Now, however, there was something wrong.
The day wore on, and the weather grew warmer with each passing mile. The sun hung fat and red behind Riverwind and his companions when they finally reached the edge of the forest. It curved ahead of them, its slender trees hissing as the summery breeze brushed through their leaves. None of the companions missed the fact that those leaves were still green; by all rights, they should have been ablaze with color at this time of year-or even already fallen brown and dead upon the ground. Somehow, the beauty of the foliage seemed more sinister than soothing.
They could do little but ride on, though; spurring their mounts, they continued, their long shadows sliding into the dappled shade of the woods.
“The bloodberries aren’t ripe yet after all,” Catt noted as they passed a tall, leafy bush. Bright red blossoms still bloomed upon its branches, instead of the fruit the kender had hoped to find. She nodded toward a thorny thicket, where bees hummed lazily around fat blackberries.
“It’s like it’s still midsummer,” Kronn murmured. He pointed at a nearby tree, where an azure-breasted songbird perched, whistling a tune to welcome the oncoming dusk. “Branchala bite me, Catt-is that a bluetwitter?”
“Kronn,” Brightdawn said suddenly, her voice very soft.
“I’ve never seen one this far south past Summer’s End, and that was more than a month ago!” Kronn went on, his eyes fast on the bird.
“Kronn.” The Plainswoman’s voice was stronger this time, and louder.
He looked at her sharply. “What is it?”
Brightdawn hesitated, then raised her hand, pointing down the trail before them. “That light,” she said. “Do you recognize it?”
Kronn followed her outstretched finger. In the distance, dimly visible through the trees, a dull, red glow was rising into the twilight sky. His eyes widened when he saw it. Beside him Catt gasped in amazement.
“It’s a fire,” Riverwind said, a sudden tension in his voice. “A great fire.”
“Trapspringer save me,” Kronn murmured. “The Kenderwood’s burning.”
Chapter 13
They slept fitfully that night, at the very edge of the forest. Each took a turn at watch, looking to the north and east where the ruddy glow continued to light the sky. By morning the wind had shifted, and smoke drifted into their eyes as they packed their bedrolls, quickly broke their fast with cold biscuits and sausage from the Pig and Whistle, and took to the road once more.
As they rode, their horses grew more and more nervous. The smell of burning was everywhere, though the fire was yet miles away. There was another scent too, still faint but unmistakably foul, which made their mounts even more skittish. Around midday they gave up riding, finding it faster to dismount and lead their steeds along Kendermore’s winding main road.
Kronn and Catt took the lead, marching swiftly and wiping stinging soot from their eyes as they crested one low hill after another. Every league, Swiftraven sought out a suitably tall tree and climbed it, nimbly ascending until he was above the blanket of boughs that spread above the path. Each time he jumped back down with the same report. The fire was still far ahead and did not look to be getting any closer. They passed the whole day that way, never stopping for more than a few minutes. They kept moving on through the deepening dark, always toward the glow. All five knew it would be fruitless to make camp. None of them would be able to sleep with that terrible light before them.
Then, sometime in the morning’s smallest hours, the glow began to waver and fade. The smell of smoke still clung to the woodland like a shroud, maddeningly strong, but there was no doubting what they saw. The fire was going out. Long before the sky began to bruise with the promise of dawn, the light had vanished entirely. If anything, it only strengthened their resolve to go on.
The sun still had not risen halfway to its full height when the forest ended. It was as if the party had struck a wall. The underbrush stopped suddenly, giving way to blackened earth. For a hundred yards or more, there were no trees at all, only stumps. Beyond the strange, razed clearing-which stretched out of sight to either side-the poplars and maples resumed, clawing upward with leafless, ash-caked branches. Smoke hovered around their sooty trunks like mist, swirling as the wind clawed past. Here and there, orange light flickered where small, stubborn fires still smoldered.
Riverwind bent beside a blackened stump, his hand running over the charred wood.
“Too even,” he pronounced. “This tree did not fall. It was cut with a saw. So were the others.”
Swiftraven crouched down, running his hand through the ashes. “This was burned on purpose.”
“Someone cleared the trees away, then scorched the earth,” Riverwind agreed. “A firebreak, to keep the flames contained.”
“My people did this,” Kronn said. He unslung his chapak from his back and compared its blade to the axe marks on a smoking stump. “They trapped the fire and let it burn out.”
Catt whistled, impressed. “It must have taken hundreds of them, cutting the whole day long.”
“Where is everyone, then?” Brightdawn wondered, looking around the clearing. “If there were so many of them here, where did they go now that the fire’s out?”
“The same place we’re going,” Kronn answered. “Kendermore. Paxina said she’d order people back from the outlying villages… if there was trouble…. Make no mistake,” he added solemnly, “those woods ahead of us were burned just as deliberately as the firebreak.”
Morning wore on to midday as they picked their way through the burnt forest, holding Kronn’s handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths to keep from choking on the lingering smoke. All around them the bare trees moaned, blackened branches clawing upward like the hands of a thousand charred skeletons. It was almost noon when they reached the remains of a tiny cottage, reduced to nothing but a chimney and stone foundation. For a while they searched for bodies but found none. “Whoever lived here got out in time,” Riverwind said.
“There aren’t any axes here,” Swiftraven added, rooting through the ruins of a tool shed. The metal heads of shovels and hammers glinted dully amid the ashes. “They must have gone to help make the firebreak.”
“And the children?” Brightdawn asked, holding up another bit of metal. It was a toy knight, made out of tin.
Catt shrugged. “Fled to Kendermore, I guess.”
“Come on,” Kronn said, his voice firm with determination. He had already begun to walk onward, leaving the cottage behind. “It’s not much farther to the nearest hamlet-Weavewillow.”
Weavewillow was no more. The town, which had once been home to some eight hundred kender, had been blasted from the face of Krynn. Like the cottage, wood and plaster and thatch were gone, leaving nothing but empty, stone husks where homes and shops had stood. Chimneys had blown apart, and cobblestone streets had cracked from the heat. The town well was nothing more than a pool of glassy rock around a steaming hole.
“What could have done this?” Brightdawn wondered, staring at Weavewillow’s five-towered town hall. The spires had melted, then hardened again, so they looked like candles that had burned down to stubs. “I’ve never seen a fire that could do this to solid rock.”