Tanis told himself he was glad Laurana was showing some signs of maturity at last. He steadfastly refused to admit that his soul stood breathless whenever he looked into her large, luminous eyes.
The afternoon passed swiftly and soon it was evening and time for the women to take dinner to the mines. The companions waited for the guards in tense silence, laughter forgotten. There had, after all, been one last crisis. Raistlin, coughing until he was exhausted, said he was too weak to accompany them. When his brother offered to stay behind with him, Raistlin glared at him irritably and told him not to be a fool.
"You do not need me this night," the mage whispered. "Leave me alone. I must sleep."
"I don't like leaving him here-" Gilthanas began, but before he could continue, they heard the sound of clawed feet outside the cell, and another sound of pots rattling. The cell door swung open and two draconian guards, both smelling strongly of stale wine, stepped inside. One of them reeled a bit as it peered, bleary-eyed, at the women.
"Get moving," it said harshly.
As the «women» filed out, they saw six gully dwarves standing in the corridor, lugging large pots of some sort of nameless stew. Caramon sniffed hungrily, then wrinkled his nose in digust. The draconians slammed the cell door shut behind them. Glancing back, Caramon saw his twin, shrouded in blankets, lying in a dark, shadowy corner.
Fizban clapped his hands. "Well done, my boy!" said the old magician in excitement as part of the wall in the Mechanism Room swung open.
"Thanks," Tas replied modestly "Actually, finding the secret door was more difficult than opening it. I don't know how you managed. I thought I'd looked everywhere."
He started to crawl through the door, then stopped as a thought occurred to him. "Fizban, is there any way you can tell that light of yours to stay behind? At least until we see if anyone's in here? Otherwise, I'm going to make an awfully good target and we're not far from Verminaard's chambers."
"I'm afraid not." Fizban shook his head. "It doesn't like to be left alone in dark places."
Tasslehoff nodded-he had expected the answer. Well, there was no use worrying about it. If the milk's spilled, the cat will drink it, as his mother used to say. Fortunately, the narrow hallway he crawled into appeared empty. The flame hovered near his shoulder. He helped Fizban through, then explored his surroundings. They were in a small hallway that ended abruptly not forty feet away in a flight of stairs descending into darkness. Double bronze doors in the east wall provided the only other exit.
"Now," muttered Tas, "we're above the throne room. Those stairs probably lead down to it. I suppose there's a million draconians guarding it! So that's out." He put his ear to the door.
"No sound. Let's look around." Pushing gently, he easily opened the double doors. Pausing to listen, Tas entered cautiously, followed closely by Fizban and the puffball flame.
"Some sort of art gallery," he said, glancing around a giant room where paintings, covered with dust and grime, hung on the walls. High slit windows in the walls gave Tas a glimpse of the stars and the tops of high mountains. With a good idea of where he was now, he drew a crude map in his head.
"If my calculations are correct, the throne room is to the west and the dragon's lair is to the west of that. At least that's where he went when Verminaard left this afternoon. The dragon must have some way to fly out of this building, so the lair should open up into the sky, which means a shaft of some sort, and maybe another crack where we can see what's going on."
So involved was Tas with his plans that he was not paying any attention to Fizban. The old magician was moving purposefully around the room, studying each painting as if searching for one in particular.
"Ah, here it is," Fizban murmured, then turned and whispered, "Tasslehoff!"
The kender lifted his head and saw the painting suddenly begin to glow with a soft light. "Look at that!" Tasslehoff said, entranced. "Why, its a painting of dragons-red dragons like Ember-attacking Pax Tharkas and…"
The kender's voice died. Men-Knights of Solamnia-mounted on other dragons were fighting back! The dragons the Knights rode were beautiful dragons-gold and silver dragons-and the men carried bright weapons that gleamed with a shining radiance. Suddenly Tasslehoff understood!
There were good dragons in the world-if they could be found-who would help fight the evil dragons, and there was-
"The Dragonlance!" he murmured.
The old magician nodded to himself. "Yes, little one," he whispered. "You understand. You see the answer. And you will remember. But not now. Not now." Reaching out, he ruffled the kender's hair with his gnarled hand.
"Dragons. What was I saying?" Tas couldn't remember. And what was he doing here anyhow, staring at a painting so covered with dust he couldn't make it out. The kender shook his head. Fizban must be rubbing off on him. "Oh, yes. The dragon's lair. If my calculations are correct, it's over here." He walked away.
The old magician shuffled along behind, smiling.
The companions' journey to the mines proved uneventful. They saw only a few draconian guards, and they appeared half-asleep with boredom. No one paid any attention to the women going by. They passed the glowing forge, continually fed by a scrambling mass of exhausted gully dwarves.
Hurrying past that dismal sight quickly, the companions entered the mines where draconian guards locked the men in huge cave rooms at night, then returned to keep an eye on the gully dwarves. Guard duty over the men was a waste of time, anyway, Verminaard figured-the humans weren't going anyplace.
And, for a while, it looked to Tanis as if this might prove horribly true. The men weren't going anyplace. They stared at Goldmoon, unconvinced, as she spoke. After all, she was a barbarian-her accent was strange, her dress even stranger. She told what seemed a children's tale of a dragon dying in a blue flame she herself survived. And all she had to show for it was a collection of shining platinum disks.
Hederick, the Solace Theocrat, was loud in his denunciation of the Que-shu woman as a witch and a charlatan and a blasphemer. He reminded them of the scene in the Inn, exhibiting his scarred hand as evidence. Not that the men paid a great deal of attention to Hederick. The Seeker gods, after all, had not kept the dragons from Solace.
Many of them, in fact, were interested in the prospect of escape. Nearly all bore some mark of ill-treatment-whip lashes, bruised faces. They were poorly fed, forced to live in conditions of filth and squalor, and everyone knew that when the iron beneath the hills was gone, their usefulness to Lord Verminaard would end. But the Highseekers-still the governing body, even in prison-opposed such a reckless plan.
Arguments started. The men shouted back and forth. Tanis hastily posted Caramon, Flint, Eben, Sturm, and Gilthanas at the doors, fearing the guards would hear the disturbance and return. The half-elf hadn't expected this-the arguing might last for days! Goldmoon sat despondently before the men, looking as though she might cry. She had been so imbued with her newfound convictions, and so eager to bring her knowledge to the world, that she was cast into despair when her beliefs were doubted.
"These humans are fools!" Laurana said softly, coming up to stand beside Tanis.
"No," replied Tanis, sighing. "If they were fools, it would be easier. We promise them nothing tangible and ask them to risk the only thing they have left-their lives. And for what? To flee into the hills, fighting a running battle all the way. At least here they are alive-for the time being."
"But how can life be worth anything, living like this?" Laurana asked.
"That's a very good question, young woman," said a feeble voice. They turned to see Maritta kneeling beside a man lying on a crude cot in a corner of the cell. Wasted with illness and deprivation, his age was indeterminable. He struggled to sit up, stretching out a thin, pale hand to Tanis and Laurana. His breath rattled in his chest. Maritta tried to hush him, but he stared at her irritably. "I know I'm dying, woman! It doesn't mean I have to be bored to death first. Bring that barbarian woman over to me."