Bunniswot's eyebrows shot into his hairline. "He drank?"

"Like a fish," sighed Toede. "But he has had a lot of help and counseling since then, and I understand it's under control nowadays. Still, I remember Riverwind and Goldmoon pouring him into the ship that morning. Sad, just sad. Maybe it's better to not mention this to Renders. Rested? Let's get on."

"One more: Tika," said Bunniswot.

Toede feigned an embarrassed blush. "I really don't feel comfortable talking about Tika," said Toede. "I mean she was pleasant enough, but she never liked nonhumans, not even kender. And me being a hobgoblin, well, that just sparked all kinds of fireworks. One reason I never joined them."-sigh-"The stories I could tell of their time in Flotsam… No, no, the world needs heroes, and once you start showing them to be ordinary men and women, everything falls apart. They earned their status, and let's only recall the good times."

Toede started up the hill past the falcon-shaped rock, remembering how easy the journey had been in his dream. His knees were complaining.

Despite the pain Toede smirked to himself, sincerely hoping that his newfound nobility did not preclude him feeling so good about lying to the officious little scrivener.

'Toede?" the scrivener in question asked.

Toede replied testily, "Yes? I mean, what about him?"

"Highmaster Toede," said Bunniswot. "You're a hobgoblin, and Toede was in charge of Flotsam at the time. You had to have met him. Were you one of his bodyguards? Maybe a servant?"

Toede huffed menacingly. "The human assumption is that all nonhumans know each other. Do I assume you knew Astinus of Palanthas, just because you are both scholarly humans?"

Bunniswot looked hurt. "Well, I knew of him."

"Exactly," said Toede. "And I knew of the highmaster. And I also knew what people said about him after he disappeared. In my experience, limited though it might be, I thought of Highmaster Toede as a fair, reasonable, rational being, thoroughly misunderstood by later human bards and scholars who were engaged in a desperate scramble to create 'good guys' and l›ad guys' for their epics."

"Sorry," said Bunniswot. "Didn't mean to upset you."

Toede huffed. "I'm not upset as much as disappointed. You're a bright young human, but you swallow all the lies and half-truths your elders dig up, tainted by blatant pro-human rhetoric."

"Sorry," repeated Bunniswot. "If it is any consolation, in retrospect the highmaster didn't nearly seem the bum-bler he was made out to be."

"How's that?" said Toede.

"Well, his successor was a draconian," said Bunniswot, "who apparently murdered small children in their beds, as it turns out. And his successor is Toede's old mount, this Hopsloth abomination, who's dressed out in finery and has his own corrupt priesthood. So in comparison, Toede seems almost enlightened."

"My point exactly," said Toede. "You never know how good you have it until it's gone."

"Groag knew him, I think," added the young scholar. "He said that Toede had died, but was sent back to fight Gildentongue, then both Toede and the draconian died in battle. Groag was there, and said Toede was a hero. So you're right, he was sadly misunderstood."

Toede turned and smiled. "Groag said that?"

Bunniswot nodded. "For a while, right after he recovered from his burns. Then he stopped talking about Toede. I think…" Bunniswot paused, puffing for breath, "I think that Hopsloth's cultists got to him and convinced him to hush up."

"You're very observant," said Toede, and the pair continued the climb in silence.

The top of the low plateau they had been scaling was not especially high, but just high enough to discourage Saturday-afternoon adventurers. As they reached the summit, Toede turned to look out over the land below. Most of it was covered in a low autumn haze that appeared most dense over the marshlands. The birches were golden, and Toede could see the smoke rising from the scholars' camp-fire. Farther off, hidden by several ridges, was another wisp of smoke. Toede fancied that one to be kender in origin. To his left was a deep valley, and on the opposite side of the vale was a citadel, dark and misty against the white haze. Its general shape was that of a skull, and Toede surmised that was the intended effect of its construction.

"So there is a necromancer," he said to the panting Bunniswot.

Trees had grown up on the plateau, atop the low hillocks that had been in Toede's dream buildings of amber and

glowing jade. What was once the main thoroughfare was now a bracken-filled mass of shrubbery. In the back, vaguely definable through the dead, brown brush, the leafless and lifeless trees, and the withered vines of wild grapes, was a hillock somewhat higher than the rest.

"That's where we're heading," said Toede. "Come along." He plunged into the brush, unaware of, and totally ignoring the scholar's moans and complaints trailing behind him.

The two explorers did not have much to say as they pressed their way across the plateau's cluttered debris and waste. Their conversation was limited to warning each other about branches or loose rocks beneath their feet. Sometimes the original flagstone pavement would appear, taunting them for feet, sometimes yards, before diving beneath another tangle of briars.

In time they reached the hill that, according to Toede's dream, would cradle the buried temple. The hill in question was relatively free of brush, and nothing more healthy than a sickly, yellowing moss grew on its flanks.

Toede scaled the hill about halfway, pointed to an otherwise unremarkable depression in the dirt, and ordered, "Dig here."

Bunniswot muttered a few vague curses, but pitched in with the larger of the two shovels. The dirt was not packed solid, however, and after breaking through the sod, the scholar quickly uncovered a low carved stone, wider from side to side than bottom to top.

"A step!" said Bunniswot, delighted. Toede just shrugged as the scholar dropped to his knees to examine it. "No writing on it, but the carving technique is identical to the forest of stones. But this city is so far removed from the plinths. The question is why?"

Toede frowned. "Far for your legs or mine. Perhaps your proto-ogres had longer limbs, or more endurance. Also, the neighborhood has changed a great deal since these areas were last used. What say we keep looking, eh?"

Bunniswot's enthusiasm lasted for a second step and most of the third. He started to tire significantly by the fourth, and if there had been a fifth step, he would have insisted that Toede take a turn at the shovel.

Instead, metal hit metal. Bunniswot beamed at the hobgoblin. "Pay dirt," he said, and began clearing the area around the door, until a two-foot-square area of rusted iron was revealed.

Toede smiled, noting, "You're going to have to clear a lot more. The door swings outward."

Bunniswot reversed his shovel and pressed the handle firmly against the iron barrier. It fell away at his touch, and the sound of it striking the flagstones rang through the darkness beyond. A strong breeze smelling of wet rot and decay billowed out, and both human and hobgoblin stood there for a moment, gagging on the fumes.

"First time you're wrong," smiled Bunniswot. Toede just furrowed his brow and peered deeper into the hole. It yawned like the Abyss. No far wall was visible from their entrance.

"Awful dark in there," said Bunniswot, then added, "We didn't bring torches."

"I don't need them," said the hobgoblin. "My people were hunting by night while yours were still trying to invent

socks. But here…"

Toede fished through his pocket, pulled out Renders's gem, placed it in another pocket, and produced the small box containing the magically lit stone.

"My stone," said Bunniswot. "You never returned it," he added sharply.