Wanderlust

by Mary Kirchoff

“I’ll just rest a few minutes before I go to sleep,” he mumbled to himself, collapsing onto the feather mattress in his small but tidy room. Though his eyes were closed, the bed spun dizzily. He was vaguely aware of something hard pressed against his breast in a most uncomfortable way. Propping himself up on his side, he fished his hand into his pocket and pulled out Flint’s copper bracelet.

  “How in the world did that get in my pocket?” he mused. Viewing it through half-closed eyes, he harrumphed in amazement. “I must remember to return it.”

  Unconsciously stuffing the bracelet back into his pocket, he rolled over and fell into the deep sleep of the innocent and inebriated.

  Chapter 3

  Inn and Out

  A tooth-rattling snore popped Flint’s bloodshot eyes open in bewilderment. He lay on his back in his bed, wearing a single heavy leather boot and just one leg of his muddy breeches. Craning his head around, he saw the familiar cupboards and chairs of his home in the hollowed-out trunk of a vallenwood. How did I get here? he wondered.

  The last thing he remembered was sitting on one of Otik’s comfortable benches at the Inn of the Last Home. It had been dark then. The muted light filtering through his parchment windows told him it was now daytime, and had been for some hours. Frowning, he sat up suddenly, then collapsed back onto the bed. His throbbing temples explained the lapse in his memory. He’d really tied one on last night.

  Then he saw Tanis. Still fully clothed in breeches, boots, tunic, and wool vest, the half-elf lay face-down on the plank floor near the fireplace. A small puddle of drool spread from his splayed lips with each drawn and exhaled breath. The old dwarf chortled heartily, in spite of the pain it sent through his head.

  Startled, the younger half-elf woke, wiping spittle from his lips with the back of his hand. The ever-present feathered headband that held back his unruly, long russet hair had slipped down over his eyes, and he pushed it back to his forehead in annoyance. Spotting the amused dwarf, Tanis scowled. He rolled over slowly and sat up, cradling his head in his hands.

  “Otik’s ale sure tasted smooth going down,” he moaned.

  Nodding his head, more slowly this time, Flint pulled on the one pant leg that he’d managed to pull off before collapsing the night before. “Kicks like a mule the next morning, though,” he said, adding “especially when you drink twice your weight of it!” He located his other boot under the bed and stuffed his foot into it, then straightened his fur-lined vest and tucked his rough-spun tunic back into his pants. “At least I managed to crawl into bed and get half my clothes off.”

  Tanis jibed him right back. “That’s because you’re older and have more experience at this. Not to mention that your greater weight allows you to hold more ale …” he finished, eyeing Flint’s round girth.

  “Have some respect for your elders, pup!” Flint growled, cuffing Tanis’s dark-haired head. He walked to the larder, across from the fireplace in the hollowed-out base of the giant vallenwood. “I’ve got two pickled eggs, three strips of jerky, and a slightly moldy sole of bread.” He took a large carving knife and deftly trimmed the green fuzz from the bread. “There, that looks fine.” He looked at Tanis. “What’ll it be?”

  Tanis’s fine-boned elven nose wrinkled in distaste. “Some of Otik’s spiced potatoes, if he’s serving yet.” He stood and pushed back one of the parchment windows flanking the heavy wooden front door. “What time do you suppose it is?”

  Frowning, Flint peered out the open window. “Good gods, it’s late, from the looks of the deserted streets. Everyone’s working the festival already.” He hastily scooped the eggs and jerky into a square cloth and tied up the corners. “My customer could be coming to the booth any time for her bracelet.” With more than a little pride, he patted the pocket inside his vest. His face froze. He patted it again. This time his face contorted into a mixture of horror, disbelief, and fury. “It’s gone!” he shrieked.

  Still at the window, Tanis winced at the noise and looked over his shoulder at his friend. “What’s gone?”

  “The bracelet, of course!” he shouted. Panic clawed at his stomach. “I put it in the inside pocket of my vest and it’s not there! I know I put it in my vest!”

  Tanis strode over to the disheveled bed and began poking through the covers. “It probably fell out of your pocket while you slept.”

