The Soulforge Read online

  “Wow! Would you look at that!” cried a shrill voice from the crowd. “Did you really swallow all those scarves? Doesn’t it tickle when they come out?”

  At first Raistlin thought the voice belonged to a child, then he noticed the kender. Dressed in bright green pants, a yellow shirt, and an orange vest, with an extremely long topknot of hair, the kender surged forward to the front of the crowd, which parted nervously at his coming, everyone clutching his purse. The kender stood in front of Raistlin, regarding him with openmouthed admiration.

  Raistlin cast an alarmed glance at Caramon, who hurried over to stand protectively beside the wooden bowl that held their money.

  The kender seemed familiar to Raistlin, but then kender are so appallingly different from normal people that they all look alike to the untrained eye.

  Raistlin thought it wise to distract the kender from the wooden bowl. He did this by first extracting one of his juggling balls from the kender’s pouch, then causing a shower of coins to fall from the kender’s nose, much to the diminutive spectator’s wild delight and mystification. The audience—quite a large audience now—applauded. Coins clinked into the bowl.

  Raistlin was taking a bow when, “For shame!” a voice cried.

  Raistlin rose from his bow to look directly into the face—the blotchy, vein-popping, infuriated face—of his schoolmaster.

  “For shame!” Master Theobald cried again. He leveled a quivering, accusing finger at his pupil. “Making an exhibition of yourself before the masses!”

  Conscious of the watching crowd, Raistlin tried to maintain his composure, though hot blood rushed to his face. “I know that you disapprove, Master, but I must earn my living the best way I know how.”

  “Excuse me, Master sir, but you’re blocking my view,” said the kender politely, and he reached up to tug at the sleeve of the man’s white robe to gain his attention.

  The kender was short and Master Theobald was shouting and waving his arms, which undoubtedly explains how the kender missed the sleeve and ended up tugging on the pouch of spell components hanging from the master’s belt.

  “I’ve heard how you’ve been earning your living!” Master Theobald countered. “Consorting with that witch woman! Using weeds to fool the gullible into thinking they’ve been healed. I came here on purpose to see for myself because I could not believe the stories were true!”

  “Do you really know a witch?” asked the kender eagerly, looking up from the pouch of spell components.

  “Would you have me starve, Master?” Raistlin demanded.

  “You should beg in the streets before you prostitute your art and make a mockery of me and my school!” Master Theobald cried.

  He reached out his hand to drag Raistlin down from the stump.

  “Touch me, sir”—Raistlin spoke with quiet menace—“and you will regret it.”

  Theobald glowered. “Do you dare to threaten—”

  “Hey, Little Fella!” Caramon cried, lumbering in between the two. “Toss that pouch over here!”

  “Goblin Ball!” shouted the kender. “You’re the goblin,” he informed Master Theobald and sent the pouch whizzing over the mage’s head.

  “This yours, huh, wizard?” Caramon teased, capering and waving the pouch in front of Theobald’s face. “Is it?”

  Master Theobald recognized the pouch, clapped his hand to his belt where the pouch should be hanging. Blue veins popped out on his forehead, his face flushed a deeper red.

  “Give that to me, you hooligan!” he cried.

  “Down the middle!” yelled the kender, making an end sweep around the Master.

  Caramon tossed the pouch. The kender caught it, amidst laughter and cheers from the crowd, who were finding the game even more entertaining than the magic. Raistlin stood on the stump, coolly watching the proceedings, a half-smile on his lips.

  The kender reached up to throw a long pass back to Caramon when suddenly the pouch was plucked out of the kender’s hand.

  “What the—” The kender looked up in astonishment.

  “I’ll take that,” said a stem voice.

  A tall man in his early twenties, with eyes as blue as Solamnic skies, long hair worn in an old-fashioned single braid down his back, took hold of the pouch. His face was serious and stem, for he was raised to believe that life was serious and stern, bound with rules whose rigid iron bars could never be bent or dislodged. Sturm Brightblade closed the pouch’s drawstrings, dusted off the pouch, and handed it, with a formal bow, to the furious mage.

