Tanis the shadow years

43

While Tanis was telling the dwanf about Scowarr, a movement down the street caught the dwarf's eye. 'There's someone there," said Clotnik. Tanis hadn't seen the figure. "It looked like an old man who ducked out of the way when he saw us," Clotnik explained. "I'm going after him. If some of the elves stayed on after the others left, I might find someone who remembers my father." Tanis hoped not, but he held his tongue. "Go ahead," he said. "I have something to do here, anyway." Correctly interpreting Clotnik's look, the half-elf promised, "Nothing dangerous."

Clotnik hurried down the street, heading toward the beach. The once-tidy cobblestones lay in disarray, with gaps that now bobbed with weeds. Tanis watched the dwarf until Clotnik rounded a corner and was gone. The half-elf was grateful to be alone. He didn't want Clotnik around to see his disappointment if he couldn't find the message Brandella had buried for him. Nor did he want the dwarf reading over his shoulder if he did find the letter.

Brandella had said the note was buried at the foot of the barricade where he had slain the giant spider. Judging the distance from the main gate and the street from which Mertwig had arrived to save him, Tanis easily reconstructed the spot. A bright orange wildflower grew there, vivid contrast to the pale green weeds that dotted the littered area. Tanis dug it up by its roots, considered tossing it aside, then-not quite knowing why-spent several minutes replanting it a short distance away.

Then he began in earnest. He took out his sword and dug it deep into the earth to soften the hard clay. Kneeling, he began digging with his hands, scooping out the dirt and tossing it next to him.

It was hot, hard work. The ground was unyielding, and there was no telling how deep the box might be after nearly a hundred years-especially if flood waters had deposited layers of mud over the land. And then, of course, there was always the chance that the box wasn't there at all. Tanis shook his head, refusing to consider that possibility, and kept digging. He pushed deeper and deeper, until he had dug a hole a hand's span deep. Then twice that. Still, he dug… hoping… dreaming… wishing that his own experience in Kishpa's memory were as real as the mage's. After all, reasoned Tanis, didn't Clotnik say that Brandella disappeared at about the same time the half-elf took her away? And would Scowarr have been a hero had Tanis not been there beside him? Wasn't it possible that he, Tanis, had actually been there in the past, living and breathing, if only for a short while, somehow bridging the gap between memory and reality? "You're fooling yourself, Half-EIven," he chided.

Yet he continued to dig.

Zarjephwu crept among the ruins of the village walls. The sligs had left their steeds in the wood and cautiously covered the ground between the forest and the village, not knowing if their prey was keeping watch. Zar- jephwu's command had spread out behind him, using tumbled walls and piles of weathered debris as cover.

Soon Zarjephwu saw Tanis hard at work, trying to dig something out of the ground. He signaled his warriors to keep their heads down and wait while he studied the half- elf. When Tanis raised his head to wipe the sweat from his brow, the slig leader knew the man in the village square was the one he sought, the one who had kicked him into the fire. The half-elf looked worn and battle- scarred, but a light shone in his face, a light that the warrior slig interpreted as the euphoria of nearing a yearned-for goal. Zarjephwu gave the grimace that passed as a smile with sligs. He figured he knew just what Tanis sought.

The slig unconsciously rubbed his burnt, hard-scaled skin. Half of his back and one of his arms was discolored from his roll in the flames. Zarjephwu had spent the better part of two days thinking about what he would do to the person who had caused him this pain. He'd lingered lovingly over the goriest details.

It was clear to the slig leader that the half-elf was looking for something. And if it was buried so deeply underground, then it had to be something very valuable-like the enchanted quill. Zarjephwu grinned, choosing to wait and let the half-elf do all the work before the slig snatched the prize.

Consumed by the task at hand, Tanis was unaware of the eyes that watched him from the ruins. The hole he had dug was nearly an arm's length deep, and he was finally ready to give up. There was nothing to be found. All he had to show for his clawing at the hard, rock- strewn dirt were bloody fingers and aching arms. In disgust, he threw his sword into the hole.

A strange sound greeted his ears: The blade clanged against something metallic!

Tanis instantly dove down on his stomach, sticking his head and shoulders into the hole. He pulled his sword up and tossed it behind him, scrabbling at yet another layer of dirt. There were more stones, more roots, and more crusted clay. And something entirely different.

It felt like the lid of a box.

Zarjephwu had wedged himself partly underneath a large slab of stone that once had anchored Ankatavaka's main gate; lying under a rock where it was cool and damp came naturally to the lizardlike slig. With deceptively sleepy eyes, he watched and waited. He was beginning to worry that he'd seen no sign of anyone else. Where was the woman? Where was the half-elf's accomplice in her rescue? Had they gone to the shore and sailed away? If that was so, reasoned the slig, then what was the half-elf digging up?

When Tanis suddenly leaped into the hole, Zarjephwu sensed that his wait had finally ended. He gave a signal as he rose to his feet. Fourteen other sligs immediately appeared as if by magic, rising from their hiding places. Silently, they advanced upon Tanis.

*****

Tanis's heart was pounding harder than when he'd fought the giant spider on this same spot. He frantically worked his fingers in every direction, probing the edges of his find.

It was a small, square box, still brightly painted in reds and blues in the same distinctly feminine style as the paintings in Brandella's room, but dotted with specks of rust. His soul soared with hope. Hurriedly digging around all four sides of it, Tanis freed the box from its resting place of nearly one hundred years.

With the box finally in his hands, Tanis pulled himself out of the hole with a triumphant cry.

Had he looked toward the outer edges of the village, he would have seen the sligs coming toward him. But when he came out of the hole, his back was to them and he had no eyes for anything except his prize.

The sligs were spread out over a wide area, the nearest, Zarjephwu, a mere thirty feet away and closing in fast.

Tanis tried to open the box; it was rusted shut. He pulled his knife from his belt to try to pry it open.

Twenty feet away, the sligs began to come together as a pack. They moved with a deadly stealth, their spears, bardiches, and battle-axes already in their sharp-nailed fingers.

The knife seemed to help. Tanis managed to wedge it under a corner of the lid and edge it upward. The top was bending a bit, coming off, but slowly.

The sligs crept just fifteen feet away. Zarjephwu signaled to the others that he wanted to take the half-elf prisoner. The torture would be exquisite.

Then Tanis heard something… inside the box. It was impossible that an animal could have been in it; the box had been sealed thoroughly. Nonetheless, he held it a little farther away from his body as he popped the top off. Inside, he saw two things: the quill he'd given Brandella and a folded piece of ancient parchment. In large letters across the parchment, written in Common, was the emphatic warning, Sligs Behind You!