“You have sharp eyes, kender,” Gerard conceded. He couldn’t see a thing in the shadows and mists of early dawn.
“We cannot stay here. We must make a run for the griffon!”
Palin said, and started to stand up.
Gerard pulled the mage back down.
“Those archers rarely miss, sir. You’ll never make it alive!”
“True, they don’t miss,” Palin retorted. “And yet they have fired three arrows at us and we live. If we have been betrayed, they know we carry the artifact! That’s what they want. They mean to capture us alive and interrogate us.” He gripped Gerard’s arm hard, his cruelly deformed fingers driving the chain mail painfully into the knight’s flesh. “I won’t give up the device. And I won’t be taken alive! Not again! Do you hear me? I won’t!”
Two more arrows thudded into the tree, causing the kender, who had poked his head up to see, to duck back down.
“Whew!” he said, feeling his top-knot anxiously. “That was close! Do I still have my hair?”
Gerard looked at Palin. The mage’s face was pale, his lips a thin, tight line. Laurana’s words came back to Gerard. Until you have been a prisoner, you cannot understand.
“You go on, sir. You and the kender.”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Palin. “We leave together. They want me alive. They have a use for me. They don’t need you at all. You will be tortured and killed.”
Behind them, the griffon’s harsh cry sounded loud and raucous and impatient.
“I am not the fool, sir,” Gerard said, looking the mage in the eye. “You are, if you don’t listen to me. I can distract them, and I can defend myself properly. You cannot, unless you have some magical spell at your fingertips?”
He knew by Majere’s pale, pinched face that he did not.
“Very well” said Gerard. “Take the kender and your precious magical artifact and get out of here!”
Palin hesitated a moment, staring at the direction of the enemy. His face was set, rigid, corpselike. Slowly, he withdrew his hand from Gerard’s arm. “This is what I have become,” he said. “Useless. Wretched. Forced to run instead of facing my enemies. . .”
“Sir, if you’re going, go now,” Gerard said, drawing his sword with a ringing sound. “Keep low and use the trees for cover. Fast!”
He rose from his hiding position. Brandishing his sword, he charged unhesitatingly at the Knights crouched in the brush, shouting his battle challenge, drawing their fire.
Palin rose to his feet. Crouching low, he grabbed hold of Tasslehoff’s shirt collar, jerked the kender to a standing position.
“You’re coming with me,” he ordered.
“But what about Gerard?” Tas hung back.
“You heard him,” Palin said, dragging the kender forward.
“He can take care of himself. Besides, the Knights must not capture the artifact!”
“But they can’t take the device away from me!” Tas protested, tugging at his shirt to free it from Palin’s grasp. “It will always come back to me!”
“Not if you’re dead,” Palin said harshly, biting the words.
Tas stopped suddenly and turned around. His eyes went wide.
“Do. . . do you see a dragon anywhere?” he asked nervously.
“Quit stalling!” Palin seized hold of the kender by the arm this time and, using strength borne of adrenaline, hauled Tasslehoff bodily through the trees toward the griffon.
“I’m not stalling. I feel sick,” Tas asserted. “I think the curse is working on me again.”
Palin paid no attention to the kender’s whining. He could hear Gerard yelling, shouting challenges to his enemies. Another arrow whistled past, but it fell spent about a yard away from Palin. His dark robes blended into the forest, he was a running target moving through the mists and dim light keeping low, as Gerard had recommended, and putting the trunks of the trees between him and the enemy whenever possible.
Behind him, Palin heard steel clash against steel. The arrows ceased. Gerard was fighting the Knights. Alone.
Palin plunged grimly ahead, dragging the protesting kender along with him. The mage was not proud of himself. His fear and his shame rankled in him, more painful than one of the arrows if it had happened to hit. He risked a glance backward but could see nothing for the shadows and. the fog.
He was near the griffon. He was near escape. His steps slowed. He hesitated, half-turned. . .
A blackness came over him. He was once again in the prison cell in the Gray Robes’ encampment on the border of Qualinesti.
He crouched at the bottom of a deep, narrow pit dug into the ground. The walls of the pit were smooth. He could not climb up them. An iron grating was placed over the top. A few holes in the grate permitted the air to filter down into the pit, along with the rain that dripped monotonously and filled the bottom of the pit with water.
He was alone, forced to live in his own filth. Forced to eat whatever scraps they tossed down to him. No one spoke to him. He had no guards. None were necessary. He was trapped, and they knew it. He rarely even heard the sound of a human voice for days on end. He almost came to welcome those times when his captors threw down a ladder and brought him up for “questioning.”
Almost.
The bright blazing pain seared through him again. Breaking his fingers, slowly, one by one. Ripping out his fingernails. Flailing his back with leather cords that cut through his flesh to the bone.
A shudder ran through him. He bit his tongue, tasted blood and bile that surged up from his clenching stomach. Sweat trickled down his face.
“I’m sorry, Gerard!” he gasped. “I’m sorry!”
Catching hold of Tasslehoff by the scruff of his neck, Palin lifted the kender and tossed him bodily onto the griffon’s back.
“Hold on tightly!” he ordered the kender.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Tas cried, squirming. “Let’s wait for Gerard!”
Palin had no time for any kender ploys. “Leave at once!” he ordered the griffon. Palin pulled himself into the saddle that was strapped onto the griffon’s back, between the feathery wings.
“The Knights of Neraka surround us. Our guard is holding them off, but I doubt he can last for long.”
The griffon glared back at the mage with bright, black eyes.
“Do we leave him behind, then?” the griffon asked.
“Yes,” said Palin evenly. “We leave him behind.”
The griffon did not argue. He had his orders. The strange habits of humans were not his concern. The beast lifted his great wings and leaped into the air, his powerful lion legs driving into the ground. He circled the clearing, striving to gain altitude and avoid the trees. Palin peered down, trying to find Gerard. The sun had cleared the horizon, was burning away the mists and lighting the shadows. Palin could see flashes of steel and hear ringing blows.
Miraculously, the Knight was still alive.
Palin turned away. He faced into the rushing wind. The sun vanished suddenly, overtaken by huge, rolling gray storm clouds that boiled up over the horizon. Lightning flickered amid the churning clouds. Thunder rumbled. A chill wind, blowing from the storm,! cooled the sweat that had drenched his robes and left his hair wringing wet. He shivered slightly and drew his dark cloak close around him. He did not look back again.
The griffon rose high above the trees. Feeling the air currents beneath his wings, the beast soared into the blue sky.
“Palin!” Tasslehoff cried, tugging urgently on the back of his robes. “There’s something flying behind us!”
Palin twisted to look.
The green dragon was distant, but it was moving at great speed, its wings slicing the air, its clawed feet pressed up against its body, its green tail streaming out behind. It was not Beryl. One of her minions, out doing her bidding.
Of course. She would not trust the Knights of Neraka to bring her this prize. She would send one of her own kind to fetch it. He leaned over the griffon’s shoulder.