know him, so I guess that doesn’t mean much. And the
white dragons can kill you by just breathing on you. I
know because I met one in Ice Wall. They can turn you
into ice harder than this mountain and kill you dead.”
I said all this, but it didn’t seem to make any
impression on Owen Glendower. He just kept buckling
and tightening and his face got more and more cold and
determined until I begin to think that it might not make
much difference if the white dragon breathed a cone of
frost on the knight because he looked already frozen to
me.
“Oh, Fizban 1” I’m afraid I may have whimpered a bit
here, but I truly didn’t want to see Owen turned into part of
this mountain. “Make him stop!”
But Fizban was no help. The wizard got that crafty,
cunning look on his face that makes me feel squirmy, and
he said, real soft, “He can do it. He has the dragonlances!”
Owen lit up. He stood tall and straight and his eyes
shone bright green, fueled from inside by a beautiful,
awful, radiant light.
“Yes,” he said in a reverent voice, like he was praying.
“Paladine sent the lances to my hand and then sent me
here, to save my family. This is Paladine’s work.”
Well, I felt like telling him, No, it wasn’t Paladine. It
was just an old, skinny, and occasionally fuddled wizard
who got us into this by falling into a hole. But I didn’t. I
had more important things on my mind.
Like the dragonlances.
I looked at them lying in the snow, and I could hear
Theros’s voice in my head. And I looked at Owen,
standing so tall and handsome, and I thought about the
painting of his wife and child and how sad they’d be if he
was dead. Then I thought that if he was dead they’d be
dead, too. And I heard Theros’s voice again in my head.
Owen reached down and picked up one of the
dragonlances and before I could stop it, a yell burst out of
me.
“No! Owen! You can’t use the dragonlances I” I cried,
grabbing hold of his arm and hanging on. “They don’t
work!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Well, at that moment, a whole lot of things happened
at once. I’ll try to keep them straight for you, but it was all
pretty confusing and I may put some things not in quite
the right order.
Owen Glendower stared at me and said, “What?”
Fizban glared at me and snapped, “You fool kender!
Keep your mouth shut!”
The draconian probably would have stared at me if it
could have seen me through the wall of snow and it said,
“I heard that!”
The dragon shifted its big body around (we could
hear it scraping against the walls) and said, “So did I! And
I smell warm blood! Spies! You, draco! Go warn the
others! I’ll deal with these!”
WHAM!
That was the dragon’s head, butting the ice wall that
separated us. (Apparently, the wall was much thicker and
stronger than I’d first supposed. For which we were all
grateful.) The mountain shook and more snow fell down
on top of us. The hole at the top grew larger – not that this
was much help at the moment, since we couldn’t get up
there.
Owen Glendower was holding the dragonlance and
staring at me. “What do you mean – the lances don’t
work!”
I looked helplessly at Fizban, who scowled at me so
fiercely that I was afraid his eyebrows would slide right
off his face and down his nose.
WHAM!
That was the dragon’s head again.
“I have to tell him, Fizban!” I wailed. And I spoke as
quickly as I could because I could see that I wasn’t going
to have time to go into a lot of detail. “We overheard
Theros Ironfeld say to Flint that the lances aren’t special or
magical or anything – they’re plain ordinary steel and when
Theros threw one against the wall it broke – I saw it!”
I stopped to suck in a big breath, having used up the
one I’d taken to get all that out.