Dragons of Summer Flame

by Tracy Hickman

  Save them for what? There might be no one left around to read them. We are sailing to an island of death, perhaps sailing toward our own deaths …

  “Well, we’re off!” Tasslehoff announced cheerily. He was perched in the bow, peering ahead, as Usha steered the boat out of the harbor, out into the open sea. “You know,” he said with a delighted sigh, “there’s nothing quite as exciting as going someplace you’ve never been before.”

  20

  Cinder and ash.

  hey sailed out of the Bay of Branchala, into the Turbidus Ocean, the wind pushing them along as if eager to help. Then, suddenly, the wind that had carried them this far—the same wind that was sending a firestorm onto Palanthas—died. They floated, becalmed, on the water’s flat surface.

  Usha rested her hand on the rudder, turned the boat’s prow to the north. “Home,” she commanded.

  The boat began to skim across the water, water that seemed to have been painted over with red. The sail fluttered limply, for no breeze stirred it, but the boat sped on, traveling faster and faster until it bounded perilously over the surface, sent the salt spray flying into their faces.

  Tas was in the prow, hanging on with both hands, facing into the wind and spray, openmouthed with the thrill of the wild ride. Usha held fast to the rudder. Palin clung to the sides, trying to blink the stinging saltwater from his eyes.

  The boat’s speed increased. Tas was blown off his perch, landed on a pile of rope coiled at the bottom. Eventually, all three of them were forced to huddle down in the bottom of the boat, the sky reeling above them, the waves crashing over them. Water sloshed around their feet; they were soaked to the skin. Palin worried about the boat taking on too much water, but Usha told him even if it did, the magic would keep them afloat. They hung on to each other now. They could see nothing except the red, glowing sky.

  “We’re slowing down,” said an excited voice. “I think we’re here.”

  Usha woke up, startled to realize that she had dozed off. Palin lifted his head, rubbed his eyes. They all must have fallen asleep. Usha vaguely recalled having dreams about being wet and hungry.

  Palin looked toward the sun, whose fiery, glaring eye stared at them above the rim of the horizon.

  “We’ve slept the day away apparently,” he said. “The sun’s setting.”

  “It’s taking a long time about it,” Tas observed.

  “What do you mean?” Palin stood up in the boat cautiously.

  “I’ve been watching it for about three hours now, all the time you were asleep. The sun hasn’t budged. It just sits there.”

  Palin smiled indulgently. “You must be mistaken, Tas. It probably hasn’t been three hours. It just seemed that long.”

  Tasslehoff was back on his station at the prow. “Look! There ahead!”

  A thin line of darkness was silhouetted against the red sky.

  Usha stood up rapidly, forgetting she was in a boat, and setting it to rocking with such violence that she was forced to grab hold of the mast to keep from tumbling overboard. She made her way forward, joining Palin and Tas at the prow, and stared eagerly, her lips parted in joy.

  “I think this must be your homeland, Usha,” Palin said. “We appear to be heading right for it.”

  The boat took them nearer.

  “Funny-looking trees,” Tas commented. “Do you come from a place that has funny-looking trees, Usha?”

  “Our trees look the same as all other trees,” Usha said. “But you’re right, those do look strange …”

  The waves and its own magic carried the boat still nearer.

  “Blessed Paladine,” Palin whispered, aghast.

  “Oh, my,” said Tas in a small voice. “Those trees aren’t trees anymore. They’re all burned up.”

  “No,” Usha said softly. “This isn’t right. The magic isn’t working. This boat has taken us to the wrong place. That”—her throat closed on her words, choking her—“that isn’t my home.”

  But the wretched boat kept taking her closer and closer.

  “I’m sorry, Usha,” Palin said, and reached out his hand to her.

  She ignored his words, ignored his hand. Stumbling over coils of rope and waterskins, she ran back to the stern. She grabbed hold of the rudder, shoved on it, tried to change course, to turn the boat around.

  The rudder wouldn’t budge.

  Usha hurled herself on the rudder bodily. When Palin took hold of her, pulled her away, she struck at him with her fists, crying out, and struggling to break free. The boat rocked violently.

