A doorway! Tanis realized suddenly. The five heads rose from a golden dais, forming an oval shape with their necks. Each craned inward, its mouth open in a frozen scream. Tanis looked beyond them into the void within the oval. Nothing was there, but that nothing moved. All was empty, and alive. He knew suddenly, instinctively, where the doorway led, and the knowledge chilled him.
“The Portal,” said Caramon, seeing Tanis’s pale face and staring eyes. “Come here, give me a hand.”
“You’re going in there?” Tanis whispered savagely, amazed at the big man’s calm. Crossing the room, he came to stand beside his friend. “Caramon, don’t be a fool!”
“I have no choice, Tanis,” Caramon said, that new look of quiet decision on his face. Tanis started to argue, but Caramon turned away from him, back to the injured dark elf.
“I’ve seen what will happen!” he reminded Tanis.
Swallowing his words, choking on them, Tanis knelt down beside Dalamar. The dark elf had managed to drag himself to a sitting position, so that he could face the Portal. He had lapsed into unconsciousness again, but, at the sound of their voices, his eyes flared open.
“Caramon!” He gasped, reaching out a trembling hand. “You must stop—”
“I know, Dalamar,” Caramon said gently. “I know what I must do. But I need your help! Tell me—”
Dalamar’s eyes fluttered shut, his skin was ashen. Tanis reached across Dalamar’s chest to feel for the lifebeat in the young elf’s neck. His hand had just touched the mage’s skin when there was a ringing sound. Something jarred his arm, striking the armor and bouncing off, falling to the floor with a clatter. Looking down, Tanis saw a blood-stained dagger.
Startled, he whirled around, twisting to his feet, sword in hand.
“Kitiara!” Dalamar whispered with a feeble nod of his head.
Staring into the shadows of the laboratory, Tanis saw the body in the corner.
“Of course,” Caramon murmured. “That’s how she killed him.” He lifted the dagger in his hand. “This time, Tanis, you blocked her throw.”
But Tanis didn’t hear. Sliding his sword back into his sheath, he crossed the room, stepping unheedingly on broken glass, kicking aside a silver candlestand that rolled beneath his feet.
Kitiara lay on her stomach, her cheek pressed against the bloody floor, her dark hair falling across her eyes. The dagger throw had taken her last energy, it seemed. Tanis, approaching her, his emotions in turmoil, was certain she must be dead.
But the indomitable will that had carried one brother through darkness and another into light, burned still within Kitiara.
She heard footsteps … her enemy.…
Her hand grasped feebly for her sword. She raised her head, looking up with eyes fast dimming.
“Tanis?” She stared at him, puzzled, confused. Where was she? Flotsam? Were they together there again? Of course! He had come back to her! Smiling, she raised her hand to him.
Tanis caught his breath, his stomach wrenching. As she moved, he saw a blackened hole gaping in her chest. Her flesh had been burned away, he could see white bone beneath. It was a gruesome sight, and Tanis, sickened and overwhelmed by a surge of memories, was forced to turn his head away.
“Tanis!” she called in a cracked voice. “Come to me.”
His heart filled with pity, Tanis knelt down beside her to lift her in his arms. She looked up into his face … and saw her death in his eyes. Fear shook her. She struggled to rise.
But the effort was too much. She collapsed.
“I’m … hurt,” she whispered angrily. “How … bad?” Lifting her hand, she started to touch the wound.
Snatching off his cloak, Tanis wrapped it around Kitiara’s torn body. “Rest easy, Kit,” he said gently. “You’ll be all right.”
“You’re a damn liar!” she cried, her hands clenching into fists, echoing—if she had only known it—the dying Elistan. “He’s killed me! That wretched elf!” She smiled, a ghastly smile. Tanis shuddered. “But I fixed him! He can’t help Raistlin now. The Dark Queen will slay him, slay them all!”
Moaning, she writhed in agony and clutched at Tanis. He held her tightly. When the pain eased, she looked up at him. “You weakling,” she whispered in a tone that was part bitter scorn, part bitter regret, “we could have had the world, you and I.”
“I have the world, Kitiara,” Tanis said softly, his heart torn with revulsion and sorrow.