  Flint’s face brightened with hope. “I bet you’re right!” He helped Tanis strip the bed, but they found nothing. Flint flapped the sheets, then flapped them harder, and finally clawed his way through them like an animal. Then he turned back to the bed and poked his nose into every cranny of the mattress and the frame. Finally he dropped to his knees and glared under it, peering into every dust ball and pushing aside old shoes. But he came up empty-handed. Flint felt panic rising past his stomach, reaching up to his throat, threatening to strangle him unless he controlled it.

  “When do you last remember seeing it?” Tanis asked calmly.

  Flint exploded. “I don’t know!” He flailed his arms uselessly and paced between the bed and the hearth. “I don’t remember much at all from last night.” He tugged at the corners of his mustache until Tanis thought he would pull it right off.

  “That’s it!” Tanis said, snapping his fingers. “Last night at the Inn—you showed it to us while you talked about it. You probably just forgot it on the table. I’ll bet Otik found it and is wondering right this minute who it belongs to.” Tanis looked pleased with himself. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go get your bracelet and a couple plates of potatoes for breakfast!”

  Flint looked marginally calmer as he followed Tanis’s slender form out the door. “I hope you’re right.…” he said, his voice trailing off with doubt as he glanced back over his shoulder. “I’ve had a strange feeling about that bracelet from the moment I read those instructions.” He shuddered, remembering. “There’s something very odd about someone being willing to pay that much for a copper bracelet.”

  Knowing his friend’s superstitious nature, Tanis felt compelled to ask, “Then why did you agree to make it?”

  Flint’s ample cheeks grew crimson under his salt-and-pepper beard. “I’ll admit, at first I fell for her flattery. She said she’d heard I was the greatest metalsmith around.” Suddenly, he frowned and scratched his graying head above the right ear. “Given her praise, I was surprised to see how simple it was in design—nowhere near as difficult as my usual work, and that’s my professional opinion, not just ego.” He shrugged. “Anyway, it was a long, cold winter, and I couldn’t pass up the money.”

  Tanis stretched in the sunshine as Flint pulled shut the heavy, ornately carved door. He fished a heavy key from his pocket, jammed it in the brass lock, and gave it a twist. The bolt shot home with a satisfying thunk. Tanis looked back with raised eyebrows. “Why’d you do that? You never lock your house.”

  “I don’t know, at the rate I’ve been losing things lately, I’d better start,” mumbled Flint. He pocketed the key and patted it. “I thought you were hungry. What are you gawking at me for?” Tanis shrugged and smiled reassuringly, then the pair set off across Solace.

  With the streets empty because of the festival, Tanis and Flint quickly covered the short distance to the inn. They fairly ran up the bridgewalk circling the massive tree trunk that held the inn aloft. With the weather so unseasonably warm, the door to the eatery was propped open with a keg. Otik stood behind the bar, polishing stoneware mugs with a soiled rag. He looked up as Flint clomped in, noted the dwarf’s agitated expression, and nodded as Tanis followed him in.

  “Hullo! I didn’t expect to see you two again until the festival closed down for the evening. Back so soon for more of the dog that bit you?” the hearty innkeeper asked, smirking. He held the mug he was wiping under the ale spigot until a thick finger of foam curled down the outside, then offered it to Flint.

  Flint scowled at the mug, but didn’t reach for it. “Otik, tell me you’ve found a copper bracelet,” he demanded without preamble.

>   Never one to hurry, Otik pursed his lips and absently gazed across the room thoughtfully. “A copper bracelet, you say? Hmm.… That’s a hard one.”

  Flint’s eyes blazed. “Look, either you have found one or you haven’t!”

  Otik was unperturbed. “I once found a ring …”

  Flint rolled his eyes impatiently and blew out his mustache. “I meant last night. Did you find a bracelet here, last night, when you cleaned up?”

  “Oh, that’s different, let me think.… I didn’t clean up last night—waited until this morning. That’s right, I came downstairs early to ready the inn for breaking fast. Took a bowl of gruel from the porridge pot—not a good batch at all, though, all lumpy and gluey.” Otik’s eyes narrowed, and he scrubbed overzealously at a spot on the bar. “I’ll be speaking to Amos Cartney. He can’t go on selling grains that choke a man.”

