The tavern at Seven Wells had been Keli's third stopping place. And, it now seemed, his last. He'd come in late, stabled his horse, and snatched a quick meal. When he tried for a room, he was able to get lodging only in the barn with his horse. A party of horse traders filled the paddocks with their stock and most of the tavern's rooms with themselves.
So tired had Keli been that the straw seemed a princely bed. He'd fallen asleep easily to the stamp and chuff of horses.
And wakened to the nightmare of the goblin and moonlight streaming along Tigo's hook-hand. One of them hit him hard. There had been nothing but pain and darkness, and finally, the woods.
His horse they must have turned out among the stock in the paddocks so that none would wonder in the morning why the young courier had gone and left his mount behind.
And they'd snatched up the kender as well. Keli still didn't understand why, couldn't fasten on a reason. Tigo jerked on the tether again as though calling to heel a wandering dog. Keli tried to pick up his pace.
He could either look at the ground or the kender scouting ahead, and he chose the kender coursing the forest as though leading them through streets of a town he knew well. Bright blue leggings flashing in and out of the underbrush, topknot bouncing, the kender reminded Keli of a blue jay.
Chatters like one, too, Keli thought. The boy didn't mind the kender's chatter very much. Running like the song of the river they'd left behind, it took his mind off what must await him at the journey's end.
That would be death. The kender talked long and often, but he was not the only one who did. In fits and snatches Keli had picked up bits of his captors' guarded conversation.
Staag was pressing for opening ransom negotiations. Tigo had other plans.
"Aye," Tigo snarled once, "we'll send a ransom demand. But it's not only ransom that one will be paying out for his son. He owes me, Ergon does. He'll pay the coin, but all he'll find is a body."
Sweat traced paths in the dust on Keli's face, ran stinging into his eyes. After a moment the kender dropped back, jostled him lightly, and stumbled to cover the move.
"Don't worry," he whispered. "This is just like a game of Hide and Go Seek, only I'm sure my friends will find us. Tanis is the best tracker there is. And Raistlin and Sturm and Caramon learned from him. The place I'm going to take us to is a place Flint showed me a couple of years ago. Once they get on our trail, Flint will know right off where I'm heading. Probably."
Hide and Go Seek? Keli turned away in disgust. "This is not a game, kender. I told you, those two are going to kill me."
As before, the kender grinned and shook his head. "Those two? Flint alone could handle three or four of that sort. Or five, or six, depending on the circumstances…"
Tigo booted the kender up ahead again, and Keli was left with something to consider.
His friends, the kender had said. Keli squinted hard at the kender's back. He did look familiar. Had he been at the tavern last night? Aye, and, despite what Staag had said about kender not traveling in company, this one had been with a red-haired hunter who had an elven look about him, three young men, and a dwarf. He remembered them because one of the young men, thin and pale-eyed, no warrior like his two companions, had threatened to turn the kender into a mouse and fill the tavern with cats if he so much as looked at his pouches again. A mage, by the sound of that threat. Keli had thought at the time that the others probably traveled with the mage just to keep the kender in line.
Could it be that these companions would be looking for the kender? I'm making sure that my friends find me… How? Keli drew a breath, and hope with it.
But the hope was small and too slim to flare. Hide and Go Seek, the boy thought, is played with friends in the streets and alleyways of the town you live in. Not with goblins and thieves in the forest.
The bride was a summer princess, her hair golden wheat, her eyes blue-touched with dawn's mist. Roses blossomed in her cheeks. Her laughter rose and dipped the way a bird's song will.
So she seemed to Tanis. She must have seemed that way to Flint, too, for he gifted Kavan, the miller's son, with her hand as though presenting the boy with jewels. How Karan felt was clear for all to see; all the jewels of Krynn would be but poor stones and rubble when compared with this girl.
"Lucky fellow, this Kavan," Caramon murmured when the ceremony was ended.
Tanis gave him a sidelong look and a grin. "Caught, is what he is, but the jailer is pretty enough, isn't she?"
"Aye, and it won't be bread and water for him. Though it will be some time before he has any interest in kitchen matters — " He did not finish the thought but jerked around when a hard finger caught him between the ribs.
"Keep a civil tongue in your head, youngster," Flint growled.
"I didn't mean — "
"I know what you meant. Now why don't you go off and do what you do best: find yourself something to eat."
It was a suggestion Caramon never found amiss. When he was gone, Tanis grinned again. "Runne is a beauty, isn't she?"
"Aye, she's that. Her grandfather would have been proud this day."
Memories darkened the old dwarf's eyes again, clouds in a clear sky. As though to deny the sudden thread of sadness running through his day, Flint looked around, searched the crowd of family and friends now surging around the new bride and her husband. "That addle-pated kender never turned up."
"I haven't seen him, but Tas isn't one to miss a celebration. He'll be here before long and likely you'll be wishing he wasn't."
Yet through the long summer afternoon and into the hot dark of night the guests at the wedding moved easily, refilling wine goblets or ale pots and plates too soon emptied of the good food. No one cried thief, no one wondered where his purse had got to, no lady missed even the smallest trinket or scarf.
There was no kender in attendance, and by the time red Lunitari reached his zenith and white Solinari left the horizon behind, Sturm came to Tanis wondering.
The forest had thinned near sunset, the oaks and pines were spare now, replaced by stony ground and boulders. Night's dark cloak brought no relief from the day's heat, and Tigo was not bearing the simmering night well at all. His eyes were black pits, his lean, hard jaw jerked from time to time under a tic of which he seemed unaware. His fingered hand stroked the grapnel's hook as though he'd decided to do murder with it.
Beyond a gulp of water, Keli and Tas were granted nothing. The rope tethers were gone, the knee and ankle thongs were back. Above the whine and drone of gnats, the bright song of crickets, Keli heard the kender's low cursing. Twisting so that he faced the fellow, Keli grudgingly whispered, "Are you all right?"
"It's not," the kender grumbled, "so much that I'm nearly starved to death and those two have eaten everything but the bones of that rabbit. It's these thongs. It's not easy to breathe when your hands, your knees, AND your feet are tied!"
The kender was more actively suffering now, so completely bound, than he had been all day. His breathing was the short, hard gasping Keli had seen once in a dog whose collar was caught in a fence.
"Kender," he whispered, thinking to distract his companion from his troubles, "I'm Keli. What's your name?"
"Tasslehoff Burrfoot. Call me Tas, all my friends do."
"Tas, how did they get you? And why?"
"With a sack over the head, followed quickly, I can tell you, by a big stick of wood. I was in the barn, at the tavern, just looking. Someone had ridden in that night on a big red horse, and Caramon said he'd never seen a bay with a mane and tail that color before. They were all gold, you see, and I just wanted a look. Nasty beast, too. Nearly took off all my fingers when I went to touch his mane. It was like gold, though, soft and yellow." Tas hitched himself up so that the small of his back rested against a boulder. In restless preoccupation, he worked his wrists against the binding leather. "I walked in on them just as they were tying you up."