Dragons of a Fallen Sun

by Margaret Weis

  Palin went off in pursuit of Tasslehoff, who was happily picking his way through the rubble, turning over rocks to see what was underneath and exclaiming over every find.

  Jenna had been strolling around the grounds of the ruined academy. Curious herself to see what the kender had discovered, she walked over to look.

  Tas lifted his head, stared at the mage for long moments and then, with a glad cry, he jumped up and ran straight for her with arms outstretched.

  Jenna quickly extended both hands, palms outward. Light flashed from one of several rings she wore, and Tas stumbled backward as if he’d run headlong into a brick wall.

  “Keep your distance, Kender,” she said calmly.

  “But, Jenna!” Tas cried, rubbing his nose and eyeing the rings with interest, “don’t you recognize me? It’s Tasslehoff! Tasslehoff Burrfoot. We met in Palanthas during the Chaos War, only a few days ago for me, but I guess for you it’s been years and years ’cause you’re a lot older now. A lot older,” he added with emphasis. “I came to your mageware shop and …” Tas prattled on.

  Jenna kept her hands stretched outward, regarding the kender with amusement—a pleasant distraction. She obviously did not believe a word he was saying.

  Hearing footsteps crunch on rock, Jenna turned her head quickly. “Palin!” She smiled to see him.

  “Jenna.” He bowed in respect. “I am pleased you could find the time to come.”

  “My dear, if what you intimated to me is true, I would not have missed this for all the treasure in Istar. You will excuse me if I do not shake hands, but I am keeping this kender at bay.”

  “How was your journey?”

  “Long.” She rolled her eyes. “My ring of teleportation”—she indicated a large ring of sparkling amethyst set in silver that she wore on her thumb—“used to take me from one end of the continent to another in a flash. Now it takes me two days to travel from Palanthas to Solace.”

  “And what are you doing here at the academy?” Palin asked, glancing around. “If you’re looking for artifacts, don’t bother. We salvaged what we could.”

  Jenna shook her head. “No, I was just taking a walk. I stopped by your house,” she added with an arch glance. “Your wife was there, and she was not overly pleased to see me. Finding the reception a bit chilly indoors, I decided I would prefer a walk in the sunshine.” She looked around in her turn, shook her head sadly. “I had not been here since the destruction. They did a thorough job. You’re not going to rebuild?”

  “Why should I?” Palin shrugged. His tone was bitter. “What use does anyone have for an Academy of Sorcery if there is no more sorcery? Tas,” he said abruptly, “Usha is at home. Why don’t you go surprise her?” Turning, he pointed to a large house which could barely be seen for the tall trees surrounding it. “There is our house—”

  “I know!” Tasslehoff said excitedly. “I was there the first time I went to Caramon’s funeral. Does Usha paint wonderful pictures like she did then?”

  “Why don’t you go ask her yourself?” Palin said irritably.

  Tas glanced at the rubble and appeared undecided.

  “Usha would be very hurt if you didn’t go to see her,” Palin added.

  “Yes, you’re right,” Tas replied, making up his mind. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. We are great friends. Besides, I can always come back here later. Good-bye, Jenna!” He started to extend his hand, thought better of it. “And thanks for magicking me. That hasn’t happened to me in a long time. I really enjoyed it.”

  “Odd little fellow,” remarked Jenna, gazing after Tas, who was running pell-mell down the hillside. “He looks and talks very much like the kender I knew as Tasslehoff Burrfoot. One would almost think he is Tasslehoff.”

  “He is,” said Palin.

  Jenna shifted her gaze to him. “Oh, come now.” She scrutinized him more closely. “By the lost gods, I believe that you are serious. Tasslehoff Burrfoot died—”

  “I know!” Palin said impatiently. “Thirty-odd years ago. Or thereabouts. I’m sorry, Jenna.” He sighed. “It’s been a long night. Beryl found out about the artifact. We were ambushed by Neraka Knights. The kender and I barely escaped with our lives, and the Solamnic who brought Tas to me didn’t escape at all. Then we were attacked in the air by one of Beryl’s greens. We escaped the dragon only by making a harrowing flight into a thunderstorm.”

