Not immortal, but high art to Caramon, who was known to faint or suffer nosebleeds when cornered and badgered into listening to "The Song of Huma"29 or "Crysania's Song."30 Not immortal, but I fear durable enough to come back into memory and embarrass the maker. I include it only to caution those who tend to idealize historical figures: Armavir was certainly no saint, and of course the couplet was not merely a performance for Caramon's benefit, but also contained an element of truth (see note to lines 46–50).
Lines 73–77: THE NEXT THE LEADER… DOES NOTHING. Tanis (Armavir preferred infinitely his elf name "Tanthalas," which derived from the same root as the verb «tantalize»; tantalized the half-elf was — by all the
28. LEGENDS, I, p. 94.
29. CHRONICLES. I, pp. 442–445.
30. LEGENDS, III, p. 164. options, all the pretty faces'). As indecisive on policy as he was on matters of women (see note to line 93), Tanis often came to Armavir for advice on both fronts. Without this counsel, the quest would have turned into a kender fire drill on a number of occasions, and a tangled romantic life could have brought all Krynn to destruction.
I still have Tanis's draft of his farewell note to Kitiara — a draft refined and expanded, as the reader knows, by more poetic hands — but the text, here printed for the first time in its entirety, will give the reader an idea of the shuttling way in which the leader of the Companions thought: