by Mark Anthony
“Flink?” the dwarf repeated, stooping to look the child full in the face. Flint’s brows shot up near his hairline. “I don’t remember you from the Hall of the Sky—Oh, yes I do! Last autumn. You weren’t walking yet. You were with your big brother. I gave you—What was it?”
The youngster shoved a hand into a pocket in his loose, teal-green coverall, and brought out a thumb-size chip of rose quartz, a fuzzy piece of quith-pa, and a carving of a robin. The child put all three treasures in Flint’s hand and smiled again. The dwarf examined all three, nodded gravely, and handed back the rock and the bread; then he stood and looked at the elven woman, the wooden bird upright on his palm.
“You made that?” she asked in an alto that sounded like the tone of an elf several centuries younger. She reached out one slim finger and poked the bird.
The robin was fatter on the bottom than on top, and was rounded along its lower edge so that the toy, when bumped, rolled to the side, then bobbed back up again. Flint had fashioned the simple toy out of two pieces of wood, fastening a heavy chunk of iron near the bottom, between the two pieces, so that the bird could not be knocked over.
Flint nudged it a few more times, entranced as ever with its bobbing, until he realized that the hazel-eyed woman was waiting for an answer and the little boy was lunging for the toy. The dwarf handed the bird back to the youngster and nodded to the woman.
“You are Flint Fireforge,” she stated. It wasn’t a question.
Flint nodded again.
“I would like to buy some toys from you,” she said abruptly.
“Well,” Flint said, drawing it out, “that could be a problem.”
“Why?” she demanded.
The dwarf turned and leaned one haunch against the oaken table. He rested one hand on his knee and looked past her toward the oaken hutch. “First of all, I don’t sell toys. I give them away. Second, I never sell to strangers.”
Her sharp features fell into an offended mein, and she turned so fast that the toddler practically swung off his feet. “Well, I guess that’s that, then, Master Fireforge,” she said, and reached to open the door.
Flint took a deep breath of the shop’s metallic air, then spoke just as the woman’s hand grasped the door handle. “Of course, if you would bother to introduce yourself, you wouldn’t be a stranger,” he said mildly, examining the nails on his left hand and using a sliver of iron to clean out the forge dirt he found encrusted there.
The woman stopped, her back to Flint; she appeared to be thinking. Then she swiveled, eyes snapping. “Ailea,” she said brusquely. “Eld Ailea to those who know me well.”
“Eld” meant “aunt” in the elven tongue.
Flint inclined his head. “And I am Flint Fireforge.”
“I know th—” she started to say, then sighed and waited.
“And,” he continued as though she hadn’t spoken, “while I wouldn’t sell toys to a stranger, I might be inclined to give some to a friend.”
She sighed again, but a faint smile found its way onto her thin lips. She resembled an Abanasinian cat, offered some prize it had long coveted. But her words showed only exasperation. “I’d heard you could be like this, Master Fireforge,” she commented.
Flint swiftly crossed before her and opened the hutch to display the dozens of toys he had brought with him from a winter’s worth of carving in Solace. Some had not survived being jounced on the back of a tylor-panicked mule, but most were in fine condition. He gazed at the contents of the hutch, selected a whistle that was too big for the toddler to swallow, and handed it to the little boy, who blew such a ferocious blast on it that the dwarf immediately wished he’d chosen something else. Flint’s thick hands continued to move over the toys, plucking out one here, one there, until more than a dozen rested in the front pockets of his loose leather tunic.
Minutes later, the toddler was seated happily on the end of Flint’s cot, arranging lines of carved animals on the dwarf’s clothes chest and intermittently tooting the whistle. Flint waited for an iron kettle of water to come to a boil on a hook over the forge’s fire, and Eld Ailea measured into a tea strainer a tantalizing mixture of dried orange peel, cinnamon pieces, and black tea. She paused to sniff the potpourri. “Wonderful,” she said in a low voice, and sighed. “It reminds me of a drink my family used to make when I was a child.”
“Where did you grow up?” Flint asked automatically. The spiced tea he carried with him from Solace every trip was more a human specialty than an elven one.