  “Thank you,” said Master Theobald stiffly. Snatching back the pouch, he thrust it safely up his long, flowing sleeve. He cast a baleful gaze at the kender, and then, turning, he coldly regarded Raistlin.

  “You will either leave this place or you will leave my school. Which is it to be, young man?”

  Raistlin glanced at the wooden bowl. They had quite enough money for the time being, anyway. And in the future, what the master did not know would not hurt him. Raistlin would simply have to be circumspect.

  With an appearance of humility, Raistlin stepped down from the stump.

  “I am sorry, Master,” said Raistlin contritely. “It won’t happen again.”

  “I should hope not,” said Master Theobald stiffly. He departed in a state of high dudgeon that would only increase upon his return home to find that most of his spell components, to say nothing of his steel pieces, had disappeared—and not by magic.

  The crowd began to drift away, most of them quite satisfied, having seen a show well worth a steel coin or two. Soon the only people remaining around the stump were Sturm, Caramon, Raistlin, and the kender.

  “Ah, Sturm!” Caramon sighed. “You spoiled the fun.”

  “Fun?” Sturm frowned. “That was Raistlin’s schoolmaster you were tormenting, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Excuse me,” said the kender, shoving his way forward to talk to Raistlin. “Could you pull the rabbit out of the box again?”

  “Raistlin should treat his master with more respect,” Sturm was saying.

  “Or make the coins come out of my nose?” the kender persisted. “I didn’t know I had coins up my nose. You think I would have sneezed or something. Here, I’ll shove this one up there, and—”

  Raistlin removed the coin from the kender’s hand. “Don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself. Besides, this is our money.”

  “Is it? You must have dropped it.” The kender held out his hand. “How do you do? My name is Tasslehoff Burrfoot. What’s yours?”

  Raistlin was prepared to coldly rebuff the kinder—no human in full possession of his sanity, who wanted to keep firm hold on such sanity, would ever willingly associate with a kender. Raistlin recalled the stupefied look on Master Theobald’s face when he had seen his precious spell components in the hands of a kender. Smiling at the memory, feeling that he was in the kender’s debt, Raistlin gravely accepted the proffered hand. Not only that, but he introduced the kender to the others.

  “This is my brother, Caramon, and his friend, Sturm Brightblade.”

  Sturm appeared extremely reluctant to shake hands with a kender, but they had been formally introduced and he could not avoid the handshake without appearing impolite.

  “Hi, there, Little Fella,” Caramon said, good-naturedly shaking hands, his own large hand completely engulfing the kender’s and causing Tasslehoff to wince slightly.

  “I don’t like to mention this, Caramon,” said the kender solemnly, “since we’ve only just been introduced, but it is very rude to keep commenting on a person’s size. For instance, you wouldn’t like it very much if I called you Beer Barrel Belly, would you?”

  The name was so funny and the scene was so ludicrous—a mosquito scolding a bear—that Raistlin began to laugh. He laughed until he was weak from the exertion and was forced to sit down on the stump. Pleased and amazed to see his brother in such a good humor, Caramon burst out in a loud guffaw and clapped the kender on the back, kindly picked him up
afterward.

  “Come, my brother,” said Raistlin, “we should gather our belongings and start for home. The fairgrounds will be closing soon. It was very good meeting you, Tasslehoff Burrfoot,” he added with sincerity.

  “I’ll help,” offered Tasslehoff, darting eager glances at the many colored balls, the brightly painted box.

  “Thanks, but we can manage,” Caramon said hurriedly, retrieving the rabbit just as it was disappearing into one of the kender’s pouches. Sturm removed several of the silk scarves from the kender’s pocket.

  “You should be more careful of your possessions,” Tasslehoff felt called upon to point out. “It’s a good thing I was here to find them. I’m glad I was. You really are a wonderful magician, Raistlin. May I call you Raistlin? Thanks. And I’ll call you Caramon, if you’ll call me Tasslehoff, which is my name, only my friends call me Tas, which you can, too, if you like. And I’ll call you Sturm. Are you a knight? I was in Solamnia once and saw lots of knights. They all had mustaches like yours, only more of it—the mustache, I mean. Yours is a bit scrawny right now, but I can see you’re working on it.”

