Dragons of the Fallen Sun

Chapter Thirty-One The Pale River of the Dead

That night, Goldmoon left the hospital, ignoring the pleas of the Healers and Lady Camilla.

“I am well,” Goldmoon said, fending off their attempts to keep her in bed. “I need rest, that is all, and I will not find rest here!”

Not with the dead.

She walked swiftly through the gardens and courtyards of the citadel complex, bright with lights. She looked neither to the left nor the right. She did not answer greetings. She kept her gaze fixed upon the path before her. If she looked anywhere else, she would see them. They were following her.

She heard their whispered beggings. She felt their touch, soft as milkweed, upon her hands, her face. They wrapped around her like silken scarves. She was afraid, if she looked at them, she would see Riverwind. Then she thought, perhaps this is why his spirit has not come to me. He is lost and foundering in this river, swept away. I will never find him.

Reaching the Grand Lyceum, she ran swiftly up the many stairs leading to her chambers. For the first time, she blessed this strange, young body, which was not only quick but was eager to meet the physical demands she now placed upon it. Brought to bay, Goldmoon turned to face them.

“Be gone. I have nothing for you.”

The dead drew near, an old, old man, a thief, a warrior, a crippled child. Beggars all, their hands extended. Then, quite suddenly, they left—as if a voice had ordered them gone. But not her voice.

Goldmoon shut the door behind.

In her chamber, she was alone, truly alone. The dead were not here. Perhaps when she had refused to grant them what they sought, they had left her to seek other prey. She sank back against the door, overwhelmed by her vision. Standing in the darkness, she could see again, in her mind’s eye, the dead draining the life-giving power from her followers. This was the reason healing was failing in the world. The dead were robbing the living. But why? What need had the dead for mystical power? What force constrained them? Where were they bound with such urgency?

“And why has it been given to me to see them?” Goldmoon murmured.

A knock sounded on her door. She ignored it and felt to make certain the door was locked. The knock was repeated several times. Voices—living voices—called to her. When she did not answer, they were perplexed. She could hear them wondering aloud what to do.

“Go away!” she ordered finally, wearily. “Go away, and leave me in peace.”

And eventually, like the dead, the living also departed and left her alone.

Crossing her chambers, Goldmoon stood before the large windows that overlooked the sea and flung open the casement.

The waning moon cast a pallid light upon the ocean. The set had a strange look to it. An oily film covered the water, and beneath this film, the water was smooth, still. No breeze stirred, not a breath. The air had a foul smell to it, tainted by the oil upon the water, perhaps. The night was clear. The stars bright. The sky empty.

Ships were putting out to sea, black against the moonlight waters. There was a smell of thunder in the air. Seasoned mariners were reading the signs and heading for the open waters, far safer for them than lying close to shore, where crashing waves could send them smashing up against the docks or the rocks of the island’s coast. Goldmoon watched them from her window, looking like toy boats gliding across a dark mirror.

There, moving over the ocean, were the dead.

Goldmoon sank to her knees at the window. She placed her t hands upon the window frame, rested her chin upon her hands, and watched the dead cross the sea. The moon sank beneath the horizon, drowned in dark water. The stars shone cold and bleak in the sky, and they also shone in the water, which was so still that Goldmoon could not perceive where the sky ended and the sea began. Small waves lapped gently upon the shore with a forlorn urgency, like a sick and fretful child trying to capture someone’s attention. The dead were traveling north, a pallid stream, paying no attention to anything except to that call they alone could hear.

Yet not quite alone.

Goldmoon heard the song. The voice that sang the song was compelling, stirred Goldmoon to the depths of her soul.

“You will find him,” said the voice. “He serves me. You will be together.”

Goldmoon crouched at the window, head bowed, and shivered in awe and fear and an exaltation that made her cry out in longing, reach her hands out in longing for the singer of that song as the dead had reached out their hands to her in longing. She spent the night on her knees, her soul listening to the song with a thrill that was both pain and pleasure, watching the dead travel north, heeding the call, while the wavelets of the still sea clung as long as they could to the shore, then receded, leaving the sand smooth and empty in their going.

Day dawned. The sun slid out of the oily water. Its light seemed covered with the same film of oil, for it had a greenish sheen smeared across the yellow. The air was tainted, hot and unsatisfying to breathe. Not a cloud marred the sky.

