Fizban fell into a hole.
Now, a normal person would fall into a normal hole, maybe twist an ankle or tumble down on his nose. But no, not Fizban. Fizban fell into a Hole. Not only that but he took us into the Hole along with him, which I considered thoughtful of him, but which Owen didn't like at all.
One minute Fizban was hopping up and down in the snow calling me a doorknob of a kender (That wasn't original, by the way. Flint yells that at me all the time.) and the next the snow gave way beneath his feet. He reached out to save himself and grabbed hold of me and I felt the snow start to give way beneath my feet and I reached out to save myself and grabbed hold of Owen and the snow started to give way beneath his feet and before we knew it we were all falling and falling and falling.
It was the most remarkable fall, and quite exciting, what with the snow flying around us and cascading down on top of us. There was one extremely interesting moment when I thought we were going to all be skewered on the dragonlances that Owen had been carrying and hadn't had time to let go of before I grabbed him. But we weren't.
We hit bottom and the lances hit bottom and the snow that came down with us hit bottom. We lay there a little bit, catching our breath. (I left mine up top somewhere.) Then Owen picked himself up out of a snowbank and glared at Fizban.
"Are you all right?" he demanded gruffly.
"Nothing's broken, if that's what you mean," Fizban said in a sort of quavery-type voice. "But I seem to have lost my hat."
Owen said something about consigning Fizban's hat to perdition and then he pulled me out of a snowbank and stood me up on my feet and picked me up when I fell back down (my breath not having made it this far yet) and he asked me if I was all right.
I said yes and wasn't that thrilling and did Fizban think there was the possibility we could do that again. Owen said the really thrilling part was just about to begin because how in the name of the Abyss were we going to get out of here?
Well, about that time I took a good look at where we were and we were in what appeared to be a cave all made out of snow and ice and stuff. And the hole that we'd fallen through was a long, long, long way up above us.
"And so are our packs and the rope and the food," said Owen, staring up at the hole we'd made and frowning.
"But we don't need to worry," I said cheerfully. "Fizban's a very great and powerful wizard and he'll just fly us all back up there in a jiffy. Won't you, Fizban?"
"Not without my hat," he said stiffly. "I can't work magic without my hat."
Owen muttered something that I won't repeat here as it isn't very complimentary to Fizban and I'm sure Owen is ashamed now he said something like that. And he frowned and glowered, but it soon became obvious that we couldn't get out of that hole without magic of some sort.
I tried climbing up the sides of the cave walls, but I kept sliding back down and was having a lot of fun, though not getting much accomplished, when Owen made me stop after a whole great load of snow broke loose and fell on top of us. He said the whole mountain might collapse.
There was nothing left to do but look for Fizban's hat.
Owen had dug the dragonlances out of the snow and he said the hat might be near where they were. We looked, but it wasn't. And we dug all around where Fizban had fallen and the hat wasn't there either.
Fizban was getting very unhappy and starting to blubber.
"I've had that hat since it was a pup," he whimpered, sniffing and wiping his eyes on the end of his beard. "Best hat in the whole world. Prefer a fedora, but they're not in for wizards. Still — "
I was about to ask who was Fedora and what did she have to do with his hat when Owen said "Shush!" in the kind of voice that makes your blood go all tingly and your stomach do funny things.
We shushed and stared at him.
"I heard something!" he said, only he said it without any voice, just his mouth moved.
I listened and then I heard something, too.
"Did you hear something?" asked a voice, only it wasn't any of our voices doing the asking. It came from behind a wall of snow that made up one end of the cave.
I'd heard that kind of voice before — slithery and hissing and ugly. I knew right off what it was, and I could tell from the expression on Owen's face — angry and loathing — that he knew too.
"Draconian!" Owen whispered.
"It was only a snowfall," answered another voice, and it boomed, deep and cold, so cold that it sent tiny bits of ice prickling through my skin and into my blood and I shivered from toe to topknot. "Avalanches are common in these mountains."
"I thought I heard voices," insisted the draconian. "On the other side of that wall. Maybe it's the rest of my outfit."
"Nonsense. I commanded them to wait up in the mountains until I come. They don't dare disobey. They better not disobey, or I'll freeze them where they stand. You're nervous, that's all. And I don't like dracos who are nervous. You make me nervous. And when I get nervous I kill things."
There came a great slithering and scraping sound and the whole mountain shook. Snow came down on top of us again, but none of us moved or spoke. We just stared at each other. Each of us could match up that sound with a picture in our minds and while my picture was certainly very interesting, it wasn't conducive to long life. (Tanis told me once I should try to look at things from the perspective of whether they were or were not conducive to long life. If they weren't, I shouldn't hang around, no matter how interesting I thought it might be. And this wasn't.)
"A dragon 1" whispered Owen Glendower, and he looked kind of awed.
"Not conducive to long life," I advised him, in case he didn't know.
I guess he did, because he glared at me like he would like to put his hand over my mouth but couldn't get close enough, so I put my own hand over my own mouth to save him the trouble.
"Probably a white dragon," murmured Fizban, whose eyes were about ready to roll out of his head. "Oh, my hat! My hat!" He wrung his hands.
Perhaps I should stop here and explain where we were in relation to the dragon. I'm not certain, but I think we were probably in a small cave that was right next to an extremely large cave where the dragon lived. A wall of snow separated us and I began to think that it wasn't a very thick wall of snow. I mean, when one is trapped in a cave with a white dragon, one would like a wall of snow to be about a zillion miles thick, and I had the unfortunate feeling that this one wasn't.
So there we were, in a snow cave, slowly freezing to death (did I mention that?) and we couldn't move, not a muscle, for fear the dragon would hear us. Fizban couldn't work his magic because he didn't have his hat. Owen didn't look like he knew what to do, and I guess I couldn't blame him because he'd probably never come across a dragon before now. So we didn't do anything except stand there and breathe and we didn't even do much of that. Just what we had to.
"Go on with your report," said the dragon.
"Yes, o Master." The draconian sounded a lot more respectful, probably not wanting to make the dragon nervous. "I scouted the village, like you said. It's fat — lots of food laid in for the winter. One of those (the draconian said a bad word here) Solamnic Knights has a manor near it, but he's off on some sort of errand."
"Has he left behind men-at-arms to guard his manor?"
The draconian made a rude noise. "This knight's poor as dirt, Master. He can't afford to keep men-at-arms. The manor's empty, except for his wife and kid."
Owen's face lost some of its color at this. I felt sorry for him because I knew he must be thinking of his own wife and child.
"The villagers?"
"Peasants!" The draconian spit. "They'll fall down and wet themselves when our raiding parties attack. It'll be easy pickings."
"Excellent. We will store the food here, to be used when the main force arrives to take the High Clerist's Tower. Are there more villages beyond this?"