Dragons of a Lost Star

15 Prisoners. Ghosts, The Dead and The Living

Palin Majere was no longer a prisoner in the Tower of High Sorcery. That is to say, he was and he was not. He was not a prisoner in that he was, not confined to a single room in the Tower. He was not chained or bound or physically restrained in any way. He could roam freely about the Tower but no farther. He could not leave the Tower. A single door at the lower level of the Tower permitted entry and egress, and that was enchanted, sealed shut by a wizard lock.

Palin had his own room with a bed but no chair and no desk. The room had a door but no window. The room had a fire grate, but no fire, and was chill and dank. For food, there were loaves of bread, stacked up in what had once been the Tower’s pantry, along with crockery bowls—most of which were cracked and chipped—filled with dried fruit. Palin recognized bread that had been created by magic and not the baker, because it was tasteless and pale and had a spongy texture. For drink, there was water in pitchers that continually refilled themselves. The water was brackish and had an unpleasant odor.

Palin had been reluctant to drink it, but he could find nothing else, and after casting a spell on it to make certain it did not contain some sort of potion, he used it to wash down the knots of bread that stuck in his throat. He cast a spell and summoned a fire into existence, but it didn’t help lift the atmosphere of gloom.

Ghosts haunted the Tower of High Sorcery. Not the ghosts of the dead who had stolen his magic. Some sort of warding spell kept them at bay. These ghosts were ghosts of his past. At this turning, he encountered the ghost of himself inside this Tower, arriving to take the dread Test of magic. At that turning, he imagined the ghost of his uncle, who had predicted a future of greatness for the young mage. Here he found the ghost of Usha when he had first met her: beautiful, mysterious, fond, and loving. The ghosts were sorrowful, shades of promise and hope, both dead. Ghosts of love, either dead or dying.

Most terrible was the ghost of the magic. It whispered to him from the cracks in the stone stairs, from the torn threads in the carpet, from the dust on the velvet curtains, from the lichen that had died years ago but had never been scraped off the wall.

Perhaps because of the presence of the ghosts, Palin was strangely at home in the Tower. He was more at home here than he was at his own light, airy, and comfortable home in Solace. He didn’t enjoy admitting that to himself. He felt guilty because of it.

After days of wandering alone through the Tower, locked up with himself and the ghosts, he understood why this chill, dread place was home. Here in the Tower he had been a child, a child of the magic. Here the magic had watched over him, guided him, loved him, cared for him. Even now he could sometimes smell the scent of faded rose petals and would recall that time, that happy time. Here in the Tower all was quiet. Here no one had any claim on him. No one expected anything of him. No one looked at him with pity. He disappointed no one.

It was then he realized he had to leave. He had to escape from this place, or he would become just another ghost among many.

Having spent the greater portion of his four days as a prisoner roaming the Tower, much as a ghost might roam the place it was doomed to frequent, he was familiar with the physical layout of the Tower. It was similar to what he remembered, but with differences. Every Master of the Tower altered the building to suit his or her needs. Raistlin had made the Tower of High Sorcery his own when he was Master. He had shared it with no one except a single apprentice, Dalamar, the undead who served them, and the Live Ones, poor, twisted creatures who lived out their miserable, misbegotten lives below the surface of the ground in the Chamber of Seeing.

Upon Raistlin’s death, Dalamar was made Master of the Tower of High Sorcery. The Tower had been located in the lord city of Palanthas, which considered itself the center of the known world. Previously the Tower of High Sorcery had been a sinister object, one of foreboding and terror. Dalamar was a forward-thinking mage, despite being an elf and a Black Robe (or perhaps because he was an elf and a Black Robe). He wanted to flaunt the power of mages, not hide it, and so he had opened the Tower to students, adding rooms in which his apprentices could live and study. Fond of comfort and luxury as any elf, he had brought into the Tower many objects that he collected over his travels: the wondrous and the hideous, the beautiful and the awful, the plain and the curious. The objects were all gone, at least so far as Palin could discover. Dalamar might have stashed them in his chamber, which was also wizard-locked, but Palin doubted it. He had the impression that if he entered Dalamar’s living quarters he would find them as bare and empty as the rest of the dark and silent rooms in the Tower. These things were part of the past. Either they had been broken in the cataclysmic upheaval of the Tower’s move from Palanthas, or their owner had cast them off in pain and in anger. Palin guessed the latter.

