“Hey! What’s that?” he demanded in a loud voice. Throwing off his blanket, he leaped to his feet and grabbed Gerard by the shoulder, shaking him and pummeling him.
“Sir Gerard! Wake up!” Tasslehoff shouted. “Sir Gerard!”
The Knight was up and awake in an instant, his sword in his hand. “What?” He stared around, alert for danger. “What is it? Did you hear something? See something? What?”
“That! That right there!” Tasslehoff clutched the Knight’s shirt and pointed.
Sir Gerard regarded the kender with an extremely grim look. “Is this your idea of a joke?”
“Oh, no,” Tas stated. “My idea of a joke is this. I say, ‘Knock, knock,’ and you say, ‘Who’s there?’ and I say, ‘Minotaur,’ and you say ‘Minotaur who,’ and I say, ‘So that’s what you stepped in.’ That’s my idea of a joke. This has to do with that strange light in the sky.”
“That’s the moon,” said Sir Gerard through gritted teeth.
“No!” Tasslehoff was astonished. “Really? The moon?”
He looked back at it. The thing did appear to have certain moonlike qualities: it was orb-shaped, and it was in the sky alongside the stars, and it glowed. But that was where the resemblance ended.
“If that’s Solinari,” Tas said, eyeing the moon skeptically. “Then what happened to him? Is he sick?”
Sir Gerard did not answer. He lay back down on his blanket, placed his sword within hand’s reach, and, grabbing hold of a corner of his blanket, rolled himself up in it. “Go to sleep,” he said coldly, “and stay that way until morning.”
“But I want to know about the moon!” Tas persisted, hunkering down beside the Knight, nothing daunted by the fact that Gerard’s back was turned and his head covered up by the blanket and that he was still obviously extremely irate at having been violently wakened for nothing. Even his back looked angry. “What happened to make Solinari look so pale and sickly? And where’s lovely red Lunitari? I guess I’d wonder where Nuitari was if I’d been able to see the black moon in the first place, which I couldn’t, so it might be there and I just wouldn’t know it—”
Sir Gerard flipped over quite suddenly. His head emerged from the blanket, revealing a stern and unfriendly eye. “You know perfectly well that Solinari has not been seen in the skies these past thirty-odd years, ever since the end of the Chaos War. Lunitari either. So you can stop this ridiculous nonsense. I am now going to sleep. I am to be awakened for nothing less than an invasion of hobgoblins. Is that clear?”
“But the moon!” Tas argued. “I remember when I came to Caramon’s first funeral Solinari shown so very brightly that it was like day only it was night. Palin said this was Solinari’s way of honoring his father and—”
Gerard flipped over again and covered his head.
Tas continued talking until he heard the Knight start to snore. Tas gave the Knight an experimental poke in the shoulder, to no avail. The kender thought that he might try prying open one of Gerard’s eyelids to see if he was really asleep or just shamming, a trick which had never been known to fail with Flint, although it usually ended with the irate dwarf chasing the kender around the room with the poker.
Tas had other things to think about, however, and so he left the Knight alone and returned to his own blanket. Lying down, he put his hands beneath his head and gazed at the strange moon, which gazed back at him without the slightest hint of recognition. This gave Tas an idea. Abandoning the moon, he shifted his gaze to the stars, searched for his favorite constellations.
They were gone, as well. The stars he looked at now were cold and distant and unfamiliar. The only understanding star in the night sky was a single red star burning brightly not far from the strange moon. The star had a warm and comforting glow about it, which made up for the empty cold feeling in the pit of Tas’s stomach, a feeling he had once thought, when he was a young kender, meant he needed something to eat but that he now knew, after years of adventuring, was his inside’s way of telling him that something was wrong. In fact, he’d felt pretty much this same way just about the time the giant’s foot had been poised over his head.
Tas kept his gaze on the red star, and after awhile the cold, empty feeling didn’t hurt so much anymore. Just when he was feeling more comfortable and had put the thoughts of the strange moon and the unfriendly stars and the looming giant out of his mind, and just when he was starting to enjoy the night, sleep crept up and nabbed him again.