“In Caergoth,” she said. When Flint raised an eyebrow at her, she continued, “My father was banished by the Qualinesti.”
“For what?” Flint demanded without thinking. The elves almost never banished anybody; the crime must have been deemed one of the most menacing possible under Qualinesti law.
“He led a movement to open Qualinesti to outsiders,” she explained. “He was banished. The family, of course, went with him. Eventually, we settled in Caergoth, where the family had distant relations.” Human ones, Flint guessed; that’s where the link came in. “I trained as a midwife with a group of clerics, and when I grew old enough, I returned here.”
“Why?” The water was boiling, and Flint swung the kettle away from the fire. Catching up a thick woolen sock—practically clean, he figured, having been worn only one day—to use as a potholder, he hauled the water over to the table and poured it over the tea leaves in a heavy ceramic pot.
An expression of sadness slipped across Eld Ailea’s face but was gone so quickly that Flint couldn’t be sure it had ever been there. “I had no friends but humans, and by the time I’d finally grown up, they’d all died of old age. I know something of weak forms of magic—potions to ease the pain of labor, illusions to amuse children, and the like—but I could do nothing to halt the aging and the death of my childhood friends.”
Flint wondered whether among those long-dead friends was a special man, a human lover, whose passing occasioned the sadness that pooled in the old elf’s eyes. Sitting at the table and mindlessly moving the strainer through the tea, she looked away and said matter-of-factly, “My parents had died. There were few other elves in Caergoth. I was lonely, so I came back here.”
A mist of orange and cinnamon scent wafted from the thick teapot. Over on Flint’s cot, the toddler slept sprawled on his back, a wooden cow in one fist and a toy sheep in the other. Eld Ailea spoke again, suddenly cheerful. “I fit in better here than I did there.”
She looked up and must have seen the sympathy in Flint’s eyes, because she bristled, her greenish brown eyes growing hard within the corona of silvery braid. “Don’t you feel sorry for me, Master Flint Fireforge,” she said. “I chose the path I walked.”
He cast around for something to say.
“You’re sure I can’t interest you in some ale?” Flint said.
Eld Ailea leveled a severe look at him. “I’m babysitting,” was all she said.
They sat and sipped their drinks for a short time, then Flint reflected that, after all, it was nearly lunchtime. So he got out some quith-pa and sliced off a few chunks of cheese, and Eld Ailea retrieved plates from the cupboard. Flint had been to Caergoth on one of his travels, so they talked about the city. It seemed Eld Ailea had left it before Flint had been born. Then Flint demonstrated how he’d made the toddler’s bobbing bird toy, and he made her a present of one just like it. And Eld Ailea told him about some of the babies she’d delivered during several centuries—“I delivered the Speaker of the Sun and both his brothers,” she said proudly—and how she had retired as a midwife but continued to care for people’s infants and small children. “I love babies,” she explained, showing animation for the first time. “That’s why I came for the toys.”
All in all, it was a comfortable way to spend a spring day.
Eventually they finished the last of the cheese and bread. Eld Ailea rinsed their plates and put them away, and Flint went back to work on Tanis’s sword—after moving the sleeping elf child from the cot, too
near the forge, to a spot on Eld Ailea’s lap. The tap of the hammer, while it initially roused the child, ultimately served to lull him more deeply into slumber. The old woman sat quietly, humming to the youngster, sipping one last cup of tea and watching the progress on the sword. An hour passed, and Flint looked up to see Eld Ailea asleep, too, one green-sleeved arm leaning against the table and her cheek resting on the little boy’s head. The dwarf smiled and continued working.
The tin chimes on the oaken door of the shop sounded again, and Flint hastily looked up, preparing to hurtle himself at the door and shove Tanis back outside. The sword was beginning to take shape, the blade smooth and tapered, the handguard a fantasy of curving, shimmering steel. Flint heaved a sigh of relief as a robed figure stepped into the shop.
“I didn’t interrupt something, did I, Master Fireforge?” Miral asked, a quizzical smile on his thin mouth. His voice, normally raspy, had hoarsened to a whisper. After a sharp glance, he nodded at Eld Ailea, who was slowly awakening. On her lap, her babysitting charge shifted and opened blue eyes.
