Dragons of Summer Flame

by Tracy Hickman

  Tas walked into the Portal, holding the staff. It was the kender’s proudest moment.

  Raistlin, dragging Palin, followed. The dragons shrieked in deafening tones, but did not try to halt them.

  The cool, dusty darkness of the laboratory closed over them. Raistlin laid Palin gently on the floor. The archmage straightened, took a step toward the Portal.

  “I’m coming back into the Abyss,” he cried. “Let me return! Do what you want to me, Takhisis. Don’t leave me here, bereft of my power!”

  Light flared, blinding light, painful to witness. Tas’s eyes burned and watered; the lids wanted to shut, but Tas knew that if they did, he might miss something, and so he held them open with his fingers.

  Raistlin, coughing, took another step toward the Portal. The light grew brighter still. Tas’s eyelids outvoted him two to one and shut. The last he saw, Raistlin had lifted his arms as if to ward off a blow …

  Raistlin cursed. Tas heard a swooshing sound, and the light went out.

  Tas risked opening his eyes.

  The velvet curtain hung, once again, over the Portal. A faint, mocking light shone from underneath. The rest of the laboratory was shrouded in black.

  Raistlin stood in front of the curtain, staring at it. Then, abruptly, he turned away, disappeared into the darkness. Tas heard him walking away.

  The darkness wasn’t an ordinary darkness, the kind of darkness one liked to have in one’s bedroom, the kind of darkness that was soft and woolly and lulled you into sleep and pleasant dreams. This was altogether a different sort of darkness, a chill, decaying, whispering darkness, a darkness that made you want to stay very much awake.

  “Raistlin? Where are you?” Tas asked.

  He wasn’t afraid, not exactly, but he was starting to think that a little light would be a pleasant sort of thing to have about now. He was about to try to cause the staff to light. He knew the magic word—he was pretty sure he knew the magic word—and was just about to speak it when Raistlin’s voice came from the darkness. His voice was like the darkness, chill, whispering.

  “I am in the front part of the laboratory. Keep near Palin,” Raistlin said. “Let me know if he moves or speaks. And put down that staff!”

  Tas crept over to sit beside Palin. The kender heard Raistlin rustling about, then a light flared—a soft, comforting sort of light. Raistlin appeared, carrying a candle in a wrought-iron holder fashioned in the shape of a bird. He set the candle down beside Palin.

  “I think he’s somewhat better,” Tas said, reaching out to touch Palin’s forehead. “He’s warmer, at least. But he’s not awake yet.”

  “The curse still chills his blood, but he can be healed now.” Raistlin eyed the kender. “Didn’t I tell you to put down that staff!”

  “I did!” Tas protested. Investigation proved—to his immense astonishment—that the staff was still in his hand. “My! Isn’t that remarkable. I think it likes me. Perhaps I could make it light up—just once. What’s that word you say to make the light go on? Shelac? Shirley? Shirleylac?”

  With a grim expression, Raistlin took hold of the staff and, with some difficulty, pried the kender’s fingers loose.

  “Just once let me light it, Raistlin! Please! I’m sorry I took your magical eyeglasses that time. If I ever find them, I’ll give them back to you. That’s odd, isn’t it, the way my fingers seem to have stiffened up like that …”

  Raistlin wrenched the staff free. Removing the staff to a distant part of the laboratory, he stood it up against the wall. The archmage seemed as reluctant to part with it as the kender. Raistlin’s hand caressed the wood. His lips moved in what might have been the language of magic.

  But nothing happened.

  Raistlin removed his hand and turned away. Going over to the gigantic stone table, he lit another candle, held it high, stared down at Palin.

  “Tas?” Palin murmured in a weak voice.

  “I’m here, Palin!” Tas forgot the staff, turned back to his patient. “How do you feel?”

  “My arm burns … but all the rest of me is so cold,” Palin answered through chattering teeth. “What … what happened?”

  “I’m not really sure,” Tas answered. “I said hullo and was going to shake hands, when the next thing I knew Kitiara had her sword and was about to stab you, and Raistlin bumped into me and I took a nap.”