He recalled very well when he had heard the news that Dalamar had destroyed the Tower, rather than permit the great blue dragon Khellendros to seize control of it. The citizens of Palanthas woke to a thundering blast that shook houses, cracked streets, broke windows. At first, the people thought they were under attack by dragons, but after that initial shock, nothing further happened.

The next morning, they were awestruck and astonished and generally pleased to find that the Tower of High Sorcery—long considered an eyesore and a haven of evil—had disappeared. In its place was a reflecting pool where, if one looked, it was said one could see the Tower in the dark waters. Thus many began to circulate rumors that the Tower had imploded and sunk into the ground. Palin had never believed those rumors, nor, as he had discussed with his longtime friend and fellow mage Jenna, did he believe Dalamar was dead or the Tower destroyed.

Jenna had agreed with him, and if anyone would know it would be she, for she had been Dalamar’s lover for many years and was the last to see him prior to his departure more than thirty years ago.

“Perhaps not so long ago as that,” Palin muttered to himself, staring in frustration and simmering anger out the window. “Dalamar knew exactly where to find us. Knew where to lay his hands on us. Only one person could have told him. Only one person knew: Jenna.”

He probably should be glad the powerful wizard had rescued them. Otherwise he and Tasslehoff would be sitting in the dragon Beryl’s prison cell under far less propitious circumstances. Palin’s feelings of gratitude toward Dalamar had effectively evaporated by now. Once he might have shaken Dalamar’s hand. Now, he wanted only to wring the elf’s neck. The Tower’s relocation from Palanthas to wherever it was now—Palin hadn’t the vaguest idea, he could see nothing but trees around it—had brought about other changes. Palin saw several large cracks in the walls, cracks that might have alarmed him for his own safety had he not been fairly certain (or at least hoped) that Dalamar had shored up the walls with magic. The spiral staircase had always been treacherous to walk, but now was doubly so, due to the fact that some of the stairs had not survived the move. Tasslehoff climbed nimbly up and down the stairs like a squirrel, but Palin held his breath every time.

Tasslehoff—who had explored every inch of the Tower during the first hour of his arrival—reported that the entrance to one of the minarets was completely blocked off by a caved-in wall and that the other minaret was missing half the roof. The fearful Shoikan Grove that had once so effectively guarded the Tower had been left behind in Palanthas, where it stood now as a sad curiosity. The Tower was surrounded by a new grove

—a grove of immense cypress trees.

Having lived among the vallenwoods all his life, Palin was accustomed to gigantic trees, but he was impressed by the cypresses. Most of the trees stood far taller than the Tower, which was dwarfed by comparison. The cypresses held their enormous green-clothed arms protectively over the Tower, shielding it from the view of roaming dragons, particularly Beryl, who would have given her fangs and her claws and her green scaly tail thrown into the bargain for knowledge of the whereabouts of the Tower that had once reigned so proudly in Palanthas.

Peering out of one of the few upper-story windows still in existence in the Tower—many others that he had remembered had been sealed up—

Palin looked out upon a thick forest of cypress that rolled in undulating waves of green to the horizon. No matter what direction he looked, he saw only those spreading green boughs, an ocean of limbs and branches, leaves and shadow. No path cut through these boughs, not even an animal path, for the forest was eerily quiet. No bird sang, no squirrel scolded, no owl hooted, no dove mourned. Nothing living roamed the forest. The Tower was not a ship bobbing upon this ocean. It was submerged in the depths, lost to the sight and knowledge of those who lived in the world beyond. The forest was the province of the dead.

One of the remaining windows was located at the very bottom of the Tower, a few feet from the massive oaken door. The window looked out upon the forest floor, a floor that was thick with shadow, for sunlight very rarely managed to penetrate through the leaves that formed a canopy above.

