'One copper!' Flint railed. 'I should read it first, and if I like what it says and who it’s from, then maybe I'd pay one copper! But why should I pay a copper for something I might not even want?'
Moya stood firm. Grumbling, Flint reached back into his pouch and gave the young messenger the copper that he had just won from Tanis.
Fuming, Flint slammed the door. He turned back toward Tanis and opened the note, which he already knew from the unique way that it was folded, in crisscrossing triangles, came from Caramon's twin brother.
Tanis read over his shoulder.
Tanis's brow furrowed with curiosity. He wasn't sure what to make of this missive from Raistlin. With Caramon and the twins' half-sister Kitiara away, Raistlin had withdrawn from the remaining companions, becoming even more aloof than usual. Tanis knew that he rarely had been separated from his twin brother for very long, and the half-elf supposed Caramon's absence put Raistlin in a solitary and perhaps agitated mood. The robust Caramon normally cast a protective shadow over his weaker brother, but when Flint and Tanis had chanced to meet Raistlin at Otik's tavern several days ago, the situation had been reversed. It was the young mage who seemed preoccupied with the welfare of Caramon, whose return to Solace was overdue.
'Caramon said he would be back within a fortnight,' Raistlin had insisted. 'This isn't like him to stay away, without sending any word to me.'
'It's just like Caramon,' Tanis had argued, adding thoughtfully, 'but it isn't like Sturm.'
'I'll tell you who it's like-Tasslehoff. And Tasslehoff is in charge,' stated Flint. He drained his ale, signaled Otik for another, and leaned toward the other two conspiratorially. 'He just lets you think you're in charge, but wherever you decide to go, it's him that's leading you by the nose. No, it's probably all Tas's doing, and it's just like that doorknob of a kender to be gallivanting around Southern Ergoth without the slightest thought of his friends back home. I don't see the point of needless worrying. Tas always turns up, and Sturm and Caramon will turn up with him. Enjoy the temporary lull, I say.'
That was about as long a speech as the customarily taciturn Flint ever made. The dwarf drank deeply of another tankard of ale, wiping the foam from his lips with his sleeve. Beaming and looking around the place, Flint didn't notice that Raistlin gave no response. The young mage had sat there, keeping them company but saying little. Indeed, as afternoon became evening and the hours wore on, Raistlin took scant appraisal of his friends. After shifting his chair, he stared beyond them, seemingly mesmerized by the pile of wood that Otik had coaxed into flames, the flickering fire reflected in Raistlin's intense hourglass eyes.
Now there was the cryptic message to meet Raistlin at Crystalmir Lake.
'What do you think?' Tanis asked Flint.
Dismay was the answer on the dwarf's craggy face. The message was unwelcome. He regretted even more the copper he had paid to receive it.
Southern Ergoth was only about a month's journey, round trip. Almost three months had passed since the day when Sturm, Caramon, and Tas had departed. 'Aw,' the dwarf said, waving his hand, 'that Raistlin is such a worry-wart. If s probably nothing. But,' he added with a sigh, 'I suppose we'd better hurry on over to Crystalmir Lake.'
Much as he once had with Tanis, Flint had more or less taken the Majere twins under his wing some years back when their mother died and they were still teenagers. Through the dwarf, the half-elf had grown to know and like the brothers-with reservations. Caramon was stalwart and good-natured, yet his easygoing habits sometimes led him astray. As to Raistlin, the pale young mage with the intense gaze, Tanis admitted to himself that he found it difficult to strike up any rapport with Raistlin when Caramon wasn't around.
'Come on,' said Flint, putting an arm around his friend and leading him toward the door. The dwarf stopped for a moment at his worktable and used a broken bit of charcoal to scribble something on a smooth piece of bark. He winked at Tanis, hanging it on the door as they walked out.
The two friends had to proceed along the elevated walkways strung between the giant vallenwoods toward the eastern edge of town. If the people of Solace hadn't already been accustomed to seeing the pair together, the dwarf and half-elf would have attracted some stares. Flint, stocky and short, with his rolling gait, hurried to keep up with his much taller companion, who glided down the walkways with the easy grace and surefootedness of his mother's race, the Qualinesti elves.
On this occasion, the picture was made even more comical by Flint's constant gesturing and exclamations as he spouted abominable tales of Tasslehoff, intended to draw Tanis out of his melancholy mood. But Tanis remained mostly silent, taking long strides as Flint endeavored to keep up.
It wasn't Raistlin's urgent summons that darkened Tanis's thoughts as they walked to Crystalmir Lake so much as it was Raistlin's half-sister, Kitiara Uth Matar. For Tanis, Kitiara was never far from his thoughts.
Her laughing face and crooked smile teased his mind by day and his dreams by night.
Tanis and Kitiara had been quarreling more than they had been getting along. Then one day, several weeks ago, Kitiara had informed Tanis that she had an offer to travel in the north with a band of mercenaries hired by a certain lord for some mysterious, no doubt illicit, purpose. Tanis denounced the expedition as unworthy of her. Kitiara had retorted that it was better than dying in her sleep in dull old Solace.
Upset by the idea of Kit leaving, Tanis had switched tactics and offered to accompany her. This had sparked a fit of laughter on Kitiara's part. She recovered, but a glint of anger lit her dark eyes. 'You wouldn't fit in,' she said with more than a hint of insult.
The next morning, Tanis had risen early to see Kit off. She was already astride her horse when he reached the stable. He had to run and grab the bridle to stop her for a moment. Kitiara had smiled vaguely down at him, then bent her dark, curly head and kissed him hard on the lips, before riding off without a word.
Even now Tanis could conjure up the sensation of that kiss. 'Flint,' he said to the dwarf as they hurried along the high walkways, 'have you ever been in love?'
Astonished by the impertinent question, the crusty dwarf stumbled and grabbed the rail of the walkway.
'Not saying that I ever was,' recovered Flint, resuming his pace. 'But if I had been, I sure would have been more careful about who I happened to fall in love with than some people I know!'
'What do you mean by that?' the half-elf demanded hotly.
'I mean, you young pup, that Kitiara Uth Matar is hardly my idea-or anyone else's idea, for that matter-of the ideal female,' Flint said firmly. 'I've seen the way you moon at her and the way she looks back at you. Two different things. Nothing in common, if you get my drift.'
Flint shook his head with exasperation as they rounded a curve and headed toward the bridge that would take them down onto the forest path leading to the lake. 'Besides,' the dwarf muttered, 'I seem to recall you two having big arguments practically every day before she lit out of here. To my way of thinking, it was half the reason she left.'
Tanis stopped and grabbed Flint's arm. 'You haven't answered my question,' he said tersely.
'Well,' said Flint, halting in midstep. His eyebrows shot up and down like a pair of wriggling caterpillars. 'There may have been someone once. Another hill dwarf like myself, of course. I don't know that you'd call it love. It was sort of… a romance.'
Flint stumbled over his words, the color rising to his cheeks. He looked at his feet, shifting his weight back and forth. Tanis waited for him to go on.
'Well?' queried Tanis at last, leaning closer to his friend, 'Go on, what happened? Tell me.'
Flint's expression was pained. 'She was a huntsman's daughter,' he said hesitantly. 'Our families had pledged us to be married since birth. Times were hard in those days.' He snorted. 'Still are…'
Tanis listened with fascination. The dwarf was normally stingy with personal information. Maybe his good mood had put him off guard, allowing his natural reserve to slip.
Flint paused, seeming to watch something in his mind's eye. Abruptly he shook his head as if to clear it of cobwebs.
