Free Serpent Mage by Margaret Weis Page A

was talking to Alake and Sabia, as well. It was left to me, to the dwarf, to speak the bitter words aloud.
    “Alake's right. Our parents won't send us. They won't even tell us about this. They'll keep it a secret from our people. And our people will die, never knowing that there was a chance they might have been spared.”
    Sabia whispered, “I wish we'd never heard! If only we hadn't gone up there!”
    “We were meant to hear,” I said gruffly.
    “You're right, Grundle,” said Alake, turning to face us. “The One wanted us to hear. We have been given the chance to save our people. The One has left it up to us to make the decision, not our parents.
We
are the ones who must be strong now.”
    As she talked, I could see she was getting caught up in it all: the romance of martyrdom, of sacrifice. Humans set great store in such things, something we dwarves can never understand. Almost all human heroes are those who die young, untimely, giving up their brief lives for some noble cause. Not so dwarves. Our heroes are the Elders, those who live a just life through ages of strife and work and hardship.
    I couldn't help but think of the broken elf with his eyes plucked out of his head.
    What nobility is there in dying like that?
I wanted to ask her.
    But, for once, I held my tongue. Let her find comfort where she could. I must find it in my duty. As forSabia, she had truly meant what she said about being a queen, “But I was to have been married,” she said.
    The elven maid wasn't arguing or whining. She knew what we had to do. It was her one protest against her terrible fate, and it was very gentle.
    Alake has just come in for the second time to tell me that I must sleep. We must “conserve our strength.”
    Bah! But I'll humor her. It's best that I stop here anyhow. The rest that I must write—the story of Devon and Sabia— is both painful and sweet. The memory will comfort me as I lie awake, trying to keep fear as far away as possible, in the lonely darkness.
    1 Dwarves use the more appropriate term
sinking
rather than
sailing
to describe travel in a submersible. Humans and elves prefer the ancient terminology.
    2 Humans were the first to communicate with the dolphins and learn their language. Elves think dolphins amusing gossips, entertaining conversationalists, fun to have at parties. Dwarves, who learned how to talk to the dolphins from the humans, use dolphins mainly as a source of information on navigation. Dwarves—being naturally suspicious of anyone or anything that is not a dwarf—do not trust the dolphins, however.
    3 Humans and elves claim that the dolphin is not a fish, but a species similar to themselves, because dolphins give birth to their young the same way they do. Dwarves have no use for such a nonsensical notion. Anything that swims like a fish
is
a fish, according to dwarves.

CONSCIOUSNESS FORCED ITSELF ON HAPLO.
    He awoke to searing pain, yet, in the same instant, he knew himself to be whole once more, and pain-free. The circle of his being was joined again. The agony he'd felt was the tail end of that circle being seized by the mouth.
    But the circle wasn't strong. It was wobbly, tenuous. Lifting his hand was an effort almost beyond his strength, but he managed it and placed the fingers on his naked breast. Starting with the rune over his heart, slowly and haltingly, he began to trace, began to reconnect and strengthen, every sigil written upon his skin.
    He started with the name rune, the first sigil that is tattooed over the heart of the squirming, screaming babe almost the moment it is forced from the mother's womb. The babe's mother performs the rite, or another female tribe member if the mother dies. The name is chosen by the father, if he lives or is still among the tribe. 1 If not, by the tribal headman.
    The name rune does not offer the babe much magical protection. Most of that comes from the tit, as the saying goes, from drawing on the magic of either mother or wet nurse. And yet the