Dragons of Summer Flame

by Tracy Hickman

  Palin had not been watching the creatures. He’d been thinking of his spell, which meant he was visualizing in his mind the words he must speak. The rest of his attention had been divided between Usha, now inside the pine grove, and Tasslehoff.

  At Tas’s cry, Palin looked for the first time directly at the shadow-wights.

  He couldn’t look away.

  He found himself staring at himself. Palin stood before him.

  “Who are you?” Palin demanded, his voice shaking. He looked into the wight’s eyes, saw nothing, not even his own reflection. “What are you?”

  “Who are you? What are you?” The wight mocked him.

  “I am myself,” Palin said, but even as he spoke, he felt himself start to slip away.

  The shadow-wight was pulling his life from his body.

  “You are nothing,” the shadow-wight told him, speaking with Palin’s mouth. “You were born of nothing. You will return to nothing.”

  Look away! came Raistlin’s warning voice, vibrating through the staff. Look away! Don’t look into the eyes!

  Palin tried to wrench his gaze from the image of himself, but he couldn’t. He stared, rapt. The words of his spell were blotted out by drops of darkness that fell into his mind, like raindrops onto paper, causing all remembrance, all the knowledge of himself to blur, run, become indistinct and muddled, slowly start to wash away.

  He had a vague impression that he heard Usha cry out a name, “Palin!” and he wondered dimly who that person was.

  “Palin!” Usha cried from within the grove of dead pines.

  The shadow-wights were drawing nearer Palin, were creeping up on Tasslehoff. She could see almost nothing of the kender now, nothing except his bright yellow socks and the tip of his topknot.

  “Palin! Tas! Get away! Run!”

  But neither of them moved or even reacted to her words. Palin stood staring at the wights with that dreadful expression of horror.

  “Quickly, Lass, or they’re goners,” Dougan cried out.

  “What … what can I do?” Usha asked helplessly. Her pack, with all the magical artifacts the Irda had given her, was lying far away at Dougan’s feet. There was no time to try to reach it.

  “The Graygem!” Dougan yelled. “Try trapping them with the Graygem! I’ll help you, Lass. You can do it!”

  Usha was doubtful on that point, but she could think of nothing else. She had to act swiftly. The darkness was stealing up over Palin, had almost engulfed Tasslehoff.

  Holding one half of the Graygem in each hand, Usha crept toward the shadow-wights.

  “Don’t look at ’em, Lass!” Dougan cautioned. “Whatever you do, don’t look at ’em!”

  Usha didn’t want to look at them. Every time her gaze brushed across them, she shuddered in a terror that twisted her up inside. She fixed her gaze on Palin, on his beloved face, now contorted in fear.

  And then, suddenly, Usha was standing before her.

  Usha blinked, amazed and appalled.

  “Don’t look into the eyes, Lass!” Dougan howled. “Don’t!”

  Usha looked at Palin, concentrated on Palin, ignored the wight’s voice that was trying to lure her to darkness. Head turned away, she reached out blindly, thrust the Graygem into the image of herself.

  A terrible, painful, numbing cold froze her fingers. She almost dropped the Graygem. The agony was unendurable. Shards of ice shot through her veins. She was losing consciousness, spiraling down into darkness.

  “Catch it!” Dougan commanded. “Trap it in the jewel!”

  Desperately, despairingly, Usha slammed the two halves of the Graygem together.

  The chill was warm.

  The darkness was light.

  The shadow-wights were gone.

  Usha stared around, wondered dazedly if they had ever truly been there. She gazed down at the Graygem, pressed tightly together in her hands, and she began to shake.

  Dougan came dashing up, panting and puffing, his thick boots clomping, raising clouds of choking ash.

  “Well done, Lass! Well done. We’ve got ’em now.” In a muttered aside he said, “Some of them, at least.” Then he added hastily, “I’ll take that,” and plucked the Graygem from Usha’s hands.

  She had wanted it before. Now she was only too glad to be rid of it.

  “Palin?” she said anxiously, grasping hold of the mage’s arm. “Palin, are you all right?”

