Chris Pierson - Spirit of the Wind

No one was completely sure-records of meetings, when they were kept at all, tended to be haphazard and careless about such details as attendance and agenda-but not even the oldest kender could remember having seen City Hall’s audience room crammed quite so full as it was that morning. There were currently one hundred and three Council members, and by the time Riverwind, Brightdawn, and Moonsong arrived, the room was quite literally packed to the walls.

Though the impending attack by Malys and the ogres was still weeks away, Riverwind and Brightdawn were both dressed for war. Clad in leather armor, she wore her mace on her belt. He had his sabre and a quiver of white-fletched arrows. Instead of armor, Moonsong wore a new blue gown-a gift from the kender-but like her father she had a sword at her hip. The weapon belonged to Stagheart, who was still too badly hurt to leave his sickbed.

Brightdawn smiled as she nodded toward the room full of milling, chattering kender. “If you’d told me a year ago that we’d be here today, I would have laughed,” she said.

Chuckling, the three Plainsfolk strode into the surging sea of topknots and hoopaks. It was hard going-they were tossed and buffeted by the kender-but in time they reached the head of the room. Paxina, Kronn, and Catt waited for them, standing on a raised dais beneath a grinning portrait of their father. The Plainsfolk and the Thistleknots shook hands, exchanging words of greeting. Then Riverwind turned to face the crowd. He raised his hands and called for silence. It took a while for the room to settle down, but in time it was quiet enough for Riverwind to make himself heard.

“Before we begin,” he proclaimed, in a loud, booming voice, “I’d like my knife back.”

There was a moment’s confusion as the Councillors looked around and checked their pockets. At last a hand shot up in the back holding Riverwind’s bone-handled dagger. It passed up from one kender’s hand to another, until at last it reached the front.

“Sorry!” a voice called out. “You must have dropped it on the way in.”

With a tight smile-some things, it seemed, would never change-Riverwind tucked the knife back in his belt.

“I’m sure we all know why we’re here,” he declared. “The ogres attack in twenty days. When they do, we won’t be able to keep them from breaching the walls. Kendermore will fall.”

A murmur of consternation rippled through the crowd. Riverwind waited for it to subside.

“Are you saying we’re doomed?” asked an old, bespectacled kender at the front of the crowd. Fear was plain in his voice.

“No, Merldon Metwinger,” Paxina said. “We’re not doomed-only Kendermore is.”

Riverwind nodded firmly. “When I met Kronn and Catt in Solace, they asked me to help you fight Malystryx and the ogres. I thought that meant saving your city, but now I know that isn’t possible.

“But,” he added quickly, seeing hope fade from many of the Councillors’ faces, “there is still a way to save your people.”

“How?” asked several kender at once.

Catt stepped forward. Her broken arm still hung in its sling, but she held her back straight and her head high.

“We’re leaving,” she proclaimed. “We’ll take the tunnels out of the Kenderwood, then travel across Ansalon to Hylo where the rest of our people live. They’ll take us in.”

“Leaving?” Merldon Metwinger asked. “What, all of us? That’ll take forever!”

“Well,” Catt replied patiently, “not quite that long. But it will take time. We’ll be drawing lots to see who leaves when. We’ve already sent messengers ahead to Solamnia and other lands asking for help in our journey. The rest of us have to start leaving tomorrow, so we need you to spread the word about this fast. Yes, Merldon?”

The old Councillor tilted his head back, peering at her through his spectacles. His squinting eyes looked huge through the lenses. “Just how long is this going to take?” he asked.

Catt cleared her throat. “I’ve, uh, been working on that. Allowing time for holdups, we can’t evacuate everyone in less than twenty-three days.”

The room erupted with shouts of outrage, confusion, and alarm. “Twenty-three days!” the Councillors exclaimed. Fingers pointed at Riverwind. “But he said we’ve only got twenty!”

Paxina cupped her hands to her mouth. “Quiet down!” she hollered. “All of you, shut up!”

A sulking silence fell over the audience hall. “I don’t mean to be rude,” Merldon Metwinger asked, “but where are we going to get the other three days?”

“We’re not,” Riverwind said. “There will still be ten thousand people left in Kendermore when the ogres attack.” A low rumble rose among the Councillors again, but the Plainsman quickly raised his hands. “That isn’t all!” he shouted. “Listen to me!”

Reluctantly, the kender looked to him.

“We have to fight the ogres,” he said. “There isn’t any other choice. But my mistake, until now, has been assuming we can do it like humans and elves do-defending the city wall, as if Kendermore were Kalaman or the High Clerist’s Tower. It isn’t.

“If we do it right, however, we can beat the ogres. But you need to fight like kender, not humans. We can’t afford a face-to-face battle, but we can beat them other ways. If the Kender Flight goes as planned, the city will be nearly empty by the time the ogres attack. But they won’t know that, and we can use that to our advantage.”

The murmurs that erupted from the Councillors were more hopeful but still confused. “What are we supposed to do?” Merldon asked.

Kronn cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “actually the answer was my idea, although I didn’t know it at the time. Riverwind had to point it out to me. Think about how Kendermore’s laid out, Merldon-streets going every which way, zigging where they should zag, stopping suddenly for no good reason, looping around on themselves. Honestly, it’s a mess. But that’s where we have the advantage. We can’t beat the ogres head-on, like Riverwind said, but if we can get them lost in the streets and use every dirty trick we’ve got, then we’ve got a chance at beating them.”

“What we need to do is block off the right roads and channel the ogres toward the middle of town,” Paxina said. “Then we have to hold them there long enough to destroy them.”

“Destroy them?” asked a young woman in the middle of the crowd. “How?”

Riverwind looked out over the Councillors, his eyes glinting in the lamplight. “You have to burn Kendermore,” he said. “You need to set fire to the city, then flee through the woods.”

For a second, every kender in the room was too stunned to speak.

“Great jumping Trapspringer’s ghost,” breathed Merldon Metwinger. “That’s insane.”

“Exactly,” Kronn replied, grinning. “Which means Kurthak won’t be expecting it.”

“It could work,” said a short, balding Councillor.

“It has to,” Paxina said emphatically. “While people are leaving through the tunnels, everyone else has to pitch in, preparing the trap. We can’t afford to have any doubts.”

Shouts of support and approval rang out through the audience hall. Fists and hoopaks waved in the air.

In the front of the crowd, Merldon Metwinger pursed his lips a moment, then raised his voice above the din. “What about Malys?” he asked.

Silence fell over the room like a landslide. A resurgence of dismay abruptly snuffed out the glee that had been kindling in the Councillors’ faces. The kender looked at one another uneasily, realizing they’d forgotten all about the dragon.

“We can try to flee through the Kenderwood,” Merldon went on, “but if Malys sees us, we’re as dead as if we stayed put. That forest out there is as dry as Balif’s bones. All she’d have to do is clear her throat, and the whole thing would go up like so much tinder. When she burned Woodsedge, the walls of the tunnel beneath it melted, and I doubt she was using the full force of her breath there. If she chooses to burn the whole Kenderwood, the tunnels will become the world’s biggest oven. Thousands will die.”