Amid the shadows, the souls roamed. The aspect was not a pleasant one. Yet Palin found himself fascinated, and often he would stand here, shivering in the cold, his arms folded for warmth in the sleeves of his robes, gazing out upon the restless, ever—amoving, ever-shifting congregation of the dead.

He would watch until he could stand it no more, then he would turn away, his own soul riven with pity and horror, only to be drawn back again.

The dead could not enter the Tower seemingly. Palin did not sense them near him as he had felt them in the citadel. He did not feel that strange tickling sensation when he used his magic to cast spells, a sensation he had set down as gnats or bits of cobweb or a straggling strand of hair or any of a hundred other ordinary occurrences. Now he knew that what he had felt had been the hands of the dead, stealing the magic from him.

Locked up in the Tower alone with Tasslehoff, Palin guessed that it was Dalamar who had been giving the dead their orders. Dalamar had been usurping the magic. Why? What was he doing with it? Certainly, Palin thought sardonically, Dalamar was not using the magic to redecorate.

Palin might have asked him, but he could not find Dalamar. Nor could Tasslehoff, who had been recruited to help in the search. Admittedly, there were many doors in the Tower that were magically locked to both Palin and the kender—especially the kender.

Tasslehoff put his ear to these doors, but not even the kender with his sharp hearing had been able to detect any sounds coming from behind any of them, including one that led to what Palin remembered were Dalamar’s private chambers.

Palin had knocked at this door, knocked and shouted, but he had received no answer. Either Dalamar was deliberately ignoring him, or he was not there. Palin had first thought the former and was angry. Now he was starting to think the latter, and he was uneasy. The notion came to his mind that he and Tas had been brought here, then abandoned, to live out their days as prisoners in this Tower, surrounded and guarded by the dead.

“No,” Palin amended, talking softly to himself as he stared out the window on the lower floor, “the dead are not guards. They, too, are prisoners.”

The souls clogged the shadows beneath the trees, unable to find rest, unable to find peace, wandering in aimless, constant motion. Palin could not comprehend the numbers—thousands, thousands of thousands, and thousands more beyond that. He saw no one he recognized. At first, he had hoped to find his father again, hoped that Caramon could give him some answers to the myriad questions teeming in his son’s fevered mind. Palin soon came to realize that his search for one soul among the countless many was as hopeless as searching for a single grain of sand on a beach. If Caramon had been free to come to Palin, his father would surely have done so.

Palin recalled vividly now the vision he had seen of his father in the Citadel of Light. In that vision, Caramon had fought his way to his son through a mass of dead pressing around Palin. Caramon had been trying to tell his son something, but before he could make himself understood, he had been seized by some unseen force and dragged away.

“I think it’s awfully sad,” said Tasslehoff. He stood with his forehead pressed against the window, peering out the glass.

“Look, there’s a kender. And another. And another. Hullo!” Tasslehoff tapped with his hands on the window. “Hullo, there! What have you got in your pouches?”

The spirits of the dead kender ignored this customary kender greeting

—a question no living kender could have resisted—and were soon lost in the crowd, disappearing among the other souls: elves, dwarves, humans, minotaurs, centaurs, goblins, hobgoblins, draconians, gully dwarves, gnomes, and other races—races Palin had never before seen but had only read about. He saw what he thought were the souls of the Theiwar, the dark dwarves, a cursed race. He saw the souls of the Dimernesti, elves who live beneath the sea and whose very existence had long been disputed. He saw souls of the Thanoi, the strange and fearsome creatures of Ice Wall.

Friend and foe were here. Goblin souls passed shoulder to shoulder with human souls. Draconian souls drifted near elven souls. Minotaur and dwarf roamed side by side. No one soul paid attention to another. One was not aware of the other or seemed to know the other existed. Each ghostly soul went on his or her way, intent upon some quest—some hopeless quest by the looks of it, for on the face of every spirit Palin saw searching and longing, dejection and despair.

“I wonder what it is they’re all looking for,” Tasslehoff said.

“A way out,” replied Palin.

