Wanderlust Read online

  With a shrug, Tanis gave in. “With luck, I won’t run into her and it’ll never come up. I’ll go, but you’ll have to stop at my place and put together what I need,” he said. “I’ll meet you there when I’m finished.” The lanky half-elf turned to leave, then added, “You’ll find plenty of foodstuffs in the pantry—just don’t pack any of those awful beans you like,” he warned, shaking his finger at the rotund dwarf.

  “I’ve never seen a dwarf’s house,” the kender, nearly forgotten, piped up. “I’ll go with Tanis,” he announced happily.

  Flint turned on the scrappy little fellow and poked him in the chest. “Oh, no you don’t,” he said emphatically. “The last thing I need is a big-mouthed, sticky-fingered kender poking around in my house when I’m not there. That’s how this whole mess started.” He took the kender firmly by the elbow. “You’ll come with me so I can keep an eye on you.”

  “Goodness, Flint,” Tasslehoff huffed, his feelings obviously bruised, his wrinkled little face puckered into a large frown. “I’d think you, of all people, would understand that my smaller-than-average size doesn’t make me a child.”

  Flint flushed bright red, and his head bobbed around as he tried to force some unaccustomed words from his lips. “Oh, all right, I’m sorry,” he grumbled.

  “That’s OK,” the kender said, with a kender’s uncanny ability to shed sadness in the space of an eye blink. He brightened as a new thought struck him. “Say, do you dwarves have special little furniture for your homes, or do you hop up into human-sized chairs there, too?”

  Flint nearly roared some favorite profanity at the kender but settled for a blistering glance and a shove toward the nearest staircase up into the vallenwood trees.

  “Move!” he snapped. Flint glanced over his shoulder nervously. If Selana was still in town (and the way his luck was going, he had every reason to expect so), Flint hoped she would stay to the ground, as most visitors did not climb up to the bridgewalks. Even though the walks functioned as roadways and were considered public property in Solace, strangers tended to feel like they were intruding if they ascended, since the majority led to private homes.

  “These swaying bridges are wonderful!” Tas exclaimed. “How do you build them up in the air like this?” He darted from one side of the bridgewalk to the other, throwing twigs over the edge and watching them pirouette to the ground.

  “Stop that!” Flint said, barely resisting the temptation to slap the kender’s hands like he would a child’s. “You’re going to hit someone with those sticks. That’s why there’s quite a large fine for littering on the walks.”

  Tas pulled his hands back and looked momentarily subdued. “So how do they build them?” he pressed again. “Stilts? In Kendermore, where I’m from, they stand in pyramids to change signs and that sort of thing, but this—” he swept his hand at the bridgewalk below his booted feet—“this would be far more difficult to build while standing on someone’s shoulders.”

  The dwarf closed his eyes and set his teeth against the kender’s incessant chatter. “They build them on the ground and then hang them afterward,” he responded at last with forced patience. Within minutes, dwarf and kender were at the door to Tanis’s house, where above them stretched the budding branches of the middle-aged vallenwood tree that supported the structure.

  Tanis’s home looked like most of the other tree-houses in Solace, except perhaps it was a bit smaller and more modestly appointed. With a grunt, Flint bent over and flipped up the seagrass mat beneath the door. “Damnation! What’s that half-elf gone and done with his key now?”

  “Are you looking for this?” Tasslehoff asked. Flint looked behind him and saw the kender with a notched key held aloft by his thumb and forefinger.

  Flint scowled. “Give me that!” he said, snatching the key from the kender’s hand. “Where did you get it?”

  “Under the mat.” Tasslehoff shook his head in disbelief. “Tanis really shouldn’t keep his key where just anyone can find it. You never know who might help himself to his home.” He wagged his finger at Flint. “It’s a good thing I came along, you know.”

  Harrumphing, Flint slipped the key into the lock and gave the door a shove and the kender a yank. They stood in Tanis’s cozy entryway, its outside wall cleverly carved into the vallenwood itself. Shafts of yellow sunlight puddled around their feet from small windows in the ceiling, which Tanis called skyloops, an elvish invention he brought with him from his childhood in Qualinesti.

