and maybe inside out if I didn't give it back to him that Fizban happened to find the painting inside my shirt pocket.
'See there,' I said, handing it back to Owen, 'I kept it from getting wet.'
He wasn't the least appreciative. For a minute I thought he was going to throw me out off the side of the mountain and for a minute he thought he was going to, too. But after a while he calmed down, especially when I told him that the lady inside the painting was one of the prettiest ladies I'd ever seen, next to Tika and Laurana and a certain kender maid I know whose name is engraved forever on my heart. (If I could remember it, I'd tell you, but I guess that it isn't important right now.)
Owen sighed and said he was sorry he shouted at me and he wasn't really going to slit my pockets or maybe my gut, whichever came first. It was only that he missed his wife and son so much and was so very worried about them because he was here in the snow with us and the dragonlances, and his wife and son were back in their house alone without him.
Well, I understood that, even if I didn't have a wife or a son or a house anymore. We made an agreement then and there. If I found the painting I was to give it right back to him immediately.
And it was amazing to me that he lost that painting as often as he did, considering how much it meant to him. But I didn't mention this to him, because I didn't want to hurt his feelings. As I said, I was beginning to like Owen Glendower.
'Life hasn't been easy for my lady wife,' he told us one other night while we were thawing out after having spent the day trekking about lost in the snow. 'From what you've told me about your friend Brightblade, you know how the knights have been persecuted and reviled. My family was driven from our ancestral home years ago, but it was a point of honor among us that someday we would return to claim it. Our holdings have passed from one bad owner to the next. The people in the village have suffered under their tyrannies and though they were the ones who drove us out, they have more than paid for that now.
'I worked as a mercenary, to keep body and soul alive, and to earn the money to buy back lawfully what had been stolen from us. For I would be honorable, though the thieves that took it were not.
'At last, I was able to save the necessary sum. I am ashamed to say that I was forced to keep my identity as a knight secret, lest the owners refuse to sell to me.'
He touched his moustaches as he said this. They were coming out fairly well, now, and were dark red as his hair.
'As it was, the thieves made a good bargain, for the manor was crumbling around their ears. We have repaired it ourselves, for I could not afford to hire the work done. The villagers helped. They were glad to see a knight return, especially in these dangerous times.
'My wife and son toiled beside me, both doing far more than their share. My wife's hands are rough and cracked from breaking stone and mixing mortar, but to me their touch is as soft as if she wrapped them in kid gloves every night of her life. Now she stands guard while I am gone, she and my boy. I did not like to leave them, with evil abroad in the land, but my duty lay with the knights, as she herself reminded me. I pray Paladine watches over them and keeps them safe.'
'He does,' said Fizban, only he said it very, very softly, so softly that I almost didn't hear him. And I might not have if I hadn't felt a snuffle coming on and so was searching in his pouch for a handkerchief.
Owen could tell the most interesting stories about when he was a mercenary and he said I was as good a listener as his son, though I asked too many questions.
We went on like this and were really having a good time and so I guess I have to admit that I didn't really mind that we took the wrong way. We'd been wandering around lost for about four days when it quit snowing and the sun came back.
Owen looked at the sun and frowned and said it was on the wrong side of the mountains.
I tried to be helpful and cheer him up. 'If Tarsis By the Sea could move itself away from the sea, maybe these mountains hopped around, too.'
But Owen didn't think much of my suggestion. He only looked very worried and grim. We were in the Wasted Lands, he said, and the bay we could see below us (Did I mention it? There was a bay below us.) was called Morgash Bay, which meant Bay of Darkness and that, all in all, we were in a Bad Place and should leave immediately, before it Got Worse.
'This is all your fault!' Fizban yelled at me and stamped his foot on the snow. 'You and that stupid map.'
'No, it isn't my fault!' I retorted. (Another good word — retorted.) 'And it isn't a stupid map.'
'Yes, it is!' Fizban shouted and he snatched his hat off his head and threw it on the snow and began to stomp up and down on top of it. 'Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!'
Right then, things Got Worse.
Fizban fell into a hole.
Now, a normal person would fall into a normal hole, maybe twist an ankle or tumble down on his nose. But no, not Fizban. Fizban fell into a Hole. Not only that but he took us into the Hole along with him, which I considered thoughtful of him, but which Owen didn't like at all.
One minute Fizban was hopping up and down in the snow calling me a doorknob of a kender (That wasn't original, by the way. Flint yells that at me all the time.) and the next the snow gave way beneath his feet. He reached out to save himself and grabbed hold of me and I felt the snow start to give way beneath my feet and I reached out to save myself and grabbed hold of Owen and the snow started to give way beneath his feet and before we knew it we were all falling and falling and falling.
It was the most remarkable fall, and quite exciting, what with the snow flying around us and cascading down on top of us. There was one extremely interesting moment when I thought we were going to all be skewered on the dragonlances that Owen had been carrying and hadn't had time to let go of before I grabbed him. But we weren't.
We hit bottom and the lances hit bottom and the snow that came down with us hit bottom. We lay there a little bit, catching our breath. (I left mine up top somewhere.) Then Owen picked himself up out of a snowbank and glared at Fizban.
'Are you all right?' he demanded gruffly.
'Nothing's broken, if that's what you mean,' Fizban said in a sort of quavery-type voice. 'But I seem to have lost my hat.'
Owen said something about consigning Fizban's hat to perdition and then he pulled me out of a snowbank and stood me up on my feet and picked me up when I fell back down (my breath not having made it this far yet) and he asked me if I was all right.
I said yes and wasn't that thrilling and did Fizban think there was the possibility we could do that again. Owen said the really thrilling part was just about to begin because how in the name of the Abyss were we going to get out of here?
Well, about that time I took a good look at where we were and we were in what appeared to be a cave all made out of snow and ice and stuff. And the hole that we'd fallen through was a long, long, long way up above us.
'And so are our packs and the rope and the food,' said Owen, staring up at the hole we'd made and frowning.
'But we don't need to worry,' I said cheerfully. 'Fizban's a very great and powerful wizard and he'll just fly us all back up there in a jiffy. Won't you, Fizban?'
'Not without my hat,' he said stiffly. 'I can't work magic without my hat.'
Owen muttered something that I won't repeat here as it isn't very complimentary to Fizban and I'm sure Owen is ashamed now he said something like that. And he frowned and glowered, but it soon became obvious that we couldn't get out of that hole without magic of some sort.
I tried climbing up the sides of the cave walls, but I kept sliding back down and was having a lot of fun, though not getting much accomplished, when Owen made me stop after a whole great load of snow broke loose and fell on top of us. He said the whole mountain might collapse.
There was nothing left to do but look for Fizban's hat.
Owen had dug the dragonlances out of the snow and he said the hat might be near where they were. We looked, but it wasn't. And we dug all around where Fizban had fallen and the hat wasn't there either.