He slung over his shoulder a pack containing several loaves of the magicked bread and a waterskin. Making up his mind, not taking time to think for fear he would argue himself out of his decision, he walked to the Tower’s main door.

“Where are you going?” asked Tas.

“Out,” said Palin.

“Are you taking me with you?”

“Of course.”

Tas looked longingly at the door, but he held back, hovering near the stairs. “We’re not going back to the citadel to look for the Device of Time Journeying, are we?”

“What’s left of it?” Palin returned bitterly. “If any of it remained undamaged, which I doubt, the bits and pieces were probably picked up by Beryl’s draconians and are now in her possession.”

“That’s good,” Tas said, heaving a relieved sigh. Absorbed in arranging his pouches for the journey, he missed Palin’s withering glare. “Very well, I’ll go along. The Tower was an extremely interesting place to visit, and I’m glad we came here, but it does get boring after awhile. Where do you suppose Dalamar is? Why did he bring us here and then disappear?”

“To flaunt his power over me,” said Palin, coming to stand in front of the door. “He imagines that I am finished. He wants to break my spirit, force me to grovel to him, beg him to release me. He will find that he has caught a shark in his net, not a minnow. I had once thought he might be of some help to us, but no more. I will not be a pawn in his khas game.”

Palin looked very hard at the kender. “You don’t have any magical objects on you? Nothing you’ve discovered here in the Tower?”

“No, Palin,” said Tas with round-eyed innocence. “I haven’t discovered anything. Like I said, it’s been pretty boring.”

Palin persisted. “Nothing you’ve found that you are intending to return to Dalamar, for example? Nothing that fell into your pouches when you weren’t looking? Nothing that you picked up so that someone wouldn’t trip over it?”

“Well. . .” Tas scratched his head. “Maybe . . .”

“This is very important, Tas,” Palin said, his tone serious. He cast a glance out the window. “You see the dead out there? If we have anything magic, they will try to take it from us. Look, I have removed all my rings and my earring that Jenna gave me. I have left behind my pouches of spell components. Just to be safe, why don’t you leave your pouches here, as well? Dalamar will take good care of them,” he added in reassuring tones, for Tas was clutching his pouches next to his body and staring at him in horror.

“Leave my pouches?” Tas protested in agony. Palin might as well have asked the kender to leave his head or his topknot. “Will we come back for them?”

“Yes,” said Palin. Lies told to a kender are not really lies, more akin to self-defense.

“I guess . . . in that case . . . since it is important . . .” Tas removed his pouches, gave each of them a fond, parting pat, then stowed them safely in a dark corner beneath the stair. “I hope no one steals them.”

“I don’t think that’s likely. Stand over there by the stairs, Tas, where you will be out of the way, and do not interrupt me. I’m going to cast a spell. Alert me if you see anyone coming.”

“I’m the rear guard? You’re posting me as rear guard?” Tas was captivated and immediately forgot about the pouches. “No one ever posted me as rear guard before! Not even Tanis.”

“Yes, you’re the . . . er . . . rear guard. You must keep careful watch, and not bother me, no matter what you hear or see me doing.”

“Yes, Palin. I will,” Tasslehoff promised solemnly, and took up his position. He came bouncing back again. “Excuse me, Palin, but since we’re alone here, who is it I’m supposed to be rear-guarding against?”

Palin counseled patience to himself, then said, “If, for example, the wizard-lock includes magical guards, casting a counter-spell on the lock might cause these guardians to appear.”

Tas sucked in a breath. “Do you mean like skeletons and wraiths and liches? Oh, I hope so—that is, no I don’t,” he amended quickly, catching sight of Palin’s baleful expression. “I’ll keep watch. I promise.”

Tas retreated back to his post, but just as Palin was calling the words to the spell to his mind, he felt a tug on his sleeve.

“Yes, Tas?” Palin fought the temptation to toss the kender out the window. “What is it now?”

“Is it because you’re afraid of the wraiths and liches that you haven’t tried to escape before this?”

“No, Tas,” said Palin quietly. “It was because I was afraid of myself.”

