Gerard was shaking his head. “This is ridiculous.”
“Excuse me,” said Tas, stern in his turn. “It’s not polite to interrupt. So anyway I came here and ended up in the Tomb and Gerard found me and took me to see Caramon. And I was able to tell him what I was going to say about him at the funeral, which he enjoyed immensely, only nothing was like I remembered it the first time. I told that to Caramon, too, and he seemed really worried, but he dropped dead before he had time to do anything about it. And then he couldn’t find Raistlin when he knew that Raistlin would never go on to the next life without his twin. Which is why I think he said I was to talk to Dalamar.” Tas drew in a deep breath, having expended most of his air on his tale. “And that’s why I’m here.”
“Do you believe this, my lady?” Gerard demanded.
“I don’t know what to believe,” Laurana said softly. She glanced at Palin, but he carefully avoided her gaze, pretended to be absorbed in examining the device, almost as if he expected to find the answers engraved upon the shining metal.
“Tas,” he said mildly, not wanting to reveal the direction of his thoughts, “tell me everything you remember about the first time you came to my father’s funeral.”
Tasslehoff did so, talking about how Dalamar attended and Lady Crysania and Riverwind and Goldmoon, how the Solamnic Knights sent a representative who traveled all the way from the High Clerist’s Tower and Gilthas came from the elven kingdom of Qualinesti and Silvanoshei from his kingdom of Silvanesti and Porthios and Alhana came and she was as beautiful as ever. “And you were there, Laurana, and you were so happy because you said you’d lived to see your dearest dream come true, the elven kingdoms united in peace and brotherhood.”
“It’s just a story he’s made up,” Gerard said impatiently. “One of those tales of ‘what might have been.’ ”
“What might have been,” Palin said, watching the sunlight sparkle on the jewels. “My father had a story of what might have been.” He looked at Tas. “You and my father traveled forward in time together once, didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Tas said quickly. “We overshot our mark. You see, we were trying to go back to our own time which was 356 but due to a miscalculation we ended up in 358. Not the 358 which was 358, but a really horrible 358 where we found Tika’s tomb and poor Bupu dead in the dust and Caramon’s corpse, a 358 which thank goodness never happened because Caramon and I went back in time to make sure that Raistlin didn’t become a god.”
“Caramon once told me that story,” Gerard said. “I thought—Well, he was getting on in years and he did like to tell tales, so I never really took him seriously.”
“My father believed that it happened,” Palin said and that was all he said.
“Do you believe it, Palin?” Laurana asked insistently. “More important, do you believe that Tas’s story is true. That he really did travel through time? Is that what you are thinking?”
“What I am thinking is that I need to know much more about this device,” he replied. “Which is, of course, why my father urged that the device be taken to Dalamar. He is the only person in this world who was actually present during the time my father worked the magic of the device.”
“I was there!” Tas reminded them. “And now I’m here.”
“Yes,” said Palin with a cool, appraising glance. “So you are.”
In his mind, an idea was forming. It was only a spark, a tiny flash of flame in a vast and empty darkness. Yet it had been enough to send the rats scurrying.
“You cannot ask Dalamar,” Laurana said practically. “No one’s seen him since his return from the Chaos War.”
“No, Laurana, you are wrong,” Palin said. “One person saw him before his mysterious disappearance—his lover, Jenna. She always claimed that she had no idea where he went, but I never believed her. And she would be the one person who might know something about this artifact.”
“Where does this Jenna live?” Gerard asked. “Your father gave me the task of taking the kender and the device to Dalamar. I may not be able to do that, but I could at least escort you, sir, and the kender—”
Palin was shaking his head. “That will not be possible, Sir Knight. Mistress Jenna lives in Palanthas, a city under the control of the Dark Knights.”
“So is Qualinesti, sir,” Gerard pointed out, with a slight smile.
