The Second Generation

The Inn of the Last Home was the last comfortable inn before a traveler reached the magical Forest of Wayreth, where stood one of the Towers of High Sorcery, ancient headquarters of magic on the continent.

Many mages and their guests stopped at the inn on their way to the tower .

“They’ve come to admire the color of the leaves,” Caramon pointed out to his wife. “Most of these mages could have simply magicked themselves to the tower without bothering to stop anywhere in between.”

Tika could only laugh and shrug and agree with her husband that, yes, it must be the leaves, and so Caramon went about inordinately pleased with himself for the rest of the day.

Neither made mention of the fact that each mage who came to stay in the inn brought with him or her a small token of esteem and remembrance for Caramon’s twin brother, Raistlin. A mage of great power, and far greater ambition, Raistlin had turned to evil and very nearly destroyed the world. But he had redeemed himself at the end by the sacrifice of his own life, over twenty years ago. One small room in the inn was deemed Raistlin’s Room and was now filled with various tokens (some of them magical) left to commemorate the wizard’s life. (No kender were ever permitted anywhere near this room!)

The Wizards' Conclave was only three days away, and this night, for the first time in a week, the inn was empty. The mages had all traveled on, for the Wayreth Forest is a tricky place—you do not find the forest, it finds you. All mages, even the highest of their rank, knew that they might spend at least a day wandering about, waiting for the forest to appear.

And so the mages were gone, and none of the regulars had yet come back. The townsfolk, both of Solace and neighboring communities, who stopped by the inn nightly for either the ale or Tika’s spiced potatoes or both, stayed away when the mages came. Magic-users were tolerated on Ansalon, (unlike the old days, when they’d been persecuted), but they were not trusted, not even the white-robed mages, who were dedicated to good.

The first year the conclave had been held—several years after the War of the Lance—Caramon had opened his inn to mages (many inns refuse to serve them). There had been trouble. The regular customers had complained loudly and bitterly, and one had even been drunk enough to attempt to bully and torment a young red-robed wizard.

That was one of the few times anyone in Solace could remember seeing Caramon angry, and it was still talked of to this day, though not in Caramon’s presence. The drunk was carried out of the inn feet first, after his friends had removed his head from a fork in a tree branch grown into the inn.

After that, whenever a conclave occurred, the regulars took their business to other taverns, and Caramon served the mages. When the conclave ended, the regulars returned, and life went on as normal.

“But tonight,” said Caramon, pausing in his work to look admiringly at his wife, “we get to go to bed early.”

They had been married some twenty-two years, and Caramon was still firmly convinced that he had married the most beautiful woman in Krynn.

They had five children, three boys: Tanin, twenty years old, at the time of this story; Sturm, who was nineteen; sixteen-year-old Palin; and two small girls, Laura and Dezra, ages five and four. The two older boys longed to be knights and were always off in search of adventure, which is where they were this night. The youngest boy, Palin, was studying magic. (“It's a passing fancy,” Caramon said. “The boy’ll soon outgrow it.") As for the little girls... well, theirs is another story.

“It"ll be nice,” Caramon repeated, “to get to bed early for a change.”

Sweeping the floor vigorously, Tika pursed her mouth, so that she wouldn’t give herself away by laughing, and replied, with a sigh, “Yes, the gods be praised. I’m so tired, I’ll probably fall asleep before my head hits the pillow.”

Caramon looked anxious. He dropped the cloth he was using to dry the freshly washed mugs and sidled around the bar. “You’re not that tired, are you, my dear? Palin’s at school, and the two older boys are away visiting Goldmoon and Riverwind, and the girls are in bed, and if s just the two of us, and I thought we might... well... have a little time to... uh ... talk.”

Tika turned away so that he wouldn’t see her grin. “Yes, yes, I am tired,"

she said, heaving another weary sigh. “I had all those beds to make up, plus the new cook to supervise, and the accounts to settle ...”

Caramon’s shoulders slumped. “Well, that’s all right,” he mumbled.

“Why don’t you just go on to bed, and I’ll finish—”

Tika threw down her broom. Laughing, she flung her arms around her husband—as far as they would go. Caramon’s girth had increased markedly over the years.