Tas considered this. “I don’t think I can rear guard you against yourself, Palin.”

“You can’t, Tas,” Palin said. “Now return to your post.”

Palin figured that he had about fifteen seconds of peace before the novelty of being rear guard wore off and Tasslehoff would again be pestering him. Approaching the door, he closed his eyes and extended his hands.

He did not touch the door. He touched the magic that enchanted the door. His broken fingers . . . He remembered a time they had been long and delicate and supple. He felt for the magic, groped for it like a blind man. Sensing a tingling in his fingertips, his soul thrilled. He had found a thread of magic. He smoothed the thread and found another thread and another until the spell rippled beneath his touch. The fabric of the magic was smooth and sheer, a piece of cloth cut from a bolt and hung over the door.

The spell was not simple, but it was certainly not that complex. One of his better students could have undone this spell. Palin’s anger increased. Now his pride was hurt.

“You always did underestimate me,” Palin muttered to the absent Dalamar. He plucked a thread, and the fabric of magic came apart in his hands.

The door swung open.

Cool air, crisp with the sharp smell of the cypress, breathed into the Tower, as one might try to breathe life through the lips of a drowned man. The souls in the shadows of the trees ceased their aimless roaming, and hundreds turned as one to stare with their shadowed eyes at the Tower. None moved toward it. None made any attempt to approach it. They hung, wavering, in the whispering air.

“I will use no magic,” Palin told them. “I have only food in my pack, food and water. You will leave me alone.” He motioned to Tas, an unnecessary gesture, since the kender was now dancing at his side. “Keep near me, Tas. This is no time to go off exploring. We must not get separated.”

“I know,” said Tas excitedly. “I’m still the rear guard. Where is it we’re going, exactly?”

Palin looked out the door. Years ago, there had been stone stairs, a courtyard. Now his first step out of the Tower of High Sorcery would fall onto a bed of brown, dead cypress needles that surrounded the Tower like a dry moat. The cypress trees formed a wall around the brown moat, their branches serving as a canopy under which they would walk. Standing in the shadows of the trees, watching, were the souls of the dead.

“We’re going to find a path, a trail. Anything to lead us out of this forest,” Palin said.

Thrusting his hands in the sleeves of his robes, to emphasize the fact that he was not going to use them, he strode out the door and headed straight for the tree line. Tas followed after, discharging his role as rear guard by attempting to look backward while walking forward, a feat of agility that apparently took some practice, for Tas was having a difficult time of it.

“Stop that!” said Palin through clenched teeth the second time Tasslehoff bumbled into him. They were nearing the tree line. Palin removed his hand from his sleeve long enough to grasp Tas by the shoulder and forcibly turn him around. “Face forward.”

“But I’m the rear—” Tas protested. He interrupted himself. “Oh, I see. It’s what’s in front of us you’re worried about.”

The dead had no bodies. These they had left behind, abandoning the shells of cold flesh as butterflies leave the cocoon. Once, like butterflies, these spirits might have flown free to whatever new destination awaited them. Now they were trapped as in an enormous jar, constrained to wander aimlessly, searching for the way out.

So many souls. A river of souls, swirling about the boles of the cypress trees, each one a drop of water in a mighty torrent. Palin could barely distinguish one from another. Faces flitted past, hands or arms or hair trailing like diaphanous silken scarves. The faces were the most terrible, for they all looked at him with a hunger that caused him to hesitate, his steps to slow. Whispered breath that he had mistaken for the wind touched his cheek. He heard words in the whispers and shivered.

The magic, they said. Give us the magic. They looked at him. They paid no attention to the kender. Tasslehoff was saying something. Palin could see his mouth moving and almost hear the words, but he couldn’t hear. It was as if his ears were stuffed with the whispers of the dead.

“I have nothing to give you,” he told the souls. His own voice sounded muffled and faraway. “I have no magical artifacts. Let us pass.”

