between darkness and consciousness, he knew with the
flashing certainty of lightning’s strike that it was not thunder
he was hearing.
It was the voice of nightmare: the voice of a goblin.
“Tigo, let’s dump the little rat in the river. We have
what we want.”
Keli expected to feel the goblin’s huge gray hands drag
him up and cast him into the river.
Far back in his mind he knew about the leather thongs
pinioning his arms, binding him at knee and ankle. Too, he
felt the hard earth, the fist-sized rock digging into his ribs.
Pain, however, was not as immediate as death-fear.
A second voice, sounding like the rattling of old bones,
growled, “Bring him over here, Staag; see what he’s
carrying first.”
Someone shouted, then yelped. Keli’s eyes flew open, his
heart leaped hard against his ribs. He was not alone in his
captivity!
Bruised, pinioned, and bound as Keli was, his fellow
prisoner was in a worse plight, caught hard by the neck in
the goblin’s iron-fingered grip. He was small, but no child;
the cant of his ears as well as his slim build and small
stature marked him as a kender. Several pouches of varying
sizes and materials bounced at the kender’s belt each time
Staag shook him. And Staag, that slope-shouldered, gray-
skinned nightmare, shook him often and hard simply
because it amused him to do so.
The kender, a game little fellow, hitched up his knees
and drove them into the goblin’s belly. Had a mouse
attacked a mountain the result would have been the same.
Laughing, Staag loosed his grip on the kender’s neck and
dropped him.
The kender writhed against his bonds. “Swamp-
breathed, slime-brained bull,” he croaked.
Keli’s heart sank. So much for the kender, he thought.
Staag’s going to kill him now!
But the goblin didn’t. Tigo stopped him with a
command.
If Staag, his arms too long, his legs too short, his skin
the color of something a week dead, was the nightmare, his
human companion Tigo was reality gone twisted. Tall and
lean, bony-shouldered, with limbs that might have been
stolen from a scarecrow, Tigo bore a four-pronged grapnel
where his right hand should have been. His eyes, muddy
and brown, held little sanity in them.
“I said bring him over here, Staag.” Tigo glanced at
Keli, who shivered despite the close heat of the summer
morning. “And the boy, too.”
A bull, the kender had called the goblin, and bull-strong
he was. He tossed the kender over one shoulder, Keli over
the other and, with no thought, he dropped them next to
Tigo.
Breathless, Keli lay still where he fell. The kender, his
face in the dirt, snarled another insult.
“Let’s just kill the kender and get it over with,” Staag
grunted. “We should have slit his throat at the tavern and
got done with it.”
“Aye,” Tigo drawled. “And left him bleeding all over
the place for anyone to find. I don’t think this one traveled
alone.”
Staag snorted. “Since when do these little vermin travel
in company? Tigo, we waste time.” He peered up through
the forest’s brooding green canopy. “It’s almost noon and
we’re still too close to that village. Let’s just kill him and the
boy and get OUT of here!”
Keli clamped his teeth down on a whimper and prayed
to every god his mother had told him was real.
“Be patient, you’ll have your fun. But we’re not going
to kill the boy yet.” Tigo, his hands thief-light, slipped a
finely tooled leather map case from the kender’s shoulder.
He laughed, a sound that reminded Keli of rusty hinges
creaking. “Nice collection of maps, kender.”
The kender hitched himself onto his back, spat dirt, and
looked at Tigo with the expression of a guileless child.
“Used to clean middens for a living, did you? I can tell by
the smell.”
Keli groaned again, hoping the kender’s blood wouldn’t
splatter all over him. Yet, though he paled, Tigo didn’t
reply. Staag kicked the kender.
“Please, kender,” Keli breathed. “Be quiet!”
Sometimes a bad dream, steeped in terror and warped
perspective, turns funny. Keli felt he was in one of those