Chapter 22

Once more, Riverwind found precious little time for rest. He spent much of the night with Kronn, Catt, and Paxina. He told Kronn’s sisters what Baloth had told them, then revealed his idea for defending against the ogres’ attack. Their discussion lasted until nearly dawn.

No one was completely sure—records of meetings, when they were kept at all, tended to be haphazard and careless about such details as attendance and agenda—but not even the oldest kender could remember having seen City Hall’s audience room crammed quite so full as it was that morning. There were currently one hundred and three Council members, and by the time Riverwind, Brightdawn, and Moonsong arrived, the room was quite literally packed to the walls.

Though the impending attack by Malys and the ogres was still weeks away, Riverwind and Brightdawn were both dressed for war. Clad in leather armor, she wore her mace on her belt. He had his sabre and a quiver of white-fletched arrows. Instead of armor, Moonsong wore a new blue gown—a gift from the kender—but like her father she had a sword at her hip. The weapon belonged to Stagheart, who was still too badly hurt to leave his sickbed.

Brightdawn smiled as she nodded toward the room full of milling, chattering kender. “If you’d told me a year ago that we’d be here today, I would have laughed,” she said.

Chuckling, the three Plainsfolk strode into the surging sea of topknots and hoopaks. It was hard going—they were tossed and buffeted by the kender—but in time they reached the head of the room. Paxina, Kronn, and Catt waited for them, standing on a raised dais beneath a grinning portrait of their father. The Plainsfolk and the Thistleknots shook hands, exchanging words of greeting. Then Riverwind turned to face the crowd. He raised his hands and called for silence. It took a while for the room to settle down, but in time it was quiet enough for Riverwind to make himself heard.

“Before we begin,” he proclaimed, in a loud, booming voice, “I’d like my knife back.”

There was a moment’s confusion as the Councillors looked around and checked their pockets. At last a hand shot up in the back holding Riverwind’s bone-handled dagger. It passed up from one kender’s hand to another, until at last it reached the front.

“Sorry!” a voice called out. “You must have dropped it on the way in.”

With a tight smile—some things, it seemed, would never change—Riverwind tucked the knife back in his belt.

“I’m sure we all know why we’re here,” he declared. “The ogres attack in twenty days. When they do, we won’t be able to keep them from breaching the walls. Kendermore will fall.”

A murmur of consternation rippled through the crowd. Riverwind waited for it to subside.

“Are you saying we’re doomed?” asked an old, bespectacled kender at the front of the crowd. Fear was plain in his voice.

“No, Merldon Metwinger,” Paxina said. “We’re not doomed—only Kendermore is.”

Riverwind nodded firmly. “When I met Kronn and Catt in Solace, they asked me to help you fight Malystryx and the ogres. I thought that meant saving your city, but now I know that isn’t possible.

“But,” he added quickly, seeing hope fade from many of the Councillors’ faces, “there is still a way to save your people.”

“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 melted, and I doubt she was using the full force of her breath there. If she chooses to burn the whole Kenderwood, the tunnels will become the world’s biggest oven. Thousands will die.”

“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.”

The meeting ended soon after, the Councillors chattering excitedly amongst themselves as they filed out the door. Several of them, including Merldon Metwinger, climbed up on the dais and solemnly shook Riverwind’s hand. The Plainsman watched them go, smiling with satisfaction.

“Father!” said a pair of voices behind him.

Riverwind shut his eyes, taking a deep breath to steady himself, then turned to face his daughters. Moonsong and Brightdawn stood side by side, their faces darkened by accusation and betrayal.

“Would you excuse us a moment, Paxina?” he asked.

The Lord Mayor glanced from the old Plainsman to the twins, then nodded, understanding. “Kronn, Catt—let’s go,” she said. Gathering her purple mayoral robes around her, she left the room. Her brother and sister followed.

Moonsong and Brightdawn stared at their father in silence. Riverwind looked away, unable to meet their gaze.

“When you explained the plan to us this morning, you never mentioned anything about going to Blood Watch,” Moonsong said.

Riverwind sighed. “I know. Nevertheless, I discussed it with Paxina and the others last night. Kronn has agreed to go with me, and guide me through the tunnels.”

Despite her best efforts to remain calm, Brightdawn trembled visibly. “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked.

“I knew you’d try to talk me out of it,” Riverwind answered. “And, what’s more, you might have succeeded. I couldn’t afford to take that chance.”

“Couldn’t afford to let us talk some sense into you?” Moonsong demanded furiously.

“Child, this is something I have to do,” Riverwind answered. “That old Councillor was right—if someone doesn’t do something about Malys, it doesn’t matter whether they beat the ogres or not. The kender will die. I can’t ask anyone else to go to Blood Watch. The danger’s too great. So I’m going myself.”