Goldmoon rose from kneeling. Her muscles were stiff and sore from the uncomfortable position, but usage warmed and limbered them. She picked up a cloak, thick and heavy, and wrapped it around her, though the early morning was already hot.

Opening her door, she found Palin standing outside, his hand raised to knock.

“First Master,” he said. “We have all been worried. . .”

The dead were all around him. They plucked at the sleeves of his robes. Their lips pressed against his broken fingers, their ragged hands clutched at the magical ring he wore, trying to pull it loose, but not succeeding, to judge by their wails of frustration.

“What?” Palin halted in the middle of his speech of concern, alarmed by the expression on her face. “What is it, First Master? Why do you stare at me like that?”

She pushed past him, shoving him out of her way with such force that he staggered backward. Goldmoon caught up the skirts of her white robes and ran down the stairs, her cloak billowing behind her. She arrived in the hall, startling masters and students.

They called after her, some ran after her. The guards stood staring and helpless. Goldmoon ignored them all and kept running.

Past the crystal domes, past the gardens and the fountains, past the hedge maze and the silver stair, past Knights and guards, visitors and pupils, past the dead. She ran down to the harbor.

She ran down to the still, smooth sea.

Tas and the gnome were mapping the hedge maze—successfully mapping the hedge maze, which must be considered a first in the long and inglorious history of gnomish science.

“Are we getting close, do you think?” Tasslehoff asked the gnome. “Because I think I’m losing all the feeling in my left foot.”

“Hold still!” Conundrum ordered. “Don’t move. I’ve almost got it. Drat this wind,” he added irritably. “I wish it would stop. It keeps blowing away my map.”

Tasslehoff endeavored to do as he was ordered, although not moving was extremely difficult. He stood on the path in the middle of the hedge maze, balanced precariously on his left foot.

He held his right leg hoisted in a most uncomfortable position in the air, his foot attached to a branch of the hedge maze by the en of the thread of the unraveled right stocking. The stocking was considerably reduced in size, its cream-colored thread trailing along the path through the hedge maze.

The gnome’s plan to use the socks had proved a brilliant success, though Conundrum sighed inwardly over the fact that the means by which he was going to finally succeed in mapping the hedge maze lacked the buttons, the gears, the pulleys, the spindles and the wheels, which are such a comfort to the scientific mind.

To have to describe the wondrous mechanism by which he had achieved his Life Quest as “two socks, wool” was a terrible blow. He had spent the night trying to think of some way to add steam power, with the result that he developed plans for snow-shoes that not only went extremely fast but kept the feet warm as well. But that did nothing to advance his Life Quest.

At length Conundrum was forced to proceed with the simple plan he’d originally developed. He could always, he reflected, embellish the proceedings during the final report. They began early in the morning, up before the dawn. Conundrum posted Tasslehoff at the entry of the hedge maze, tied one end of the kender’s sock to a branch, and marched Tasslehoff forward. The sock unraveled nicely, leaving a cream-colored track behind.

Whenever Tasslehoff took a wrong turn and came to a dead end, he reversed direction, rolling up the thread, and proceeded down the path until he came to the right turn in the path, which was leading them deeper into the middle of the hedge maze.

Whenever they struck a correct turning, Conundrum would fall flat on his belly and mark the route on his map. By this means, he advanced farther than he’d ever been able to go. So long as Tasslehoff’s supply of hosiery held out, the gnome felt certain that he would have the entire hedge maze well and truly mapped by day’s end.

As for Tasslehoff, he was not feeling quite as cheery and pleased as one might expect for someone who was on the verge of wondrous scientific breakthrough. Every time he put his hand in a pocket he felt the prickly jewels and the cold, hard surface of the Device of Time Journeying. He more than half suspected the device of deliberately making a nuisance of itself by turning up in places and pockets where he knew for a fact it had not been ten minutes earlier. No matter where he put his hands, the Device was jabbing him or poking him.

Every time the device jabbed him or poked him, it was like Fizban’s bony finger jabbing him or poking him, reminding him of his promise to come right back.