“Not really,” Flint said, “I thought you were someone else …” He stepped away from the glow of the forge and swabbed the sweat from his forehead and beard with a handkerchief.
“Tanthalas?” Miral asked, his smile broadening. The old woman sat up purposefully and whispered to the toddler; the child slipped from her lap and ran to collect the carved animals he’d left strewn on the cot. “As a matter of fact,” the mage continued, “I came here seeking Tanis. It seemed a safe guess that if he weren’t practicing archery in the courtyard, he was probably here with you. Still, if there is some reason you wish to avoid him …”
“I just don’t want him to spoil the surprise.”
The expression on Miral’s drawn face asked the unspoken question.
Flint grinned and rubbed his hands together. “It’s a gift,” he said, gesturing to the half-finished sword, which lay cooling by the forge.
Miral stepped closer to examine the weapon, the orange light of the coals glowing in his pale hair and reflecting off the black leather trim of his long-sleeved, blood-red robe. He reached out a gloved hand and touched the warm metal gently, almost reverently.
“And a wondrous gift it will be,” he said, turning to regard Flint. His thoughts appeared far away for a moment. “It’s beautiful.”
“Bah, it’s not even finished yet,” Flint said gruffly, but his chest puffed out just the same. He pulled out a grubby length of cloth and tossed it over the weapon. Eld Ailea stood by the door, making preparations to leave. “I made some arrowheads for him, as well, last winter in Solace,” Flint added. “I thought I would present Tanis with one grand gift.”
“Hmm?” Miral said. Suddenly he shook his head, as if coming back to himself after being lost in reverie. “I’m sorry, Master Fireforge. I fear I slept little last night. The Speaker plans to make an important announcement tomorrow afternoon—though what it is, only he and Lord Xenoth seem to know—and preparations have kept everyone busy. Even a minor mage has duties. And so does Tanis, if ever I find him.”
Saying that he would look for the half-elf in the Grand Market, Miral took his leave of Flint and Eld Ailea, pausing to pat the toddler on the head. The youngster took a swing at the mage with a wooden horse; Miral deftly sidestepped the blow and headed out the door.
“Minor mage,” Eld Ailea whispered, her brows knit. She appeared deep in thought. Even after the mage was out of earshot, Eld Ailea continued to hover in the doorway. Twice, she appeared to be on the verge of saying something, then she stopped herself. Meanwhile, the child busied himself with denuding the climbing rose of its lower leaves and strewing them over the doorstep. “I have a confession, Master Fireforge,” the alto voice finally confided. “I too came here hoping to find Tanthalas. I … I am not welcomed by some at the Palace anymore. Thus I hoped to find him here.”
“Oh?” Flint questioned, still watching the receding mage’s red robe. “Why?”
“I knew his mother.”
She refused to say more, then left immediately.
Chapter 12
The Sword
Qualinost was silent. The night lay oven the city like a dark mantle. Although it was closer to dawn than midnight, an orange light still flickered behind the windows of Flint’s small shop. Inside, the dwarf sank wearily to a wooden chair, regarding his handiwork before him. The sword was done.
It glimmered flawlessly in the ruddy glow of the forge, the light dancing on its razor-sharp edge and playing along the grooves of the dwarven runes of power that Flint had carved into the flat of the blade. The handguard was fashioned of smooth curves and graceful arcs of steel, so fluid it seemed as if it had grown about the hilt of the sword like the tendrils of some entwining vine. Even Flint—modest as the dwarf was wont to be—sensed there was something special about this sword. He could only hope Tanis would like it.
He enjoyed pleasing the half-elf. Perhaps someday he could show Tanis around Solace and let him see that elves weren’t the only folk on Krynn. That would please Tanis even more than the sword would, he thought.
Flint sighed and then stood. He banked the coals beneath the ashes in the furnace and blew out the one tallow candle shining in the dimness. By silver moonlight, he found his way to his bed in the small room behind the shop and, kicking off his boots, he tumbled down into exhausted slumber. Soon the dwarf’s snores rumbled upon the air, as rhythmic as the plying of his hammer only moments before.