The kender wanted to discuss the moon the next day, and discuss it he did, but only with himself. Sir Gerard never responded to any of Tasslehoff’s innumerable questions, never turned around, just rode along at a slow pace, the reins of Tas’s pony in his hands.
The Knight rode in silence, though he was watchful and alert, constantly scanning the horizon. The entire world seemed to be riding in silence today, as well, once Tasslehoff quit talking, which he did after a couple of hours. It wasn’t so much that he was bored with talking to himself, it was the answering himself that grew old fast. They met no one on the road, and now even the sounds of other living creatures came to an end. No bird sang. No squirrel scampered across the path. No deer walked among the shadows or ran from them, white tail flashing an alarm.
“Where are the animals?” Tas asked Gerard.
“They are in hiding,” the Knight answered, the first words he’d spoken all morning. “They are afraid.”
The air was hushed and still, as if the world held its breath, fearful of being heard. Not even the trees rustled and Tas had the feeling that if they had been able to make the choice, they would have dragged their roots out of the ground and run away.
“What are they afraid of?” Tasslehoff asked with interest, looking around in excitement, hoping for a haunted castle or a crumbling manor or, at the very least, a spooky cave.
“They fear the great green dragon. Beryl. We are in the West Plains now. We have crossed over into her realm.”
“You keep talking about this green dragon. I’ve never heard of her. The only green dragon I knew was named Cyan Bloodbane. Who is Beryl? Where did she come from?”
“Who knows?” Gerard said impatiently. “From across the sea, I suppose, along with the great red dragon Malystryx and others of their foul kind.”
“Well, if she isn’t from around these parts, why doesn’t some hero just go stick a lance into her?” Tas asked cheerfully.
Gerard halted his horse. He tugged on the reins of Tasslehoff’s pony, who had been trudging behind, her head down, every bit as bored as the kender. She came plodding up level with the black, shaking her mane and eyeing a patch of grass hopefully.
“Keep your voice down!” Gerard said in a low voice. He looked as grim and stern as the kender had ever seen him. “Beryl’s spies are everywhere, though we do not see them. Nothing moves in her realm but she is aware of it. Nothing moves here without her permission. We crossed into her realm an hour ago,” he added. “I will be very surprised if someone doesn’t come to take a look at us—Ah, there. What did I tell you?”
He had shifted in his saddle, to gaze intently to the east. A large speck of black in the sky was growing steadily larger and larger and larger with every passing moment. As Tas watched, he saw the speck develop wings and a long tail, saw a massive body—a massive green body.
Tasslehoff had seen dragons before, he’d ridden dragons before, he’d fought dragons before. But he had never seen or hoped to see a dragon this immense. Her tail seemed as long as the road they traveled; her teeth, set in slavering jaws, could have served as the high, crenellated walls of a formidable fortress. Her wicked red eyes burned with a hotter fire than the sun and seemed to illuminate all they looked upon with a glaring light.
“As you have any regard for your life or mine, kender,” Gerard said in a fierce whisper, “do or say nothing!”
The dragon flew directly over them, her head swiveling to study them from all angles. The dragonfear slid over them like the dragon’s shadow, blotting out the sunshine,
blotting out reason and hope and sanity. The pony shook and whimpered. The black whinnied in terror and kicked and plunged. Gerard clung to the bucking horse’s back, unable to calm the animal, prey to the same fear himself. Tasslehoff stared upward in open-mouthed astonishment. He felt a most unpleasant sensation come over him, a stomach-shriveling, spine-watering, knee-buckling, hand-sweating sort of feeling. As feelings went, he didn’t much like it. For making a person miserable, it ranked right up there with a bad, sniffly cold in the head.
Beryl circled them twice and, seeing nothing more interesting than one of her own Knight allies with a kender prisoner in tow, she left them alone, flying lazily and unhurriedly back to her lair, her sharp eyes taking note of everything that moved upon her ground.
Gerard slid off his horse. He stood next to the shivering animal, leaned his head against its heaving flanks. He was exceedingly pale and sweating, a tremor shook his body. He opened and shut his mouth several times and at one point looked as if he might be sick, but he recovered himself. At length his breathing evened out.
