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. There were
dozens of others, but these three were fairly fresh.
With curiosity devouring him, Tas bounded up the
stairs so quickly he almost extinguished the candle.
It seemed to Tas that he had climbed far beyond the
tower's apparent height when he finally spotted a door
blocking the stairs. He crept up to it and listened, but
heard nothing. He tried the latch and the door swung
quietly inward, astounding the kender with its smooth
operation after so many years. Without a pause, Tas-
slehoff stepped through the doorway.
The room where he found himself was obviously
someone's study. Light streamed in through leaded
windows in the ceiling. The circular, outside wall was
lined with books, except for a few open spaces where
pictures had fallen to the floor. A heavy desk and
carved chair did not nearly fill the rest of the room.
The footprints Tas had been following now scat-
tered through the room. Picking out the largest set, he
traced them, one step at a time, along a winding course
to one of the bookshelves. Just above eye level was an
empty spot on the shelf. "Someone's been taking down
books," Tas said to himself.
The footprints changed course suddenly. Tas no-
ticed an odd thing. All three sets of footprints con-
verged on a bare section of wall, then vanished. The
kender paused for a moment, lost in thought. With a
sudden thrill he realized that among all the footprints
ascending the stairs, both new and old, he had not seen
a single print going back down. He strode over to the
wall and studied the tracks there until he was satisfied
that they did, in fact, end at the wall
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