Thorbardin. A petite and sturdy four feet three, with the wide, subtly chiseled face of a dwarven angel and a curvaceous shape that even the most modest of clothing could not hide, it was natural that she should have suitors. And she did. They came by the dozens, and Slag Firestoke busied himself investigating the family lineage and financial means of each one.
But he was wasting his time. Jilian had already decided. Even when young males of the noble-blooded Hylar clans stared after her in the market, with open mouths and enchanted eyes, she was no more than amused. In Chane
Feldstone she saw something that no one else seemed to see, but that didn't matter. She saw it, and had no intention of letting him get away.
And she had told her father so, in no uncertain terms. In that straightforward way of hers that always seemed to infuriate him, Jilian had made it clear that she would, by Reorx, decide for herself what male she wanted. And she had, by Reorx, decided it was Chane Feldstone.
It wasn't that Chane was the most handsome young dwarf she had seen – although his broad shoulders, his somber, wide-set dark eyes, and the way his near-black whiskers swept back in feral lines along each sloping cheek reminded her of old pictures she had seen, paintings of the fierce Hylar warriors of ancient times. It wasn't that he was the most entertaining; at times, when the mood was on him, Chane was nearly impossible to talk to, and seemed to lose himself in dark, hidden thoughts that he wouldn't – or couldn't – express.
He was, in fact, a waif.
Orphaned in some manner that left no clear record of his lineage, Chane was a bit of an enigma to those whose duty it was, or whose inclination it was, to keep track of people in the dwarven realm. Clearly a citizen of
Thorbardin, he yet had no definable status except that of orphan and common worker.
But now Jilian was worried. He had simply disappeared, and no one had seen him. And when she had asked her father to make inquiries, old
Firestoke just sneered and said, "Good riddance. He's nothing but an upstart who's never learned his place."
She would have argued with her father, except for the arrival of that bunch of rough-looking armsmen who were waiting to see him on some sort of business and wouldn't go away until they had. By the time they were gone,
Jilian's anger at her father had jelled. She didn't want to argue with him. She didn't want to talk to him at all. In fact, she had hardly seen him since the incident, having gone about her own business and staying out of his sight when he was at home.
Until today.
With communication at a minimum in the Firestoke quarters, certain necessities such as paying the tap fees and keeping the larder stocked – things Jilian normally did – had piled up so that she had to do something about it or face such problems as late penalties on water and oil bills.
So she had gone to her father's chamber for the money she needed, and found that he was away on business.
For the first time in months Jilian had opened the old dwarf's private locker.
Now she stood over the locker, holding a dagger in her hands – a small, nickeliron dagger with an ebony-andbrass hilt. It was a dagger she had seen many times, but not in her father's things. It belonged to Chane
Feldstone.
Chapter 5
Chestal Thicketsway had been a little miffed that the dwarf had abandoned what promised to be an interesting exploration in favor of playing with fire and iron and such things. But, in the way of all kender, he hadn't stayed miffed very long. The world held far too many new and fascinating things to see for any kender to dwell for long on any one subject… even such a novelty as a fugitive dwarf who could kill a giant cat with his bare hands and make himself a bunny suit. Before he had gone a mile, Chess found a new fascination. The forest of this valley, what he had seen of it so far, was an ancient forest. The gnarled and twisted hardwood trees, some still wearing their fall colors though many now were bare, spoke of ages of time, while the deep loam beneath them, under a thick carpet of fallen leaves, whispered of countless generations of such trees that had grown and fallen before them. Thousands upon thousands of years have passed here, the forest seemed to say, and nothing of note has occurred. Nothing here has changed.
And yet, where the rolling lands came down to a little rock-bound stream, the forest did change. Across the stream was a different sort of forest, younger and less brooding. The kender crossed, climbed the far bank, and prowled around, looking at everything. The trees were large here too, but younger and more varied. The forest here spoke of hundreds of years… but not of thousands.
"It burned," something said… or seemed to say. Chess was not sure whether he had heard words or imagined them. He looked around and there was no one there. He was alone.
"It might very well have," he told himself. "This might once have been a forest fire, and all the old trees burned and the ones here now grew later."
"Much later," something seemed to say.
"I beg your pardon?" The kender turned full circle, holding his forked staff at the ready. There was no one there, nor any sign that anyone had been there – at least in a very long time. The only sound was the fitful breeze rustling the treetops. He squatted, peering under the nearby bush, then walked in a wide circle, looking behind trees and under stones. There was no one anywhere about.
Perplexed and curious, he went on, turning often to look behind him. He wasn't sure at all that he had heard anything, but he didn't remember thinking the words that he had seemed to hear until after he seemed to hear them. Talking to himself was nothing unusual for Chess. As a traveler, he was often alone, and even in company he often preferred to talk to himself. But he didn't recall ever not being in complete charge of one of his own conversations.
The younger forest – he thought of it now as Afterburn Woods – rose away before the kender, and he kept traveling more or less northward, recalling from time to time that his original purpose – at least the most recent one
– had been to go east across the valley with Chane Feldstone, to see if the dwarf could find his dreamhelmet.
The forest thickened, then broke away, and the black road was before him, curving in from the east to wind northward again. The path almost immediately lost itself in the forest as it curved once more, again to the east.
"I wonder what it's trying to stay away from now," the kender muttered.
"Death and birth," something nearby seemed to say.
Chess spun around. As before, there was no one there.
"Death and birth?" he repeated.
"Birth and death," something almost certainly said.
This time Chess strolled about, squinting as he peered upward. Maybe the talking bird has come back, he thought. But there was no sign of it anywhere. Besides, it had talked – clearly and without mistake. Whatever was talking here just kind of seemed to talk. It wasn't the same.
With a grunt of exasperation, he put his hands on his hips and asked,
'Whose birth and death?"
"Mine and theirs," something seemed to respond.
"Theirs and yours?" As the kender asked the question, his bright eyes were darting from one side to the other, looking for a clue as to who was talking to him.
For a moment there was silence, then the silence whispered, "Death and birth. Go and see." And a few yards away, just where the trees began, there was a brief shifting of light – as though the air there had moved.
"Probably something truly dreadful over there somewhere," Chess decided.
"Maybe even a deathtrap for kender. I guess I had better go and see."
He turned his back on the black road and entered the verge of forest where the odd shifting of air had been. A few feet into the woods he saw it again – a little way ahead and beckoning.