The twins looked at him silently; then Moonsong turned and walked out of the audience hall. Brightdawn lingered, however. The pain in her eyes was almost too much for Riverwind to bear.

“You should have told me, Father,” she said softly. For a moment, she looked as if she might say more, but instead she turned away and hurried out the door.

Riverwind started after her, but a spasm of pain contorted his face and he stopped. Groaning, he stumbled to a chair and slumped down into it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, then buried his face in his hands and wept.

Kendermore’s last days passed much too quickly.

As Paxina had predicted, once the Kender Council knew about the plan, the rest of the city learned of it within hours. When the sun rose on the first day after the meeting at City Hall, thousands of kender poured into the streets, making their way to the tunnel entrances that riddled the city. Giffel and the other guards kept the crowds under control while Catt oversaw the drawing of lots. While there were some arguments and hurt feelings over the results, most of the kender accepted their place with good humor. And so, when the blistering sun rode high in the late autumn sky, the Kender Flight began right on schedule.

Several key Councillors, including Merldon Metwinger, went ahead of the Flight to guide those who followed to the agreed upon gathering place—a shallow valley in the plains of Balifor, several leagues west of the edge of the Kenderwood. There, over the next three weeks, the kender would set up a ramshackle tent city and wait for the rest to follow.

For the kender, the hardest part wasn’t leaving their homes—even the oldest of them still felt the yearning for the road sometimes, and the impending attack by Malystryx and the ogres only made that yearning that much stronger. And while there were many tears shed when they realized they had to leave behind most of the interesting things they owned, they were practical about that, too. “There’s always more where that came from,” was a kender proverb—although, of course, every kender who set out through the tunnels did so with full pockets and pouches stuffed almost to bursting.

The hardest part, it turned out, was saying goodbye to friends. The method Paxina and Catt had chosen for choosing who went first in the Flight was fair, but in many ways it was also cruel. Kender who had known each other for years had to bid each other farewell, and while Catt made every effort to move families out together, inevitably some husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, parents and children were separated. Around the tunnel entrances, the air rang with weeping and promises of “I’ll see you soon.”

While the Flight was going on, the rest of the city was far from idle. Kender filled the streets, not with their usual aimless bustle but with a singular reason: to prepare the trap that would catch and kill the Black-Gazer and his horde. Walls were erected, holes dug, and wood and stone carried back and forth. At the town’s edge, teams of kender armed with chisels and picks chipped away at the city walls themselves, weakening the stone and mortar. It could have been a grim business, preparing the city for its destruction, but the kender enjoyed themselves, singing and humming as bit by bit they crafted a purpose from the meaningless tangle of Kendermore’s streets.

On the day after Yule—a holiday the kender completely forgot about as they sought to prepare the defenses and flee the city—Riverwind and Paxina toured Kendermore, inspecting the work the kender had done. As they walked through the courtyards just inside the city walls, they had to thread their way carefully among the many places where the kender had pried up the cobblestones and were excavating earth beneath. The clatter of shovels rang all around them, and a constant flow of wheelbarrows hauled dirt away into the city.

“Where are they taking all the earth?” Riverwind asked, pausing in the middle of the courtyard to take it all in. There were hundreds of holes, all around them. It looked as if a colony of giant moles had invaded the town.

“All over the place,” Paxina answered. “The bricklayers and stonemasons need mortar, and it turns out whatever Malystryx has done to the soil makes it perfect for that.”

They continued to pick their way through the hole-riddled courtyard until they reached a place where the diggers had finished working. Here and there, kender sat around smoldering braziers, whittling wooden stakes into spears and setting them among the flames to harden. Runners moved from fire to fire, gathering armloads of finished stakes and carrying them down ladders into the many holes in the cobbles. Riverwind glanced into a pit and saw that its earthen floor, some fifteen feet down, was lined with dozens of stakes. Such deadfalls were an old trick, used by hunters all over Krynn. Many years ago, when he’d been a shepherd, Riverwind had dug them himself to protect his flock when hunger drove wolves and other predators down from the hills to the east of Qué-Shu.

“They’ve finished covering them over there,” Paxina stated, pointing ahead. At the far end of the courtyard, there was no sign whatsoever that the ground was riddled with pits. To Riverwind, it looked like nothing but an ordinary, stone-paved plaza.

“How did you get the cobblestones to stay up?” he asked.

