by Mark Anthony
The blooms of the morning glories that were entwined about the door were twisted tightly shut against the descending twilight, but one of the new rosebushes Flint had planted next to the stoop was just beginning to bloom. Flint plucked one of the pale yellow blossoms and inhaled its perfume. He sighed. It didn't do to forget life's small pleasures. Notwithstanding the dispute with Lord Tyresian, the day had been a good one.
Perhaps a mug of ale-Flint's favorite of those small pleasures-would be in order this evening, he mused as he opened the door of his shop and started to step through, twirling the rose in his fingers.
"Ow!" Flint said suddenly, dropping the rose. He had pricked himself on a thorn, and he stuck his finger in his mouth, sucking on it to ease the sting. "So much for simple pleasures," he grumbled around his wounded finger, and then bent down to retrieve the rose, mindful of its thorns this time.
Just as he was about to stand back up and step into the shop, something caught Flint's eye. It was a thin black thread, lying before the doorway, about a pace into the room. Usually a keeper of a clean-if cluttered-shop, Flint reached for the thread, intending to pick it up and throw it away.
The thread seemed strangely stuck to something.
"Confound it!" he groused, and he tugged harder.
Suddenly there was a faint snick, and, acting on some survival instinct, Flint threw himself face down on the floor. Just as he collided with the stones, he caught a glint of light flashing from across the room. Something whooshed over his head and landed with a thunk in the wood of the door above and behind him.
Swallowing hard, he forced himself to roll over and, still on the floor, examine the door rising above him. Sunk deep into the hard oak, directly at chest level to a standing dwarf, was a leather-hilted dagger.
"Reorx!" Flint whispered. He moved cautiously to his feet, alert for any sudden noise that might signal another attack. He felt his knees trembling despite his firm orders for them not do to so. Slowly, he gripped the dagger and pulled it out of the door. Its tip glinted wickedly in the waning light of day. Had he stepped into the shop and snagged the thread with his boot, that dagger wouldn't have sunk into the door, but into Flint's heart.
Why would someone want to kill him?
Flint began to turn around, to step over the thread and into the shop, but just then there was a faint clunk, reminding the dwarf of the sound a stuck mechanism might make when it suddenly falls into place.
Before he could so much as cry out, there was another flash as a second dagger glittered through the air directly at the dwarf.
"Flint, you old knob-head," he said hoarsely, and stumbled backward against the door, clutching at the knife that had pierced the shoulder of his pale blue shirt. Blood seeped between his fingers and stained the fabric. "You should have guessed…"
He sagged against the door and then slid down to the ground with a groan. "You old knob-head…" he whispered once more, and then his eyes fluttered shut. Flint lay still as night cast its cloak over the city.
Chapter 22
Help Arrives
"Flint. Can you hear me?"
Tanis shook the dwarf gently, and then more insistently, but Flint remained motionless, his hand still gripping the dagger. His fingers were dark with dried blood.
"Flint!"
Tanis gave the dwarf one more shake, and suddenly Flint let out a low groan. Tanis breathed a sigh of relief.
"In the name of Reorx," Flint groaned hoarsely, "can't you leave a poor dead dwarf alone?"
Tanis put his arm around Flint's neck to help the dwarf sit up straight to ease his breathing. "Flint," the half-elf said softly, "you're not dead."
"Who asked you?" Flint said testily, if weakly. "Now just leave me here to be dead in peace, will you? All this shaking is making my head ache." The dwarf groaned again, slumping back against Tanis's arm. A relieved grin flickered across the half-elf's face.
"You must not be seriously hurt," the half-elf whispered. "You're still complaining."
Moving gingerly to avoid starting the wound bleeding again, Tanis lifted Flint and placed the dwarf as gently as he could on Flint's cot. He checked the wound, decided against removing the dagger until he had assistance, and ran for help.
Outside the shop, he debated whom to fetch-Miral or Eld Ailea. Miral was overwhelmed with the Kentommen preparations, but the Tower was closer than the midwife's west-side home. That decided the half-elf.
Ten minutes later, Tanis returned, still at a dead run, with the mage panting behind him. Soon Tanis and Miral had propped the dwarf against some pillows and removed the knife. The dwarf's breathing eased.
