Joy, he thought, because I never thought to see you again; sorrow that I should find you the vacant and empty-eyed corpse of a place once beautiful, now only coldly lovely.
The chill wind of late autumn moaned through the deserted city, sobbing around the eaves of buildings once brimming with life. It rattled through the last golden leaves of the countless aspens lining the streets. Once the sound had been rippling laughter, now it was a weak and weary dirge.
Beneath the wind, Tyorl heard the voices of memory. His father’s quiet laughter, his sister’s song. Where were they now?
Flown into exile with the rest of their people. Tyorl wondered if he would ever see them again. He shook his head as though to shake off the memories and the questions.
The houses and shops and all the buildings of Qualinost were made of quartz the color of dawn’s light. These, too, were empty now, their windows dark, their doorways filled with shadows and the echoes of memories only Tyorl noticed. Broad paths of shimmering crushed stone marked the streets and avenues of Qualinost. All along these glittering paths were black fire-rings and piles of gray ashes, like dirty thumb marks on the streets of Qualinost.
Kelida, shivering and silent beside Stanach, leaned against an aspen’s thick, gray trunk. The city was not ravaged, only empty, but she felt here the same sense of despair she had felt when she looked at the blackened, skeletal beams and posts of her own home.
Stanach, who counted his mountain home among the riches of his life, recognized Tyorl’s sorrow. He looked from Tyorl to Kelida, he homeless, she clanless, and Stanach shivered.
It was Lavim who finally broke the silence. There was nothing in his deep, merry voice to tell any that he sensed the elf’s sorrow or the dwarf’s pity. He sidled up beside Tyorl and pointed to the nearest pile of ashes.
“Tyorl, what are those? They look like the remains of watch-fires, but there’s too many of ’em to be that.”
Tyorl glanced down at the kender. “They were not watch-fires, kenderkin. I wasn’t here to see it, but I’m told that the people burned most of what they couldn’t carry with them into exile. Those are the marks of funeral pyres, and the funeral was for a way of life.”
Lavim tucked his blue-knuckled, freezing hands beneath his arms.
“What a shame, Tyorl. Burning is the worst, if you ask me. Whatever it was, I would have hidden it, or carried it in my pouches, or sold it to a gnome vendor. Burning is such a waste. Now, you have to start all over again.”
“It would never be the same. It has changed.” He might have said ‘it has vanished’ or ‘it has died.’
Stanach shook his head. “All who live change,” he said quietly. “Even, it seems, elves.”
Tyorl’s blue eyes, soft only a moment ago with his sadness, iced over and grew hard. “No, dwarf. We have known no change for too many long centuries. The only change an elf knows is death.”
Stanach snorted impatiently, already regretting his fumbling attempt at comfort. “Then you’re dead already, Tyorl, and wasting good air that others could be breathing. Your city, your way of life has changed. Perhaps we should consider you not an elf but a ghost, eh?”
Tyorl drew a breath to answer, then turned back to the silent city.
“Perhaps.”
Lavim watched as Tyorl led Kelida away. His long eyes narrowed, and he absently twirled the end of his thick white braid around a finger.
“Stanach,” he said, “if the elves burned everything before they left here, what’s Tyorl going to find for Kelida to wear?”
Stanach shrugged. “I don’t know. Ever since we got within a mile of this place, that damn elf has been more ghost than anything else. Maybe he’ll spirit up something for her.” Stanach started down the road. “Let’s go, Lavim. The sooner we get out of here, the easier I’ll be.”
Lavim fell in beside the dwarf. He still didn’t know half of what was going on. Kelida’s sword, some missing ranger, and a couple of dwarven thanes all figured into it somehow. And who was Piper?
A small wooden stag, frozen by the woodcarver’s art into a graceful leap, lay caught in a tangled nest of silver necklaces and golden earrings. A child’s toy amid a mother’s jewelry. Stanach reached for the oak stag and freed it as gently as though it lived. He turned it over idly and then smiled. Carved in the belly of the stag with deft strokes that might have been only the careful feathering of the beast’s fur, was a stylized anvil bisected by a dwarven F rune. A dwarf’s craft.
Stanach put the stag carefully aside and looked around the room. The place was a shambles.
Beautifully wrought tapestries, woven floor coverings, and soft pillows, whose designs were picked out in bright silk thread, lay scattered about the room as though thrown down in desperate haste. A tall wardrobe, elegantly painted with a delicate, stylized hunting scene, lay where it had fallen during someone’s frantic preparations for exile.
Lavim staggered into the room, his arms loaded with a pile of mismatched clothing. “Here you go, Stanach. Tyorl says to look through these for Kelida.”
“Aye, and where is she?”
“Taking a wash. She insisted, and Tyorl didn’t argue. Said it would give him some time to look for gear.” Lavim dumped the clothes on the floor and dropped down among them, happily rummaging through cloaks and hunting costumes, boots and blouses. “I guess they didn’t burn everything before they left, did they?
“You know, Stanach, this place must’ve been really nice not so long ago. Its too bad the elves decided to leave. Me, I’d make those draconians drag me out of a place like this before I’d leave.”
Fear, like shadows, hung in the air. It clung to the lovely buildings, lurked in the darkness of the apple garths and pear groves. Fear and sorrow walked the streets and laughed darkly at each dying aspen.
Stanach shook his head. Fear was nothing a kender could understand, and there was no sense wasting time trying to explain it. The dwarf crossed the room and dropped cross-legged onto the icy marble floor. Curbing his impatience to be out of this sad room, this sad house, and the whole deserted city, he sorted through the clothing before Lavim could find a way to stuff the half of it into his pouches. The kender’s pockets and pouches were bulging already. His middle looked too thick for one Stanach knew to be sapling-thin. If the search through the deserted homes and shops of Qualinost had been painful for Tyorl and uncomfortable for Kelida and Stanach, it had been a kender’s dream for Lavim.
Stanach rescued a thick cloak from Lavim’s interest. The color of pine boughs and lined with gray rabbit fur, it had been made for someone about Kelida’s height and size. Next, he found a pair of hard-soled doeskin boots. The boots felt too heavy for their look. He peered into the interior of one and pinched an edge. The soft, supple leather was two layers thick and lined between with goose down.
“These look like they’ll probably fit her.”
Lavim picked up first one boot and then the other. “Nice stuff, Stanach. Kelida’s going to be warmer than all of us.”
“She’s been colder than all of us this far. It’s about time her luck turned. Why don’t you take those to her and then go see if you can find Tyorl and hurry him up. And, Lavim—”
The kender turned, his arms full of cloak and boots. “Yes?”
“Knock before you go in, empty out your pouches before you find Tyorl, and don’t take anything else on your way.”
Lavim’s wrinkled face was all innocence.
Stanach’s expression was firm. “And don’t bother spinning any of your tales about how you came by the stuff—just get rid of it.”
“But, Stanach—”
“I mean it, Lavim. That damn ghost of an elf is touchy enough. By the look of him, you’d think he was giving away his mother’s best gowns.”
“Maybe he is,” Lavim said thoughtfully. His eyes, in their webbing of wrinkles, looked unaccountably wise. “Well, not gowns, because Kelida’s probably going to be wearing breeches and not a gown, but maybe Tyorl used to know the person this stuff belongs to.”