  “What?” Palin was momentarily confused, then memory returned. He struggled weakly to sit up. “The Portal! The Dark Queen! We must … get back …”

  “We are back,” Tas said, gently pushing Palin down again. “We’re in the laboratory. Raistlin’s here, too.”

  “Uncle?” Palin stared up into the light that reflected off the golden-skinned face, framed by long white hair. “You came after all!”

  “He came through the Portal to save you, Palin,” Tas explained.

  Palin’s wan face flushed with pleasure. “Thank you, Uncle. I’m very grateful.” He lay back, closed his eyes. “What did happen to me? I feel so cold …”

  “You were struck by a cursed weapon from the Abyss,” Raistlin explained. “Fortunately, the sword only harmed your flesh. If it had stabbed through to the heart, you would be serving Chemosh now. As it is, I believe I have something here that will give you ease.”

  Raistlin returned to the inner portion of the laboratory to examine a row of jars lined up on a dust-covered shelf.

  “Who was that woman?” Palin asked, with a shudder. “Some minion of the Dark Queen’s?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes, though I’ve no doubt she was not acting on orders, but furthering her own pursuits. That was my sister,” Raistlin replied, “your late aunt Kitiara.”

  “We certainly have been running into a lot of old friends lately,” Tas said. “Well, I guess you couldn’t call Kitiara a friend now, but she was once, long ago. Why, I remember the time she saved me from a bugbear in a cave. How was I supposed to know that bugbears sleep all winter and wake up hungry? But she’s gone.” Tas heaved a sigh. “And now Tanis is gone, too. So many … gone. At least,” he added, cheering up a bit, “we have you back, Raistlin.”

  “So it seems,” Raistlin replied, and almost immediately he went into a fit of coughing. The fit doubled him over. He clutched his chest, gasped for breath. At length, the spasm eased. Wiping his lips with the sleeve of his robe, he drew a ragged breath. “My return was unintended, I assure you.”

  “He tried to go back,” Tas added, “and when he tried to go back, the heads screamed at us. It was really quite exciting. But then Raistlin shut the curtain. I don’t suppose I could just take a peek? See if the heads are—”

  “Don’t go near it!” Raistlin snapped. “Or else you will find yourself taking another nap. And this one will not be brief!”

  Finding the jar he wanted, the archmage took it down from the shelf, removed the stopper. He sniffed at it, nodded, and walked over to Palin.

  Raistlin spread a bluish unguent over the wound.

  “This may sting.”

  Palin grit his teeth, drew in a sharp breath. “I take it we weren’t supposed to have been eavesdropping on the gods.” He half sat up, peered at his shoulder, trying to see his wound. The lines of pain were smoothed from his face. He breathed easier and had stopped shivering. “That does feel better. Is it magic?”

  “It is,” Raistlin replied, “but not of my making. It was a gift, from a cleric of Paladine.”

  “Lady Crysania, I expect,” Tasslehoff said, nodding wisely. “She thought quite a lot of you, Raistlin.”

  Raistlin’s face was impassive, grim. Turning, he stood and walked back over to resume his examination of the shelves’ contents.

  “Tas!” Palin whispered, shocked. “Hush!”

  “Why?” Tas whispered back crossly. He was feeling out of sorts. “It’s the truth.”

  Palin cast an uneasy glance at his uncle, but—if Raistlin heard—he was ignoring them both.

  Tas’s head hurt. He was dreadfully unhappy to think that Tani
s was gone and he’d never able to hear his laughter, see him smile, borrow his handkerchiefs. And now, to add to his misery, he was bored.

  Tas knew very well that if he even so much as looked at a dead bat in this laboratory, Raistlin and Palin would both yell at him. And if they yelled at him, the ache in his chest would cause him to yell back at them and probably say some things that would hurt their feelings. Which would mean that one or the other might end up by turning him—Tasslehoff Burrfoot—into a bat, and while that sounded like fun …

  Tasslehoff wandered over to the laboratory door. He tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. “Drat! We’re stuck in here!”

  “No, we are not,” Raistlin said coldly. “We will leave when I am ready to leave, not before.”

  Tas regarded the door thoughtfully. “It sure is quiet out there. Steel was hammering on this door like thunder when we left. I suppose he and Usha and Dalamar got tired and went to dinner.”