  “You’re going to capsize us!” Palin told her.

  “I don’t care!” she sobbed. “I don’t care if we all die!”

  “Yes, you do, Usha,” he said gently, over and over. “Yes, you do.” He soothed her and brushed back her wet hair and held her tightly.

  Her sobs quieted, she rested in his arms. The boat, under its geas, took them in to shore.

  By the time they reached the beach, Usha had settled into a silent, frozen calm almost as frightening as her hysteria. She stepped out of the boat and into the water, waded through it ankle-deep until they reached the broad stretch of sand where the Knights of Takhisis had made their own landfall not so long ago.

  She stared around at a scene of utter devastation.

  Except for where the waves lapped against the shore, the sand—once white—was now black.

  Palin, pulling in the boat and beaching it on the shore, thought the black sand a natural phenomenon. But then he saw the debris floating in the water, saw the fine silt that had settled on the top of the waves. He looked at the charred and burned trunks of what had once been living trees, and suddenly he knew why the sand was black. It was covered with cinders and ash.

  Palin, sighing, helped Tas climb out of the boat. When he turned back to Usha, she was running wildly, frantically, into what had once been a forest. Palin and Tas scrambled after her, slipping in the shifting sands. She left them both behind. The elder kender, with his short legs and shorter breath, was soon outdistanced. Palin, not accustomed to physical exertion and encumbered by his wet robes, could not keep up.

  Her trail was easy to follow, however, pitifully easy, as Tas observed. It was a trail of footprints through ankle-deep ashes, and it led them deeper into a wilderness of desolation. The slightly sweet, sharp, sickening smell of charred wood was overpowering, sapped the breath. Ashes and cinders, stirred by the breeze, stung the eyes and set them both to coughing. Blackened branches hung over them, creaking and swaying, ready to fall.

  They came to a stone wall, formed in the shape of a square. A blackened chimney made of stone rose up from one end—all that was left of what must have once been a small, snug house.

  “Palin!” Tas called in a strangled voice.

  Palin turned. The kender was pointing at something. Palin had no need to draw closer to see what it was. He knew.

  The corpse—what remained of it—lay near the house, as if the person might have been running out of the burning building, only to be overtaken by the inferno.

  “I saw Que-shu,” Tasslehoff said, subdued by the awful sight, “after the dragons had been there. It was like this. The saddest thing I ever saw until now. Do you … do you think they’re all dead, Palin?”

  Palin looked at the charred and blasted stumps of the trees, at the thick coating of ash covering the ground.

  “We have to find Usha,” he said, and, taking hold of Tas by the hand, the two followed her trail through the ashes.

  She stood in front of another wall of stone. Nothing recognizable was left of the house or its contents. It had collapsed in upon itself, was a heap of blackened rubble.

  She didn’t cry or call out. She made no move to touch what little was left.

  Palin went to her, put his arms around her. It was as if he were embracing stone. Her flesh was cold, her body stiff, her eyes wide, set, staring.

  “Usha!” Palin called, truly frightened at her appearance. “Usha, don’t do this to yourself. I
t won’t help. Usha, don’t …”

  She didn’t look at him, but stared fixedly at the charred remnants of the house. Her face was chalky white beneath a mask of black soot. A single tear tracked through the smudges on her cheek, as her footsteps had tracked through the ashes on the ground.

  “I’m so sorry, Usha,” Palin said gently. “But, the Irda are not wholly destroyed. You will carry on …”

  “No,” she said with a terrible, remote calm. “No, they are gone, completely, utterly gone. Prot knew this would happen. That’s why he sent me away. Oh, I’m sorry, Prot!” She gave a shuddering sob. “So very sorry.”

  “Don’t, Dearest. There was nothing you could have done. Perhaps,” he added hopefully, “some of them managed to escape. Their magic …”

  Usha shook her head. “Even if some could have saved themselves, they never would have left the others behind. No, they are gone. Nothing is left. Nothing.”

  The eerie red glow of the sun shone through the skeletal trees. A bar of sunlight glanced across her, bathed her in red, making her golden eyes gleam like burnished bronze.

