"Anyone would think it had been made for you," he said, thrilled that Frala was wearing the iron trinket as proudly as if Girdlegard's finest jeweler had designed and forged the piece.

There was a special bond between the pair of them. The dwarf had known Frala since she was a baby and had watched her mature into an attractive young woman who turned the heads of Lot-Ionan's apprentices. These days she had two daughters of her own: Sunja and one-year-old Ikana.

Cycles ago, when Frala was still a girl, he had made tin figures for her to play with, showed her around the forge, and let her work the bellows. "Dragon's breath," she used to call it as the sparks flew up the chimney, accompanied by her laughter. Frala never forgot the pains he had taken to entertain her, nor how he cared for her daughter.

She shook the remaining potatoes into the tub and topped up the water. As she turned round, her green eyes looked at him keenly. "It's funny," she said with a smile. "I was just thinking how you haven't changed a bit in all the cycles I've known you."

Half of Tungdil's apple had already disappeared. Still munching, he made himself comfortable on a stool. "And I was just thinking how splendidly we get on together," he said simply.

"Frala!" the cook shouted. "I'm going for some herbs. You'll have to stir the goulash." The ladle, its stem scarcely shorter than Tungdil, changed hands. The cook hurried out. "You'd better not let it stick," she warned.

A delicious smell of goulash rose from the pot as Frala gave the stew a vigorous stir.

"All the others look older," she said, "even the magus. But you've stayed the same for twenty-three cycles. How do you think you'll look in another twenty-three?"

The topic was one that Tungdil was reluctant to consider. From what he had read about dwarves, it seemed he was destined to live for three hundred cycles or more. Even now it grieved him to think that he would see the death of Frala and her daughters, of whom he had grown so fond.

With these thoughts in mind, he popped the apple core into his mouth. "Who knows, Frala," he mumbled, hoping to dismiss the gloomy subject.

The maid had a particular knack for reading his mind that morning. "Can I ask you something, Tungdil?" He nodded. "Do you promise you'll look after my daughters when I'm gone?"

He choked on the sour apple pips, scratching his throat in the process. "I don't think we need to worry about that now. Why, you'll live to be"-he looked her up and down-"a hundred cycles at least. I'll ask the magus to give you eternal life-and Sunja and Ikana too, of course."

Frala laughed. "Oh, I'm not intending to meet Palandiell quite yet." She kept stirring dutifully, even though her forehead was dripping with perspiration. "But all the same, I'd… Well, I'd feel better if I knew you were there to take care of them." Her shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug. "Please, Tungdil, say you'll be their guardian."

"Frala, by the time you're summoned to your goddess, Sunja and Ikana will be old enough to look after themselves." Realizing that she was in earnest, he duly gave his word. "I'd be honored to be their guardian." He slid from the stool. "If the chain slips again, send Jolosin to find me!" He made his way out with a small bowl of goulash to sustain him until lunch.

On returning to the forge he found Sunja waiting for him with yet another commission from Eiden, two wooden barrels whose iron hoops had split. No sooner had he started work than the plow was brought in, needing urgent repair.

Tungdil relished the work. The fierce flames and physical effort made it a sweaty business, and soon perspiration was trickling down his arms and plopping into the fire with a hiss. Frala's daughter watched in fascination, passing him tools whenever she was strong enough to lift them and working the bellows with all her might.

The glowing metal yielded to his hammer, letting him shape it as he pleased. At times like this he almost felt like a proper dwarf and not just a foundling raised by humans.

His mind began to drift. He had reached the age of sixty-three solar cycles without seeing another of his kind, which was why he looked forward to being sent away on errands. The occasions when Lot-Ionan required his services as a messenger were regrettably few and far between. There was nothing Tungdil wanted more than to meet one of his own people and learn about his race, but the chances of encountering a traveling dwarf were infinitesimally small.

The realm of Ionandar belonged exclusively to humans. There were a few gnomes and kobolds, but their races were almost extinct. Those that remained lived in remote caves beneath the surface, emerging only when there was something worth stealing-or so Frala said. The last of the elven people lived in Вlandur amid the glades of the Eternal Forest, while the dwarves inhabited the five ranges bounding Girdlegard. Tungdil had almost given up hope of visiting a dwarven kingdom and finding out about his folk.

Everything he knew about dwarves stemmed from Lot-Ionan's library, but it was a dry kind of knowledge, empty and colorless. In some of the magus's books, the writers called the dwarves "groundlings" and poked fun at them, while others blamed his people for opening Girdlegard to the northern hordes. Tungdil refused to believe it.

But he could understand why so few of his kind ventured outside their kingdoms; his kinsfolk were almost certainly offended by such prejudice and preferred to turn their backs on humankind. Tungdil was putting the finishing touches to the first of the iron hoops when Jolosin appeared at the door, wearing, as Tungdil noted with satisfaction, a clean set of robes. "Hurry," he spluttered, panting for breath. "Don't tell me it's the goulash again," said Tungdil, grinning. "Why don't you run along and hold the chain until I get there?"

"It's the laboratory…" Barely able to get the words out, Jolosin resorted to gestures. "The chimney…," he gasped, turning and hurrying away.

This time it sounded serious. The dwarf set down his hammer in consternation and wiped his hands on his apron. Once Sunja had been dispatched to join her mother in the kitchen, he chased after the famulus through the underground galleries hewn into the stone.

Border Territory, Secondling Kingdom, Girdlegard, Winter, 6233rd Solar Cycle Tens of hundreds of tiny grains of sand pelted their helms, shields, mail, and every inch of unprotected flesh.

Battered by the gusts, the brave band of dwarves struggled onward, mounted on ponies. Scarves muffled their faces but the cloth was no match for the fine desert sand, which worked its way through the fabric, clogging their beards and grinding between their teeth.

"Bedeviled wind," cursed Gandogar Silverbeard of the clan of the Silver Beards, king of the fourthlings' twelve clans. He tugged at his scarf, pulling it over his nose.

At 298 cycles of age, Gandogar was a respected leader and accomplished warrior. He stood a little over five feet tall and his arms were strong and powerful. His heavy tunic of finely forged mail was worn with pride, despite the trying circumstances. Beneath his diamond-studded helmet his hair and beard were brown and wiry. He led the party unflinchingly through the sand and scree.

"It's the sand that gets me. I've never seen a sandstorm below the surface," complained Bislipur Surestroke, the friend and mentor riding at his side. He was taller and brawnier than the monarch and his hands and arms were laden with almost as many golden rings and bangles. He looked every inch the warrior, his chain mail bearing the scars of countless battles. The freshest marks were just five orbits old, the result of a skirmish with orcs.

"Vraccas knew what he was doing when he sculpted us from rock. Dwarves and deserts don't mix." The verdict was shared by the rest of the troop.