  Much of Tanis’s home reflected his upbringing. There was a soothing, sylvan quality to its design, even apart from its placement in a vallenwood. Potted plants abounded. Like most houses in Solace, it had a common room, bed chamber, and kitchen. The hearth was the focal point in the common room, and around it were piled immense, fluffy feather pillows for sitting. In deference to his old dwarven friend, Flint, Tanis also had one sturdy chair. The only other furniture were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves carved into the nooks provided by the vallenwood that ran through the house. Tanis was an inveterate reader of anything and everything. He also collected rare, finely crafted bows, which he displayed on the wall opposite the hearth.

  Flint saw the kender’s eyes light up when they came upon the elven weapons. “Keep your hands to yourself,” the dwarf cautioned. “If I see just one bowstring out of place, I’ll—”

  “You don’t have to constantly threaten me,” Tas interrupted wearily. “I won’t touch anything.”

  Flint looked dubious. “It’s taking, not touching, that I’m worried about.”

  “Why, I never—”

  Flint held up a hand to silence the indignant kender. “I know, you’ve never stolen anything, and it’s not your fault that the bracelet is missing,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm. “Now, may we get on with collecting Tanis’s things, so we can go find the bracelet that just mysteriously ended up in your possession not once but twice?”

  “Be my guest.” Tasslehoff waved Flint forward. “I must say, I’m glad to see that you’re beginning to see my side in this thing.”

  Shaking his head incredulously, Flint stomped into Tanis’s bedchamber and headed straight for the heavy wooden clothes chest at the bottom of the foot-high feather-stuffed ticking the half-elf used as a bed. He took out an undershirt, several pairs of hose, a tunic, two blankets, a woolen shirt, and heavy woolen socks. He quickly rolled the clothing inside the blankets, tied the two ends of the roll together with a leather thong, and slipped it over his shoulder.

  Digging to the bottom of the chest, Flint found a large canvas sack and headed for the kitchen. As he passed the common room, Flint saw Tasslehoff quickly withdraw his hand from the bows.

  “I was just looking!” He followed Flint to the kitchen.

  The room was very small, really just a storeroom, or pantry, since the cooking was done in the hearth in the common room. The ceiling stretched up higher than in the other rooms, and vallenwood branches grew freely through holes poked and caulked in the side wall. Tanis utilized every available space with shelves. Smoked hams, bunches of dried herbs, bags of potatoes, squash, dried fruit, and garlic cloves hung from thick cords on dark beams. A small drop-leaf table folded down from a cupboard in the wall across from the archway, with two cane-backed chairs tucked beneath it.

  Working quickly, Flint grabbed a haunch of ham, an acorn squash, and two handfuls of dried apples and stuffed them into the sack. As he turned to leave, he spotted Tasslehoff inspecting several raisin buns from the local bakery, which Flint knew to be among Tanis’s favorite foods. Though usually generous to a fault, Tanis could be downright possessive about his buns.

  “Get away from those. We have what we need,” growled the dwarf.

  “I was just thinking,” Tas mused. “We could be gone for several days. These buns are already a day or two old.” He poked one to demonstrate, licking his finger afterward. “By the time we get back, they’ll be too stale to eat. It just seems like a shame, that’s all.”

  Flint glanced at th
e buns, then scowled at the kender, then looked back to the buns again. They were thick and shiny with glaze, and each had a star-shaped pattern laid out on top with raisins. Now Flint was staring at them, his empty stomach growling and churning after their all-night march. They did look quite tasty.

  “Just one,” mumbled Flint, grabbing a bun for himself. Half of it disappeared in the first enormous bite. With his cheeks puffed out like a squirrel’s and crumbs tumbling into his beard, he led the way back into Tanis’s common room. Tasslehoff followed, popping raisins into his mouth.

  Just as Flint raised the bun for a second bite, the door flew open and in strode Tanis. He carried a red-and-gray blanket, rolled lengthwise and slung over his shoulder. Bulges in the roll showed where other items were packed inside. Tanis lifted it over his head and dropped it onto the floor, saying, “You’ll have to reroll this, Flint. If I’d made it your size, I never could have slung it over my shoulder. Did you find everything we need?”