  He was staring straight ahead, that dreadful fixed expression on his pallid face. At the sound of her voice, her touch, he looked slowly around.

  “Palin. I am Palin.”

  She flung her arms around him.

  He embraced her, held her close, his eyes closed, body trembling.

  Dougan bent over Tasslehoff.

  The kender had fallen to his knees. He clutched the spoon in his hand still, and was sobbing, over and over, “I’m not nothing! I’m not nothing! I’m not nothing!”

  “Lad! Lad! They’re gone!” Dougan called, pounding Tas on the back in what was a good-natured attempt to bring the kender around, but which had the effect of knocking most of the air out of Tas’s small body.

  He coughed and wheezed and blinked his eyes. Catching sight of Dougan, Tas smiled vaguely.

  “Oh, hullo.”

  “Do you know me, Lad?” Dougan asked anxiously.

  “Well, of course,” Tas said. “You’re Reorx.”

  Dougan shook his head. “Never mind about that now. The important thing is, who are you, Lad? Do you remember?”

  Tas gave a relieved and contented sigh that started at the toes of his yellow socks, surged warmly all through him. He flung his arms wide.

  “I’m me! That’s who! I’m me!”

  The Graygem rested in the dwarf’s hands. He looked very old suddenly. His hands shook; the fingers trembled. His face was worn and aged. He had removed his hat with its jaunty feather, set it aside. His clothes were ash-covered, the buttons undone, laces dangling. He held the gem and regarded it sadly, drew a deep, shivering breath.

  “I remember well the day I crafted this,” he said. “A bit of Chaos, that’s all I wanted. It was all I needed. No more than a lock of hair or a shaving of a fingernail, to put it into mortal terms. Himself was hanging about, snooping, as always. Our world—the world we’d made without him—was ordered then, you see. He couldn’t bear that. Disorder, confusion, anarchy—he’d have enjoyed watching our creation sink to that.

  “He especially hated my forge. The crafting, the making, the building of things, was anathema to Himself. The breaking—that’s what he liked.

  “Himself has many children. But these three children: Paladine, Takhisis, Gilean, these were his favorites. He gave them great power, and then he was furious when they used it—used it to thwart him—or so he felt. To make a world and then populate it with living beings, to breathe the breath of the gods into those beings, to give them life, so that they could continue the crafting and the building and the ordering. None of his other children had ever dared try such a thing before. Himself couldn’t stand it.

  “He wanted to wreck it, but we were too powerful. We held him back. Himself had given his children the means to do that, you see, and how he regretted it! Paladine and Takhisis, Himself despised them, the two who always longed for order, plotted and schemed to achieve it. Gilean—he was the favorite child, but he proved a sad disappointment.

  “It was mainly on account of Gilean, I believe, that Chaos held back from destroying the new-peopled world at the very beginning. Himself thought Gilean would see to it that Chaos reigned. But Gilean had always been of a studious turn, his nose in a book, refusing to be bothered. And so Paladine and Takhisis had their way. The balance shifting from one to another with Gilean flipping pages in between.”

  Dougan stared at the two fragments of the jewel, hefted them both, peered intently into the hollow center.

  “They say I trapped him inside, that I grabbed for a tiny bit of Chaos to put in here and ended up with it all. The gem was to b
e an anchor, don’t you see? It would do what Gilean, lost in his books, was not doing. The plan sounded good to me at the time. Perhaps, if I’d thought about it … But I didn’t, so there’s an end to it.

  “But I don’t think I trapped him. No.

  “He did it on purpose. Himself saw his chance, and he took it. He popped into that gem, right before I sealed it. It was Himself who took off soaring over the world, changing this and altering that, throwing all that we had done into disorder. A good time he was having with it, too: wars, the Cataclysm, his children battling among themselves. And then, you see, it was the Irda ruined it all for him. They broke the jewel, spoiled his fun. So now he blusters and rants and raves and—since he can no longer influence the world—he’ll destroy it. That’s the truth of the matter, to my mind.”

  The dwarf nodded emphatically, and—balancing the gem carefully on his broad knee—wiped his sweating face with his hand.

