“And you have very blue eyes,” said Goatweed. “Uncomfortably blue, if you don’t mind my saying so. Would you like to see what I have in my pouches?”
Before Gerard could answer, the kender dumped out the contents of several pouches and began happily to sort through them.
“You just left Solanthus,” Gerard said, interrupting Goatweed in the middle of a story about how he’d come by a hammer that had once belonged to some unfortunate tinker. “What’s it like inside there? I heard that it had been taken over by Dark Knights?”
Goatweed nodded vigorously. “It’s about the same as usual The guards round us up and throw us out. Except that now they take us first to this place that used to belong to the Mystics, and before that it was a temple of some old god or other. They brought in a group of Mystics from the Citadel of Light and talked to them. That was fun to watch, I tell you! A girl stood up in front of them, dressed up like a knight. She had very strange eyes. Very strange. Stranger than your eyes. She stood in front of the Mystics and told them all about the One God, and she showed them a pretty lady stored up in an amber box and told them that the One God had already performed one miracle and given the pretty lady her youth and beauty and the One God was going to perform another miracle and bring the pretty lady back to life.
“The Mystics stared at the pretty lady, and some of them began to cry. The girl asked the Mystics if they wanted to know more about this One God, and those who said they did were marched off one way, and those who said that they didn’t were marched off another, including some old man called the Starmaster or something like that. And then the girl came to us and asked us lots of questions, and then she told us all about this new god who has come to Krynn. And then she asked us if we’d like to worship this new god and serve the new god.”
“And what did you say?” Gerard was curious.
“Why, I said ‘yes,’ of course,” said Goatweed, astonished that he could suppose otherwise. “It would be rude not to, don’t you think? Since this new god has taken all this trouble to come here and everything, shouldn’t we do what we can to be encouraging?”
“Don’t you think it might be dangerous to worship a god you don’t know anything about?”
“OK I know a lot about this god,”Goatweed assured him. “At least, as much as seems important. This god has a great liking for kender, the girl told us. A very great liking. So great that this god is searching for one very special kender in particular. If any of us find this kender, we’re supposed to bring him to the girl and she’ll give us a huge reward. We all promised we would, and that’s the very thing I’m off to do. Find this kender. You haven’t seen him, by any chance?”
“You’re the first kender I’ve seen in days,” said Gerard. And hopefully the last, he added mentally. “How do you manage to get into the city without—”
“His name,” said Goatweed, fixated on his quest, “is The Tasslehoff Burrfoot, and he—”
“Eh?” Gerard exclaimed, astonished. “What did you say?”
“Which time? There was what I said about Solanthus and what I said about the girl and what I said about the new god—”
“The kender. The special kender. You said his name was Burrfoot? Tasslehoff Burrfoot?”
“The Tasslehoff Burrfoot,”Goatweed corrected. “The ‘The’ is very important because he can’t be just any Tasslehoff Burrfoot.” .. “No, I guess he couldn’t be,” said Gerard, thinking back to the kender who had started this entire adventure by managing to get himself locked inside the Tomb of Heroes in Solace. “Although, to make sure,” Goatweed continued, “we’re supposed to bring any Tasslehoff Burrfoot we find to Sanction for the girl to have a look at.”
“You mean Solanthus,” said Gerard.
Goatweed was absorbed in examining with interest a bit of broken blue glass. Holding it up, he asked eagerly, “Do you think that’s a sapphire?”
“No,” said Gerard. “It’s a piece of broken blue glass. You said you were supposed to take this Burrfoot to Sanction. You mean Solanthus. The girl and her army are in Solanthus, not Sanction.”
“Did I say Sanction?” Goatweed scratched his head. After some thought, he nodded. “Yes, I said Sanction, and I meant Sanction. The girl told us that she wasn’t going to be in Solanthus long. She and her army were all heading off to Sanction, where the new god was going to establish a huge temple, and it was in Sanction where she wanted to see Burrfoot.” That answers one of my questions, Gerard thought to himself.
“I think it’s a sapphire,” Goatweed added, and slid the broken glass back into his pouch.
“I once knew a Tasslehoff Burrfoot—” Gerard began hesitantly.
“Did you?” Goatweed leaped to his feet and began to skip around Gerard in excitement. “Where is he? How do I find him?”
“I haven’t seen him for a long time,” Gerard said, motioning the kender to calm down. “It’s just that I was wondering what makes this Burrfoot so special.”
“I don’t think the girl said, but I may be mistaken. I’m afraid I dozed off for a bit at about that point. The girl kept us sitting there a very long time, and when one of us tried to get up to leave, a soldier stuck us with a sword, which isn’t as exciting as it sounds like it might be. What was the question?”
Patiently, Gerard repeated it.
Goatweed frowned, a practice that is commonly known to aid the mental process, then said, “All I can remember is that he is very special to the One God. If you see this Tasslehoff friend of yours, will you be sure to tell him the One God is looking for him? And please mention my name.”
“I promise,” said Gerard. “And now, you can do me a favor. Say that a fellow had a very good reason for not entering Solanthus through the front gate, what’s another way a fellow could get inside?”
Goatweed eyed Gerard shrewdly. “A fellow about your size?”
“About,” said Gerard, shrugging.
“What would this information be worth to a fellow about your size?” Goatweed asked. Gerard had foreseen this, and he brought forth a pouch containing an assortment of interesting and curious objects he’d appropriated from the manor house of Lord Ulrich.
“Take your pick,” he said.
Gerard regretted this immediately, for Goatweed was thrown into an agony of indecision, dithering over the lot, finally ending up torn between a rusty caltrop and an old boot missing its heel.
“Take them both,” Gerard said.
Struck by such generosity, Goatweed described a great many places whereby one could sneak unnoticed into Solanthus. Unfortunately, the kender’s descriptions were more confusing than helpful, for he often jumped forward to add details about one he hadn’t described yet or fell backward to correct information about one he’d described fifteen minutes earlier.
Eventually, Gerard pinned Goatweed down and made him go over each in detail—a timeconsuming and frustrating process, during which Gerard came perilously close to strangling Goatweed. At length, Gerard had three locations in mind: one he deemed most suitable to his needs and the other two as back-up. Goatweed required Gerard to swear on his yellow hair that he would never, never divulge the location of the sites to anyone. Gerard did so, wondering if Goatweed himself had taken that very same vow and considering it highly likely. After this came the hard part. Gerard had to rid himself of the kender, who had by now decided that they were best friends, if not brothers or maybe cousins. The loyal Goatweed was quite prepared to travel with Gerard for the rest of his days. Gerard said that was fine with him, he was going to lounge about here for a good long while. Maybe take a nap. Goatweed was free to wait. Fifteen minutes passed, during which the kender developed the fidgets and Gerard snoozed with one eye open to see that he didn’t lose anything of value. Finally Goatweed could stand the strain no longer. He packed up his treasure and departed, coming back several times to remind Gerard that if he saw The Tasslehoff Burrfoot, he was to send him straight to the One God and mention that his friend Goatweed was to receive the reward. Gerard promised and finally managed to rid himself of the kender. He had several hours to wait until darkness, and he whiled away his time trying to figure out what Mina wanted with Tasslehoff Burrfoot.