Fistanadantilus Reborn

CHAPTER 29

First Misham, Reapember

374 AC

"It got him again!" Danyal cried, patting Emilo's cheek, trying to draw some response from the stiff, motionless kender.

Once again Mirabeth knelt beside the afflicted fellow, talking to him soothingly. They heard him gasp some strangled, inarticulate sounds, though Dan thought he heard the word "skull" in the midst of the ravings, and finally he drew a deep breath and lapsed into a more relaxed, normal-seeming slumber.

Some time later the kender stirred, then sat up, looking around with a dazed expression.

"Can you walk?" Danyal asked, shivering at the dull look he detected in Emilo's eyes.

"Walk… yes… yes, I can walk." The kender's voice seemed to gain strength from the positive response.

"Good." Dan turned to Mirabeth. "'Do you want to lead the way? I'll help Emilo."

"I think I should stay beside him," she said quietly. "Why don't you see if you can find us a path?"

Foryth brought up the rear as the lad started through the woods, trying to keep his feet on the smooth, winding trail that he could barely see. He felt a glimmer of fear, a moment of melancholy and longing for the secure bed in the loft of his parents' house. But then he banished the memory, knowing he would never be able to go back there. Trying to stare through the darkness, he concentrated on looking for a good path up the rough valley floor.

Moving at a fast walk, he gradually realized that he could, in fact, discern the path better than before. Looking upward, he saw a patch of the eastern sky between two conical evergreens; the rosy tint of dawn was already reaching toward the zenith.

Still making good time, Danyal focused his attentions on locating a good place for them to hide during the day The copse of woods they traversed ended soon, and the small party broke into a jog as they crossed a meadow of tall grass and drooping, dew-laden flowers. The stream was out of sight to the left, running through a channel that was slightly deeper than ground level. Soon the enclosing arms of the pines were around them again as they entered a much larger grove.

"It looks like this woods goes some way up the side valley," Danyal noted as the four travelers paused to catch their breath. "Maybe we should get off this trail and try to hide ourselves up there, at least until dark."

"Are we running from something?" Emilo asked. His eyes no longer lacked focus, but he asked the question with obvious sincerity.

"Some men-evil men. I'll tell you all about it when we find shelter," Mirabeth said. "Until then you'll just have to trust us."

"I do," the kender agreed, chewing on the trailing end of his topknot. "But why don't I remember anything? Even my name?"

"I told you, you're Emilo Haversack," the kendermaid declared sternly. "And you're our friend, and you'll just have to be satisfied with that for now."

Silently accepting, Emilo mouthed the clearly unfamiliar sounds of his name several times. Danyal, meanwhile, ducked under the low branches of an evergreen and found a small clearing giving passage through the woods.

"Go on ahead," he told Mirabeth as she followed with Emilo and Foryth. "I'll brush our tracks off the trail to cover our route if we're followed."

"Good idea!" the historian agreed, absently grinding his heel into the ground as he tried to adjust his bootlace. "Would you like me to help?"

"Urn, no," the lad demurred. Foryth followed the two kender while Danyal followed their backtrail to the edge of the meadow. The grass was trampled flat and would undoubtedly mark their passing for some hours to come, so he decided to concentrate on masking their route through the woods.

In several places, he could see footprints, mostly from the historian, in the soft loam of the needle-covered ground. He brushed these with a branch, starting to back carefully along the route they had taken.

Abruptly he was taken with an idea. He stepped into the meadow at the end of the trail the companions had made. Moving at a right angle to their path, he took low, sweeping steps toward the bank of the stream. Trampling the grass, he stepped firmly, holding his feet in place to leave clear marks.

When he reached the edge of the water, he saw that the banks of the streambed were slightly taller than his own height. A short distance below, the water babbled cheerfully along a flat, graveled bed, the flowage no more than a foot or two deep. At the lip of the tall bank, Danyal skidded downward, intentionally leaving a gouge in the dirt and a footprint at the very edge of the water. Next he rinsed his feet free of mud, then climbed across several boulders until he reached the fringe of the wood. Seizing a root of pine, he pulled himself into the shelter of the trees. Here he stepped lightly as he returned to the original backtrail and continued to sweep away their tracks until he reached the place where the trio had turned toward the deep woods.

