On the day he asked for Hepsiba's hand in marriage, Gaesil had rolled the symbol for Earth-good luck. With no other suitors of any kind and growing older, she accepted at once. They were married that afternoon.
Within hours of the marriage, Gaesil began to wonder if perhaps he had not somehow misread the Eye, for Hepsiba revealed herself to be homely in both body and spirit: suspicious, selfish, and conceited. But much worse than these, as far as Gaesil was concerned, was her ability to sour any mood, to make any splendid thing seem ugly. He had no illusions about his looks, with his dishwater hair, knobby bones, and big feet, but he had a good heart and a ready smile. She would have seen his virtues, he was certain, if she was capable of appreciating anything besides money.
Despite his unhappiness, Gaesil felt certain there was some reason fate had thrown him together with Hepsiba. He hoped only that she would let him live long enough to discover what it was.
And so he spent a lot of time on the road, fixing what needed fixing wherever it needed to be fixed. He traveled along the festival route, and Solace held the first, and possibly the best, festival of the year. He would stay in each town along the way up to a week if business warranted it. Sometimes he was gone for as long as six months at a stretch, especially if the weather was good and the people were friendly, like the chatty little kender who had saved him from the hobgoblins and helped him free his wagon from the ditch. That fellow was the least annoying kender Gaesil had ever met.
Just after midday, Gaesil reached the turn to Solace at the south end of Crystalmir Lake. A snap of the reins guided Bella to the right and the wagon rolled on toward the ancient stone bridge that crossed Solace Stream. Here traffic picked up. Gaesil nodded his head in greeting at the driver of a wagon passing from the other direction.
Ahead, just stepping onto the bridge, were two travelers on foot. They appeared to be in quite a hurry. Their agitated pace was being set by the shorter of the two, a dwarf with a goodly amount of gray in his hair and a large scowl on his face. The other, with the soft good looks of a young elf, moved more calmly, his longer strides seeming slower and more deliberate. He walked with his face turned toward the dwarf and sounded as if he were trying in vain to calm down his companion. The dwarf's expression remained stony, his gaze locked straight ahead.
"Here's someone coming from the road through Darken Wood. Perhaps this fellow's seen him and can tell us if we're even headed in the right direction," Gaesil heard the dwarf say before running up to the tinker's wagon. Gaesil tugged on Bella's reins until she stopped.
"Excuse me," the dwarf called up, "but have you seen a kender on the road this morning?"
Gaesil looked surprised. "Why, yes, I have. A helpful little fellow-"
"Ah, ha!" the dwarf interrupted, slamming a fist into his hand in smug satisfaction. His eyes narrowed to slits. "Where did you spot the little gadfly?"
The young elf stepped before the dwarf. "What my friend means is, were you traveling from the south on the new road or north on Haven Road?"
Gaesil was a bit flustered by the dwarf's animosity. "Why, I left him about two hours ago on Southway Road, but I doubt it's the same kender you're looking for. The one I met was a cheerful little fellow in blue leggings. His name was Tasslehouse, or Tusslehauf, or some such thing."
"That's him!" the dwarf shouted, grabbing the elf by the arm and breaking into a run. "Come on, Tanis, time's a-wasting!"
"Thanks for your help, sir," the elf managed to call back as he was pulled away behind the dwarf.
"Certainly," Gaesil said from habit, though the two were out of earshot. He shook his shaggy head. What could such a nice kender have done to inspire such anger? Giving Bella's reins another sharp tug, he set off again across the bridge and toward Solace. He dared waste no more time. As it was, he was in a hurry to track down that kender's friend, Flint Fireforge, to return the bracelet and, he hoped, beg or buy some festival booth space from him.
"Yeah, I know Flint Fireforge, but you just missed him," the jowly barkeep at the Inn of the Last Home told Gaesil a half-hour later. "He and Tanis tore out of here more than an hour ago." The innkeeper, whose name was Otik, balanced two plates of fried potatoes and sausage on his forearm, having just come through the swinging kitchen door. "Do you mind?" he asked, nodding his head from the plates to the patrons who awaited them.
"Oh, not at all," Gaesil said. He sat down absently on a stool to wait for the innkeeper's return, while he pondered Otik's comment. Tanis… where had he heard that name before?
"Now, you were asking?" Otik said, returning, his arms free. He wiped his hands on his dingy white apron and moved behind the bar.
"Flint Fireforge. You said he'd left. Will I find him at the festival?"
Otik chuckled. "You might, but I doubt it. He and Tanis were hot on the trail of a kender. He'd stolen a very important bracelet from Flint."
Gaesil's eyes went as wide and round as two steel pieces and his mouth fell open. He remembered the dwarf and the elf on the bridge! That's where he'd heard of Tanis. But the dwarf had never been called by name. How could he have known? The kender hadn't mentioned that the dwarf would have a friend with him, an elf at that.
"Something wrong?" the barkeep asked him, noting the tinker's startled expression.
Gaesil put his knobby hand into the pocket of his breeches and his fingers closed around the bracelet. "I have-" But the tinker stopped short. He was about to give the bracelet to the innkeeper to return to Flint the next time the dwarf visited the inn, but he was having second thoughts. "You say Flint left town and won't be running his booth at the festival?"
"Not until he finds that kender. And the festival will only last another couple of days."
"I see." Gaesil was already mulling the situation. With the dwarf out of town and unable to sell his wares anyway, his booth would be vacant. Gaesil could borrow it and no one would be put out, though there might be trouble if the dwarf caught up to the kender, returned before the festival ended, and found a stranger using his business space. Judging from what Gaesil had seen, Flint Fireforge didn't seem the affable kind.
On the other hand, Gaesil could claim he was waiting at the booth to return the bracelet to its rightful owner, the dwarf. If he conducted a little business to pay his expenses while waiting, no one could hold that against him. If the festival closed up before the dwarf returned, why, then, Gaesil could hand the bracelet over to the innkeeper and skedaddle. It wasn't dishonest, he reasoned, just good business.
"I'm a little busy, friend. Is there anything else I can do for you?" Otik's mild voice interrupted Gaesil's thoughts.
"I'm sorry," the tinker said, bouncing back to the present. He scratched ruefully at his mud-caked skin. "Actually, I could use a bath before I head over to the festival grounds. Do you have a bathtub on the premises?"
A pink and scrubbed Gaesil emerged from the inn an hour later and wound his way down the bridgewalk to the ground, his hair freshly washed, his road clothing in his hand newly clean and ready to hang to dry. He had put on his best tunic and trousers-not too plain, so as to make customers think him a novice at his trade, and not too fancy, so as to make them think him too high-priced. He had removed the dwarf's bracelet from his breeches before washing them and placed it in the pocket of his clean trousers for safekeeping.