Test of the Twins

The Hammer of the Gods

Like sharp steel, the clarion call of a trumpet split the autumn air as the armies of the dwarves of Thorbardin rode down into the Plains of Dergoth to meet their foe—their kinsmen. Centuries of hatred and misunderstanding between the hill dwarves and their mountain cousins poured red upon the plains that day. Victory became meaningless—an objective no one sought. To avenge wrongs committed long ago by grandfathers long since dead was the aim of both sides. To kill and kill and kill again—this was the Dwarfgate War.

True to his word, the dwarven hero, Kharas, fought for his King Beneath the Mountain. Clean-shaven, his beard sacrificed to shame that he must fight those he called kin, Kharas was at the vanguard of the army, weeping even as he killed. But as he fought, he suddenly came to see that the word victory had become twisted to mean annihilation. He saw the standards of both armies fall, lying trampled and forgotten upon the bloody plain as the madness of revenge engulfed both armies in a fearsome red wave. And when he saw that no matter who won there would be no victor, Kharas threw down his Hammer—the Hammer forged with the help of Reorx, god of the dwarves—and left the field.

Many were the voices that shrieked “coward.” If Kharas heard, he paid them no heed. He knew his worth in his own heart, he knew it better than any. Wiping the bitter tears from his eyes, washing the blood of his kinsmen from his hands, Kharas searched among the dead until he found the bodies of King Duncan’s two beloved sons. Throwing the hacked and mutilated corpses of the young dwarves over the back of a horse, Kharas left the Plains of Dergoth, returning to Thorbardin with his burden.

Kharas rode far, but not far enough to escape the sound of hoarse voices crying for revenge, the clash of steel, the screams of the dying. He did not look back. He had the feeling he would hear those voices to the end of his days.

The dwarven hero was just riding into the first foothills of the Kharolis Mountains when he heard an eerie rumbling sound begin. Kharas’s horse shied nervously. The dwarf checked it and stopped to soothe the animal. As he did so, he looked around uneasily. What was it? It was no sound of war, no sound of nature.

Kharas turned. The sound came from behind him, from the lands he had just left, lands where his kinsmen were still slaughtering each other in the name of justice. The sound increased in magnitude, becoming a low, dull, booming sound that grew louder and louder. Kharas almost imagined he could see the sound, coming closer and closer. The dwarven hero shuddered and lowered his head as the dreadful roar came nearer, thundering across the Plains.

It is Reorx, he thought in grief and horror. It is the voice of the angry god. We are doomed.

The sound hit Kharas, along with a shock wave—a blast of heat and scorching, foul-smelling wind that nearly blew him from the saddle. Clouds of sand and dust and ash enveloped him, turning day into a horrible, perverted night. Trees around him bent and twisted, his horses screamed in terror and nearly bolted. For a moment, it was all Kharas could do to retain control of the panic-stricken animals.

Blinded by the stinging dust cloud, choking and coughing, Kharas covered his mouth and tried—as best he could in the strange darkness—to cover the eyes of the horses as well. How long he stood in that cloud of sand and ash and hot wind, he could not remember. But, as suddenly as it came, it passed.

The sand and dust settled. The trees straightened. The horses grew calm. The cloud drifted past on the gentler winds of autumn, leaving behind a silence more dreadful than the thunderous noise.

Filled with dreadful foreboding, Kharas urged his tired horses on as fast as he could and rode up into the hills, seeking desperately for some vantage site. Finally, he found it an out-cropping of rock. Tying the pack animals with their sorrowful burden to a tree, Kharas rode his horse out onto the rock and looked out over the Plains of Dergoth. Stopping, he stared down below him in awe. Nothing living stirred. In fact, there was nothing there at all; nothing except blackened, blasted sand and rock.

Both armies were completely wiped out. So devastating was the explosion that not even corpses remained upon the ash-covered Plain. Even the very face of the land itself had changed. Kharas’s horrified gaze went to where the magical fortress of Zhaman had once stood, its tall, graceful spires ruling the Plains. It, too, had been destroyed—but not totally. The fortress had collapsed in upon itself and now—most horribly—its ruins resembled a human skull sitting, grinning, upon the barren Plain of Death.

“Reorx, Father, Forger, forgive us,” murmured Kharas, tears blurring his vision. Then, his head bowed in grief, the dwarven hero left the site, returning to Thorbardin.