Danyal took care to obliterate every sign of their passage, feeling a strange thrill at the thought that he was deceiving Kelryn Darewind, Zack, and the other bandits. Of course, a stern and practical part of him was afraid that they might be followed, but another part was able to take grim pleasure in the knowledge that his careful masking would be certain to thwart the bandit chief and his villainous group of thugs.

After he had concealed a hundred paces or more of the connecting trail, Danyal tossed his broom-branch aside and jogged after his companions, following footsteps that were barely visible in the smooth forest floor.

However, he would have gone right past the clump of brambly wild rose that clustered at the base of a low rock promontory, except for the fact that the bush seemed to call out to him as he went by.

"Sssst! Dan-this way."

He stopped and stared, finally perceiving the outlines of a dark opening at the base of the rocky knoll. Gingerly he stepped around the prickly bushes, avoiding the thorns while at the same time taking care not to leave any sign of his passage.

Foryth, Mirabeth, and Emilo were huddled within a small alcove in the rock. The place was too tiny to be called a cave, but it was spacious enough to hold them all as long as nobody wanted to lie down, and, more importantly, it was well concealed from the woods beyond.

"You're Danyal, they told me," Emilo said as soon as the youth made himself comfortable in the small enclosure. "Pleased to make your acquaintance… again."

"Urn, me, too." It was strange, this loss of memory, but the lad was glad to see that Emilo seemed to have regained his vitality. Dan wanted to ask questions: Why, for example, had Emilo taken it into his head to rescue them? But he doubted that the kender would know the answers, at least not now, and he didn't want to upset him further by posing queries that would only highlight the unfortunate fellow's loss of memory.

In any event, it seemed to be the kender who was determined to ask questions.

"Foryth said you were traveling into the mountains by yourself, and then Mirabeth told me that your village was burned by a dragon. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It wasn't your fault," Danyal declared curtly, even as he was surprised by his own snide reaction. Still, one thing he knew was that he didn't want sympathy. He laughed bitterly as he remembered his plans in that long ago time-was it just four days ago? — when his world had died.

"I was on my way to kill that dragon," he admitted, sheepish over his earlier brusque attitude. "I guess I never gave any thought about how I was going to do it. All I had was a fishing pole and a little knife, and I don't even have those anymore!" Again he laughed, trying to sound harsh, sensing that he had wandered dangerously close to the brink of tears.

"And what about you?" Emilo, to Danyal's relief, had turned to Foryth. "Do your studies often bring you this far away from the temple library?"

"Er, no." Foryth cleared his throat, then repeated the mannerism, and Danyal sensed that he was reluctant to talk, a reluctance that made the lad all that much more curious about the historian's tale.

"Actually, I have been given a chance-sort of a last chance, to tell the truth-to be ordained into the priesthood of Gilean."

"This is some kind of a test?" Danyal guessed. "Getting to Loreloch?"

"Not that, specifically. You see, I have studied the priestly doctrines for many years, but I have never been able to master the casting of a spell. I pray to Gilean with utmost sincerity, asking for guidance, for a hint of power. But there is nothing there."

"And if you don't cast this spell…?" probed the youth.

"Then I shall never become a priest. My life's objective, all the fruits of my labors, the volumes of my writing, shall have been for naught."

"I don't think so!" objected Danyal. "You told me that story about Fistandantilus. It was good. You don't have to cast a spell in order to make the words you write on paper, the histories you tell, mean something. To make them be important, I mean."

"But the most highly regarded historians of Krynn have been priests of Gilean," moaned Foryth. "And all I need is one spell, a single, simple enchantment that would prove my faith. Then I could join their numbers!"

"I wouldn't count on a priest of the Seekers giving you one," Danyal muttered sourly. "And I can't believe you still want to go to Loreloch!"