He came to the tree line. The whispering souls were a white, frothing pool among the shadows of the trees. He had hoped that the souls would part before him, like the early morning fog lifting from the valleys, but they remained, blocking his way. He could see dimly through them, see more trees with the eerie white mist of souls wavering beneath. He was reminded of the hordes of mendicants that crowded the streets of Palanthas, grimy hands outstretched, shrill voices begging. He halted, cast a glance back at the Tower of High Sorcery, saw a broken, crumbling ruin. He faced forward.

They did not harm you in the past, he reminded himself. You know their touch. It is unpleasant but no worse than walking into a cobweb. If you go back there, you will never leave. Not until you are one of them. He walked into the river of souls.

Chill, pale hands touched his hands, his arms. Chill, pale eyes stared at him. Chill, pale lips pressed against his lips, sucked the breath from him. He could not move for the swirling souls that had hold of him and were dragging him under. He could hear nothing except the whispered roar of their terrible voices. He turned, trying to find the way back, but all he saw were eyes, mouths, and hands. He turned and turned again, and now he was disoriented and confused, and there were more of them and still more. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t cry out. He fell to the ground, gasping for air. They rose and ebbed around him, touching, pulling, yanking. He was shredded, torn asunder. They searched through the fibers of his being.

He slipped beneath the awful surface and ceased to struggle. Tasslehoff saw Palin walk into the shadows of the trees, but the kender did not immediately follow after him. Instead he attempted to gain the attention of several dead kender, who were standing beneath the trees, watching Palin.

“I say,” said Tas very loudly, over the sound of buzzing in his ears, a sound that was starting to be annoying, “have you seen my friend, Caramon? He’s one of you.”

Tas had been about to tell them that Caramon was dead, like them, but he refrained, thinking that it might make them sad to be reminded of the fact.

“He’s a really big human, and the last time I saw him alive he was very old, but now that he’s dead—no offense—he looks young again. He has curly hair and a very friendly smile.”

No use. The kender refused to pay the least bit of attention to him.

“I hate to tell you this, but you are extremely rude,” Tas told the kender as he walked past. He might as well follow Palin, since no one was going to talk to him. “One would think you’d been raised by humans. You must not be from Kendermore. No Kendermore kender would act that— Now that’s odd. Where did he go?”

Tas searched the forest ahead of him as well as he could, considering the poor ghosts, who were whirling about in a frenetic manner, enough to make a fellow dizzy.

“Palin! Where are you? I’m supposed to be the rear guard, and I can’t be the rear guard if you’re not in front.”

He waited a bit to see if Palin answered his call, but if the sorcerer did, Tas probably wouldn’t be able to hear it over the buzzing that was starting to give him a pain in the head. Putting his fingers in his ears to try to shut out the sound, Tas turned to look behind him, thinking that perhaps Palin had forgotten something and gone back to the Tower to fetch it. Tas could see the Tower, looking small beneath the cypress trees, but no sign of Palin.

“Drat it!” Tas took his fingers out of his ears to wave his hands, trying to disperse the dead who were really making a most frightful nuisance of themselves. “Get out of here. I can’t see a thing. Palin!”

It was like walking through a thick fog, only worse, because fog didn’t look at you with pleading eyes or try to grab hold of you with wispy hands. Tasslehoff groped his way forward. Tripping over something, probably a tree root, he fell headlong on the forest floor. Whatever he had fallen over jerked beneath his legs. It’s not a tree root, he thought, or if it is, the root belongs to one of the more lively varieties of tree. Tas recognized Palin’s robes, and after a moment more, he recognized Palin. He hovered over his friend in consternation.

Palin’s face was exceedingly white, more white than the spirits surrounding him. His eyes were closed. He gasped for air. One hand clutched at this throat, the other clawed at the dirt.

“Get away, you! Go! Leave him alone,” Tas cried, endeavoring to drive away the dead souls, who seemed to be wrapping themselves around Palin like some evil web. “Stop it!” the kender shouted, jumping up and stamping his foot. He was starting to grow desperate. “You’re killing him!”

The buzzing sound grew louder, as if hornets were flying into his ears and using his head for a hive. The sound was so awful that Tasslehoff couldn’t think, but he realized he didn’t have to think. He only had to rescue Palin before the dead turned him into one of themselves. 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.