Chapter 15

"It should be around here somewhere,” Kronn said, poking at a thornbush with the head of his chapak.

Swiftraven glanced at Riverwind, who shook his head and shrugged. “It might help if we knew what you were looking for,” the young warrior observed.

“Oh, I agree,” Kronn agreed sincerely, “but every one of these is different.”

“What are you talking about?” Brightdawn asked. “Every one of what is different?”

Kronn’s mind was elsewhere, however; he squinted up at the sun, then glanced to his left. “I’m sure I’m remembering this right. That’s the lightning-forked tree over there.”—he pointed at a dead ashwood that had a scorched crack down its middle. “It should be right here—so where is the blasted thing?”

“What are we looking for?” Swiftraven asked skeptically. “A secret… bush?”

“It doesn’t have to be a bush,” Kronn answered. “It could be a tree stump, or a mushroom ring, or a rock… He stopped, bent down beside a flat stone, and lifted it up, muscles straining. When he had it high enough, he peered beneath it, frowned, and let it drop back to the ground with a thud. “Yuck. Nothing but bugs.”

“Is there a key of some sort?” Brightdawn asked, looking around dubiously.

Kronn tugged his cheek braids as his eyes scanned the undergrowth. “No, not a key,” he muttered. “Not a key… aha!” With a snap of his fingers, he trotted over to an old, fallen tree. It was old, its bark covered with fungi and thick, green moss. “This is it, I’m sure of it.” He spat in his hands and gave the log a push. It didn’t budge. “Humpf. It’s stuck. Can someone help me over here?”

Riverwind and Swiftraven exchanged confused glances, then walked over to join Kronn. Brightdawn and little Billee stayed with Catt.

“That thing must have been lying there for a hundred years,” Swiftraven said, shaking his head as he looked at the tree. “Look, it’s sunk halfway into the ground. I don’t think an ogre could lift it—and I know we can’t.”

“We can try,” said Riverwind.

As Swiftraven looked on incredulously, the old Plainsman and Kronn braced themselves against the tree and shoved. It resisted a moment longer, then moved so suddenly that Riverwind fell to his knees. The log wasn’t embedded in the earth at all; it had been sawn in half, then carefully laid upon the ground to give the illusion that it was nothing but an old, fallen tree.

It wasn’t just a tree, though. It was a door.

“Mishakal’s mercy,” Riverwind gasped. The log swung aside, revealing a dark, yawning hole in the ground.

The others gathered around the opening. It was deep, sloping out of sight beneath the earth. Worn steps, made from packed earth, led down into the gloom.

“The entrance might be a bit cramped,” said Kronn, “but things should open up a bit down below. Here we go.” Smiling with satisfaction, he produced a small, brass lamp from his pouch.

Riverwind frowned as he looked at the lamp. “Isn’t that from the Inn of the Last Home?”

“Is it?” Kronn asked, surprised. “You know, now that you mention it, it does look familiar. Caramon must have given it to me as a going-away gift, I suppose.” He examined it carefully. “Good, there’s still oil in it. Can anyone give me a light?”

There was no room in the tunnel for the horses, and though they were loath to do so in such dangerous lands, the companions had no choice but to set them free. They stripped off their mounts’ saddles and bridles, gave each of them a handful of oats from their feed bags, then slapped them on their rumps, sending the startled animals trotting away through the forest. When the animals were gone from sight, Riverwind and Swiftraven fashioned a stretcher from a pair of stout branches and an old blanket, and laid Catt on top of it. The wounded kender grimaced, groaning dully, as the Plainsmen lifted her off the ground.

Kronn lit his lamp and gave it to Brightdawn. “Go on ahead,” he told the others. “Wait for me at the bottom of the stairs.”

They moved slowly down the crumbling steps, the little lamp dimly lighting their way. When the Plainsfolk had vanished into the darkness, Kronn descended the first few stairs, then reached to the wall. His grasping hand closed around a rope that hung down from the log door above. He pulled at it with all his strength, bracing himself against the wall of the tunnel. Slowly, the log slid back into place across the opening. Daylight narrowed to a sliver of dancing dust, then disappeared completely, replaced by utter blackness. Carefully, Kronn headed down the stairs, moving by touch as he followed the Plainsfolk.

The stairs wound down for what seemed forever, though Kronn knew from experience it was less than a hundred feet. Tree roots hung down from the ceiling, slapping at the kender’s face in the darkness. The steps were treacherous and uneven, some of them slick with moisture. The air was dank and close and smelled of wet earth. It took Kronn many long minutes to grope his way to the bottom.

At last, he saw the ruddy glow of lamplight below. Recklessly quickening his pace, he bounded down the last dozen steps. The Plainsfolk were waiting for him, staring about in amazement.

They stood in a dark tunnel, which stretched out of sight in either direction. It was much broader than the stairway, and higher as well. Even Riverwind, who towered a head above the rest, could stand in its midst without stooping. The walls were made of packed earth, shored up with broad timbers every dozen paces or so. Next to each timber, a wall sconce held an unlit torch. Kronn pulled down two such torches, lit them with the lamp, and handed one to Brightdawn. The crackling flames seemed almost blindingly bright after their dim descent, but they still only carved small pockets of light out of the gloom.

“Almighty goddess,” Swiftraven breathed. “Did your people build these, Kronn?”

