“You didn’t always used to be a barmaid, did you? You used to live on a farm with your family, right? Before the dragon—uh, well, before you were a barmaid. Well, if you like farming, you’d love the valleys in Khur. I’d be happy to take you there. That way I’d get back, too. For a while, anyway. After we take care of Stormblade.” He paused. “Say, you don’t suppose this Hauk fellow is going to want to come to Khur, too, do you?”
Kelida watched sun dazzle on stone. “Why would he want to?”
“Well, if you were there he might. He probably knows you’re coming to Thorbardin to rescue him, and he’ll probably be grateful. I wonder if they’ve got him in a gaol or a dungeon? Gaols are all right, I guess, for limited duration. The food’s usually really nasty, but it’s pretty regular.
“Dungeons? I don’t like them so much. The food’s not much worse, but you don’t see it as often. The people who put you there tend to forget about you after a while.
“You know, Thorbardin’s a really big place. Not one city—six of ’em. They’re all sort of connected somehow. Maybe with bridges. And it’s built right inside the mountain. Can you imagine that?
“There’s gardens, too. Did you know that? But, if they’re inside the mountain, how do they get sunlight? How do they get rain? Well, I suppose they could save up the rain and water their gardens, but that would be a big job, don’t you think? Even if they did—water the gardens, I mean—that still doesn’t solve the problem of sunlight. You can’t carry that in a bucket.”
Lavim rambled on. Kelida only half heard him. She was thinking of dungeons and gaols and wondering if Hauk did, indeed, know that someone was coming to help him.
He must know, she thought. He must know that Tyorl is searching for him. She ran her hand along the sheathed flat of the Kingsword. He has to know his imprisonment is because of this sword.
“Of course, if you were going to carry sunlight in buckets, the buckets would have to have a tight lid, wouldn’t they?”
If he’s alive, she thought, Hauk knows. Can he still be alive? It had been six days since the night he’d walked out of Tenny’s. She thought of Piper, the mage, and the cairn on the hill in the forest, and of Stanach’s eyes when he spoke of his kinsman’s death. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her drawn up knees.
She tried to hear Hauk’s voice, find the little break in it that told of a gentleness hiding behind the bear’s rumble. She imagined that if she could always hear his voice in her memory, he would still be alive. If she could always see his eyes as he laid the sword at her feet, he would not be dead. She had built, of the few moments she’d spoken with him, an image of gallantry and kindness, and she no longer remembered that, in those real moments in Tenny’s, she had feared him.
“… And they’d have to be dark buckets—maybe lined with lead or something like that—so the sunlight wouldn’t always be leaking out. Hmmm. I wonder if they’ve thought of that.”
Kelida closed her fingers around the scabbarded sword. Kingsword, Stanach called it. Stormblade. For Kelida it would always be the sword of the man who risked her life for a gamble and then gambled with his own to keep her safe.
Bushes rustled, a stone skittered on the path, and Lavim scrambled from his rocky perch, scooping rocks back into his pouch. Kelida looked around and saw Tyorl standing beside her. She moved to get to her feet, but the elf waved her back.
“Not yet. Lavim. Get up the trail and catch up with Stanach, will you?”
The kender slung his hoopak across his back. “Sure, Tyorl. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Go find Stanach. And don’t wander.”
Grinning happily, the kender loped away up the trail, pack and pouches jogging.
“I heard him halfway up the trail.” Tyorl said. He settled on the boulder that the kender had abandoned. “What was he on about?”
Kelida smiled. “Thorbardin and sunlight in lead-lined buckets.”
“Sunlight in—?” Tyorl scratched his jaw. “Why?”
“Oh, for the gardens. He says there are a lot of gardens in Thorbardin. Are there?”
The elf shrugged. “I don’t know. The city’s inside the mountain so I don’t see how there could be. Kender-talk is half dreams and half imagination.”
Kelida watched in silence for a long moment as Tyorl ran his thumb along the longbow’s string. “Where is Stanach?”
“Up the trail.” Tyorl shrugged again. “Running scout.”
“Shouldn’t we catch up with him?”
Tyorl looked into the shadows. Though he heard nothing but wind in the trees, he shook his head. “In a minute. It’s a long climb up the trail. We can wait here still.”
Kelida nodded and fell silent, watching the shadows weaving on the trail. Tyorl watched the sunlight running like gold thread through her hair. You see, the thing about the buckets, Lavim told himself, is that they might work and they might not. But you never know until you try, right?
The wind sighed in the treetops, and Lavim trotted up the trail. Right, he thought. Of course, if they do have gardens in Thorbardin, then they must’ve figured something out about the light.
Lavim had decided that he wasn’t going to worry about this new habit of talking to himself. Besides, he enjoyed it almost as much as talking to someone else. For one thing, he never interrupted himself. Besides, it seemed as though Stanach and Tyorl just couldn’t be happy unless they were cutting him off in mid-sentence. Kelida listened, sometimes. But, all in all, he was beginning to enjoy his conversations with himself. He gave and got good answers.
He left the path where broken bushes and trampled underbrush showed him Stanach’s trail.
Just like a dwarf! He cuts a path a mile wide so everyone can see where he’s been. They’re not real good in the woods, dwarves, are they?
A stone outcropping rose tall and gray before him. Lavim grinned. I’ll bet he went this way. Why didn’t he stick to the path? Oh, well. I’ll ask him when I find him.
He grabbed for hand and footholds and scrambled up the stone. Oh, yes, Stanach had been here. The lichen clinging to the rock was scuffed and torn. Lavim shook his head. Might as well paint a sign in red that says, I WENT THIS WAY.
Sunlight winked on something smooth and red-brown where it lay in a narrow crevice in the stone. Lavim reached for the gleam and frowned when he picked up Piper’s flute.
Lavim drew a long breath and let it out in a low whistle. Piper’s flute!
What a find!
He raised the flute to his lips, ready at once to make good his resolve to see if the flute would teach him songs. He tried a note and then another. Before he could draw another breath, he was stopped by a sudden thought. Now why, he thought, would Stanach leave this up here? He’s always real careful not to leave things lying around—annoyingly careful—and here is Piper’s flute, just tossed aside.
The kender rubbed his thumbs along the smooth cherry wood, then held the flute up to the sunlight, watching the red and brown glints deep inside the wood. Had the dwarf dropped it?
Lavim snorted. Not likely! It was Piper’s flute and, so Stanach said, magic. You don’t just drop a magic flute that’s been hanging from your belt for two days and that you check every six minutes to make sure is still there.
Lavim peered closely at the stone beneath his feet. Someone else had been here, too. The dirt around the small pine at the crest of the stone showed two sets of footprints.
Not Tyorl’s footprints, the kender thought. He dropped to his haunches and laid his hand along the prints. One set was narrower than the other, but both were of a length. Another dwarf.
Now why do you suppose there’d be another dwarf way out here in the middle of the woods? Oh, he thought, right, the whadyacallems. Theiwar.
“Right,” he said, “Theiwar. That means—” Lavim snapped his mouth shut and looked around. Wind sighed in the underbrush. The river in the valley below whispered and laughed. A jay scolded from the top of an oak and took noisy wing. There was no one around, but he’d heard a voice, hollow as the wind or a distant flute song. “Uh, hello?”