Many of the trip wires did no more than that; others, however, set off all sorts of booby traps. On Tallowwax Way, a tall rowhouse collapsed, crashing down on the charging ogres and choking the street with broken stone. Across town, on Applebloom Trail, countless caltrops poured from roofs and rainspouts, clattering onto the street like barbed hailstones and crippling anyone who stepped on them. On Tornado Alley, in Moonsong and Stagheart’s wake, a series of wires caused the strings of two hundred carefully arranged crossbows to thrum. Scores of ogres collapsed, their bodies riddled with quarrels. All across the town, pits and snares and rockfalls slaughtered Kendermore’s attackers without mercy.
On Greentwig Avenue, the ogres swarmed over their comrades’ trampled corpses as they continued to chase the kender. They ran with all the speed they could muster, and even caught some of their quarry seizing several unlucky kender and tearing them apart in mindless rage. Still the surviving kender ran, their taunts growing more vicious. As the street twisted and turned, they ducked down alleys or into narrow doorways, their numbers diminishing until only eight remained, pursued by a hundred raging ogres.
Two lagged behind, and the ogres caught them, snapping their necks with their bare hands.
Then, suddenly, they rounded a corner and reached the dead end. A brand-new, twenty-foot stone wall blocked the road, stretching between two four-storey rowhouses.
The remaining six kender didn’t stop, however; in front of them, less than a dozen yards before the wall, were several catapults. They sprinted to the devices and leapt onto their arms. As the ogres rounded the corner behind them, the kender released the catapults’ catches.
The machines’ arms sprung, launching the kender aloft. Behind and below them, the ogres skidded to a halt, staring in astonishment as their quarry flew high into the air, vaulting up and over the wall.
On the wall’s far side, Greentwig Avenue was heaped with loose straw. The kender landed in it, rolled, then leapt up and ran onward, laughing with reckless glee. Back in the dead end, the ogres gawked at the abandoned catapults. Their prey suddenly out of reach, they snarled savagely, shaking their weapons in angry impotence.
When the low, whirring sound first began, the ogres’ eyes narrowed, and they peered about in confusion. The noise seemed to come from all around them, an irritating drone that slowly grew into a loud, high-pitched scream-the shriek of dozens of hoopaks, swinging in unison.
Then the ogres’ confusion gave way to panic as slingstones began to rain down on them from above. Kender appeared on the rooftops of the tall row houses, flinging rocks down into the street. The ogres dropped in waves, filling the air with cries of pain. Those who didn’t fall at first tried to flee, scrambling back away from the wall in a desperate attempt to escape the ambush. More ogres kept coming around the corner from the other direction, however, trapping their fellows and leaving them exposed to the hail of stones. When the last handful of surviving ogres finally broke and ran, they left more than a hundred of their comrades’ battered bodies behind.
So it went throughout the city. Kender led ogres along, dividing them, trapping them and leading them to their deaths in Kendermore’s twisting, mazelike streets. But there were still hundreds of ogres, and there was no stopping them all. Whenever one fell, another stepped over its body to take its place. Though a great many died, they continued to push deeper into the city, down Strawberry Boulevard, up winding Straight Street, along Whitehare Lane and Horsetail Avenue. Hundreds of unlucky kender perished when they stumbled as they ran or tarried too long to taunt their foes.
Inexorably, the ogres overwhelmed Kendermore, pressing inward on all sides, toward the middle of town. In the end, barely two thousand ogres remained-but they had conquered the kender capital.
Which was just what the kender wanted.
The glow of the magma pool faded behind Riverwind and Kronn as they marched onward, following the sinuous, obsidian tunnel. They walked for an hour in silence, pausing only long enough for the kender to light another torch when the shadows grew too deep to see. From time to time, Kronn looked up at the old Plainsman, a question on his lips, then looked away when he saw the fierce scowl that twisted Riverwind’s face.
