trooped out the door and into the moonlight.
And then I realized that it WAS moonlight. (I told you
I’d tell you all this when it came its proper turn in the
story, and this is it.) The fog was gone and we could see
the Guardians and the Bridge of Passage and behind us the
Silver Dragon Mountain. And Owen was so fascinated
that we almost couldn’t drag him off. But Fizban reminded
him that the dragonlances were the “salvation of the
people” and this got the knight moving.
He’d had a horse, but somehow or other he’d lost it. He
said that when we reached civilized lands we’d find other
horses to ride and that would get us to Lord Gunthar’s
faster.
I considered telling him that Fizban could get us all to
Lord Gunthar’s much, much faster, if he wanted to cast
one of his spells on us. Then I thought that with Fizban’s
spells, all things considered (especially my eyebrows), we
might end up in the middle of the Hot Springs. And maybe
Fizban thought the same thing because he didn’t mention
his spells either. So we set off, with Owen Glendower
carrying the dragonlances and me carrying my pouches
and Fizban carrying a tune, sort of.
And, praise be to any and all of the gods, we did NOT
go back to Huma’s Tomb!
CHAPTER SIX
Let me point out right here and now that it wasn’t my
fault we ended up in the Wasted Lands. I had a map and I
told Fizban and Sir Owen we were heading the wrong
direction. (It was a perfectly good map: if Tarsis By the
Sea chose to get itself landlocked, I don’t see how anyone
can blame me for it!)
It was night. We were wandering around in the
mountains when we came to a pass. I told Fizban that we
should go left. That would lead us out of the mountains
and take us to Sancrist. But Fizban scoffed and said my
map was outdated (outdated!) and Owen Glendower
vowed he’d shave his moustaches before he ever took
advice from a kender. (Which seemed a fairly safe vow to
me, considering that he didn’t have all that much yet to
shave.) This after he’d admitted that he’d gotten himself
all turned around in Foghaven Vale and wasn’t real sure
where he was now!
He said that we should wait until morning and that
when the sun came up we’d know what direction to take,
but Fizban said he had a feeling in his bones that the sun
wouldn’t come up in the morning, and, by gosh, he was
right. The sun didn’t come up or if it did we missed it
what with the snow and all.
So we turned right when we should have turned left
and came to the Wasted Lands and the adventure, but this
isn’t the adventure’s proper place in the story yet, so it’ll
have to wait its turn.
I could tell you about the days we spent traveling
through the mountains in the snow but, to be honest, that
part wasn’t very exciting … if you don’t count Fizban
accidentally melting our snow shelter down around us one
night while he was trying to read his spell book by the
light of a magical candle that turned out to be more magic
than candle. (I got to keep the wick)
One nice thing about that time was traveling with
Owen Glendower. I was getting to like the knight a lot. He
said he didn’t even mind being around me much (which
may not sound very gracious to you but is a lot more than
I expected).
“Probably,” he said, “because I don’t have many
valuables to lose.”
I didn’t quite understand that last part, especially since
he kept losing what he said was his most treasured
possession: a very beautiful little painting of his wife and
son that he carried in a small leather pouch over his left
breast underneath his armor.
He discovered it missing one night when we were
relaxing in our snow shelter (the one Fizban melted) and
we all hunted for the painting most diligently. It was right