The dwarves would believe—for so Kharas himself would report—that the destruction of both armies on the Plains of Dergoth was brought about by Reorx. That the god had, in his anger, hurled his hammer down upon the land, smiting his children.

But the Chronicles of Astinus truly record what happened upon the Plains of Dergoth that day: Now at the height of his magical powers, the archmage, Raistlin, known also as Fistandantilus, and the White-robed cleric of Paladine, Crysania, sought entry into the Portal that leads to the Abyss, there to challenge and fight the Queen of Darkness.

Dark crimes of his own this archmage had committed to reach this point—the pinnacle of his ambition. The Black Robes he wore were stained with blood; some of it his own. Yet this man knew the human heart. He knew how to wrench it and twist it and make those who should have reviled him and spurned him come to admire him instead. Such a one was Lady Crysania, of the House of Tarinius. A Revered Daughter of the church, she possessed one fatal flaw in the white marble of her soul. And that flaw Raistlin found and widened so that the crack would spread throughout her being and eventually reach her heart...

Crysania followed him to the dread Portal. Here she called upon her god and Paladine answered, for, truly, she was his chosen. Raistlin called upon his magic and he was successful, for no wizard had yet lived as powerful as this young man. The Portal opened.

Raistlin started to enter, but a magical, time-traveling device being operated by the mage’s twin brother, Caramon, and the kender, Tasslehoff Burrfoot, interfered with the archmage’s powerful spell. The field of magic was disrupted...

...with disastrous and unforeseen consequences.

1

“Oops,” said Tasslehoff Burrfoot.

Caramon fixed the kender with a stern eye.

“It’s not my fault! Really, Caramon!” Tas protested.

But, even as he spoke, the kender’s gaze went to their surroundings, then he glanced up at Caramon, then back to their surroundings again. Tas’s lower lip began to tremble and he reached for his handkerchief, just in case he felt a snuffle coming. But his handkerchief wasn’t there, his pouches weren’t there. Tas sighed. In the excitement of the moment, he’d forgotten—they’d all been left behind in the dungeons of Thorbardin.

And it had been a truly exciting moment. One minute he and Caramon had been standing in the magical fortress of Zhaman, activating the magical time-traveling device; the next minute Raistlin had begun working his magic and, before Tas knew it, there had been a terrible commotion stones singing and rocks cracking and a horrible feeling of being pulled in six different directions at once and then—WHOOSH—here they were.

Wherever here was. And, wherever it was, it certainly didn’t seem to be where it was supposed to be. He and Caramon were on a mountain trail, near a large boulder, standing ankle-deep in slick ash-gray mud that completely covered the face of the land below them for as far as Tas could see. Here and there, jagged ends of broken rock jutted from the soft flesh of the ash covering. There were no signs of life. Nothing could be alive in that desolation. No trees remained standing; only fire-blackened stumps poked through the thick mud. As far as the eye could see, clear to the horizon, in every direction, there was nothing but complete and total devastation.

The sky itself offered no relief. Above them, it was gray and empty. To the west, however, it was a strange violet color, boiling with weird, luminous clouds laced with lightning of brilliant blue. Other than the distant rumble of thunder, there was no sound... no movement... nothing. Caramon drew a deep breath and rubbed his hand across his face. The heat was intense and, already, even though they had been standing in this place only a few minutes, his sweaty skin was coated with a fine film of gray ash.

“Where are we?” he asked in even, measured tones. “I-I’m sure I haven’t any idea, Caramon,” Tas said. Then, after a pause, “Have you?”

“I did everything the way you told me to,” Caramon replied, his voice ominously calm. “You said Gnimsh said that all we had to do was think of where we wanted to go and there we’d be. I know I was thinking of Solace—”

“I was too!” Tas cried. Then, seeing Caramon glare at him, the kender faltered. “At least I was thinking of it most of the time...”

“Most of the time?” Caramon asked in a dreadfully calm voice.

“Well”—Tas gulped—“I—I did th-think once, just for an instant, mind you, about how—er—how much fun and interesting and, well, unique, it would be to—uh—visit a—uuh... um...

“Um what?” Caramon demanded. “A... mmmmmm.”

“A what?”

“Mmmmm,” Tas mumbled. Caramon sucked in his breath. “A moon!” Tas said quickly.

