xxx XZAR AND THE RABBITS xxx

Twelve-year-old Jade was ecstatic as she rushed out of Candlekeep library. All my chores are done! The rest of the day is mine! Her long scarlet hair flew across her face in the wind as she dashed across the courtyard, nearly colliding with a monk.

"Watch yourself, hell-brat!" Ulraunt snapped down at her, his sneer rimmed by a harshly trimmed moustache and beard.

"Whatever," she pressed her tongue between her full lips and made a gastric noise, "Where's X?"

The Keeper of the Tomes snorted and pointed with a clawlike index finger up upon the outer ramparts of the keep. There, framed by the grey stones and the bright blue sky, Jade could see a familiar blonde boy hopping nimbly from stone to stone and talking to himself, teetering on the rampart, one misstep to sent him plunging over the side of the wall.

"Thanks, Ulraunchy!" she giggled and dashed off, while the old monk muttereds something dark under his breath.

She ran fast, climbed up a ladder, and dashed across the rampart.

"Hey X!" she called. Twelve-year-old Xzar was wearing a green tunic, black pants, and his blonde hair stuck up wildly from his grinning face in every direction.

"Oooohhh," he sang while hopping from one stone to the next, "Old Elf-Wizard had a lab, e-i-e-i-o! And in that lab he had a ..."

"Xzar..." Jade cooed, "It's me, Jay-ade!"

"...with a cut-cut here, a cut-cut there, here a cut, there a cut, everywhere a...."

"XZAR!" Jade screamed. "SNAP OUT OF IT!"

"....old Elf-Wizard stole our souls, e-i-e-i-AIEEE! Jade!!"

He hopped down off the guard-wall onto the rampart floor and grinned at her. "Shhhhh....." he hissed in a conspiratorial whisper, putting an index finger over her pursed lips. She grinned, a goofy effect with her thick lips smooshed around his finger. "Be vewy vewy quiet. I'm huntin' wabbits!" he looked around down into the keep suspiciously.

Jade giggled hysterically and ruffled Xzar's hair. "There aren't any rabbits around now, silly! So how was your day?"

Xzar practically purred while she ruffled his hair, and blinked a few times, his eyes undilating and focusing lucidly on her. His wide plastered grin shrunk to a friendly smile. "Ulraunt taught me this cool new spell. Literally! You can touch stuff, and it gets really cold."

"Neat!" Jade laughed, brushing an undisciplined strand of scarlet hair out of her face. "That's three now, right?"

"Yep!" Xzar grinned proudly. "Larloch's minor drain, magic missile, and this one's called chill touch. Want to see it?"

"On what?" Jade asked suspiciously. "Don't freeze me or anything!"

Xzar thought. He glanced around, his eyes focusing on a bluebird, but it chirped skittishly and flew off, as if guessing the boy's intent. "Hey!" He looked at Jade. "How about your hair!"

"My hair!?" Jade gasped, reflexively pinching a scarlet wisp that rolled down her shoulder. "But I like it!"

"Well, me too," Xzar grinned, "But it's too long! It'd be prettier about...there." He pointed to her neck.

Jade giggled. "Uh, okay."

"Alright," Xzar smiled, rubbing his hands together. "Turn around."

She did, closing her eyes and gritting her teeth while she heard the boy babbling in tongues. The airs on the back of her neck stood on end as the air around them grew cold, and then she felt the faintest touch on the back of her air, like of fingers, but utterly cold. It was gone as soon as it had come, but her scalp could sense a difference in the way the wind now blew her hair. It seemed...heavier. Then she felt the hand again, and her ears heard faint breaking sounds, and then her hair felt much lighter.

"Okay!" Xzar laughed, and she turned around to see him brushing off his hands again.

"My hair!" Jade gasped. She looked down at her feet, and saw a number of strands of her scarlet hair on the stones, but when she kicked them, they shattered, like brittle, spiderweb-thin twigs, not like flexible hair. She reached up her hands around her head, and felt her hair. It now hung just down to her neck.

"Well I I like it," Xzar grinned.

"Cool!" Jade laughed at last, brushing strands down the side of her head, where they stayed. "Hey, it falls around my face now, not over it. This'll be alot better for fencing. I shoulda done this along time ago! You really think it's prettier?"