  “Thank you,” Sturm said, stroking his new mustache self-consciously.

  The brothers started moving through the crowd, heading toward the exit. Saying that he’d seen all he cared to see for the day, Tasslehoff accompanied them. Not caring to be seen in public in company with a kender, Sturm had been about to take his leave of them when the kender mentioned Solamnia.

  “Have you truly been there?” he asked.

  “I’ve been all over Ansalon,” said Tas proudly. “Solamnia’s a very nice place. I’ll tell you about it if you’d like. Say, I have an idea. Why don’t you come home with me for supper? All of you. Flint won’t mind.”

  “Who’s Flint? Your wife?” Caramon asked.

  Tasslehoff hooted. “My wife! Wait till I tell him! No, Flint’s a dwarf and my very best friend in all the world, and I’m his best friend, no matter what he says, except for maybe Tanis Half-Elven, who is another friend of mine, only he’s not here right now, he’s gone to Qualinesti where the elves live.” Tas stopped talking at this juncture, but only because he’d run out of breath.

  “I remember now!” exclaimed Raistlin, coming to a halt. “I knew you looked familiar. You were there when Gilon died. You and the dwarf and the half-elf.” He paused a moment, eyeing the kender thoughtfully, then said, “Thank you, Tasslehoff. We accept your invitation to supper.”

  “We do?” Caramon looked startled.

  “Yes, my brother,” said Raistlin.

  “You’ll come, too, won’t you?” Tasslehoff asked Sturm eagerly.

  Sturm was stroking his mustache. “My mother’s expecting me at home, but I don’t believe she’ll mind if I join my friends. I’ll stop by and tell her where I’m going. What part of Solamnia did you visit?”

  “I’ll show you.” Tasslehoff reached around to a pouch he wore on his back—the kender was festooned with pouches and bags. He pulled out a map. “I do love maps, don’t you? Would you mind holding that corner? There’s Tarsis by the Sea. I’ve never been there, but I hope to go someday, when Flint doesn’t need my help so much, which he does dreadfully right now. You wouldn’t believe the trouble he gets into if I’m not there to keep an eye on things. Yes, that’s Solamnia. They have awfully fine jails there.…”

  The two continued walking, the tall Sturm bent to study the map, Tasslehoff pointing out various places of interest.

  “Sturm’s taken leave of his senses,” said Caramon. “That kender’s probably never been anywhere near Solamnia. They all lie like … well, like kender. And now you’ve got us eating supper with one of them and a dwarf! It’s … it’s not proper. We should stick to our own kind. Father says—”

  “Not anymore he doesn’t,” Raistlin interrupted.

  Caramon paled and lapsed into an unhappy silence.

  Raistlin laid his hand on his brother’s arm in silent apology. “We cannot stay cooped up forever in our home, wrapped in a safe little cocoon,” he said gently. “We finally have a chance to break free of our bindings, Caramon, and we should take it! We’ll need a little time for our wings to dry in the sun, but soon we’ll be strong enough to fly. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I think so. I’m not sure I want to fly, Raist. I get dizzy when I’m up too high.” Caramon, added thoughtfully, “But if you’re wet, you should definitely go home and dry off.”

  Raistlin sighed, patted his brother’s arm. “Yes, Caramon. I’ll change my clothes. And then we’ll have dinner with the dwarf. And the kender.”

  2

  THE HOUSE OF FLINT FIREFORGE WAS CONSIDERED AN ODDITY and one of the wonders of Solace. Not only was it built on the ground, but it was also made entirely of stone, which the dwarf had hauled all the way from Prayer’s Eye Peak. Flint didn’t care what people said about him or his house. In the long and proud history of dwarfdom, no dwarf had ever lived in a tree.

  Birds lived in trees. Squirrels lived in trees. Elves lived in trees. Flint was neither bird, nor squirrel, nor elf, thanks be to Reorx the Forger. Flint did not have wings, nor a bushy tail, nor pointed ears—all of which, as everyone knows, are indigenous to tree-dwelling species. He considered living in trees unnatural as well as dangerous.

  “Fall out of bed and that’ll be the last fall you ever take,” the dwarf was wont to say in dire tones.