“Moon!” repeated Caramon incredulously. “Which moon?” he asked after a moment, glancing around. “Oh”—Tas shrugged—“any of the three. I suppose one’s as good as another. Quite similar, I should imagine. Except, of course, that Solinari would have all glittering silver rocks and Lunitari all bright red rocks, and I guess the other one would be all black, though I can’t say for sure, never having seen—”

Caramon growled at this point, and Tas decided it might be best to hold his tongue. He did, too, for about three minutes during which time Caramon continued to look around at their surroundings with a solemn face. But it would have taken more holding than the kender had inside him (or a sharp knife) to keep his tongue from talking longer than that.

“Caramon,” he blurted out, “do—do you think we actually did it? Went to a—uh—moon, that is? I mean, this certainly doesn’t look like anyplace I’ve ever been before. Not that these rocks are silver or red or even black. They’re more of a rock color, but—”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Caramon said gloomily. “After all, you did take us to a seaport city that was sitting squarely in the middle of a desert—”

“That wasn’t my fault either!” Tas said indignantly. “Why even Tanis said—”

“Still”—Caramon’s face creased in puzzlement “this place certainly looks strange, but it seems familiar somehow.”

“You’re right,” said Tas after a moment, staring around again at the bleak, ash-choked landscape. “It does remind me of somewhere, now that you mention it. Only”—the kender shivered—“I don’t recall ever having been anyplace quite this awful... except the Abyss,” he added, but he said it under his breath.

The boiling clouds surged nearer and nearer as the two spoke, casting a further pall over the barren land. A hot wind sprang up, and a fine rain began to fall, mingling with the ash drifting through the air. Tas was just about to comment on the slimy quality of the rain when suddenly, without warning, the world blew up.

At least that was Tas’s first impression. Brilliant, blinding light, a sizzling sound, a crack, a boom that shook the ground, and Tasslehoff found himself sitting in the gray mud, staring stupidly at a gigantic hole that had been blasted in the rock not a hundred feet away from him.

“Name of the gods!” Caramon gasped. Reaching down, he dragged Tas to his feet. “Are you all right?”

“I—I think so,” said Tas, somewhat shaken. As he watched, lightning streaked again from the cloud to ground, sending rock and ash hurtling through the air. “My! That certainly was an interesting experience. Though nothing I’d care to repeat right away,” he added hastily, fearful that the sky, which was growing darker and darker by the minute, might decide to treat him to that interesting experience all over again.

“Wherever we are, we better get off this high ground,” Caramon muttered. “At least there’s a trail. It must lead somewhere.”

Glancing down the mud-choked trail into the equally mud-choked valley below, Tas had the fleeting thought that Somewhere was likely to be every bit as gray and yucky as Here, but, after a glimpse of Caramon’s grim face, the kender quickly decided to keep his thoughts to himself.

As they slogged down the trail through the thick mud, the hot wind blew harder, driving specks of blackened wood and cinders and ash into their flesh. Lightning danced among the trees, making them burst into balls of bright green or blue flame. The ground shook with the concussive roar of the thunder. And still, the storm clouds massed on the horizon. Caramon hurried their pace.

As they labored down the hillside they entered what must once have been, Tas imagined, a beautiful valley. At one time, he guessed, the trees here must have been ablaze with autumn oranges and golds, or misty green in the spring. Here and there, he saw spirals of smoke curling up, only to be whipped away immediately by the storm wind. Undoubtedly from more lightning strikes, he thought. But, in an odd sort of way, that reminded him of something, too. Like Caramon, he was becoming increasingly convinced that he knew this place.

Wading through the mud, trying to ignore what the icky stuff was doing to his green shoes and bright blue leggings, Tas decided to try an old kender trick To Use When Lost. Closing his eyes and blotting everything from his mind, he ordered his brain to provide him with a picture of the landscape before him. The rather interesting kender logic behind this being that since it was likely that some kender in Tasslehoff’s family had undoubtedly been to this place before, the memory was somehow passed on to his or her descendants. While this was never scientifically verified (the gnomes are working on it, having referred it to committee), it certainly is true that—to this day—no kender has ever been reported lost on Krynn.

