Tas caught hold of her sleeve, hung on for dear life. “It’s the feeling that came to me when I saw the dragon!”
“What dragon?” Laurana stopped, turned back. “When did you see a dragon?”
“While Gerard and I were riding into Qualinesti. The dragon came around to take a look at us. I was …” Tas paused, then said in a awful whisper, “I think I was … scared.” He gazed at Laurana with round eyes, expecting to see her reel backward into the pond, stunned with the shock and horror of this unnatural occurrence.
“You were wise to be scared, Tas,” Laurana replied, taking the terrible news quite calmly. “The dragon Beryl is a loathsome, fearsome beast. Her claws are stained with blood. She is a cruel tyrant, and you are not the first to be afraid in her presence. Now, we should not keep the others waiting.”
“But it’s me, Laurana! Tasslehoff Burrfoot! Hero of the Lance!” Tas pounded himself frantically on his chest. “I’m not afraid of anything. There’s a giant in the other time who’s about to step on me and probably squash me flat, and that gives me a sort of squirmy feeling in my stomach when I think about it, but this is different.” He sighed deeply. “You must be mistaken. I can’t be Tasslehoff and be afraid.”
The kender was truly upset, that much was obvious. Laurana regarded him thoughtfully. “Yes, this is different. This is very strange. You have been around dragons before, Tas.”
“All sorts of dragons,” Tas said proudly. “Blues and reds and greens and blacks, bronze and copper and silver and gold. I even flew on the back of one. It was glorious.”
“And you never felt dragonfear?”
“I remember thinking that dragons were beautiful in an awful kind of way. And I felt afraid, but that was for my friends, never for myself. Much.”
“This must have been true of the other kender, as well,” Laurana mused, “the kender we now call ‘afflicted.’ Some of them must have experienced dragonfear years ago, during the War of the Lance and after. Why would these experiences be different? I never thought about it.”
“Lots of times people don’t think about us,” Tas said in an understanding tone. “Don’t feel bad.”
“But I do feel badly,” Laurana sighed. “We should have done something to help the kender. It’s just that there’s been so much happening that was more important. Or at least it seemed more important. If this fear is different from dragonfear, I wonder what it could be? A spell, perhaps?”
“That’s it!” Tas shouted. “A spell! A curse!” He was thrilled. “I’m under a curse from the dragon. Do you truly think so?”
“I really don’t know—” Laurana began, but the kender was no longer listening.
“A curse! I’m cursed!” Tasslehoff gave a blissful sigh. “Dragons have done lots of things to me but I’ve never before had one curse me! This is almost as good as the time Raistlin magicked me into a duck pond. Thank you, Laurana,” he said, fervently shaking her hand and accidently removing the last of her rings. “You have no idea what a weight you have taken off my mind. I can be Tasslehoff now. A cursed Tasslehoff! Let’s go tell Palin!
“Say, speaking of Palin,” Tas added in a piercing whisper, “when did he become a Black Robe? The last I saw him, he was Head of the Order of White Robes! What made him change? Was it like Raistlin? Is someone else inhabit—habitat—habitating Palm’s body?”
“Black robes, white robes, red robes, the distinction between one and the other is now gone, Tas,” Laurana said. “Palin wore black robes because he wanted to blend in with the night.” She looked at the kender oddly. “Palin was never Head of the Order of White Robes. What made you think that?”
“I’m beginning to wonder,” Tasslehoff said. “I don’t mind telling you, Laurana, but I’m extremely confused. Maybe someone’s inhabitating my body,” he added, but without much hope.
With all the strange feelings and lumps, there just didn’t seem to be room for anyone else in there.
16
Tasslehoff’s Tale
he Queen Mother’s house was built on the side of a cliff overlooking Qualinesti. Like all elven structures, the house blended with nature, seemed a part of the landscape, as, indeed, much of it was. The elven builders had constructed the house so as to utilize the cliff-face in the design. Seen from a distance, the house appeared to be a grove of trees growing on a broad ledge that jutted out from the cliff. Only when one drew closer, did one see the path leading up to the house and then one could tell that the trees were in reality walls, their branches the roof and that cliff was also used for many of the walls of the house.