Of course, kender have traditionally considered promises to be about as binding as a silken strand of gossamer—good for holding butterflies, but not much more. Normally anyone relying on a kender’s promise would be considered loony, unstable, incompetent and just plain daft, all of which descriptions fit Fizban to a tee. Tasslehoff would not have worried at all about breaking a promise he had really never intended to keep in the first place and that he had assumed Fizban knew he never meant to keep, but for what Palin had said about his—Tasslehoff’s—funeral.

That funeral speech seemed to indicate that Fizban expected Tasslehoff to keep his promise. Fizban expected it because Tas was not an ordinary kender. He was a brave kender, a courageous kender, and—that dreadful word—an honorable kender.

Tasslehoff looked honor up and he looked it down. He looked it inside out and sideways, and there were just no two ways about it. Honorable people kept promises. Even promises that were terrible promises, promises that meant one had to go back in time to be stepped on by a giant and squashed flat and killed dead.

“Right! That’s got it!” said the gnome briskly. “You can put your foot down. Now, just hop along around that comer. To your right. No, left. No, right. . .”

Tasslehoff hopped, feeling the sock unravel from around his leg. Rounding the comer, he came upon a staircase. A spiral staircase. A spiral staircase made all of silver. A silver spiral staircase in the middle of the hedge maze.

“We’ve done it!” The gnome shouted ecstatically.

“We have?” asked Tasslehoff, staring at the stair. “What have we done?”

“We’ve reached the very center of the hedge maze!” The gnome was capering about, flinging ink to the four winds.

“How beautiful!” said Tasslehoff and walked toward the silver stair.

“Stop! You’re unraveling too fast!” the gnome cried. “We still, have to map the exit.”

At that moment, Tasslehoff’s sock gave out. He barely noticed, he was so interested in the staircase. The stair seemed to rise up out of nothing. The stair had no supports, but hung suspended in the air, shining and fluid as quicksilver. The stair turned round and round upon itself, leading ever upward. Arriving at the bottom, he looked up to see the top.

He looked up and up and all he saw was sky, blue sky that seemed to go on and on like a bright and lovely summer’s day, which is so bright and so lovely that you never want the day to end. You want it to go on and on forever. Yet you know, the sky seemed to say, that night must come, or else there will be no day tomorrow. And the night has its own blessing, its own beauty.

Tasslehoff began to climb the silver stair.

A few steps below, Conundrum was also starting to climb.

“Strange construction,” he remarked. “No pylons, no struts, no rivets, no balusters, no hand railings—safety hazard. Someone should be reported.” The gnome paused about twenty steps up to look around. “My what a view. I can see the harbor—”

The gnome let out a shriek that might have been mistaken for the Mt. Nevermind noon whistle, which generally goes off at about three in the morning.

“My ship!”

Conundrum dropped his maps, he spilled his ink. He dashed down the stair, his wispy hair flying in the wind, tripped over Tasslehoff’s stocking, which was tied to the end of the hedge, picked himself up and ran toward the harbor with a speed that the makers of the steam-powered, piston-driven snowshoes might have tried hard to emulate.

“Stop thief!” the gnome bellowed. “That’s my ship!”

Tasslehoff glanced down to see what all the excitement was about, saw it was the gnome, and thought nothing more about it.

Gnomes were always excitable.

Tasslehoff sat down on the stairs, put his small pointed chin in his hand and thought about promises.

Palin tried to catch up with Goldmoon, but a cramp in his leg had brought him up, gasping in pain. He massaged the leg and then, when he could walk, he limped down the stairs to find the hall in an uproar. Goldmoon had come running through like a madwoman. She had run out before any could stop her. The masters and healers had been taken by such surprise that only belatedly had some thought to chase after her. By that time, she had vanished. The entire Citadel was being turned upside down, searching for her.

Palin kept to himself what Goldmoon had said to him. The others were already speaking of her in tense whispers. Her wild talk about the dead feeding off him would only convince them—as it had convinced him—that the poor woman had been driven insane by her amazing transformation. He could still see her look of horror, still feel the powerful blow that had sent him falling back against the wall. He offered to search for her, but Lady Camilla told him curtly that both her Knights and the citadel guards had been sent to locate the First Master and that they were quite capable of handling the situation.

Not knowing what else to do, he returned to his rooms, telling Lady Camilla to be certain to notify him upon the First Master’s return.

