Tas glanced behind him again to get his bearings. He could see the Tower or catch glimpses of it, at any rate, through the ever-shifting mist of the souls. Running around to Palin’s head, Tas took hold of the man by the shoulders. The kender dug his heels into the ground and gave a grunt and a heave. Palin was not large as humans went—Tas envisioned himself trying to drag Caramon—but he was a full-grown man and deadweight, at this point more dead than alive. Tas was a kender and an older kender at that. He dragged Palin over the rough, needle-strewn ground and managed to move him a couple of feet before he had to drop him and stop to catch his breath.
The dead did not try to stop Tas, but the buzzing noise grew so loud that he had to grit his teeth against it. He picked up Palin again, glanced behind once more to reassure himself that the Tower was still where he thought it was, and gave another tug. He pulled and panted and floundered, but he never lost his grip on Palin. With a final great heave that caused his feet to slip out from under him, he dragged Palin out of the forest onto the bed of brown needles that surrounded the Tower.
Keeping a wary eye on the dead, who hovered in the dark shadows beneath the trees, watching, waiting, Tas crawled around on all fours to look anxiously at his friend.
Palin no longer gasped for air. He gulped it down thankfully. His eyes blinked a few times, then opened wide with a look that was wild and terrified. He sat up suddenly with a cry, thrusting out his arms.
“It’s all right, Palin!” Tas grabbed hold of one of Palin’s flailing hands and clutching it tightly. “You’re safe. At least I think you’re safe. There seems to be some sort of barrier they can’t cross.”
Palin glanced over at the souls writhing in the darkness. Shuddering, he averted his gaze, looked back at the door to the Tower. His expression grew grim, he stood up, brushing brown needles from his robes.
“I saved your life, Palin,” Tas said. “You might have died out there.”
“Yes, Tas, I might have,” Palin said. “Thank you.” Stopping, he looked down at the kender, and his grim expression softened. He put a hand on Tas’s shoulder. “Thank you very much.”
He glanced again at the Tower, and the grimness returned. A frown caused the lines on his face to turn dark and jagged. He continued to stare fixedly at the Tower and, after drawing in a few more deep breaths, he walked toward it. He was very pale, almost paler than when he had been dying, and he looked extremely determined. As determined as Tas had ever seen anyone.
“Where are you going now?” Tas asked, game for another adventure, although he wouldn’t have minded a brief rest.
“To find Dalamar.”
“But we’ve looked and looked—”
“No, we haven’t,” Palin said. He was angry now, and he intended to act before his anger cooled. “Dalamar has no right to do this! He has no right to imprison these wretched souls.”
Sweeping through the Tower door, Palin began to climb the spiral staircase that led into the upper levels of the building. He kept close to the wall that was on his right, for the stairs had no railing on his left. A misstep would send him plummeting down into darkness.
“Are we going to free them?” Tas asked, clambering up the staircase behind Palin. “Even after they tried to kill you?”
“They didn’t mean to,” Palin said. “They can’t help themselves. They are being driven to seek out the magic. I know now who is behind it, and I intend to stop him.”
“How will we do that?” Tas asked eagerly. Palin hadn’t exactly included him in this adventure, but that was probably an oversight. “Stop him, I mean? We don’t even know where he is.”
“I’ll stop him if I have to tear this Tower down stone by stone,” was all Palin would say.
A long and perilous climb up the spiral staircase through the near darkness brought them to a door.
“I already tried this,” Tas announced. Examining it, he gave it an experimental shove. “It won’t budge.”
“Oh, yes, it will,” said Palin.
He raised his hands and spoke a word. Blue light began to glow, flames crackled from his fingers. He drew a breath and reached out toward the door. The flames burned brighter.
Suddenly, silently, the door swung open.
“Stop, Tas!” Palin ordered, as the kender was about to bound inside.
“But you opened it,” Tas protested.
“No,” said Palin, and his voice was harsh. The blue flames had died away. “No, I didn’t.”
He took a step forward, staring intently into the room. The few rays of sunlight that managed to struggle through the heavy, overhanging boughs of the cypress trees had to work to penetrate the years of silt and mud that covered the windows outside and the layer of dust that caked the inside. No sound came from within.
