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Tanis muttered an old elven oath; Kitiara’s smile grew wider. He held himself motionless. No good could come from a union between human and elf, he knew only too well.
    Tanis suddenly wished he’d checked this Kitiara Uth Matar for a hidden dagger. But there was no going back now.
    *   *   *   *   *
    Later that night, as Tanis slept on Kitiara’s pallet in her camp, the swordswoman eased away from the half-elf and reached for her pack, between pallet and fire. Checking once more to make sure the half-elf was sleeping, Kitiara slipped a hand into the pack, shoving aside spare clothing and provisions as she groped for the catch of the pack’s false bottom. Barely breathing, she eased the piece of stiff canvas to one side and peered into the pack. Violet light streamed into the clearing. She let her fingers dance over the source of the glow. “… eight, nine,” she murmured. “All there.” She sighed and smiled, as with sweet contentment, but her eyes glittered.

Chapter 2
Danger Shared

    “A ND SO WHEN MY HALF-BROTHERS WERE BORN, I took care of Raistlin and Caramon. My mother … couldn’t,” Kitiara concluded. That one word masked so much—her mother’s frequent trances and illness, and those weeks on end that the woman spent in bed while Kitiara, with some help from her stepfather, tended the twins.
    “When they were six and Raistlin had been admitted to the mage school, I left Solace. That was a long time ago—seven, ten years.” She kept her tone offhand.
    “This is your first trip back to Solace?” Tanis asked, guiding his heavy-boned gelding, Dauntless, aroundan outcropping of rocks. He kept the chestnut horse on the easier path of beaten earth. One hand pulled the leather headband from his forehead; the other wiped the sweat from his face. Then he replaced the band. The summer heat was oppressive, even on the shaded path.
    “I come back now and then.” Kitiara shrugged. “I was there when my mother died, and a few other times. I bring the twins presents and money when I have any.”
    “You don’t seem …” Tanis bit off the words.
    Kitiara surveyed him. “What, half-elf?” When he failed to go on, she reached over toward him and, smiling, prodded the half-elf with a fist until he grimaced.
    “For someone who hasn’t seen her brothers in a year, you don’t seem to be in much of a hurry to get back,” Tanis finally said. “We’ve been on the road more than a month, and you haven’t pushed the pace at all. In fact,” he added, warming to the topic, “you were the one who insisted on taking off after the horax.”
    The six-foot-long, insectlike monster had burst into camp one morning more than two weeks ago, rampaging through their belongings and making off with Kitiara’s pack. The creature, built low to the ground, with armorlike plates protecting it from its mandible to its rearmost pair of legs, had twelve legs and possessed frightening quickness and ferocity.
    Kitiara’s first suspicion had been that the Valdane’s mage had sent the horax after her to recover the pack and the ice jewels. But she dispelled that notion when the carnivorous creature, after some wandering, finally had simply returned to its subterranean colony. She and the half-elf had taken advantage of an early-morning cold snap, which slowed the cold-bloodedcreature and several of its mates.
    The campaign against the horax had drawn them back south and west into the forests of Qualinesti, Tanis’s turf, but still far off their planned route to Solace. The expedition had taken up half of the one month that had elapsed since Tanis and Kitiara’s initial skirmish with the hobgoblins. Now the travelers, the pack restored to its spot behind Kitiara’s saddle, were several miles south of Haven.
    “I still think it would have been easier for you to get a new pack,” Tanis persisted. “That one looks like it’s been through a civil war.”
    “Well, it has,” Kitiara muttered defensively.
    “So