At any rate, Tas, standing shin-deep in mud, closed his eyes and tried to conjure up a picture of his surroundings. One came to him, so vivid in its clarity that he was rather startled—certainly his ancestors’ mental maps had never been so perfect. There were trees—giant trees—there were mountains on the horizon, there was a lake...

Opening his eyes, Tas gasped. There was a lake! He hadn’t noticed it before, probably because it was the same gray, sludge color as the ash-covered ground. Was there water there, still? Or was it filled with mud?

I wonder, Tas mused, if Uncle Trapspringer ever visited a moon. If so, that would account for the fact that I recognize this place. But surely he would have told someone... Perhaps he would have if the goblins hadn’t eaten him before he had the chance. Speaking of food, that reminds me...

“Caramon,” Tas shouted over the rising wind and the boom of the thunder. “Did you bring along any water? I didn’t. Nor any food, either. I didn’t suppose we’d need any, what with going back home and all. But—”

Tas suddenly saw something that drove thoughts of food and water and Uncle Trapspringer from his mind.

“Oh, Caramon!” Tas clutched at the big warrior, pointing. “Look, do you suppose that’s the sun?”

“What else would it be?” Caramon snapped gruffly, his gaze on a watery, greenish-yellow disk that had appeared through a rift in the storm clouds. “And, no, I didn’t bring any water. So just keep quiet about it, huh?”

“Well, you needn’t be ru—” Tas began. Then he saw Caramon s face and quickly hushed.

They had come to a halt, slipping in the mud, halfway down the trail. The hot wind blew about them, sending Tas’s topknot streaming out from his head like a banner and whipping Caramon’s cloak out. The big warrior was staring at the lake—the same lake Tas had noticed. Caramon’s face was pale, his eyes troubled. After a moment, he began walking again, trudging grimly down the trail. With a sigh, Tas squished along after him. He had reached a decision.

“Caramon,” he said, “let’s get out of here. Let’s leave this place. Even if it is a moon like Uncle Trapspringer must have visited before the goblins ate him, it isn’t much fun. The moon, I mean, not being eaten by goblins which I suppose wouldn’t be much fun either, come to think of it. To tell you the truth, this moon’s just about as boring as the Abyss and it certainly smells as bad.

Besides, there I wasn’t thirsty... . Not that I’m thirsty now,” he added hastily, remembering too late that he wasn’t supposed to talk about it, “but my tongue’s sort of dried out, if you know what I mean, which makes it hard to talk. We’ve got the magical device.” He held the jewel encrusted sceptre-shaped object up in his hand, just in case Caramon had forgotten in the last half-hour what it looked like. “And I promise... I solemnly vow... that I’ll think of Solace with all my brain this time, Caramon. I—Caramon?”

“Hush, Tas,” Caramon said.

They had reached the valley floor, where the mud was ankle-deep on Caramon, which made it about shin-deep on Tas. Caramon had begun to limp again from when he’d fallen and wrenched his knee back in the magical fortress of Zhaman. Now, in addition to worry, there was a look of pain on his face.

There was another look, too. A look that made Tas feel all prickly inside—a look of true fear. Tas, startled, glanced about quickly, wondering what Caramon saw. It seemed pretty much the same at the bottom as it had at the top, he thought—gray and yucky and horrible. Nothing had changed, except that it was growing darker. The storm clouds had obliterated the sun again, rather to Tas’s relief, since it was an unwholesome-looking sun that made the bleak, gray landscape appear worse than ever. The rain was falling harder as the storm clouds drew nearer. Other than that, there certainly didn’t appear to be anything frightening.

The kender tried his best to keep silent, but the words just sort of leaped out of his mouth before he could stop them. “What’s the matter, Caramon? I don’t see anything. Is your knee bothering you? I—”

“Be quiet, Tas!” Caramon ordered in a strained, tight voice. He was staring around him, his eyes wide, his hands clenching and unclenching nervously.

Tas sighed and clapped his hand over his mouth to bottle up the words, determined to keep quiet if it killed him. When he was quiet, it suddenly occurred to him that it was so very quiet around here. There was no sound at all when the thunder wasn’t thundering, not even the usual sounds he was used to hearing when it rained—water dripping from tree leaves and plopping onto the ground, the wind rustling in the branches, birds singing their rain songs, complaining about their wet feathers...

