The kender paused once more beside the forge. "Luck with your quest," he said.

"You, too," Chane glanced up. "See you."

"Sure," Chess waved and headed north. Long after he had gone, the dwarf looked up from his work and his eyes went thoughtful. Entirely ringing him and his forge was a circle of black gravel scattered on the ground. The kender had left a shield for him, in case any of the hunting cats found a way to cross the road or to go around it.

Through that day and most of the next, Chane worked at his forge in the forest. In a buried firepit he coaled bits of hardwood for the bed of his flame, and a foot-bellows of sapling lengths and catskin fed it to a pulsing glow. His first hammer was no more than a lump of iron remelted, skimmed clean and shaped in a clay mold. But with its help he crafted a second one – a hammer that even a Hylar prince or Daewar merchant in the finest halls of Thorbardin might have envied. For though Chane Feldstone – orphaned and without a known lineage – had been relegated to the lowly ranks of common delver and sometimes outsman in the teeming realm within the Kharolis Mountains, still the high crafts came to him easily when he turned his hand to them.

Often through the years of childhood he had watched others of his age go off to apprentice at the trades of metalsmithy, stonecutting, and other such high callings. Sometimes he had been envious that those so chosen had someone of note to sponsor them. His hands had longed for the feel of good tools, and his heart had yearned for the chance to do such works as those more fortunate would one day do. Still, he had not been alone in his circumstances. Among the seven cities of the undermountain kingdom there always were thousands of children without access to great name or the comfort of wealth. Children of the warrens and the ways, the offspring of warriors who didn't come home or traders lost to the outlands, orphans and waifs of all sorts. It was the way of the dwarves of Thorbardin that these children be cared for and receive at least some basic education so they would never lack for work or the basic needs.

Chane had grown up like the rest, and had learned a host of lesser skills that served him well. Only, there had been times – times all through the years when some secret part within him raged and strove for recognition. Times there had been…

When he was yet a youngster, inches short of his full growth of four feet six, Chane had been employed to clean the smithing stalls of the ironworker, Barak Chiselcut. A piece of nickeliron had been cast aside, and Chane retrieved it, put a high polish on it and returned it to the master.

"A nice bauble," old Chiselcut had said, approving. "So you enjoy metals, youngster?"

"Yes, sir. I like the feel of good metals, and the sound and taste."

"Then keep this," the old dwarf told him. "Play with it at the forge and anvil, if you like. But mind you get your work done first."

For weeks, Chane had shaped the bit of nickeliron, late in the sleeping hours when no one else was about, and the small dagger he crafted from it had so pleased Barak Chiselcut that the shopmaster gave the youth some brass and ebony with which to make a handle for it.

"You have skill at making weapons, Chane," Chiselcut told him. "Maybe some ancestor of yours was a craftsman. It's too bad you don't have a known lineage. But then, most orphans don't. Keep the dagger, and keep learning. Having craft is more important than knowing who you are."

For fifteen years Chane had carried and cherished the knife, and sometimes at odd moments it seemed to whisper to him, "Look at me, Chane

Feldstone. I am no ordinary dagger, and you are no ordinary dwarf. See your reflection in my steel. Perhaps someday your reflection will tell you who you really are."

He had looked at his reflection and wondered. Even then, in the years before his shoulders broadened and his whiskers grew, he had been aware that he looked subtly different from most of those around him… not quite typical of the ordinary day-to-day Daewar he met in the trade centers. In some respects, he even resembled the Hylar dwarves – not that it made any difference, since there was no more likelihood of his tracing lineage among the Hylar than among the Daewar. A foundling is a foundling, anywhere in Thorbardin.

It was in those years, too, that the dreams began. The same insistent dream, over and over, sometimes no more than a week apart. The mysterious place, the mysterious container, and the old, horned battle helmet that he held in his hands but somehow never managed to place upon his head.

The years had passed, and he had come of age and found work with Rogar

Goldbuckle, the trader. He had served as a packer and sometimes as an outsman, going beyond Southgate to help with the gear and goods of trading parties bound for Barter or some other gathering place of merchants. Chane had made the journey to Barter himself once. He had met elves and humans, gnomes and kender. He had seen the rising and setting of the sun, had seen the moons in the night sky, had felt the vastness of outside, a world not contained beneath mountains.

Back in Thorbardin, full of worldliness and wonder, Chane had walked as tall as any dwarf for the first time in his life. And it had been then that he'd met Jilian. Jilian Firestoke. His eyes grew moist now, remembering how she had made his heart melt… and how he had worked to win her affections. He had known from the first that her father despised him, but that hadn't seemed important. Jilian knew her own mind, and what

Slag Firestoke thought about anything didn't seem to matter…

Until the dream had come again, this time with urgency. This time the dream had spoken to him of destiny, and he couldn't help but believe it.

And old Firestoke had used the opportunity to teach Chane who he truly was – a lowly foundling who had reached beyond his grasp.

The nickeliron dagger was gone now. It was one of the things Slag

Firestoke's thugs had robbed from him when they drove him into the wilderness. Maybe Jilian was gone as well. Chane was certain that Slag

Firestoke wouldn't tell his daughter what he had done, so all Jilian could know was that Chane had gone away and not come back. Maybe she even thought he was dead. He was still tempted to head right back for

Southgate, to give those toughs a taste of honest iron, and to shake Slag

Firestoke until his teeth rattled. The devious old rust-bucket.

But the dream called. There was something he was supposed to do, and he knew deep inside that he could not return to Thorbardin until he had done it… or at least tried his best.

"Become rich and famous," the kender had said. Chane rumbled his irritation at the thought. What could a kender know about anything?

The new hammer shaped itself on his makeshift anvil. Four pounds would be its weight. His hands told him that, and he knew there was no mistake.

A head that was a shaping maul at one end with a tapered balancing spike at the other. A hammer that could bend the strongest drawbar or shape the daintiest filigree… and could serve as a formidable weapon should the need arise. He put the final touches to it, tempered its face and its spike, and set it on a shaft of sturdy darkwood, with rawhide lashing for the hand to grip. Then he fashioned a thong to carry it, took a deep breath, and looked around for the metal that would make a sword.

A man stood a few feet away, leaning casually on a staff, watching the dwarf. Chane had no idea how long the man had been there. He had not heard him approach. But the faded red robe beneath the bison-pelt cape told him what the man was, and the dwarf felt a twinge of distaste… distaste and more than a bit of caution. A wizard.