The War Of The Lance (40 page)

“May your moustaches grow long,” said Fizban, clapping Owen on both shoulders. “And don't
worry about my hat. Though, of course, it will never be the same.” He heaved a sad sigh.

Owen stood back and gave us both the knight's salute. I would have given it back, only a
snuffle took hold of me right then, and I was looking for a handkerchief. When I found it
(in Fizban's pouch) Owen was gone. The snuffle got bigger and it probably would have
turned into a sob if Fizban hadn't taken hold of me and given me a restorative shake. Then
he raised a finger in the air.

“Tasslehoff Burrfoot,” he said, and he looked very solemn and wizardly and so I paid
strict attention, which I must admit sometimes I don't when he's talking, “you must
promise me that you will never, ever, ever, tell anyone else about the dragonlances.”

“What about them?” I asked, interested.

His eyebrows nearly flew up off his head and into the sky, which is probably where my
eyebrows were at the moment.

“You mean . . . um . . . about them not working?” I suggested.

“They work!” he roared.

“Yes, of course,” I said hurriedly. I knew why he was yelling. He was upset about his hat.
“What about Theros? What if he says something? He's a very honest person.”

“That is Theros's decision,” said Fizban. “He'll take the lances to the Council of
Whitestone and we'll see what he does when he gets there.”

Well, of course, when Theros got to the Council of Whitestone, which - in case you've
forgotten - was a big meeting of the Knights of Solamnia and the elves and some other
people that I can't remember. And they were all ready to kill each other, when they should
have been ready to kill the evil dragons, and I was only trying to prove a point when I
broke the dragon orb (That's ORB not HERB!) and I guess they would have all been ready to
kill me, except Theros came with the dragonlances and he threw a lance at the Whitestone
and shattered it - the stone, not the lance - so I guess he had decided the lances worked,
after all.

Fizban took his slobbered-on hat out of his pocket and perched it gingerly on his head. He
began to hum and wave his hands in the air so I knew a spell was coming on. I covered my
face and took hold of his sleeve.

“And what about Owen?” I asked. “What if he tells the other knights about the lances?”

“Don't interrupt me. Very difficult, this spell,” he muttered.

I kept quiet or at least I meant to keep quiet, but the words came out before I could stop
them, in the same sort of way a hiccup comes out, whether you want it to or not.

“Owen Glendower's a knight,” I said, “and you know how knights are about telling the truth
all the time. He's bound by whatever it is that knights are bound by to tell the other
knights about the lances, isn't he?”

“If he does, he does. It's his decision,” said Fizban. And he was suddenly holding a
flapping black bat in his hand. “Wing of bat!” he shouted at nobody that I could see. “Not
the whole damn ...” Muttering, he let the bat loose, glared at me, and sighed. “Now I'll
have to start over.”

“It doesn't seem to me very fair,” I commented, watching the bat fly into the cave. “If
it's Theros's decision to tell or not to tell and Owen's decision - then it should be my
decision, too. I mean whether or not to say anything about the lances. Working,” I added.

Fizban stopped his spell casting and stared at me. Then his eyebrows smoothed out. “By
gosh. I believe you've caught on at last. You are absolutely right, Tasslehoff Burr-foot.
The decision will be yours. What do you say?”

Well, I thought and I thought and I thought.

“Maybe the lances aren't magical,” I said, after thinking so hard that my hair hurt.
“Maybe the magic's inside us. But, if that's true, then some people might not have found
the magic inside themselves yet, so if they use the lances and think that the magic is
outside themselves and inside the lances, then the magic that isn't inside the lances will
really be inside them. And after a while they'll come to understand - just like Owen did,
though he doesn't - and they'll look for the magic inside and not for the magic outside.”

Fizban had the sort of expression that you get on your face when you're sitting in a rope
swing and someone winds the rope up real tight, then lets it loose and you spin round and
round and throw up, if you're lucky.

“I think I better sit down,” he said, and he sat down in the snow.

I sat down in the snow and we talked some more and eventually he knew what I was trying to
say. Which was that I would never, ever, ever say anything to anybody about the
dragonlances not working. And, just to make certain that the words didn't accidentally
slip out, like a hiccup, I swore the most solemn and reverent oath a kender can take.

I swore on my topknot.

And I want to say right here and now, for Astinus and history, that I kept my oath.

I just wouldn't be me without a topknot.

I finished my story. They were all sitting in the Upper Gallery, next to poor Owen
Glendower, listening to me. And they were about the best audience I'd ever had.

Tanis and Lady Crysania and Laurana and Caramon and Owen's son and Lord Gunthar all sat
staring at me like they'd been frozen into statues by the white dragon's frost breath. But
I'm afraid the only thing I was thinking about then was my topknot shriveling up and
falling off. I was hoping it didn't, but that's a risk I figured I had to take. I just
couldn't let Owen Glendower die of a fit when telling this story might help him, though I
didn't see how it could.

“You mean to say,” said Lord Gunthar, his moustaches starting to quiver, “that we fought
that entire war and risked our very lives on dragonlances that were supposed to be magical
and they were just ordinary lances?”

“You said it,” I told him, hanging onto my topknot and thinking how fond I was of it. “I
didn't.”