"Yeah." Xzar smiled. "You should learn magic too. Tethtoril said you were really smart, and I think so too. Don't learn from Ulraunt like me though. He knows lotsa cool stuff, but he's mean whenever I get even the tiniest thing wrong," Xzar stuck out his tongue.

"Yeah, I hate him," Jade frowned. "Dad won't say so, but I can tell he does too."

"Hey!" Xzar brightened. "Your dad's a wizard. He could teach you! Your dad's nice."

"Maybe someday," Jade smiled, her eyes growing faraway, "I really like fencing though."

"...like your brother," Xzar wrinkled his nose and stuck out his tongue.

"I'm as good as him! I'll better than him soon," Jade smirked. Xzar's face, though, grew pained. She held up her hand, and lightly brushed Xzar's temple. "How...are you doing?"

Xzar twitched, and his face wrinkled. "Tethtoril healed it, but it still....hurts sometimes. Not like pain-hurt, but like...weird headaches. And colors look weird, and...I think my hearing gets more acute, cuz I can hear people and stuff that must be far away. And, I don't know, stuff just makes sense in a different way. It actually makes thinking about magic and abstract stuff easier though....it's weird."

"Yeah," a tear escaped Jade's eye, and rolled down her high, rounded cheek, "I think it's when you get too excited, X. I can sorta see it. I like you better calm, like this."

Xzar bit his lip. "Me too. It's easier around you, Jade," their green eyes locked, "I dunno why. It's harder around...him. I hate him!"

"Xzar," Jade sighed, "It's cuz you were picking on Phy. I'm glad you stopped, X. I didn't like that, but I like you now. Bro doesn't hate you, you know. He said maybe he hit you too hard and he's sorry. And father got really really mad at him. He and Phy both want to be your friends now."

Xzar's face twisted. "I only like you and Immy. I try not to scare Immy but sometimes, I dunno, I know I act weird and she gets scared, but later she seems to understand. I promised her I wouldn't actually hurt her again and she understands."

"C'mon X," Jade pleaded, "They all forgive you. We can all be friends. The more you're nice the easier it'll be."

Xzar jerked away from her and gasped the sides of her head. "No, no....it's still weird. I I I can't."

Jade clasped his hands. "I'm here, X, stay with me." He turned back to look at her, the corner of his mouth quivering in an indeterminate sneer. She lightly brushed the side of his face and it dissipated. "I'll always be your friend, X. I care about you, and I like you."

Xzar's face loosened and he smiled. "I like you too."

"Hey!" Jade's face lit up. "I've nevered showed you my room. Wanna come?"

Xzar shrugged and smiled. "Okay."

The pair scuttled down the ladder and strode across the grounds of the keep.

"You there!" they heard a gruff voice and turned around, to the sight of two Flaming Fist soldiers standing on the grass a few feet away. "Would you be Xzar?"

"Errr," the boy's teeth chattered.

"No," Jade spoke up, "This is Abdullard. Xzar is this kid our age with beady blue eyes and grimy black hair..."

"No," one of the Fist grinned, "I think this boy matches Xzar's descrption. Come with us, son." He reached out a hand and attempted to smile, in a very sincere imitation of friendliness, as if these two kids were much less intellectually developed than the were. In fact, they were probably further developed now than this man would ever be.

Jade jumped in front of Xzar and shouted in his face, "RUN!!"

Xzar spun on a dime and bolted away from them.

"Why you little..." the Fist growled, and backhanded Jade with his mailed fist, sending her to the ground. "Ah am tha law!"

"Oww!" Jade cried, her left eye looking along level with the grass, and seeing blood from her throbbing temple seep out over the blades. She tried to get up, but fell again, her vision blacking out and her head spinning.

The two Fist soldiers had already stepped past her, and were chasing Xzar as he bolted away. But just as he dashed through the gates to the inner courtyard, he collided with a man, and looked up to see Ulraunt.

"Master Ulraunt!" Xzar cried, "These men are..."

Xzar choked when he noticed his tutor was flanked by two other Flaming Fist soldiers. Before he knew it, each had grabbed one of his arms. They yanked him off the ground, and he felt like a wishbone about to be snapped in half, his legs kicking helplessly.

"That's Xzar," Ulraunt stated calmly as Xzar whimpered and cried, his tone of someone identifying a bushel grain of as wheat, "Off to your paddy wagon before you upset the good, sane citizens."