Tas had a strange, quaking feeling inside. He looked at the stumps of the burned trees more closely. Even burned, they were huge, easily the largest trees he had ever seen in his life except for Tas gulped. Leaves, autumn colors, the smoke of cooking fires curling up from the valley, the lake—blue and smooth as crystal...

Blinking, he rubbed his eyes to clear them of the gummy film of mud and rain. He stared around him, looking back up at the trail, at that huge boulder... . He stared at the lake that he could see quite clearly through the burned tree stumps. He stared at the mountains with their sharp, jagged peaks. It wasn’t Uncle Trapspringer who’d been here before... Oh, Caramon!” he whispered in horror.

2

“What is it?” Caramon turned, looking at Tas so strangely that the kender felt his inside prickly feeling spread to his outside. Little bumps appeared all up and down his arms.

“N-nothing,” Tas stammered. “Just my imagination. Caramon,” he added urgently, “let’s leave! Right now. We can go anywhere we want to! We can go back in time to when we were all together, to when we were all happy! We can go back to when Flint and Sturm were alive, to when Raistlin still wore the red robes and Tika—”

“Shut up, Tas,” snapped Caramon warningly, his words accented by a flash of lightning that made even the kender flinch.

The wind was rising, whistling through the dead tree stumps with an eerie sound, like someone drawing a shivering breath through clenched teeth. The warm, slimy rain had ceased. The clouds above them swirled past, revealing the pale sun shimmering in the gray sky. But on the horizon, the clouds continued to mass, continued to grow blacker and blacker. Multicolored lightning flickered among them, giving them a distant, deadly beauty.

Caramon started walking along the muddy trail, gritting his teeth against the pain of his injured leg. But Tas, looking down that trail that he now knew so well—even though it was appallingly different—could see to where it rounded a bend. Knowing what lay beyond that bend, he stood where he was, planted firmly in the middle of the road, staring at Caramon’s back.

After a few moments of unusual silence, Caramon realized something was wrong and glanced around. He stopped, his face drawn with pain and fatigue.

“C’mon, Tas!” he said irritably.

Twisting his topknot of hair around his finger, Tas shook his head.

Caramon glared at him.

Tas finally burst out, “Those are vallenwood trees, Caramon!”

The big man’s stern expression softened. “I know, Tas,” he said wearily. “This is Solace.”

“No, it isn’t!” Tas cried. “It—it’s just some place that has vallenwoods! There must be lots of places that have vallenwoods—”

“And are there lots of places that have Crystalmir Lake, Tas, or the Kharolis Mountains or that boulder up where you and I’ve both seen Flint sitting, carving his wood, or this road that leads to the—”

“You don’t know!” Tas yelled angrily. “It’s possible!” Suddenly, he ran forward, or he tried to run forward, dragging his feet through the oozing, clinging mud as fast as possible. Stumbling into Caramon, he grabbed the big maxis hand and tugged on it. “Let’s go! Let’s get out of here!” Once again, he held up the time-traveling device. “We—we can go back to Tarsis! Where the dragons toppled a building down on top of me! That was a fun time, very interesting. Remember?” His shrill voice screeched through the burned-out trees.

Reaching out, his face grim, Caramon grabbed the magical device from the kender’s hand. Ignoring Tas’s frantic protests, he took the device and began twisting and turning the jewels, gradually transforming it from a sparkling sceptre into a plain, nondescript pendant. Tas watched him miserably.

“Why won’t we go, Caramon? This place is horrible. We don’t have any food or water and, from what I’ve seen, there’s not much likelihood of us finding either. Plus, we’re liable to get blasted right out of our shoes if one of those lightning bolts hits us, and that storm’s getting closer and closer and you know this isn’t Solace—”

“I don’t know, Tas,” Caramon said quietly. “But I’m going to find out. What’s the matter? Aren’t you curious? Since when did a kender ever turn down the chance for an adventure?” He began to limp down the trail again.

“I’m just as curious as the next kender,” Tas mumbled, hanging his head and trudging along after Caramon. “But it’s one thing to be curious about some place you’ve never been before, and quite another to be curious about home. You’re not supposed to be curious about home! Home isn’t supposed to change. It just stays there, waiting for you to come back. Home is someplace you say ‘My, this looks just like it did when I left!’ not ‘My, this looks like six million dragons flew in and wrecked the joint!’ Home is not a place for adventures, Caramon!”