"It's more important now than ever. I simply must see the writings, the records of Kelryn Darewind. How did the archmage become a god? Where does he reside? And are there other facets to his faith, sects in different parts of Krynn? These questions must be answered."

The historian drew a deep breath, continuing firmly. "There are very few things about Fistandantilus that have escaped the light of the historian's torch. But the details of his passing, at the time of Skullcap's creation and beyond, have always called for further investigation. And now it seems there was real import there, occurrences that we never suspected!"

"And you're going to study those things but remain aloof, uninvolved?" Dan asked, remembering the historian's concern over his intervention that had kept the lad alive.

"Er… yes, of course. That is, I have to be. Tsk." Foryth shook his head, flustered. "My efforts would be doomed to failure if I should let myself become attached to individuals or, worse yet, attempt to play a role myself."

"But how does all this study and research help you learn a spell?" Mirabeth voiced the same question that Danyal had been wondering about. "My father said- that is, I heard somewhere that priests pray for their spells, get them from their god." She halted, flustered, though only Danyal seemed to notice the kendermaid's distress.

"Well, I guess it doesn't, to tell the absolute truth," Foryth admitted with slumping shoulders. But then he raised his head, and his narrow chin jutted forward in an approximation of determination. "But I don't know where to find a spell, so I thought it made sense to do something useful while I was looking."

"You can't argue with that," Emilo agreed with an amiable chuckle.

Despite his willingness to do just that, Danyal was forced to concede that the kender was right-Foryth's decision made as much sense as anything else. "Good luck, then," said the lad. "I hope you find that magic."

"You know, in a way I envy you kender," Foryth said, leaning his head against the cave wall and shifting his eyes from Mirabeth to Emilo. "Your folk are, in many ways, the favorites of Gilean. True neutrals, that's the kender. Nary a care in the world as you go wherever your mood and your interests take you."

"I don't know about that," Emilo said seriously. He chewed thoughtfully on the tail of his topknot. "Of course, right now I don't known much about anything. But it seems to me that we have cares just like humans. And that business about being truly neutral… I'd like to think we know the difference between good and evil.

"And that we practice a little more of the former," the kender added with a soft laugh. He lapsed into silence, and for a time, the four companions just rested. They shared cool water from Mirabeth's canteen, and finally Danyal decided he would bring up some of the things that had been bothering him.

"About these… seizures," he said to Emilo. "Have you had them all your life?"

"Well, yes, I think so. Actually," the kender admitted, chewing on his topknot, "I'm not sure. You see, I don't remember my childhood or my early life. So I've had these attacks ever since I can recall."

"What's the first thing you remember? Where were you, and how long ago was it?"

"Well, those are good questions. I remember that I was in Dergoth, on the plains around Skullcap. I met some elves there, and they fed me and gave me water. From what they told me, I was about ready to die there in the desert."

"When did that happen?" Foryth asked, warming to the questions with the interest of the true historian. "Did they tell you the year?"

"As a matter of fact, they did. It was two hundred and fifty something, as I recall."

"That's more than a hundred years ago," Danyal said with a whistle. "I didn't think kender lived to be that old-not that you look old, that is. But that's part of it, isn't it? You don't look that old."

"More than a hundred years?" Emilo looked puzzled. "I could have sworn that it was just last winter, or maybe a little before that. But not a hundred years!"

"What do you remember of where you were, what you were doing, last winter?" Foryth took over the interview. "Were you and Mirabeth traveling together then?"

"Well…" Suddenly Emilo looked frightened. He cast a worried glance at the kendermaid and asked, "I didn't know you then, did I?"

"No," she said.

"But-but why can't I remember? When did I meet you? How long ago?"

"It was just a few days ago, actually," Mirabeth said. She turned her head, including the two humans in her explanation. "I was wandering on my own-that is, I'd been by myself for a little while. I was having some trouble, I guess you could say, and Emilo came along and helped me out."

"Did he rescue you from bandits, too?" Danyal asked, only half teasing.