  “You should get some sleep,” Jenna advised, regarding him with concern.

  “I can’t sleep,” Palin returned, rubbing his eyes, which were red-rimmed and burning. “My thoughts are in turmoil, they give me no rest. We need to talk!” he added in a kind of frantic desperation.

  “That’s why I am here, my friend,” Jenna said. “But you should at least eat something. Let us go to your house and drink a glass of wine. Say hello to your wife, who has just returned herself from what I gather was a very harrowing journey herself.”

  Palin grew calmer. He smiled at her wanly. “Yes, you are right, as usual. It’s just …” He paused, thinking what to say and how to say it. “That is the real Tasslehoff, Jenna. I’m convinced of it. And he has been to a future that is not ours, a future in which the great dragons do not exist. A future where the world is at peace. He has brought with him the device he used to travel to that future.”

  Jenna gazed at him searchingly and intently. Seeing that he was in earnest, utterly serious, her eyes darkened, narrowed with interest.

  “Yes,” she said at last. “We do need to talk.” She took his arm, they walked side by side.

  “Tell me everything, Palin,” she said.

  The Majeres’ house was a large structure that had once belonged to a Master Theobald, the man who had taught Raistlin Majere magic. Caramon had purchased the house at the master’s death, in memory of his brother, and had given the house as gift to Palin and Usha when they were married. Here their children had been born and grown up, going off on adventures of their own. Palin had transformed the classroom where the young Raistlin had once droned through his lessons into a studio for his wife, a portrait painter of some renown throughout Solamnia and Abanasinia. He continued to use the master’s old laboratory for his studies.

  Tasslehoff had spoken truly when he told Palin that he remembered the house from Caramon’s first funeral. He did remember the house—it hadn’t changed. But Palin certainly had.

  “I suppose having your fingers all mangled would give you a mangled view of life,” Tas was saying to Usha as he sat with her in the kitchen, eating a large bowl of oatmeal. “That must be the reason, because at Caramon’s first funeral, Palin’s fingers were just fine and so was he. He was cheerful and happy. Well, maybe not happy, because poor Caramon had just died and no one could feel truly happy. But Palin was happy underneath. So that when he was over being sad, I knew he would be happy again. But now he’s terribly unhappy, so unhappy that he can’t even be sad.”

  “I … I suppose so,” Usha murmured.

  The kitchen was a large one with a high, beamed ceiling and an enormous stone fireplace, charred and blackened with years of use. A pot hung from a black chain in the center of the fireplace. Usha sat across from the kender at a large, butcher-block table used for chopping the heads off chickens and such, or so Tas supposed. Right now it was washed clean, no headless chickens lying about. But then it was only midmorning. Dinnertime was a long way off.

  Usha was staring at him just like all the rest of them—as if he’d grown two heads or maybe was headless altogether, like the chickens. She had been staring at him that way ever since his arrival, when he had thrown open the front door (remembering to knock afterward), and cried out, “Usha! It’s me, Tas! I haven’t been stepped on by the giant yet!”

  Usha Majere had been a lovely young woman. Age had enhanced her good looks, although, Tas thought, she doesn’t have quite the same prettiness she had when I came back here for Caramon’s funeral the first time. Her hair shone with the same silver sheen, her eyes glinted with the same gold, but the go
ld lacked warmth, the silver was dull and tarnished. She looked faded and tired.

  She’s unhappy, too, Tas realized suddenly. It must be catching. Like measles.

  “That will be Palin now!” Usha said, hearing the front door open and close. She sounded relieved.

  “And Jenna,” Tas mumbled, his mouth full.

  “Yes. Jenna,” Usha repeated, her voice cool. “You can stay here, if you like, er … Tas. Finish your oatmeal. There’s more in the pot.”

  She rose to her feet and left the kitchen. The door swung shut behind her. Tas ate his oatmeal and eavesdropped with interest on the conversation being held in the entry hall. Ordinarily he would not have listened in on someone else’s conversation, because that wasn’t polite, but they were talking about him when he wasn’t there, which wasn’t polite, either, and so he felt justified.

