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Shining Sands, vol. iv
Printed and Bound at Keltar
960 DR
    F OR ALL HIS FAULTS, AND HE WAS MORE THAN WILLING TO admit they were many, the freedman Talid was no fool. He knew what his fellow former slaves thought of him. He knew, too, that the only time he was ever assigned guard duty on the downland bridge was when Azad and Shaneerah judged that there was no threat from that direction. Other than a few hapless wildcat miners scratching in unpromising places, the western mountains were empty.
    That suited Talid just fine. He regretted he wouldn’t be able to liberate any whiskey from the kitchens during the night’s matches, but he knew he wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of actually watching the downslope trail, either. Talid usually managed to get a great deal of rest on guard duty.
    He was not yet fully asleep when the rumbling sound came from behind him, and a wave of cool, moisture-ladenair flowed over the canyon rim. Talid turned just in time to see a boulder that had sat immobile by the trail since the Calishites had arrived, a boulder under which he had been shaded on more than one occasion, fall back to the ground with a heavy thud, as if it had hovered in the air before he turned around.
    The bandit quickly forgot any questions about levitating boulders when he spotted the three figures standing before him. Talid had seen dwarves many times, of course. The savage clans on the jungle islands south of Calimport were a favorite source of new talent for the genasi who had owned him. And these mountains were home to their own variety of the squat, muscle-bound little men. Once or twice a year one would show up on the canvas, usually lasting longer than most humans.
    But neither the wild-eyed jungle dwarves he’d known in the South nor the quieter ones he’d encountered since Azad had led them north prepared him for the pair that confronted him on the trail. Talid was an expert on arms and armor, so he knew a good word to describe the baroque angles and intricate details, infinitely impractical, of the bejeweled suits of armor these two white-beards wore. That word was “archaic.”
    As for the goliath fighter who loomed behind them, his mail shirt and enormous mattock struck Talid as infinitely practical.
    The dwarves were a little shorter than Talid, who was not a tall man, but their shoulders were twice the breadth of his. They wore full suits of plate, ridiculous off a military battlefield; certainly no soldier had designed them. The ores that went into their making—unrecognizable to Talid—bore a sheen so high that at first the Calishite thought their golden color reflected the late-afternoon sun. And the jewels!
    Cuirass and vambrace, hipguard and gauntlet, every surface that did not bear a spike or serration; all were fitted with a multifaceted ruby, sapphire, or emerald, and with other precious stones Talid didn’t know. They were clear in color, flaming orange, or royal purple, and none of them, no matter their hue, was smaller than the size of Talid’s eyes just then.
    But the demeanor the dwarves projected was not martial. Rather, it was haughty, confident, to be sure, and troubled at finding Talid standing there, not because he represented a threat but because he was a bothersome inconvenience. The attitude they wordlessly expressed reminded Talid of nothing so much as the windsouled genasi back in Calimport; he had seen them almost every day of the first five decades of his life, but they almost never saw him at all. Only the memory of that inhuman haughtiness kept him from shaking in fear as the huge warrior reached down and between the dwarves and relieved Talid of his spear.
    The dwarf who was not bearing a sword began to speak, but not to Talid, and not in any tongue he was familiar with. This ancient being bent almost double under the weight of the king’s ransom of precious stones woven into his enormous mustache. He leaned on a pair of canes that must have had wood or bone somewhere in