"Wait!" The Theiwar articulated the word with a great effort of will. "I-I'd like to talk to you some more. Won't you join me here in my camp?"

He gestured to the featureless, cracked ground around him. It was the place in this gods-forsaken wasteland where he had collapsed, nothing more, and yet the kender beamed as if he had been invited into a grand palace.

"Well, I don't mind if I do, really. It has been a long walk…" Emilo shivered suddenly, looking over his shoulder again, and the dwarf wondered what could make this clearly seasoned wanderer so nervous. "And I could use some company myself."

The kender crossed his legs in a fashion no dwarf could hope to mimic as he squatted easily on the ground.

"I hope you're feeling a little better after the water. You know, you really should carry some with you. After all, a person can die of thirst out here."

"I wanted to-" Cantor started to speak in his habitual snarl, to tell this kender that he had desired nothing but death.

Yet now, with the wetness of water soothing his throat and the knowledge that there was a cave somewhere, perhaps not terribly far away, the Theiwar admitted to himself that he did not want to perish here. He wanted to survive, to go on living, even if not for any particular reason that he could name at the tune.

"That is, I wanted to bring enough water to drink, but the desert was bigger than I thought it was," he concluded lamely, looking sidelong at the kender to see if he would swallow the lie.

"I see," Emilo Haversack said, nodding seriously. "Well, would you like a little hardtack?" He offered a strip of leathery meat, and the dwarf gratefully took the provision, chewing on the tough membrane, relishing the feel of saliva once again wetting his mouth.

"I meant to ask you," the kender continued, speaking around a tough mouthful of the jerky, "why doesn't your sword have a blade?"

Cantor gaped in astonishment, which quickly exploded to rage as he saw the kender examining the broken weapon. "How did you get that?" the dwarf demanded, making a clumsy lunge that Emilo easily evaded.

"I was just looking at it," he declared nonchalantly, allowing Cantor to snatch the weapon back.

Suspiciously the dwarf patted his pouch, finding flint and tinder where it was supposed to be. As he did, he remembered some of things he had heard about kender, and he resolved to be careful of his possessions.

"If you feel well enough, perhaps we should get going," Emilo suggested. "I've found that it's best to do my walking at night, at least here in the desert. If you want to come with me, I think we can get back to Skullcap-er, the caves-before sunrise."

Once again the dwarf heard that tremor in the kender's voice, but he took no note. The promise of a cave over his head before cruel dawn! The very notion sent a shiver of bliss through the dark-loving Theiwar, and he pushed himself to his feet with a minimum of pain and stiffness. Again he felt alive, ready to move, to fight, to do whatever he had to do to claim the part of the world that was rightfully his.

"Let's go," he said, making the unfamiliar effort to make his voice sound friendly. "Why don't you show me where those caves are?"

Third Adamachtis, Dry-Anvil

"There-didn't I tell you that it looked like a skull?" asked Emilo Haversack. "And doesn't it make you wonder how it got to be this way?"

Gantor leaned back, allowing his pale, luminous eyes to trace upward across the pocked face of the mountain, past the eye sockets and mouth that gaped as vast, dark caves. The visage did indeed look ghastly, and so realistic that it might have been the work of some giant demented sculptor.

"It might," the Theiwar said agreeably, "except I've heard a lot about this place, and I know how it was made. It serves as a monument to ten thousand dwarves who died here and an emblem of blame for the mad wizard who brought them to their doom!"

"Really? That sounds like a great story! Won't you tell me? Please?"

The kender all but hopped up and down beside the Theiwar, but Gantor brushed him away with a burly hand. "Time for stories later. I think we should head inside before the sun comes up."

They had plodded steadily through the remaining hours of darkness, with the kender claiming that he could see the pale massif of the garish mountain rising against the dark sky. This had been the first clue to Gantor that creatures on the outside world had much farther-ranging vision than did the Theiwar dwarves. Of course, even under the moonless skies, the under-mountain dweller had been able to make out every detail of his companion's features, and he had realized that his own eyes seemed to have a greater affinity for the darkness.

In fact, to Gantor, the ground underfoot had been clearly revealed. The dwarf had once pointed out a shadowy gully that the kender had almost rambled right into. Without missing a beat in his conversation, which consisted for several uninterrupted hours of preposterous stories of wandering and adventure, Emilo had hopped down into the ravine and scrambled up the other side. Still overcoming his stiffness and fatigue, Gantor had followed, pondering the difference between Theiwar and kender, not only in perceptions but in balance and movement as well.

Now, however, they stood at the base of the white stone massif, and Gantor did not need the slowly growing light of dawn to reveal the skeletal features, nor the gaping black hole-the "mouth" of the skull-that offered protection from the imminent daylight.

"Well, this is it," Emilo announced, drawing a slightly ragged breath. "Though I'm not sure that we have to go in. In fact, I'm pretty certain we can find water around here somewhere else, if we look hard enough. Now that I mention it, it might even be better water. I don't know if you noticed, being so thirsty and all, but the stuff I got in there was kind of bitter."

"I'm going in," Gantor announced, with a shrug of his shoulders. Faced with the nearby prospect of shade and water, he didn't care whether the kender came with him or not.

But then his thoughts progressed a little further. No doubt the kender knew his way around in there. And the place was certainly big, there was no denying that. Who knew how long it might take him to find the water once he started looking?

Furthermore, though the dwarf wouldn't consciously acknowledge the fact, there was another reason he desired Emilo Haversack's company. Perhaps it was just the grotesque appearance of the mountain, but there was something undeniably spooky and unpleasant about the place. Gantor didn't want to go in there alone because, in all utter, naked truth, he was afraid.

"Why don't you come along?" he asked. "You can show me where the water is and finish telling me that story about your cousin Whippersink and that big ruby he found in… what was that place again?"

"Sanction was the place." Emilo sighed in exasperation. "But you're not getting any of it right. First of all, he was my uncle! Uncle Sipperwink! I told you-his mother was my grandmother's older sister! Or younger sister, I'm not sure which. But it was an emerald, not a ruby, that he found in Sanction. And it was in a temple of the Dark Queen. You know, like in the days when there were still gods, before the Cataclysm."

"I'm afraid you lost me again," Gantor declared. "But why don't we find that water and make ourselves comfortable? Then you can tell me all about it."

"I'm not even sure you want to hear it!" snapped Emilo, a trifle peevishly.

"Well, what about my story, then? I can tell you about Skullcap."