"Oh! No! No, no." Ripple rushed forward, stopped a few feet away and sobbed. The kender girl loved the ponies and begrudged no work in rubbing them down, combing their manes and tails and brushing their hides.
"Beglug! Bad! Bad!" Trap yelled at the little creature, still too shocked to say more.
Halmarain rushed over, muttered a spell, and the evil glow in the merchesti's eyes died out. He hummed his calm little sounds and stood. When Halmarain told him to, he wandered back to the fire to curl up and sleep again.
"I told you that monster was evil," the little wizard said, staring at her dead pony.
"No good make Lava Belly sleep," Umpth said, staring at the dead animal. "Him eat pony now, no bad two days maybe."
"He will not eat that animal!" Halmarain snapped. "The last thing we need is for him to develop a taste for our mounts."
"No make good magic," Grod said as he too stared at the carcass. "Too heavy. No can carry."
They cooked a quick meal, loaded the surviving animals, and broke camp. Halmarain rode the pack animal and they divided the supplies between them, loading a few on the backs of her mount, and those ridden by the Aghar and the kender.
At dawn of the second day, they found a deep gully where they would not be seen and made camp. Not two miles ahead was the foot of the first mountain in the range.
"When we finish eating can we go visit the wizard?" Ripple asked. She was as happy as her brother to have the boring trip behind them.
"That would be nice," the little wizard agreed with a despondent sigh.
"Gee! You sound sad. I thought you'd be happy to be here," Trap said, surprised that she seemed disappointed.
"We still have to search miles of mountains for a hidden entrance to an abandoned dwarf city-one abandoned a thousand years ago," Halmarain said. "That will be the hardest part of our journey."
"Hard? No, it'll be fun. I like looking for things," Ripple said. "How do we recognize it when we find it?"
"I don't know."
The kender stared at Halmarain. Even the gully dwarves paused, forgetting to eat as they gazed at the wizard.
"Wizard no smart," Umpth said.
"Done said that," Grod agreed.
"Just shut up!" Halmarain jumped up and stomped away from the campsite, her tiny feet making poofs of dust in the dry bed of the gully.
"She's tired," Ripple said. "When a person is very tired, everything seems harder than it really is. But I don't see the difficulty. We won't have any trouble finding the entrance."
"How do that?" Umpth asked.
"You're dwarves-not Hylar, Neidar, Daewar, and certainly not Daergar, but dwarves. You should be able to find the entrance to this dwarf city."
"The Aghar don't live underground," Trap reminded her. "They don't know anything about mines and caverns."
"Aglest Clan use wheel," Umpth announced. "Wheel know everything."
"Know more than human wizard," Grod said, turning so it was apparent he was speaking to Umpth.
"Can find village," Umpth agreed. He scuttled around to sit facing Grod and held up one finger, then a second. "Wheel know someone comes, two times." He held up two more fingers, became confused. He stared at the three fingers, confused because one limiting trait of their race was their inability to count above two. He solved his problem by tucking one finger under his grubby thumb.
"Wheel find Trap," Grod said, holding up a finger.
Halmarain's fit of temper had not taken her far from camp and as she returned she heard the last of the conversation.
"That's enough!" Halmarain shouted at the dwarves, remembered loud noises could attract unwanted attention, then spoke more softly. "If that wheel is so powerful, I'll let it find the entrance to the dwarf caverns."
"Does this place have a name?" Trap asked.
"Digondamaar, it means 'the golden halls' in the Neidar tongue."
"Neidar?" Trap looked up.
"Really? That's interesting. Tell us about it," Ripple suggested. "Perhaps knowing more could help us locate the entrance."
"This city isn't Hylar. The Neidar started the mines and the city more than a thousand years ago. For some reason they abandoned it," Halmarain said, then paused to sigh before continuing. "How much they built, how deep they delved, and why they left are secrets known only to the dwarves. Chalmis Rosterig lives in the underground chambers near one of the entrances-the west entrance, according to rumor. That's all I know."
"That's really not much," Trap said with a hint of censure. "And you didn't make much a tale of it. Still, it's a start. You stay in camp with Beglug and rest. We'll go searching for the entrance. If two kender and two gully dwarves can't find the entrance, it isn't there."
Halmarain appeared undecided. She glanced around the camp, which was well hidden in the gully, and then at the little fiend, who had curled up in the early morning sunshine and was asleep.
"I know. I'll get you some water from the stream and you can have some more tea," Ripple said quickly. "You can sit and relax and let us explor-search."
"Take care, you don't know what sort of creatures you might find in those mountains," Halmarain said.
Trap considered the wizard's warning and checked his pouches to see if he had any more stones for his hoopak pouch. His exploring fingers discovered something he could not identify by feel and he drew it out.
"I had forgotten about this," he said, inspecting the small, gray-green glass disk. He moved it to another pouch to make sure he didn't make a mistake and use it as a slinging stone.
Astinus of Palanthus is rumored to serve the god Zivityn or perhaps Gilean, the god of knowledge. No one has ever known the truth. Nevertheless, he shook his head as he described the satisfaction in the Dark Queen's voice…
"At last!" Takhisis said, her words a sigh of relief. Then she gave a snort of disgust. "They're in some gully, and I can't see the surrounding area.
"Look at those striations of red and gray," Draaddis Vulter pointed. "There's only one place on Krynn where that geological anomaly occurs. They're east of here… in the hill country. They passed right by us!"
"At least that stupid kender hasn't lost the viewing disk."
As they watched, the kender slipped the viewing disk back into his pouch and a small dark cloud hovered over its mate that lay on the mirror in Draaddis' laboratory.
"I will have them, Draaddis." The Dark Queen's voice was full of menace. "You will not employ any more fools. No death knights, no goblins, no bugbears, no kobolds… and if you value your life, no more mistakes."
The chamber seemed to fill with an evil vapor again. From it came the grasping arms on which long-fingered hands reached out with even longer claws. Draaddis felt the ripping of his skin, the flesh being torn from his face and limbs. No matter that the wizard knew his torture was illusion, the pain in his mind was real. He screamed and fell, begging his senses for the oblivion of unconsciousness or death. Since the wounds were mere illusions, he received neither.
Dimly, between his own screams, he could hear the little winged rat shrieking. It staggered out from behind a stack of books and flapped it's wings pathetically, as if it had lost the ability to fly.
When the illusion faded, and the pain with it, the rat continued to whimper. Draaddis was minutes getting his breath, calming his senses, and regaining his feet.