“I have shamed myself,” he said. “I did not know I could experience fear like that.”
“I wasn’t afraid,” Tas announced in voice that seemed to have developed the same shakiness as his body. “I wasn’t afraid one bit.”
“If you had any sense, you would have been,” Gerard said dourly.
“It’s just that while I’ve seen some hideous dragons in my time I’ve never seen one quite that …”
Tasslehoff’s words shriveled under Gerard’s baleful stare.
“That … imposing,” the kender said loudly, just in case any of the dragon’s spies were listening. “Imposing,” he whispered to Gerard. “That’s a sort of compliment, isn’t it?”
The Knight did not reply. Having calmed himself and his horse, he retrieved the reins to Tasslehoff’s pony and, holding them in his hand, remounted the black. He did not set off immediately, but continued to sit some time in the middle of the road, gazing out to the west.
“I had never seen one of the great dragons before,” he said quietly. “I did not think it would be that bad.”
He sat quite still for several more moments, then, with a set jaw and pale face, he rode forward.
Tasslehoff followed along behind because he couldn’t do anything else except follow along behind, what with the Knight holding onto the pony’s reins.
“Was that the same dragon who killed all the kender?” Tasslehoff asked in a small voice.
“No,” Gerard replied. “That was an even bigger dragon. A red dragon named Malys.”
“Oh,” said Tas. “Oh, my.”
An even bigger dragon. He couldn’t imagine it, and he very nearly said that he would like to see an even bigger dragon when it came to him quite forcibly that, in all honesty, he wouldn’t.
“What is the matter with me?” Tasslehoff wailed in dismay. “I must be coming down with something. I’m not curious! I don’t want to see a red dragon that might be bigger than Palanthas. This is just not like me.”
Which led to an astounding thought, a thought so astounding Tas almost tumbled off the pony.
“Maybe I’m not me!”
Tasslehoff considered this. After all, no one else believed he was him except Caramon, and he was pretty old and almost dead at the time so perhaps he didn’t count. Laura had said that she thought Tasslehoff was Tasslehoff but she was probably only being polite, so he couldn’t count on that either. Sir Gerard had said that he couldn’t possibly be Tasslehoff Burrfoot and Lord Warren had said the same thing, and they were Solamnic Knights, which meant that they were smart and most likely knew what they were talking about.
“That would explain everything,” said Tasslehoff to himself, growing cheerier the more he thought about it. “That would explain why nothing that happened to me the first time I went to Caramon’s funeral happened the second time, because it wasn’t me it was happening to. It was someone else entirely. But if that’s the case,” he added, becoming rather muddled, “if I’m not me, I wonder who I am?”
He pondered on this for a good half-mile.
“One thing is certain,” he said. “I can’t keep calling myself Tasslehoff Burrfoot. If I meet the real one, he would be highly annoyed that I’d taken his name. Just the way I felt when I found out that there were thirty-seven other Tasslehoff Burrfoots in Solace—thirty-nine counting the dogs. I suppose I’ll have to give him back the Device of Time Journeying, too. I wonder how I came to have it? Ah, of course. He must have dropped it.”
Tas kicked his pony in the flanks. The pony perked up and trotted forward until Tas had caught up with the knight.
“Excuse me, Sir Gerard,” Tas said.
The Knight glanced at him and frowned. “What?” he asked coldly.
“I just wanted to tell you that I made a mistake,” Tas said meekly. “I’m not the person I said was.”
“Ah, now there’s a surprise!” Gerard grunted. “You mean you’re not Tasslehoff Burrfoot, who’s been dead for over thirty years?”
“I thought I was,” Tas said wistfully. He found the notion more difficult to give up than he’d imagined. “But I can’t be. You see, Tasslehoff Burrfoot was a hero. He wasn’t afraid of anything. And I don’t think he would have felt all strange the way I felt when that dragon flew over us. But I know what’s wrong with me.”
He waited for the Knight to ask politely but the Knight didn’t. Tas volunteered the information.
“I have magnesia,” he said solemnly.
