The faultless used the towers to mark her destination, then swooped down, flying low over the humans’ lands. Built on a broad moss plain, dotted here and there with trees that had been left standing for their shade, the country was flat, criss-crossed with roads and pockmarked with small towns. The roads were well traveled; humans having a curious need to be constantly on the move, a need the sedentary elves could never understand and one that they considered barbaric.
The hunting was far more favorable in this part of the world, and the faultless took a brief moment to fortify herself on a largish rat. Meal finished, she cleaned her claws on her beak, preened her feathers, and took to the air. When she saw the flat lands begin to give way to thick jungle, the bird felt cheered, for she was nearing the end of her long journey. She was over Terncia, the kingdom farthest norinth. Arriving at the walled city surrounding the crystal brick tower that marked the capital of Terncia, the lard heard the rough call of her mate. She dove from the sky, spiraling down into the city’s heart, and landed on the leather-covered arm of a Thillian birdman. He removed the message, noted the designation, and placed the weary faultless into the cage with her mate, who greeted her with tiny nips of his beak.
The birdman handed the message to a circuit rider. Several days later, the rider entered a crude and half-thought-through village standing on the very edges of the jungle and dropped the message off at the village’s only inn.
Seated in his favorite booth in the Jungleflower, Master Roland of Griffith studied the fine quin scroll. Grinning, he shoved it across the table to a young woman who sat across from him.
“There! What did I tell you, Rega?”
“Thank Thillia, that’s all I can say.” Rega’s tone was grim, she wasn’t smiling. “Now you at least have something to show old Blackbeard and maybe he’ll leave us be for a stretch!”
“I wonder where he is?” Roland glanced at the hour flower [9] that stood in a pot on the bar. Almost twenty petals were folded down. “It’s past his usual time.”
“He’ll be here. This is too important to him.”
“Yeah, and that makes me nervous.”
“Developing a conscience?” Rega drained her mug of kegrot and glanced about for the barmaid.
“No, I just don’t like doing business here, in a public place-”
“All the better. Everything’s aboveboard and out in the open. No one could have any suspicions of us. Ah, here he is. What did I tell you?”
The inn’s door opened and a dwarf stood bathed in the dicing hour’s bright sunlight. He was an imposing sight, and nearly everyone in the inn paused in their drinking, gambling, and conversing to stare at him. Slightly above average height for his people, he had ruddy brown skin and a shaggy mane of curly black hair and beard that gave him his nickname among humans. Thick black brows meeting over a hooked nose and flashing black eyes gave him a perpetually fierce expression that served him well in alien lands. Despite the heat, he wore a red-and-white striped silken shirt and over that the heavy leather armor of his people, with bright red pants tucked into tall, thick boots.
Those in the bar sniggered and exchanged grins at the dwarf’s garish clothing. If they had known anything at all about dwarven society and what the bright colors of his clothing portended, they wouldn’t have laughed.
The dwarf paused in the doorway, blinking his eyes, half-blinded from the bright sun.
“Blackbeard, my friend,” Roland called, rising from his seat. “Over here!”
The dwarf clumped into the inn, the black eyes darting here and there, staring down any who seemed too bold. Dwarves were a rarity in Thillia. The dwarven kingdom was far to the norinth-est of the humans and there was little contact between the two. But this particular dwarf had been in town for five days now and his appearance had ceased to be a novelty. Griffith was a squalid place located on the borders of two kingdoms, neither of which claimed it. The inhabitants did what they liked-an arrangement that suited most of them, because most of them had come from parts of Thillia where doing what they liked generally got them hung. The people of Griffith might wonder what a dwarf was up to in their town, but no one would wonder aloud.