Setting down the lamp, he reached out and touched what he sought. . . . It was light and smooth, hard and curved, grooved, and hollow as death.

"When Father’s gone, Clack’ll need another wood cutter–and that’s you, just as when Maister Craw’s gone, I’m to be greengrocer in his place. It’s our duty, you see.”

“Well, look who’s here!” Gaffer Gudgeon said, as Gom followed Stig into the inn parlor. “If it isn’t the wizard himself and in person!” Around him, his cronies laughed.

Far from being hailed as a hero as his father fondly thought, he had an uncomfortable feeling that some angry and disillusioned people might just be waiting to run him out of town after all!

Skeller, his clothes still wet, was standing over him now, his eyes dark sockets in the wavering firelight. “Too bad your plan didn’t work, little man,” he said, and raised the knife to strike.

There came a loud rumble, then a cry, a full, long, roaring cry, that thinned away, down, and down, . . . and down. Then there was silence. “Father?” Gom whispered. There was no sound.

Gom’s panic increased. His father had fallen down the crevasse. How far? “Father! Father!” His voice echoed off the tunnel walls.

He thought of Stig up above in the warm sunlight. How grieved his father would be, when Gom didn’t come home. Oh, Father. His hand closed about the rune.

“Tell me—how much more of this lovely gold is back through there?” Skeller put the edge of the blade to Gom’s throat. “Speak the truth,” he added, “or it will go the worse for you.”

Wings fluttered suddenly overhead . . . The mockingbird was back. “You’ve a tall, tall, tall, tall shadow,” it called. “A tall, tall . . . tall . . . ” It flew off again.