“Slipping unnoticed across the heavily wooded borders of Qualinesti is one thing,” Palin observed. “Entering the walled and heavily guarded city of Palanthas is quite another. Besides the journey would take far too long. It would be easier to meet Jenna half way. Perhaps in Solace.”
“But can Jenna leave Palanthas?” Laurana asked. “I thought the Dark Knights had restricted travel out of the city as well as into it.”
“Such restrictions may apply to ordinary people,” Palin said drily. “Not to Mistress Jenna. She made it her business to get on well with the knights when they took over the city. Very well, if you take my meaning. Youth is lost to her, but she is still an attractive woman. She is also the wealthiest woman in Solamnia and one of the most powerful mages. No, Laurana, Jenna will have no difficulty traveling to Solace.” He rose to his feet. He needed to be alone, to think.
“But aren’t her powers abating like yours, Palin?” Laurana asked.
He pressed his lips together in displeasure. He did not like speaking of his loss, as another might not like speaking of a cancerous growth. “Jenna has certain artifacts which continue to work for her, as I have some which continue to work for me. It is not much,” he added caustically, “but we make do.”
“Perhaps this is the best plan,” Laurana agreed. “But how will you return to Solace? The roads are closed—”
Palin bit his lip, bit back bitter words. Would they never quit yammering at him?
“Not to one of the Dark Knights,” Gerard was saying. “I offer myself as escort, sir. I came here with a kender prisoner. I will leave with a human one.”
“Yes, yes, a good plan, Sir Knight,” Palin said impatiently. “You work out the details.” He started to walk off, eager to escape to the silence of his room, but he thought of one more important question. Pausing, he turned to ask it. “Does anyone else know of the discovery of this artifact?”
“Probably half of Solace by now, sir,” Gerard answered dourly. “The kender was not very secretive.”
“Then we must not waste time,” Palin said tersely. “I will contact Jenna.”
“How will you do that?” Laurana asked him.
“I have my ways,” he said, adding, with a curl of his lip, “Not much, but I make do.”
He left the room, left abruptly, without looking back. He had no need. He could feel her hurt and her sorrow accompany him like a gentle spirit. He was momentarily ashamed, half-turned to go back to apologize. He was her guest, after all. She was putting her very life in danger to host him. He hesitated, and then he kept walking.
No, he thought grimly. Laurana can’t understand. Usha doesn’t understand. That brash and arrogant knight doesn’t understand. They can’t any of them understand. They don’t know what I’ve been through, what I’ve suffered. They don’t know my loss.
Once, he cried in silent anguish, once I touched the minds of gods!
He paused, listening in the stillness, to see if he could by chance hear a faint voice answering his grieving cry.
He heard, as he always heard, only the empty echo.
They think I’ve been freed from prison. They think my torment is ended.
They are wrong.
My confinement endures day after dreary day. The torture goes on indefintely. Gray walls surround me. I squat in my own filth. The bones of my spirit are cracked and splintered. My hunger is so great that I devour myself. My thirst so great that I drink my own waste. This is what I’ve become.
Reaching the sanctuary of his room, he shut the door and then dragged a chair across to lean against it. No elf would dream of disturbing the privacy of one who has
shut himself away, but Palin didn’t trust them. He didn’t trust any of them.
He sat down at a writing desk, but he did not write to Jenna. He placed his hand on a small silver earring he wore in his ear lobe. He spoke the words to the spell, words that perhaps didn’t matter anymore, for there was no one to hear them. Sometimes artifacts worked without the ritual words, sometimes they only worked with the words, sometimes they didn’t work at all under any circumstances. That was happening more and more often these days.
He repeated the words and added “Jenna” to them.
A hungry wizard had sold her the six silver earrings. He was evasive about where he had found them, mumbled something to the effect that they had been left to him by a dead uncle.
Jenna had told Palin, “Certainly, the dead once owned these earrings. But they were not willed to him. He stole them.”