Angrily, she shook her head and seemed about to say more when her eyes grew wide, her gaze fixed upon something at the far end of the room.
“No!” she cried in a terror that no torture or suffering could have ever wrenched from her. “No!” Shrinking, huddling against Tanis, she whispered in a frantic, strangled voice. “Don’t let him take me! Tanis, no! Keep him away! I always loved you, half-elf! Always … loved … you …”
Her voice faded to a gasping whisper.
Tanis looked up, alarmed. But the doorway was empty. There was no one there. Had she meant Dalamar? “Who? Kitiara! I don’t understand—”
But she did not hear him. Her ears were deaf forever to mortal voices. The only voice she heard now was one she would hear forever, through all eternity.
Tanis felt the body in his arms go limp. Smoothing back the dark, curly hair, he searched her face for some sign that death had brought peace to her soul. But the expression on her face was one of horror—her brown eyes fixed in a terrified stare, the crooked, charming smile twisted into a grimace.
Tanis glanced up at Caramon. His face pale and grave, the big man shook his head. Slowly, Tanis laid Kitiara’s body back down upon the floor. Leaning over, he started to kiss the cold forehead, but he found that he couldn’t. The look on the corpse’s face was too grim, too ghastly.
Pulling his cloak up over Kitiara’s head, Tanis remained for a moment, kneeling beside her body, surrounded by darkness. And then he heard Caramon’s step, he felt a hand upon his arm. “Tanis—”
“I’m all right,” the half-elf said gruffly, rising to his feet. But, in his mind, he could still hear her dying plea—
“Keep him away!”
CHAPTER
7
“I’m glad you’re here with me, Tanis,” Caramon said.
He stood before the Portal, staring into it intently, watching every shift and wave of the void within. Near him sat Dalamar, propped up by pillows in his chair, his face pale and drawn with pain, his arm bound in a crude sling. Tanis paced the floor restlessly. The dragon’s heads now glowed so brightly it hurt the eye to look at them directly.
“Caramon,” he began, “please—”
Caramon looked over at him, his same grave, calm expression unchanged.
Tanis was baffled. How could you argue with granite? He sighed. “All right. But just how are you going to get in there?” he asked abruptly.
Caramon smiled. He knew what Tanis had been about to say, and he was grateful to him for not having said it.
Giving the Portal a grim look, Tanis gestured toward the opening. “From what you told me earlier, Raistlin had to study years and become this Fistandantilus and entrap Lady Crysania into going with him, and even then he barely made it!” Tanis shifted his gaze to Dalamar. “Can you enter the Portal, dark elf?”
Dalamar shook his head. “No, As you say, it takes one of great power to cross that dread threshold. I do not have such power, perhaps I never will. But, do not glower, Half-Elven. We do not waste our time. I am certain Caramon would not have undertaken this if he did not know how he could enter.” Dalamar looked at the big warrior intently. “For enter he must, or we are doomed.”
“When Raistlin fights the Dark Queen and her minions in the Abyss,” Caramon said, his voice even and expressionless, “he will need to concentrate upon them completely, to the exclusion of all else. Isn’t that true, Dalamar?”
“Most assuredly.” The dark elf shivered and pulled his black robes about him closer with his good hand. “One breath, one blink, one twitch, and th
ey will rend him limb from limb and devour him.”
Caramon nodded.
How can he be so calm? Tanis wondered. And a voice within him replied, it is the calm of one who knows and accepts his fate.
“In Astinus’s book,” Caramon continued, “he wrote that Raistlin, knowing he would have to concentrate his magic upon fighting the Queen, opened the Portal to make sure of his escape route before he went into battle. Thus, when he arrived, he would find it ready for him to enter when he returned to this world.”
“He also knew undoubtedly that he would be too weakened by that time to open it himself,” Dalamar murmured. “He would need to be at the height of his strength. Yes, you are right. He will open it, and soon. And when he does, anyone with the strength and courage necessary to pass the boundary may enter.”
The dark elf closed his eyes, biting his lip to keep from crying out. He had refused a potion to ease the pain. “If you fail,” he had said to Caramon, “I am our last hope.”