  Besides, Tas was starting not to like Palin very much. The kender felt badly about this, but he couldn’t help the feeling. He’d spent a considerable amount of time with the mage when they were at Laurana’s, relating over and over everything he could remember about Caramon’s first funeral. The kender added the usual embellishments, of course, without which no kender tale is considered complete. Unfortunately, instead of entertaining Palin, these embellishments—which shifted from story to story—appeared to irritate him to no end. Palin had a way of looking at him—Tas—not as if he had two heads, but more as if the mage would like to rip off the kender’s single head and open it up to see what was inside.

  “Not even Raistlin looked at me like that,” Tas said to himself, scraping the oatmeal out of the bowl with his finger. “He looked at me as if he’d like to kill me sometimes, but never like he wanted to turn me inside out first.”

  Usha’s voice came floating through the door “… claims he’s Tasslehoff …”

  “He is Tasslehoff, my dear,” Palin returned. “You know Mistress Jenna, I believe, Usha? Mistress Jenna will be spending a few days with us. Will you make up the guest room?”

  There was a silence that sounded as if it had been mashed through a sieve, then Usha’s voice, cold as the oatmeal had grown by now. “Palin, may I see you in the kitchen?”

  Palin’s voice, colder than the oatmeal. “Please excuse us, Mistress Jenna.”

  Tasslehoff sighed and, thinking he should look as if he hadn’t been listening, began to hum loudly to himself and started to rummage through the pantry, searching for something else to eat.

  Fortunately, neither Palin nor Usha paid any attention to the kender at all, except for Palin to snap at him to stop that infernal racket.

  “What is she doing here?” Usha demanded, her hands on her hips.

  “We have important matters to discuss,” Palin answered evasively.

  Usha fixed him with a look. “Palin, you promised me! This trip to Qualinesti would be your last! You know how dangerous this search for artifacts has become—”

  “Yes, my dear, I do know,” Palin interrupted, his tone cool. “That is why I think it would be best if you left Solace.”

  “Left!” Usha repeated, astonished. “I’ve just come back home after being away for three months! Your sister and I were virtual prisoners in Haven. Did you know that?”

  “Yes, I knew—”

  “You knew! And you didn’t say anything? You weren’t worried? You didn’t ask how we escaped—”

  “My dear, I haven’t had time—”

  “We couldn’t even come back for your father’s funeral!” Usha continued. “We were permitted to leave only because I agreed to paint a portrait of the magistrate’s wife. She has a face that would have been ugly on a hobgoblin. Now you want me to leave again.”

  “It’s for your own safety.”

  “What about your safety?” she demanded.

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Can you, Palin?” Usha asked. Her voice was suddenly gentle. She reached out, tried to take hold of his hands in her own.

  “Yes,” he snapped and snatched his crippled hands away, folded them in the sleeves of his robes.

  Tasslehoff, feeling extremely uncomfortable, wished he could crawl inside the pantry and shut the door. Unfortunately, there was no room, not even after he’d cleared out a space by stashing several interesting-looking objects in his pockets.

  “Very well, if that’s how you feel. I’m not to touch you apparently”—Usha folded her arms across her chest—“but I do think you owe me an explanation. What is going on? Why did you send this kender here claiming to be Tas! What are you up to?”

  “We’re keeping Mistress Jenna waiting—”

  “I’m sure she won’t mind. I am your wife, in case you’ve forgotten!” Usha tossed her silver hair. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you had. We never see each other anymore.”

  “Don’t start that again!” he shouted angrily and turned away toward the door.

  “Palin!” Usha reached out her hand impulsively. “I love you! I want to help you!”

  “You can’t help me!” he cried, rounding on her. “No one can.” He lifted his hands, held them to the light, the fingers crooked and turned inward like the claws of a bird. “No one can,” he repeated.

  More silence. Tas recalled the time he’d been a prisoner in the Abyss. He had felt very alone then, desolate and unhappy. Strangely, he was feeling the same now sitting in his friends’ kitchen. He lacked the spirit to even give the lock on the silver cabinet a second glance.

  “I am sorry, Usha,” Palin said stiffly. “You are right. You deserve an explanation. This kender is Tasslehoff.”