She did not pursue the matter. Many once respectable wizards—including Palin himself—had turned to grave robbery in their desperate search for magic. The wizard had described what the earrings did, said he would not have sold them but that dire necessity drove him to it. She had paid him a handsome sum and, instead of placing the earrings in her shop, she had given one to Palin and one to Ulin, his son. She had not told Palin who wore the others.
He had not asked. Once there had been a time when the mages of the Conclave had trusted each other. In these dark days, with the magic dwindling, each now looked sidelong at the others wondering, “Does he have more than I do? Has he found something I have not? Has the power been given to him and not to me?”
Palin heard no response. Sighing, he repeated the words and rubbed the metal with his finger. When he was first given the earrings, the spell had worked immediately. Now it would take him three or four tries and there was always the nagging fear that this might be the time it would fail altogether.
“Jenna!” he whispered urgently.
Something wispy and delicate brushed across his face, like the touch of a fly’s wings. Annoyed, he waved it away hurriedly, his concentration broken. He looked for the insect, to shoo it off, but couldn’t find it. He was settling down to try the magic once again, when Jenna’s thoughts answered his.
“Palin …”
He focused his thoughts, keeping the message short, in case the magic failed midway. “Urgent need. Meet me in Solace. Immediately.”
“I will come at once.” Jenna said nothing more, did not waste time or the her own magic with questions. She trusted him. He would not send for her unless he had good reason.
Palin looked down at the device that he cherished in his broken hands.
Is this the key to my cell? he asked himself. Or nothing but another lash of the whip?
“He is very changed,” said Gerard, after Palin had left the atrium. “I would not have recognized him. And the way he spoke of his father …” He shook his head.
“Wherever Caramon is, I am certain he understands,” Laurana said. “Palin is changed, yes, but then who would not be changed after such a terrible experience. I don’t think any of us will ever know what torment he endured at the hands of the Gray Robes. Speaking of them, how do you plan to travel to Solace?” she asked, skillfully turning the subject away from Palin to more practical considerations.
“I have my horse, the black one. I thought that perhaps Palin could ride the smaller horse I brought for the kender.”
“And then I could ride the black horse with you!” Tas announced, pleased. “Although I’m not sure Little Gray will really like Palin, but perhaps if I talk to her—”
“You are not going,” Gerard said flatly.
“Not going!” Tas repeated, stunned. “But you need me!”
Gerard ignored this statement, which, of all statements ever made in the course of history, could be ranked as most likely to be ignored. “The journey will take many days, but that can’t be helped. It seems the only course—”
“I have another suggestion,” Laurana said. “Griffons could fly you to Solace. They brought Palin here and they will carry him back and you along with them. My falcon Brightwing will take a message to them. The griffons could be here the day after tomorrow. You and Palin will be in Solace by that evening.”
Gerard had a brief, vivid image of flying on griffon back or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he had a brief vivid image of falling off a griffon’s back and smashing headfirst into the ground. He flushed and fumbled for an answer that didn’t make him out to be a craven coward.
“I couldn’t possibly impose … We should leave at once …”
“Nonsense. The rest will do you good,” Laurana replied, smiling as if she understood the real reason behind his reluctance. “This will save you over a week’s time and, as Palin said, we must move swiftly before Beryl discovers such a valuable magical device is in her lands. Tomorrow night, after dark, Kalindas will guide you to the meeting place.”
“I’ve never ridden a griffon,” Tas said, hinting. “At least, not that I can remember. Uncle Trapspringer did once. He said …”
“No,” Gerard cut in firmly. “Absolutely not. You will stay with the Queen Mother, if she’ll have you. This is already dangerous enough without—” His words died away.
The magical device was once again in the kender’s possession. Tasslehoff was, even now, stuffing the device down the front of his shirt.
Far from Qualinesti, but not so far that she couldn’t keep an eye watching and an ear listening, the great green dragon Beryl lay in her tangled, overgrown, vine-ridden bower and chafed at the wrongs which had been done to her. Wrongs which itched and stung her like a parasitic infestation and, like a parasite, she could scratch here and scratch there, but the itch seemed to move so that she was never quite rid of it.
