"Unbelievable! Goblins not withstanding, how could Kaldre and the kobolds have missed the kender and the merchesti?"
"It could only have been bad luck, my queen, since my messenger brought back an image to show they were traveling with a dwarf, Neidar in dress, and two Aghar, who were dressed as Neidar as well."
"What would they want with Aghar, who are even more foolish than kender?" Takhisis asked.
"I have no idea, but as you say, the foolishness of gully dwarves and kender together must deliver them into our hands. I've no doubt that Jaerume Kaldre will find the kender… and the little merchesti."
It had been Takhisis, not Draaddis, who had chosen Jaerume Kaldre and insisted that the wizard raise him from the dead and send him after the kender. She had even chosen the kobolds as the death knight's allies. The black-robed wizard just hoped she would remember it. He knew better than to remind her.
"He had better find them," she said, sending out a blast of evil frustration that threatened to crumble the walls of Draaddis' hidden workroom beneath the ruins. She calmed down but glared at the wizard with one perfect eye, enlarged by the globe.
"Are you sure you impressed upon him the urgency of his mission?" "I tried, my queen…"
"But did you try hard enough?" She paused, her eye blinked several times. "Do you even understand?" She waited but when Draaddis didn't answer she sighed.
"Draaddis, my unwilling but faithful servant, if we have one gate stone, we can get the other. They are mated as the viewing disks are mated."
"Then if we have one, we can get the other," Draaddis mused under his breath.
"Did I not tell you so?"
"If the other still exists," Draaddis spoke up. "You did say, my queen, that the infant merchesti might kill and devour the kender, eating the stone as well. Might the adult parent do the same to Orander and the one he carries?"
"Orander is dead," Takhisis said. "He must be." She realized Draaddis had no idea what she meant.
"Shortly after Orander disappeared," Takhisis continued impatiently, "a portal opened just south of Palanthus. I don't think it was used. This might have been a coincidence. Red-robed wizards are forever traveling between planes and it is not unusual for them to open paths of destruction."
Draaddis bowed his head. He too had walked on other planes, but he did not want to remind his queen of it at the moment. No one prospered from interrupting a god.
"Just so," she nodded, correctly reading his thought. "Still, I divine from the evidence that the red-robed wizard is dead, and that the adult merchesti has the stone and is trying to get into this world to find its young one."
Though his queen often scorned his mortal intelligence, Draaddis was not stupid, far from it. The god herself had expanded his mind, and he saw a flaw in her reasoning. If the gate stones were mated and the adult merchesti on the Plane of Vasmarg had used one of them, the portal would have opened near the kender who had the second stone. The little thieves were still somewhere near the southern tip of the Vingaard Mountain chain, still a long way from Palanthus. His queen's reasoning on that point was faulty, but he dared not tell her so. Instead, he would play the stupid mortal, stay with the subject as long as he dared, and hope she saw her mistake.
"The adult merchesti," Draaddis murmured. "But it couldn't get through the portal when it was open-"
"Do not attempt to appear even more stupid than you are," Takhisis snapped. "Orander opened the portal. He opened it for himself. When he used the stones, he held them no more than three feet apart and the opening formed between them."
"But if the merchesti held one of the gate stones, then the rent in the fabric between worlds would be large enough for the monster to enter our world?" Since necromancy was his primary study, he had given little thought to planes and the subtleties of portals. Like many other wizards he used portals when he needed them, but he knew just enough about them to serve his purpose.
"Is the merchesti intelligent enough to use the stone?" the wizard asked.
"In time," Takhisis replied. "Also, adult merchesti have an innate magic. It sensed the power of the stone, and when it killed Orander, I suspect it took and kept it. Their intelligence is not on the plane with humans, but while their thinking is slow, they are capable of working out problems. And remember, they have been known to open their own portals, though its rare for them to do so."
"How long would it take for the merchesti to learn to use the stone?" Draaddis was as impatient as his queen.
"Years, your lifetime, if we left it totally to the fiend on the plane of Vasmarg," Takhisis replied. "Still, it will come after its young. When Orander opened that portal, he set a course of destruction that is inevitable. If we can get the other stone, we can help the monster through to this world in time to help our cause."
"Help it through-bring that monster here?"
"Yes!" Takhisis gave a hiss of impatience and two of the jars on the shelves cracked with the power of her mood.
Two hundred feet above the ceiling of the work room, the old lobo wolf awoke from a terrible dream. He leaped to his feet, snarling at the evil that surrounded him. Fully awake, he saw only moonlight through the vines that covered his lair.
He wondered why he had been having such terrible dreams.
Chapter 14
My Uncle Trapspringer, like all kender, was a light sleeper…
Trap awoke when he heard an irregular tapping. He sat up on the pallet to see the sun coming through the window. Beglug sat in the corner, holding one of Grod's boots. The young fiend was chewing up the last of the only chair that had been in the room and started eyeing the wood floor. When an ant crawled out between two floor boards, Beglug mashed it with the boot and gave an evil chuckle.
"Little monster," Halmarain said as she climbed down from the bed and went to the corner, searching her pack for her comb.
"Beglug find new game," Grod said. "Can use own boot." The gully dwarf grabbed his boot from the merchesti and put it on. "Lava Belly evil." "I don't believe it," Ripple snapped.
"If killing and eating the innkeeper's dog isn't evil, I don't know what is," Halmarain spoke up.
"I don't know that," Trap insisted. "The innkeeper said his dog was mean, so Beglug might have killed it because it attacked him. You know he'll eat anything."
"Lava Belly evil," Grod announced, again echoing the little wizard.
"No! He's not!" Trap was growing irritated with the gully dwarf for echoing Halmarain's warnings.
"Maybe not so bad," Umpth said. His real complaint with the little fiend was its occasional desire to munch on his wagon wheel. Otherwise Grod's brother didn't seem to mind Beglug.
The celebration had lasted well into the night. Even though the travelers had turned in at an early hour, they had not slept well because of the noisy party in the square. They packed their belongings and covered Beglug's dark skin with the makeup and adjusted his false wig and beard. The sun was high when they carried their gear down the stairs and entered the common room of the inn. The innkeeper came into the room and glared at the group while they were eating their breakfast.
"Where's the chair that was in your room?" he demanded of Grod, who was closest to the end of the table.
"Lava Belly eat chair," Umpth said, pointing at Beglug. He continued to scoop porridge into his mouth, spilling it on his beard in the process.
"I want to know what happened to the chair in your room," the innkeeper said again, dismissing the truth as a joke.