Tas peered up into Caramon’s face to see if his argument had made any impression. If it had, it didn’t show. There was a look of stern resolution on the pain-filled face that rather surprised Tas, surprised and startled him as well.

Caramon’s changed, Tas realized suddenly. And it isn’t just from giving up dwarf spirits. There’s something different about him—he’s more serious and... well, responsible looking, I guess. But there’s something else. Tas pondered. Pride, he decided after a minute of profound reflection.

Pride in himself, pride and determination.

This isn’t a Caramon who will give in easily, Tas thought with a sinking heart. This isn’t a Caramon who needs a kender to keep him out of mischief and taverns. Tas sighed bleakly. He rather missed that old Caramon.

They came to the bend in the road. Each recognized it, though neither said anything—Caramon, because there wasn’t anything to be said, and Tas, because he was steadfastly refusing to admit he recognized it. But both found their footsteps dragging.

Once, travelers coming around that bend would have seen the Inn of the Last Home, gleaming with light. They would have smelled Otik’s spiced potatoes, heard the sounds of laughter and song drift from the door every time it opened to admit the wanderer or regular from Solace. Both Caramon and Tas stopped, by unspoken agreement, before they rounded that corner.

Still they said nothing, but each looked around him at the desolation, at the burned and blasted tree stumps, at the ash covered ground, at the blackened rocks. In their ears rang a silence louder and more frightening than the booming thunder. Because both knew that they should have heard Solace, even if they couldn’t see it yet. They should have heard the sounds of the town—the sounds of the smithy, the sounds of market day, the sounds of hawkers and children and merchants, the sounds of the Inn.

But there was nothing, only silence. And, far off in the distance, the ominous rumble of thunder.

Finally, Caramon sighed. “Let’s go,” he said, and hobbled forward.

Tas followed more slowly, his shoes so caked with mud that he felt as if he were wearing iron-shod dwarf boots. But his shoes weren’t nearly as heavy as his heart. Over and over he muttered to himself, “This isn’t Solace, this isn’t Solace, this isn’t Solace,” until it began to sound like one of Raistlin’s magical incantations.

Rounding the bend, Tas fearfully raised his eyes—and heaved a vast sigh of relief.

“What did I tell you, Caramon?” he cried over the wailing of the wind. “Look, nothing there, nothing there at all. No Inn, no town, nothing.” He slipped his small hand into Caramon’s large one and tried to pull him backward. “Now, let’s go. I’ve got an idea. We can go back to the time when Fizban made the golden span come out of the sky—”

But Caramon, shaking off the kender, was limping ahead, his face grim. Coming to a halt, he stared down at the ground. “What’s this then, Tas?” he demanded in a voice taut with fear.

Chewing nervously on the end of his topknot, the kender came up to stand beside Caramon.

“What’s what?” he asked stubbornly.

Caramon pointed.

Tas sniffed. “So, it’s a big cleared-off space on the ground. All right, maybe something was there.

Maybe a big building was there. But it isn’t there now, so why worry about it? I—Oh, Caramon!”

The big man’s injured knee suddenly gave way. He staggered, and would have fallen if Tas hadn’t propped him up. With Tas’s help, Caramon made his way over to the stump of what had been an unusually large vallenwood, on the edge of the empty patch of mud-covered ground.

Leaning against it, his face pale with pain and dripping with sweat, Caramon rubbed his injured knee.

“What can I do to help?” Tas asked anxiously, wringing his hands. “I know! I’ll find you a crutch!

There must be lots of broken branches lying about. I’ll go look.”

Caramon said nothing, only nodded wearily.

Tas dashed off, his sharp eyes scouring the gray, slimy ground, rather glad to have something to do and not to have to answer questions about stupid cleared-off spaces. He soon found what he was looking for—the end of a tree branch sticking up through the mud. Catching hold of it, the kender gave it a yank. His hands slipped off the wet branch, sending him toppling over backward.

Getting up, staring ruefully at the gunk on his blue leggings, the kender tried unsuccessfully to wipe it off. Then he sighed and grimly took hold of the branch again. This time, he felt it give a little.

“I’ve almost got it, Caramon!” he reported. “I—”

A most unkenderlike shriek rose above the screaming wind. Caramon looked up in alarm to see Tas’s topknot disappearing into a vast sink hole that had apparently opened up beneath his feet.