"No physicians," he murmured. "Too late." His voice took on a dreamy tone. "I can already see Reorx 's forge…"
"That's your forge, Flint," Tanis said.
"You are a pest," the dwarf griped.
"Here," Miral said from behind Tanis, and handed the half-elf a mug with steam rising from it. Chopped leaves floated on the water. "Make him drink this."
Tanis held the mug beneath Flint's bulbous nose, and the dwarf sniffed the drink. It smelled of bitter almonds. "That's not ale," he said accusingly.
"True," Miral said. "But it's better for you."
"Impossible," the dwarf groused. He took a deep breath and drained the mug nonetheless.
Eld Ailea — summoned by one of the Kentommen acrobats, whom Tanis had bribed with one steel coin — arrived just as Miral was binding and cleaning the wound. The slash from the dagger proved relatively easy to cleanse and bandage, though Flint made it more difficult by fussing and grouching through the entire process. Surprisingly, the treatment seemed to pain him less than it annoyed him. Miral rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, scrubbed his forearms with soap, and closed the wound with seven stitches-accompanied by seven dwarven oaths, and seven dwarven apologies to Eld Ailea. Then Miral daubed on a bubble of salve the size of a walnut and bound the dwarf's hairy chest with a bandage made of soft linen.
"I'm all right!" Flint finally shouted. "Leave me be!"
At that, Miral pronounced the dwarf fairly fit and prepared to head back to the Tower. The mage rolled his sleeves down again; his right hand was nearly healed, but the fingers that had lost their nails still looked ugly.
"I have to oversee a troupe of actors who want to entertain the crowd by declaiming the dying speech of Kith-Kanan," he said, and grimaced.
"Why is that bad?" Tanis asked.
"I'm not sure he made one," the mage said, and grimaced. Miral handed Tanis a folded paper filled with herbs, and told him to make a cup of tea from them every hour and administer it to the dwarf, "even if you have to tie him down to do it."
"If he's too difficult, mix it with ale," Miral told Tanis quietly at the door.
"I promise I'll be difficult!" Flint shouted from his cot, where Eld Ailea was unsuccessfully trying to lull him into sleeping. At that, the mage took his leave.
Eld Ailea attempted to soothe Flint with a lullaby that, she said, usually worked wonders with toddlers. He didn't seem sure how to take that, but he listened to her warm alto as she intoned the ancient melody. "Lullay, lullay, little elf," she sang, "sleep in the stars 'til the morrow, little elf. Search all the forests, ride 'mong the trees, then home with a smile on the morn, little one.
"That's an old, old song. My mother sang that to me," she said, then looked over at Tanis, who was examining the trap that had thrown the daggers. "And I sang that to you and Elansa when you were just minutes old, Tanthalas."
Tanis smiled. "I'll bet I liked it then just as much as I do now," he said.
"Flatterer," Ailea said. "You'll find yourself an elven woman to marry with no problem, with that silver tongue."
A blushing Tanis suddenly redoubled his efforts with the trap. He disarmed it carefully and began to dismantle it for inspection. "Whoever set this trap knew what he was doing, Flint. It's a sophisticated design, and the aim was perfect. What luck that the mechanism jammed on the second dagger; that's why it tossed only one o
f them at you at first. Then the tension released the second mechanism after a few moments."
Tanis had avoided looking at the old midwife as he spoke. "And what if I find a human woman, Eld Ailea?" he added at last, his voice carefully matter-of-fact.
A shadow passed over Ailea's catlike face as she drew the covers around Flint's bearded chin one more time. "It will bring you little but pain, in the end, Tanthalas," she said. "Humans are frail, and even if you find one to love, it's terrible watching them grow old while you remain young. It takes a strong love to survive that." She sounded weary.
He looked up from the trap. Round hazel eyes met almond-shaped hazel eyes, and a spark passed between the two part-elves.
"Try to remember that, Tanthalas," Ailea said sadly. Tanis swallowed. "I'll try."
"Hey!" Flint crabbed from the cot. "Isn't it time for my ale?"
