Anthology: Kender, gully Dwarves, and Gnomes

Frankly, the Plainsman was frightening, and although Armavir hoped devoutly to wake one mom-ing and find a kender topknot (complete with, possibly, kender noggin) dangling from Riverwind's belt, the poet never really ventured to make acquaintance with the hunter, who suffered from all kinds of delusions, including one that he had been raised by leopards, the only support for which was a slight lack of personal cleanliness and a tendency to glaze over and grow abstract when Goldmoon stroked the top of his head (a condition that Armavir thought resembled hypnosis, although the hypnotic suggestion "you are now… a chicken!" had no visible effect on either the Plainsman's humanity or courage).

Lines 46–50: ONE WITHIN ABSENCES… AWAKENING AND THOUGHT. Kitiara. Through a keyhole, Armavir saw her taking a bath once, and Great Reorx! she was lovely and dark and glistening with waterdrops, but a

26. A longer poem of Armavir's about this adventure appears elsewhere, conveniently pirated by that Solamnic Knight of the Rose, Michael Williams, who should remember that the Order of the Rose urges its knights to take pity on those less fortunate rather than to steal their verses. big thing for the likes of us. Nonetheless, only the fact that the door was locked kept the poet from donning his water wings (not yet remembering where they had come from, but knowing that somehow they were ambitious and tragic) and, as he says in the farewell note he wrote for Tanis27 (who, characteristically, was completely at sea over how to begin the note) "take in the darkness/blessed and renamed by pleasure."

Armavir used the keyhole research method on several other occasions (see notes to lines 92 and 93).

Lines 55–59: ONE IN THE HEART… FOREVER AN HEIRLOOM. Sturm. From this distance, it is sometimes difficult to understand the amount of posturing that went on among the Companions: Tanis wavering and serious and oh so tragic, like a moonstruck ship's captain; Tasslehoff's infuriating innocence (I remind you that, yes, a snake is innocent, too); Goldmoon and Laurana like princesses from old romances they probably never had time to read in their devout attention to hair, eye shadow, and manicure.

Sturm was different, and undeniably dangerous, for he believed all of that posturing. It was as though someone had made him up, had said, "We need a perfect, gentle knight to play a role in the story. How about this one?" As a result, some criticism of the CHRONICLES has arisen in cynical circles (primarily, those of the elves) — the suspicion that Sturm is, indeed, a fictional character, added to the CHRONICLES so that the humans might be represented even more overwhelmingly than they are now.

A fictional character? Only in the widest sense, for Sturm was among the Companions and met his death, as the story says, in the Siege at the High Clerist's Tower.

27. CHRONICLES, III, p.5.

Fictional he might have been, but only in the sense that he lived by fictions — by the notions of honor and duty and compassion that have since passed from the world of Krynn. For as you see, he was none too bright.

Yet Armavir remembered him fondly, for it was Sturm who insisted that the poet's role in the CHRONICLES should be championed, that the truth will out as to Armavir's discovery of the Orb at the Tower, as to the gnome's teaching the Solamnic Knights to use the dragonlances in that dismal and beleaguered fortress — truths that died with this silly, honorable man on the fortress wall. One might detect a conspiracy of silence in his death and that of Flint, but I am generous and far from such suggestions.

He was tiresome at best, but it is to be said for him that he was also tiresome at his worst. Receive this soul to Huma's breast, improbable as he was.

Lines 64–68: THE NEXT IN A SIMPLE… SEE THEIR BOTTOM. Caramon. An amiable dunce, he was Armavir's drinking companion throughout the War of the Lance and for some time afterward. Though many of Armavir's exploits with Caramon have been forgotten by both parties, one of them must have involved the elaborate project (designed by the gnome and urged on by substantial quantities of dwarf spirits) of restoring the original Inn of the Last Home to its original height in a nearby vallenwood. The project involved a complicated system of pulleys and winches employing wires of incredible girth and tensile strength.

Needless to say, such an undertaking stirred old memories in the poet, and with those memories arose a series of increasingly severe depressions in which Armavir lay face down on the floor of the inn, paralyzed by spirits and listening in terror for the sound of distant thunder. The project was finally abandoned, and remained unacknowledged in Caramon's rather smug preface to LEAVES. All in all, though, he wasn't a bad sort, only easily influenced.

It was for Caramon that the poet wrote "Three Sheets to the Wind,"28 not to mention a few less successful lyrics thankfully forgotten. Line 68 contains a punning reference to one of these lesser songs — certainly Caramon's favorite of the lot, and composed while the poet himself was hoisting still another sheet at the site of the old inn:

Not immortal, but high art to Caramon, who was known to faint or suffer nosebleeds when cornered and badgered into listening to "The Song of Huma"29 or "Crysania's Song."30 Not immortal, but I fear durable enough to come back into memory and embarrass the maker. I include it only to caution those who tend to idealize historical figures: Armavir was certainly no saint, and of course the couplet was not merely a performance for Caramon's benefit, but also contained an element of truth (see note to lines 46–50).

Lines 73–77: THE NEXT THE LEADER… DOES NOTHING. Tanis (Armavir preferred infinitely his elf name "Tanthalas," which derived from the same root as the verb «tantalize»; tantalized the half-elf was — by all the

28. LEGENDS, I, p. 94.

29. CHRONICLES. I, pp. 442–445.

30. LEGENDS, III, p. 164. options, all the pretty faces'). As indecisive on policy as he was on matters of women (see note to line 93), Tanis often came to Armavir for advice on both fronts. Without this counsel, the quest would have turned into a kender fire drill on a number of occasions, and a tangled romantic life could have brought all Krynn to destruction.

I still have Tanis's draft of his farewell note to Kitiara — a draft refined and expanded, as the reader knows, by more poetic hands — but the text, here printed for the first time in its entirety, will give the reader an idea of the shuttling way in which the leader of the Companions thought:

BUT NOT AS MUCH as… MAYBE I SHOULD SAY,

His policy decisions were painful to watch. By the time the Companions had reached Solace, Tanis had taken to standing on battlements, dressed in black and holding a skull in one hand, discussing with the skull (or with Armavir, when the poet had nothing better to do or when it was not bath time among the Companions) as to which hamlet, which village the party should pass through next. But judging from the text of the letter above, the half-elf was, if possible, more pathetic in matters of the heart than in matters of the head. "Laurana or Kitiara," he would whine, to Armavir or the skull: "Tell me which one?" To which the poet, making Tanis a party to his secret observa tions (see note to lines 46–50), perhaps unwittingly planted the seed of resentment that was to grow into the ingratitude with which our esteemed leader would later conceal Armavir's contribution to history.