Our last hope, thought Tanis—a dark elf. This is insane! It can’t be happening. Leaning against the stone table, he let his head sink into his hands. Name of the gods, he was tired! His body ached, his wounds burned and stung. He had removed the breast plate of his armor—it felt as heavy as a gravestone, slung around his neck. But as much as his body hurt, his soul hurt worse.
Memories flitted about him like the guardians of the Tower, reaching out to touch him with their cold hands. Caramon sneaking food off Flint’s plate while the dwarf had his back turned. Raistlin conjuring up visions of wonder and delight for the children of Flotsam. Kitiara, laughing, throwing her arms around his neck, whispering into his ear. Tanis’s heart shrank within him, the pain brought tears to his eyes. No! It was all wrong! Surely it wasn’t supposed to end this way!
A book swam into his blurred vision—Caramon’s book, resting upon the stone table, the last book of Astinus. Or is that how it was going to end? He became aware, then, of Caramon looking at him in concern. Angrily, he wiped his eyes and his face and stood up with a sigh.
But the spectres remained with him, hovering near him. Near him … and near the burned and broken body that lay in the corner beneath his cloak.
Human, half-elf, and dark elf watched the Portal in silence. A water clock on the mantle kept track of time, the drops falling one by one with the regularity of a heartbeat. The tension in the room stretched until it seemed it must snap and break, whipping around the laboratory with stinging fury. Dalamar began muttering in elven. Tanis glanced at him sharply, fearing the dark elf might be delirious. The mage’s face was pale, cadaverous, his eyes surrounded by deep, purple shadows had sunken into their sockets. Their gaze never shifted, they stared always into the swirling void.
Even Caramon’s calm appeared to be slipping. His big hands clenched and unclenched nervously, sweat covered his body, glistening in the light of the five heads of the dragon. He began to shiver, involuntarily. The muscles in his arms twitched and bunched spasmodically.
And then Tanis felt a strange sensation creep over him. The air was still, too still. Sounds of battle raging in the city outside the Tower—sounds that he had heard without even being aware of it—suddenly ceased. Inside the Tower, too, sound hushed. The words Dalamar muttered died on his lips.
The silence blanketed them, as thick and stifling as the darkness in the corridor, as the evil within the room. The dripping of the water clock grew louder, magnified, every drop seeming to jar Tanis’s bones. Dalamar’s eyes jerked open, his hand twitched, nervously grasping his black robes between white-knuckled fingers.
Tanis moved closer to Caramon, only to find the big man reaching out for him.
Both spoke at once. “Caramon …”
“Tanis …”
Desperately, Caramon grasped hold of Tanis’s arm. “You’ll take care of Tika for me, won’t you?”
“Caramon, I can’t let you go in there alone!” Tanis gripped him. “I’ll come—”
“No, Tanis,” Caramon’s voice was firm. “If I fail, Dalamar will need your help. Tell Tika good-bye, and try to explain to her, Tanis. Tell her I love her very much, so much I—” His voice broke. He couldn’t go on. Tanis held onto him tightly.
“I know what to tell her, Caramon,” he said, remembering a letter of good-bye of his own.
Caramon nodded, shaking the tears from his eyes and drawing a deep, quivering breath. “And say good-bye to Tas. I—I don’t think he ever did understand. Not really.” He managed a smile. “Of course, you’ll have to get him out of that flying castle first.”
“I think he knew, Caramon,” Tanis said softly.
The dragon’s heads began to make a shrill sound, a faint scream that seemed to come from far away.
Caramon tensed.
The screaming grew louder, nearer, and more shrill. The Portal burned with color, each head of the dragon glistened brilliantly.
“Make ready,” Dalamar warned, his voice cracking.
“Good-bye, Tanis.” Caramon held onto his hand tightly.
“Good-bye, Caramon.”
Releasing his hold on his friend, Tanis stepped back.
The void parted. The Portal opened.
Tanis looked into it—he knew he looked into it, for he could not turn away. But he could never recall clearly what he saw. He dreamed of it, even years later. He knew he dreamed of it because he would wake in the night, drenched in sweat. But the image was always just fading from his consciousness, never to be grasped by his waking mind. And he would lie, staring into the darkness, trembling, for hours after.
