Tolem nodded sympathetically.

"It is a serious matter for one so young to be traveling alone, my lady," he remarked. "We journey south for a time-on an errand of great importance, but…"

"Oh, I'm not alone," Halmarain hastily reminded him in an effort to forestall any offer of help. "The kender and the gully dwarves are loyal friends. They will see me to the end of my journey."

While Halmarain had been dressing the merchesti, the dwarves had watered their animals. They had removed the packs and saddles and tethered their mounts to graze along with the other ponies. Their chores finished, they gathered beneath the deep shade of a large tree and sat on the ground in a semicircle.

Halmarain took the two kender aside, well away from the dwarves. "You touch one thing belonging to those dwarves and you'll end you lives as a pair of rabbits."

Trap scowled. He had expected the dwarves to doze in the heat and had already planned a pleasant afternoon learning about the traveling gear of the strangers. The little wizard read his expression correctly. She took a deep breath and muttered a spell.

The kender found his arms close to his body, and he was unable to move more than the tips of his fingers.

"What did you do?" Ripple was looking down at her own hands, her arms similarly trapped.

"I used a binding spell," the little wizard said. "Do you want to stay that way for the rest of the day, or do you promise not to touch anything that belongs to the dwarves?"

The two kender promised, reluctantly, because when they gave their word they would be bound by it as long as they remembered it, and both knew the little wizard would keep their memories fresh. Halmarain released them but took care to see that Trap and Ripple stayed well away from the dwarves. They sat on the opposite side of the circle, too far for their exploring fingers to reach into packs or pockets.

The dwarves' original dislike of the kender evaporated when Halmarain and Ripple brought out a ham and some day old bread and offered it around. They had brought the food from Deepdel. The dwarves supplied the drink: dwarf mead, strong and heady. When they had filled their stomachs one of them leaned forward, gazing at Grod.

"Did you say you had a tale about a dead outlaw?"

"Trap have tale," Grod answered.

Bored, and with nothing to explore, Trap let his mind wander into another tale of the kender outlaw. Still slightly tiffed at Halmarain's earlier accusations, he wove a red-robed wizard turned renegade into his story. His tale stretched out through the hot afternoon as he made sly digs at Halmarain and received angry glares in return.

Since she was sitting with her back to the tree where Beglug slept, she was not aware that he had awakened. He sat watching the dwarves as they passed earthen jugs around the circle. After several minutes he crept forward. He picked up one of the crocks that a dwarf and placed in the stream to cool and took it back to his tree.

Trap nearly lost the thread of his story as he watched the merchesti down the contents of the jug in one long gurgle. Then Beglug ate the jug.

The kender's story suddenly included a group of stone golems that made loud and crashing noises as he tried to cover the sound of Beglug's crunching. The little fiend was looking around for something else to snack on when Halmarain noticed him. She turned so the dwarves would not see her weaving a spell and in seconds Beglug curled up and went back to sleep.

The gully dwarves wandered around the area, so only Ripple, Halmarain, and the travelers heard how the imaginary Trapspringer met his fate in a ball of fire.

"A good tale, that," Tolem congratulated the kender. "The worst heat of the day has passed, so we'll be on our way."

As the dwarves rose and began to load their ponies, Halmarain and the kender discovered that Beglug was missing. The calming spell had worn away. They found him upstream, poking a stick into the hole of an unoffending mole.

"My calming spells don't seem to be strong enough," Halmarain said as they returned to the stream to saddle their own mounts. "I'll need to work on a stronger one."

By the time they returned, the dwarves had continued their journey. They had taken Halmarain's pony and had left a raw-boned, sickly looking animal in its place.

The little wizard glared at the dispirited animal and out toward the road. "I should have let you and Ripple steal them blind," she said.

"Stop saying that! We don't steal," Trap objected. "How many times do I have to say it? Just because people are careless with their belongings, or they reach for their own pouches and we happened to be next to them and they put their-"

"I don't want to hear it," Halmarain snapped.

The afternoon cooled and Halmarain was impatient to continue their journey. Since the kender had totally explored the small copse they had no objections and quickly saddled their ponies. The old pony, left them by the dwarves, seemed relieved to be carrying a lighter load.

The gully dwarves still had not learned to control their own mounts, but they had a talent for making useful items out of any material at hand. Umpth had found a length of rope he insisted had been left behind by the dwarves. He fashioned it into a series of three loops and attached it to the left stirrup of Halmarain's saddle. With a practicality belied by their otherwise childish behavior, he had even tied a short length of rope to the bottom loop. The little wizard used the loops to climb into the saddle. When she mounted she could pull her makeshift ladder up behind her and keep it from snagging on weeds and bushes on the trail.

"I guess Aghar have their uses after all," she admitted after she tested her new method of mounting her pony.

Trap was ready to lead the way and Halmarain kept the leads of Beglug's mount and the pack animal tied to the back of her saddle. Ripple brought up the rear leading Grod's and Umpth's mounts. The Aghar's wagon wheel, again set in it's travois-like frame, rolled along behind Umpth.

The road that ran north between the village of Deepdel and the fortress of Ironrock curved to skirt the foothills. The stand of woods where they had taken shelter from the midday sun gave way to gentle brush-covered slopes that rose to meet the mountain range beyond.

Before they began their journey Trap, Ripple, and Halmarain sat their mounts in a row, taking another look at one of Trap's maps.

"You'd think with all the pains the cartographer took with that picture, he would have added some practical detail," the wizard said with a snort. "He didn't even show Deepdel or the road to Ironrock."

"Still, it's a beautiful map," Trap said, defending his ill-gotten possession. He carefully rolled it, tucked it back into a pouch, and was just urging his pony forward when Umpth gave a hoot.

"Dwarves come back," the gully dwarf announced.

Trap looked back over his shoulder to see the dwarves galloping up the road. The kender stood up in his saddle. He was about to wave when Halmarain reached over and slapped his hand down.

"What did you take from them?" she asked, her eyes blazing in anger.

"Nothing!" Trap retorted. "You know that! You put a spell on us until we promised we wouldn't."

"Not soon enough, apparently," she spat out the words as she looked back at the road. "They're riding like they're chasing someone or being chased, and there's no one behind them. Get us out of here before they find us." "Wizard fuss again," Umpth muttered.

"Not really fussing, she's just tired," Trap said, giving Halmarain the benefit of the doubt. "She'll apologize when she's in a better mood, but I know what you mean, she does get-"