Mark Anthony - Kindred Spirits

Tanis broke in. “Why do you do that?”

“What?”

“Pound the hammer on the anvil,” the half-elf said, pausing the bellows to look more closely. “It seems intentional- not as though you’ve missed the metal.”

“Keep pumping! Reorx above, lad, am I going to have to hire a gully dwarf to take your place?” Flint complained. “Of course I’m intentionally hitting the anvil. The metal of the hammer picks up heat as I tap it against this gate latch I’m making for Fleetfoot’s stall. Banging the hammer against the anvil every so often cools the hammer. See?” He demonstrated. “Now, go on.”

Tanis grinned at his friend. “The gnomes built a mechanical ladder that reached to the red moon, and they captured the Graystone, which some call the Graygem.”

Flint quickly rapped the other end of the rod into a point, and forced it perpendicular to the rod.

“But the gem escaped and floated away.” Tanis’s voice lost its recitation note and took on more enthusiasm. “The stone caused havoc on Krynn. As it passed by, it caused new animals and plants to spring up; old ones changed form.”

Flint reheated the rod, which was now recognizable as a gate latch with a loop at one end and a catch at the other.

“Finally,” Tanis said, “the gnomes split into two armies to search for the gem. They found it in the high tower of a barbarian prince named Gargath.”

Holding a pair of strong tongs at each end of the squared-off rod, the dwarf put his considerable strength into the operation and twisted the latch.one full turn. The four edges of the rod swirled into a four-lined decoration at the middle of the latch. Flint thrust the latch into a half-barrel of cool water and then held it up for Tanis to see.

The half-elf raised his eyebrows, but kept pumping and talking. “The prince refused to hand over the stone, and the two groups declared war on him. When they finally penetrated the fortress, the stone’s light exploded through the area. And when the gnomes could see again, the two factions had changed.”

Flint was looking proudly at the latch. “I could sell this for a good price in Solace,” he told the half-elf.

“The curious gnomes,” Tanis said, “became kender. The ones who lusted for wealth became… uh… became…” Tanis stopped and blushed.

“Became…?” Flint prompted, still displaying the latch.

“… dwarves,” Tanis concluded, a bit shamefacedly.

“Ah,” said the dwarf. “You can stop the bellows now.”

Tanis bit his lower lip and studied the dwarf. “Is it the same story you knew?” he asked.

Flint smiled and nodded. “Same old story,” he said.

That night, Miral tossed on his pallet and drifted in and out of the same dream that had plagued him almost nightly since reports of the tylor had come in from the countryside.

He was very small, the size of a child, cowering in a crevice of an enormous cave. He knew that he was far underground, yet light from somewhere provided dim illumination.

Enough light penetrated the murk of the chamber that the tiny Miral could see the beaklike, open maw of the tylor that ranged this way and that as though seeking his scent.

“Come out,” the creature boomed. “I will not hurt you.”

Miral shuddered and pulled still farther into the opening, knowing he was dreaming and knowing, also, that he could do nothing to stop what was coming in this nightmare.

The dragonlike beast thrust one clawed foreleg into the crevice. Miral the child cringed back as far as he could go and, to his embarrassment, cried for his mother. He moved sideways and pressed his right side farther back, against the converging walls of the crevice.

Once again, as always in this dream, he felt cool air against his right arm-where there should have been nothing but dead, unmoving air. Miral knew that the worst part of the nightmare was ahead, the part that shocked him into wakefulness and the realization that he’d sleep no more.

As Miral shoved still harder against the angle of the crevice, a hand clutched his right arm.

Next day got off to a good start, dawning fine and clear. Although frost sparkled on the green leaves in the first light of the morning, within an hour it vanished, and the day promised to be warm and gentle.

It had been Tanis’s suggestion to go looking for the sla-mori; the half-elf craved an adventure. Flint, after looking at his forge and considering what duties he could put off, finally accepted. Other groups of armed elves were out searching for the tylor, especially since the Speaker of the Sun had offered a considerable award to the hunter who downed the rare beast.

Tanis raided the larder of the palace kitchens, appearing at Flint’s door shortly after dawn, bearing a sack containing a loaf of brown bread, a yellow cheese, a flask of wine for himself, and a clay jug of ale for the dwarf.

Armed with battle-axe and short sword, Flint led Tanis, grumbling and carrying his longbow, across the five-hundred-foot bridge spanning the ravine that guarded the city to the west. The dwarf had heard that an ancient race of air elementals, creatures composed of air itself, guarded the regions above the rivers, prohibiting anything from crossing over it into Qualinost by any way except the bridge. Knowing that a peeved elemental was waiting for him to poke an arm or a leg over the bridge’s side so that it could blow him into the ravine five hundred feet below didn’t improve Flint’s opinion of the situation at all.

Tanis pointed to the north. “I’ve never been to the Kentommenai-kath,” Tanis said. “Let’s go.”

“I thought we were hunting for the tylor,” Flint said.

“We’re just as likely to find the lizard at the Kentommenai-kath as anywhere else. From what I hear, the lizard is more likely to find us than the other way around.”

“That’s reassuring,” Flint groused, trudging along behind Tanis and staying well away from the edge of the ravine. “And what in Krynn is a Kentommenai-kath!”

“When an elf undergoes a Kentommen, a close relative, one who has not yet undergone the ceremony himself, goes to an open area overlooking the River of Hope to keep vigil alone all night.”

“Don’t make me work so hard, boy,” Flint huffed. “What’s a Kentommen?”

“It’s a ceremony that elves undergo when they reach their ninety-ninth birthday-when they become adults. Porthios will have his Kentommen in a few months. Gilthanas, I imagine, will perform the Kentommenai-kath.”

The trail wound through the dense forest of aspen and pine, occasionally following the edge so closely that Flint felt his palms grow sweaty, and sometimes swerving upward back into the forest, to his relief. Finally, after more than an hour, they arrived at the Kentommenai-kath. The path opened into a sun-bathed outcropping of purple granite, dotted with white, green, and black lichens and looking east over the ravine. Flint could see the Tower of the Sun shining in the distance; the homes of the elves looked like pink stumps of branchless trees. The Grove, the forest in the center of Qualinost, was visible just north of the open area that must have been the Hall of the Sky.

The cries of birds carried faintly through the air. In the center of the Kentommenai-kath was a huge outcropping of purple granite, nearly flat but dotted with hand-size depressions that cradled clear water. The outcropping inclined gently toward the ravine’s edge.

“This is where the relative of the Kentommen elf kneels to pray to Habbakuk, to ask the god’s blessing on the young man or woman, to keep them in harmony with nature throughout their centuries,” Tanis said reverentially.

Flint wandered around the Kentommenai-kath, scuffing the rock with his traveling boots and admiring the purples, greens, and whites of the glade, surrounded by aspen, oak, and spruce. A sense of peace permeated the area. He looked over at Tanis and continued to stroll.