“I don’t know anything about gewgaws,” said Tas, “but I know that I’ll let you use the device if you want to.”
Palin lowered his head. His gray hair fell forward, covering his face, but not before Tas had seen the pain that contorted and twisted it into a face he did not recognize. Reaching out, Palin took hold of the device, his crooked fingers wrapping around it lovingly.
Tas watched the device go with something akin to relief. Whenever the device was in his possession, he could always hear Fizban’s voice reminding him in irritable tones that he wasn’t supposed to be off having adventures. He was supposed to go back to his own time. And while this adventure certainly left a lot to be desired as far as adventures go—what with being cursed and having to see Usha cry and discovering that he didn’t like Palin anymore—Tas was starting to think that even a bad adventure was probably better than being stepped on by a giant.
“I can tell you how it works,” Tas offered.
Palin placed the device on the kitchen table. He sat there staring at it, not saying a word.
“There’s a rhyme that goes with it and stuff you have to do to it,” Tas added, “but it’s pretty easy to learn. Fizban said I had to know it so that I could recite it standing on my head and I could, so I’m sure you probably can, too.”
Palin was only half-listening. He looked up at Jenna. “What do you think?”
“It is the Device of Time Journeying,” she said. “I saw it at the Tower of High Sorcery when your father brought it to Dalamar for safekeeping. He studied it, of course. I believe he had some of your uncle’s notes regarding it. He never used it that I know of, but he has more knowledge about it than anyone now living. I never heard that the device went missing. However, as I recall, we did find Tasslehoff in the Tower right before the Chaos War. He might have taken it then.”
Jenna eyed the kender quite sternly.
“I did not take it!” Tas said, insulted. “Fizban gave it to me! He told me—”
“Hush, Tas.” Palin leaned across the table, lowered his voice. “I don’t suppose there is any way you could contact Dalamar.”
“I do not practice necromancy,” Jenna returned coolly.
Palin’s eyes narrowed. “Come now, you don’t believe he’s dead. Do you?”
Jenna relaxed back in her chair. “Perhaps I don’t. But he might as well be. I have not heard a word from him in more than thirty years. I don’t know where he may have gone.”
Palin looked dubious, as if he did not quite believe her. Jenna spread her bejeweled hands on the table’s surface, fingers apart. “Listen to me, Palin. You do not know him. No one knows him as I know him. You did not see him at the end, when he came back from the Chaos War. I did. I was with him. Day and night. I nursed him to health. If you could call it that.”
She sat back, her expression dark and frowning.
“I am sorry if I offended you,” Palin said. “I never heard.… You never told me.”
“It is not something I enjoy talking about,” Jenna said tersely. “You know that Dalamar was gravely wounded during our battle against Chaos. I brought him back to the Tower. For weeks he hovered between the realm of the living and that of the dead. I left my home and my shop and moved into the Tower to care for him. He survived. But the loss of the gods, the loss of godly magic, was a terrible blow, one from which he never truly recovered. He changed, Palin. Do you remember how he used to be?”
“I didn’t know him very well. He supervised my Test in the Tower, the Test during which my Uncle Raistlin took him by surprise, turning what Dalamar had intended as illusion into reality. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he saw I had been given my uncle’s staff.” Palin sighed deeply, regretfully. The memories were sweet, yet painful. “All I remember of Dalamar is that I thought him sharp-tongued and sarcastic, self-centered and arrogant. I know that my father had a better opinion of him. My father said Dalamar was a very complicated man, whose loyalty was to magic, rather than to the Dark Queen. From what little I knew of Dalamar, I believe that to be true.”
“He was excitable,” Tas chimed in. “He used to get very excited when I started to touch anything that belonged to him. Jumpy, too.”
“Yes, he was all that. But he could also be charming, soft-spoken, wise …” Jenna smiled and sighed. “I loved him, Palin. I still do, I suppose. I have never met any other man to equal him.” She was quiet a moment, then she shrugged and said, “But that was long ago.”
