'I can see why,' he said.
'Actually, I was on my way to Pax Tharkas, but I got sidetracked,' the kender admitted. 'There's a lot to see in these mountains. And a lot not to see. Did you notice that valley the cats came from, how it just sort of fades out of sight when you try to see it? Pretty mysterious if you ask me.'
Even if you don't ask, Chane was thinking.
'I had a nice talk with a hill dwarf a few months ago. He'd lost an amulet and I helped him find it, and when I showed him my map he said the blank space between the west ranges and the Vale of Respite must be the
Valley of Waykeep. He doesn't know anything about it, except it doesn't show on maps and nobody goes there. Especially wizards. So that's why I'm sidetracked and not on my way to Pax Tharkas. You don't look like a hill dwarf. You look a little different. Are you a mountain dwarf?'
'I'm from Thorbardin,' Chane said, paying scant attention to the chattering kender. The more the creature talked, the more glassy-eyed he felt. It was like trying to listen to twenty or thirty anvils, all at once.
'Is that why your beard grows back that way?' Chess stared at him in bright-eyed curiosity. 'Do all Thorbardin dwarves have swept-back whiskers?'
'No, but I do. It's just the way they grow.' He looked up from his work, thoughtfully. 'What kind of maps do you have?'
'Oh, all kinds,' the kender spread his hands. 'Big ones and little ones, some drawn on linen, some on parchment — I even have one drawn on a… no,
I used to have that, but I don't now. I ate it.' He glanced at the remains of their meal.
'Maps of what?' Chane growled.
The kender blinked at him. 'Places. That's what maps are. They're pictures of places. I make a lot of maps. Of places. When I go home to
Hylo someday… that's where I'm from, did I tell you that?'
'I don't know.' The dwarf's scowl was becoming fierce. 'What places?'
'— I'll be able to show everybody where I've been.' The kender blinked again. 'What places would you like?'
'I don't know, exactly,' Chane sighed. 'I've never seen it… except in dreams. But it's outside of Thorbardin…someplace beyond Northgate.'
The kender shifted his voluminous belt-pouch around so that it rested on his lap, and began rummaging inside it. The pouch seemed to have endless capacity, and the dwarf stared at the horde of treasure the kender's busy hands brought to light. Bright baubles of countless kinds, small stones, bits of twine, an old turtle shell, various metal objects, a wooden cube, an old and battered bird's nest — this the kender stared at for a moment, then tossed aside — a broken spoon, a scrap of cloth… The treasures went on and on.
Then Chess drew forth a fat sheath of drawings and his eyes brightened.
'Ah,' he said. 'Maps.' He thumbed through them. 'If the place you want to see is north of Northgate, that means it's east of here,' he explained, then looked up, glanced at Chane and pointed. 'East is that way.'
'What do the maps show to the east?' Chane squinted, trying to see what the drawings said.
Chess looked up, surprised. 'Nothing,' he said. 'I thought I told you about that. The first thing east of here is the Valley of Waykeep, and it isn't on maps. Maybe I can draw one on the way.'
'I don't want to go to the Valley of Waykeep,' the dwarf snorted.
'If you want to go east, you do,' Chess said amicably, then reached into his pouch and drew out another shiny bauble. 'How about that?' He held it up and gazed at it in surprise.
'How about what? What is that?'
'It's that hill dwarf's amulet. The one I helped him find. He must have lost it again. That's where I found it the first time, too. Right in here, under the troll's sandal. What do you know!'
Chapter 2
'What kind of dreams was it? I mean the one where you saw a place outside of Thorbardin, and now you want to find it?' Chestal Thicketsway scrambled to the crest of a stone ledge and squinted, peering at misty distances. Fogs and low clouds seemed to span the Valley of Waykeep, a trough of sun-dappled gray mist miles across and tens of miles in length.
He noted again how the valley seemed to just… lose itself from sight, even when one stood directly above it and looked down. Chane Feldstone hoisted himself to the ledge-top, a black-clad dwarf burdened by black packs slung from each shoulder. The dead cat had provided more than a meal. It had provided a good, black fur coat, two packs, and a supply of smoked meat. 'It was just a dream,' he said. 'At least that's what almost everybody tells me. Maybe they're right, too. But it's my dream, and I don't think that's all it is.'
'Well, what do you think it was?' The kender shaded his bright eyes, gazing at the distant, craggy mountains that rose above the mists several miles eastward, across the valley.
'I think it was a message,' Chane sighed. 'It's like a dream that I've had a hundred times over the years, only this time it seemed to almost make sense, and there was this face — I felt like I should know who he was, but I can't quite grasp it. He told me that I had a destiny and the fate of Thorbardin depends on me, and he showed me a place where I must go.'
'Why?'
'I don't know. He didn't say, but it must have something to do with the helmet, because that's what I always dream about.'
The kender glanced around at the dwarf, raising an eyebrow quizzically.
'What helmet?'
'The same one I always dream about. Ever since I was half-grown.'
'A helmet,' Chess breathed. 'Gee, I usually just dream about butterflies and leeches and things. I don't think I ever dreamed about a helmet,' He raised his forked staff, twirled it in his hngers for a moment, then tossed it into the air and caught it, still twirling, as it fell. 'Dreams are important, though. My cousin dreamed he was a doormat one time, and a week later an ogre stepped on him.'
Chane stared at the twirling staff. 'What is that thing, anyways'
'What t' Chess blinked and stopped twirling the stick. 'Oh, this? It's a hoopak. Tell me some more about your helmet dream.'
'Well, it's just a dream. I've had it now and then, most of my life. I dream I'm in a place I've never seen before, and there's something there.
Sometimes it's a locked chest, sometimes a bag, sometimes a pile of stones or a wooden box. But I open it, and there is an old helmet inside. A war helm, with horns and a spire, cheekplates, noseguard… it always looks the same, and every time I start to put it on my head there is a voice that says, ' 'No, not now. Not yet. When the time comes, you will know.' '
'Is that all?' the kender frowned in disappointment. 'That isn't very exciting.'
'That's all of it,' Chane admitted. 'Or it was until a few weeks ago, when I started having that dream almost every night. But now it's different. There's a great, high bridge, and nothing at all beneath it. I cross the bridge, and then I find the helmet. I start to put it on, and there is someone there with me. A warrior, like the old Hylar warriors back in the time of the great war. He looks at me and says, 'The time approaches. Thorbardin is at risk. Chane Feldstone, you must become who you are and who you are meant to be. It is your destiny.' ' Chane growled and scuffed a fur-clad foot against the stone. 'Old Firestoke laughed when
I told him about it.'
'Is he the one who chased you out of Thorbardin?'
'Nobody chased me out of Thorbardin!' Chane rumbled. 'I went because I wanted to go. But his villains beat me up and robbed me and told me never to come back.'
'Why do you suppose they did that?'
'Because Slag Firestoke is a miserable old rust-pit, and he wants Jilian to marry somebody wealthy or famous.'
'I don't suppose you are either of those?'