Eld Ailea threw off her gloom and laughed then, and patted the dwarf on his hale shoulder. "You're good for me, Master Fireforge." With renewed energy, she moved briskly to the table, where Tanis had deposited the paper of herbs. "There's a bucket of ale in the spring," Flint suggested helpfully.
After some thought, Eld Ailea announced that ale might help the dwarf sleep-and, especially, keep him quiet. So she retrieved the near-empty container from the spring and poured the last splash into a mug. When she opened the packet of herbs, a look of consternation crossed her sharp features, then disappeared under her usual pleasant expression. "Flint, did Miral make you a drink of these leaves?" she asked casually. "Yes," Flint said. "With water. It tasted awful. I'm sure the potion will be much better with ale." He grinned engagingly over his white bandage. "Lots of ale."
Eld Ailea stood for a moment, perusing the packet, then refolded it and slipped it into a pocket of the gray cloak she'd thrown over the bench when she arrived. From another pocket, unnoticed by Flint and Tanis, she drew out a small cloth bag, gathered with a leather thong, and measured a teaspoonful of the powder within. Then, while Tanis searched the rest of the shop for more traps, Ailea added the powder to the ale and gave the beverage to the dwarf. He drained it in a gulp.
Whatever it was, it didn't agree with him. Flint fell into a deep sleep, but awoke a short time later to vomit into the empty ale bucket, which Ailea had left by the bed. Then the dwarf's head fell back, and he slept again, his black and gray beard rising and falling with his deep breaths.
Tanis joined Ailea at Flint's bedside. The tiny elf was looking down at the dwarf with a half-smile that did little to mask her exhaustion.
"Is he going to be all right?" Tanis whispered.
"He'll be fine," she said. "My herbs will put him right again. At least, they work for nursing mothers…" She caught Tanis's startled look and patted his arm. "I'm just jesting, Tanthalas. Flint will be fine."
"Do you want me to walk you home?" Tanis asked. "I'll spend the night with him. I can give him Miral's tea, if you leave it here."
Eld Ailea's head came up then, and her eyes probed Tanis's. "It's best not to leave him alone at all right now," she said. "I'll stay here. We can take turns watching him."
Chapter 23
The Rescue
He was back in the dream. The rough hands clenched Miral and, just as the tylor's armored jaws jabbed into the crevice, powerful arms hauled him through the back of the crack in the stone.
"Truly thou hast gotten thyself in a royal fix, little elf," a deep voice said above the toddler's head.
Miral, eyes wet with tears, lifted his head and peered up through the gloom of the cave; this portion seemed to be lit less well than the tunnels he'd come through. He gulped back a sob and tried to focus on his rescuer.
It was a man, the youngster saw, but what a man! Bands of muscle rippled across a corded, barrel-shaped chest. The man's shoulders were huge, brushed with white hair that curled from his head and chin. When the man looked down at him, Miral looked deep into violet eyes that shone with kindness.
"Methinks thou art too young to be wandering about without thy dam, youngling," the man said.
At that moment, Miral became aware of hoofbeats clop-ping against the damp stone of the tunnels. The man came to a fork in the tunnel and turned to the right without stopping. But how had he signaled his intention to his horse? the little boy wondered. Miral looked down.
The man was a horse! Or the horse was a man; Miral couldn't decide. He looked up again, a delighted smile lighting his face.
"You're a centaur!" Miral cried.
"Of course," the creature replied, cradling the youngster in strong arms.
The centaur must have been seven feet tall from hooves to the top of his aristocratic head. He moved gracefully on the wet rocks, long tail flowing behind. Around the shoulders of the horse portion of the centaur, the creature wore a leather purse. Miral slipped little hands down to investigate the purse, but the creature held him higher, out of reach.
"Thou art a curious one," the centaur murmured in a bass voice. "No doubt 'tis why thou art so deep in the caverns."
"Someone called me," Miral explained, wanting this creature, above all, to like him. "From the tunnel."
The centaur's pale purple eyes widened and his gait slowed somewhat, then speeded again. "Thou heard the Voice? Truly thou hast magic in thy soul, young elf. Tis not all who hear the Graygem call." He took another turn, and another. Soon the toddler had no idea where he'd been or where he was now.