“What happened between you two?” Palin asked.
She shook her head. “After his illness, he withdrew into himself, became sullen and silent, morose and isolated. I have never been a particularly patient person,” Jenna admitted. “I couldn’t stomach his self-pity and I told him so. We quarreled, I walked out, and that was the last I saw of him.”
“I can understand how he felt,” Palin said. “I know how lost I felt when I realized the gods were gone. Dalamar had practiced the arcane art far longer than I. He had sacrificed so much for it. He must have been devastated.”
“We all were,” Jenna said bluntly, “but we dealt with it. You went on with your life, and so did I. Dalamar could not. He fretted and fumed until I feared that his frustration would do what his wounds could not. I honestly thought he would die of it. He could not eat or sleep. He spent hours locked up in his laboratory searching desperately for what had been lost. He had the key to it, he once told me during one of the rare times he actually spoke to me. He said the key had come to him during his sickness. Now he had only to find the door. It’s my belief,” Jenna added wryly, “that he found it.”
“So you do not think he destroyed himself when he destroyed the Tower,” Palin said.
“The Tower’s gone?” Tas was stunned. “That great big Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas? What happened to it?”
“I am not even convinced he blew up the Tower,” Jenna said, continuing the conversation as if the kender wasn’t there. “Oh, I know what people say. That he destroyed the Tower for fear the dragon Khellendros would seize it and use its magic. I saw the pile of rubble that was left. People found all sorts of magical artifacts in the ruins. I bought many of them and resold them later for five times what I paid for them. But I know something I’ve never told anyone. The truly valuable artifacts that were in the Tower were never found. Not a trace. The scrollbooks, the spellbooks, those belonging to Raistlin and Fistandantilus, Dalamar’s own spellbooks—those were gone, too. People thought they were destroyed in the blast. If so,” she added with fine irony, “the blast was extremely selective. It took only what was valuable and important, left the trinkets behind.”
She eyed Palin speculatively. “Tell me, my friend, would you take this device to Dalamar if you had the chance?”
Palin stirred restlessly. “Probably not, now that I think of it. If he knew I had it, the device would not remain long in my possession.”
“Do you truly intend to use it?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Palin was evasive. “What do you think? Would it be dangerous?”
“Yes, very,” she answered.
“But the kender used it—”
“If you believe him, he used it in his own time,” she said. “And that was the time of the gods. The artifact is now in this time. You know as well as I do that the magic of the artifacts from the Fourth Age is erratic in nature. Some artifacts behave perfectly predictably and others go haywire.”
“So I won’t really find out until I try,” Palin said. “What do you suppose could happen?”
“Who knows!” Jenna lifted her hands, the jewels on her fingers glittered. “The journey alone might kill you. You might be stranded back in time, unable to return. You might accidently do something to change the past and, in so doing, obliterate the present. You might blow up this house and everything around it for a twenty-mile radius. I would not risk it. Not for a kender tale.”
“Yet I would like to go back to before the Chaos War. Go back simply to look. Perhaps I c
ould see the moment where destiny veered off the path it should have taken. Then we would know how to steer it back on the right course.”
Jenna snorted. “You speak of time as if it were a horse and cart. For all you know, this kender has made up this nonsensical story of a future in which the gods never left us. He is a kender, after all.”
“But he is an unusual kender. My father believed him, and Caramon knew something about traveling through time.”
“Your father also said the kender and the device were to be given to Dalamar,” Jenna reminded him.
Palin frowned. “I think we have to find out the truth for ourselves,” he argued. “I believe that it is worth the risk. Consider this, Jenna. If there is another future, a better future for our world, a future in which the gods did not depart, no price would be too great to pay for it.”
“Even your life?” she asked.
“My life!” Palin was bitter. “Of what value is my life to me now? My wife is right. The old magic is gone, the new magic is dead. I am nothing without the magic!”
