting, as the final kender whose lots had been drawn bade farewell to those who would stay behind, then walked down the stairs into the dark, ancient catacombs. When they were gone, Catt Thistleknot and Giffel Birdwhistle stood at the same entrance where Riverwind and his companions had departed a week before, and looked out over Kendermore.
“Strange,” Catt said. “It doesn’t really feel like home anymore.”
Paxina faced them, ready for war. She had shed her purple mayoral robes, leaving them in the audience chamber of City Hall. In their place she wore a breastplate and greaves of boiled leather. Her arms were bare, save for a pair of metal bracers. Her face was daubed with red paint-a fanciful touch she had picked up in her youth, among the Kagonesti in Ergoth. In her hand she held her hoopak; on her hip was a sack of slingstones. She wore no other pouches.
With her were Moonsong and Stagheart, similarly clad for battle. The Plainswoman held a staff in her hands, while her companion wore his sword and bow. There was also Arlie Longfinger, who had neither armor nor weapon despite his friends’ insistence.
“You take care of that arm of yours, now,” the old herbalist said, squinting at Catt through his thick spectacles. The sling had finally come off just a few days ago, and she still held her arm tenderly.
Paxina glanced at the eastern horizon, which was brightening from black to deep blue. “You should go,” she said. “It won’t be long now.”
Catt stepped forward and kissed her sister on the cheek. “I’ll see you in a few days,” she said.
“Sure thing,” Paxina said, grinning. She pulled a dagger from her belt and cut off her cheek braids. She held the locks of hair for a moment, then handed them to her sister.
Catt nodded, understanding, and kicked the braids into a small doeskin pouch. Returning Paxina’s smile, she turned and walked to the top of the stairs. Giffel took her hand, and together they descended into the tunnels.
Paxina listened to them go until the sound of their footsteps faded away. Then she turned to the others, her war-painted face hard with determination, and nodded.
“Let’s get ready,” she said.
On the second day of the new year, and Kendermore’s last, Kurthak stood just within the tree line, watching the sun rise. He shifted his gaze to the city across the meadow. Apart from a few sentries atop her walls, the town