This time Gerard said, “What?” only he didn’t say it very politely.
Tas put his hand to his forehead, to see if he could feel it. “Magnesia. I’m not sure how a person gets magnesia. I think it has something to do with milk. But I remember that Raistlin said he knew someone with it once and that person couldn’t remember who he was or why he was or where he’d left his spectacles or anything. So I must have magnesia, because that’s my situation entirely.”
This solved, Tasslehoff—or rather, the kender who used to think he was Tasslehoff—felt extremely proud to know he had come down with something so important.
“Of course,” he added with a sigh, “a lot of people like you who expect me to be Tasslehoff are going to be in for a sad disappointment when they find out I’m not. But they’ll just have to come to grips with it.”
“I’ll try to bear up,” Gerard said dryly. “Now why don’t you think really hard and see if you can ‘remember’ the truth about who you are.”
“I wouldn’t mind remembering the truth,” Tas said. “I have the feeling that the truth doesn’t want to remember me.”
The two rode on in silence through a silent world until at last, to Tasslehoff’s relief, he heard a sound, the sound of water, angry water of a river that foamed and seethed as if it resented being held prisoner within its rocky banks. Humans named the river the White-rage River. It marked the northern border of the elven land of Qualinesti.
Gerard slowed his horse. Rounding a bend in the road, they came within sight of the river, a broad expanse of white foaming water falling over and around glistening black rocks.
They had arrived at the end of the day. The forest was shadowed with the coming of darkness. The river held the light still, the water shining in the afterglow, and by that light they could see in the distance a narrow bridge spanning the river. The bridge was guarded by a lowered gate and guards wearing the same black armor as Gerard.
“Those are Dark Knights,” said Tasslehoff in astonishment.
“Keep your voice down!” Gerard ordered sternly. Dismounting, he removed the gag from his belt and approached the kender. “Remember, the only way we’re going to be able to see your alleged friend Palin Majere is if they let us past.”
“But why are there Dark Knights here in Qualinesti?” Tas asked, talking quickly before Gerard had time to put the gag in place.
“The dragon Beryl rules the realm. These Knights are her overseers. They enforce her laws, collect th
e taxes and the tribute the elves pay to stay alive.”
“Oh, no,” said Tas, shaking his head. “There must be some mistake. The Dark Knights were driven out by the combined forces of Porthios and Gilthas in the year—Ulp!”
Gerard stuffed the gag in the kender’s mouth, fastened it securely in a knot at the back of his head. “Keep saying things like that and I won’t have to gag you. Everyone will just think you’re crazy.”
“If you’d tell me what has happened,” Tas said, pulling the gag from his mouth and peering around at Gerard, “then I wouldn’t have to ask questions.”
Gerard, exasperated, put the gag back in place. “Very well,” he said crossly. “The Knights of Neraka took Qualinesti during the Chaos War and they have never relinquished their hold on it,” he said as he tied the knot. “They were prepared to go to war against the dragon, when she demanded that they cede the land to her. Beryl was clever enough to realize that she didn’t need to fight. The Knights could be of use to her. She formed an alliance with them. The elves pay tribute, the Knights collect it and turn over a percentage—a large percentage—to the dragon. The Knights keep the rest. They prosper. The dragon prospers. It’s the elves who are out of luck.”
“I guess that must have happened when I had magnesia,” Tas said, tugging one corner of the gag loose.
Gerard fastened the knot even tighter and added, irritably, “The word is ‘amnesia,’ damn it. And just keep quiet!”
He remounted his horse, and the two rode toward the gate. The guards were alert and had probably been on the watch for them, warned of their coming by the dragon, for they did not appear surprised to see the two emerge from the shadows. Knights armed with halberds stood guard at the gate, but it was an elf, clad all in green cloth and glittering chain mail, who walked up to question them. He was followed by an officer of the Knights of Neraka, who stood behind the elf, observing.
The elf regarded the two, particularly the kender, with disdain.
“The elven realm of Qualinesti is closed to all travelers by orders of Gilthas, Speaker of the Sun,” said the elf, speaking Common. “What is your business here?”
Dragons of a Fallen Sun Page 26