Chapter One
The Strange Request of a Blue Dragon Rider
It was autumn on Ansalon, autumn in Solace. The leaves of the vallenwood trees were the most beautiful they’d ever been, so Caramon said—the reds blazing brighter than fire, the golds sparkling more brilliantly than the newly minted coins that were coming out of Palanthas. Tika, Caramon’s wife, agreed with him. Never had such colors been seen before in Solace.
And when he stepped out of the inn, went to haul in another barrel of brown ale, Tika shook her head and laughed.
“Caramon says the same thing every year. The leaves are more colorful, more beautiful than the year before. It never fails.”
The customers laughed with her, and a few teased the big man, when he came back into the inn, carrying the heavy barrel of brown ale on his back.
“The leaves seem a tad brown this year,” commented one sadly.
“Drying up,” said another.
“Aye, they’re falling too early, before they’ll have a chance to completely turn,” another remarked.
Caramon looked amazed. He swore stoutly that this wasn’t so and even dragged the disbelievers out onto the porch and shoved their faces in a leafy branch to prove his point.
The customers—longtime residents of Solace—admitted he was right. The leaves had never before looked so lovely. At which Caramon, as gratified as if he’d painted the leaves personally, escorted the customers back inside and treated them to free ale. This, too, happened every year.
The Inn of the Last Home was especially busy this autumn. Caramon would have liked to ascribe the increase intrade to the leaves; there were many who made the pilgrimage to Solace, in these days of relative peace, to see the wondrous vallenwood trees, which grew here and nowhere else on Krynn (despite various claims to the contrary, made by certain jealous towns, whose names will not be mentioned).
But even Caramon was forced to agree with the practical-minded Tika.
The upcoming Wizards' Conclave was having more to do with the increased number of guests than the leaves—beautiful as they were.
A Wizards' Conclave was held infrequently on Krynn, occurring only when the top-ranking magic-users in each of the three orders—White, Red, and Black—deemed it necessary that all those of all levels of magic, from the newest apprentice to the most skilled sorcerer, gather to discuss arcane affairs.
Mages from all over Ansalon traveled to the Tower of Wayreth to attend the conclave. Also invited were certain individuals of those known as the Graystone Gem races, whose people did not use magic, but who were involved in the crafting of various magical items and artifacts. Several members of the dwarven race were honored guests. A group of gnomes arrived, encumbered with blueprints, hoping to persuade the wizards to admit them. Numerous kender appeared, of course, but they were gently, albeit firmly, turned away at the borders.
The Inn of the Last Home was the last comfortable inn before a traveler reached the magical Forest of Wayreth, where stood one of the Towers of High Sorcery, ancient headquarters of magic on the continent.
Many mages and their guests stopped at the inn on their way to the tower .
“They’ve come to admire the color of the leaves,” Caramon pointed out to his wife. “Most of these mages could have simply magicked themselves to the tower without bothering to stop anywhere in between.”
Tika could only laugh and shrug and agree with her husband that, yes, it must be the leaves, and so Caramon went about inordinately pleased with himself for the rest of the day.
Neither made mention of the fact that each mage who came to stay in the inn brought with him or her a small token of esteem and remembrance for Caramon’s twin brother, Raistlin. A mage of great power, and far greater ambition, Raistlin had turned to evil and very nearly destroyed the world. But he had redeemed himself at the end by the sacrifice of his own life, over twenty years ago. One small room in the inn was deemed Raistlin’s Room and was now filled with various tokens (some of them magical) left to commemorate the wizard’s life. (No kender were ever permitted anywhere near this room!)
The Wizards' Conclave was only three days away, and this night, for the first time in a week, the inn was empty. The mages had all traveled on, for the Wayreth Forest is a tricky place—you do not find the forest, it finds you. All mages, even the highest of their rank, knew that they might spend at least a day wandering about, waiting for the forest to appear.
And so the mages were gone, and none of the regulars had yet come back. The townsfolk, both of Solace and neighboring communities, who stopped by the inn nightly for either the ale or Tika’s spiced potatoes or both, stayed away when the mages came. Magic-users were tolerated on Ansalon, (unlike the old days, when they’d been persecuted), but they were not trusted, not even the white-robed mages, who were dedicated to good.
The first year the conclave had been held—several years after the War of the Lance—Caramon had opened his inn to mages (many inns refuse to serve them). There had been trouble. The regular customers had complained loudly and bitterly, and one had even been drunk enough to attempt to bully and torment a young red-robed wizard.
That was one of the few times anyone in Solace could remember seeing Caramon angry, and it was still talked of to this day, though not in Caramon’s presence. The drunk was carried out of the inn feet first, after his friends had removed his head from a fork in a tree branch grown into the inn.
After that, whenever a conclave occurred, the regulars took their business to other taverns, and Caramon served the mages. When the conclave ended, the regulars returned, and life went on as normal.
“But tonight,” said Caramon, pausing in his work to look admiringly at his wife, “we get to go to bed early.”
They had been married some twenty-two years, and Caramon was still firmly convinced that he had married the most beautiful woman in Krynn.
They had five children, three boys: Tanin, twenty years old, at the time of this story; Sturm, who was nineteen; sixteen-year-old Palin; and two small girls, Laura and Dezra, ages five and four. The two older boys longed to be knights and were always off in search of adventure, which is where they were this night. The youngest boy, Palin, was studying magic. (“It's a passing fancy,” Caramon said. “The boy’ll soon outgrow it.") As for the little girls... well, theirs is another story.
“It"ll be nice,” Caramon repeated, “to get to bed early for a change.”