Earwig sighed, thrashing in his chains. He had examined the lock as best he could, but it was just too dark to see.
“I couldn’t open it anyway. My tools are missing.” The kender, thinking of this, became highly indignant. “That’s really not fair. I’ll just mention that, on my way out.”
The chains themselves were heavy and thick, and he doubted if even his mighty friend Caramon could break them in one try. The floor he sat on was cold and wet; the damp was making him sneeze. The walls were constructed from solid rock that nothing, seemingly, would penetrate. He thought of his Uncle Trapspringer, who had purportedly escaped from a prison cell by digging his way out with a spoon. That very spoon had become a sacred relic among kender.
“I wonder what Uncle Trapspringer would do if he were down here?” Earwig said out loud, half-hoping he might get an answer. One never knew when or where Uncle Trapspringer might pop up.
Apparently, however, it wasn’t here.
Earwig had no idea how long he’d been down wherever here was. He only knew he had to get out soon, or his mind would leave on its own.
“Why don’t one of you guys tell me a story? Something I haven’t heard before,” the kender prompted his silent cellmates. “Well? How about it?”
No answer. Earwig frowned. He was beginning to lose all patience with the situation. He rummaged through his pockets for the tenth time, hoping to find something that could either help him escape or provide interesting entertainment.
“Handkerchief and a bit of fluff. Empty. Empty. My spinner and nothing else.” Frustrated, he dragged his chained hand over and gave the spinner a flick with his finger. Something jabbed him in the arm, coming from his right sleeve.
“The dart!” Earwig exclaimed, pulling back the inner flap that kept the missile hidden. “Don’t worry, you guys. I’ll have us out in a minute!” he called to his silent companions in the cell. “It’s really strange, you know”-he continued talking to alleviate his cellmates’ impatience-“but someone used a dart like this to try to kill Caramon, and now it’s helping me to escape.”
Earwig thrust the dart into the lock of the manacle around his wrist. He seemed to recall Raistlin saying that the dart was tipped with a deadly poison, but that didn’t matter. Death was better than sitting here and doing nothing.
Inserting the tip of the dart into the keyhole, he ran the metal along his finger as a guide, feeling the point come to the first tumbler. Jiggling the projectile, he bypassed the second and third tumblers, jimmied past the fourth, and felt a sharp point press against his skin. “That’s it!”
The last tumbler gave way to his gentle proddings. Something soft-dust, perhaps-flaked off the dart onto his skin, but in his excitement, Earwig didn’t notice. He slipped the dart into a pocket, threw the chains from his body, and stood triumphantly.
“All right! You guys are next.”
For just one brief, fascinating moment, the kender thought he might pass out from the sudden pain in his head. But the dizzy spell went away, and the pain in his head eased. Earwig began to stumble blindly about the room, holding his arms out in front of him. He came to a wall, his hand slapping against the moist stone. “Don’t worry, Baldy. I’m coming.”
He followed the wall until his foot clattered into a heap of chains on the floor. “There you are!” he said, bending down to feel the shackles. “Why didn’t you tell me where you were?” His hand closed, not around flesh, but around bone, the bone of a man long dead.
“I guess that’s why you weren’t much interested in Dizzy,” said Earwig, feeling comforted. He’d really begun to think he was losing his talent as a storyteller. “Well, Baldy, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be leaving now. I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re not very good company.”
Earwig moved blindly around the cell for a few moments more when he kicked an object, large and soft, lying on the ground near a wall. Kneeling down, he closed his hands around a long piece of wood-a piece of wood with which he was very familiar.
“My hoopak!” he cried. Reaching out with his other hand, he found his pouches. Rummaging through his gear, he discovered that everything he could remember having was still there, including the tinderbox and a small torch. Soon, bright, yellow flame lit the room.
Earwig gazed around the cell. There were four more skeletons chained to the walls in addition to the one he had found. It looked as if they’d been there a while. But what really caught his attention were the walls themselves. They were covered with paintings and decorations, gold against black.
“More stories!” sighed Earwig, enraptured. He began to study them. “A long time ago,” he said, tracing the pattern with his finger, “the world was … whole … and everything was fine. Then, something happened, and there were wars. Then nothing happened and everyone thought they were happy, but they weren’t, really. Then came the Cataclysm!” he surmised, seeing what could only be pictures of a great mountain of fire falling from the sky. “Then what? We go back, and a guy in a red robe builds a great city of white stone. No, that doesn’t seem right. Let’s see, a guy in a black robe tricks the guy in the red robe into building the city of white stone. And then, the guy in the red robes builds the city and a guy in a white robes helps from behind.”
Earwig stood back, scratching his head in confusion. The first part of the story had been easy to follow, flowing in a vertical direction down the wall, but now everything he looked at branched out in hundreds of directions, over the ceiling, across the floor, along the walls, lines of gold connecting each to a large triangle. Following the lines, he came to a great, stylized eye done in colors of red and white and black, staring at him in the wall opposite the triangle. All the gold lines in the room met at this symbol.
“Not much of a story,” Earwig sniffed. “The plot goes absolutely nowhere.”
The kender put his pack on his back, adjusting it for comfort, shifting his shoulders against the weight. He started to walk out of the room when he realized that something essential to his plan of escape was missing.
“A door. There’s no door! How am I supposed to get out of here?” he demanded angrily. “Wait! Maybe they hid the door, just so I’d have to find it.”
Cheering up, Earwig started to tap his hoopak against the walls, the wooden staff making a loud sound in the quiet of the cell. He systematically worked around from one corner to the others. “Tack, tack tack, tack, tack. Tick! That’s it!”
He pushed with all his strength against the block, but couldn’t move it. “Maybe this isn’t it,” he concluded, leaning back against the wall to rest. “Wha-oh!” The stone swung on hidden hinges, dumping the startled but highly elated kender onto the floor on the other side.
“Wake up, Caramon!”
Thin fingers bit into the young man’s shoulders. He was up and moving in an instant. With the instinct of a warrior, his body was functioning before his brain.
“I’m here! I’m ready!” he shouted, hands fumbling for his weapons.
“Don’t be alarmed. Yet. Get dressed.”
Caramon stared around sleepily, and realized he was in his comfortable room in Barnstoke Hall rather than in a war camp that had come under the attack of hordes of goblins.
“Sure, Raist.” He’d only been asleep, he judged, for several hours. “Just give me a couple of minutes to wash up and shave and-”
Raistlin brought the metal-shod end of his staff to the floor with enough force to shake the lamps on the walls.
Caramon, startled, stared at his twin. Pain and outrage lined the golden face, flickering in the narrowed eyes. The warrior put his gear on quickly, as if he were about to engage in battle.
Raistlin, saying nothing, led the way from their room to the street. He seemed to have become a spirit of retribution overnight. What had happened? Caramon wondered.