  Flint tried to speak, but his voice was muffled by a mouthful of raisin bun. He nodded, crumbs tumbling from his beard.

  “What’s that?” Tanis peered closely at Flint. “That’s not a raisin bun, is it?”

  “Want one?” answered Tas. He reached into his pouch and produced another of the sticky buns and handed it to Tanis. “Don’t wolf it like Flint,” he cautioned. “They’re a little dry.”

  Tanis looked from Flint’s sheepish face to Tas’s satisfied one, then snatched the sweet from the kender’s hand. “Let’s go, before you two eat me out of house and home.”

  “I found enough to keep us going for at least a couple of days,” Flint told him. “But what about my things? Did you remember my warm hat? How about those woolen socks that fit so nicely inside my leather hiking boots? And what about my axe?”

  Tanis clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I got everything.” He held out a pack containing the items Flint had asked for, including the dwarf’s beloved old axe. Over the years, its smooth wooden haft had developed two grooves in the shape of Flint’s meaty hands; it was as comfortable in his grip as a pair of old shoes on his feet.

  Anxious to be on the road, Flint took up the pack and the axe and marched toward the door, then suddenly looked apprehensive as he remembered something. “What about Selana? Did you see a tightly hooded woman with unusually pale skin anywhere?”

  Tanis shook his auburn head. “I saw no one.”

  Flint looked measurably relieved, and the tension seemed to slip from his thickset shoulders. “Wonderful. Now maybe we’ll see some good luck for once.” Settling the blanket pack into a more comfortable position, Flint opened the half-elf’s front door and called to his companions over his shoulder as he stepped over the threshold. “The sooner we leave, the sooner we’ll be coming home,” he said, popping the last bite of raisin bun past his lips. Flint turned back around to watch his step. Suddenly, bits of dry, sticky bun flew out of his mouth with a gasp of surprise.

  “Hello, Master Fireforge,” said the extremely fair-skinned, green-eyed woman in the blue robe, wisps of whitish hair escaping the confines of her cornflower-colored scarf.

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  PART II

  Chapter 7

  The Crashing Boar

  The paunchy human, born Waldo Didlebaum some thirty-five years earlier, took pride in his ability to recognize and seize opportunity. Consider his newest occupation, now barely twelve hours old—prognostication. Actually, it had a lot in common with his previous profession, which lasted two weeks: barding.

  Both had potential for great prestige and an accompanying lifestyle; they sometimes secured wealthy patrons or received court appointments. At the least they made good money in the streets and inns among the common folk. A comfortable life was all Waldo sought. After all, wasn’t that his right?

  The avaricious former pickpocket/juggler/brick-maker/sailor/blackmailer had recently entered the bard’s profession after seeing a smartly dressed bard perform to rave reviews and bags of coins at Thelgaard Keep in the north. Waldo was newly employed there (and underutilized, in his humble opinion), as third household steward. He saw the position as a temporary setback, the result of some bad judgment and even worse luck as a blackmailer—he’d put the squeeze on the burgher of Clonnisborough over a romantic indiscretion, only to discover the man was also the overlord of the most ruthless smuggling ring in Solamnia. In the interest of prolonging his life, Waldo had dropped everything and fled to Thelgaard.

  For all the years of his common life he had watched with envy the deference granted to those of noble birth. To simply dress and speak like nobility might get him the respect he desired; unfortunately, respect doesn’t fill a man’s empty belly. But professional respect, coupled with high financial rewards, Waldo had thought, would give him all that he desired from life.

  Some fancy clothes, a high-falutin’ name, and a story or two, he decided, were the only requirements for a successful career as a minstrel. That very night Sir Delbridge Fidington was born, and the name he’d assumed as steward, Hector Smithson, was lost forever.

  Using skills vaguely learned during one of his earlier professions, Waldo lifted some fine clothing from his employer, including the green jacket and breeches he now wore. He also had helped himself to a number of priceless items from the manor, knowing that proceeds from their sale would allow him to live comfortably until he established himself as a bard.