  “Usha!” Palin stood up, then almost immediately sagged back weakly in a chair. “I hope she’s all right. You must meet her, Uncle.”

  “He’s already met her,” Tas pointed out. “Well, sort of. Since she’s his daughter—”

  “Daughter!” Raistlin snorted. He was shaking fragrant leaves from a large bag into a small leather pouch. “If she claims that, she’s a liar. I have no daughter.”

  “She’s not a liar. The circumstances were … um … singular, Uncle,” Palin said defensively. He made his way from the chair to the corner where his staff stood, took hold of it. Almost immediately, he appeared to feel stronger. “You could have had a daughter and not known about it. Because of the Irda magic.”

  Raistlin coughed, started to shake his head, then looked up. “Irda? What have the Irda to do with this?”

  “I … Well, it’s a story that people tell about you, Uncle. Father never paid much attention to it. Whenever anyone would bring it up, he’d say it was all nonsense.”

  “I would be interested to hear this tale,” Raistlin said with a hint of a smile on the thin lips.

  “There are several versions, but—according to most—you and father were returning from your Test in the Tower of Wayreth. You were ill. The weather was turning bad. You both stopped at an inn to rest. A woman entered, asked to spend the night. She was muffled and cloaked. Some ruffians attacked her. You and father saved her. She tried to keep her face hidden, but her scarf fell off. She was beautiful,” Palin said softly. “I know how you must have felt, Uncle, when you looked at her! I have felt the same way.” He was silent, smiling, entering his own fable.

  “And then what happened?” Raistlin asked, jolting the young man from his daydream.

  “Well, um,” Palin stammered. “To make a long story short, you and she … well, you, uh …”

  “Made love,” Tas said, seeing that Palin appeared rather confused on this point. “You two made love, only you didn’t know it, because of the Irda magic, and she had a baby that had golden eyes, and the Irda came and took the baby away.”

  “I made love to a beautiful woman and I didn’t know it. Just my luck,” Raistlin said.

  “That wasn’t quite the way it happened. She’ll have to tell you. You will like her, Uncle,” Palin continued with enthusiasm. “She is charming. And kind, and very, very beautiful.”

  “All of which proves she is no child of mine,” Raistlin returned caustically. He pulled the thong shut on the leather pouch, hung it carefully from his belt. “We had best leave now. We have a great deal to do and little time in which to accomplish it. Too many days have passed, I fear.”

  “Days? No, Uncle. It was midmorning when we left. It must be about twilight now.” Palin paused, looked about the laboratory. “Don’t you want to take any of your spellbooks? I’m feeling better. I could help you carry them—”

  “No, I do not,” Raistlin returned calmly, coldly. He did not glance in their direction.

  Palin hesitated, then said, “Would you mind if I took them, then? I was hoping you might teach me some of the spells.”

  “Spells of the great Fistandantilus?” Raistlin asked, and he appeared highly amused. “Your robes would have to turn a lot darker than they are now before you could read those spells, Nephew.”

  Palin was calm. “Perhaps not, Uncle. I know that a Black Robe has never in the history of the Three Moons apprenticed a White Robe. But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Father told me how you once changed a life-draining spell into a life-giving spell, the time when Uncle Tas was poisoned in the Temple of Neraka. I know the work will be arduous and difficult, but I will do anything—sacrifice anything,” he added emphatically, “to gain more power.”

  “Would you?” Raistlin gazed at Palin intently. “Would you really?” He lifted an eyebrow. “We will see, my nephew. We will see. And now”—he strode toward the door—“we must leave. As I said, time grows short. It is twilight, but not of the day you left. A month has passed on Ansalon.”

  Palin gasped. “But that’s not possible! It … it’s only been hours …”

  “To you, perhaps, but time as we know it on this plane of existence means nothing in the realm of the gods. A month ago this day, Lord Ariakan rode in triumph through the gates of the High Clerist’s Tower. Once that fell, nothing could stop him. The city of Palanthas is now ruled by the Knights of Takhisis.”

  Tas was at the door, his eye to the keyhole, trying to see out. “What if the specter’s still there?”

  “The guardian is gone. Dalamar is here, but he will not be staying long. Soon, as in the days after the Cataclysm, the tower will be deserted.”