  Palin shifted restlessly. “You’re not to blame. Paladine’s not to blame. Takhisis is not to blame. No one’s to blame, it seems. That’s all very well, but I don’t suppose it will matter much when our world is broken like this wretched gem and we’re all dead and forgotten.”

  “True, Lad, true,” the dwarf said morosely.

  “But there must be some way we can defeat Chaos,” Tasslehoff observed. “We have the Graygem now. I don’t suppose I could hold it—for just a second. I’ll give it right back …”

  Dougan clutched the gem to his breast. “Go away!” he ordered fiercely, glowering at Tas. “Go on! Stand over there! No, farther back. Keep going …”

  “If I go any farther, I’ll drop off the end of the island,” Tas complained.

  “Good riddance,” Dougan muttered.

  “Stay where you are, Tas,” Palin said. “Look, Dougan or Reorx or whoever you are, we’ve got to do something!”

  “The gem destroyed the shadow-wights,” Usha began hopefully.

  “Not all of them,” the dwarf corrected her, “not by a long shot. The wights will spread like darkest night across the land, starting with the High Clerist’s Tower. It’s there, you see, where Chaos figures he can strike hardest at his two most powerful children, Paladine and Takhisis. Once they are destroyed—and they both will be if the High Clerist’s Tower falls—then he will send his fiends in force into the rest of the world.”

  “We should go to the tower, then,” Palin said, frustrated. “We can use the Graygem to help the knights defeat Chaos—”

  “The knights have help, Lad, though they may not know it. The other gods are not idle. Their forces are at work throughout Ansalon. But this”—Dougan touched the Graygem with caressing fingers—“this is the key to it all. If my idea works, we can stop Himself, send him and his fiends packing.”

  “You have a plan, then,” Palin said.

  Dougan fixed him with a cunning eye. “You want to do something, you say?”

  “Of course,” Palin answered impatiently. “We want to do whatever we can.”

  “No matter that it’s dangerous, that you likely won’t survive? Or, if you do, you’ll be changed forever?”

  Tasslehoff raised his hand. “I’m going, too! Raistlin said I could!”

  “I’ll face the danger.” Usha glanced back toward the dead pine trees, toward where the shadow-wights had been. “Nothing could be as bad as that.”

  “Wanna bet?” the dwarf growled.

  “From what you say, everyone on Ansalon will be facing danger. We’ll take our chances with the rest. What do we have to do?”

  Dougan held out the two pieces of the Graygem, one in each hand. “You must capture Chaos, put him back inside.”

  Palin gasped. “You’re mad! That’s not possible for us! We’re not gods!”

  “It is possible, Lad. I’ve thought it all out. I’ve talked with the others, and they believe it might work. As for we gods, we have our own problems. Paladine has agreed to help us—if he survives. Desperate as Takhisis is”—Dougan shook his head—“she still fights to rule the world. She had much better fight for her own survival, but she can’t see that. They’re doing battle at the High Clerist’s Tower.”

  Dougan sighed heavily. “Takhisis may yet win. If she does, she’ll finally be on top. But she may find herself on top of nothing but a heap of ash.”

  24

  The dark warrir. Plotting.

  The nature of the enemy.

  he knights fought in the red heat of the sun that would not set. The garish light bloodied their sword blades and gilded their spears with flame. The Knights of Takhisis rallied to defend the High Clerist’s Tower against an awful, dread, and deadly foe.

  Lightning forked out of a cloudless sky; thunder boomed and roared continuously. Wherever the lightning struck the mountainside, the tinder-dry trees burst into flame. Smoke hung like a pall over the valley. Flowing beneath the smoke, the unnatural darkness surged down from the mountains to the north, heading for the northern wall of the High Clerist’s Tower. The knights were prepared to face it—whatever it was—having been warned by the dragons that this unnatural darkness was no friend to those who worshipped Her Dark Majesty.

  The dragons—golds, reds, blues, silver, and all colors of dragonkind—reported that a vast rift had opened in the Turbidus Ocean, a rift erupting with fire that caused the sea water to boil. Out of this rift came the darkness.

