Heroes And Fools

Epilogue. A Road Out of Xak Faoleen

They were well out of town before slowing the horses to a trot. Samael peered behind them. “Do you think he’ll follow us?”

“Not for a while,” Daev answered. “When he wakes up, I don’t think he’ll find any reliable witnesses. We’ve got some time.” He considered. “We’ve got more than that.”

“We still have the printing press,” Samael said cheerfully.

“We still have half of our props,” Frenni said.

“We have my notebooks,” Kela said.

Daev felt the purse at his belt. “We have a fair amount of gold.”

Kela hugged him suddenly. “We still have our play and all your wonderful words. I haven’t been able to think of anything else since we started rehearsal.” She held him tight.

Samael glanced sideways at Frenni, who was watching with interest while he sat with an arm around the panting, happy Tasslehoff. “I have some work to do inside.” He lifted the canvas flap. “ Tasslehoff, come. Frenni, you too.”

“But-”

“I’ll need the help.” He pushed the kender backward into the wagon bed. Tasslehoff followed happily, and Samael closed the flap behind them.

“So the thing you loved was the play,” Daev said wonderingly.

“Of course. You wrote such beautiful things about love-you’re so wonderful, Daev. There’s no one like you in the whole world.”

“But I thought-” He shook his head. “Never mind what I thought.”

Kela looked up at him, her eyes shining. “What are you thinking now?”

Daev was thinking that perhaps he’d been exposed to too much of the love potion. He stopped thinking and kissed her.

Much later he had a disturbing thought. “Kela?”

“Yes, love.” She was nestled in his arm, but she was sketching the view ahead in a notebook. She frowned, trying to get the sunset shadows right.

“I’ve been reviewing our recent past.”

In seven lines she added a tree, which was not in the panorama ahead but which balanced the distant mountains nicely. “It’s been exciting.”

“Now I understand how much I love you-mostly because you-

“Accidentally, of course-”

“-made me jealous.” He paused. “Was it accidental?”

She laughed and kissed him.

That was no answer at all, he realized as he kissed her back.

“Frenni’s right,” he muttered to himself as he kissed Kela again. “In some things, thinking is less fun than improvising.”

The kender’s head popped out from under the canvas wagon back. “I heard my name.”

“I expected you to interrupt earlier.”

“I wanted to, but Samael sat on me.”

Samael gave one of his demented-sounding laughs. “You two needed privacy, and I needed something to sit on while I corrected the revised version of the Alchemist’s Handbook.” He looked disapprovingly at Frenni while he showed them the corrections.

Daev was thinking aloud. “There’s a play in this somewhere. . ”