Dragons of Summer Flame

by Tracy Hickman

Usha blinked, gasped for breath, and peered dizzily around.

  A tall, muscular man dressed in a dull, crimson-colored tunic and leggings, with an official air about him, had hold of her. At his arrival, the crowd rapidly dispersed, with varied and colorful comments about guardsmen who spoiled their fun. The man who had accosted her lay on the ground, groaning and clutching his private parts.

  “Who started this?” The guardsman glared around.

  “She stole bread from my stall, Y’Honor,” cried the baker, “and then she tried to murder the lot of us.”

  “Them’s my apples,” accused the fruit vendor. “She walked off with ’em, just as cool as cucumbers.”

  “I never meant to steal anything,” Usha protested, snuffling a little. Tears had always worked with Prot when she was in trouble, and she was quick to fall back on old habits. “I thought the fruit and the bread were set out for anyone to take.” She wiped her eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I’m tired and I’m lost and I’m hungry, and then that man … he touched …”

  The tears came for real at the horrible memory. The guardsman gazed at her helplessly, attempted to comfort her.

  “Now, now there. Don’t cry. The heat’s likely addlepated you. Give these two fair payment, and we’ll call it even. Won’t we?” the guardsman added, with a glowering glance at the two vendors, who glowered back, but nodded grudging assent.

  “I don’t have any money,” Usha gulped.

  “Vagrant!” the man snapped.

  “Worse than that.” The woman sniffed. “Obviously no better than she should be. Look at those outlandish clothes! I want her set in the stocks and whipped!”

  The guardsman appeared displeased, but he didn’t have much choice. The contested bread lay on the street, having fallen out of Usha’s pouch during the scuffle, and she reeked of overripe, squashed apple.

  “We’ll let the magistrate settle all this. Come along, young woman. And you two, you’ll have to come as well if you want to swear out a warrant.”

  The guard marched Usha off. The two vendors trailed behind, the woman stiff with righteous indignation, the apple-vendor wondering uneasily if this was going to cost him money.

  Numb and exhausted, Usha paid no attention to where she was being taken. She stumbled along beside her captor, her head bowed, not wanting to see any more of this horrible place. She was dimly aware of leaving the streets and entering a large building made entirely of stone, with an enormous, heavy wooden door guarded by more men wearing the same crimson-colored tunic as the man-at-arms. They opened the door. Her guard led her inside.

  The stone-walled room into which she was led was refreshingly dark and cool, after the glare and heat of the streets. Usha looked up and around. The guard was arguing with the two vendors. Usha ignored them. Although she was involved, none of this seemed to have anything to do with her. It was all part of this horrible city, which she was going to leave the moment she delivered her letter.

  A large man, looking bored by the whole affair, sat at a desk, writing something down in a greasy-paged book. Behind him was an enormous room filled with people, sitting or sleeping on the cold stone floor. Numerous iron bars, bolted into the ceiling and floor, separated the people inside the large room from those on the outside.

  “Here’s another one, jailer. Petty theft. Lock her up with the rest of the lot until the magistrate can hear her case in the morning,” said the guardsman.

  The large man glanced up, saw Usha. His eyes widened. “If the Thieves’ Guild is taking on recruits who look like her, I’ll join myself!” he said in an undertone to the guardsman. “Now then, Mistress, you’ll have to leave those pouches with me.”

  “What? Why? Don’t touch these!” Usha clasped her valuables tightly to her.

  “You’ll likely get them back,” the guardsman assured her with a shrug. “Here, now, young woman, don’t start any trouble. You’re in enough as it is.”

  Usha held on to the pouches a moment longer. The large man frowned, said something about taking them by force.

  “No, don’t touch me!” Usha said, and reluctantly removed both of her pouches—the small one with her clothes, the large one with her gifts—and placed them on the desk in front of the jailer.

  “I should warn you,” she said, in an anger-choked voice, “that some of the objects in that pack are magic, and you better treat them with respect. Also, I am carrying a scroll that I am supposed to deliver to someone known as Lord Dalamar. I don’t know who this Dalamar is, but I’m sure he wouldn’t be pleased to know you tampered with his things.”