The passage began to wind upward, like a snake rising to strike. The floor’s glossy surface gave their feet little to grip, slowing them considerably as they fought to keep from slipping. They gripped the walls, pressing their hands against the smooth stone to keep themselves upright. Their legs burned with pain at every faltering step, and the tunnel’s slope grew ever steeper. Once Kronn’s right foot slid out from beneath him, and he stumbled, grunting with pain as his knee struck the floor. He slipped back several feet, scrabbling to stop himself, before Riverwind’s strong hand caught his sleeve. Straining, the Plainsman pulled Kronn back to his feet.
At last the tunnel leveled out, its slope becoming more and more gentle, until finally they could rest without fear of falling. They sank to the ground, panting as they leaned back against the walls. Riverwind groaned, holding a hand against his belly, then leaned over sideways and retched, his chest heaving violently. When the spasm passed, he sat back upright, wiping his mouth with a weak, shaking hand. He smeared blood across his lips.
“Riverwind?” Kronn asked.
The old Plainsman’s eyes rolled toward the kender. A moment passed before they lit with recognition. “Kronn.”
“How long have you known you are dying?” Kronn asked.
“Many months. That’s why I was in Solace when you and Catt arrived-to say goodbye to my friends.”
“And you still came with us?” the kender asked, astounded. “Why?”
“Because I knew no one else would,” Riverwind replied softly.
After another ten minutes of walking, a light glimmered before them once more. The air grew warm, and a sound rose-a slow rhythm of rushing air, like the pumping of elephantine bellows.
Kronn doused his torch, and they crept stealthily onward through the gloom. The light before them brightened. The passage wound sharply to the left, then arrowed straight for nearly a hundred yards. At its end, they could see, it opened into another chamber.
They traveled that last hundred yards on their bellies, listening to the steady whoosh of the dragon’s breath. Finally, they reached the end of the tunnel.
It opened out into a vast, vaulted cavern, even larger than the magma chamber. Orange firelight danced upon the walls, casting shifting shadows that seemed somehow alive. Looking up, they saw the wide shaft in the nest’s ceiling and the telltale clawmarks in the stone at its edges. Swallowing, the kender and the Plainsman shifted their gazes down, to the floor of the cavern a hundred feet below. Riverwind sucked in a sharp breath.
Malystryx covered the floor of the cave, her wings tucked in at her sides, her head held low to the ground. Her scaly, scarlet sides moved in and out as she breathed. Her body was coiled, wrapped around something in the middle of the chamber. They couldn’t see what she encircled, but they guessed.
The dragonfear that rose from her motionless form crushed Kronn and Riverwind into the ground, paralyzing them where they lay even as their minds screamed at them to flee. Madness clawed at them, and they quivered with terror and dread.
“Blessed goddess,” Riverwind hissed. Kronn whimpered softly beside him.
They lay upon the ledge at the tunnel’s mouth for what seemed like hours, listening to Malys’s breathing, waiting for her head to snap up and her golden eyes to fix upon them. The dragon, however, took no notice of them. Her attention was elsewhere, many leagues away.
Malystryx’s presence was a white-hot cinder in Kurthak’s mind as he and Tragor strode down Elbowpoke Way, toward the center of Kendermore. The street was littered with corpses from both sides of the battle, but there were three slain ogres for every kender who lay broken upon the ground.
The dragon’s voice swelled within him. Black-Gazer, it whispered, menacing. What has happened?
“My people,” Kurthak answered. “
Slaughtered…”
Slaughtered? the voice shrieked, forging a stabbing pain behind the hetman’s eyes. By the kender? How?
“Trickery,” he replied. He spat angrily on the ground.
Then you are beaten?
“No!” he snarled. He raised his spiked club, which was stained with kender blood. “We have them cornered now. We will destroy them.”
“There, my lord!” Tragor said suddenly, pointing with his sword. Kurthak looked past the red-dripping blade and saw what his champion had spotted. A group of kender-he counted ten-had stepped out from a side street onto Elbowpoke Way. They froze, staring at the hetman and his champion.
Kurthak glared back at them balefully. “Wait,” he said as Tragor started forward. “It could be another trap.”
Obediently, his champion stopped, waiting tensely. Kurthak’s brow furrowed as he regarded the kender. Seeing the unfeigned fear on their faces, he smiled. This was no trick. The kender were caught, paralyzed by the sight of the two ogres. He charged, his club held high. Tragor ran with him.
