For a moment, an expression of anguish showed in the Speaker's aspen-leaf-green eyes. Then the proud visage returned. "He is the son of my brother's wife, and he will come with me. He will be raised in the manner of a true Qualinesti elf." Eld Ailea sighed, touching the newborn's cheeks and kissing his forehead, and handed the bundle wordlessly to the Speaker. "Does the little one have a name yet?" Solostaran asked, seeming to avoid looking at the still form in the corner bed. "Did Elansa name him?"

"Yes," the midwife whispered after a pause. She faltered over the lie. "She named him Tanthalas.' " Eld Ailea smoothed the wool of her skirt, not daring to meet the Speaker's eyes lest he guess the truth. But her gift to the child would be something lasting-a name. "Ever strong," the name meant in the human dialect Eld Ailea had learned as a child.

Solostaran merely nodded. He stepped to the doorway, holding the baby with the ease of an experienced father; his firstborn son, Porthios, was only fifty years old, only a youth. Eld Ailea pushed her suddenly weary body out of the chair and followed him. They paused in the night air at the window; it carried the freshness of spring, catching his golden hair and blowing it back from his brow. A gold circlet rested there, glimmering silver and scarlet in the light from the moons above.

"I fear I do him no favor, taking him to the court," the Speaker said. "I doubt he will find much peace there in his life. But he is my kin, and so I must."

Solostaran pulled the linen up around the infant's face, protecting him from the damp, and midwife and Speaker tarried before the window. Just then, a streak of silver flashed across the sky. A falling star, the light of the heavens come to Krynn, sped northward as it flung its fiery tail out behind. The Speaker appeared mindless of the omen, but Eld Ailea pressed hopeful fingers against the amulet that the dying Elansa had forced into her hand; to the midwife's people, a shooting star portended good fellowship. She hoped the star soared for the child sleeping against the Speaker's shoulder; a half-elf would need good friends.

"I will send others to see to Elansa," Solostaran said, his voice brittle for a moment. Then he left, taking the baby with him. Eld Ailea stayed at the window until the jingling of bells and the muffled beat of hooves on the tiled streets receded into the distance.

Far to the north, a small town slept in the darkness. It was a town of wooden houses, most tucked high among the embracing branches of ancient, towering trees, joined by footbridges high above the ground. In one of the few houses that stood upon the ground-and the only one with a dim light still glowing between the open shutters of its windows-a figure sat alone. He was short, a human child's height, but thick-limbed and broad-shouldered, and coarse whiskers curled down his chest. He sat at a table, turning a piece of wood over and over in his hands. He worked at it with a small knife, removing flakes of wood with precision despite his stubby fingers. Soon a smooth and delicate shape emerged from the soft wood: the image of a single aspen leaf. Only once had he seen an aspen, and that had been far away to the south, near the homeland he had left not so very long ago to seek his fortune in the wide world. The tree had stood, pale and slender, at the summit of a high pass, leading-or so his father had told him-toward the land of the elves beyond. Perhaps the Qualinesti elves had planted it there as a reminder of their forest home should they have occasion to travel that way. He had thought the tree one of the loveliest sights he had seen, the leaves as green and shiny as emeralds on one side, all frosted with silver on the other. Maybe one day he might have the fortune to see an aspen tree again. But for now, the wooden leaf would have to do.

Finally, the dwarf grew weary and, standing, blew out the candle on the table. As he passed the window on his way to his bed, a flash to the south caught his eye. It burned for a long second as it streaked across the darkened sky, and then it was gone.

"Reorx! I've never seen such a shooting star!" he muttered, shivering though the spring night was not chilly at all. And then, unsure why he stood gaping out the window like some whelp who'd never seen such a sight, he shook his head, closed the shutters, and trudged off to dream of aspen trees.

A. C. 288, Early Spring

"Flint Fireforge of Solace, dwarf and Mastersmith, by summons of the Speaker of the Sun!" a voice rang.

Flint peered warily through the gilded doors that swung open before him, and then his steel-blue eyes went wide with wonder as his gaze traveled up, up, and up-following walls of white marble, unaided by column or buttress or brace-nearly six hundred feet to the domed ceiling. To Flint's eyes, the dome seemed almost as distant as the sky itself, and indeed, the illusion was completed by a tiled mosaic that glittered on the dome's surface, portraying night on one side and day on the other. The two realms were divided by a translucent rainbow. The vastness of the Tower made him giddy just to look at it. Flint's jaw dropped and his eyes watered as he squinted to examine the tiled pattern far above, until a polite cough on the part of the servant who'd announced him brought him back to his senses. "Fireforge, don't act like a tourist," the dwarf chided himself softly. " Anybody 'd think you've never been out of Hillhome." His tiny native village lay far to the south of the elven lands. He stood as tall as he could, straightened his blue-green tunic and stepped farther into the chamber. A dozen courtiers, dressed in silver-belted, knee-length tunics in tones of brown, green, and russet, turned to follow his progress as his iron-heeled boots, so practical for battle, thundered on the marble floors. The padded shoes of his escort, in contrast, whispered on the marble. Flint tried to tiptoe, a difficult prospect in boots. He caught a slight smile, quickly stifled, on the face of his companion, whose brown, almond-shaped eyes nonetheless showed kindness. A few courtiers smiled, but most of the elven faces remained as if carved out of the ice of the polar cap to the south.

The western – Qualinesti – elves were descendants of the Silvanesti elves, who lived many weeks travel to the east. Nearly twenty-five hundred years before, the western elves had split with their eastern kin and, led by the hero Kith-Kanan, traveled to a forested refuge along the borders of the dwarven kingdom of Thorbardin. The Qualinesti elves had joined with the Thorbardin dwarves to build the Tower of the Sun.' They also had cooperated to build Pax Tharkas, a massive fortress between the two kingdoms, and had manned the fort together for more than fifteen hundred years, until the elves withdrew to Qualinost at the time of the Cataclysm, three centuries before, in the time of Flint's grandfather.

Since then, no nonelves had entered the Qualinesti capital.

A hiss dragged Flint's thoughts back to the present. 'The surroundings are a bit grand for a dwarf." The words that startled Flint came from a tall elf who stood near a pillar to the dwarf's left. The elf's silver-gray robe complemented the white hair that framed an icy face; elderly lips puckered in disdain.

Flint stopped, considered, and spoke to the elf, whose face showed the arrogance sometimes seen in those who believed a long life had given them reason to speak their minds regardless of the consequences. "Have we met, sir?" Flint queried, his voice low. "If not, it seems to me that you've formed an opinion with little information." His hand strayed to the battle-axe at his belt.