“Us?” the kender asked, and chuckled. “No. We just keep them from falling apart. Come on, it’s this way.” Holding his smoldering brand aloft, he led the company down the passage to the left.

“Who did build them, then?” Brightdawn asked. Her voice echoed weirdly off the walls of the tunnel.

“Goblins, mostly,” Kronn answered. “At least, they were the first—that was about five hundred years ago.”

“Before the Cataclysm,” Riverwind murmured, regarding the earthen walls with renewed awe.

Kronn nodded. “Before both Cataclysms, actually. It started when the Kingpriest of Istar issued some edict or other, saying the goblins were a pox upon the land and had to be exterminated. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t much care for goblins, but that seems a bit extreme, you know?

“Anyway, suddenly there were warriors everywhere, hoping to collect the bounty the clergy put on goblin ears. I guess things got pretty bad, because the goblins decided to go underground, literally. They dug warrens and hid down here, only going up to raid for food and such.

“Of course, it doesn’t end there. As time went on, the Kingpriests had started to get a little… funny. Not calling-down-fiery-mountains funny, but not at all right in the head, either. With the goblins gone, they needed a new enemy. They started going after heretics—and their definition of ‘heretic’ kept getting broader all the time. The heretics, in response, came up with the same idea the goblins had. They started to dig catacombs.

“It didn’t take long, of course before the heretics and the goblins met. There was fighting at first, of course, but after a few battles the two groups decided they’d be better off working together. Kind of like how everyone fought together against Chaos, actually. So they called a truce, and the warrens and catacombs became one great, big underground city. And it just kept on growing, every time the Kingpriest declared holy war on some other group—priests of the neutral and evil gods, wizards of all kinds… even a lot of my people, toward the end. Can you imagine? The Kingpriest thought we were a blight upon the land!”

Swiftraven made a soft, snorting noise. Brightdawn glared at him. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Istar was hundreds of miles to the north of here. What are these tunnels doing here?”

“Istar was more than just a city Brightdawn,” Riverwind answered. “It was a great empire, stretching all the way from Nordmaar to Balifor, and from Neraka east to the sea.”

“Right,” Kronn agreed. “The Kenderwood didn’t always belong to the kender, you know. Before the Cataclysm, this was actually the southernmost province of Istar—the part that didn’t fall into the sea when the fiery mountain fell. After the Cataclysm, when my people came north out of the ruins of Balifor they found the tunnels here, abandoned. The people who’d lived in them had all died or moved above ground. The tunnels were in rough shape then, from what I gather, but we fixed up what we could, sealed off what we couldn’t, and hid the entrances with secret doors like that log back there. These passages run almost the whole length of Goodlund and connect every town from Flotsam to Blood Watch—including Kendermore, of course. We’ve got tunnel entrances all over the place there.”

“Hold on,” Swiftraven interrupted. “If you knew these tunnels were here, why didn’t we take them in the first place? We could have avoided almost getting killed, earlier today.”

Kronn thought it over. “Two reasons. First, these tunnels are a sacred kender secret. No one knows about them but us—and now the three of you. Can you imagine what would happen if people in Flotsam found out there was an underground road that led all the way from their wharf to Kendermore? We’d never be able to use that tunnel again.

“Second, I didn’t expect us to have any problem going in through the front gates. I certainly didn’t think the place would be lousy with ogres. So it didn’t even occur to me to use the tunnels until after that little showdown earlier today. It would be like entering a house by crawling through the window—it doesn’t make much sense unless the door is locked.”

Riverwind, who had been mostly silent during the kender’s lecture, cleared his throat. “Kronn,” he began thoughtfully, “If I’m going to help your people fight Malystryx and the ogres, I’ll want to know where everything is—down here as well as up there. Do you have any maps of these tunnels, including all the entrances?”

A sudden grin split Kronn’s face. He patted his bulging leather map case. “Come on, Riverwind,” he said. “Look who you’re talking to.”

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. “Now we’re home,” he said.

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 was down in the tunnels,” Giffel returned, breathless from running. He bent over, fighting to regain his wind. “We found someone—or they found us. Anyway, it doesn’t matter—we found each other.”

“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.

Paxina started toward a flight of steps that led down from the wall. She waved Brimble off as he started to follow. “Stay there,” she told him. “You’ve got work to do. If there’s trouble, Giffel will take care of it.”

Brimble looked doubtful but bowed obediently and turned back to his men. “Quit gawking, you bloody mooncalves!” he snapped, stabbing a finger out across the meadow. “You’re supposed to be looking that way! Branchala bite me, how are you going to keep the ogres out if you can’t even guard the wall properly?”

Paxina trotted down to the courtyard below, her grin fading as she noted Giffel’s solemn expression.

“Pax,” Giffel said, “Kronn and Catt are back.”

“So,” Paxina said quietly, “they were the riders. Did they bring anyone with them? Humans?”

“Yes. Three humans, and a little girl—a kender girl.”

Paxina blinked, not sure what to make of that.

“That’s not all. Catt’s hurt, Pax. I don’t know how bad,” Giffel added, heading off her next question. “I took the lot of them over to Arlie Longfinger ‘s house and left them there while I came to look for you.”

“Thanks, Giff,” Paxina replied. She glanced around anxiously. “Is Arlie’s place still on Henstooth Street?”

He nodded. “Over by Sneezing Goblin Fountain.”

“All right, then,” she declared, already heading briskly up the street. “Let’s go.”