  Usha had hoped to impress her captors, and she did, though not quite in the way she’d intended. The jailer, who had been rifling eagerly through the pouches, suddenly snatched his hand away from them as if they might be some gnomish invention that was likely to explode at a moment’s notice.

  The apple vendor cried out, “I drop all charges!” and made a swift departure.

  “A witch,” pronounced the baker, standing her ground. “I figured as much. Burn her at the stake.”

  “We don’t do that anymore,” the jailer growled, but he was pale and shaken. “Did you say Dalamar?”

  “Yes, I did.” Usha was considerably startled at all this fuss, but—seeing that the name meant something to these people—she took advantage of it. “And you better treat me well, or I’m certain Lord Dalamar will be displeased.”

  The two men conferred in low voices.

  “What should we do?” the jailer whispered.

  “Send for Mistress Jenna. She’ll know,” returned the guard.

  “Do I put her in the cells?”

  “You want her running around loose?”

  The conversation ended with Usha being escorted—respectfully—into the large room behind the iron bars. Almost immediately, she was surrounded by what she thought at first were human children. She was wondering what crimes these children could have committed, when she heard the jailer swear at them.

  “Get back, you blasted kender! Here now! Where’s my keys? Ah, you rascal! Give me them back! Find a seat, Missy,” the jailer yelled at her, making snatches and grabs at the kender all the while. “Someone’ll be along soon. And what are you doing with my pipe? And you, hand over that ironweed pouch or so help me, Gilean, I’ll—”

  Muttering and swearing, the jailer left the cell, retreated thankfully to his desk.

  So these were kender! Usha was interested in meeting the people whom Prot had dubbed, the “merry thieves of Krynn.” Meeting them was not a problem, since the ever curious kender were always interested in meeting any stranger who came into what they considered to be “their” jail.

  All talking at once, asking her thirty questions in the space of five seconds, the kender swarmed around her, jabbering and giggling, touching and patting. The noise, the clamor, the heat, her fear and hunger—it was all suddenly too much for her to bear. The room started to heave, then tilt. The air was shot through with sparkling stars.

  The next thing Usha knew, she was lying on the floor, looking up into the anxious face of one of the kender. This kender appeared older than the rest; crinkly lines webbed his eyes, laugh-lines tugged at his mouth. Long hair streaked with gray was gathered in a topknot on his head and hung to his shoulder. His face was as pleasant and friendly and curious as that of a child or all the other kender, but he seemed more grown-up than the rest.

  When any of the kender came too close, this elder kender shooed them off. Even the rougher elements of the human population, who were also penned up in the holding cell, appeared to respect him, for they, too, kept their distance.

  “What happened?” Usha asked, struggling to sit up.

  “You fainted,” the kender explained. “And I really think you should lie down some more. I’ve never fainted myself—at least not that I can remember. I keep thinking I should like to try it sometime, but I never seem to manage it. How are you feeling? The guard said you probably passed out because you haven’t eaten in a while and
that you’d come around. And, sure enough, you did! Are you hungry? In about an hour they’ll bring us some bread and soup. The food’s good here. Palanthas has a very nice jail, one of the nicest in all Ansalon. What remarkable eyes you have. Kind of a gold color, aren’t they? You certainly do look familiar. Have we met before? Were you ever in Solace?”

  “I don’t think so,” Usha answered wearily. The kender’s chatter was comforting, but his innumerable questions confused her. “I’ve never heard of Solace.”

  She felt rotten. Her head ached and her empty stomach gnawed at her. Prot had warned her to be wary of kender, but this one was the first person she’d met who’d spoken kindly to her. Looking around, she noticed that her head was pillowed on what was probably—to judge by the vivid green, which was the same color as the pants he was wearing—the kender’s cloak.

  Usha was grateful and tried a smile. “Who are you?”

  The kender appeared shocked, then chagrined. “Didn’t I introduce myself? I guess not. I was going to, when you keeled over.” He held out a small, nut-brown hand. “My name’s Tasslehoff Burrfoot. My friends all call me Tas. What’s your name?”

