Tasslehoff talked on, but he couldn’t induce the Knight to tell him anything. That didn’t really matter much to Tas, who was perfectly capable of making up the entire incident himself. By the time they had finished eating and Gerard had gone to wash the pan and the wooden bowls in a nearby stream, the bold kender had stolen not one but a host of wondrous magical artifacts, snatching them out from under the very noses of six Thorn Knights, who had threatened him with six powerful magicks, but who had, all six, been dispatched by a skilled blow from the kender’s hoopak.
“ And that must have been how I came down with magnesia!”
Tas concluded. “One of the Thorn Knights struck me severely on the headbone! I was unconscious for several days. But, no,” he added in disappointment. “That couldn’t be true for otherwise I wouldn’t have escaped.” He pondered on this for a considerable time. “I have it,” he said at last, looking with triumph at Gerard.
“You hit me on the head when you arrested me!”
“Don’t tempt me,” Gerard said. “Now shut up and get some sleep.” He spread out his blanket near the fire, which had been reduced to a pile of glowing embers. Pulling the blanket over himself, he turned his back to the kender.
Tasslehoff relaxed on his blanket, gazed up at the stars. Sleep wasn’t going to catch him tonight. He was much too busy reliving his life as the Scourge of Ansalon, the Menace of Morgash, the Thug of Thorbardin. He was quite a wicked fellow. Women would faint and strong men would blanch at the mere sound of his name. He wasn’t certain exactly what blanching entailed, but he had heard that strong men were subject to it when faced with a terrible foe, so it seemed suitable in this instance. He was just picturing his arrival in a town to find all the woman passed out in their laundry tubs and the strong men blanching left and right when he heard a noise. A small noise, a twig snapping, nothing more.
Tas would not have noticed it except that he was used to not hearing any noises at all from the forest. He reached out his hand and tugged on the sleeve of Gerard’s shirt.
“Gerard!” Tas said in a loud whisper. “I think someone’s out there!”
Gerard snuffled and snorted, but didn’t wake up. He hunched down deeper in his blanket.
Tasslehoff lay quite still, his ears stretched. He couldn’t hear anything for a moment, then he heard another sound, a sound that might have been made by a boot slipping on a loose rock.
“Gerard!” said Tasslehoff. “I don’t think it’s the moon this time.” He wished he had his hoopak.
Gerard rolled over at that moment and faced Tasslehoff, who was quite amazed to see by the dying fire that the Knight was not asleep. He was only playing possum.
“Keep quiet!” Gerard said in a hissing whisper. “Pretend you’re asleep!” He shut his eyes.
Tasslehoff obediently shut his eyes, though he opened them again the next instant so as to be sure not to miss anything. Which was good, otherwise he would have never seen the elves creeping up on them from the darkness.
“Gerard, look out!” Tas started to shout, but a hand clapped down over his mouth and cold steel poked him in the neck before he could stammer out more than “Ger—”
“What?” Gerard mumbled sleepily. “What’s—”
He was wide awake the next moment, trying to grab the sword that lay nearby.
One elf stomped down hard on Gerard’s hand—Tas could hear bones crunch and he winced in sympathy. A second elf picked up the sword and moved it out of the Knight’s reach.
Gerard tried to stand up, but the elf who had stomped on his hand now kicked him viciously in the head. Gerard groaned and rolled over on his back, unconscious.
“We have them both, Master,” said one of the elves, speaking to the shadows. “What are your orders?”
“Don’t kill the kender, Kalindas,” said a voice from the darkness, a human’s voice, a man’s voice, muffled, as if he were speaking from the depths of a hood. “I need him alive. He must tell us what he knows.”
The human was not very woods-crafty apparently. Although Tas couldn’t see him—the human had remained in the shadows—Tas could hear his booted feet mashing dry leaves and breaking sticks. The elves, by contrast, were as quiet as the night air.
“What about the Dark Knight?” the elf asked.
“Slay him.” said the human indifferently.
The elf placed a knife at the Knight’s throat.
“No!” Tas squeaked and wriggled. “You can’t! He’s not really a Dark—ulp!”
“Keep silent kender,” said the elf, who held onto Tas. He shifted the point of his knife from the kender’s throat to his head. “Make another sound and I will cut off your ears. That will not affect your usefulness to us.”
“I wish you wouldn’t cut off my ears,” said Tas, talking desperately, despite feeling the knife blade nick his skin. “They keep my hair from falling off my head. But if you have to, you have to, I guess. It’s just that you’re about to make a terrible mistake. We’ve come from Solace, Gerard’s not a Dark Knight you see. He’s a Solamnic—”
“Gerard?” said the human suddenly from the darkness. “Hold your hand, Kelevandros! Don’t kill him yet. I know a Solamnic named Gerard from Solace. Let me take a look.”
The strange moon had risen again. Its light was intermittent coming and going as dark clouds glided across its empty, vacuous face. Tas tried to catch a glimpse of the human, who was apparently in charge of this operation, for the elves deferred to him in all that was done. The kender was curious to see him, because he had a feeling he’d heard that voice before, although he couldn’t quite place it.
Tas was doomed to disappointment. The human was heavily cloaked and hooded. He knelt beside Gerard. The Knight’s head lolled to one side. Blood covered his face. His breathing was raspy. The human studied his face.
“Bring him along,” he ordered.
“But, Master—” The elf called Kelevandros started to protest.
“You can always kill him later,” said the human. Rising, he turned on his heel and walked back into the forest.
One of the elves doused the fire. Another elf went to calm the horses, particularly the black, who had reared in alarm at the sight of the intruders. A third elf put a gag in Tas’s mouth, pricking Tas’s right ear with the tip of the knife the moment the kender even looked as if he might protest.
The elves handled the Knight with efficiency and dispatch.
They tied his hands and feet with leather cord, thrust a gag into his mouth, and fixed a blindfold around his eyes. Lifting the comatose Knight from the ground, they carried him to his horse and threw him over the saddle. Blackie had been alarmed by the sudden invasion of the camp, but he now stood quite calm and placid under an elf’s soothing hand, his head over the elf’s shoulder, nuzzling his ear. The elves tied Gerard’s hands to his feet, passing the rope underneath the horse’s belly, securing the Knight firmly to the saddle.
The human looked at the kender, but Tas couldn’t get a glimpse of his face because at that moment an elf popped a gunny sack over his head and he couldn’t see anything except gunny sack. The elves bound his feet together. Strong hands lifted him, tossed him headfirst over the saddle, and the Scourge of Ansalon, his head in a sack, was carried off into the night.
Chapter Fourteen
The Masquerade
As the Scourge of Ansalon was being hauled off in ignominy and a sack, only a few miles away in Qualinost the Speaker of the Sun, ruler of the Qualinesti people, was hosting a masquerade ball. The masquerade was something relatively new to the elves—a human custom, brought to them by their Speaker, who had some share of human blood in rum, a curse passed on by his father, Tanis Half-Elven. The elves generally disdained human customs as they disdained humans, but they had taken to the masquerade, which had been introduced by Gilthas in the year 21 to celebrate his ascension to the throne twenty years previously.