  “It is a vast river of endless night that flows over the mountains. In its wake, devastation worse than the fires,” reported an ancient gold dragon, a lord among his kind. “Every living creature the darkness touches disappears, vanishes without a trace, leaving nothing behind—not even a memory.”

  Ariakan listened, skeptical, particularly of the gold dragons.

  “What is this darkness?” he demanded to know.

  “We cannot say, Lord,” answered a red dragon, young, newly risen to leadership, with the scars of battle fresh on him. “We have never seen its like. You can judge for yourself, though. It is upon you.”

  Lord Ariakan went to his command post, taking up a position on the battlements of the Knights’ Spur. As the dragon had said, the attack had already been launched. Archers, lining the walls, fired arrows into the darkness, which flowed like water up to the base of the structure. The arrows disappeared without leaving a trace, doing no damage that anyone could see. The darkness rose, began to seep over the walls.

  A line of brutes, commanded by knights, was drawn up in defense, prepared to attack the darkness with sword and spear. Among their ranks were Knights of the Thorn and Knights of the Skull, ready to fight this new enemy with sorcery and prayer.

  “What the—?” Ariakan swore. “What’s going on? I can’t see!”

  The sun shone brightly on the horizon, yet night had fallen on the northern wall of the High Clerist’s Tower. Ariakan heard hoarse cries of terror, horrifying screams coming out of the darkness. What he could not hear worried him more. No sounds of battle, no clash of sword on shield, or sword against armor. No officer’s commands. He heard the voices of his wizards, the beginnings of magical spells, but he never heard the ends. Prayers of the clerics, rising to Her Dark Majesty, ceased abruptly.

  At last, Ariakan could stand it no longer. “I’m going down there,” he announced, brushing aside the remonstrations of his commanders.

  But before he could take a step, the darkness retreated as suddenly as it had come. It flowed back down the wall, glided in among the trees, mingled with the smoke. The knights on the walls cheered at first, thinking that their forces had beaten back the foe. The cheering ceased when the light of the angry sun rushed in to replace the darkness. It was then apparent that this was not victory. The darkness had retreated for a reason.

  “Blessed Majesty!” Ariakan whispered, stunned and appalled.

  Of the hundreds of soldiers who had mounted the defense of the tower on the northern wall, not one remained. The only indication that these people had ever existed was the physical objects they’d been wearing or carrying
at the time. Breastplates, helms, bracers, shirts, tunics, boots, gray robes and black were strewn upon the battlements. Atop a breastplate lay a sword. Near a feathered headdress was a feathered spear. Upon a gray robe lay a bag of rose petals. Beside a black robe stood a black mace.

  No living being remained. They had, each and every one, disappeared. No blood was shed, but—by the sounds of those horrible screams—they had all perished in torment. And, what was worse, those who gazed in shock at the awful scene could not call a single face or name to mind. That living men and women had once stood here, no one doubted. There was the physical evidence left behind to prove it. Almost, people could remember. They held the possessions of friends and comrades in their hands and stared at them in awe and fear. Try as they might, they could not remember the vanished.

  “What dreadful force is this?” Ariakan wondered in baffled fury. His face was ashen. He stood amazed. Those who had known him before, calm and cool in battle, saw him now shaken to the core of his being. “And how do we combat it? Find someone who can tell me! Bring my clerics and the Gray Knights—those who are left,” he added grimly.

  But though each cleric and wizard had ideas, none could provide any information for certain.

  “At least,” ventured Subcommander Trevalin, “the enemy appears to have retreated. Perhaps those who fought it were victorious, though they gave their lives.”

  “No,” said Ariakan, staring out into the impenetrable darkness that lurked beneath the smoldering trees. “No, the shadows did not retreat because they lost. They were drawn back on purpose, so that we could see what happened to our comrades. Their commander—whoever or whatever it is—wants us demoralized, fearful, panicked. But, by Her Dark Majesty, I will not permit that to happen!

  “Return to your forces,” he ordered his commanders. “Have that mess cleaned up immediately, removed from sight. Interview your men. Try to find anyone who saw or heard anything that might give us some indication as to this foe and what happened to those who fought it. Report all information to me directly. I will be in the Kingfisher’s Nest.”