It was obviously the one she was missing.
Kelida snatched the dagger and sheathed it awkwardly. “Just where did you find it?”
Lavim scratched his head in puzzlement. “I don’t remember, but I knew it would come in handy.”
Skillfully, he veered away from a mossy outcropping. “I heard Stanach tell you that you should learn. He was a little testy about the matter, but he’s right. I could teach you.”
“Would you?”
“Sure, Kelida, I’d be happy to.” Lavim peered up the trail. Stanach and Tyorl stood waiting. When he winked, Kelida thought he looked like a disreputable old conspirator. “In my youth I was a sort of champion of Kendertown. Well, actually, second place. Sort of. Second place is really quite impressive, especially if there are at least two contestants, don’t you think? Oops! Better catch up!”
Kelida smiled. She trailed after Lavim, her hand on the dagger’s hilt, and reminded herself to check to see what else of hers the old kender might have ‘found.’
The warm boulder felt good at Kelida’s back. Here, on the high ground, the sun of the morning and early afternoon had dried the dampness from the grass and heated the rocks. The tree line was, temporarily, below them. The rock-strewn hill rose like a small island from the forest. This, Kelida knew from questioning Stanach as they’d climbed the hill, was not part of the foothills.
“Just a bump in the ground,” the dwarf had said, his dark eyes on the tall, blue peaks to the south. “The real hills are farther east.”
Kelida rubbed her aching legs. ‘Real hills.’ As though this were a meadow! The outcropping against which she leaned was as comfortable as the bricks her mother used to heat in winter to warm cold feet. A cloud’s shadow slipped across the ground, and Kelida closed her eyes. The memory of her mother touched an empty, aching place within her. As though it had fled into that empty place, all the warmth seemed to bleed out of the day. Behind her eyes, she saw fire and death and a wide-winged dragon dropping from the sky.
To her left and a little below where she sat ran a laughing stream, cold from its passage through the earth. The sound of splashing and then an impatient snarl that could only have been Stanach’s cut through Kelida’s dark memories. She looked around.
Lavim, who had gone to fill their flasks at the stream, leaped up the slope and around the rocks bulging from the earth’s thin skin with all the unconcerned skill of a mountain goat. The kender dropped down beside her.
“I did not!” he shouted over his shoulder, his eyes filled with impish green light. He passed Kelida her flask and unstoppered his own to drink deeply. “Stanach fell in the stream. The way he tells it, you’d think I pushed him!”
“Did you?”
“Not me! He slipped on a mossy rock. Look at him. Now, at least, he’s got something to snap and snarl about.”
Kelida peered over her shoulder. Stanach, wet to the knees, stalked up the slope like a grudge-holding hunter. He saw Kelida sitting with Lavim, so he veered away to join Tyorl. Kelida watched him take a seat on the ground near the elf. Each sat silently, not sharing his thoughts. When she turned back to the old kender, she saw her dagger again in Lavim’s possession.
Lavim grinned and held up his hand, the dagger point balanced on his palm. “Look what I found again.”
“Lavim, give it back.”
The kender pulled back his hand and snapped his wrist. The blade now balanced on his other palm. “I thought you wanted me to teach you how to use it.”
“I do, but—”
“Well, then?”
Kelida smiled. “All right. But, I don’t think I need to know juggler’s tricks.”
“Oh, I dunno. It’d be easy to teach you some really simple tricks. I’m a really good juggler. Well, I s’pose it’s not polite to say that myself, but I am and—” He shrugged when Kelida frowned impatiently. “All right. How about this?”
The kender jerked his wrist again, brought the weapon hilt-first to his right hand, and sent the dagger flying from his grip with a swift and subtle movement.
Kelida looked around quickly but saw no sign of the dagger. “Where is it?”
Lavim gestured toward a scrubby growth of naked brush. “There, getting us some supper.” The kender scrambled to his feet, trotted across the stony ground, and reached into the brush. When he turned, he had a large gray-furred rabbit by the hind legs. The creature stirred weakly and then fell still. The slim, little dagger had pierced it cleanly through the heart. Lavim returned, tossed the rabbit down, and resumed his seat.
“That’s one Tyorl won’t have to waste a draw on later. A dagger is for stabbing and throwing, Kelida,” he said, his tone serious now. Clearly, he was enjoying his role as weapons instructor. “Those are about the only things you can do with a knife. Well, besides cutting meat and picking locks, maybe.”
He eyed her consideringly and then nodded. “You’ve got a good throwing arm. I saw that in the road outside Long Ridge. If those soldiers hadn’t been wearing mail, you’d have taken ’em down with those stones you were pegging at ’em. Of course, you should have been aiming at their heads. You were probably too distracted to think about that. Here, take the knife.”
The rabbit’s blood steamed on the blade in the cool air. Kelida took the hilt between two fingers.
“No, no, not that way. Here, like this.” Lavim laid the hilt along her palm, closed her fingers over the bone handle. “There, grip it like—I dunno, like you’re shaking hands with it, but not too tight. There, pleased to meet ’cha.”
The dagger’s hilt was cold in her hand. Blood tapped against the hem of her cloak. Kelida shuddered. Dark and creeping, she felt nausea rolling around in her stomach.
“Now,” Lavim said, “throw it. Throw overhand, just like you’d peg a rock, only a dagger’s lighter so you have to get a higher arc on it. Go ahead, try to hit that old stump over there.”
The blackened remains of a lightning-struck ash jutted up from a low scoop in the ground about five yards to the north. Kelida judged the distance, took a sighting, and threw. The blade wobbled a little, made the distance, and fell among the stump’s gnarled roots.
“Not too bad. You got where you wanted to go, but you have to really put your arm into it.” Lavim retrieved the dagger. “Try again.”
She did, and this time the dagger’s blade grazed the rough bark. On the third try, the dagger struck hard into the wood and stayed, quivering.
“There! You’ve got it now.” Lavim fetched the dagger again and dropped down beside his student. “Now, throwing is fine when you have the room for it, and when you’re more interested in hitting your target than keeping the dagger. The other thing a dagger is for is stabbing.”
Kelida shivered again. She closed her eyes and drew a long, steadying breath.
Lavim tugged at her sleeve. “Kelida, are you listening?”
Kelida nodded dumbly.
“All right, then. Stabbing is funny stuff. Well, not funny, really, but strange. Don’t stab down if you’re in close. All you’ll do is hit bone and make someone mad. You sure won’t disable him. Stab up from below. That way you stand a really good chance of hitting something important like a liver or kidney. Got it?”
“I—I think so.”
Lavim looked at her again. “You look a little green, Kelida, you feeling all right?”
Kelida swallowed against rising nausea. “I’m fine.”
“You sure? Maybe we should talk about stabbing later? Why don’t you try a few throws again?”
Kelida tried. Her first throw was off by a finger’s width, her second hit the mark.
“One more.” Lavim encouraged, “You’re getting the feel of it.” Kelida threw again and missed the stump by a yard.
Brown sedge and dead grass were thick around the stump. Kelida searched for a moment, but did not find the dagger. Beyond the stump, the hill dropped down toward the woods. Just before the dark line of the trees’ shadows, she saw sun glinting off steel, the dagger’s blade. Kelida started down the hill.