Dragons of Winter Night - Margaret Weis [30]
“Right, the kender,” Tanis said grimly. “Where is he?”
“Over here!” piped a shrill voice.
Tanis peered through the dimly lit room to see a candle burning on a table. Tasslehoff, seated on a high wooden chair, was bent over a thick book. As the companions neared him, they could see a pair of small glasses perched on his nose.
“All right, Tas,” Tanis said. “Where did you get them?”
“Get what?” the kender asked innocently. He saw Tanis’s eyes narrow and put his hand to the small wire-rimmed glasses. “Oh, uh, these? I had them in a pouch … and, well, if you must know, I found them in the dwarven kingdom—”
Flint groaned and put his hand over his face.
“They were just lying on a table!” Tas protested, seeing Tanis scowl. “Honest! There was no one around. I thought perhaps someone misplaced them. I only took them for safe-keeping. Good thing, too. Some thief might have come along and stolen them, and they’re very valuable! I meant to return them, but after that we were so busy, what with fighting dark dwarves and draconians and finding the Hammer, and I—sort of—forgot I had them. When I remembered them, we were miles away from the dwarves, on our way to Tarsis, and I didn’t think you’d want me to go back, just to return them, so—”
“What do they do?” Tanis interrupted the kender, knowing they’d be here until the day after tomorrow if he didn’t.
“They’re wonderful,” Tas said hastily, relieved that Tanis wasn’t going to yell at him. “I left them lying on a map one day.” Tas patted his mapcase. “I looked down and what do you suppose? I could read the writing on the map through the glasses! Now, that doesn’t sound very wonderful,” Tas said hurriedly, seeing Tanis start to frown again, “but this was a map written in a language I’d never been able to understand before. So I tried them on all my maps and I could read them, Tanis! Every one! Even the real, real old ones!”
“And you never mentioned this to us?” Sturm glared at Tas.
“Well, the subject just never came up,” Tas said apologetically. “Now, if you had asked me directly—‘Tasslehoff, do you have a pair of magical seeing glasses?—’ I would have told you the truth straight off. But you never did, Sturm Brightblade, so don’t look at me like that. Anyway, I can read this old book. Let me tell you what I—”
“How do you know they’re magic and not just some mechanical device of the dwarves?” Tanis asked, sensing that Tas was hiding something.
Tas gulped. He had been hoping Tanis wouldn’t ask him that question.
“Uh,” Tas stammered, “I—I guess I did sort of, happened to, uh, mention them to Raistlin one night when you were all busy doing something else. He told me they might be magic. To find out, he said one of those weird spells of his and they—uh—began to glow. That meant they were enchanted. He asked me what they did and I demonstrated and he said they were ‘glasses of true seeing.’ The dwarven magic-users of old made them to read books written in other languages and—” Tas stopped.
“And?” Tanis pursued.
“And—uh—magic spellbooks.” Tas’s voice was a whisper.
“And what else did Raistlin say?”
“That if I touched his spellbooks or even looked at them sideways, he’d turn me into a cricket and s-swallow m-me whole,” Tasslehoff stammered. He looked up at Tanis with wide eyes. “I believed him, too.”
Tanis shook his head. Trust Raistlin to come up with a threat awful enough to quench the curiosity of a kender. “Anything else?” he asked.
“No, Tanis,” Tas said innocently. Actually Raistlin had mentioned something else about the glasses, but Tas hadn’t been able to understand it very well. Something about the glasses seeing things too truly, which didn’t make any sense, so he figured it probably wasn’t worth bringing up. Besides, Tanis was mad enough already.
“Well, what have you discovered?” Tanis asked grudgingly.
“Oh, Tanis, it’s so interesting!” Tas said, thankful the ordeal was over. He carefully turned a page and, even as he did so, it split and cracked beneath his small fingers.