It was the darkest part of the night. The door to the shop swung slowly open, smoothly, so that the chimes made no noise. A figure stepped through, carefully shutting the door behind itself. It paused, cocking its head, and then, as if satisfied, drifted soundlessly toward the workbench.
The sword shone faintly in the cool light of Solinari, spilling in through the window. The dark, cloaked figure lifted a gloved hand and ran a finger down the length of the blade, as if testing its edge, and then it held both hands above the weapon. Murmured words spilled forth on the air, spoken in an ancient tongue of a people turned to dust age upon age ago, the name of their people long forgotten. Few spoke the tongue now, save sorcerers and mages, for it was the language of magic.
The mumbling ended, the last syllables drifting on the air like motes of dust. The sword began to glow, not with moonlight, but with a light from within. It was a crimson brightness, growing hotter and hotter, until the sword gave off an angry illumination, the color of fire. Nearby, a small mound of iron arrowheads also took on the glow. Suddenly a shadow seemed to separate from the darkness beyond the ring of illumination and drifted toward the sword, as if beckoned by the stranger’s hand. The shadow defied the crimson light until suddenly it flowed down, coursing into the blade as if it had been sucked in. The weapon gave a small jerk, then the illumination faded.
The door to the shop swung in the gentle night breeze. The snores continued, uninterrupted. The stranger was gone.
Chapter 13
The Announcement
Flint encountered Tanis the next morning in the Grand Market; the half-elf stood before a tent with a sign that read, “Lady Kyanna: Seeress of All Planes.” Underneath, a smaller sign read, “Special Rates Available.” The midnight-blue tent was decorated with silver silhouettes of moons and constellations. Several young elves, only a few years out of childhood, and giggling as they fingered their coins, slipped around Tanis and Flint and entered the tent. The scent of incense drifted from the tent as they moved the flap back, and a low voice intoned, “Welcome to a view of your futures, fair elves.”
“Seers,” Flint snorted. “Crooks and charlatans, all of them. Why, did I ever tell you the time I was at the Autumn Festival in Solace? Let’s see, …” the dwarf mused. “It must have been not long after that day I bested those ten highwaymen in the Inn of the Last Home.”
Tanis resisted Flint’s efforts to draw him away from the seer’s tent. “I wouldn’t mind a look into my future,” he said. The dwarf snorted and dragged him
down the tiled pathway left open between the tents and stalls. The half-elf seemed suddenly to come to himself. With one last longing gaze at Lady Kyanna’s tent, he looked at Flint with a quirk of his features and prompted, “You were saying?”
“A Solace street wizard tried to sell me an elixir he claimed would make me invisible,” Flint said, allowing the half-elf to draw to a stop before the stall of an elf who sold, of all things, swords. “It looked suspiciously like clear water to my eye, but he said to me, ‘Of course it’s clear. Otherwise, it wouldn’t make you invisible, now would it?’ Well, when I got home with the elixir—”
Tanis turned from stroking the hilt of a sword. “You mean you bought it?” he asked in disbelief.
“Not because I believed a word of the street wizard’s sly talk, mind you,” Flint said testily, his eyes flashing, trying once again to hustle the half-elf away from the sword display. “I knew all along it was a hoax. I just wanted to have some evidence so I could turn him in to the authorities for the charlatan he was.”
“So what happened when you used the elixir?” Tanis asked smoothly, his attention still engaged by the weaponry display. “Those are beautiful swords. I could use—”
“Shoddy workmanship,” Flint interjected, hauling on the half-elf’s arm, ignoring the furious glance of the weapon seller. “You don’t need a sword. Who is there to fight in Qualinost? Anyway, I drank the potion down and thought I could get away with pinching a tankard or two off this snub-nosed innkeeper who had cheated me a few days back, giving me a mug of watered-down ale instead of the good stuff,” Flint said, a wickedly gleeful grin on his face. But then he frowned. “Except that somehow the bouncer—who was sure to be half hobgoblin if he was anything at all—managed to see me and … Hey!” Flint said indignantly, realizing he had told a bit more of the tale than he’d meant to.
He glared at Tanis, but the half-elf only regarded him with a serious expression.
