Chane's voice had gone soft as he spoke, and was barely audible in the final words. As he opened his eyes a tear welled in one of them and started to trickle down his cheek. He snorted, shook his head, and brushed it away. "Everything ended there, you know. They all died."

The dwarf sighed heavily, glancing around as though he were just awakening. The kender had come to listen and was holding one end of a long pole with leather loops on it. Chane realized this was probably the first time he had ever seen the kender speechless.

"But you said you saw Skullcap," Wingover persisted.

"Grallen couldn't have seen that."

"No. It was as well that he never saw it. It was like the mountain… melted, changed into something hideous.

Grallen didn't see it, Wingover, but I did. In the dream." He tapped his forehead. "The stone in Grallen's helm -Pathfinder – saw it, and I've seen what Pathfinder saw.

"Grallen must have put his helm aside… or lost it in the tower or something. But I know where it is now, and why the green trace out there looks so odd, as though it doubles back on itself." He walked to the ledge and pointed, not toward distant Skullcap, but south of there.

"Zhaman's spire," he said. "It was blown entirely away from the tower, and bits of the upper portions with it. Grallen's helm – and Pathfinder

– are there, where the wreckage fell."

Morning sun was on the peaks of Sky's End when the soarwagon appeared again, spiraling down from high above in a series of precipitous loops and tumbles – for all the world like a stricken bird falling away from a raptor. And as it tumbled closer, Chane and his allies squinted at it. The contrivance seemed to have added something since its last visit. Thrust upward from its top side was a slim thing like a narrow mast.

Over the gorge, just out from the cove, the soarwagon leveled out and its nose-vanes shifted. It hovered on rising mists while Bobbin leaned out to shout, "Get the supplies ready! I've solved the problem!"

"What do you mean, you've solved the problem?"

Chess called back. "I worked all day on solving the problem."

"Hurry!" Bobbin tugged the control lines, ignoring the kender, and eased the soarwagon toward the ledge. As it had done before, the contraption began to tilt, aligning itself to the slope of the mountain steeps above.

Closer it came, and closer, and the slender mastlike thing began to extend from its underside, toward the cove. Chess and the others could see what it was: Bobbin's rope. But somehow it was stiff, snaking toward the ledge at an angle.

"Hurry!" the gnome shouted. "And don't forget the cider!"

Chess danced about the ledge, his eyes bright with excitement. "Look at that! He's made the rope stiff. It's coming right to us."

Bobbin worked his controls and continued feeding out the rope, doing all he could to settle the soarwagon in close to the ledge.

"How did you do that I" Chess shouted. "That's really something! Come on! The raisins and cider are right here, all lashed together. All we have to do is hook them…oops!"

The rope had come within five feet of the ledge, almost within reach.

Then, abruptly, it sagged and went limp. The rope dangled from the flying craft, its hook swinging fifteen feet out from the cliff.

"Oh, breakdown!" the gnome cursed. "It melted!"

"Melted?"

"Right. I used up the last of my water, soaking it, then spent the night at least ten thousand feet up, freezing it. I thought that would work."

"Well, don't worry," the kender called. "Just try to hold still."

Strutting with pride, Chess brought out his supply pole – twenty feet of slim sapling, with loops at its ends. He attached the narrow-end loop to the raisin-and-cider pack and lifted it, then began to feed out pole toward Bobbin's dangling hook.

Leaning over his wicker rail, the gnome watched with worried eyes. "That isn't going to work," he said. "You can't lever that much weight that far out without a counterbalance."

Chess braced himself, struggling to feed out the pole. The weight of the supplies seemed to double with each foot of extension. "I may need some help," he admitted. The others had gathered around him, watching with a mixture of amusement and disbelief.

"You need more than help," Wingover advised. "There isn't enough pole there."

"This just has to work," the kender panted, beginning to stagger at the leveraged weight of the supply pole. "It's the only idea I have."

With the last of his strength, Chess hauled the supplies back to the ledge. He carried the pack twenty feet to the left and ran back. Lifting the butt-end of the pole, the kender put his shoulder to it.

"Don't!" Wingover started.

"Wait!" Chane shouted.

"Youcan'tdothat!" Bobbin called.

But the kender already had. With a tremendous heave, Chess swung the pack off the ledge, trying to hoist it out to the soarwagon's hook. Pack, pole, and kender disappeared over the edge. Jilian screamed.

Instantly Wingover loosed his sword, plunged its blade deep into a crack in the rock, and swung himself outward and down. Chane Feldstone jumped over him, cleared the ledge, and scrambled down the man's length. The dwarf hung from Wingover's ankle and grabbed Chess's free hand just as the kender lost his grip on a snag.

"Got him!" Chane called. "Pull us back up!" Wingover pulled, but nothing happened. His grip on his sword held them suspended – man, dwarf, kender, pole and pack hanging over the misted gorge – but no amount of muscle-wrenching effort would lift them.

"I thought I was the one who was crazy," Bobbin called from the hovering soarwagon.

Just at the cliff's edge, Jilian had her feet braced and both hands on

Wingover's forearm. Her nails bit into hi! skin as she pulled. "Let go!" he shouted at her. 'You're making it worse!"

"Somebody get a rope!" Chane called from below.

"I have a rope," Bobbin mentioned. "A fat lot of good it does me, now that it's melted."

Jilian scrambled back from the ledge, then turned and ran, returning with Wingover's horse and a length of rope from his packs. Working quickly, the girl secured the rope to the saddle, carried its free end to the ledge, and leaned over to tie it around Wingover's arm. With Jilian pulling on its headstall, the horse braced itself and hauled. Wingover appeared at the ledge and was dragged to safety, snatching up his sword as he came. Then came Chane and finally the kender. Chess had one hand firmly grasped in the dwarf's fingers; the other held the pole's loop.

"Remarkable," Bobbin sighed, watching from the limit of ground effect.

When finally the pole and packs were safe, Chane Feldstone released his grips on the man's ankle and the kender's hand. The dwarf stood up, brushed himself off, and took the pole away from Chess. "Get out of the way," he growled.

Angrily, the dwarf reversed the pole and thrust its butt-loop out toward the gnome's dangling hook, hand over hand.

Chess watched for a moment, then shook his head.

'That won't work," he said.

"Why not?" Chane kept feeding out the pole.

"Because then I'll lose my supply pole!"

"What do you want it for?"

"Well, it's for sending raisins and cider out to where Bobbin can get them."

"And when he has the pole, he'll have the supplies, too," the dwarf rumbled. "Mercy!"

"Oh." Chess backed off, considering the logic of it.

"Well, there is that."

Using the supply pack as a counterweight, Chane fed the pole out and neatly dropped its loop over Bobbin's hook. The gnome began to winch in his line, and the pack slid off the ledge and fell. The heavy bundle of supplies swung at pole's end, making the soarwagon dance in its hover. The contraption held for a moment, then sensitive vanes reacted to the shifting currents and it soared away over the gorge, circling and climbing as Bobbin's angry voice trailed away.