The north wall of the atrium was made of the rocky slope of the cliff face. Flowers and small trees blossomed, birds sang in the trees. A stream of water ran down the cliff, splashing into many small pools along the way. As each pool varied in depth, the sound of the falling water differed from pool to pool, producing a wondrous harmony of musical sound.
Tasslehoff was quite enchanted with the fact that there was a real waterfall inside the house and he climbed upon the rocks, slipping perilously on the slippery surface. He loudly exclaimed over the wonder of every bird’s nest, uprooted a rare plant while trying to pick its flower and was forcibly removed by Kalindas when the kender insisted on trying to climb clear up to the ceiling.
This was Tasslehoff. The more Palin watched, the more he remembered and the more he became convinced that this kender was the kender he had known well over thirty years ago. He noted that Laurana watched Tas, as well. She watched him with a bewilderment tinged with wonder. Palin supposed it was perfectly plausible that Tasslefhoff could have been wandering the world for thirty-eight years and had finally taken it into his head to drop by for a chat with Caramon.
Palin discarded the notion. Another kender might have done so, but not Tasslehoff. He was a unique kender, as Caramon liked to say. Or perhaps, not so unique as all that. Perhaps if they had taken time to come to know another kender, they might have discovered that they were all loyal and compassionate friends. But if Tas had not been roaming the world for almost forty years, than where had he been?
Palin listened attentively to the Knight’s story of Tas’s appearance in the tomb the night of the storm (most remarkable, Palin made a mental note of this occurrence), Caramon’s recognition, his subsequent death and his last words to Sir Gerard.
“Your father was upset that he could not find his brother Raistlin. He said that Raistlin had promised to wait for him. And then came your father’s dying request, sir,” said Gerard in conclusion. “He asked me to take Tasslehoff to Dalamar. I would have to assume that to be the wizard, Dalamar, of infamous repute?”
“I suppose so,” said Palin evasively, determined to betray nothing of his thoughts.
“According to the Measure, sir, I am honor bound to fulfill a request made by the dying. But since the wizard Dalamar has disappeared and no one has heard from him in many years, I’m not quite certain what to do.”
“Nor am I,” Palin said.
His father’s final words intrigued Palin. He was well aware of his father’s firmly held belief that Raistlin would not depart this mortal plane until his twin had joined him.
“We’re twins, Raist and I,” Caramon would say. “And because we’re twins, one of us can’t leave this world and move on to the next without the other. The gods granted Raist peace in sleep, but then they woke him up during the Chaos War and it was then that he told me he would wait for me.”
Raistlin had indeed returned from the dead during the Chaos War. He had gone to the Inn of the Last Home and had spent some time with Caramon. During that time, Raistlin had, according to Caramon, sought his brother’s forgiveness. Palin had never questioned his father’s faith in his faithless brother, though he had privately thought that Caramon was indulging in wishful thinking.
Still Palin did not feel he had the right to try to dissuade Caramon of his belief. After all, none could say for certain what happened to the souls of those who died.
“The kender
maintains that he traveled forward in time and that he came here with the help of the magical device.” Gerard shook his head, smiled. “At least it’s the most original excuse I’ve heard from one of the little thieves.”
“It’s not an excuse,” Tas said loudly. He had attempted to interrupt Gerard at several key points in the story, until finally the knight had threatened to gag him again if he wasn’t quiet. “I didn’t steal the device. Fizban gave it to me. And I did travel forward in time. Twice. The first time I was late and the second time I … don’t know what happened.”
“Let me see the magical artifact, Sir Gerard,” Palin said. “Perhaps that will help us arrive at an answer.”
“I’ll show you!” Tas offered eagerly. He fumbled about in his pockets, looked down his shirtfront, felt all about his pant legs. “I know it’s here somewhere …”
Palin looked accusingly at the knight. “If this artifact is as valuable as you describe, sir, why did you allow it to remain in the kender’s possession? If it is still in his possession—”
“I didn’t, sir,” Gerard said defensively. “I’ve taken it away from him I don’t know how many times. The artifact keeps going back to him. He says that’s how it works.”