The kender faltered, too surprised to react before the ogres struck. Kurthak brought his club down on a female kender’s head, crushing her where she stood. Tragor waded into the battle a heartbeat later. He swung his sword low, cutting a male in half across the stomach. He reversed the stroke, sending another kender’s head skipping away across the cobblestones. Kurthak savagely smashed a fourth. It crumpled, its back broken.
Panicking, the remaining kender tried to flee. Tragor slashed two of them in half with one sweep of his sword. Kurthak swatted a third into the air. The kender flew across the width of Elbowpoke Way, its neck flopping limply, and struck the side of a house before sliding to the ground. The two ogres turned to face their remaining opponents. Two warriors faced them, one armed with a hoopak and the other wielding a battak. Just behind them was an old, unarmed male, quivering with fright as he squinted through a pair of bottle-thick spectacles.
“Run, Arlie!” the hoopak-wielder shouted. He glanced over his shoulder at the old man. “We’ll try and hold-”
Before he could finish, Tragor drove his sword through the kender’s body. The other warrior charged toward Kurthak, swinging his battak. The hetman batted aside the desperate blow with his club, then lashed out in response, crushing his attacker’s skull.
Arlie Longfinger backed away, terrified. Kurthak strode forward, snarling, and slammed his club down on the old herbalist’s head. The Black-Gazer pounded Arlie’s body until nothing remained but a lifeless pulp.
Enough, Malys’s voice said within his mind. He is dead. Where are your followers, Black-Gazer?
His nostrils flaring angrily, Kurthak turned away from Arlie’s battered corpse and stalked off down Elbowpoke Way. Tragor followed, teeth bared in a feral snarl.
Soon they caught up with a bedraggled group of a hundred ogres, most of them wounded. The group, which was all that remained of a band three times that number, pursued one group of jeering kender.
“Hey!” the kender taunted. “Do you smear yourselves with filth on purpose, or does it just happen naturally?”
Kurthak and Tragor added their voices to the chorus of roars that erupted from the ogre band. They chased the kender around bend after bend in the road, yearning for slaughter. Then, suddenly, they rounded a corner and stepped into the cleared quadrangle in Kendermore’s midst.
A pitched battle was raging, all across the yard. A thousand ogres pressed toward the quadrangle’s midst from all sides, hacking and stabbing madly at a cluster of a few hundred kender. The kender fought back desperately, their weapons clashing and clattering. Many of their number lay sprawled in pools of blood, but somehow the survivors held their own, keeping the remnants of the horde at bay. In their midst stood three figures Kurthak recognized. Two were Plainsfolk-a young man and woman-and the third was the silver-haired kender who had stood atop the merlons that morning. With them were several dozen archers, who clustered around glowing braziers, arrows nocked on their bowstrings.
The kender fought valiantly, but they were clearly doomed. More and more ogres staggered into the yard, bloody and bruised from the gauntlet they had run through Kendermore’s streets. Every time one of Kurthak’s troops fell to the kender’s whirling hoopaks, another stepped forward to take its place. The battlefront began to constrict as the ogres slowly pressed inward.
Paxina Thistleknot turned and met the Black-Gazer’s hateful glare. Her lips curled into a tight, vulpine smile, then she said something to the archers.
Sensing something was wrong, Kurthak cast about wildly. He sniffed the air, his nose wrinkling. A pungent reek hung over the quadrangle, thick enough to bring tears to the hetman’s good eye. Casting about, he quickly spotted the source of the smell. The walls of the tall houses and shops surrounding the yard were covered with thick, black grease.
“What is that?” he asked.
Tragor looked, frowning, then reached out, brushing the nearest wall with his fingertips. They came away smeared with grime. He rubbed them together, held them up to his nose. Then he turned back toward Kurthak “It’s pitch,” he said.
“Ready!” shouted Paxina.
As one, the archers touched the tips of their arrows to the smoldering braziers. The shafts’ tips, wrapped in oily rags, burst aflame. The archers pulled their bowstrings back to their cheeks, aiming high. Kurthak’s eyes widened with understanding.
“Fire!” Paxina cried.