“I’m coming, Tas!” Caramon called, stumbling forward. “Hang on!”

But he halted at the sight of Tas crawling back out of the hole. The kender’s face was like nothing Caramon had ever seen. It was ashen, the lips white, the eyes wide and staring.

“Don’t come any closer, Caramon,” Tas whispered, gesturing him away with a small, muddy hand. “Please, stay back!”

But it was too late. Caramon had reached the edge of the hole and was staring down. Tas, crouched beside him on the ground, began to shake and sob. “They’re all dead,” he whimpered.

“All dead.” Burying his face in his arms, he rocked back and forth, weeping bitterly.

At the bottom of the rock-lined hole that had been covered by a thick layer of mud lay bodies, piles of bodies, bodies of men, women, children. Preserved by the mud, some were still pitifully recognizable—or so it seemed to Caramon’s feverish gaze. His thoughts went to the last mass grave he had seen the plague village Crysania had found. He remembered his brother’s angry, grief-stricken face. He remembered Raistlin calling down the lightning, burning everything, burning the village to ash.

Gritting his teeth, Caramon forced himself to look into that grave—forced himself to look for a mass of red curls... He turned away with a shuddering sob of relief, then, looking around wildly, he began to run back toward the Inn. “Tika!” he screamed.

Tas raised his head, springing up in alarm. “Caramon!” he cried, slipped in the mud, and fell.

“Tika!” Caramon yelled hoarsely above the howl of the wind and the distant thunder. Apparently oblivious to the pain of his injured leg, he staggered down a wide, clear area, free of tree stumps—the road leading past the Inn, Tas’s mind registered, though he didn’t think it clearly. Getting to his feet again, the kender hurried after Caramon, but the big man was making rapid headway, staggering through the mud, his fear and hope giving him strength.

Tas soon lost sight of him amid the blackened stumps, but he could hear his voice, still calling Tika’s name. Now Tas knew where the big man was headed. His footsteps slowed. His head ached with the heat and the foul smells of the place, his heart ached with what he had just seen. Dragging his heavy, mud-caked shoes, fearful of what he would find ahead, the kender stumbled on.

Sure enough, there was Caramon, standing in a barren space next to another vallenwood stump. In his hand, he held something, staring at it with the look of one who is, at last, defeated. Mud-covered, bedraggled, heartsick, the kender went to stand before him. “What?” he asked through trembling lips, pointing to the object in the big mans hand.

“A hammer,” Caramon said in a choked voice. “My hammer.”

Tas looked at it. It was a hammer, all right. Or at least appeared to have been one. The wooden handle had been burned about three-fourths of the way off. All that was left was a charred bit of wood and the metal head, blackened with flame.

“How—how can you be sure?” he faltered, still fighting, still refusing to believe.

“I’m sure,” Caramon said bitterly. “Look at this.” The handle wiggled, the head wobbled when he touched it. “I made it when I was—was still drinking.” He wiped his eyes with his hand. “It isn’t made very well. The head used to come off about half the time. But then”—he choked—“I never did much work with it anyway.”

Weakened from the running, Caramon’s injured leg suddenly gave out. This time, he didn’t even try to catch himself, but just slumped down into the mud. Sitting in the clear patch of ground that had once been his home, he clutched the hammer in his hand and began to cry.

Tas turned his head away. The big man’s grief was sacred, too private a thing for even his eyes.

Ignoring his own tears, which were trickling past his nose, Tas stared around bleakly. He had never felt so helpless, so lost and alone. What had happened? What had gone wrong? Surely there must be a clue, an answer.

“I-I’m going to look around,” he mumbled to Caramon, who didn’t hear him.

With a sigh, Tas trudged off. He knew where he was now, of course. He could refuse to admit it no longer. Caramon’s house had been located near the center of town, close to the Inn. Tas continued walking along what had once been a street running between rows of houses. Even though there was nothing left now—not the houses, not the street, not the vallenwoods that held the houses—he knew exactly where he was. He wished he didn’t. Here and there he saw branches poking up out of the mud, and he shivered. For there was nothing else. Nothing except...

“Caramon!” Tas called, thankful to have something to investigate and to, hopefully, take Caramon’s mind off his sorrow. “Caramon, I think you should come see this!”

But the big man continued to ignore him, so Tas went off to examine the object by himself.