  “Dalamar, gone! I … can’t believe it.” Palin seemed dazed. “Uncle, if the dark knights are in control, where will we go? No place will be safe.”

  Raistlin did not reply.

  There was an eerie quality to his silence.

  “I have dreamed of it … for so long,” Raistlin said softly. “We will go home, Nephew. I want to go home.”

  BOOK 4

  1

  A changing world. The inn.

  An unexpected visitor.

  ith the fall of Palanthas came the fall of northern Ansalon. The great and ancient city secured, its wealth in hand, its port open to the black dragon ships, Ariakan lost no time in seizing all the land that he could take easily, while building up his forces for the battles that would be difficult and long-fought.

  Rumor turned out to be his best weapon. It spread faster than even his knights on their blue dragons could fly. Tales of armies led by Lord Soth, armies formed of skeletal warriors, who butchered any living being and drank their blood, were whispered everywhere, believed everywhere. Dragonfear added to the terror, as did tales of the cruel barbarians, who were said to spit children on their spears and roast them alive over their fires. By the time his troops reached most major cities, the citizens were in such a panic that they flung wide the gates and invited the dark knights to enter without a fight.

  A month had passed, and Ariakan controlled Nordmaar, eastward through the Khalkist Mountains, south as far as the Plains of Dust, west into Solamnia and Abanasinia. Northern Ergoth still held out, its dark-skinned seafaring race battling fiercely, refusing to give in. The hill dwarves were said to be mounting stiff resistance in the Khalkists, where renegade draconians had entered the fray. Ariakan had not yet attempted to take the elven lands of Silvanesti and Qualinesti. He knew that such a battle would be costly; he hoped instead that the fruit would fall into his hand, rotted from the inside.

  The Plains of Dust he ignored, for the time being, as being worth very little. When the remainder of the continent was in his control, then he would pick off the scattered tribes of Plainspeople, led by the cleric Goldmoon and her husband, Riverwind.

  As for the gnomes of Mount Nevermind, they, unfortunately, fell to themselves. Having heard rumors of the dark knights’ planned invasion, the gnomes feverishly launched into operation all their most powerful war machines. No one was exactly certain what went wrong, but
a powerful explosion rocked Northern and Southern Ergoth. An enormous cloud of black, acrid smoke appeared in the sky, hung over the mountain for a week. When the smoke cleared, most of the top of the mountain was said to be missing. Casualties were reported to be high, but the sounds of clanking and banging could once more be heard echoing from the mountain. In gnomish philosophy, there is no such thing as a disaster—merely opportunity.

  Kendermore did not fall without a fight, due mainly to the efforts of the kender’s cunning war leader, Paxina, the daughter of Kronin Thistleknot, a hero of the Dragon Wars. Paxina “Stinging” Thistleknot had heard that Lord Ariakan had deemed the kender “worthless nuisances” and planned to have all kender rounded up and put to death. Paxina announced this to her people, hoping to rally them to battle. She received shrugs, yawns, and “So what else is new?” in return.

  Something else was needed to stir kender blood. Paxina thought the matter over, then started a rumor that the dark knights were corning to loot Kendermore, steal all the kender’s most prized possessions.

  This did the trick.

  Appalled, the kender put up such a stiff resistance that, even though he crushed them, they managed to win Ariakan’s admiration. He determined that the kender might prove useful after all, if they could be convinced to serve the Dark Queen. Thus Kendermore survived, much to the disgruntlement of those knights forced to serve there.

  Within a matter of weeks, Lord Ariakan was ruler and master over more territory than the Dragon Highlords had been able to gain during the War of the Lance. This with fewer casualties, on both sides.

  Life changed for the conquered, but only in subtle ways not readily apparent. Those who feared wholesale butchery and slaughter, such as they had witnessed during the last war, were surprised to find that the knights treated those they conquered fairly, if harshly. Strict laws were laid down and coldly, dispassionately, sometimes brutally enforced. Schools, except for those teaching the lessons of the Dark Queen, were closed. Any wizard caught outside the bounds of the Tower of Wayreth was in peril. Those who broke the laws were put to death. No arguments, no appeals. The rollicking town of Flotsam, known for its rough and rowdy citizenry, was, by the end of the month, subdued, quiet, peaceful.