"No," she replied with a soft laugh. The lad decided that he liked that sound a lot. "I was trying to camp, but my lean-to had fallen over and my bedroll was soaked with rain. I couldn't get a fire going, and I was sitting in the woods, teeth chattering, feeling sorry for myself. He almost scared me out of my skin when he walked up and said-"

"Emilo Haversack, at your service?" guessed Danyal.

Mirabeth grinned at him. "The same thing he said to you, I presume."

"And he was-at our service, I mean. Really, you saved our lives," declared the young human. "I guess I haven't told you that, but you did."

"Oh, now, tsk," interjected Foryth Teel. "I admit that business of being tied up was unpleasant, but I hardly think Kelryn was going to do us in."

"Then you weren't paying attention! Do you remember Zack-the way he liked to play with his knife?" Danyal shuddered at the memory. "He wasn't ever going to let us get away, despite what Kelryn said."

Still, he admitted privately, it was Kelryn Darewind himself who was the scariest of all the bandits.

"You mentioned that wizard, Fistandantilus," Emilo said, drawing the historian's attention away from Dan. "It seems to me I've heard a lot about him. I just can't remember any of it."

"There's a lot to know," declared Foryth enthusiastically. "He was the Master of Past and Present, you know. The first wizard-and one of only a very small number-who learned how to travel through time. An arch-mage who manipulated history by altering his own position in the River of Time. He had an influence on ages of elves and men, in an era before the Cataclysm-"

"And in Skullcap and Dergoth afterward," noted the kender, bobbing his head.

"He must have been awfully old. Was he human, or perhaps an elf?" asked Danyal.

"Oh, absolutely human-in a way, human many times over," Foryth said with a grim chuckle. "You see, he absorbed the spiritual essence of other humans, for the most part young men who were gifted with magic. These sacrificial lambs were destroyed, and the power of the archmage was maintained and increased with the passing of years. Eventually he had consumed the essence of many men, and his power had become greater than any other mage's in the history of Krynn."

"How?" The lad had a hard time imagining the magical power, the bizarre consumption, that the historian described.

"It's said that he used a gem-a bloodstone. That's one of the things I wondered about, but Kelryn Darewind wouldn't discuss it."

"I saw a bloodstone once," Emilo said.

Danyal looked at the kender and gasped in shock. Emilo's eyes had gone blank and lifeless, devoid of expression or awareness. His jaw hung slack and he sighed sorrowfully, shoulders slumping as if the air had all gone out of him.

"A bloodstone?" Foryth was apparently unaware of the kender's sudden alteration, for he pressed forward with obvious excitement. "They're very rare, you know! Where was it? Could it have been-"

"It pulsed… hot, hot blood…" Emilo spoke sharply, visibly straining to push out the words. His lips stretched taut over his teeth, and he grimaced between each quick, bursting phrase. The voice was deep and rasping, very unlike the high-pitched chatter of the kender's normal speech.

"Yes, I remember the stone. And then the portal was there, colors… whirling. I sensed the magic. It pulled me, drew me in!" Eyes wild, Emilo backed against the rock wall, recoiling from the three companions who watched, aghast. "And then she was there, laughing, waiting for me!"

The Kender's sudden scream of terror reverberated through the enclosed space of the cave, and Danyal instantly pictured the sound resonating through the woods and valley far beyond their hiding place.

Emilo drew another breath, but by then the youth was on him, pressing him down, a sturdy hand pressed over the kender's mouth. Only when he felt the thin, wiry body relax underneath him did Danyal release his hold, rocking back on his haunches as he tried to offer his frightened companion a reassuring smile.

Mirabeth was kneeling at Emilo's side, and she took his hand and cradled his head against her shoulder. The kender's eyes were blank again, but this time Danyal was almost relieved by the lack of expression; it was certainly preferable to the awful, haunting terror that swept over Emilo Haversack's features a few moments before.

The sun was high in the sky when at last they relaxed. After sipping another drink of water, Danyal was relieved to lean his head on a mossy log and allow himself to fall asleep.