Chris Pierson - Spirit of the Wind

For a moment, Brightdawn met her father’s steady gaze. Then her shoulders slumped, and she bowed her head. “You’re right. I’m just being selfish.”

“Not just, Brightdawn.” Riverwind said, shaking his head. “I want you to leave. Go back to Que-Shu.”

“We’ve already discussed this. I can’t leave these people here, any more than you can, Father.” Before he could respond, she stood, propping little Billee on her shoulder, and walked to the door. “I’m tired now. It’s been a very long day. I’m going to ask Paxina to show us to that house she was telling us about.”

With that, she strode from the room. Swiftraven glanced apologetically at Riverwind, then rose and followed her out.

When they were gone and Riverwind was alone, he let out a groan of pain, his hand pressing against his belly. Tears spilled down his old, weathered face.

The next day, Catt Thistleknot woke with a headache the likes of which she had never felt before. Though the little bedroom where Arlie had put her was mostly dark, what little light there was stabbed at her eyes like spears. She moaned, wincing, and tried to roll over. A flash of pain stopped her, however, and she lay back, the room spinning wildly about her. “I wish I were dead,” she moaned thickly.

“Good morning to you, too,” said Kronn. He leaned over her, a cheery smile on his face. “Of course, any morning you wake up alive’s a good one, after what you’ve been through.”

She squinted, her bleary eyes fighting to focus. “Kronn?” she asked. “Why are there two of you?”

Kronn’s eyebrows shot up-all four of them, in Catt’s eyes-and he glanced across the room, at Arlie Longfinger. The old herbalist nodded. “Double-vision’s normal for someone who’s taken that kind of knock,” he said.

“Quit complaining, Catt,” said another voice, from the other side of the bed. Painfully, Catt looked that way, and saw a silver-haired kender clad in the purple robes of a Lord Mayor. She frowned, trying to focus on the woman’s face. “You could at least be grateful to Kronn. You’d be dead if it weren’t for him.”

“Pax?”

Paxina looked at Arlie, who shrugged. “Short-term memory loss,” he said. “That isn’t unusual, either.”

Catt looked at them blankly. “So what happened to me?”

“You fell off your horse,” Kronn answered. He squeezed her good hand; the other arm lay across her chest, bound in fresh, linen bandages. “You conked your head pretty good too.”

“Kronn went back for you, Catt,” Paxina said. “He picked you up and put you on his pony. If he hadn’t, the ogres would have gotten you.”

“Ogres…“ Catt slurred. “I thought I’d dreamed that. I remember Swiftraven too.”

Gently, Kronn touched her cheek. His fingers felt cool against her livid skin. “We all made it. The Plainsfolk are out in the hall, Catt. Arlie didn’t want you to have too many visitors in here at once. Do you want to see them?”

“No,” she mumbled. “Not right now. I’m tired, Kronn. Let me sleep.”

He laid her hand across her breast as her eyes drooped closed. A moment later, she began to snore.

The Plainsfolk looked up as Kronn and Paxina emerged from the darkened room. “How is she?” Brightdawn asked, her brow knitting with concern.

“Fine,” Paxina said. “A bit delirious, but that’ll pass. She’s sleeping now.”

“In that case,” Riverwind said, “I think it’s time for you to give me a tour of the town’s defenses.” His knees creaked and popped as he pushed himself up from where he’d been sitting on the floor.

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Paxina said, shrugging. “Arlie, when Giffel comes by, tell him we’re on the wall.” The herbalist nodded, then shuffled off down the hall.

Paxina headed the other way, toward the front door. “Come on, then,” she said. “And keep your eyes on your pockets. Try not to let anything fall out of them.”

Riverwind had heard about Kendermore from Tasslehoff Burrfoot. Of course, Tas had also told him stories about woolly mammoths, hovering plants and goatsucker birds, so he’d always been somewhat skeptical of his friend’s tales.

According to Tas, Kendermore was a place unlike any other in all of Krynn, a full-fledged city designed and built by and for kender. As such, it was somewhat like a human town, only a hundred times more confusing. Roads changed direction, switched names, widened and narrowed, all seemingly at random. Intersections were chaotic affairs, with streets seldom meeting in groups of less than five and never at anything resembling a right angle. Buildings mimicked, and frequently mixed, architectural styles from every nation and era in Krynn’s history, and with a few exceptions-such the house Paxina had given to the Plainsfolk-they were all scaled down to accommodate occupants who seldom grew taller than four feet. Towers leaned at improbable angles because no one had thought to put in foundations. Great stone walls came to sudden stops where their builders had lost interest. The city’s library an excellent demonstration of why Palanthian and Nerakan building styles shouldn’t mix, was slowly sinking into the ground because its designers hadn’t considered how much more it would weigh with all the books inside. Riverwind had never been completely comfortable in cities, but Kendermore made him especially uneasy. It was a town in complete disarray.

Then there were the kender themselves. None of the Plainsfolk had ever seen more than a handful in one place at any one time. Here, though, there were thousands, more than the city was meant to hold, thanks to the refugees who had flooded into town over the past few weeks. They jammed the streets, a pushing, shoving, yammering sea of topknotted heads. The humans, Riverwind and particular, felt like giants as Paxina and Kronn led them through the crowds. Many of the kender stopped and stared at them, their jaws hanging open in awe as they looked up. The mob around them grew steadily thicker as people crowded around, trying to get a look at the rare Plainsfolk.

That wasn’t the worst of it, though. Kender being kender, for every one who was content simply to stand and gawk at Riverwind, Brightdawn and Swiftraven, there were three who just had to find out what was inside the Plainsfolk’s purses. The humans quickly discovered they had to carry their pouches-along with swordbelts, quivers, and anything else they wanted to hold on to-above their heads, where the kender’s reaching, grasping hands couldn’t get near them. Even so, the Plainsfolk lost the buckles off their boots and most of the beads from the fringes of their buckskin tunics.

The noise, too, was incredible. The air was filled with the clamor of voices, screeching hoopaks and other strange weapons; and occasional musical instruments or exploding firecrackers.

They actually became lost for a short time, pulling up short when the road they were walking along-a narrow lane named Broad Street-rounded a sharp corner and suddenly stopped, blocked by a tall, iron fence. There didn’t appear to be any reason for the fence to be there-the road continued on its far side-but it was there nonetheless, and there was no way around it.

Kronn stopped, scratching his head. “Now, where did that come from?” he wondered aloud, staring at the fence as if he wasn’t quite sure it was there.

“Don’t look at me,” Paxina told him. “This was your short cut.”

“Hmph.” Kronn looked around. “Well, this thing wasn’t here last time I came this way. But, I think-where in the Abyss is it-” He muttered aimlessly for a moment, then pointed excitedly, back the way they had come. “Yeah, there it is. Straight Street. That’ll get us to Tornado Alley, then we can follow that to the gates.”