  “Usha.” She accepted the hand and shook it solemnly.

  “Just Usha? Most humans I know have two names.”

  “Just Usha.”

  “Anyway, that’s a pretty name. Pretty enough for two names together.” The kender studied her thoughtfully. “You know, Usha, you really do remind me of someone. I wonder who it could be?”

  Usha didn’t know, and she didn’t care. Closing her eyes, feeling protected by her new friend, she let herself relax and drift into sleep.

  On the ragged edge of consciousness, she heard the kender murmur in awed tones, “I have it! She has gold eyes—just like Raistlin!”

  5

  The sorceress.

  Mistress jenna is surprised.

  he smell of hot soup woke Usha from her nap. She felt better after her brief rest. Propped against the stone wall, she drank chicken broth from a chipped crockery bowl and wondered what was going to happen to her next. At least she’d solved the problem of where she was going to sleep.

  It was now nighttime. The cell was dark, lit only by the light of a few sputtering torches on the wall of the prison’s entrance.

  The kender, Tas, drank his soup, then offered Usha his hunk of brown bread. “Here, you still look hungry.”

  Usha had finished her bread in about three bites. She hesitated. “Are you sure you don’t want it?”

  Tas shook his head. “No, that’s all right. If I get hungry, I’ve likely got something in my pouches to eat.” He indicated various bulging bags that were draped about his slender frame.

  Usha frowned. “Why do you get to keep your things? They took mine.”

  “Oh, that’s the way it always is.” Tas shrugged. “I’m not sure why, but they never take anything from us kender. Maybe it’s because they don’t have room to store them. We tend to collect things in our travels. Or perhaps it’s because it would be too difficult to sort out who belongs to what in the morning. Not that it would matter to us, particularly. We”—he gestured at the other members of his race, who were now pelting each other with bread—“share everything.”

  “So do my people,” said Usha, before she thought.

  “Your people. Who are your people? Where do you come from? You certainly don’t come from around here, that’s for sure.” Tas nodded so emphatically that his topknot flipped over his head and smacked him in the nose.

  “How can you tell?” Usha asked, ignoring the question.

  “Well …” Tas stared at her, paused to consider. “You’re dressed differently, that’s one. You talk differently. Same words, but you say them in a peculiar way. And you’re about one hundred times prettier than any woman I’ve ever seen, with the exception of Laurana—that’s Tanis’s wife, but you probably don’t know him, do you? I didn’t think so. Oh, and Tika. She married Caramon. Do you know him? He had a twin brother named Raistlin.”

  Tas looked at Usha oddly as he asked this question. She recalled hearing the name Raistlin before she drifted off to sleep, but she couldn’t remember what the kender had said about it. Not that it mattered. She’d never heard of either of them, and she said as much.

  “As for my being pretty, I know you mean well, but you don’t have to lie to me. I know what I am.” Usha sighed.

  “I’m not lying!” Tas protested. “Kender never lie. And if you don’t believe me, ask those men over in that corner there. They were talking about you. Well, maybe you better not speak to them after all. They’re a bad lot. They’re thieves!” he added, in a shocked whisper.

  Usha was moderately confused. “You’re not a thief?”

  “Great Paladine’s beard, no!” Tas’s eyes were round and wide in indignation.

  “Then why are you in prison?”

  “A mistake,” Tas said cheerfully. “It always happens to us kender—on a daily basis, if you can believe that! Of course, they know it’s a mistake.” He nodded at the guardsman. “They never charge us, and they always let us go in the morning. Then they spend the day rounding us up and bringing us all back here at night. Gives us all something to do, you see.”

  Usha didn’t understand, tried to think of how to get information without rousing the kender’s suspicions.

  “Maybe you can explain something to me, Tas. Where I come from, my people live a lot like you do. We share everything. But here, everyone seems so—well—greedy. I took some man’s apples. I was hungry. The apples were spoiled. He would have had to throw them out anyway. Why did he get so mad? And that woman. Her bread would have been stale by morning.”