  “Otik, the bracelet,” Tanis reminded the innkeeper before Flint exploded.

  “Oh, yes.” Otik shook his head. “No, no bracelet. I’m sure I didn’t find a bracelet. I could ask one of the serving girls, or you could check around your table yourself …”

  Before the innkeeper could finish the sentence, Flint ran to the table and dropped to his knees, pushing chairs and benches out of his way. He gave up the search after only a few minutes, falling back on his haunches with a resigned, hopeless sigh, his arms folded across his knees.

  “That doesn’t look good,” Otik muttered to Tanis. “What’s so important about this bracelet?”

  “It was commissioned by a lady from out of town, and she’s coming to fetch it at the festival.” Tanis remembered something and chuckled. “He lost it once already, yesterday, to a kender …” Tanis’s voice trailed off as an awful idea took form in his head.

  Tanis stepped away from the bar and approached his friend cautiously. The dwarf still sat on the floor, back against the wall, muttering incomprehensibly to himself. “Say, Flint, you don’t suppose the bracelet could be with Tasslehoff—?”

  “Burrfoot!” Flint spurted. His eyes shot open and his hands twisted into tight fists. “I should have thought of that. I knew he was just another thieving, scheming little—” The dwarf cut his verbal tirade short when he noticed a young serving girl, eyes wide and staring, as she lugged ashes from the fireplace.

  “Well, that’s simple, then,” Tanis said. “The kender said he intended to stay here at the inn for a few days. Let’s just find him and get it back,” he finished reasonably.

  “Yeah, I’ll get it back.” Flint rose to his feet, an evil glint in his eyes.

  Otik leaned across the bar on his elbows. “You talking about that little kender fellow you two were drinking with last night?” Flint nodded. Otik shook his balding head. “You won’t find him here. He bounced down the stairs early, ate breakfast—and a mighty big one, I’ll add, for such a little fellow—then left, that little sling-stick over his shoulder.”

  Flint seized Otik’s arm. “He was just going out for the day, right?”

  Otik shook his head again. “I don’t think so … He paid off his bill.” Otik’s expression turned to wonder. “Can you imagine, a kender actually paying his bill? Of course, I had to remind him several times—once he was all the way out the door—but he paid it, all right.”

  “Did he say where he was headed? The festival, perhaps?” Tanis asked.

  Otik eased his bulk onto a stool and tapped his chin in thought. “Festival, hmm. I don’t recollect … no, I’m sure not, come to think of it. Just making conversation, I asked him that very question myself. He said he’d had his fill the day before, said he was going to lick his finger, stick it in the air, and go wherever the wind was blowing.”

  Tanis shook his head sadly and clapped Flint’s hunched shoulder sympathetically. “That about clinches it, Flint. You’ll just have to tell this lady the truth and give her money back. She’ll probably understand.”

  Flint had been staring silently at some distant point in space, absorbed in thoughts of revenge and kender hunting. Suddenly he spun, grabbed Tanis by the lapels, and shook him. “You don’t understand! I don’t have the money to give back to her! I spent it on supplies for our trading trip! I can’t very well explain that, can I?”

  Tanis struggled to pry Flint’s hands from his clothing, but couldn’t break the dwarf’s grip. “So, offer to make her another one.”

  “Didn’t you hear anything I said last night?” he bellowed. “She gave me special ingredients, and there was only enough for one bracelet! She told me specifically to make only one! She came to me because she trusted me—and me alone—to get it right the first time. What am I supposed to say?” he moaned, his face screwing up into a sarcastic grimace. “ ‘Yes, ma’am, I made it, all right. It was beautiful. I’m sorry I let a fast-fingered kender walk off with it.’ I’d be humiliated. Worse still, if word spreads, my reputation as a metalsmith will be ruined!”

  Still grasping Tanis’s lapels, Flint looked toward the door. “Otik, how long ago would you say the kender left?”

  “Four hours, maybe.”

  “You’re not thinking of trying to follow him, are you?” Tanis asked, incredulous. “You don’t even know what direction he was headed.”