“You stay out in the hall, Tas.”
“Do you want me to be rear guard again?” Tas asked.
“Yes, Tas,” said Palin quietly. He took another step forward. His head cocked, he was listening for the slightest sound. He moved slowly into the room. “You be the rear guard. Let me know if you see anything coming.”
“Like a wraith or a ghoul? Sure, Palin.”
Tas stood in the hall, hopping from one foot to the other, trying to see what was happening in the room.
“Rear guard is a really important assignment,” Tasslehoff reminded himself, fidgeting, unable to hear or see anything. “Sturm was always rear guard. Or Caramon. I never got to be rear guard because Tanis said kender don’t make good rear guards, mainly because they never stay in the rear—
“Don’t worry! I’m coming, Palin!” Tas called, giving up. He dashed into the room. “Nothing’s sneaking up behind us. Our rears are safe. Oh!”
Tas came to a halt. He didn’t have much choice in the matter. Palin’s hand had a good, strong hold on his shoulder.
The room’s interior was gray and chill, and even on the warmest, brightest summer day would always be gray and chill. The wintry light illuminated shelves containing innumerable books. Next to these were the scroll repositories, like honeycombs, a few filled, but most empty. Wooden chests stood on the floor, their ornate carvings almost obliterated by dust. The heavy curtains that covered the windows, the once-beautiful rugs on the floors, were dust-covered, the fabric rotting and frayed.
At the far end of the room was a desk. Someone was sitting behind the desk. Tas squinted, tried to see in the dim, gray light. The someone was an elf, with long, lank hair that had once been black but now had a gray, jagged streak that ran from the forehead back.
“Who’s that?” he asked in a loud whisper.
The elf sat perfectly still. Tas, thinking he was asleep, didn’t want to wake him.
“Dalamar,” said Palin.
“Dalamar!” Tas repeated, stunned. He twisted his head to look up at Palin, thinking this might be a joke. If it was, Palin wasn’t laughing. “But that can’t be right! He’s not here. I know because I banged on the door and shouted ‘Dalamar’ real loud, like that, and no one answered.”
“Dalamar!” Tas raised his voice. “Hullo! Where have you been?”
“He can’t hear, Tas,” Palin said. “He can’t see you or hear you.”
Dalamar sat behind his desk, his thin hands folded before him, his eyes staring straight ahead. He had not moved as they entered. His eyes did not shift, as they surely must have, at the sound of the kender’s shrill voice. His hands did not stir, his fingers did not twitch.
“Maybe he’s dead,” Tas said, a funny feeling squirming in his stomach. “He certainly looks dead, doesn’t he, Palin?”
The elf sat unmoving in the chair.
“No,” said Palin. “He is not dead.”
“It’s a funny way to take a nap, then,” Tas remarked. “Sitting straight up. Maybe if I pinched him—”
“Don’t touch him!” Palin warned sharply. “He is in stasis.”
“I know where that is,” Tas stated. “It’s north of Flotsam, about fifty miles. But he’s not in Stasis, Palin. He�
�s right here.”
The elf’s eyes, which had been open and unseeing, suddenly closed. They remained closed for a long, long time. He was coming back from the stasis, back from the enchantment that had taken his spirit out into the world, leaving his body behind. He drew air in through his nose, keeping his lips pressed tightly shut. His fingers curled, and he winced, as if in pain. He curled them and uncurled them and began to rub them.
“The circulation stops,” Dalamar said, opening his eyes and looking at Palin. “It is quite painful.”
“My heart bleeds for you,” said Palin.
Dalamar’s gaze went to Palin’s own broken, twisted fingers. He said nothing, continued to rub his hands.
“Hullo, Dalamar!” Tas said cheerfully, glad for a chance to be included in the conversation. “It’s nice to see you again. Did I tell you how much you have changed from the time I saw you at Caramon’s first funeral? Do you want to hear about it? I made a really good speech, and then it began to rain and everyone was already sad, and that made it sadder, but then you cast a magic spell, a wonderful spell that made the raindrops sparkle and the sky was filled with rainbows—”
“No!” Dalamar said, making a sharp, cutting motion with his hand.