  “I know what you mean. It all has to do with things,” Tas explained. “Humans are very keen on things. They like to own things, and when they get tired of owning their things they don’t give them away, they demand other things in exchange. Remember that, and you’ll get on fine. Where do you come from, by the way, Usha?”

  It was a casual question. The kender was probably just curious, but Usha remembered Prot’s warning not to reveal that she’d been living among the Irda.

  “I’m from all over, really,” she answered, watching the kender from beneath lowered eyelids, to see his reaction. “I wander here and there, never stay in one place long.”

  “You know, Usha,” said Tas admiringly, “you’d make a great kender. You’ve never been to Solace, you said?”

  “Oh, I might have. One place is a lot like another. Who can remember names?”

  “I can! I make maps. But the reason I asked about Solace is that you look just like—”

  Keys clanked in the cell door. The jailer entered. This time he carried a staff, which he used to fend off the kender. He peered around the shadowy cell. “Where’s that newest prisoner?” He spotted Usha. “You there. Someone wants to talk to you.”

  “Me?” Usha thought he must be mistaken.

  “You. Get moving. Mistress Jenna ain’t got all night.”

  Usha looked at Tas for information.

  “Mistress Jenna’s a Red Robe mage,” he offered. “She runs a mage-ware shop in town. A truly wonderful place!”

  “What’s she want with me?”

  “The jailer always calls her to come inspect anything he confiscates that he thinks might be magic. Did you have anything with you that might be magic?”

  “Maybe,” Usha said, biting her lip.

  “You! Apple thief!” The jailer was prodding at the giggling kender with his staff. “Get over here now!”

  “Come on, Usha.” Tas stood up, held out his hand. “Don’t be afraid. Mistress Jenna’s real nice. She and I are old acquaintances. I’ve been thrown out of her shop on numerous occasions.”

  Usha stood. She did not accept the kender’s hand. Arranging her face to show careless indifference, she walked on her own over to the iron-barred door.

  The jailer let her out and grabbed hold of Tasslehoff just as the kender was sidling past, hiding in
Usha’s shadow. “Here now? Where are you going, Master Burrfoot?”

  “To say hello to Mistress Jenna, of course. I wouldn’t want to be impolite.”

  “You wouldn’t, would you? Well, now, you just be good and polite and hustle your way back into that cell.”

  The jailer gave Tas a shove and slammed the door shut in the kender’s face. Tas clung to the bars, peering out, trying to see.

  “Hullo, Mistress Jenna!” he yelled, waving his small arms. “It’s me! Tasslehoff Burrfoot, one of the Heroes of the Lance!”

  A woman wearing a red velvet hooded cloak stood beside the jailer’s desk. She turned her head in the direction of the kender’s shout, smiled a cool smile, and briefly nodded. Then she went back to what she had been doing—sorting through Usha’s possessions, which were now lined neatly on the desk.

  “Here she is, Mistress Jenna, the one who was asking about the Master of the Tower.”

  The woman drew aside the hood of her cloak to get a better view. She was human, her face lovely but cold, as if it were carved from the same stone as the white marble buildings. Dark eyes gazed intently at and through Usha.

  Usha’s stomach clenched. Her legs trembled. Her mouth went dry. She realized in an instant that this woman knew everything. What would happen to her now? Prot had warned her. Humans consider the Irda no better—maybe worse—than ogres. And humans slew ogres without mercy.

  “Come closer, child,” the woman said, beckoning with a shapely, delicate hand. “Into the light.”

  The woman was probably not much older than Usha herself, but the aura of mystery, power, and magic that surrounded the Red Robe wizardess added immeasurably to her years.

  Usha walked brashly forward, determined not to let this sorceress see that she was intimidated. She stepped into the light.

  Jenna’s eyes widened. She took a step forward, sucked in a swift breath. “Lunitari bless us!” she whispered.

  With a swift motion, she drew her hood back up over her head and turned to the jailer. “You will release this prisoner into my custody. I’ll take her and her belongings.”

  The woman gathered up the gifts of the Irda, handling each carefully, with respect, and replaced them safely inside Usha’s pouch. The jailer regarded them with deep suspicion.