Laurana flounced, and Tanis suddenly saw the spoiled girl she'd been only a few years before. Her voice, however, was that of a woman. "Gilthanas, I will do as I please," she snapped. "We have discussed this. Now leave it."

Tanis felt awkward. The days he and Gilthanas had spent together, running about the city or trekking deep within the forest, seemed shadowy and far away now, as if they were a dream rather than something that had ever truly been. They had been friends. Now Tanis couldn't think of anything to say, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

Gilthanas nodded shortly at the two of them. "I'll leave, then." He wheeled and stalked away, threading through the departing merchants and their carts.

"I am sorry," Tanis said, more to himself than to Laurana, but the elven woman didn't appear to have heard him. Instead, she took his hand and drew him along with her through the Grand Market.

"I don't know what father has planned for tomorrow," she complained. "All I know is that no one in government ever simply comes out and says anything. Even the most ordinary proclamation has to be accompanied by sheaves of parchments, yards of ribbon, and gallons of sealing wax."

Tanis found himself smiling. Adjusting for a certain amount of hyperbole, Laurana was right.

"Perhaps they are declaring tomorrow National Elvenblossom Wine Day," he suggested.

Tanis was so rarely whimsical that it took Laurana a moment to match her mood to his. She laughed. "Or passing a resolution urging every elf to eat quith-pa at every meal?"

She giggled again, and suddenly Tanis felt like a child- not the sullen youngster he had been, but the carefree child he could have been under different circumstances. The thought made him both happy and sad.

As always with the half-elf, it seemed, sadness won out. "Most likely, it has to do with the tylor," Tanis said.

Laurana shivered. 'That's probably true. Palace guards were out all day, but none was able to find the creature."

She appeared to lapse into deep thought, and he wondered what conversational shift she was making now.

They had reached the edge of the Kith-Kanan mosaic, leaving the clamor of the Grand Market behind them. Laurana drew him up the stone steps and through a break in the blooming lilac bushes at the edge of the mosaic, into a small clearing. The bushes dulled the sound from the public area; suddenly, Tanis was aware of how alone they were.

Laurana pulled a small, tissue-wrapped package from the pocket of her dress. "I have something for you," she said. "I've been carrying it around all week, hoping to see you."

"What is it?" he asked, puzzled, but Laurana only smiled mysteriously. At that moment, she was not at all a child, and Tanis shifted uncomfortably.

"You'll see," she said, and then suddenly she stood on her toes and kissed his cheek, ignoring his incipient beard, her touch as cool and soft as the spring air. A scant moment later, she had slipped through the lilacs and out of sight, only the faint fragrance of mint lingering where she had been. Bemused, Tanis touched his cheek, unsure what she was up to. With a shrug, he unwrapped the small parcel.

A sudden coldness sank deep into Tanis's stomach despite the warmth of the spring air. On his palm, in the sunlight filtering between the new leaves of the trees, glimmered a ring. It was a simple thing, fashioned of seven tiny, interlocking ivy leaves, gleaming as bright and gold as the hair of the elven woman who had given it to him. It was lovely, delicate, a ring one might place on the hand of a lover. Tanis shook his head, clenching the ring in his fist.

Still shaking his head, Tanis emerged from the lilacs moments later, slipping the slender ring into the pocket of his vest until he could ponder its meaning.

"Interesting," said a cold voice.

Tanis whirled. Standing at the top of the steps, shaking in anger as several laden tradesmen watched and waited to get by, stood Lord Xenoth.

"Tanthalas Half-Elven," the elf lord said portentously. "You will come to regret this."

As Tanis, blinking, watched Lord Xenoth stomp away in indignation, he had no doubt that the elf lord was right.

The sound of hammer blows sang like clean music on the spring morning air. Flint grinned fiercely as he worked the crimson-glowing slab of steel, periodically quenching the metal in an oaken half-barrel of water. Sweat trickled down his soot-stained brow.

He had begun late the previous day, shucking his blanket onto the bed, tossing down a mug of ale-for his frail health, he concluded-then firing the forge and hammering irregular chunks of iron into several small bars of metal. He beat the bars into strips and heated them to a high temperature in the charcoal fire, converting them to carbon steel. Then he sandwiched the strips into a slab, continually reheating the slab in the coal and thrusting it into cold water to harden the metal.

Now, finally satisfied with the thinness and evenness of the piece of steel, he lifted it from the heat of the forge with a pair of iron tongs and quenched it again. Clouds of steam hissed into the air like the breath of some fabled dragon, until finally the metal had cooled. Flint set it on his workbench and eyed it critically. It was still rough and crude-little more than a flat strip of steel, really-but soon enough, it would be something far different-a magnificent sword. Flint's blue eyes glimmered, for already he could see the finished weapon, smooth and shimmering, beneath the blackened surface of the steel bar.

Flint wiped away the sweat and grime from his forehead and gulped water from a tin ladle dipped in a bucket in the corner. He sat on a low wooden stool and closed his eyes for a moment. He'd arrived in Qualinost two days ago, and already it seemed as though he had never left it for the winter. How long had it been since that day he had first set foot in the city? Probably twenty years to the very day, he thought, opening his eyes to glance out the window.

Outside, the new leaves of the aspen trees flickered emerald and silver in the sunlight.

His heart felt right in Qualinost, and despite the occasional unfriendly stares from Lord Xenoth, Litanas, Ulthen and Tyresian-stares rarely converted to comments because of Flint's popularity with the Speaker of the Sun-the dwarf felt almost as if he belonged in the elven capital more than anywhere else on Krynn. Not for the first time, he wondered what his relatives back in the dwarven village of Hillhome would think of him now.

A small chime sounded on the smoky air, and Flint looked up to see the door of his small shop opening. Hastily he tossed a cloth over the bar of steel on the workbench. It wouldn't do to have the surprise spoiled.

"Flint! You're still alive?" Tanis Half-Elven said with a smile. "I thought I would need to arrange a funeral."

Flint reached hastily for his handkerchief, snuffled, and affected a frail expression. "As my mother would say, 'Don't count your chickens on the other side of the fence,' " he said.

A flutter of incomprehension flitted across the half-elf's face; Flint's mother's sayings tended to affect him that way. Then he shrugged and forged ahead. "Are you in the mood for another adventure, Flint? I thought perhaps we could search again for the tylor."

Uppity snit, Flint thought, and his grin returned.

"You still haven't got it through that thick skull of yours, have you, lad?" the dwarf said gruffly. "I have work to do. I don't have all day to parade about the city all dandified, like some folk."

Tanis laughed, looking down at his outfit. He wore the same clothes that had drawn Laurana's eyes in the Grand Market yesterday: blue shirt, fringed vest, and woolen breeches.