'Dragonmetal. Magical silver.'
Theros bent down and picked up something from a pile of somethings lying on the floor. It was a lance, and it gleamed in the light of the silver pool, and it certainly seemed very fine to me. He held it in his hand and it was well-balanced and the light glinted off its sharp spearlike point. Suddenly, Theros's big arm muscle bunched up and he threw the lance, hard as he could, straight in to the rock wall.
The lance broke.
'You didn't see that!' Fizban gasped and clapped his hand over my eyes, but, of course, it was too late, which he must have realized, cause he let me look again after I started squirming.
'There's your magical dragonlances 1' Theros snarled, glaring at the pieces of the shattered lance.
He squatted down at the edge of the pool, his big arms hanging between his knees and his head bowed low. He looked defeated, finished, beaten. I had never seen Theros look that way, not even when the draconians had cut off his arm and he was near dying.
'Steel,' he said. 'Fair quality. Certainly not the best. Look how it shattered. Plain ordinary steel.' Standing up, he walked over and picked up the pieces of the broken lance. 'I'll have to tell the others, of course.'
Flint looked at him and wiped his hand over his face and beard, the way he does when he's thinking pretty hard and pretty deep. Going over to Theros, the dwarf laid a hand on the big man's arm.
'No, you won't, lad,' he said. 'You'll go on making more of these. You'll use your silver arm and say they're made of dragonmetal. And you won't say a word about the steel.'
Theros stared at him, startled. Then he frowned. 'I can't lie to them.'
'You won't be,' Flint said, and he had That Look on his face.
I knew That Look. It was like a mountain had plunked down right in the middle of the path you want to walk on. (I heard that actually happened, during the Cataclysm.) You can say what you like to it, but the mountain won't move. And when the mountain won't move it has That Look on its face.
I said to Theros, under my breath,
Flint was going on. 'We'll take these lances to the knights and we'll say, 'Here, lads, Paladine has sent these to you. He hasn't forgotten you. He's fighting here with you, right now.' And the faith will fill their hearts and that faith will flow into their arms and into their bright eyes and when they throw those lances it will be the strength of that faith and the power of their arms and the vision of their bright eyes that will guide these lances into the evil dragons' dark hearts. And who's to say that this isn't magic, perhaps the greatest magic of all?'
'But it isn't true,' argued Theros, glowering.
'And how do you know what is true and what is not?' Flint demanded, glowering right back, though he only came up to Theros's waist. 'Here you stand, alive and well with the silver arm, when you should — if you want truth — be lying dead and moldering in the ground with worms eating you.
'And here we are, inside the Silver Dragon Mountain, brought here by that beautiful creature who gave up everything, even love itself, for the sake of us all, and broke her oath and doomed herself, when — if you want truth — she could have magicked us all away and never said a word.
'Now I'll tell you what we're going to do, Theros Ironfeld,' Flint went on, the stubborn look on his face getting stubborner. He rolled up his sleeves and hitched up his pants. 'We're going to get to work, you and I. And we're going to make these dragonlances. And we're going to let the truth each man and woman carries in his or her own heart be the magic that guides it.'
Well, at this point Fizban got the snuffles. He was dabbing his eyes with the end of his beard. I guess I wasn't much better. We both stood there and snuffled together and shared a handkerchief that I happened to have with me and by the time we were over the snuffles Flint and Theros had gone away.
'What do we do now?' I asked. 'Do we go help Flint and Theros?'
'A lot of help you'd be,' Fizban snapped. 'Probably fall into the dragonmetal well. No,' he said, after chewing on the end of his beard, which must have been quite salty from his tears, 'I think I know how to break the enchantment.'
'You do?' I was truly glad.
'We've got to grab a couple of those lances.' He pointed to the pile of lances lying by the pool.
'But those don't work,' I reminded him. 'Theros said they don't.'
'What do you use these for?' Fizban demanded, grabbing hold of my ears and giving them a tug that brought water to my eyes. 'Doorknobs? Weren't you listening?'
Well, of course, I had been. I'd heard every word and if some of it wasn't exactly clear that wasn't my fault and I don't know why he had to go and pull my ears nearly off my head, especially after he'd already almost broken my nose and burned off my eyebrows.
'If you ask Theros nicely I'm sure he'd lend you a couple of lances,' I said, rubbing my ears and trying not to be mad. After all, Fizban had gotten me caught in an enchantment and, while it was a dull and boring enchantment, it was an enchantment nonetheless and I felt I owed him something. 'Especially since they don't work.'
'No, no!' Fizban muttered, and his eyes sparkled in quite a cunning and sneaky manner. 'We won't bother Theros. He's over firing up the forge. You and I'll just sneak in and borrow a lance or two. He'll never notice.'
Now if there's one thing I'm good at, it's borrowing. You won't find a better borrower than me, except maybe Uncle Trapspringer, but that's another story.
Fizban and I sneaked out of the shadows where we'd been hiding and crept quiet as mice over to where the lances lay by the shining pool of silver. Once I got close to the lances, I had to admit they were beautiful things, whether they worked or not. I wanted one very badly and I was glad Fizban had decided he wanted one, too. I was a bit uncertain, at first, as to how we were going to make off with them, for they were long and big and heavy, and I couldn't very well stuff one in my pouch.
'I'll carry the butt-end,' said Fizban, 'and you carry the spear-end. Balance it on our shoulders, like this.'
I saw that would work, though I couldn't quite balance my end on my shoulders, since Fizban's shoulders are higher than mine. But I held my end up in the air and Fizban managed the butt-end. We lifted up two of the lances and ran off with them.
And while we were running, Fizban said some more of those spider-foot words and the next thing I knew I was running straight into…
You guessed it. Huma's Tomb.
CHAPTER FIVE
'Oh, now, really!' I began, quite put out. But I didn't get the rest of my sentence finished, which was probably just as well, since it would have most likely made Fizban angry and he might have sent my topknot to join my eyebrows.
The reason I didn't get the rest of my sentence finished was that we weren't alone in Huma's Tomb anymore. A knight was there. A knight in full battle armor and he was kneeling beside the bier in the silver moonlight, with tears rolling down his cheeks.
'Thank you, Paladine!' he was saying, over and over again in a tone that made me feel I'd like to go off somewhere and be very, very quiet for a long time.
But the lances were growing extremely heavy, and I'm afraid I dropped my end, which caused Fizban to overbalance and nearly tumble over backward, and he dropped his butt-end. Which meant we both dropped the middles. The lances fell to the stone floor with quite a remarkable-sounding clatter.
The knight nearly leapt out of his armor. Jumping to his feet, he drew his sword and whipped right around and glared at us.
He had taken off his helmet to pray. He was older, about thirty, I guess. His hair was dark red and he wore it in two long braids. His eyes were green as the vallenwood leaves in Solace, where I live when I'm not out adventuring or residing in jails. Only his eyes didn't look green as leaves just at the moment. They looked hard and cold as the ice in Ice Wall.
I don't know what the knight expected — maybe a dragon or at least a draconian, or possibly a goblin or two.