"Master!" Xzar whimpered as the soldiers marched toward the front gate of the keep, "What's going on..." suddenly he twitched and screamed, "HEEEEEEEEELLLLLP!!!!!"

Jade heard Xzar screaming, and came to. She hopped up, dashing in its direction, toward the main gate.

When it came into view, she gagged, nauseated and nearly vomiting, and what she saw. Xzar was practically being drawn and quartered, each limb held by a Fist soldier as they tried to shove him into the back of a horse-drawn wagon, writhing terribly, frothing at the mouth and screaming.

"Stop it!!" Jade screamed, running up at them. "You're giving him a seizure!"

"You again!" the man who'd hit her growled. "Stay back, or we'll arrest you too! This boy's crazy!"

"Don't you see, YOU'RE MAKING HIM CRAZY!" Jade cried.

"Stop touching me!" Xzar cried, as two of the men grabbed a straight jacket out of the wagon and forced it over his squirming head. "STOP TOUCHING ME!!"

"Stop it!!" Jade snarled, and bolted for the leg of the man who'd hit her. He swung down at her again, but she reached up with both hands, grab him around the wrist, and she screamed as she broke it.

"You little bitch," the man snarled, and he and another man reached down at Jade, as she flailed back at them. The other soldier managed to grip her arms and twist them behind her, and the man lifted his fist, yelling, "Ah'll put you in yer place, little girl."

He noticed something out of the corner of his eye, and glanced up to see a brunette boy, early teenager at the oldest and but as tall as he, barreling down on long legs and yelling, "Don't you godsdamn hit my sister..." in an eerily unemotive voice. Before he could turn, the boy had tackled him, flying into him with his full bodyweight and sending him to the grass.

The Fist restraining Jade choked in shock, and it was all the girl needed to wrestle out of his grasp, spin around, using the circular momentum to sock him so hard in the open face of his helm that his nose exploded his blood and he fell to the ground, his vision going red.

"HEEEELP!" Xzar screamed, his arms twisted behind his back in a straight jacket as two guards threw him into the back of the wagon, like they might a sack of potatoes, his head cracking sharply against the wooden floor. sending colored sparks across his vision and thoughts. "HEEEELP!" He looked back out at the two guards, their heads covered by helmets with wings that flared up high on the left and right sides of their heads, like the big ears of rabbits.

--

The Fist whose nose Jade had broken wasn't getting up anytime soon; the one Onyx had tackled was uninjured but would be on the grass awhile pumping wind back into his lungs. The two children stared down the remaining two Fist as they hoisted a screaming, writhing, and straight-jacketed Xzar into the back of their wagon, and made ready to pounce.

"Children! Stop!"

A sage voice, neither loud nor angry yet very commanding, resontated through the air. The soldiers exhaled, relieved, as the scarlet-haired girl and the brunette boy spun around obediently, to face their father Gorion.

"They're trying to take X!" Jade cried, with anger and tears. "Make them stop!" Onyx nodde, his young smooth face creased with worry.

"You cannot interfere in this manner," Gorion managed sternly, though the pain was thick behind his voice. A number of paces behind him, Ulraunt strode forward and nodded, his face unemotive, hands clasped at the belt of his robe. "You cannot assault the Fist so. You would endanger only yourselves."

Gorion's face grew bitter, as if his tongue were coated with lemonjuice, when Ulraunt stopped just behind him and hissed, "He is right. You cannot interfere with this! It is the law."

The corner of Onyx's mouth quivered as he looked at the old man. "But it isn't right." Jade snarled and nodded. Onyx looked at Gorion like a lost puppy. "I don't understand."

Behind them, the two standing Fist were helping their dazed companions into the wagon, feeding carrots to the spooked horses, and loaded into the front of the wagon themselves, and began to ride off. Ulraunt signaled to Jondalar, who stood by the gate, and called to the other guards with a voice of reluctance to open the Keep gates.

Onyx began to cry as the wagon rolled away, flinching but not moving, looking up with injury, but obedience, at his father, and Jade too with a flushed face under her tears. But at last, the girl screamed and bolted for closing portucullis, and would have made it if several Candlekeep guards hadn't swept her up, holding their open-faced helms far back from the ferally clawing and flailing girl. Jade's horrible screams made half the Keep feel their ears were bleeding and cover them in pain. She wrested herself from the guards, but too late, after the porticullis had closed. She punched the iron bars until her fists bled, watching the wagon draw away behind them and calling Xzar's name, and when the guards converged on her, she dashed out from under their falling hands and dashed back towards Gorion, Ulraunt, and Onyx.