The Lord Mayor grinned. “Good question. Come over here.” She hurried ahead, making her way over toward the deceptively normal-looking part of the courtyard. When she reached its edge, she tapped her hoopak against the ground a few times, until one cobblestone answered with a hollow clack. She bent down and lifted it up, revealing a lattice of wood and rope that hung above a yawning, spiked pit. “Strong enough to keep the stones up,” she declared, “and it’ll hold a kender’s weight, too—maybe even an ogre or two. But try charging a whole bunch across…” She shrugged, grinning impishly as she slid the stone back into place.

They went on, pausing briefly when they reached a place where the kender were busily hewing at a span of the wall. Riverwind marveled at the workers’ precision. They had chipped away so much stone, it looked like the wall might crash down upon them if anyone sneezed. Despite its apparent fragility, however, sentries and archers still paced the battlements, watching the woods with a wary eye.

As he regarded the wall, Riverwind started to chuckle. Paxina looked at him questioningly. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

The old Plainsman gestured at the wall. “I just had a vision of how surprised they’ll be when this comes down,” he said. “In most sieges, it’s crews of sappers on the other side who try to weaken the walls.”

“True,” Paxina said with a grin. “Come on, let’s head into the city. There’s a few more things I want to show you.”

They walked down a narrow, winding avenue, stopping every now and then to walk around places where the kender were digging more pits in the middle of the road. Bricklayers worked at certain intersections, hurriedly building walls to block off side streets. “It all leads into the middle of town, just like we planned,” Paxina explained.

“Like a spider’s web,” Riverwind said, nodding with approval. “Once they get in…”

“They’re going to have an awful time getting out again,” the Lord Mayor finished. Suddenly, she grabbed his arm. “Watch it!”

Riverwind stopped and looked down. Stretched across the street right in front of him was a strong, thin cord.

“Trip wire,” Paxina explained. “You’ve got to watch very carefully where you walk around here.”

The old Plainsman stared at the nearly invisible wire. There was no way the ogres would see it when they came charging through. “What’s it connected to?” he asked.

“This one? Nothing,” Paxina answered. “Doesn’t need to be. See, the front wave of ogres come barreling down the street, and they hit this. Boom, they go down.”

“And the ones behind trample them,” Riverwind said, nodding.

“You got it. Of course, there are trip wires on other streets that are connected to things. Believe me—you don’t want to set off those. Here you would have fallen, no big deal. Hit one of the others, and… well, it wouldn’t be pretty Come on,” she said, beckoning him forward.

Carefully, Riverwind stepped over the trip wire. Walking more slowly, his eyes never leaving the ground before his feet, he followed the Lord Mayor farther down Greentwig Avenue. At last, they came to a dead end. A wall, twenty feet high, stretched across the middle of the road between two four-storey rowhouses. Riverwind stared at the blank, forbidding edifices surrounding him, then looked back the way they’d come.

“I thought you said every street led to the center of town,” he said.

“Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration,” Paxina replied. “Actually, a few of them end up like this. Look up.”

Riverwind followed the kender’s pointing finger and regarded the roofs of the buildings. He was silent for a moment, then lowered his gaze back to Paxina. “There’s nothing up there,” he said.

“Not now, there isn’t,” the Lord Mayor replied. “Not much point until the attack comes. But when the ogres come down this street, those rooftops will be covered with kender.”

“An ambush?”

“Yup. We’ve got them all over town.”

Riverwind stared thoughtfully up at the rooftops, a smile spreading across his face. Then Paxina led him back down Greentwig, around a corner, and along another street with the unlikely name of Furrynose. Along both sides of the street, kender were busy tearing the houses apart. They threw bricks and boards onto carts, which other kender hauled away. Most of the buildings had been stripped bare, with only a skeletal frameworks left; others lacked even that, and nothing remained but foundations and fronts.

“There’s streets like this one all over town, too!” Paxina shouted above the din. “We’re taking the materials and using them in other places.”

They moved on, turning off Furrynose onto Elbowpoke Way, where Riverwind stopped short. Ahead, dozens of small catapults, the same devices the kender used for target practice with their hoopaks, lined the street. Instead of clay discs, however, the catapults were loaded with small straw dummies. As Riverwind watched, the arms of several catapults sprang forward, hurling their payloads into the air. The dummies flew surprisingly far, soaring over walls and landing on rooftops.

“One of the Councillors, Pudgel Goosedown, came up with these,” Paxina said. “He said he got the idea from the gnomes—apparently, catapults are all the rage at Mount Nevermind.” As she spoke, one of the catapults misfired, slamming its dummy into a wall. “We’re still trying to get the kinks worked out,” she added.

Wincing, Riverwind followed her past the catapults, and on down the street.