“I do not believe that the new magic is dead,” Jenna said gravely. “Nor do I believe those who say that we ‘used it all up.’ Does one use up water? Does one use up air? The magic is a part of this world. We could not consume it.”
“Then what has happened to it?” Palin demanded impatiently. “Why do our spells fail? Why do even simple spells require so much energy that one has to go to bed for a week after casting them?”
“Do you remember that old test they used to give us in school?” Jenna asked. “The one where they put an object on the table and tell you to move it without touching it. You do, and then they put the object on a table behind a brick wall and tell you to move it. Suddenly, it’s much more difficult. Since you can’t see the object, it’s difficult to focus your magic on it. I feel the same when I try to cast a spell—as if something is in the way. A brick wall, if you will. Goldmoon told me her healers were experiencing similar feelings—”
“Goldmoon!” Tas cried eagerly. “Where is Goldmoon? If anyone could fix things around here, it’s Goldmoon.” He was on his feet, as if he would run out the door that instant. “She’ll know what to do. Where is she?”
“Goldmoon? Who brought up Goldmoon? What does she have to do with anything?” Palin glowered at the kender. “Please sit down and be quiet! You’ve interrupted my thoughts!”
“I’d really like to see Goldmoon,” Tas said, but he said it quietly, under his breath, so as not to disturb Palin.
The mage lifted the device carefully in his hand, turned it over, examined it, caressed it.
“Your wife was right,” Jenna stated. “You’re going to use the device, aren’t you, Palin?”
“Yes, I am,” he replied, closing his hands over it.
“No matter what I say?”
“No matter what anyone says.” He glanced at her, appeared embarrased. “Thank you for your help. I’m certain my sister can find you a room at the Inn. I’ll send word.”
“Did you really think I would leave and miss this?” Jenna asked, amused.
“It’s dangerous. You said—”
“These days, walking across the street is dangerous.” Jenna shrugged. “Besides, you will need a witness. Or at the very least,” she added lightly, “you’ll need someone to identify your body.”
“Thank you very much,” Palin said, but he managed a smile, the first Tas had seen the mage wear. Palin drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. His hands holding the device trembled.
“When should we try this?” he asked
“No time like the present,” Jenna said and grinned.
22
The Journey Back
nd that’s the rhyme,” said Tasslehoff. “Do you want me to repeat it again?”
“No, I have it memorized,” Palin said.
“Are you sure?” Tas was anxious. “You’ll need to recite it to return to this time. Unless you want to take me with you?” he added excitedly. “Then I could bring us.”
“I am quite sure I have the spell memorized,” Palin said firmly. And, indeed, the words were emblazoned in his mind. It seemed to him that he could see their fiery images on the backs of his eyes. “And, no, I’m not taking you with me. Someone needs to stay here and keep Mistress Jenna company.”
“And to identify the body,” Tas said, nodding and settling down in his chair, kicking his feet against the rungs. “Sorry, I forgot about that. I’ll stay here. You won’t be gone long anyway. Unless you don’t come back at all,” he mentioned, as an afterthought. Twisting in his chair, he looked at Jenna, who had dragged her chair to a far corner in the kitchen. “Do you really think he’ll blow up?”
Palin carefully ignored the kender.
“I will chant the magic that activates the device. If the spell works, I believe that I will vanish from your sight. As the kender says, I should not be gone long. I do not plan to stay in the past. I am going to my father’s first funeral where, hopefully, I will be able talk to Dalamar. Perhaps I’ll even talk to myself.” He smiled grimly. “I’ll try to find out what went wrong—”
“Take no action, Palin,” Jenna warned. “If you do find out anything useful, return and report. We will need to think long and hard before acting upon it.”
“Who is ‘we’?” Palin demanded, frowning.
