Kronin motioned to Toede that now he was expected to utter a few words. The hobgoblin cleared his voice. "My only regret is that I was not here long enough in days of yore to get to know every one of you wonderful kender." Greater applause to this compliment, and Toede sat back down, thinking, And I further regret not having a team of talented torturers with me at the time.

During Toede's small speech, Kronin rescued from the table a wooden goblet that he now held aloft. "I give you the first toast of the evening." There was wild applause, and Kronin looked pensive, as if summoning some ghost of a memory. Then he proclaimed, "Drink deep the cup of life, for time will sup it if you do not." It was an appropriate toast, and there were cheers and the clinking of mugs.

Kronin turned to the hobgoblin, clacking goblets with him. Toede nodded politely. "A good toast," he said. Kronin smiled. "It should be, you wrote it." Toede's smile froze for an instant. Then he said smoothly, 'True, but you seem to have caught the nuance of the passage perfectly. I have never heard it recited better." He added the mental note that, until he himself had read the dratted thing, he had best assume that every smutty or hedonistic statement uttered around him was a quote from his supposed book.

Kronin did not seem to notice Toede's tightened facial muscles. "When I first read the book, I couldn't believe you were responsible for it. It's so… deep. Thoughtful. Intelligent."

Toede tried to unclench his teeth. "Surprised?" he asked.

"Very," responded Kronin, ignoring the color crawling into Toede's face. "I mean, in our limited dealings, you struck me as a bully, a lout, and a simpleton. No offense meant."

"None taken," said Toede, aware of the drag of the dagger in his boot.

"And yet, such clear, precise thinking, masking itself in sensual analogy…" Kronin shook his head. "It only makes me wonder why you didn't put such thoughts into action earlier, before you got yourself killed."

"Retirement gives an opportunity for reflection," smiled Toede.

"Exactly my conclusion!" said Kronin. "I would no more think of you saying such things, or even sitting down here with us, than I could imagine a badger singing sopera. This only confirms a personal theory I have about your tyrannical rule."

"Oh?" said Toede.

"Your heart wasn't in it," concluded the kender elder, slapping the table. "You could not reconcile your own conscionable beliefs with the dragon highlords who created your position and supported your regime. So as a result, you sought to appear as the bumbling, hedonistic, groveling petty tyrant that everyone thought you were. Whereas, in reality, you were the very opposite."

There was another call for a toast. Kronin rose to address the crowd.

That does it, Toede thought. I'm going to kill him. This time for sure. The only question is when. A true smile blossomed on his sallow face.

Kronin made another suggestive toast involving blossom petals and honey, and sat back down. Toede took a pull from his cup and enjoyed the pleasant cranberry wine, very potent.

"You're going to quote me all night?" chided Toede.

"Your words are honest and brave," said Kronin, "unlike the public facade you presented to the world. My daughter has always been sympathetic to you, but I fear I could not see behind the mean-spirited boot-spittle lackey image you showed to the outside world. I mean, is it true you once went drinking with Raistlin, and that he was almost left behind by the Companions as a result?"

As the evening continued in a similar vein, Kronin's tongue became looser, his prose more direct and explicit, particularly as to how the new Toede was far superior to that gutless, inbred, despotic little excuse for a sliver-of-worm-larva that he had been when he was in charge of Flotsam. All of these insults were delivered with a glib smile, and an assurance that the kender leader knew that Toede was much better now.

Kronin's opinion of Groag was even worse, but only in the matter of degree. At one point the kender was saying how Groag was more Toedelike than Toede had ever been, when the elderly kender's conversation took a turn, and he mentioned the loss of his daughter's lovely locks. It was an off-hand reference to Groag's senseless cruelty, but it halted Kronin in his conversational tracks. The old kender grew quiet, and Toede could almost hear his old kender heart breaking.

Then the moment passed, and Kronin resumed his detailed comparison of Toede and Groag. Toede felt his blood pressure climbing. The worst thing that could happen, thought the hobgoblin as the kender nattered on, would be for him to die again. At the hands of kender it would take a while, because they wouldn't know how to proceed properly and would probably talk him to death.

Five more toasts and an hour of comparative comments later, Toede's head was aching, both from the conversation and the wine. Kronin interrupted his fourth analysis of Toede's first death to stagger to his feet and gesture to the increasingly rambunctious crowd. "You have heard many toasts this evening," he slurred, "all from the mind of this incredible individual known as Toede." There was drunken and thunderous applause at this point, with the by-now-woozy Toede convinced they had forgotten who they were cheering for. The inner rage at pompous Kronin, foolish Taywin, the kender rabble, their stupid songs and their excessive eating habits, had pushed him to the boiling point. It wouldn't take much more to push him over the edge.

"But I do not want to be the only one speaking," Kronin continued, "so I grant the floor to my daughter, Taywin."

Oh, no, thought Toede.

Kronin went on, oblivious. "Taywin will be reading a litany of her best poems…"

"That does it," muttered Toede, as he leaned down to grab the knife out his boot, and then jam it between Kro-* run's ribs. Then a quick escape into the darkness and freedom.

There was a prickly feeling that passed over Toede's neck when he bent forward, and then, when he looked up, dagger in hand, he saw to his astonishment that there was already a dagger sticking in Kronin's side. The kender elder looked in confusion at the blood fountaining out of his right side, mouthed something incomprehensible, and collapsed onto his daughter.

Toede looked at the unused dagger in his own hand, at the implement jutting out of the kender, and back to the dagger again, as if unable to believe that there were multiple poetry-haters at the moot.

Then Miles gave a shout. "The hobgoblin's stabbed Kronin! Get him!"

Toede felt the entire weight of two-hundred-plus eyes fix on him simultaneously, backed up by two-hundred-plus hands, all armed with knives, forks, and other instruments of potential personal damage.

Toede rose halfway, looked out at the angry faces, and seemed about to speak. Then he wheeled, cut a long,

savage rip in the screen behind the main table, and bolted, leaving the charging kender behind, and Taywin screaming for order.

Kronin's assassin moved as silently as possible toward the river bank. He had to make a large loop to avoid the mass of confusion, for an impromptu posse of impassioned and drunken kender had charged in various directions after the incident-to the village and Toede's hut, to the river, to the old campsite. Bands of kender in fours and fives went tumbling in all directions in the dark, intent on fetching the hounds and catching the traitorous criminal.

Twice now, packs of dazed kender had boiled past him, completely unaware that the true murderer was in their sights and providing erroneous information to them.

The assassin smiled as he slipped quietly between the large boles, down to the embankment and toward the lone maple bridge across the stream. The water glowed white in the moonlight.

He was at the near end of the bridge when a small shadow detached itself from a tree about fifteen feet away. The hobgoblin-shaped shadow strode forward into the moonlight, as the assassin stopped dead in his tracks.