Tas was about to go on to the other parts of the funeral, since Dalamar didn’t want to talk about the rainbows, but the elf gave him a peculiar look, raised his hand, and pointed.
Perhaps I’m going to Stasis, Tas thought, and that was the last conscious thought he had for a good, long while.
16
A Bored Kender
alin placed the comatose kender in one of the shabby, dust-covered and mildewed chairs that stood at the far end of the library, a portion that was in shadow. Affecting to be settling Tas, Palin took the opportunity to look closely at Dalamar, who remained seated behind the desk, his head bowed into his hands.
Palin had seen the elf only briefly on first arriving. He had been shocked then at the ruinous alteration in the features of the once handsome and vain elven wizard: the gray-streaked black hair, the wasted features, the thin hands with their branching blue veins like rivers drawn on a map, rivers of blood, rivers of souls. And this, their master … Master of the Tower.
Struck by a new thought, Palin walked over to the window and looked down into the forest below, where the dead flowed still and silent among the boles of the cypress trees.
“The wizard-lock on the door below,” Palin said abruptly. “It was not meant to keep us in, was it?”
No answer came from Dalamar. Palin was left to answer himself. “It was meant to keep them out. If that is true, you might want to replace it.”
Dalamar, a grim look on his face, left the room. He returned long moments later. Palin had not moved. Dalamar came to stand beside him, looked into the mist of swirling souls.
“They gather around you,” Dalamar said softly. “Their grave-cold hands clasp you. Their ice lips press against your flesh. Their chill arms embrace you, dead fingers clutch at you. You know!”
“Yes,” said Palin. “I know.” He shook off the remembered horror. “You can’t leave, either.”
“My body cannot leave,” Dalamar corrected. “My spirit is free to roam. When I depart, I must always come back.” He shrugged. “What is it the Shalafi used to say? ‘Even wizards must suffer.’ There is always a price.” Dalamar lowered his gaze to Palin’s broken fingers. “Isn’t there?”
Palin thrust his hands into the sleeves of his robes. “Where has your spirit been?”
“Traveling Ansalon, investigating this fantastical time-traveling story of yours,” Dalamar replied.
“Story? I told you no story,” Palin returned crisply. “I haven’t spoken one word to you. You’ve been to see Jenna. She was the one who told you. And she said that she hadn’t seen you in years.”
“She did not lie, Majere, if that’s what you’re insinuating, although I admit she did not tell you all the truth. She has not seen me, at least not my physical form. She has heard my voice, and that only recently. I arranged a meeting with her after the strange storm that swept over all Ansalon in a single night.”
“I asked her if she knew where to find you.”
“Again, she told you the truth. She does not know where to find me. I did not tell her. She has never been here. No one has been here. You are the first, and believe me”—Dalamar’s brows constricted—“if you had not been in such dire straits, you would not be here now. I do not pine for company,” he added with a dark glance.
Palin was silent, uncertain whether to believe him or not.
“For mercy’s sake, don’t sulk, Majere,” Dalamar said, willfully misinterpreting Palin’s silence. “It’s undignified for a man of your age. How old are you anyway? Sixty, seventy, a hundred? I can never tell with humans. You look ancient enough to me. As for Jenna ‘betraying’ your confidence, it is well for you and the kender that she did, else I would have not taken an interest in you, and you would now be in Beryl’s tender care.”
“Do not try to taunt me by remarking on the fact that I am old,” Palin said calmly. “I know I have aged. The process is natural in humans. In elves, it is not. Look in a mirror, Dalamar. If the years have taken a toll on me, they have taken a far more terrible toll on you. As for pride”—Palin shrugged in his turn—“I lost that a long time ago. It is hard to remain proud when you can no longer summon magic enough to heat my morning tea. I think you have reason to know that.”
“Perhaps I do,” Dalamar replied. “I know that I have changed. The battle I fought with Chaos stole hundreds of years from me, yet I could live with that. I was victorious, after all. Victor and loser, all at the same time. I won the war and was defeated by what came after. The loss of the magic.
