“We meant no offense,” Doctor Bothy said.
“Yet offense you have given,” the king countered.
“How can we make amends?” the doctor asked. “Truly, for we gnomes are sympathetic to your plight. You call us monkeys and confuse us with humans, but we are smaller than humans and are ever their subjects.”
“Even now, humans rule our home mountain in the name of an evil dragon,” Sir Grumdish added.
“They do not take us very seriously,” Doctor Bothy continued, “and then only when something goes wrong or explodes.”
“That all sounds very terrible,” the king sympathized. “Very terrible indeed. Yet it does not excuse you to come burying your haggis in our roofs to attract these trolls hereabouts to come and eat us up. If these things that you are telling me are true, then you should have been even more thoughtful than these other monkeys who live in the villages.”
“What are you going to do with us?” Sir Grumdish asked worriedly.
“We will take you up to the forest again,” the king said.
Sir Grumdish sighed in relief. Doctor Bothy said, “Good. Because I didn’t want to complain, but all the blood has gone to my head, hanging upside down this way.”
“Yes, you will be taken to the forest,” the badger king continued, smiling in a snarly sort of way, baring his short but wicked fangs, “and there you will be hung from the tree under which you buried your nasty haggis. Then, when the trolls come sniffing round, they can eat you, rather than our small burrowing selveses.”
“I told you we went the wrong way,” Conundrum said. He and Razmous stood at the mouth of a dark forest cave, looking out at the stars peeping through treetops.
“I went down,” Razmous said as he stood there scratching his head. “Everybody knows that when you are in a dungeon, you go down to find its secret chambers, not up. Up is for haunted castles and ruined towers. Down is for dungeons.”
“Well, down brought us to the entrance, seemingly,” Conundrum said. “Or perhaps it is an exit. I don’t see any guards.”
“There’s only one thing to be done. We must go back,” Razmous said, with not a little enthusiasm. “Sometimes getting lost isn’t such a bad thing, you know. I’ve been lost many times, and I’ve often had a better time than when I knew where I was going.”
He turned and led the way back into the dark depths of the cave. They felt their way along the wall until they found the small entrance through which they’d come. The kender ducked down to enter it, then froze, a hiss whistling through his teeth.
“That’s torn it!” Razmous whispered. “There’s a light! Someone’s coming. We can’t get in this way now.”
“Let’s hide. Maybe they’ll pass.” By the light shining from the passageway, they made their way to a crack in the far wall and squeezed themselves into it to hide. Razmous had to turn his pouches sideways just to make it inside the crack before the light emerged into the cave.
“This crack must lead somewhere,” the kender whispered. “I feel a draft.”
“I should say you do,” Conundrum answered with a barely-suppressed snicker. “You’ve finished tearing out the seat of your breeches.”
But they had no more time to discuss cave exploration or the superiority of various fabrics. From the small passage appeared as strange a procession as even the kender was ever likely to see in his long and adventurous life. A dozen or more badgers and hedgehogs, some with one head, some with two, and some with as many as four, strode into the cavern. They walked upright with a curious waddling gait and carried in their tiny paws a comparatively tall pole. From the end of the pole depended a small glass globe glowing with a wan blue light. Conundrum realized with a start that the globes were glowing because they were filled with the tiny glowworms they had seen earlier in the trap. In quick whispers, he described to Razmous what he, being wedged in front, saw.
“Ah, yes! How ingenious!” the kender replied also in a whisper. “We could use those onboard the boat when we dive!”
Next to emerge from the passageway was a pair of badgers crawling along on all fours. These looked more primitive and stupid-and vicious-than their upright, multi-headed fellows, and each wore a type of muzzle made of woven grapevine. The badgers were bound together by a sort of harness, to which was attached a squat, two-wheeled cart. Atop the cart, secured with numerous ropes and blackberry vines, lay the enormous bulk of their friend and shipmate, the good doctor Bothy. Another pair of muzzled badgers appeared behind the cart, towing Sir Grumdish similarly trussed. Last came a second company of badgers and hedgehogs, some carrying coils of rope, others with tiny silver crossbows held at the ready. With ponderous ceremony they crossed the floor of the cavern and vanished into the nighttime forest.
Conundrum slipped out of their hiding place and scampered silently to the cave’s mouth. Razmous followed, and the two of them peered out of the cave into the night-dark woods. It was as though the motley group had vanished from the face of Krynn. The two crept out, listening, staring into the deep shadows for any sign of their friends. Finally, they spotted a gleam of blue light, like a will-o-wisp floating up the hillside through the trees. They set off after the light, moving as quietly and quickly as possible in the unfamiliar woods.
Before they reached the hilltop, they came upon the returning party of badgers and hedgehogs. Razmous scampered like a squirrel up a tree, while Conundrum hid behind a large black boulder overgrown with gray lichens and straggling vines of blackberry laden with unripe red fruit. The badgers passed first, pulling their now-empty carts, followed closely by the hedgehogs. When they had gone, vanished with hardly a sound down the hill, Conundrum stole out from his hiding place.
The kender swung down from his branch and landed with a crunching thump in the leaves. “What do you suppose they’ve done with them?” the kender asked.
A scream of terror, echoing through the woods, seemed to answer his question. They paused a moment, their faces turning gray as they looked at one another, then Razmous was off like a shot, quickly leaving Conundrum struggling up the hillside as fast as his legs could carry him. Soon, he was utterly alone in the vast dark wood, too frightened to call out, with only the steady blue glow at the hilltop to guide him.
As Conundrum neared the light, he slowed and crept forward cautiously. Another scream rent the night, followed closely by a long rumbling laugh, like a boulder rolling down the hillside. A screen of matted vines hid from him the source of the light, which was now red-he guessed its cause-and the laughter. He tried to find a way through the vines, but finding them thorny and tangled, he chose to search for a path around. He started off to his right, only to stumble into a hole of some sort. He almost cried out in surprise, but something caught him and kept him from falling. At the same moment, a small hand clapped over his mouth. He struggled a moment, then grew still at the sound of Razmous’s voice whispering in his ear.
“Be very, very quiet, unless you want to get eaten,” the kender said as he removed his hand from Conundrum’s mouth and set him back on his feet.
“Why? What’s wrong?” Conundrum asked.
In answer, the kender pointed through a gap in the vines. Conundrum closed one eye and peered through.
In the clearing beyond stood a troll, its massive fists resting on its narrow hips, and its long gangly neck craned back to stare up into the trees at the two gnomes dangling just out of its long-armed reach. The badgers and hedgehogs had left a half dozen of their glowwormglobes lying about on the ground, apparently either to attract the troll or to allow the gnomes to see their doom. The globes glowed with a deep crimson light as the gnomes above struggled and wept. The troll stood below them, contemplating a way to get at the juicy, vine-wrapped morsels.