Barbara Siegel - Tanis the shadow years

"Come. We're going," he said, putting his hand out to the dwarf.

"Where?" asked Clotnik, taking the offered hand and hoisting himself up off the ground.

'To Ankatavaka."

Tanis thought of Brandella, picturing her writing the note. Each time he imagined it differently. Once he saw her weeping upon the parchment as she wrote a letter of farewell. A second time he conjured up the image of her writing it with painstaking care, crumbling one sheet of parchment after another, unable to find the words to convey her feelings. The third time, she wrote a letter that told him how to find her if ever she were lost. He imagined that she wrote, "Look for me in your dreams." He promised himself that he would.

Clotnik, seeing the half-elf deep in thought, did not bother him. They rode side by side, heading west toward Ankatavaka, just one more day's journey away. When the dwarf told Tanis that the village was in ruins, abandoned decades ago after a damaging flood, it hadn't deterred him. He still wanted to go, telling the dwarf there was something there that he hoped to find.

To amuse himself, Clotnik reached for his traveling bag and took out several of his juggling balls: the brass, gold, and the glass. He hadn't practiced in more than a week, and he didn't want to get rusty. As the bullbogg beneath him lumbered along the trail, Clotnik began tossing the balls into the air in a lazy, steady circle.

A flash of movement caught Tanis's attention and he glanced over at Clotnik. It amazed the half-elf that the dwarf could so comfortably juggle while being carried aloft by a moving creature. He watched in fascination- until he realized that Clotnik was juggling the exquisite clear glass ball with the blue and green markings.

Tanis's lips went dry. He wanted to tell Clotnik to stop, but he feared his voice would startle the dwarf and cause an accident.

Seeing that he had an audience, Clotnik's exercise turned into an elaborate act. The brass ball flew high in the air, followed by the gold, then the glass. What had been a small, tight circle became a breathtakingly large ellipse, at the apex of which the ball almost disappeared.

Tanis couldn't stand it anymore. In as calm a voice as he could muster, hoping it wouldn't break Clotnik's concentration, he said, "That's very good. But I wonder-"

Suddenly, the bullbogg beneath the dwarf stumbled in a rut just as he threw the glass ball high into the sky. It went up at a crazy angle, far over to his right.

Tanis judged the trajectory and spurred his bullbogg into a gallop. The animal ran faster than the half-elf expected. He overran the glass ball; it was coming down behind him. Letting go of the tether around the animal's neck, Tanis leaped off the creature's back and tried to catch the quickly falling glass ball.

Twisting in the air so that he was looking up into the sky, Tanis hit the ground hard, back first. The glass ball was falling from the sky above him. He lifted his hands to catch it… and Clotnik plucked it out of the air just above the half-elf's outstretched fingers, the dwarf's bullbogg nearly trampling Tanis as he trotted by.

The dwarf circled around and rode up to Tanis, asking, "Are you all right?"

The half-elf didn't answer. In a silent fury, he picked himself up, dusted himself off, and then reached up and grabbed the glass ball out of Clotnik's hand. "Don't you ever juggle with that ball again! Not ever!"

Clotnik tried to take the ball back. Tanis wouldn't give it to him. "Why is it so important to you?" questioned the dwarf. "Why should you care7"

"Because I know what that glass ball cost your father."

"It's pretty, but it's old. It can't be worth that much," protested Clotnik.

"It was worth his life," said Tanis.

The dwarf didn't move. He just stared at the beautifully detailed glass ball in Tanis's hand. The orb's delicate swirls carried memories of blue summer skies and green forests.

"It was the last gift he bought your mother," the half-elf explained, softening. "He wanted her to have it even though he could not afford the cost."

'Then he did steal?" Clotnik demanded coldly.

Tanis paused. What good would the truth do Clotnik? For his part, Tanis wished he had been told that his father had been a good and generous man instead of being left to search out the bitter truth. In the end, it wasn't the truth that mattered, anyway, but what you believed to be true. The half-elf was the only one who knew for certain that Mertwig had once made a terrible error in judgment. That secret, he decided, would die with him.

"Your father," said Tanis, "was someone to admire and respect." Thinking fast, he explained, "Mertwig paid for that glass ball with his life because he and your mother were attacked by goblins who tried to steal it. He wouldn't let them take it. And he died fighting them, saving my life in the bargain. So, my friend, please don't juggle this glass ball anymore. Keep it safe, and when you look upon it, think of the love your father had for your mother."

Tanis offered the trinket to Clotnik, who took it reverently in hand. "On the soul of my father, you have my word," said the dwarf.

*****

The raid on the human settlement had gone well, Zarjephwu thought. Not a single human survived, and only one slig had been killed. The bold midday raid netted the remaining fifteen sligs a small herd of bullboggs and several horses, enough animals for each slig to have an extra mount.

They rode their animals hard, not caring if the beasts dropped dead along the way. When that happened, a slig would jump on another steed and keep on riding. By nightfall, they had caught the trail of the woman and her rescuers. Sometime during the following day, they would catch them.

That night, in their camp, the band praised Zarjephwu for his clever strategy and wise leadership. He wondered how many of them suspected that the idea of heading northwest to raid the humans had been Ghuchaz's. Not that it mattered. After what he had done to the young slig, he was safe from challenge. And once he had the enchanted quill, none of them would ever succeed if they dared to try.

Zarjephwu, lying on the hard ground, felt the pain of his burns. As he drifted off to sleep, his jaw opened and sharp teeth glistened in the light of the three-quarter moon. He remembered the man-or was it a half-elf? — who had kicked him into the cookfire and run off with the woman. His reptilian face settled into a smile. Sligs despised elves. He would see that one again tomorrow.

The smell of salt air саmе wafting to Tanis on a gentle sea breeze. He knew they were getting close to the Straits of Algoni. And Ankatavaka. Unconsciously, the half-elf leaned forward on his bullbogg, straining to see some sign of the village beyond the wood in which they rode. He wondered if this was the same forest in which the human soldiers had gathered before making their charge upon the elven barricades. His father had been among those men.

Tanis pushed the memory out of his mind. He didn't want to remember his father. Rubbing the bullbogg's sweaty neck, Tanis led them, plodding, through the trees, finding only the barest semblance of a trail; what had been there before had long since been reclaimed by nature.

"When were you here last?" Tanis called back to Clotnik, who had fallen behind.

The dwarf muttered an oath; Tanis heard him swat back a branch that had blocked his path. "It's been at least sixty years. The floods came thirty-eight years ago. Maybe you remember that winter when it rained almost every day7"

"Of course. I was with my friend-Flint." Tanis laughed. "We were making our way across a desert in Taladas when the rains started. Almost overnight, the desert was flooded. We had to save ourselves by grabbing hold of a drowned skrit. Have you ever spent three days holding on to the back of a dead, six-foot beetle?"