Now Tarli looked startled. "She never told you? She knew, but she didn't think it would work. You're very different from her." He added calmly, "But I think she loved you."
"I think so, too" Moran thought, briefly and with regret, of the demands of knighthood, of bastardly scandals in the knighthood, and of the fact that conflicts of duty can be every bit as painful as conflicts of honor. "You have my permission. Use my name if you wish."
Tarli smiled. "Thank you, but I think I'll keep using my own name, plus my formal name, now that I'm an adult."
Moran, amused by this sudden eighteen-year-old adult, said, "And what name is that?"
Tarli answered easily and calmly, "Tarli Half-Kender."
Moran's jaw sagged slowly, like something settling into a swamp. "Half… kender?" he repeated faintly.
"That's right." Tarli flipped the broken lance end-forend.
Moran remembered Loraine's words. No matter who the child is, or what it's like? And her laughter. I love strange places and strange men. Even her constant patting of her hair, over her ears. "Half-Kender?"
"I suppose I could use 'Flamehair.' It's a respected name among her people, you know. I didn't want to use it at first, since it would look like social climbing."
Moran's room reeled around him. "Half-Kender?" How could he have been so stupid? Or was it that he just wouldn't admit it to himself?
"That's right." Tarli stared off into space and said reflectively, "But my mother left her people and came here. Kender all love wandering. That's why she left here, too, partly."
Tarli walked around the room with his duffel, looking absently at things. The shaken Moran would later discover that a bottle of wine, a table knife, and a copy of The Brightblade Tactics had disappeared. "I'd better get going."
But Tarli stopped and rummaged in the duffel, which seemed disturbingly full. "Could you give these back to your cleric friend?"
Moran took the offered scrolls. "He gave these to you?"
"Not exactly." Tarli grinned. "I just needed something to read one night, and his room was unlocked — or almost." He trailed off, then brightened. "The parts about the knights' treasury are pretty good."
Moran unrolled the top scroll (the seal was already broken) and read:
Most Revered Cleric Ansilus, in Istar.
Greetings, and the blessings of the only true gods, from their servant and your brother rakiel; may you and they speak well of him.
Written when the moon Solinari is on the wane in the Month of the Moon Lunitari ascendant in the Queen of Darkness.
So far, things go well. I have learned the extent of the knights' wealth here in Xak Tsaroth and believe that it is more than is needed for a defensive training force in peace time. I will recommend that the Church could make better use of it.
I have gained access once to the Treasury, and have enclosed an itemized list of its contents. I am unsure how the money and precious metals are transported from the Treasury and where the knights' main store is, but hope to find out soon. The old man who trains these peasants is a fool…
Moran closed his eyes, remembering Rakiel asking questions, Rakiel filling out forms, Rakiel offering to handle requisitions for the lances.
"Plus this. I kept it because of the map — I love maps — but I don't suppose I'll be back here ever."
The "map" was a floor plan of the Manor of the Measure, with the storeroom marked in red. On the bottom of the scroll was a careful tracing, from the top, bottom, and end, of the treasure room key.
"I'll kill him," Moran muttered, but even as he said it he recoiled. There was no honor in Solamnia's best-trained weapons master killing a cleric who trembled when the knight brandished a butter knife.
Moran turned the paper over thoughtfully. If he could soothe his honor somehow and refrain from slaying Ra kiel, this page alone, sent to the Order of the Rose, would humiliate the clerics and probably keep the knights in Xak Tsaroth free of their influence for years to come.
"Thank you for showing me this," Moran said.
Tarli smiled, looked at the knight affectionately. "Uncle Moran, you've been good to me."
"Uncle Moran? You may call me 'Father.' "
Tarli nodded, almost shyly. "I'd like that. You know, you've been almost a spiritual guide to me — "
Moran, holding Rakiel's tracing of the knights' treasury, had a wild idea.
"I may still be your guide," he said slowly. "Tell me, Tarli, where will you go from here?"
Tarli frowned, considering. "No idea," he said finally. "Maybe to meet my mother's people again. I've been with them, and they're nice." He frowned still more, and Moran was reminded forcibly of himself. "But sometimes I think I ought to make something of myself."
Moran took a deep breath and said carefully, "Have you considered the clergy?"
From his blank expression, clearly Tarli never had.
The blankness turned to wonder. "You know, you're right," Tarli said excitedly. "They're perfect. I'd have a wonderful time. The more I know of clerics, the more their code seems more like mine than the knights' does." He looked up suddenly at Moran. "No offense."
"Oh, none." Moran hid a smile.
"Tell me, do the clerics accept common — accept people like me?"
Ah, Tarli, Moran thought fondly, there ARE no other people like you. His hand closed in a fist around Rakiel's letters. It was hard, not killing a man for a debt of honor, but this way might be better.
"I'll write your recommendation myself. The clerics owe me a large favor. You'll get in, sight unseen." He pictured, briefly, Tarli in a classroom of fledgling clerics. This was better than murdering Rakiel in uneven combat.
"Thank you." Tarli was genuinely surprised and pleased. "Mother always said you would be good to me."
"Ah. And what will you do as a cleric?"
Tarli's eyes looked far away and dreamy. "I'll go to my mother's people. Something tells me they'll need clerics in the future."
He swung the stick at his side. "And I'll take them this weapon I've designed. It's a great thing for short people in a fight. I need a name for it." He spun the stick over his head. "Isn't that a wonderful sound? Hoop," he said happily. "Hoop."
Moran scribbled a quick note. "Take this to the clerics and wait. I'll be sending… some other items… on to the Knights of the Rose." After a brief moral struggle, he added, "I hope the church will open many doors for you."
"If it doesn't, I'll open them myself." Tarli stuffed the note in his duffel, which by now was bulging ominously.
He said quickly, "Good-bye, Father."
Moran's arms remembered what eighteen years could not erase. He caught Tarli and held him. Tarli kissed his cheek. Not even the Mask could have kept a few tears from Moran's eyes.
Tarli dropped back to the ground and, in a gesture surprisingly like Loraine's, patted his hair back over his ears. It didn't matter, since his ears — however well they heard — looked exactly like his father's. He walked to the door, turned back suddenly.
"Maybe I'll be able to teach the clerics as much as I've taught the knights."
And he was gone.
Moran, watching from the window as Tarli rode off on Rakiel's horse, laughed out loud for the first time in many years. "Maybe you will, Tarli. I know you will!"
The Goblin's Wish
The human carried a broad-headed spear with a crosspiece mounted behind the spearhead. The crosspiece would keep a speared boar from running up the shaft and mauling the hunter, but the human didn't think the crosspiece would be necessary when the spear ran the kender through. If the spear went in right, it shouldn't make any difference what the kender did.