Palin’s heartbeat quickened. His blood warmed. His hands, that seemed always cold and numb, tingled with life. Laurana had risen involuntarily to her feet.
“Palin! You don’t suppose …” she began.
“I found it!” Tas announced in triumph. He dragged the artifact out of his boot. “Would you like to hold it, Palin? It won’t hurt you or anything.”
The artifact had been small enough to fit inside the kender’s small boot. Yet as Tas held it out, the kender had to hold the device with both hands. Yet Palin had not seen it change shape or enlarge. It was as if it was always the shape and size it was meant to be, no matter what the circumstances. If anything changed, it was the viewer’s perception of the artifact, not the artifact itself.
Jewels of antiquity—rubies, sapphires, diamonds and emeralds—sparkled and glittered in the sunlight, catching the sunbeams and transforming them into smears of rainbow light splashed on the walls and the floor and shining up from the kender’s cupped hands.
Palin started to reach out his own crippled hands to hold the device, then he hesitated. He was suddenly afraid. He did not fear that the artifact might do him some harm. He knew perfectly well it wouldn’t. He had seen the artifact when he was a boy. His father had shown it off proudly to his children. In addition, Palin recognized the device from his studies when he was a youth. He had seen drawings of it in the books in the Tower of High Sorcery. This was the Device of Time Journeying, one of the greatest and most powerful of all the artifacts ever created by the masters of the Towers. It would not harm him, yet it would do him terrible, irrevocable damage.
Palin knew from experience the pleasure he would feel when he touched the artifact: he would sense the old magic, the pure magic, the loved magic, the magic that came to him untainted, freely given, a gift of faith, a blessing from the gods. He would sense the magic, but only faintly, as one senses the smell of rose leaves, pressed between the pages of a book, their sweet fragrance only a memory. And because it was only a memory, after the pleasure would come the pain—the aching, searing pain of loss.
But he could not help himself. He said to himself, “Perhaps this time I will be able to hold onto it. Perhaps this time with this artifact, the magic will come back to me.”
Palin touched the artifact with trembling, twisted fingers.
Glory … brilliance … surrender …
Palin cried out, his broken fingers clenched over the artifact. The jewels cut into the flesh of his hand.
Truth … beauty … art … life …
Tears burned his eyelids, slid down his cheeks.
Death … loss … emptiness …
Palin sobbed harshly, bitterly for what was lost. He wept for his father’s death, wept for the three moons that had vanished from the sky, wept for his broken hands, wept for his own betrayal of all that he had believed in, wept for his own inconstancy, his own desperate need to try to find the ecstasy again.
“He is ill. Should we do something?” Gerard asked uneasily.
“No, Sir Knight. Leave him be,” Laurana admonished gently. “There is nothing we can do for him. There is nothing we should do for him. This is necessary to him. Though he suffers now, he will be better for this release.”
“I’m sorry, Palin,” Tasslehoff cried remorsefully. “I didn’t think it would hurt you. Honestly, I didn’t! It never hurt me.”
“Of course it would not hurt you, wretched kender!” Palin returned, the pain a living thing inside him, twisting and coiling around his heart so that it fluttered in his chest like a frantic bird caught by the snake. “To you it is nothing but a pretty toy! To me it is an opiate that brings blissful, wondrous dreams.” His voice cracked. “Until the effect wears off. The dreams end and I must wake again to drudgery and despair, wake to the bitter, mundane reality.”
He clenched his hand over the device, quenched the light of its jewels. “Once,” he said, his voice tight, “I might have crafted a marvelous and powerful artifact such as this. Once I might have been what you claim I was—Head of the Order of White Robes. Once I might have had the future my uncle foresaw for me. Once I might have been a wizard, gifted, puissant, powerful. I look at this device and that is what I see. But I look into a mirror and I see something far different.”