“In the meantime,” he said to himself, sighing, “the best I can do is to leave Schallsea. I’ve made a mess of things. Tas won’t come near me, and I can’t blame him. I am only adding to Goldmoon’s burdens. Perhaps I am the one responsible for her madness!”

His guest room in the Citadel was a spacious one, located on the second floor. He had a small bedroom, a study, and a parlor.

One wall of the parlor was crystal, facing west, providing a magnificent view of sea and sky. Restless, exhausted, but too tense to sleep, he wandered into the parlor and stood gazing out across the sea. The water was like green glass, mirroring the sky. Except for a gray-green line on the horizon, he could not tell where one left off and the other began. The sight was strangely disquieting.

Leaving the parlor, Palin entered his study and sat down at his desk, thinking he would write a letter to Jenna. He picked up the pen, but the words scrambled in his head, made no sense. He rubbed his burning eyes. He had not been able to sleep all night.

Every time he drifted off, he thought he heard a voice calling to him and he woke with a start to find that no one was there.

His head sank down, pillowed on his arms. He closed his eyes.

The smooth crystal sea stole over him, the water warm and dark.

“Palin!” a voice cried, a hollow, whispering voice. “Palin! Wake up!”

“Just a moment more, father,” Palin said, lost in a dream that he was a child again. “I’ll be down—”

Caramon stood over him. Big of body, big of heart as when Palin had last seen him, except that he was wavering and insubstantial as the smoke from dying embers. His father was not alone. He was surrounded by ghosts, who reached out grasping hands to Palin.

“Father!” Palin cried. His head jerked up. He stared in amazement. He could say nothing more, only stare, gaping, at the phantasmic shapes that had gathered around him and seemed to be trying to seize hold of him.

“Get back!” Caramon shouted in that dreadful whisper. He glared around, and the ghosts shrank back, but they did not go far. They stared at Palin with hungry eyes.

“Father,” Palin said—or tried to say. His throat was so dry that the words seemed to shred his flesh. “Father, what—”

“I’ve been searching for you!” Caramon said desperately. “Listen to me! Raistlin’s not here! I can’t find him! Something’s wrong. . . .”

More ghosts appeared in the study. The ghosts surged past Caramon, over him and around him. They could not rest, could not remain long in one place. They seized Caramon and tried to carry him away, like a panicked mob that bears its members to destruction.

Exerting all his effort, Caramon broke free of the raging current and flung himself at Palin.

“Palin!” he shouted, a shout that made no sound,”Don’t kill Tas! He’s the—”

Caramon vanished suddenly. The ephemeral forms swirled a moment and then separated into ragged wisps, as if a hand had brushed through smoke. The wisps were wafted away on a soul-chilling wind.

“Father? I don’t understand! Father!”

The sound of his own voice woke Palin. He sat upright with a start, gasping, as if he’d been splashed with cold water. He stared about wildly. “Father!”

The room was empty. Sunlight streamed in through the open window. The air was hot and fetid.

“A dream,” Palin said, dazedly.

But a very real dream. Remembering the dead clustering around him, Palin felt horror thrilling through him, raising the hair on his arms and his neck. He still seemed to feel the clutching hands of the dead, plucking at his clothes, whispering and pleading. He brushed at his face, as if he’d run into a spider’s web in the dark.

Just as Goldmoon had said. . . .

“Nonsense,” he said to himself out loud, needing to hear a living voice after those terrible whispers. “She put the thought into my mind, that is all. No wonder I’m having nightmares. Tonight, I will take a sleeping potion.”

Someone rattled the doorknob, trying to open the door, only to find that it was locked. Palin’s heart was in his throat.

Then came the sound of metal—a lockpick—clicking and snicking in the door lock.

Not ghosts. Just a kender.

Palin, sighing, stood up and walked to the door, opened it.

“Good morning, Tas,” said Palin.

“Oh, hullo,” said Tasslehoff. The kender was bent double, a lockpick in his hand, peering intently at the place where the lock had been before the door swung open. Tas straightened, tucked the lockpick back in a front pocket.

“I thought you might be asleep. I didn’t want to bother you. Do you have anything to eat?” The kender entered the room, making himself at home.

“Look, Tas,” Palin said, trying hard to be patient, “this isn’t a good time. I am very tired. I didn’t sleep well—”

“Me neither,” said Tas, marching into the parlor and plunking himself down on a chair. “I guess you don’t have anything to eat. That’s all right. I’m not really hungry.”