The creature continued to speak soothingly to the child. "Thou art warm, child. Thy dam should give thee a posset for thy fever. I will take thee home directly."
Miral, rocked by the steady pace of the gentle centaur, was growing sleepy. "Why are you here?" he asked drowsily.
"Ah, the Graygem hath great treasure indeed," the centaur said. "And, in truth, the beastly rock hath done me grave ill in the past and I'm sworn to vengeance. And that, little elf, be all thou need know."
The centaur picked up his gait, and soon the toddler dozed in the creature's arms. He awakened periodically, once when fresh air fanned through his hair and he realized he was moving through the moonless night, somewhere outside the caverns, and once while the centaur moved nearly silently through the tiled Qualinost streets.
Finally, they arrived at the palace. Miral roused enough to note their passage around the back of the structure, through the gates into the garden-Why didn't the guards look up? he wondered-and from there into the courtyard. Large hands laid him down on soft moss and covered him with a cloth.
"Go to sleep, little elf," the centaur murmured. 'Thou wilt not remember this experience in the morn."
With a last pat on the toddler's shoulder, the centaur wheeled in the courtyard and, silently, was gone.
Chapter 24
Another Death
Next few Days, Tanis and Eld Ailea took turns staying with the dwarf in the shop. Flint told them a score of times not to bother with him.
"You've got too much to be worrying about to be concerning yourself with a lame dwarf!" Flint would grumble, but the effect of the words seemed lost upon his caretakers. Solostaran visited once and seemed reassured by Flint's cantankerousness. Miral stopped by twice to check on the dwarf.
By noon of the second day, it was apparent that Flint was regaining his strength, and, judging from the reduction in the number of oaths when he moved about, the pain was lessening. Still, Eld Ailea was adamant that the dwarf not be left alone, and she remained with Flint while Tanis went back to the palace to pick up some clean clothes.
She did, however, allow Flint to work on Porthios's Kentommen medallion from his nest on the cot.
"After all, the ceremony starts tomorrow," she said nonchalantly, spreading a bandage on the table and folding it so it would best fit the stocky dwarf.
"Tomorrow?" boomed Flint, rocketing out of bed, then grasping his shoulder with a groan. "I thought I had three more days!"
Ailea intercepted the dwarf on his way to the door- though what he hoped to accomplish running shirtless through the streets of
Qualinost was unclear-and shooed him back to bed, her greenish brown eyes merry. "Relax," she said. "You do have three days."
She explained the intricacies of the ceremony while she removed the old bandage from the dwarf's chest.
"The word 'Kentommen! or 'coming of age,' actually refers to the final portion of the four-part ceremony," she said as she eased the linen away from the wound. "That's the showiest part of the ceremony, the part most folks would like to witness. Most elves use 'Kentommen' to refer to the whole three-day extravaganza, however.
"The first part is the Kaltatha, or The Graying,' " the midwife explained, fingers gentle as she cleansed the healing wound. "That part starts tomorrow morning. In the Kaltatha, the youth-who can be male or female, as long as he or she is a member of the nobility-is led by his or her parents to the Grove," referring to the ancient forested area in the center of the elven capital.
Ailea rinsed the cleansing cotton in a basin of clear water. "When the youth undergoing the Kaltatha is of as high a rank as Porthios, most of the common elves use the occasion as an excuse to parade through the streets, wearing their most colorful finery or even costumes. They dance and sing songs as ancient as the ceremony itself," she said. "That's why the palace is overseeing the making of brightly colored banners-to mark the route from the palace to the Grove."
"I'd like to see that," Flint said.
Eld Ailea scrutinized the spot where the dagger entered Flint's shoulder. "You should be well enough to walk to the procession route tomorrow morning, I'd think."
She rinsed the wound one more time, then emptied the basin out the shop's back door.
"What will happen to Porthios in the Grove?" the dwarf asked.
'The Speaker will take Porthios to the center of the Grove, then ceremonially turn his back on him," the midwife said. "Porthios will remain in the Grove for three days, alone, eating nothing and drinking only from the spring in the Grove's center. No one can enter the Grove to disturb him, nor is he to attempt to leave."