At the heart of all her trouble was a great red dragon, a monstrous wyrm that Beryl feared more than anything else in this world, though she would have allowed her green wings to be pulled off and her enormous green tail to be tied up in knots before she admitted it. This fear was the main reason Beryl had agreed to the pact three years ago. She had seen in her mind her own skull adorning Malys’s totem. Besides the fact that she wanted to keep her skull, Beryl had resolved that she would never give her bloated red cousin that satisfaction.
The pact of peace between the dragons had seemed a good idea at the time. It ended the bloody Dragon Purge, during which the dragons had fought and killed not only mortals, but each other, as well. The dragons who had emerged alive and powerful divided up parts of Ansalon, each claiming a portion to rule and leaving some previously disputed lands, such as Abanasinia, untouched.
The peace had lasted about a year before it started to crumble. When Beryl felt her magical powers start to seep away, she blamed the elves, she blamed the humans, but in her heart she knew full well where the real blame lay. Malys was stealing her magic. No wonder her red cousin had no more need to kill her own kind! She had found some way to drain the other dragons of their power. Beryl’s magic had been a major defense against her stronger cousin. Without that magic, the green dragon would be as helpless as a gully dwarf.
Night fell while Beryl was musing. Darkness wrapped around her bower like another, larger vine. She fell asleep, lulled by the lullaby of her scheming and plotting. She was dreaming that she had found at last the legendary Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth. She wrapped her huge body around the tower and felt the magic flow into her, warm and sweet as the blood of a gold dragon.…
“Exalted One!” A hissing voice woke her from her pleasant dream.
Beryl blinked and snorted, sending fumes of poisonous gas roiling among the leaves. “Yes, what is it?” she demanded, focusing her eyes on the source of the hiss. She could see quite well in the darkness, had no need of light.
“A messenger from Qualinost,” said her draconian servant. “He claims his news is urgent, else I would not have disturbed you.”
“Send him in.”
The draconian bowed and departed. Another draconian appeared in
his place. A baaz named Groul, he was one of Beryl’s favorites, a trusted messenger who traveled between her lair and Qualinesti. Draconians were created during the War of the Lance when black robed wizards and evil clerics loyal to Takhisis stole the eggs of good dragons and gave them hideous life in the form of these winged lizard-men. Like all his kind, the baaz walked upright on two powerful legs, but he could run on all fours, using his wings to increase his movement over the ground. His body was covered with scales that had a dull metallic sheen. He wore little in the way of clothing, which would have hampered his movements. He was a messenger and so he was armed only lightly, with a short sword that he wore strapped to his back, in between his wings.
Beryl wakened more fully. Normally a laconic creature, who rarely evinced any type of emotion, Groul appeared quite pleased with himself this night. His lizard eyes glittered with excitement, his fangs were prominent in a wide grin. The tip of his flickered in his mouth.
Beryl shifted and rolled her huge body, wallowing deeper in the muck to increase her comfort, gathering her vines around her like a writhing blanket.
“News from Qualinost?” Beryl asked casually. She did not want to seem too eager.
“Yes, Exalted One,” said Groul, moving forward to stand near one of the gigantic claws of her front foot. “Most interesting news involving the Queen Mother, Laurana.”
“Indeed? Is that fool knight Medan still enamored of her?”
“Of course.” Groul dismissed this as old news. “According to our spy, he shields and protects her. But that is not such a bad thing, Mistress. The Queen Mother believes herself to be invulnerable and thus we are able to discover what the elves are plotting.”
“True,” Beryl agreed. “So long as Medan remembers where his true loyalities lie, I permit his little flirtation. He has served me well thus far and he is easily removed. What else? There is something else, I believe …”
Beryl rested her head on the ground, to put herself level with the draconian, gazed intently at him. His excitement was catching. She could feel it quiver through her. Her tail twitched, her claws dug deep into the oozing mud.
Dragons of a Fallen Sun Page 32