"But still…" the dwarf protested as he drew on his russet leggings.

"The water goes into a circular, tubelike contraption under the floors." Miral's hands sketched in the air.

Flint dropped to his knees and peered under the tub. "How do you fill it?" he queried.

"Buckets."

Later, Flint retrieved Fleetfoot, now clean, curried, shiny, and-the final touch by a livery elf with a waggish sense of humor-with her mane braided and adorned with pink ribbons. Flint made her comfortable in a makeshift stall in an outbuilding near his shop and forge-a job that required two extra trips between shop and outbuilding because Fleet-foot deftly chewed through the stall's leather latch and arrived at Flint's shop moments after he did.

He finally barricaded the beast in the stall by wedging a log between the building door and a small apple tree. He had almost finished unpacking his ale-soaked saddlepack when a figure appeared at the doorway.

The figure was not immediately recognizable, outlined as it was in the setting sun, but the silhouette of the container the figure carried was obvious enough.

"Elvenblossom wine," Flint commented. "Only Tanis Half-Elven could get away with bringing me that."

Tanis smiled widely and placed the bottle on the wooden table. "I thought you could use it to start the fire in your forge," he said. "Quicker than kindling."

The two stood apart, Tanis with his arms folded before his muscular chest and Flint with a stubby hand draped with unpacked tunics in brown and emerald green. They smelled wonderfully of ale, from the dwarf's point of view, but Flint supposed he would have to wash them before he'd be accepted in court.

Flint finally spoke, his voice gruff.

"I suppose now that you're a full-grown lad, tall as an aspen and nearly strong enough to lift me with one arm, you're too good to hang around the forge with a middle-aged grouch of a dwarf."

The half-elf replied, "And I suppose that because you've traveled around the continent of Ansalon and fought off a raging tylor, you don't want me pestering you."

A few minutes passed in silence as the two studied each other. Then, as though each was satisfied with what he saw, they nodded greetings. Tanis settled onto a granite bench, slung one leg up on its surface, and rested a curved, muscular arm across a bent knee. His human forebear was evident in the huskiness of his frame, Hint thought.

The dwarf set to fixing up his forge after a full season of disuse and congratulated himself on the job he'd done of cleaning out the place when he'd left it five months before, at the end of autumn.

The forge, which resembled a raised fireplace, took up much of the back wall of the tiny home. A stone-and-mortar chimney rose up through the back wall like a thick tree trunk, with an opening at the back large enough to accommodate a kender-although Flint would let himself be damned to the Abyss before he'd allow one of those perpetually curious creatures near his beloved forge. The front ledge of the forge, designed for someone of elven proportions, was just above waist-height for the dwarf, an awkward height that often prompted grumbles from him.

"So," Flint said as he placed twigs and dry bark in the depression at the back of the forge, "what have I missed in the past five months?" He looked dubiously at the container of wine, then uncorked it and tossed a liberal splash on the kindling. "Hope this doesn't blast us to Xak Tsaroth," he muttered, patting his pocket for his steel and flint, then realizing he'd probably dropped both in the entrance to the sla-mori. "Got a flint and steel, lad?" he asked.

Tanis fished in his pocket, drew out the desired objects, and tossed them to Hint, one after the other. Mumbling "Thanks," the dwarf cracked the two together. With a whoosh, the kindling exploded into flame, sending the dwarf backpedaling hastily. When the conflagration dwindled to a glow, he warily placed a few pieces of coal on the kindling and waited for them to catch fire. He looked over at Tanis, ready to hear the local news.

"Lord Xenoth is still chief adviser, though Litanas has been added as Xenoth's assistant, at Porthios's request," Tanis explained, watching Flint reach to a nearby pile of coal and toss a shovelful onto the blaze. "The Speaker was unhappy at hurting Lord Xenoth's feelings-after all, Xenoth has been adviser to the Speaker of the Sun since Solostaran's father held that post, and the Speaker would not want Xenoth to feel that he could no longer handle the duties alone. Although that certainly seems to be true." The last words were uttered in a bitter tone.

"Grab the bellows, would you, lad, and give me a hand," Flint said. Tanis leaped over to that instrument and directed air on the fire. Flint, meanwhile, mounded coal on each side of the blaze. "So Xenoth took it ill?" Flint inquired.

"He wasn't happy." The curt reply spoke volumes about how vocal the adviser had been about the change.

Flint shook his head and spared a sympathetic thought for Litanas, even though Porthios's brown-eyed friend had never seemed particularly fond of dwarf or half-elf. Flint had long suspected that Porthios's friends made a career of making Tanis's life unhappy, though Porthios himself merely stayed aloof. But the dwarf rarely asked Tanis about that aspect of his life, and the half-elf never volunteered any but the most roundabout information on the subject.

Last autumn, before Flint had left for the winter, Litanas and Ulthen had appeared to be vying for wealthy Lady Selena's hand. The elven lady adored the attention, of course, but the situation chipped away at the friendship between Litanas and Ulthen.

As Tanis worked at the bellows, Flint fed chunk after chunk of coal into the fire and wondered how the latest development would affect either elf's suit for Lady Selena. Litanas had wealth, good bloodlines, and the position with Lord Xenoth. But Xenoth could easily destroy an assistant's standing at court if he felt moved to do so.

Ulthen, on the other hand, boasted a fine old Qualinost family, but he-and it-were perennially broke; years ago, tight finances had forced the elf to take on the job of teaching weaponry to Gilthanas, Porthios's younger brother.

At any rate, Flint wouldn't want to be on the bad side of the irascible old adviser-though it seemed that the dwarf perpetually was, anyway. Lord Xenoth, whose age and tenure gave him protection of sorts for his criticism of some of the Speaker's policies, was vocal in his condemnation of allowing any outsiders into the court.

But as Flint took his favorite wooden-handled hammer from a selection in his bench, he had another thought.

"Have you heard of the Graystone?"

From his position at the bellows, Tanis looked surprised at the turn of the conversation. "The Graystone of Gargath? Of course. Every elf child has to memorize the tale."

"Miral mentioned it to me just today." Flint's voice was distracted, most of his attention on the forge. "Tell me the story as the elves know it," Flint urged.

Tanis cast his friend a curious glance, but-careful to keep the bellows operating regularly-launched into the tale that Miral had made him learn by rote years earlier.

"Before the neutral god Reorx forged the world, the gods fought over the various races' spirits, which at that time were still dancing among the stars." He repositioned his hands on the wooden handles of the bellows.

Flint nodded, as if that checked out with the story the dwarves told. From a pile on a table next to the forge, he drew out a rod of iron about as long as a man's hand and as thick as a little finger, and heated the rod in the coals.

The half-elf continued to recite. "The gods of good wanted the races to have power over the physical world. The gods of evil wanted to make the races slaves. And the gods of neutrality wanted the races to have physical power over the world plus the freedom to choose between good and evil-which was the course eventually decided upon."