He sat in silence, swinging his feet back and forth, looking out at the sky and the sea. The kender was silent for several whole minutes put together.

Palin, recognizing this as an extraordinarily unusual phenomenon, drew up another chair and sat down beside him.

“What is it, Tas?” he asked gently.

“I’ve decided to go back,” Tas said, not looking at Palin, but still looking out at the empty sky. “I made a promise. I never thought about it before, but a promise isn’t something you make with your mouth. You make a promise with your heart. Every time you break a promise, your heart breaks a little until pretty soon you have cracks running all through it. I think, all in all, it’s better to be squished by a giant.”

“You are very wise, Tas,” said Palin, feeling ashamed of self. “You are far wiser than I am.”

He paused a moment. He could hear again his father’s voice.

Don’t kill Tas! The vision was real, much more real than any dream. A mage learns to trust his instincts, to listen to the inner voices of heart and soul, for those are the voices that speak the language of magic.

He wondered if, perhaps, this dream wasn’t that inner voice cautioning him to slow down, take no drastic actions, do further study.

“Tas,” said Palin slowly. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want you to go back. At least not yet.”

Tas leaped to his feet. “What? I don’t have to die? Is that true? Do you mean it?”

“I said only that you didn’t have to go back yet,” Palin admonished. “Of course, you have to go back sometime.”

His words were lost on the excited kender. Tas was skipping around the room, scattering the contents of his pouches every which way. “This is wonderful! Can we go sailing off in a boat like Goldmoon?”

“Goldmoon went off in a boat?” Palin repeated, amazed.

“Yes,” said Tas cheerfully. “With the gnome. At least I guess Conundrum caught up with her. He was swimming awfully fast. I didn’t know gnomes could swim so well.”

“She has gone mad,” Palin said to himself. He headed for the door. “We must alert the guards. Someone will have to go rescue her.”

“Oh, they’ve gone after them,” Tas said casually, “but I don’t think they’ll find them. You see, Conundrum told me that the Destructible can dive down under the water just like a dolphin. It’s a sub-sup-soop-whatchamacallit. A boat that travels under water. Conundrum showed it to me last night. It looks exactly like a gigantic steel fish. Say, I wonder if we could see them from here?”

Tasslehoff ran to the window. Pressing his nose against the crystal, he peered out, searching for some sight of the boat. Palin forgot the strange vision in his amazement and consternation. He hoped very much that this was just another of Tasslehoff’s tales and that Goldmoon had not sailed away in a gnomish contraption.

He was about to go downstairs, to find out the truth of the matter, and was heading for the door when the morning stillness was split by a trumpet blast. Bells rang out, loudly, insistently. In the hallway voices could be heard demanding to know what was going on. Other voices answered, sounding panicked.

“What’s that?” Tas asked, still peering out the window.

“They’re sounding the call to arms,” Palin said. “I wonder why—”

“Maybe it has something to do with those dragons,” Tasslehoff said, pointing.

Winged shapes, black against the morning sky, flew toward the citadel. One shape, flying in the center, was larger than the rest, so large that it seemed the green tinge in the sky was a reflection of the sunlight on the dragon’s scales. Palin took one good look. Appalled, he drew back into the center of the room, into the shadows, as if, even at that distance, the dragon’s red eyes might find him.

“That is Beryl!” he said, his throat constricting. “Beryl and her minions!”

Tas’s eyes were round. “I thought it was finding out that I didn’t have to go back to die that was making me feel all squirmy inside. It’s the curse, isn’t it?” He gazed at Palin. “Why is she coming here?”

A good question. Of course, Beryl might have decided to attack the citadel on a whim, but Palin doubted it. The Citadel of Light was in the territory of Khellendros, the blue dragon who ruled this part of the world. Beryl would not encroach on the Blue’s territory unless she had desperate need. And he guessed what that need was.

“She wants the device,” Palin said.

“The magical device?” Tasslehoff reached into a pocket and drew forth the magical artifact.

“Ugh!” He brushed his hand over his face. “You must have spiders in here. I feel all cobwebby.” He clutched the device protectively. “Can the dragon sniff it out, Palin? How does she know we’re here?”