A multitude of twangs rang out. The arrows flew high, arcing above the seething battle, then dropped toward the houses at the quadrangle’s edges. A blazing shaft whizzed past Tragor’s head, embedding itself in the wall before him. He stared at it, blinking in surprise.
The wall exploded with fire. Tragor screamed as flames flared out around him, enveloping his body. Kurthak could do nothing but stare in horror as his champion became a living, howling torch. Tragor staggered back from the building, dropping his sword and beating wildly at the sheath of fire that surrounded him. He shrieked in agony, fell to his knees, then crashed face forward onto the ground. His burning body twitched violently, then was still.
The building he had been standing before rapidly became an inferno. It wasn’t the only one. The archers’ flaming arrows struck dozens of other houses, setting them alight as well. The fire spread with shocking speed, leaping from one pitch-soaked building to the next. In moments, the quadrangle was surrounded by a ring of flame.
Through the heat-shimmering air, Kurthak saw plumes of black smoke rise where other blazes were breaking out all over Kendermore. The crackling of burning wood grew deafening, drowning out the clamor of battle.
“What are they doing?” the Black-Gazer shouted. “They’re burning their own city!”
The ogres panicked, searching vainly for a way out of the trap. In that moment, the tide of the battle turned. The kender in the quadrangle’s midst pushed forward, slashing and stabbing. Many of the ogres died; others broke and ran, screaming as they sought to escape the conflagration.
But the kender knew their home. They knew which streets to block, which buildings to set alight. Most of them managed to escape, running out of the city ahead of the flames; others dove down tunnel entrances, scattering in all directions through the passages. For Kurthak’s horde, however, there was no escape. Sheets of flame blocked their way; burning buildings collapsed, filling the streets with fiery rubble. Ogres perished by the score, overcome by fire and choking smoke.
Kurthak stood amidst it all, hewing about him with his club. He spotted a group of four taunting kender, who had just killed two ogres and were trying to escape through the smoke. They saw him as he charged toward them, and turned to run. One of them, a tow-headed boy in bright blue trousers, lagged behind his fellows: Kurthak knocked him flat, then smashed his cudgel down, spattering the young kender’s blood on the cobblestones. The other three glanced back, horrified, but did not slow their pace: they ran onward, through a roiling wall of smoke. He gave chase, but when he cle
ared the other side of the pall, they were nowhere to be seen. He cast about, growling in frustration, but the kender were gone. Enraged he lashed out with his club at the nearest available target: a stack of water barrels, piled high against the wall of a burning blacksmith’s shop. The barrels shattered, splinters of wood flying everywhere. He began to turn away, then stopped, confused. Where was the water?
Looking down, he confirmed his suspicions: the barrels had been bone-dry, empty. He kicked at the broken staves, pushing them aside, and saw the hole in the ground.
It was dark and small, too tight for him to squeeze through, but large enough to admit a kender… or three. It led down into the ground, its earthen stairs freshly scuffed by passing feet. He gawked at it, dumbfounded. Then his mouth dropped open with sudden comprehension. All at once, he knew-how the kender had eluded his people at Myrtledew, how they had fled the inexorable advance of the horde toward Kendermore, how, even now, they were escaping the inferno they had made of their city. He reeled, nausea twisting his stomach as he stared into the tunnel entrance.
Off to his left, a burning house collapsed, littering the ground with stone and blazing timbers. The deafening crash roused him, bringing him back to his senses. He glanced back into the quadrangle, through the billowing smoke. The remaining kender were making short work of his people, then melting away into the shadows-fleeing, he realized, into the safety of their subterranean passages. At that moment, Kurthak the Black-Gazer knew his horde was utterly beaten and that he would die here with his people if he didn’t get help soon.
He sought that help in the only place left to him: his mind. Concentrating, he focused on the presence that simmered within him, seeking the other who dwelt in his thoughts. “Malystryx!” he begged, speaking the words aloud even as he thought them. “Mistress, hear me.”
I am here, Black-Gazer, Malys’s voice growled. What is happening?
“We are betrayed!” he shouted. “The kender have tricked us! They destroy their own city and flee through tunnels, under the ground! We are doomed!”
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