  “Sure I do. He’s walking with the wind.” Flint released Tanis only to shove his finger in his mouth, then stare at it as he held it in front of his face. “This will tell me where he went.” Tanis’s skeptical expression irritated the desperate dwarf. “What other choice do I have? He’s only four hours ahead at most. The way kender travel, stopping to talk to bugs and clouds and Reorx knows what other foolish claptrap, I can probably catch up to him, throttle the bracelet out of him, and be back before dark, with average luck.”

  “What if this lady customer shows up at the booth looking for the bracelet while you’re gone?”

  Flint thought about that one for a long moment. “You know my wares well enough that you could stay behind and open the booth. Stall her if she shows up—tell her I’m still working on it or something.”

  Tanis held his hands up defensively and backed away. “Oh, no, you don’t. I’m not staying behind to blow your smoke—besides, I’m a terrible liar—you know I am.” Tanis shook his head emphatically. “No, if you’re doing this, I’m coming with you. We can easily put a sign up at the booth that says ‘Open Tomorrow,’ or some such thing.”

  Flint dared an optimistic look. “That would work. Good, then. Let’s be off, before that kender gets another mile ahead of us. And when we find him, I’m going to wrap my fingers around his scrawny little neck and squeeze until—”

  “Until he gives back the bracelet, and then you’re going to let him go,” warned Tanis. “I’m coming along to prevent a murder as much as anything else.”

  “We’ll see,” murmured Flint.

  Chapter 4

  Darken Way

  Tas’s clear, lilting alto cut through the morning mist, heralding his passage down the Southway Road. Since leaving the Inn of the Last Home at daybreak, Tas was sure he had hiked four or five miles, singing the Kender Trailsong to pass the time.

  Your one true love’s a sailing ship

  That anchors at our pier.

  We lift her sails, we man her decks,

  We scrub the portholes clear.

  And yes, our lighthouse shines for her,

  And yes, our shores are warm.

  We steer her into harbor—

  Any port in a storm.

  The sailors stand upon the docks,

  The sailors stand in line,

  As thirsty as a dwarf for gold

  Or centaurs for cheap wine.

  For all the sailors love her

  And flock to where she’s moored,

  Each man hoping that he might

  Go down, all hands on board.

  It was an uncommonly pleasant morning, one of the kender’s favorite sort. He had awakened to the affable rays of the sun pouring through the colorful stained glass windows of his room. The gay sunshine h
ad made it quite impossible for him to linger in bed. The best breakfast he’d had for months, consisting of spiced potatoes, poached duck eggs, and chokeberry muffins with freshly churned butter, was made even better by the amusing stories of the innkeeper, Otik.

  Tas vowed that someday he’d be back through Solace; it was too fine a place not to visit at least twice. In the meantime—well, there was a reason why this phase of a kender’s life was called “wanderlust.”

  No kender could bear the thought of an empty stomach, so before leaving town he had, of course, purchased lunch. Tucked under his arm like a ball was a long, pale loaf of crusty bread; in his pack was a wheel of orange cheese and a flask of fresh milk. Yet he was puzzled by the appearance in his pack of three shiny red apples; he recalled admiring them while he was paying for his other purchases, but how did he inherit them?

  The kender shrugged happily.

  “Perhaps the merchant had a special—buy cheese, get free apples,” he concluded aloud. “Or maybe they just rolled off the cart and fell into my pouch.” It was all very curious, the sort of mystery and intrigue kender loved.

  On the trail the sun was warm, though the breeze still had a nip to it. Verdant blades of new grass, wild purple crocuses, and hyacinths regularly poked through the few remaining clumps of dirty snow, suggesting that something other than mud existed beneath. The heavy, musty-fresh scent of thawed earth and worms and wet thatch tickled Tasslehoff’s heart as much as good food and ale. The kender barely noticed the thick mud that sucked at his newly cleaned deerhide boots and splashed his bright blue leggings as he skipped, topknot dancing, down the road.

  Cresting a small hill, Tasslehoff gazed in delight at the panorama stretching around him. Driving the point of his hoopak into the soft ground, Tasslehoff lowered himself onto a chilly but dry slab of exposed rock. He popped open the cylindrical leather case on his belt and pulled out a map of Abanasinia. Along with it came a bracelet, which clinked on the rock and rolled in ever-narrowing circles until it came to a stop next to Tas’s feet.