Well, Owen gave Fizban a really odd look.
Fizban didn't see it. He stuck his maltreated hat in a pocket of his robes, picked up his staff, which had been lying in the snow waiting for him, I guess, and walked out into the sun. Owen and I followed; Owen carrying the dragonlances and me carrying my most precious possessions.
"Now," said Fizban, "the kender and I have to travel to Lord Gunthar's, and you, Owen Glendower, have to return to your village and prepare to face the draconian raiding party. No, no, don't mind us. I'm a great and powerful wizard, you know. I'll just magic us to Lord Gunthar's. You haven't got much time. The draconian ran off to alert its troops. They'll move swiftly now. If you go back into the dragon's lair, you'll find that the cave extends all the way through to the other side of the mountain. Cut your distance in half and it will be safe traveling, now that the dragon's dead.
"No, no, we'll be fine on our own. I know where Lord Gunthar's house is. Known all along. We make a left at the pass instead of a right," he said.
I was about to say that's what I'd said all along, only Owen was obviously real anxious to get on his way.
He said good-bye and shook hands with me very formally and politely. And I gave him back the painting and told him — rather sternly — that if he thought so much of it he should take better care of it. And he smiled and promised he would. And then he shook hands with Fizban, all the time looking at him in that odd way.
"May your moustaches grow long," said Fizban, clapping Owen on both shoulders. "And don't worry about my hat. Though, of course, it will never be the same." He heaved a sad sigh.
Owen stood back and gave us both the knight's salute. I would have given it back, only a snuffle took hold of me right then, and I was looking for a handkerchief. When I found it (in Fizban's pouch) Owen was gone. The snuffle got bigger and it probably would have turned into a sob if Fizban hadn't taken hold of me and given me a restorative shake. Then he raised a finger in the air.
"Tasslehoff Burrfoot," he said, and he looked very solemn and wizardly and so I paid strict attention, which I must admit sometimes I don't when he's talking, "you must promise me that you will never, ever, ever, tell anyone else about the dragonlances."
"What about them?" I asked, interested.
His eyebrows nearly flew up off his head and into the sky, which is probably where my eyebrows were at the moment.
"You mean… um… about them not working?" I suggested.
"They work!" he roared.
"Yes, of course," I said hurriedly. I knew why he was yelling. He was upset about his hat. "What about Theros? What if he says something? He's a very honest person."
"That is Theros's decision," said Fizban. "He'll take the lances to the Council of Whitestone and we'll see what he does when he gets there."
Well, of course, when Theros got to the Council of Whitestone, which — in case you've forgotten — was a big meeting of the Knights of Solamnia and the elves and some other people that I can't remember. And they were all ready to kill each other, when they should have been ready to kill the evil dragons, and I was only trying to prove a point when I broke the dragon orb (That's ORB not HERB!) and I guess they would have all been ready to kill me, except Theros came with the dragonlances and he threw a lance at the Whitestone and shattered it — the stone, not the lance — so I guess he had decided the lances worked, after all.
Fizban took his slobbered-on hat out of his pocket and perched it gingerly on his head. He began to hum and wave his hands in the air so I knew a spell was coming on. I covered my face and took hold of his sleeve.
"And what about Owen?" I asked. "What if he tells the other knights about the lances?"
"Don't interrupt me. Very difficult, this spell," he muttered.
I kept quiet or at least I meant to keep quiet, but the words came out before I could stop them, in the same sort of way a hiccup comes out, whether you want it to or not.
"Owen Glendower's a knight," I said, "and you know how knights are about telling the truth all the time. He's bound by whatever it is that knights are bound by to tell the other knights about the lances, isn't he?"
"If he does, he does. It's his decision," said Fizban. And he was suddenly holding a flapping black bat in his hand. "Wing of bat!" he shouted at nobody that I could see. "Not the whole damn…" Muttering, he let the bat loose, glared at me, and sighed. "Now I'll have to start over."
"It doesn't seem to me very fair," I commented, watching the bat fly into the cave. "If it's Theros's decision to tell or not to tell and Owen's decision — then it should be my decision, too. I mean whether or not to say anything about the lances. Working," I added.
Fizban stopped his spell casting and stared at me. Then his eyebrows smoothed out. "By gosh. I believe you've caught on at last. You are absolutely right, Tasslehoff Burr-foot. The decision will be yours. What do you say?"
Well, I thought and I thought and I thought.
"Maybe the lances aren't magical," I said, after thinking so hard that my hair hurt. "Maybe the magic's inside us. But, if that's true, then some people might not have found the magic inside themselves yet, so if they use the lances and think that the magic is outside themselves and inside the lances, then the magic that isn't inside the lances will really be inside them. And after a while they'll come to understand — just like Owen did, though he doesn't — and they'll look for the magic inside and not for the magic outside."
Fizban had the sort of expression that you get on your face when you're sitting in a rope swing and someone winds the rope up real tight, then lets it loose and you spin round and round and throw up, if you're lucky.
"I think I better sit down," he said, and he sat down in the snow.
I sat down in the snow and we talked some more and eventually he knew what I was trying to say. Which was that I would never, ever, ever say anything to anybody about the dragonlances not working. And, just to make certain that the words didn't accidentally slip out, like a hiccup, I swore the most solemn and reverent oath a kender can take.
I swore on my topknot.
And I want to say right here and now, for Astinus and history, that I kept my oath.
I just wouldn't be me without a topknot.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I finished my story. They were all sitting in the Upper Gallery, next to poor Owen Glendower, listening to me. And they were about the best audience I'd ever had.
Tanis and Lady Crysania and Laurana and Caramon and Owen's son and Lord Gunthar all sat staring at me like they'd been frozen into statues by the white dragon's frost breath. But I'm afraid the only thing I was thinking about then was my topknot shriveling up and falling off. I was hoping it didn't, but that's a risk I figured I had to take. I just couldn't let Owen Glendower die of a fit when telling this story might help him, though I didn't see how it could.
"You mean to say," said Lord Gunthar, his moustaches starting to quiver, "that we fought that entire war and risked our very lives on dragonlances that were supposed to be magical and they were just ordinary lances?"
"You said it," I told him, hanging onto my topknot and thinking how fond I was of it. "I didn't."
"Theros of the Silver Arm knew they were ordinary," Lord Gunthar went on, and I could see him getting himself all worked up over it. "He knew the metal was plain steel. Theros should have told someone -
"
"Theros Ironfeld knew, and Theros Ironfeld split the Whitestone with the dragonlance," Lady Crysania said coolly. "The lance didn't break when he threw it."
"That's true," said Lord Gunthar, struck by the fact. He thought this over, then he looked angry again. "But, as the kender reminded us, Owen Glendower knew. And by the Measure he should have told the Knight's Council."