Confident he could elude his pursuers, he took two long steps and moved six feet.

"Oops," he muttered and ducked behind a bush as the dwarves charged, so intent on him they nearly struck each other with their weapons.

"Excuse me!" he said, ducking down into the under-brush. Keeping his head down, he scampered from bush to bush, narrowly escaping the dwarves. He dashed into a thick, high clump of bushes. Momentarily out of sight, he picked up a stone. Using the sling of his hoopak, he sent it skittering along the ground to the north.

The dwarves charged the sound of clattering rock. Trap crept south and then back toward the small copse of woods, the direction the dwarves would not expect him to go.

Still, they might think of it, and it would be best for them to think he was seeking the safety of the trees. He found a spring with a muddy bank and was careful to leave footprints heading west until he was on firm ground again. Then he turned south and hid under a large, thick bush.

Safe for the moment, he gazed down at the ring, took it off and inspected it closely. He shook it and held it up to his ear. Then he decided magic wouldn't slosh like water in a jug. He put the ring back on his finger and took another cautious step. No magic widened his kender pace. Disappointed, he took the ring off and slipped it back into his pouch.

He hated to think he had used up all the magic. Taking giant steps had been fun. Even spinning around in the air had been interesting. And he had accomplished some-thing important. He had kept the dwarves, now milling about trying to find him, from following Ripple and Halmarain.

But the sun was down, it would soon be dark, and how was he to find his sister and the little wizard?

Trap sat on the ground inside a clump of bushes and thought about the dwarves as well as his friends. The dwarves were still beating the bushes when one found the footprints by the spring.

After a short conference they dashed off toward the woods. The little wizard, Ripple, and the animals they led had been out of sight when the dwarves appeared. Trap had hidden his mount, the dwarves seemed to think that their quarry had returned to the copse and the road.

The kender worked his way through the underbrush until he reached his mount and set out in search of the rest of his party.

"The way they brandished those axes, they certainly weren't friendly anymore," Trap told his pony. "And I'm tired of being called a thief. I didn't take anything from them. Not one even came close enough to me to drop anything in my pouches."

To make certain, he opened them one at a time, fingering and identifying various items. Except for a pretty little stone he had found in the creek, he could not find a single item he had not possessed before he met the dwarves.

He pulled it out and held it close to his face since the sun had set and he could barely see it. He considered it as the pony picked its way through the brush. It was only a rock, smoothed by the stream. He had picked it up before the dwarves arrived. In putting it back into his pouch he found another one. He pulled it out too. By that time the twilight had deepened until he could not see the second stone, but by touch he remembered it. It was not stone at all, but the little gray-green disk of glass he had found on the floor of the wizard Orander's workroom after the attack of the merchesti.

"And I had this one long before I met the dwarves," he said as he put it back in his pouch. Since he could not see the trail in front of the pony, he dismounted and led the animal as he went in search of his sister and his friends.

He wandered for hours trying to find the others. Unable to see their trail, he had decided to stop for the night and continue his search at dawn. He was looking for a likely place to stop for the night when he stumbled on their camp. He startled them as he walked out of the darkness.

"Trap!" Ripple cried out and jumped up from the fire.

"Him dead, make a good tale…" Grod said. At the approach of the pony he had jumped up and waved his dead squirrel in an attempt to ward off anything unfriendly. Umpth stood holding the wagon wheel.

"I'm not so dead!" Trap replied with heat as he led his pony into the shallow cave which was hardly more than a depression in the stony hillside.

Ripple filled her cup with hot tea and cut him a generous slice of ham. She tucked it into a bun of day old bread and he was munching away when Halmarain looked up from the study of her spellbooks.

"You were able to keep the dwarves from following us," she said. She made a statement as if she expected no less from the kender.

"Of course I did!" He accepted the credit as if he had planned the outcome of his adventure "They were certainly mad and I don't understand it at all," Trap said. "They kept calling me a thief, but you know we don't have anything of theirs."

"Of course I do," Halmarain mocked Traps tone.

"Then you might reward him by doing some nice magic," Ripple said, a martial light in her eye.

"Then Trap tell story," Grod said with a grin.

So no part of history would be lost, Astinus recorded…

Draaddis Vulter gave out with a string of curses that turned two confused mice into cats. They dashed into a strange orange cloud that suddenly filled the center of his work room.

Once the kender tucked the rune-trimmed viewing disk into his pouch, Draaddis and Takhisis were blind to their whereabouts. Draaddis decided the little thief had even forgotten he carried it. Still, the black-robed wizard thought it fortunate that the kender had it with him. Sooner or later his desire to handle and inspect his possessions would lead him to pull it out of his pouch. If it had been left on the floor of Orander's laboratory, they would have no way of ever telling where the kender might wander.

It was just bad luck that when the little thief finally pulled it out, darkness had prevented the wizard from getting a clear idea of the location of the kender.

He stood wondering what he should do. Did he dare tell his queen he had finally seen the kender again but could tell her nothing about them? He would not. He could not. Despite knowing Takhisis could only torment him through his own mind, he still lived in terror of the illusions she could plant in his head.

"There was more to see than you supposed," Takhisis spoke from the orb.

The wizard whirled around, dizzy as fear drained the blood from his head. He saw the humorous glitter in the eye of the goddess as she watched from the black orb. Obviously she knew he had been considering whether or not to tell her he had seen the kender again. Since she did not mention his omission, he would not be the one to bring it up.

"It is my good fortune that you, my queen, have better eyes than mine," the wizard replied.

"The kender was traveling east, toward the mountains," the Queen of Darkness informed him. "They are not far north of where they crossed at the southern end of the Vingaard Mountains when they were traveling west."

"First they go west, across the highlands, then north for a short distance, now east, back into the mountains again?" Draaddis pulled at his ear while he considered the confusing route of the kender. He shrugged away the inconsistency.

"At least we can put Kaldre on their trail again," he told his mistress.

"Yes, send your messenger," Takhisis smiled in anticipation.

"We must have that stone if we are to bring the merchesti into this world," Draaddis agreed.

"It will come, and more," Takhisis smiled wickedly. "Once we have both stones we will open the portal wider and bring more of its kind. They will rampage across the lands and the world of Ansalon will be in a turmoil as great as the time of the Cataclysm."