They followed Elbowpoke Way as it wound through town, past many more deadfalls and trip wires, until finally they reached the middle of Kendermore. The kender had been very busy here. Dozens of houses had been leveled to create a large, empty quadrangle. “And this,” Paxina declared, “is where it all comes together.” She made a grand, sweeping motion with her arm, indicating the houses along the edges of the yard. “The day before the attack, we’re going to soak all of those with oil and pitch. When the horde gets here, we’ll have a good, old-fashioned bonfire. Goodbye ogres.”

Riverwind nodded solemnly, struggling to take it all in. There didn’t seem to be a single part of Kendermore that hadn’t been turned into some sort of death trap. “I hope it works,” he asked said solemnly.

“If it does,” Paxina replied blithely, “boy, are we going to have a whopper of a story to tell!”

Smiling, Riverwind glanced around the courtyard. At the far side, a crowd of kender were gathered around one of the tunnel entrances, bidding one another farewell as they waited for their turn to leave the city. “And the Flight?” he asked. “I haven’t seen Catt in a few days. Things are going as we hoped?”

“Better, actually,” Paxina answered. “We should be down to the last ten thousand by sunrise on the day after Mark Year. Not bad, eh? Whoever’s left behind will join the fun here. When the call went out for volunteers, we got more than we needed. A lot of my people really want to stick around and see the end of Kendermore.”

They stood together, admiring the kender’s handiwork, for a few minutes. Then Paxina cleared her throat awkwardly, breaking the silence. “So,” she said. “what about you and Kronn?”

“We leave for Blood Watch tomorrow,” Riverwind said.

“You’d get lost in the tunnels without Kronn,” Paxina said. “I’m glad you’re taking him with you. I’d go too—if I didn’t have my own job to do.”

Riverwind nodded. Paxina had taken charge of the defenses after the death of Brimble Redfeather. She would stay and fight, stay and die if need be.

“Are you sure you want to stay behind?”

“Yes,” she replied earnestly. “Kendermore is my home. Besides,” she added with a smile, “I’m not afraid.”

When Riverwind came home that night, he found Brightdawn and Moonsong waiting for him. They stood in the front hall, side by side, their arms folded across their chests. Stagheart was behind them, still haggard and weak from his wounds.

The old Plainsman looked at his daughters and immediately understood the look in their eyes. “No,” he said before they could open their mouths to speak. “You’re leaving with the Kender Flight.”

“That’s our choice to make,” Brightdawn answered curtly. “Just like it’s yours to go to Blood Watch.”

When Moonsong spoke, her voice was more gentle. “Father,” she said, “all the healers in Kendermore are staying. Anile told me. The people who’ve already left don’t need us—but the ones who stay behind will. My place is with them—I can’t just leave.”

“You shouldn’t have come in the first place,” Riverwind said wearily. “You should have stayed in Qué-Shu.”

“Be that as it may,” Moonsong declared, “I am here.”

“I will stay with her,” stated Stagheart, his face a mask of pride and regret. “I failed to protect her before; I will not make that mistake again.”

Riverwind sighed. “Very well,” he said. “Your mother would do the same, Moonsong, if she were in your place.” He turned to face Brightdawn. “And you? You’re not a healer.”

She gazed at him, her eyes fierce and clear. “I will go with you to Blood Watch.”

The old Plainsman slumped, bowing his head. Tears burned in his eyes. “Child,” he whispered, “please..

“Listen to me,” Brightdawn said fiercely. “Do you remember when we left Qué-Shu? I told you I didn’t know what my place was in this world. I know, now—it’s with you, Father.”

Riverwind stood silently for a moment, trembling. Brightdawn stepped forward and rested a gentle hand on his shoulder. After a moment, he looked up at her and smiled, his eyes full.

“Goldmoon and I raised you to do what you knew in your hearts was right,” he said softly. “I will not tell you otherwise now.”

There were no more words. He gathered his daughters in his arms, unable to hold back his tears.

The hot wind ruffled Riverwind’s feathered headdress as he stood with Kronn and Brightdawn in the center of town, outside an entrance to the tunnels. Before them was a crowd of kender, who had set aside their work to bid them farewell. Paxina, Catt, and Giffel stood at the front, Moonsong and Stagheart beside them. Moonsong held little Billee Juniper in her arms.

They had already said their farewells—Brightdawn holding Billee and embracing Moonsong, Kronn taking his sisters’ hands and promising to return, Riverwind kissing Moonsong, Catt, and Paxina goodbye. Now the Lord Mayor bowed to them, smiling.

“Kendermore thanks you,” Paxina said softly.

Gravely, Riverwind bowed to her, then turned and walked down the stairs into the tunnels. Brightdawn and Kronn followed. They did not look back.