“I don’t know,” Palin said grimly. He could see it all quite clearly. “It doesn’t matter.” He held out his hand. “Give me the device.”

“What are we going to do?” Tas asked, hesitating. He was still a bit mistrustful.

“We’re going to get out of here,” Palin said. “The magical device must not come into her possession.”

Palin could only imagine what the dragon might do with it.

The magic of the device would make the dragon the undisputed ruler of Ansalon. Even if there was no longer past, she could go back to the point after the Chaos War when the great dragons had first come to Ansalon. She could go back to any point in time and change events so that she emerged victorious from any battle. At the very least, she could use the device to transport her great bloated body to circumnavigate the world. No place would be safe from her ravages.

“Give me the device,” Palin repeated urgently, reaching for it.

“We have to leave. Hurry, Tas!”

“Am I coming with you?” Tas asked, still hanging onto the device.

“Yes!” Palin almost shouted. He started to add that they didn’t have much time—but time was the one thing they did have. “Just. . . give me the device.”

Tas handed it over. “Where are we going?” he asked eagerly.

A good question. In all the turmoil, Palin had not given that important matter any thought.

“Solace,” he said. “We will go back to Solace. We’ll alert the Knights. The Solamnic Knights in the garrison ride silver dragons. They can come to the aid of the people here.”

The dragons were closer now, much closer. The sun shone on green scales and red. Their broad wings cast shadows that glided over the oily water. Outside the door the bells clamored, urging people to seek shelter, to flee to the hills and forests. Trumpets sounded, blaring the call to arms. Feet pounded, steel clashed, voices shouted terse orders and commands.

He held the device in his hands. The magic warmed him, calmed him like a draught of fine brandy. He closed his eyes, called to mind the words of the spell, the manipulation of the device.

“Keep close to me!” he ordered Tas.

The kender obediently clamped his hand firmly onto the sleeve of Palin’s robes.

Palin began to recite the spell.

“Thy time is thy own. . .”

He tried to turn the jeweled face of the pendant upward.

Something was not quite right. There was a catch in the mechanism. Palin applied a bit more force, and the face plate shifted.

“Though across it you travel. . .”

Palin adjusted the face plate right to left. He felt something scrape, but the face plate moved.

“Its expanses you see. . .”

Now the back plate was supposed to drop to form two spheres connected by rods. But quite astonishingly, the back plate dropped completely off. It fell to the floor with a clatter.

“Oops,” said Tas, looking down at the spherical plate that lay rolling like a crazed top on the floor. “Did you mean for that to happen?”

“No!” Palin gasped. He stood holding in his hands a single sphere with a rod protruding from one end, staring down at the plate in horror.

“Here, I’ll fix it!” Tas helpfully picked up the broken piece.

“Give it to me!” Palin snatched the plate. He stared helplessly at the plate, tried to fit the rod into it, but there was no place for the rod to go. A misty film of fear and frustration swam before his eyes, blinding him.

He spoke the verse again, terse, panicked. “‘Its expanses you see!’” He shook the sphere and the rod, shook the plate. “Work!” he commanded in anger and desperation. “Work, damn you!”

The chain dropped down, slithered out of Palin’s grasping fingers to lie like a glittering silver snake on the floor. The rod separated from the sphere. Jewels winked and sparkled in the sunlight. And then the room went dark, the light of the jewels vanished. The dragons’ wings blotted out the sun.

Palin Majere stood in the Citadel of Light holding the shattered remnants of the Device of Time Journeying in his crippled hands.

The dead! Goldmoon had told him. They are feeding off you!

He saw his father, saw the river of dead pouring around him.

A dream. No, not a dream. Reality was the dream. Goldmoon had tried to tell him.

“This is what is wrong with the magic! This is why my spells go awry. The dead are leeching the magical power from me. They are all around me. Touching me with their hands, their lips. . . .”

He could feel them. Their touch was like cobwebs brushing across his skin. Or insect wings, such as he had felt at Laurana’s home. So much was made clear now. The loss of the magic. It wasn’t that he had lost his power. It was that the dead had sucked it from him.

“Well,” said Tas, “at least the dragon won’t have the artifact.”

“No,” said Palin quietly, “she’ll have us.”

Though he could not see them, he could feel the dead all around him, feeding.