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     And the field mice,
    and the owl. And what about the rabbit, Flint? It slept against your foot all the time."
    This time Flint made no firm denial. “Kender stories,” he snorted. He glanced sidelong at
     Tanis and veered sharply away from the subject of magic pipes. “Are you certain Sturm is
     ready to travel?”
    “So he says, and I think he is.”
    “I'd like to check that bandage once more.”
    Tas watched him leave, then reached over to finger a broken pack strap that had been
     giving the old dwarf trouble. “Look, Tanis.”
    “Frayed, but it should hold with repair.” “No. Look. It's not frayed. The goat chewed it.”
     “Yes, well. . .” Tanis smiled and quietly relieved Tas of
    Flint's small whittling knife. “Fell out of the pack, did it?” Tas's eyes widened
     innocently. "Oh! I guess it did. Good thing I found it. Flint wouldn't have been happy to
     leave it
    behind. But what about the pack strap?“ ”It looks frayed to me.“ He patted Tas's shoulder.
     ”Come
    on, now. It's time to go.“ ”I don't know why no one believes me, Tanis." Tanis wished
     then, for the sake of the wistful hope in the
    kender's voice, that he could believe in the magic pipe. But it sounded too much like all
     of Tas's fantastic stories. Some, doubtless, were true. But Tan-is had never been able to
     separate those from the soaring flights of imagination that Tas passed off as adventures.
    “You know,” he said kindly, “enchanted or not, your piping saved our lives. If we hadn't
     heard it, Sturm and I would have died out there.”
    “I'm glad it did, Tanis, I really am. But, still, I wish someone would believe I found the
     magic. I don't know why Flint won't. He saw the deer and the goat and the mice and the
     owl. And the rabbit WAS sleeping against his foot.”
    That rabbit, Tanis realized then, was not among the things that Flint denied. In matters
     of magic, that might be, where Flint was concerned, considered avowal.
    When he looked up again Tas had gone. Rising to join the others, he caught sight of
     something small and abandoned on the floor. “Tas, you forgot your pipe.” He picked it up
     and then saw words carved into the wood that he had not seen before.
    FIND THE MUSIC, FIND THE MAGIC. “Did you carve this?” Tas did not turn. “Yes,” he said,
     reluctantly. "I have to
    leave it.“ ”But, Tas, why?" Tas squared his shoulders as though firming some resolve.
    But still he did not turn. "Because the shepherd said that it could only be used once.
     That's why I can't get the pipe to
    play that song again - or any song. I've used the magic.“ He took a deep breath and went
     on. ”And he said that once I found the magic I had to pass the pipe on.“ He paused and
     then he did turn, a scamp's humor in his long brown eyes. ”It's going to be a long winter.
     I'm going to leave it here for someone else to find."
    Suddenly, as sharply as though he was yet there, the half-elf saw himself crouched in the
     snow, too aching and exhausted to move. He felt again the bitter whip of the wind, the
     life-draining cold. He heard, very faintly, the coaxing tune that had called him back from
     freezing. Maybe, he thought, seeing the earnest belief in the kender's brown eyes. Maybe .
     . .
    But no. If there were any magic in the shabby little pipe at all, it lay in the fact that
     Tas, that inveterate and inevitable collector, could be induced to believe that he must
     leave behind a pipe he swore was enchanted.
    Tanis grinned again. That, he supposed, was magic enough for one pipe.
    The Wizard's Spectacles Morris Simon
    Nugold Lodston shook a gnarled fist at his youthful tormentors.
    “Get away! Pester somebody else! Leave me alone!”
    The old hermit shielded his face with his forearm from another flurry of pebbles amid the
     laughter of the dirty street urchins and their audience of amused onlookers. He despised
     these trips into Digfel and longed for the quiet solitude