Tanis the shadow years

Epilogue

At the far end of the village sguare, the ancient elf showed himself again, staying at a distance but calling out, "Do you treat all your old friends like that?" Tanis laughed and shouted, "Be glad you're just an acquaintance." Then he waved for him to approach. Tentatively, the old elf made his way in their direction. 'This is the villager you chased earlier," Tanis explained to Clotnik, who nodded exhaustedly. When the elf sat next to Tanis, he patted him on the back, saying, "You remind me of another young fellow who was here about a hundred years ago. Fought alongside him" he said, pointing at the statue of Scowarr.

Tanis narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to speak, but the old elf, amber eyes nostalgic, continued, "That human, Brandella, that you asked me about7"

"Yes?" said Tanis anxiously.

The elf's creased face assumed a wise expression. "I remember her. She was a beautiful weaver. My wife had several of her scarves."

Tanis leaned close to the elf. "Do you remember anything personal about her?"

The elf paused to think, resting one elbow on a patched trouser leg. "A pleasant girl. Well-liked in the village, even though she was human. Actually," he confided, "I thought she was rather plain-looking, myself. Kishpa thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen." The elf paused to consider, then added, "But of course, he had some human blood."

"What became of her?" Tanis pressed while Clotnik just looked on.

The elf, apparently tiring of the conversation, stood and brushed off his trousers. "She just disappeared one day," he said, leaving the impression that he, too, was about to take his leave. "Went off with a stranger. Kishpa went after her, but came back alone." The elf pursed his lips. "He never did say what happened."

When Clotnik was well enough to travel, he and Tanis left Ankatavaka together, heading east. They did not stay together long. When they reached a crossroads, Clotnik veered off for the closest town to show off his juggling skills. Tanis, however, craved solitude.

"Farewell," the dwarf said from atop a bullbogg. "We may never meet again." His sad expression deepened.

Tanis scrutinized his friend, memorizing the emerald eyes, slanted forehead, rounded body, forest-colored clothes. "You can be sure that you will live in my memory," the half-elf said.

Clotnik rewarded him with a quick smile so like Mertwig's that the half-elf caught his breath. "And you in mine, my friend." Then the dwarf, sitting as straight as one can on a six-legged creature with an impossibly broad back, guided his steed up the path.

Tanis headed into the mountains near Solace. As he rode, he often read the letter Brandella had written him. It wasn't long, though, before the ancient parchment fell apart in his hands. It didn't matter. He had long since committed it to memory.

Cool, crisp days and chilly nights stretched out before him as the autumn season broke early in the high country. It was on one of these nights, as he drifted somewhere near sleep, that he thought once again of Kishpa and Brandella, the two of them sharing their great love. And then it hit him, and he sat bolt upright.

"It wasn't just Brandella whom I saved from Kishpa's memory," he whispered, "but Kishpa himself!"

He lay back down, smiling. What a master stroke, he thought. What a brilliant conceit. The old mage had contrived not only to save the woman he loved, but to save himself. For in Tanis's memory, Brandella and Kishpa lived together again, at the height of their youthful love, sacrificing what they wanted most in life-each other. What greater gesture of love could there be?

Tanis recalled their love as Kishpa remembered it. The half-elf knew he could change it all if he chose to. He could imagine that it was he whom Brandella really loved, and over time he could convince himself that this was so. The truth, he knew, was that memories not only fade; they change, become embellished, and are sometimes created out of whole cloth.

Maybe it never happened the way Kishpa remembered it. But it was a beautiful memory nonetheless. No matter how much he might despair, Tanis would know that a great love could exist-and might, therefore, someday exist for him.

As fall gave way to winter, Tanis began to brood that eventually, when he died, the story of Kishpa and Brandella would die with him. But there was another way that they might live on.

Tanis had planned to try his hand at sculpting upon leaving the Inn of the Last Home. Hint's metalsmithing had first sparked his interest, but it was the statue of Scowarr in Ajikatavaka that truly inspired him. There was magic in that stone, and somehow it had come alive. He didn't know if he could fashion such a work, but he felt the passion to try. And he would do it in a way that was bigger than life.

He began in the winter, in the ice, snow, and freezing cold. He chose a granite mountain peak, painstakingly chiseling away the stone to suggest a face of ineffable beauty, intelligence, and warmth. With longing eyes, she looked across a narrow pass at the second of Tanis's creations: her desperate, headstrong, loving mage.

He worked on his masterpiece every day for more than fourteen months. By the spring of the following year, he didn't merely tell their story in stone, he toid it in mountains-so that it would last.

He never left a signature in the stone or told anyone that he'd created it. It was his monument to memory. And imagination.

Tanis never picked up a chisel again. He left the mountains near Solace and disappeared. His adventures between the finishing of his creation and his rendezvous with the companions at the Inn of the Last Home will, it seems, have to await their own timely telling.

As for his sculpture, the mountain figures never came to life like the statue of Scowarr, but they did something even grander: They came to life in the minds of the untold thousands who saw them. People trekked from all over Krynn to be inspired by the images.

In time, a legend grew up about the man and the woman, and about the sculptor who had fashioned them. And this is that legend.