Kindred Spirits

Laurana flounced, and Tanis suddenly saw the spoiled girl she'd been only a few years before. Her voice, however, was that of a woman. "Gilthanas, I will do as I please," she snapped. "We have discussed this. Now leave it."

Tanis felt awkward. The days he and Gilthanas had spent together, ru

Gilthanas nodded shortly at the two of them. "I'll leave, then." He wheeled and stalked away, threading through the departing merchants and their carts.

"I am sorry," Tanis said, more to himself than to Laurana, but the elven woman didn't appear to have heard him. Instead, she took his hand and drew him along with her through the Grand Market.

"I don't know what father has pla

Tanis found himself smiling. Adjusting for a certain amount of hyperbole, Laurana was right.

"Perhaps they are declaring tomorrow National Elvenblossom Wine Day," he suggested.

Tanis was so rarely whimsical that it took Laurana a moment to match her mood to his. She laughed. "Or passing a resolution urging every elf to eat quith-pa at every meal?"

She giggled again, and suddenly Tanis felt like a child- not the sullen youngster he had been, but the carefree child he could have been under different circumstances. The thought made him both happy and sad.

As always with the half-elf, it seemed, sadness won out. "Most likely, it has to do with the tylor," Tanis said.

Laurana shivered. 'That's probably true. Palace guards were out all day, but none was able to find the creature."

She appeared to lapse into deep thought, and he wondered what conversational shift she was making now.

They had reached the edge of the Kith-Kanan mosaic, leaving the clamor of the Grand Market behind them. Laurana drew him up the stone steps and through a break in the blooming lilac bushes at the edge of the mosaic, into a small clearing. The bushes dulled the sound from the public area; suddenly, Tanis was aware of how alone they were.

Laurana pulled a small, tissue-wrapped package from the pocket of her dress. "I have something for you," she said. "I've been carrying it around all week, hoping to see you."

"What is it?" he asked, puzzled, but Laurana only smiled mysteriously. At that moment, she was not at all a child, and Tanis shifted uncomfortably.

"You'll see," she said, and then suddenly she stood on her toes and kissed his cheek, ignoring his incipient beard, her touch as cool and soft as the spring air. A scant moment later, she had slipped through the lilacs and out of sight, only the faint fragrance of mint lingering where she had been. Bemused, Tanis touched his cheek, unsure what she was up to. With a shrug, he unwrapped the small parcel.

A sudden coldness sank deep into Tanis's stomach despite the warmth of the spring air. On his palm, in the sunlight filtering between the new leaves of the trees, glimmered a ring. It was a simple thing, fashioned of seven tiny, interlocking ivy leaves, gleaming as bright and gold as the hair of the elven woman who had given it to him. It was lovely, delicate, a ring one might place on the hand of a lover. Tanis shook his head, clenching the ring in his fist.

Still shaking his head, Tanis emerged from the lilacs moments later, slipping the slender ring into the pocket of his vest until he could ponder its meaning.

"Interesting," said a cold voice.

Tanis whirled. Standing at the top of the steps, shaking in anger as several laden tradesmen watched and waited to get by, stood Lord Xenoth.

"Tanthalas Half-Elven," the elf lord said portentously. "You will come to regret this."

As Tanis, blinking, watched Lord Xenoth stomp away in indignation, he had no doubt that the elf lord was right.

Chapter 11

The sound of hammer blows sang like clean music on the spring morning air. Flint gri

He had begun late the previous day, shucking his blanket onto the bed, tossing down a mug of ale-for his frail health, he concluded-then firing the forge and hammering irregular chunks of iron into several small bars of metal. He beat the bars into strips and heated them to a high temperature in the charcoal fire, converting them to carbon steel. Then he sandwiched the strips into a slab, continually reheating the slab in the coal and thrusting it into cold water to harden the metal.

Now, finally satisfied with the thi

Flint wiped away the sweat and grime from his forehead and gulped water from a tin ladle dipped in a bucket in the corner. He sat on a low wooden stool and closed his eyes for a moment. He'd arrived in Qualinost two days ago, and already it seemed as though he had never left it for the winter. How long had it been since that day he had first set foot in the city? Probably twenty years to the very day, he thought, opening his eyes to glance out the window.

Outside, the new leaves of the aspen trees flickered emerald and silver in the sunlight.

His heart felt right in Qualinost, and despite the occasional unfriendly stares from Lord Xenoth, Litanas, Ulthen and Tyresian-stares rarely converted to comments because of Flint's popularity with the Speaker of the Sun-the dwarf felt almost as if he belonged in the elven capital more than anywhere else on Kry

A small chime sounded on the smoky air, and Flint looked up to see the door of his small shop opening. Hastily he tossed a cloth over the bar of steel on the workbench. It wouldn't do to have the surprise spoiled.

"Flint! You're still alive?" Tanis Half-Elven said with a smile. "I thought I would need to arrange a funeral."

Flint reached hastily for his handkerchief, snuffled, and affected a frail expression. "As my mother would say, 'Don't count your chickens on the other side of the fence,' " he said.

A flutter of incomprehension flitted across the half-elf's face; Flint's mother's sayings tended to affect him that way. Then he shrugged and forged ahead. "Are you in the mood for another adventure, Flint? I thought perhaps we could search again for the tylor."

Uppity snit, Flint thought, and his grin returned.

"You still haven't got it through that thick skull of yours, have you, lad?" the dwarf said gruffly. "I have work to do. I don't have all day to parade about the city all dandified, like some folk."

Tanis laughed, looking down at his outfit. He wore the same clothes that had drawn Laurana's eyes in the Grand Market yesterday: blue shirt, fringed vest, and woolen breeches.