  Unfortunately, that process took much longer than he had expected or budgeted for. He repeated the stories he’d heard from the bard at Thelgaard Keep, but they never went over quite as well for him. He blamed that on the crowds. The farmers and other riffraff he was obliged to entertain certainly weren’t sophisticated enough to appreciate the sort of stories that amused nobles at Thelgaard Keep. Still he was certain that success would come as soon as he managed to tell the right story in front of the right crowd.

  In recent days, however, Waldo had begun suspecting that perhaps a bard’s job was not as easy as it looked. Perhaps it actually required talent; perhaps he had none. Indeed, perhaps he stank. He couldn’t even draw applause in an ale tent in a backwater such as Solace.

  And then, like a gift from the blue, he met a tinker with a magical bracelet and a loose tongue.

  After knocking out the tinker the night before, Waldo had slipped posthaste from Solace, walked the five miles east to Que-kiri in moonlight, then camped alongside the road on the north edge of the village. Hitting the trail early, he was headed for the nearest port on New Sea, to put as much ground between him and the conked-out tinker as possible. But the first ride he got was with a farmer who was not going to the sea. Instead, he was headed for his hometown, with a stop along the way, a remote village called Tantallon, high in the Eastwall Mountains, which, not coincidentally, was also as far as the road went.

  Having no love for sailing ships—actually, he was frightened of them—Waldo decided a remote village was as good a place as any for a prognosticator who wanted a comfortable life and anonymity, at least temporarily. Besides, his motto was “Never turn down anything free,” and that included rides.

  There was room on the wagon’s front bench for only one, so Waldo rode in back atop heaped burlap sacks filled with rutabagas. In spite of the lumpy bed, he clasped the lucky copper bracelet and thought smugly, “I think my luck is about to change.” He slipped the bracelet into his pack for safekeeping. Reclining on the rutabagas, he silently thanked the unfortunate tinker for his new good fortune.

  One bumpy, bruised hour later, the wagon rattled into a small village.

  “Ravenvale,” called the farmer as he reined in the wagon before the grocer’s shop on the village square.

  Delbridge hopped down to stretch his short legs. Brushing road dust from the hem of his green jacket, he asked, ““How far to Tantallon?”

  The farmer squinted as he hefted a rutabaga sack over his shoulder. “Don’t know for sure. Eight—no, probably ten miles north. The
trail gets a bit rough from here on, and it’s slow going.” With that, the farmer stepped into the store and began negotiating a price for his wares with the greengrocer.

  The sight of fresh produce made Delbridge’s stomach rumble, and he smacked his thick lips. Remembering the adage by which he ran his life—“Never buy what you can steal—” he looked quickly about and snatched up a wedge of yellow cheese from a vending cart outside the store. Passing the potent-smelling chunk under his pug nose for approval, he dropped it in his meager pack for a snack along the trail. Next he plucked two shiny red Goodlundian apples and gulped them in three hungry bites each.

  Before long, the farmer emerged from the store and clambered back onto the buckboard. Delbridge lowered himself onto the somewhat smaller but still lumpy heap of rutabaga bags and contemplated his immediate future as they rattled northward out of town. Delbridge glanced ruefully at what the farmer had optimistically called a road; it could easily have been mistaken for a goat path, and a well-churned one at that.

  First thing in Tantallon, Delbridge decided, he would need to purchase himself a new look. Fortune-tellers wore flowing, colorful robes and those odd little hat things, which were really just bits of cloth wrapped around their heads.

  Fortune-tellers also had unusual-sounding names, like Omardicar or Hosni. He settled on Omardicar. Omardicar the Omnipotent.

  The trees were budding, tiny green leaves poking out around the bark-covered limbs, which were still bleak and gray from winter. Dotting the foothills that climbed up toward the mountains were fluffy clumps of white and pink crab apple and plum trees in full bloom. Their soft-looking branches scraped along the sides of the wooden wagon as it jolted along the narrow trail, showering Delbridge and the rutabagas with fragrant, multicolored petals.

  The pastoral beauty was wasted on Delbridge. Lulled by the warm spring sun on his face and the swaying and bumping of the wagon on the rutted road, the bard-turned-soothsayer leaned back on the filthy bags and fell asleep.