“I risked my life for the sake of the magic,” Dalamar continued, his voice low and hollow. “I would have given my life for the sake of the magic. What happened? The magic departed. The gods left. They left me bereft, powerless, helpless. They left me—ordinary!”
Dalamar breathed shallowly. “All that I gave up for the magic—my homeland, my nation, my people … I used to consider I had made a fair trade. My sacrifice—and it was a wrenching sacrifice, though only another elf would understand—had been rewarded. But the reward was gone, and I was left with nothing. Nothing. And everyone knew it.
“It was then I began to hear rumors—rumors that Khellendros the Blue was going to seize my Tower, rumors that the Dark Knights were going to attack it. My Tower!” Dalamar gave a vicious snarl. His thin fist clenched. Then, his hand relaxed, and he gave a grating laugh.
“I tell you, Majere, gully dwarves could have taken over my Tower, and I could have done nothing to stop them. I had once been the most powerful wizard in Ansalon, and now, as you said, I could not so much as boil water.”
“You were not alone.” Palin was unsympathetic. “All of us were affected the same way.”
“No, you weren’t,” Dalamar retorted passionately. “You could not be. You had not sacrificed as I had sacrificed. You had your father and mother. You had a wife and children.”
“Jenna loved you—” Palin began.
“Did she?” Dalamar grimaced. “Sometimes I think we only used each other. She could not understand me either. She was like you, with her damnable human hope and optimism. Why are you humans like that? Why do you go on hoping when it is obvious that all hope is lost? I could not stomach her platitudes. We quarreled. She left, and I was glad to see her leave. I had no need of her. I had no need of anyone. It was up to me to protect my Tower from those great, bloated wyrms, and I did what I had to do. The only way to save the Tower was to appear to destroy it. And I did so. My plan worked. No one knows the Tower is here. No one will, unless I want it to be found.”
“Moving the Tower must have taken an immense amount of magical power—a bit more than would be required to boil water,” Palin observed. “You must have had some of the old magic left to you.”
“No, I assure you, I did not,” Dalam
ar said, his passion cooling. “I was as barren as you.”
He gave Palin a sharp and meaningful glance. “Like you, I understood magic was in the world, if one knew where to look for it.”
Palin avoided Dalamar’s intense gaze. “I do not know what you’re implying. I discovered the wild magic—”
“Not alone. You had help. I know, because I had the same help. A strange personage known as the Shadow Sorcerer.”
“Yes!” Palin was astonished. “Hooded and cloaked in gray. A voice that was as soft as shadow, might have belonged to either man or woman.”
“You never saw a face—”
“But I did,” Palin protested. “In that last terrible battle, I saw she was a woman. She was an agent of the dragon Malystryx—”
“Indeed?” Dalamar lifted an eyebrow. “In my last ‘terrible’ battle, I saw that the Shadow Sorcerer was a man, an agent for the dragon Khellendros who, according to my sources, had supposedly left this world in search of the soul of his late master, that demon-witch Kitiara.”
“The Shadow Sorcerer taught you wild magic?”
“No,” Dalamar replied. “The Shadow Sorcerer taught me death magic. Necromancy.”
Palin looked back out the window to the roaming spirits. He looked around the shabby room with its books of magic that were so many ghosts, lined up on the shelves. He looked at the elf, who was thin and wasted, like a gnawed bone. “What went wrong?” he asked at last.
“I was duped,” Dalamar returned. “I was given to believe I was master of the dead. Too late, I discovered I was not the master. I was the prisoner. A prisoner of my own ambition, my own lust for power.
“It is not easy for me to say these things about myself, Majere,” Dalamar added. “It is especially hard for me to say them to you, the darling child of magic. Oh, yes. I knew. You were the gifted one, beloved of Solinari, beloved of your Uncle Raistlin. You would have been one of the great archmages of all time. I saw that. Was I jealous? A little. More than a little. Especially of Raistlin’s care for you. You wouldn’t think I would want that, would you? That I would hunger for his approval, his notice. But I did.”
Dragons of a Lost Star Page 20