He opened his hand. He could not see the device for his bitter tears. He could see only the light of its magic, glinting and winking, mocking. “My magic dwindles, my powers grow weaker every day. Without the magic, there is one hope left for us—to hope that death is better than this dismal life!”
“Palin, you must not speak like that!” Laurana said sternly. “So we thought in the dark days before the War of the Lance. I remember Raistlin saying something to the effect that hope was the carrot dangled before the nose of the cart horse to fool him into plodding forward. Yet we did plod forward and, in the end, we were rewarded.”
“We were,” said Tas. “I ate the carrot.”
“We were rewarded all right,” Palin said, sneering. “With this wretched world in which we find ourselves!”
The artifact was painful to his touch—indeed, he had clutched so tightly that the sharp-edged jewels had cut him. But still he held it fast, carressing it covetously. The pain was so much preferable to the feeling of numbness.
Gerard cleared his throat, looked embarrassed.
“I take it, sir, that I was right,” he said diffidently. “This is a powerful artifact of the Fourth Age?”
“It is,” Palin answered.
They waited for him to say more, but he refused to indulge them. He wanted them to leave. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to sort out his thoughts that were running hither and yon like rats in a cave when someone lights a torch. Scuttling down dark holes, crawling into crevices and some staring with glittering, fascinated eyes at the blazing fire. He had to endure them, their foolishiness, their inane questions. He had to hear the rest of Tasslehoff’s tale.
“Tell me what happened, Tas,” Palin said. “None of your woolly mammoth stories. This is very important.”
“I understand,” Tas said, impressed. “I’ll tell the truth. I promise. It all started one day when I was attending the funeral of an extremely good kender friend I’d met the day before. She’d had an unfortunate encounter with a bugbear. What happened was—er—”—Tas caught sight of Palin’s brows constricting—“never mind, as the gnomes say. I’ll tell you that story later. Anyhow during her funeral, it occurred to me that very few kender ever live long enough to be what you might call old. I’ve already lived a lot longer than most kender I know and I suddenly realized that Caramon was likely to live a lot longer than I was. The one thing I really, really wanted to do before I was dead was to tell everyone what a good friend Caramon had been to me. It seemed to me that the best ti
me to do this would be at his funeral. But if Caramon outlived me, then me going to his funeral would be something of a problem.
“Anyway, I was talking to Fizban one day and I explained this and he said that he thought what I wanted to do was a fine and noble thing and he could fix it up. I could speak at Caramon’s funeral by traveling to the time when the funeral was taking place. And he gave me this device and told me how it worked and gave me strict instructions to just jump ahead, talk at the funeral, and come straight back. ‘No gallivanting,’ he said. By the way,” Tas asked anxiously, “you don’t think he’d consider this trip ‘gallivanting,’ do you? Because I’m finding that I really am enjoying seeing all my friends again. It’s much more fun than being stepped on by a giant.”
“Go on with the story, Tas,” Palin said tersely. “We’ll discuss that later.”
“Yes, right. So I used the device and I jumped forward in time, but, well, you know that Fizban gets things a bit muddled now and then. He’s always forgetting his name or where his hat is when it’s right on his head or forgetting how to cast a fireball spell and so I guess he just miscalculated. Because when I jumped forward in time the first time, Caramon’s funeral was over. I’d missed it. I arrived just in time for refreshments. And while I did have a nice visit visiting with everyone and the cream cheese puffs Jenna made were truly scrumptious, I wasn’t able to do what I’d meant to do all along. Remembering that I’d promised Fizban no gallivanting, I went back.
“And, to be honest”—Tas hung his head and shuffled his foot—“after that, I forgot all about speaking at Caramon’s funeral. I had a really good reason. The Chaos War came and we were fighting shadow wights and I met Dougan and Usha, your wife, you know, Palin. It was all immensely interesting and exciting. And now the world is about to come to an end and there’s this horrible giant about to smash me flat and it was at that precise moment that I remembered that I hadn’t spoken at Caramon’s funeral. So I activated the device really quickly and came here to say what a good friend Caramon was before the giant steps on me.”
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