Tas looked down in time to see a group of several people carrying baskets and talking and laughing as they walked along the main road through town. Moments later they turned off onto a smaller road and disappeared from view.
As suddenly as it had appeared, the oilcloth bundle disappeared again, and Tasslehoff scurried to the ground.
"Hey, wait for me!" he called, but they were too far away to hear. The kender's short legs pumped furiously as he raced down the road in pursuit of the basket carriers. Around the bend he flew and over a low rise, before skidding to a halt.
Below the small knob where Tasslehoff stood lay a fair! The area was choked with sellers' stalls, tents, booths, performers, beggars, and people in general. Lots of people—certainly all of Solace and probably quite a few more, Tasslehoff concluded.
He rushed down the slope into the throng. On every side he heard the cries of merchants hawking their wares and services. Wide-eyed, the kender looked this way and that, and then back again. He dodged around a donkey when two men carrying a rolled tapestry on their shoulders appeared from nowhere. Tas slipped between them and found himself in a tiny open space, a stationary island in a roiling sea. Twisting right and left, forward and back, he peered from here to there, trying vainly to see everything at once. In fact, he could see very little of anything except arms and torsos flowing past, pushing, touching, gesturing, carrying, buying and selling.
A frantic warning shout from behind came just in time for Tas to sidestep an enormous barrel before it thundered past. The juggernaut gouged a trough through the mud and doused the lower half of Tasslehoff's body with a sheet of brown water. Two men, both looking frightfully concerned, splashed and galloped after it, one shouting warnings as the other screamed curses and epithets. Tas giggled as he watched the barrel's progress, people leaping and scrambling out of the way along its route. The show ended when the runaway barrel crashed into a furniture maker's stall, bringing a colorful canopy flapping down across the debris.
The crowd quickly returned to its business. As Tas turned back to the festival, a stabbing pain shot up through his leg. He swallowed a yelp and then landed a quick punch against the hip of a burly man in a long canvas coat who was standing on Tas's foot. Whether the punch actually hurt the man is hard to say, but it drew his attention. His head snapped to one side and he scanned the crowd darkly, but it was several moments before he noticed the diminutive kender at his waist. A growl welled up from somewhere deep inside the man's cavernous chest. He placed one hand on Tas's left shoulder, lifted his foot, and gave a mighty shove that sent the hapless kender crashing through the crowd.
Hopping backward and windmilling furiously to regain his balance, Tasslehoff tumbled into a pile of rugs. He scrambled to safety at the top and sat, looking over the crowd and rubbing his throbbing foot.
Rough hands grabbed him from behind. "Get your muddy feet off my merchandise, you little urchin!" Tasslehoff was spun around and found himself face to angry face with a slim, bearded man wearing a large satin hat.
Tas glanced down at his mud-soaked leggings and the trail of dirty, wet footprints leading across the carpets to where he now stood. He giggled, which was certainly a mistake. The words "I'm sorry," were barely formed on his lips when the merchant realized his mistake, too.
"A kender! And I mistook you for an innocent child. Away!" he roared.
"But I was pushed," protested Tasslehoff. "It wasn't my fault—"
"Away!" The rug merchant's face turned purple with anger. His hands flew across Tas's upper body, probing and poking the kender's woolen vest and pockets, which only made Tasslehoff giggle again. When the merchant was satisfied that nothing of his was secreted on Tas's body, he whirled the little fellow around and pushed him away, back into the milling crowd.
It would be natural to think Tasslehoff was discouraged by all the manhandling he'd been subjected to, but kender are not so easily put off. It was all part and parcel of the fair, and Tas had a taste for excitement. He was also partial to the crispy-fried spiral cakes sprinkled with sugar, which he purchased from a toothless but jolly, red-cheeked old woman. Absently sucking the sugar from his fingers, he set off to explore the grounds.
Strains of exotic music drifted across the festival grounds, sounds of long-stringed instruments and tiny cymbals, which wrapped Tasslehoff up in their pulsing rhythm. Like a dog on a scent, the kender threaded through the seething crowd and found his way to the stage. On it, a dark-skinned woman shivered and whirled, her silk veils floating like gossamer petals. Steel coins jangled on her wrists, ankles, and hips. The music, strange and wonderful, seemed filled with color and faraway scents.
But even that wasn't enough to hold Tas's attention when the magic show started up in the next stall.
Foul-smelling smoke drifted across the stage. With a whoosh, a man appeared in the smoke, grimacing. The crowd swayed in awe, though Tas was quite certain he saw the curtain move just before the man "materialized."
The fellow was dressed in a floor-length forest green tunic, so dark it almost appeared black. A fur-trimmed robe of the same color reached just below his waist. Both items were decorated with cabalistic symbols of every size and color.
"I am the great and potent Fozgoz Mithrohir," announced the wizard, "grandson and only surviving heir of the equally great and potent Fozgond Mithrohir, the Eternal High Light and