But that was later. All he knew now was that he had to stop Caramon! But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t cry out. Transfixed, horror-stricken, he watched as Caramon, with a last, quiet look, turned and mounted the golden platform.
The dragons shrieked in warning, triumph, hatred.… Tanis didn’t know. His own cry, wrenched from his body, was lost in the shrill, deafening sound.
There was a blinding, swirling, crashing wave of many-colored light.
And then it was dark.
Caramon was gone.
“May Paladine be with you,” Tanis whispered, only to hear, to his discomfiture, Dalamar’s cool voice, echo, “Takhisis, my Queen, go with you.”
“I see him,” said Dalamar, after a moment. Staring intently into the Portal, he half-rose, to see more clearly. A gasp of pain, forgotten in the excitement, escaped him. Cursing, he sank back down into the chair, his pale face covered with sweat.
Tanis ceased his restless pacing and came to stand beside Dalamar. “There,” the dark elf pointed, his breath coming from between clenched teeth.
Reluctantly, still feeling the effects of the shock that lingered from when he had first looked into the Portal, Tanis looked into it again. At first he could see nothing but a bleak and barren landscape stretching beneath a burning sky. And then he saw red-tinged light glint off bright armor. He saw a small figure standing near the front of the Portal, sword in hand, facing away from them, waiting.…
“How will he close it?” Tanis asked, trying to speak calmly though grief choked his voice.
“He cannot,” Dalamar replied.
Tanis stared at him in alarm. “Then what will stop the Queen from entering again?”
“She cannot come through unless one comes through ahead of her, half-elf,” Dalamar answered, somewhat irritably. “Otherwise, she would have entered long before this. Raistlin keeps it open. If he comes through it, she will follow. With his death, it will close.”
“So Caramon must kill him—his brother?”
“Yes.”
“And he must die as well,” Tanis murmured.
“Pray that he dies!” Dalamar licked his lips. The pain was making him dizzy, nauseated. “For he cannot return through the Portal either. And though death at the hands of the Dark Queen can be very slow, very unpleasant, believe me, Half-Elven, it is far preferable to life!”
“He knew this—”
“Yes, he knew it. But th
e world will be saved, Half-Elven,” Dalamar remarked cynically. Sinking back into his chair, he continued staring into the Portal, his hand alternately crumpling, then smoothing, the folds of his black, rune-covered robes.
“No, not the world, a soul,” Tanis started to reply bitterly, when he heard, behind him, the laboratory door creak.
Dalamar’s gaze shifted instantly. Eyes glittering, his hand moved to a spell scroll he had slipped into his belt.
“No one can enter,” he said softly to Tanis, who had turned at the sound. “The guardians—”
“Cannot stop him,” Tanis said, his gaze fixed upon the door with a look of fear that mirrored, for an instant, the look of frozen fear upon Kitiara’s dead face.
Dalamar smiled grimly, and relapsed back into his chair. There was no need to look around. The chill of death flowed through the room like a foul mist.
“Enter, Lord Soth,” Dalamar said. “I’ve been expecting you.”
CHAPTER
8
aramon was blinded by the dazzling light that seared even through his closed eyelids. Then darkness wrapped around him and, when he opened his eyes, for an instant he could not see, and he panicked, remembering the time he had been blind and lost in the Tower of High Sorcery.
But, gradually, the darkness, too, lifted, and his eyes became accustomed to the eerie light of his surroundings. It burned with a strange, pinkish glow, as if the sun had just set, Tasslehoff had told him. And the land was just as the kender had described—vast, empty terrain beneath a vast, empty sky. Sky and land were the same color everywhere he looked, in every direction.
Except in one direction. Turning his head, Caramon saw the Portal, now behind him. It was the only swatch of colors in the barren land. Framed by the oval door of the five heads of the dragon, it seemed small and distant to him even though he knew he must be very near. Caramon fancied it looked like a picture, hung upon a wall. Though he could see Tanis and Dalamar quite clearly, they were not moving. They might well have been painted subjects, captured in arrested motion, forced to spend their painted eternity staring into nothing.
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