“Theros of the Silver Arm knew they were ordinary,” Lord Gunthar went on, and I could see
him getting himself all worked up over it. “He knew the metal was plain steel. Theros
should have told someone - ”

“Theros Ironfeld knew, and Theros Ironfeld split the Whitestone with the dragonlance,”
Lady Crysania said coolly. “The lance didn't break when he threw it.”

“That's true,” said Lord Gunthar, struck by the fact. He thought this over, then he looked
angry again. “But, as the kender reminded us, Owen Glendower knew. And by the Measure he
should have told the Knight's Council.”

“What did I know?” asked a voice, and we all jumped up to our feet.

Owen Glendower was standing up in the middle of the pile of cloaks and, though he looked
almost as bad as he had when he was righting the dragon, he had at least come out of his
fit.

“You knew the truth, Sir!” said Lord Gunthar, scowling.

“I came to know the truth - for myself. But how could I know it for any other? That was
what I told myself and what I believed until. . . until. . .” He glanced at his son.

“Until I became a knight,” said Gwynfor.

“Yes, my son.” Owen sighed, and stroked his moustaches that were extremely long now,
though they weren't red so much as mostly gray. “I saw you with the lance in your hand and
I saw again the lance - the first lance I threw - shatter and fall to pieces in front of
my foe. How could I let you go to battle the evil in this world, knowing as I did that the
weapon on which your life depended was plain, ordinary? And how could I tell you? How
could I destroy your faith?”

“The faith you feared to destroy in your son was not in the dragonlance, but in yourself,
wasn't it, Sir Knight?” Lady Crysania asked, her sightless eyes turning to see him.

“Yes, Revered Daughter,” answered Owen. “I know that now, listening to the kender's story.
Which,” he added, his mouth twisting, “wasn't precisely the way it all happened.”

Tanis eyed me sternly.

“It was so, too!” I said, but I said it under my breath. My topknot didn't appear to be
going anywhere for the time being and I intended to keep it that way.

“It was my faith that faltered the first time,” Owen said. “The second, my heart and my
aim held true.”

“And so will mine, father,” said Gwynfor Glendower. “So will mine. You have taught me
well.”

Gwynfor threw his arms around his father. Owen hugged his son close, which must have been
hard to do with all the armor they were wearing, but they managed. Lord Gunthar thought at
first he was going to keep being mad, but then, the more he thought about it, the more I
guess he decided he wouldn't. He went over to Owen and they shook hands and then they put
their arms around each other.

Laurana went to get Theros, who'd walked out of the room, you remember. He was awfully
gruff and grim when he first came back, as if he thought everyone was going to yell at him
or something. But he relaxed quite a bit when he saw that Owen was walking around and
smiling, and that we were all smiling, even Lord Gunthar - as much as he ever smiles,
which is mostly just a twitch around the moustaches.

They decided to go on with the ceremony of the Forging of the Lance, but it wasn't going
to be a “public spectacle” as Tanis put it, when he thought Lord Gunthar wasn't listening.
It was going to be a time for the knights to rededicate themselves to honor and courage
and nobility and self-sacrifice. And now it would have more meaning than ever.

“Are you going to tell them the truth about the lances?” Laurana asked.

“What truth?” asked Lord Gunthar and for a moment he looked as crafty and cunning as
Fizban. Then he smiled. “No, I'm not. But I am going to urge Owen Glendower to tell his
story to them.”

And with that he and Owen and Gwynfor left (Owen said good-bye to me very politely) and
went down to

Huma's Tomb, where all the other knights were getting ready to fast and pray and
rededicate themselves.

“His story!” I said to Tanis, and I must admit I was a bit indignant. “Why it's my story
and Fizban's story just as much as it is Owen's story.”

“You're absolutely right, Tas,” said Tanis seriously. One thing I do like about Tanis is
that he always takes me seriously. “It is your story. You have my permission to go down
into Huma's Tomb and tell your side of it. I'm certain that Lord Gunthar would understand.”

“I'm certain he better,” I said loftily.

I was about to go down to Huma's Tomb, because I was afraid Owen would leave out a lot of
the very best parts, only about then Caramon came up to us.

“I don't understand,” he said, his big face all screwed up into thought-wrinkles. “Did the
lances work? Or didn't they?”

I looked at Tanis. Tanis looked at me. Then Tanis put his arm around Caramon's shoulders.

“Caramon,” he said. “I think we better have a little talk. We used the lances, and we won
the war because of them. And so you see . . .”

The two of them walked off. And I hope Caramon understands the truth about the lances now,
though I think it's more likely that he just caught Tanis's cold.

I was on my own, and I started once again to go down to Huma's Tomb when the thought
occurred to me.

Huma's Tomb. Again.

Now, please don't misunderstand, all you knights who read this. Huma's Tomb is a most
wonderful and solemn and sorrowful and feel-sad-until-you-feel-good kind of place.

But I'd seen about all of it I wanted to see in one lifetime.

Right then I heard Tanis sneeze, and I figured he'd need his handkerchief, which he'd left
behind in my pocket, so I decided I'd go take it to him instead.

And I figure that about now Owen Glendower must be looking for that little painting of his
that he keeps losing. I plan to give it right back to him . . . when he leaves Huma's Tomb.