  It was useless to point out to him, as did his friend and business partner, Tanis Half-Elven, that even in a tree house one fell out of bed and landed on the floor, likely suffering nothing worse than a bruised backside.

  Tree house floors were made of wood, Flint maintained, and wood was known to be an untrustworthy building material, subject to rot, mice, and termites, likely to catch fire at any moment, leaky in the rain, drafty in the cold. A good, stiff puff of wind would carry it away.

  Stone, now. Nothing could beat good, solid stone. Cool in the summer, warm in the winter. Not a drop of rain could penetrate stone walls. The wind might blow as hard as it liked, blow until it was red in the face, and your stone blocks would never so much as quiver. It was well known that stone houses were the only houses to have survived the Cataclysm.

  “Except in Istar,” Tanis Half-Elven would tease.

  “Not even stone houses can be expected to survive having a great bloody mountain dropped down on top of them,” Flint would return, always adding, “Besides, I have no doubt that way down in the Blood Sea, where all know the city of Istar was cast, certain lucky fish are living quite comfortably.”

  On this particular day, Flint was inside his stone house attempting to make some sense of the disorder in which he lived. Disorder was a constant state of affairs ever since the kender had moved in.

  The two unlikely roommates had met on market day. Flint was showing his wares, and Tasslehoff, passing through town on his way to anywhere interesting, had stopped at the dwarf’s stall to admire a very fine bracelet.

  What happened next is subject to who tells the story. According to Tas, he picked up the bracelet to try it on, discovered it fit perfectly, and was going off in search of someone to ask the price.

  According to Flint, he came out of the back of the booth, after a refreshing nip of ale, to find Tasslehoff and the bracelet both disappearing rapidly into the crowd. Flint nabbed the kender, who loudly and shrilly proclaimed his innocence. People stopped to watch. Not to buy. Just to watch.

  Tanis Half-Elven, arriving on the scene, broke up the altercation, dispersed the crowd. Reminding the dwarf in low tones that such scenes were bad for business, Tanis persuaded Flint that he didn’t really want to see the kender hung from the nearest vallenwood by his thumbs. Tasslehoff magnanimously accepted the dwarf’s apology, which Flint couldn’t recall ever having made.

  That evening, the kender had showed up on Flint’s doorstep, along with a jug of excellent brandy, which Tasslehoff claimed to have purchased at the Inn of the Last Home and which he had brought the dwarf by way of a peace offeri
ng. The next afternoon, Flint had awakened with a hammer-pounding headache to find the kender firmly ensconced in the guest bedroom.

  Nothing Flint did or said could induce Tasslehoff to leave.

  “I’ve heard tell that kender are afflicted with—what do they call it?—wanderlust. That’s it. Wanderlust. I suppose you’ll be coming down with that soon,” the dwarf had hinted.

  “Nope. Not me.” Tas had been emphatic. “I’ve gone through that already. Outgrown it, you might say. I’m ready to settle down. Isn’t that lucky? You really do need someone to look after you, Flint, and I’m here to fill the bill. We’ll share this nice house all through the winter. I’ll travel with you during the summer. I have the most excellent maps, by the way. And I know all the really fine jails.…”

  Thoroughly alarmed at this prospect, more frightened than he’d ever been in his life, even when held captive by ogres, Flint had sought out his friend, Tanis Half-Elven, and had asked him to help him either evict the kender or murder him. To Flint’s amazement, the half-elf had laughed heartily and refused. According to Tanis, life shared with Tasslehoff would be good for Flint, who was much too reclusive and set in his ways.

  “The kender will keep you young,” Tanis had said.

  “Aye, and likely I’ll die young,” Flint had grumbled.

  Living with the kender had introduced Flint to a great many people in Solace, most notably the town guardsmen, who now made the dwarf’s house their first stop when searching for missing valuables. The sheriff soon grew tired of arresting Tas, who ate more than his share of prison food, walked off with their keys, and persisted in making helpful suggestions about how they could improve their jail. Finally, at the suggestion of Tanis Half-Elven, the sheriff had decided to quit incarcerating the kender, on the condition that Tas be remanded into Flint’s custody. The dwarf had protested vehemently, but no one listened.