  The sun …

  “Tas was right!” Palin gasped. “The sun hasn’t moved! Tas, you were—Tas?”

  He looked around.

  The kender was gone.

  21

  Dougan redhammer. The graygem.

  Minions of chaos.

  hat’s more like it,” said Tasslehoff, watching Palin and Usha. “They have each other now, and so, of course, everything will be all right. At least everything deserves to be all right for them. I’ve often found, though,” he added with a sigh, “that deserving and happening don’t necessarily go together.”

  He stood watching the two, long enough to see them find solace and comfort in each other’s arms. True love—if you’re not in it, just happen to be standing there watching it—does tend to be a bit boring. Tas yawned, sneezed violently when some ash flew up his nose, and looked around for something to do.

  There, stretching before him among the stumps of burned trees, was a path.

  “All paths lead somewhere,” is an old kender adage. Combine this with “Every path is the right path except when it’s the left fork,” and that pretty well sums up kender philosophy.

  “And perhaps this path will lead me to the Graygem,” he said, on consideration.

  Tas was going to tell Palin and Usha he was leaving, then he thought that perhaps they wouldn’t want to be disturbed, so he slipped very softly away, following the path he had discovered.

  As he walked, moving along very quietly, so as not to bother anyone, he considered what he knew about the Graygem.

  “I suppose it’s a jewel like any other, except that it’s broken, of course, which is a very good thing,” Tas said thoughtfully, “because now I don’t have to go to the trouble of breaking it.”

  He recalled Raistlin saying something about the Graygem being guarded, but Tas hadn’t paid too much attention to that part. Gems were always guarded, in his experience, and since the guards always tended to be people with a most unreasoning prejudice against kender, Tas really couldn’t see why this should be any different. He continued down the path, climbing over burned-out stumps and thinking that the mounds of black ashes were a lot like drifted snow, except for being black and being ashes and smelling kind of putrid, when he suddenly came upon a dwarf, crouched behind a tree.

  “My goodness,” Tas said, stopping short. “How very strange.”

  The dwarf was exceedingly well dressed, especially to be hiding behind a flame-ravaged tree in a charred and devastated forest. The dwarf’s fine clothes were covered with soot, as was his beard and long hair. The plume of his hat was bedraggled and dirty. He was watching something very intently; his back was half-turned to the path, which meant his back was half-turned to the kender on the path.

  “I do believe … yes, I’m positive,” Tas muttered. “It’s Dougan Redhammer.”

  Tas followed the dwarf’s line of sight, tried to see what Dougan was watching so closely, but he couldn’t, due to another large pine tree—or what was left of it—that was in the way.

  The dwarf seemed very intent on his watch. Tas didn’t want to disturb Dougan, so he crept forward silently, gliding across the scorched ground as still as a mouse, of which he had firsthand knowledge, having accidentally turned himself into a mouse once. Stealing up on the dwarf, Tas reached out and tapped Dougan on the shoulder.

  It was amazing, considering his stoutness, how high the dwarf could jump. And to jump that high, without losing his broad-brimmed hat, was also quite remarkable.

  Dougan’s jumping up in that sudden manner startled Tas so that he fell back, tumbled over a burned-out log, and landed on the ground. The rotund dwarf, breathing heavily and turning the same red as the sky, pounced on the kender and clapped his hand over Tas’s mouth.

  “Who in Reorx’s name are you?” Dougan demanded in a hoarse whisper. “And what are you doing here?”

  Tas replied as best he could, being somewhat hampered in answering due to the hand over his mouth.

  “Xrinxmaggle Yurfuuz?” repeated the dwarf. “Never heard of you. Still, you do look kind of familiar.”

  Tas shook his head violently, squeaked and squirmed and indicated by pointing that they might carry on this conversation more pleasantly if he could talk.

  Dougan eyed him a moment, then removed his hand from Tas’s mouth. The dwarf sat back on his heels. “Be quiet!” he warned. “They’re close. Over there. And though I’m not certain whether or not they can hear, it’s best not to take chances.”

  Tasslehoff nodded, rubbed his head where he’d banged it on a rock, and sat up. “Who’s ‘they’?” he whispered.

