Flint Fireforge, sitting on that boulder, carving wood, and
complaining – as usual. That meeting had set in motion events
that had shaken the world, culminating in the War of the
Lance, the battle that cast the Queen of Darkness back into the
Abyss, and broke the might of the Dragon Highlords.
Now I am a hero, Tanis thought, glancing down ruefully at
the gaudy panoply he wore: breastplate of a Knight of Solam-
nia; green silken sash, mark of the Wildrunners of Silvanesti,
the elves’ most honored legions; the medallion of Kharas, the
dwarves’ highest honor; plus countless others. No one –
human, elf, or half-elf – had been so honored. It was ironic. He
who hated armor, who hated ceremony, now forced to wear it
as befitting his station. How the old dwarf would have
laughed.
“You – a hero!” He could almost hear the dwarf snort. But
Flint was dead. He had died two years ago this spring in Tanis’s
arms.
“Why the beard?” He could swear once again that he heard
Flint’s voice, the first words he had said upon seeing the half-elf
in the road. “You were ugly enough….”
Tanis smiled and scratched the beard that no elf on Krynn
could grow, the beard that was the outward, visible sign of his
half-human heritage. Flint knew well enough why the beard,
Tanis thought, gazing fondly at the sun-warmed boulder. He
knew me better than I knew myself. He knew of the chaos that
raged inside my soul. He knew I had a lesson to learn.
“And I learned it,” Tanis whispered to the friend who was
with him in spirit only. “I learned it, Flint. But… oh, it was bit-
ter!”
The smell of wood smoke came to Tanis. That and the slant-
ing rays of the sun and the chill in the spring air reminded him
he still had some distance to travel. Turning, Tanis Half-Elven
looked down into the valley where he had spent the bittersweet
years of his young manhood. Turning, Tanis Half-Elven looked
down upon Solace.
It had been autumn when he last saw the small town. The
vallenwood trees in the valley had been ablaze with the sea-
son’s colors, the brilliant reds and golds fading into the purple
of the peaks of the Kharolis mountains beyond, the deep azure
of the sky mirrored in the still waters of Crystalmir Lake. There
had been a haze of smoke over the valley, the smoke of home
fires burning in the peaceful town that had once roosted in the
vallenwood trees like contented birds. He and Flint had
watched the lights flicker on, one by one, in the houses that
sheltered among the leaves of the huge trees. Solace – tree
city – one of the beauties and wonders of Krynn.
For a moment, Tanis saw the vision in his mind’s eye as
clearly as he had seen it two years before. Then the vision
faded. Then it had been autumn. Now it was spring. The
smoke was there still, the smoke of the home fires. But now it
came mostly from houses built on the ground. There was the
green of living, growing things, but it only seemed – in Tanis’s
mind – to emphasize the black scars upon the land; scars that
could never be totally erased, though here and there he saw the
marks of the plow across them.
Tanis shook his head. Everyone thought that, with the
destruction of the Queen’s foul temple at Neraka, the war was
over. Everyone was anxious to plow over the black and burned
land, scorched by dragonfire, and forget their pain.
His eyes went to a huge circle of black that stood in the center
of town. Here, nothing would grow. No plow could turn the
soil ravaged by dragonfire and soaked by the blood of inno-
cents, murdered by the troops of the Dragon Highlords.
Tanis smiled grimly. He could imagine how an eyesore like
that must irritate those who were working to forget. He was
glad it was there. He hoped it would remain, forever.
Softly, he repeated words he had heard Elistan speak, as the
cleric dedicated in solemn ceremony the High Clerist’s Tower to