“I suggest a gathering of the wise,” Jenna said. “The elven king Gilthas, his mother Laurana, Goldmoon, Lady Crysania—”
“And while we are spreading the word of what we’ve found far and wide and waiting for all these people to come together, Beryl murders us and steals the device,” Palin said acerbically. “She uses it, and we’re all dead.”
“Palin, you are talking about altering the past,” Jenna said in stern rebuke. “We have no idea what the ramifications would be to those of us living in the present.”
“I know,” he said, after a moment. “I understand. I will return and report. But we must be prepared to act rapidly after that.”
“We will. How long do you think you will be gone?”
“According to Tasslehoff, hundreds of days will pass for me for each second of time that passes for you. I estimate that I may be gone an hour or two marked by our time.”
“Good fortune on your journey,” Jenna said quietly. “Kender, come over here and stand beside me.”
Palin took hold of the device, moved to the center of the kitchen. The jewels glinted and sparkled in the sunshine.
He closed his eyes. He stood for long moments in deep thought and concentration. His hands cherished the device. He delighted in the feel of the magic. He began to give himself to the magic, let it cherish him, caress him. The dark years slipped away like receding waves, leaving memory’s shoreline smooth and clean. Palin was, for a moment, young and filled with hope and promise. Tears blurred his vision.
“Holding the pendant in my hand, I repeat the first verse, turning the face of the device up toward myself.” Palin recited the first words of the spell: “ ‘Thy time is thy own.’ ” Acting as he had been instructed, he twisted the face plate of the device.
“Next, at the second verse, I move the face plate from the right to the left.” He moved the face of the device in the direction indicated and recited the second verse of the chant: “ ‘Though across it you travel.’ ”
“At the recitation of the third verse, the back plate drops to form two spheres connected by rods. “ ‘Its expanses you see.’ ”
Palin gave the device another twist and smiled with pleasure when it performed as designed. He no longer held an egg-shaped bauble in his hand but something that resembled a scepter. “At the fourth verse, twist the top clockwise—a chain will drop down.”
Palin repeated the fourth verse: “ ‘Whirling across forever.’ ”
The chain dropped as Tas had foretold. Palin’s heartbeat increased with excitement and exultation. The spell was working.
“The fifth verse warns me to make certain that the chain is clear of the
mechanism. As the sixth verse instructs, I hold the device by each sphere and rotate the spheres forward, while reciting the seventh verse. The chain will wind itself into the body. I hold the device over my head, repeating the final verse, and summon a clear vision of where I want to be and the time I want to be there.”
Palin drew in a deep breath. Manipulating the device as instructed, he recited the rest of the chant: “ ‘Obstruct not its flow. Grasp firmly the end and the beginning. Turn them forward upon themselves. All that is loose shall be secure. Destiny will be over your own head.’ ”
He held the device over his head and brought to mind a vision of the Chaos War, his own part in it. His part and Tasslehoff’s.
Closing his eyes, Palin focused on the vision and gave himself to the magic. He surrendered himself to his longtime mistress. She proved faithful to him.
The floor of the kitchen elongated, scrolled up into the air. The ceiling slid underneath the floor, the dishes on the shelves melted and trickled down the walls, the walls merged with the floor and the ceiling, and all began to roll into themselves, forming an enormous spiral. The spiral sucked in the house and then the woods beyond. Trees and grass wrapped around Palin, then the blue sky, and the ball in which he was the center started to revolve, faster and faster.
His feet left the floor. He was suspended in the center of a whirling, spinning kaleidoscope of places and people and events. He saw Jenna and Tas whirl past, saw the blur of their faces, and then they disappeared. He was moving very slowly but the people around him were moving fast, or perhaps he was the one speeding past them while they walked by him as slowly if they were walking under water.
He saw forests and mountains. He saw villages and cities. He saw the ocean and ships on the ocean, and all of them were drawn up to form part of the great ball in the middle of which he drifted.
The spiral wound down. The spinning slowed, slowed … he could see people, objects more clearly …
Dragons of a Fallen Sun Page 41