  Usha shook her head.

  “Do you remember my father telling the story about how he and Tas traveled back in time?” Palin continued.

  “Yes,” she answered, her voice tight.

  “They did so by means of a magical artifact. Tasslehoff used that same device to jump forward in time so he could speak at Caramon’s funeral. He was here once, but he overshot the mark. He arrived too late. The funeral was over, so he came back a second time. In this instance, he was on time. Only everything was different. The other future he saw was a future of hope and happiness. The gods had not gone away. I was head of the Order of White Robes. The elven kingdoms were united—”

  “And you believe all this?” Usha asked, amazed.

  “I do,” Palin said stubbornly. “I believe it because I have seen the device, Usha. I’ve held it in my hands. I’ve felt its power. That’s why Mistress Jenna is here. I need her advice. And that’s why it’s not safe for you to stay in Solace. The dragon knows I have the device. I’m not sure how she found out, but I fear someone in Laurana’s household may be a traitor. If so, Beryl may already be aware that I have brought the device to Solace. She’ll send her people to try to—”

  “You’re going to use it!” Usha gasped, pointed her finger at Palin.

  He made no response

  “I know you, Palin Majere,” Usha said. “You’re planning to use the device yourself! To try to go back in time and … and … who knows what else!”

  “I’ve only been thinking about it,” he returned, uneasily. “I haven’t made up my mind. That’s why I needed to speak to Mistress Jenna.”

  “You planned to speak to her and not to me? Your wife?”

  “I was going to tell you,” Palin said.

  “Tell me? Not ask me? Not ask me what I thought about this insanity? Not ask my opinion? No.” She answered her own question. “You intend to do this whether I want you to or not. No matter how dangerous. No matter that you could be killed!”

  “Usha,” he said, after a moment, “it’s so very important. The magic … if I could …” He shook his head, unable to explain. His voice trailed away.

  “The magic is dead, Palin,” Usha cried, her voice choked with tears. “Good riddance, I say. What did it ever do for you? Nothing except destroy you and ruin our marriage.”

  He reached out his hand, but this time she was the one who pulled away. “I’m going to the Inn,” she said, not
looking at him. “Let me know if … if you want me to come home.”

  Turning away from him, she walked over to Tas. Usha looked him over long and hard. “You really are Tas, aren’t you?” she said, awed.

  “Yes, Usha,” Tas said miserably. “But I wish right now I wasn’t.”

  She leaned down, kissed him on the forehead. He could see the unshed tears shimmer in her golden eyes.

  “Good-bye, Tas. It was nice to see you again.”

  “I’m sorry, Usha,” he wailed. “I didn’t mean to make a mess of things. I just came back to speak at Caramon’s funeral.”

  “It’s not your fault, Tas. Things were a mess long before you came.”

  Usha left the kitchen, walking past Palin without glancing at him. He stood where she had left him, staring at nothing, his expression dark, his face pale. Tas heard Usha say something to Jenna, something he couldn’t quite catch. He heard Jenna respond, but he couldn’t catch that either. Usha left the house. The front door shut with a bang. The house was silent, except for Jenna’s restive pacing. Still Palin did not move.

  Tas reached into several of his pockets and at last located the device. He removed some string that had become tangled around it, dusted off the lint from his pocket and some crumbs from a biscuit he’d meant to eat two days ago.

  “Here, Palin,” Tas said, holding out the device. “You can have it.”

  Palin stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “Go on,” Tas said, pushing the device at him. “If you want to use it, like Usha said you did, I’ll let you. Especially if you can go back and make things the way they’re supposed to be. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? Here,” Tas said insistently and he gave the device a shake, which caused its jewels to wink.

  “Take it!” Jenna said.

  Tas was startled. He had been so intent on Palin, he hadn’t heard Jenna come into the kitchen. She stood in the doorway, the door partially ajar.

  “Take it!” she repeated urgently. “Palin, you were worried about overcoming the geas laid on the device, the spell that would always return the device to the person who uses it. Such a geas would protect the owner if the device was ever stolen or lost, but if the device is freely given, this act may break the geas!”