Newlyweds Tutroug Redforge (his clan is known for their fine forge work) and Branaebena Whitbuster (travelling merchant) decided to celebrate their marriage by taking a long honeymoon while looking for trade goods to bring back to Thrillem. Yal was born midsummer in a field beside the road. When the proud parents returned to their wagon, they found their goose had laid a golden egg, clearly a boon from their ancestors - and spent weeks afterward arguing over whose ancestor it had been.

Their return two years later was not triumpant. Yal crying in a basket on the seat beside her mother, who was already pregnant with her brother Snazzak, and her father in one of the casts of wine. They had been attacked on the road by goblins, and afterwards Branae found him slumped over their daughter's basket. The Redforges took them in, but while Branae was allowed to travel for her wine business, her children had to stay in Thrillem.

In Yal's twelfth year, Branae brought back Jofean, a human toddler of some customers of her, farmers, who had died in a goblin raid, along with many others. While the clan was afronted by this alien invader, they reluctantly agreed to let him stay until such time as she could return him to the humans.

Branae also brought back Yal a violin, arranging for lessons. Snazzak turned down the lute as he preferred precussion - drums and anvil.

Yal's fiftheen year, she noticed that unlike her friends, her beard wasn't growing in - and dwarves were beginning to talk. Eventually she learned the secret shame of the Redforges - they had problems growing beards, and would blame the scraggly look on them catching fire as they worked at their trade. Yal raided her mother's library and medicine chest, trying various noxious unguents and remedies, but none of them worked. Finally, her mother used some of Yal's hair to make her a false beard, which itched terribly but she endures.

In her seventeenth year, when she was planning to join the rest of her clan at the forges, her mother took her aside and explained she had arranged an apprenticeship with the dour Badmeac Flintbrow, the weapons master. Weapon training, Branae hoped, would allow Yal to join her mother on the road and Branae could teach her the wine trade and show her more of the world than the halls of Thrillem. Furious, Yal fled the clan's tunnels, hiding out in some of the darker spots of the mines. While she didn't mind it so much with the Dark began to whisper, errant echos or wind blowing past cracks surely, but on the fifth night, Yal got creeped out when she felt that the Dark was staring at her, and she fled home.

Badmeac the Weapons Master, while not cruel, was an exacting task master, training her before his students showed up and for hours after they left, each mistake getting a whack with his practice blade. The one good thing that seem to make it worthwhile was Detmeak Gravelbasher, a handsome muscular dwarf with a fine beard who was a student. More than once did Badmeac had to use the flat of his sword on her backside to shift her attention upwards. Detmeak, however, thought Yal was just another part of the wall. His mother Groustreda was not so blind, and well aware of the wealth of Yal's mother.

They were briefly married, but divorced two years later. While Yal had been most willing at first for children, her false beard slipped off on their wedding night and Detmeak was so repulsed by her naked face that he threw her out of their bed chamber. Despite all her attempts to reconcile the two, including trying to blindfold her son, Groustreda reluctantly had to pay back Yal's dowry to Branae, scolding Detmeak the entire time. Fortunately, neither one of them wanted to spread the story of her deformity.

Returning to the Redforge clan and her apprenticeship with Badmeac Flintbrow, the weapons master grudgingly allowed that she could start teaching her own students. One of them was Noggeas Trollhood, and in practice with her, accidently knocked her beard off. She was embarrassed, but Noggeas found her naked face appealing, and asked if they could get a drink together.

On their way, he suddenly pulled Yal into an alley, pulled off her beard, and began passionately kissing her. A guardsman on patrol, seeing what he thought was an adult dwarf molesting an unbearded child, ran him through with his spear, killing Noggeas instantly. Then, spotting the false beard discarded on the ground, realized his mistake. Word soon spread about yal's lack of a beard. Even her mother's and Snazzak's beards got a tug, and the Redforge clan denied any knowledge. As a result, no decent family would even consider her.

But afterward, Yal's students got quite the work out in their practice sessions.