  “Who are you?” Dougan whispered testily back.

  “Sorry. Forgot to introduce myself.” Tas scrambled to his feet. Dougan heaved himself to his feet—which he probably hadn’t seen in the past few centuries, or so Tas figured, noting the dwarf’s immense girth. The kender extended his hand. “I’m Tasslehoff Burrfoot.”

  “Oh.” Dougan grunted. “So that’s where I know you from. I’m—”

  “I know. Reorx,” Tas said in a loud whisper. “But don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone,” he added hastily, noting the scowl on Dougan’s face.

  “Nothing to tell,” the dwarf snarled, glaring straight into Tas’s eyes. “The name’s Dougan Redhammer. Understand?”

  “No,” Tas replied, after a moment’s thought. “But then there’s lots I don’t understand. Death, for one thing. And sheriffs for another. Both seem to take a lot of the fun out of life. And while we’re at it, there’s the matter of hiccups. Why hiccups, if you take my meaning? And I was also wondering if you could explain—”

  Dougan said something about the Abyss becoming an ice-skating pond first, which Tas found rather curious, and he was about to ask the dwarf to explain that, but Dougan’s hand was over his mouth again.

  “Why did you come? What are you doing here?”

  He moved his hand slightly, enough for Tas could squeak past an answer. “Raistlin Majere sent me,” the kender replied proudly. “I’m to pick up the Graygem.”

  “You?”

  The dwarf forgot his own prohibition and spoke this word quite loudly. Cringing, he hunkered down behind the tree, pulled Tas down with him.

  “You?” Dougan repeated, apparently quite shocked. “He sent you?”

  Tas wasn’t sure he liked the nasty way Dougan kept saying you. It didn’t sound very complimentary to Raistlin.

  “I am a Hero of the Lance,” Tas pointed out. “I’ve fought dragons before, and I captured a prisoner once, no matter what Flint might have said to the contrary. I rescued Sestun from a red dragon, and I’ve been to the Abyss and back twice, and—”

  “Enough!” the dwarf howled quietly—an interesting feat, and one Tas would have said offhand a person couldn’t do, if he hadn’t just seen Dougan do it.

  “You’re here, so I guess I’ll have to make the best of it,�
�� Dougan grumbled, adding something about why hadn’t the mage sent along a party of gnomes, too, just to make his—Dougan’s—misery complete. “Come here,” he finished, hauling Tas over to the tree. “I want to show you something. And keep your mouth shut!”

  Tas looked, keeping quiet, as ordered, not because he’d been ordered, but because what he was seeing made him want to keep quiet—very, very quiet for a long time.

  Seven dead pine trees stood in a circle. The pines had all been ravaged by fire, but—unlike the other trees that had been reduced to blackened and withered stumps—these pines were still whole. Now they stood, like ghastly skeletons, their peeling limbs twisted and contorted in agonizing death.

  A whimper—in sympathy for the once magnificent trees—tried to slip out, but Tas managed to swallow it back. In the middle of the ring of dead pines stood a heap of wood. Marvelously and inexplicably, the wood had not been consumed by the terrible blaze that had burned everything else on the island. Something sparkled near the bottom of the woodpile, sparkled red, reflecting the blaze of the fierce and stubborn sun, which was still refusing to properly set.

  Tas put his hand to Dougan’s ear, leaned over, and said softly, “Is that the Graygem?”

  “Split in twain,” the dwarf answered back, his face dark, his expression grim. “Its two halves lie upon what is left of the altar. I hid them from Himself. He could not find them, though he searched long and hard. And that made me stop and think.”

  “Think what?”

  “Never you mind,” Dougan said severely, looking very serious. “The first thing we have to do is recover the gem.”

  “Then let’s go get it. What’s stopping us?”

  “They are.” Dougan gave a gloomy nod in the direction of the altar.

  Tas looked back. He didn’t see a dragon. He didn’t see draconians. He didn’t see hordes of goblins or ogres or kobolds or death knights or banshees or skeletal warriors or any other of the usual guardians of magical gemstones. There wasn’t even a sheriff. There wasn’t anything—a fact he pointed out.