"Jade!" Gorion thundered, his voice echoing perhaps magically, "Stop this instant!"

"I'm sorry sis," Onyx stepped forward and reached out a hand as his sister approached,, "I'm so-"

Jade's eyes flashed yellow and she slammed her right fist into Onyx's cheek and the hook sent the boy spinning to the ground. She descend upon and throttled him, and he swung at the insides of her elbows with his forearms an in attempt to break her grasp, but it was like steel. Ulraunt studied the event dispassionately, nodding along as to an expectedly proceeding magical experiment, and Gorion continued to shout commandingly at Jade. As his foster daughter failed to relent, his voice descended in tongues, and all at once Jade's grip loosened, and she slumped off her brother onto the grass, fast asleep.

"They'll be the death of you yet," Ulraunt growled. "Mark my words."

Gorion's heart felt as if poisoned, he had hoped very much never to have to cast against his wards.

"Harmless," Ulraunt growled and his gaze almost spoke to Gorion. You should have cast something more, it said, Long ago.

Gorion choked back bile, and a sense of deja vu. He turned around to see Tethtoril running up with a face of great worry and hands raised to heal, but his mind was on another old friend.

-------------

Montaron sat on a cot, patiently watching the fading grid of sunlight cast through the barred window of his cell within the Flaming Fist compound in the Gate. Busting out of this flimsy place would be a joke, he just needed to wait for the graveyard shift change in a few hours. Then briefly back to the Silvershield estate, and the rosebush where he'd managed to dump the papers before getting caught. Within another twenty-four hours, they and he would be back in the presence of his superiors. He wouldn't even be late.

His attention turned to the scrawny blonde kid huddled shivering in the corner. He'd been babbling incessantly for hours.

"Hey kid," Montaron began gruffly, "Ye said ye knew a li'l magic?"

"Y-y-y-y-y-y-yes," the kid's teeth chattered. "A little."

The kid was so cold he could hardly even talk. Montaron spat on the floor, seeing a Fist's face there and his phlegm as a sling bullet.

"Not bad for a tyke yer age. Ye know," Montaron's voice went low, and he looked suspiciously through the door of the cell into the hallway, at the Fist marching obliviously the other way. "My employers're always on the lookout to, eh, culvitate talent. Real understandin' they are, too....don't mind if yer past's a bit outside the law. They'd gimme a nice 50 gold bonus for signin' ye up, an' I sure could use that." He smiled, and looked closer at the kid, who recoiled a bit but looked back lucidly. "I'll be, eh, endin' me sentence early in a few hours. How'd ye like to tag along?" He held his index finger over his lips, and ssshed. "If ye can be quiet."

The kid nodded, mimicing the silence gesture, and looking outside the cell like he was. The kid whispered, "Okay. Away from the rabbits."

Montaron chuckled, watching as a winged-helm Fist soldier marched by. "Hey, not bad code-talk. Aye, away from the rabbits."

Rabbits...he sure could go for some herbs and stewed rabbit. And some nice tater-chips. The halfling idly fingered the earring that he always wore in his left ear, and his mind drifted back to his life before his current employment, and his childhood in Gullykin so many years ago.

"It's a dangerous business, Monty, going outside your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."

"Neat, uncle Bago."

"We Sackinses were very well respected, and never did anything unexpected, until that dottering old Terminsel and those seven dwarves showed up at Sack-End with a mad quest to slay the black dragon Acydrayne and rescue that princess, Ice Pale."

"I like that story, uncle Bago. I should like to go out into the Road someday."

"Hmm...well I do need to return this little bit of jewelry, an earring, in fact, that I borrowed from...ah, what was her name? Melissa? Tall lady with auburn hair, likes to wear feathers in it. Can't miss her when you finally see her. Here, take this earring. Terminsel thought I should take it somewhere else and destroy it, but I've always felt that was simply because Melissa went for me. Petty ol' bugger. Yes, take this earring and give it back to her. Not sure where you can find her, but I know who might lead you there. But do be careful with it. It is very...precious."