Was this ghostly state more or less than being dead? He reached around him with his mind. He couldn’t “see” everything the way he’d imagined a ghost would be able to. He saw—or knew—only a little more than he would be able to see were he alive. However, that was changing even as he tried to extend this new sense. Like the potential he’d once sensed in his strong body, he knew that the ability to “see” farther would increase with using it. He would have to explore this netherworld the way he would have done the physical world, a little at a time. He was not alone here. The souls he sensed behind the fog were few and showed no interest in him at all. They were, like he, beings moving to their own purposes and only brushed past him like sighs.
Piper laughed ruefully and the fog shivered. How many of the spirits here were bound to a kender for the rest of his natural life?
That’s what the flute’s spell had done: tied him to Lavim, the person who had triggered it, for as long as the kender lived. The spell not only gave Lavim a ghostly companion, but because of the connection to Piper, access to the flute’s magic.
Of course, he hadn’t imagined that the kender would be the first to play the flute. He’d thought Stanach would. The dwarf hadn’t and Lavim had. The summoning spell had called Piper back, all right, but it had called him to a kender’s attention. It had taken Piper all night and half the day to make his way through the labyrinths of Lavim’s confusing mental chatter and get to a place in the kender’s mind where Lavim could hear him. Stanach, when he was taken by the Theiwar, had dropped the flute for fear that it would end up in a Theiwar’s hand. He couldn’t have known that the flute’s magic would work for no one but Lavim now. Piper hoped he wasn’t in for more trouble than he could handle. He’d have to convince Lavim to give Tyorl the flute.
The fog seemed to thicken and grow dark and heavy with Piper’s fear. Soon it would be too late to help Stanach.
Lavim danced impatiently from one foot to the other. As delighted and surprised to find himself in conversation with Piper, he’d come to his senses before he’d come to the place where Kelida and Tyorl waited near the path. He had tucked the cherry wood flute into the deepest pocket of his old black coat, certain that Tyorl was going to want to snatch it right out of his hand.
Now, he had Tyorl plaguing him with questions in one ear and Piper whispering directions in the other. He didn’t know who to answer first. Tell him about Stanach and give him the flute.
Tyorl clamped both his hands on the kender’s shoulders and held him still. “Lavim, tell me about Stanach!”
“I will. In a minute.” Lavim blinked, not exactly sure who he was answering.
Tyorl’s blue eyes flared with sudden anger. “Tell me now!”
Tell him now! Give him the flute!
Lavim squirmed away and put Kelida between himself and Tyorl. Though he was a lean, slim fellow, the elf had a bear’s grip and looked as though he’d like to shake all the information out of him.
“All right, all right, I am! There’s some rocks up ahead and I found, uh, footprints and some of them were Stanach’s and some of them weren’t. Stanach isn’t there now, and I don’t know where he is, but I came back here because—”
Because you’re going to give him the flute. Tell him about the flute!
“Because I figured you should know.”
Lavim! Give him the—
Lavim steadfastly ignored the voice in his mind. “Tyorl, what do you suppose happened to him? The other footprints were a dwarf’s and he was probably one of those, urn,—”
Theiwar, Piper muttered.
“Theiwar,” Tyorl said.
Lavim blinked. He was getting a headache. “Right. Those are the fellows who’re looking for Kelida’s sword, aren’t they?”
Tyorl reached for his bow. His mouth a grim, hard line, he drew an arrow from the quiver on his back. Kelida looked from one to the other of them.
“Tyorl, they’ll kill him,” she whispered.
The sunlight on the path had deepened to gold. Shadows gathered in the thickets and under the trees, soon to spread through the forest and become night. The breeze sighed colder now.
Aye, Tyorl thought, they will. Sooner or later.
“They couldn’t have taken him far,” the ranger said.
He’s in the river caves.
Lavim nodded. “He’s in the river caves, Tyorl.”
“How do you know that? Damn, Lavim! What else do you know?”
Lavim didn’t know what else he knew. He hadn’t even known that till just now. “Tyorl, I—” He started to try to explain, then he snapped his mouth shut as Piper bellowed No! right inside his head.
But, he demanded silently, how am I going to tell him if I don’t tell him about you? Stop yelling, would you? I’ve got a headache already and—
You can tell him later. There’s no time to go into the part about me now, Lavim. The way you tell it, you’d be explaining all day. Stanach doesn’t have all day.
But what am I going to say?
Piper sighed heavily. Tell him you saw the caves. But I didn’t see any—
Don’t get virtuous on me now, Lavim.
“I saw the caves. Where else could he be?” With Piper’s prompting, he told the rest of the tale. “There’s five of ’em. Not caves, dwarves. There’s only three caves. They’re this side of the river and—”
Tyorl knows where. He’s been here before. Finn caches weapons in a cave in the forest, but he doesn’t know that this one connects with the river caves.
Lavim nodded. “Oh, Finn caches—”
No! Don’t tell him that! And give him my flute!
Lavim shoved his hands into his pockets and grasped the flute. He wasn’t going to give that up yet. “—Uh, stuff in the forest, doesn’t he? Like weapons and things?”
Has he ever … ?
“Has he ever used those ca—I mean, any caves around here?”
The elf shook his head, impatient again. “Aye, Lavim, he has. But those are woodland caves, and they’re too far south of here to connect to caves in the riverbank.”
“Yes, they—I—well, I mean, maybe they do.” Lavim curled his fingers around the flute. He was beginning to get the knack of talking to two people at once. He hoped.
You heard something about caves …
“I heard something about the caves in these woods. I don’t know where I heard it, but I did. Something about, um, right, caves that start out at the river and end up back here in the woods.
“They were saying back in Long Ridge that bandits used to hide out in ’em and sometimes they’d go to ground here in the woods because they wanted to lose whoever was chasing ’em. You pick up all kinds of stuff like that if you just listen and—”
“Tyorl,” Kelida’s hand trembled as she laid it on the elf’s arm. “We’ve got to help Stanach.”
Tyorl let his breath out in a frustrated sigh. He was caught between having to believe something a kender had ‘heard’—which meant he could have heard it, or thought he’d heard it, or imagined the whole idea right now—and the realization that if Stanach was made to tell his captors where the sword was, Kelida’s life now stood in danger.
The proverbial bear and the cliff’s edge, he thought bitterly. We’ve got to help Stanach, Kelida had said. That was another matter. He couldn’t leave her behind, alone and with the sword to mark her as the dwarves’ target, but he didn’t want to take her into danger with him either. Hands tied by circumstance, Tyorl cursed. Where was Finn? Thirty rangers in these woods and he should have run across their trail by now. He damned the sword, damned the dwarves, and made the only decision he could make.