Kerian raised her chin and lifted her hands to tuck stray locks into her braid. She didn’t know dwarves at all, had not seen them but now and then in Qualinost, and only from a distance in the years before the Chaos War when hill dwarves came into the kingdom to trade their goods.

Her voice cool, she said, “I haven’t heard that of all the dwarf clans, those in Thorbardin are the rudest. I am Keri-anseray.” She did not say, “of Qualinost” or “of the House of Rashas.” She did not say “a friend of the king himself,” though she would like to have said all those things to this arrogant dwarf. “You haven’t answered my question.”

He shrugged. “I’m here in the wood for the same reason you are-not interested in having conversations with black-hearted Knights out of gods-blasted Neraka.”

It was no answer, truly, but Kerian didn’t press the point She looked at him long. His beard was thick and glossy. His dark hair, shining silver at the temples, was cut rough and shaggy, long enough to fall over his shirt collar. The shirt itself was unremarkable, unbleached cotton and the wide-sleeved kind you’d see a taverner or shop-owner wearing. The same could be said for his breeches, made of brown, tough fabric.

Slantwise across his back hung a thick bedroll. Around his waist he wore a broad leather belt from which hung a throwing axe, a leather water bottle filled fat, a coil of rope and a knife. His boots were of fine sturdy leather, and he wore a single earring in his left ear, a bright silver ring to suggest he wasn’t so humble of fortune as he might seem.

“Are y’finished lookin’ now?” he asked when it seemed she was.

“You have my name, sir dwarf. What is yours?”

He shrugged. “I mean your king’s kingdom no harm, girl. I’m only a traveler on the road, like y’self. Now and then, one of us dwarves slips us into the forest with wares to sell.”

She made a softly disbelieving sound. “Fairly adventurous for the sake of a sale of goods.”

The dwarf shrugged. “There are some venturesome sons among the clans yet.” He reached into his shirt and took out a small leather pouch. It rang comfortably with the sound of coins. “All I’m here for is some selling-and I did a fine bit of that.” His voice softened with sudden yearning, touched by a kind of gentleness she’d not expected. “I’m goin’ home now, and I’ll be glad to get there. I’m Stanach of Thorbardin. My family is Hammerfell; my clan is Hylar.” He lifted his chin when he claimed his clan; his eyes flashed again, this time defiantly.

A Hylar. Well, Kerian knew her history, even the history of dwarves. There had been wars and wars in Krynn these thirty years past, wars of gods, mortals, and dragons. There had been, too, a war in Thorbardin, and that had been the worst kind of war. A civil war in which clan fought clan, often kinsman fought kinsman, and the balance of power did not simply shift, it shattered. The aristocratic Hylar, for long centuries the ruling clan, did not rule now. In the mountain kingdom the clans were still putting order back together again after a brutal war, still learning to trust each other and their new High King, Tarn Bellowgranite.

A civil war, Gil once said, is the kind of war that will break anyone’s heart, and the kind that would wring the last drop of blood right out of a dwarf’s, for after his forge god Reorx, a dwarf loves his kin best.

High up and far away, crows called, and Kerian shuddered, for those crows were not sailing west to Qualinost where they might be expected to find a feast of flesh on the eastern bridge. These flew east, right along the path of the road, crying their brothers to a feast.

“Ay well,” said Stanach Hammerfell, “we’re all properly introduced now, aren’t we? You’re clumsy for an elfin the home-wood, are y’not?” He looked pointedly at the ripped knees of her trews, her wet boots, scraped face, the torn flesh of her hands. When he marked her tattoos, the graceful vines twining, he shook his head. “You’re one of those special elves besides. One of the Wilder Elves. Wilder than what-the hearth cat?”

Kerian’s cheeks flamed. That from a surly dwarf who’d likely spent all his nigh two hundred years under the mountains and wouldn’t know north from south if the sun were staring him blind!

Stanach ignored her reaction. “I reckon you don’t know a better way to Sliathnost than yon road, do you?”

Stubborn, Kerian said nothing. She didn’t know a better way, and she wasn’t minded to confirm his guess at her ignorance.

Stanach snorted. “I figured.”

She drew breath to say something, and then realized her leather wallet, with food and money pouch, hung somewhere on the branches of dead trees. She looked back, looked ahead. She thought, so what? She would figure something out when the time came.

“I am going to Sliathnost, too. They have a tavern there called-”

“The Hare and Hound, I know. All right then, you can come along with me if you like.”

“You know the way through the wood?”

“I can reckon it. Come along if you like.”

Stanach walked away, heading north through the trees and somewhat east.

Keri can’t catch me!

And you, one of those special elves…

Perhaps it was as Iydahar had warned. Perhaps it was true, she had forgotten herself, forgotten how to be Kagon-esti. She had lost herself in the city and the servitude that dressed her in fine silk.

She had lost herself, perhaps, even in the high bed of a king.

Ahead, Stanach stopped, and he looked back over his shoulder. Kerian ran to follow.

The way Stanach chose headed up, dappled in sun and ‘ shifting shade. Rocky and seemingly pathless, it wound between tall oaks whose wide stands soon gave way to fragrant pines growing closer together. Beneath Kerian’s feet, oak leaves vanished to be replaced by years of brown pine straw, the fallen needles some as long as her forearm.

Kerian followed Stanach as closely as she could, slipping in the pine straw, picking herself up. No matter if she fell, cursed, and lingered over hruised knees and skinned palms, Stanach didn’t stop. She imagined that if she’d tumbled right off the face of Krynn, he would not so much as look over his shoulder.

Kerian was growing no more fond of the dwarf.

Following, she never saw him consult the slant of shadow or the point of the sun in the sky for direction, yet he went faultlessly north and east, seeming to make his way by landmarks Kerian, versed in the winding ways of every street, path and wandering by-way of Qualinost, could not have recognized. The farther east they went, the more often they encountered great gray boulders thrusting up from the earth. Trees made way for the lichen-patched rocks as though, in some long ago fought-out treaty, they had agreed to cede a part of the forest to stone. There had been no treaty between forest and stone, of course. There had been, in fact, a kind of war, the great and terrible Cataclysm, many centuries before. All the face of Krynn had changed then, the world heaving and breaking, the very continents shifting. After the great upheaval, the land between elven kingdom and that of the mountain dwarves had become a wasteland of rising ground, gaping glens, and thrusting boulders.

Kerian, once a wild running child of upland Ergothian forests and shining sea strands, felt the strain of the climbing terrain. She had been too long in Qualinost, where she never endured any walk more difficult than the sweet curling path from the Library of Qualinost to the Temple of Paladine. Her muscles burned, her lungs seemed to shrink with every passing moment until own breathing was loud in her ears.

Seemingly unaware of her distress, Stanach kept a steady pace through what Kerian saw as a trackless forest. Kerian remained dogged in her determination not to fall behind. Sweat rolled down her cheeks, made her blouse stick uncomfortably to her back. Her legs hurt, her ankles turned, and treacherous stones rolled beneath her feet.