Standing at the very end of the street, in what had once been a small park, was a stone obelisk.

Tas remembered the park, but he didn’t remember the obelisk. It hadn’t been there the last time he’d been in Solace, he realized, examining it.

Tall, crudely carved, it had, nevertheless, survived the ravages of fire and wind and storm. Its surface was blackened and charred but, Tas saw as he neared it, there were letters carved into it, letters that, once he had cleaned away the muck, he thought he could read.

Tas brushed away the soot and muddy film covering the stone, stared at it for a long moment, then called out softly, “Caramon.”

The odd note in the kender’s voice penetrated Caramon’s haze of grief. He lifted his head. Seeing the strange obelisk and seeing Tas’s unusually serious face, the big man painfully heaved himself up and limped toward it.

“What is it?” he asked.

Tas couldn’t answer, he could only shake his head and point.

Caramon came around to the front and stood, silently reading the roughly carved letters and unfinished inscription.

“I—I’m sorry, Caramon,” Tas murmured, slipping his hand into the big man’s limp, nerveless fingers. Caramon’s head bowed. Putting his hand on the obelisk, he stroked its cold, wet surface as the wind whipped around them. A few raindrops splattered against the stone. “She died alone,” he said. Doubling his fist, he bashed it into the rock, cutting his flesh on the sharp edges.

“I left her alone! I should have been here! Damn it, I should have been here!”

His shoulders began to heave with sobs. Tas, looking over at the storm clouds and realizing that they were moving again, and coming closer, held Caramon s hand tightly.

“I don’t think there would have been anything you could have done, Caramon, if you had been here—” the kender began earnestly.

Suddenly, he bit his words off, nearly biting his tongue in the process. Withdrawing his hand from Caramon’s—the big man never even noticed—the kender knelt down in the mud. His quick eyes had caught sight of something shining in the sickly rays of the pale sun. Reaching down with a trembling hand, Tas hurriedly scooped away the muck.

“Name of the gods,” he said in awe, leaning back on his heels. “Caramon, you were here!”

“What?” he growled. Tas pointed.

Lifting his head, Caramon turned and looked down. There, at his feet, lay his own corpse.

3

At least it appeared to be Caramon’s corpse. It was wearing the armor he had acquired in Solamnia—armor he had worn during the Dwarfgate War, armor he had been wearing when he and Tas left Zhaman, armor he was wearing now... .

But, beyond that, there was nothing specific that identified the body. Unlike the bodies Tas had discovered that had been preserved beneath layers of mud, this corpse lay relatively close to the surface and had decomposed. All that was left was the skeleton of what had obviously been a large man lying at the foot of the obelisk. One hand, holding a chisel, rested directly beneath the stone monument as if his final act had been to carve out that last dreadful phrase. There was no sign of what had killed him.

“What’s going on, Caramon?” Tas asked in a quivering voice. “If that’s you and you’re dead, how can you be here at the same time?” A sudden thought occurred to him. “Oh, no! What if you’re not here!” He clutched at his topknot, twisting it round and round. “If you’re not here, then I’ve made you up. My!” Tas gulped. “I never knew I had such a vivid imagination. You certainly look real.” Reaching out a trembling hand, he touched Caramon. “You feel real and, if you don’t mind my saying so, you even smell real!” Tas wrung his hands. “Caramon! I’m going crazy,” he cried wildly. “Like one of those dark dwarves in Thorbardin!”

“No, Tas,” Caramon muttered. “This is real. All too real.” He stared at the corpse, then at the obelisk that was now barely visible in the rapidly fading light. “And it’s starting to make sense. If only I could—” He paused, staring intently at the obelisk. “That’s it! Tas, look at the date on the monument!”

With a sigh, Tas lifted his head. “358,” he read in a dull voice. Then his eyes opened wide. “358?” he repeated. “Caramon—it was 356 when we left Solace!”

“We’ve come too far, Tas,” Caramon murmured in awe. “We’ve come into our own future.”

The boiling black clouds they had been watching mass along the horizon like an army gathering its full strength for the attack surged in just before nightfall, mercifully obliterating the final few moments of the shrunken sun’s existence.

The storm struck swiftly and with unbelievable fury. A blast of hot wind blew Tas off his feet and slammed Caramon back against the obelisk. Then the rain hit, pelting them with drops like molten lead. Hail beat on their heads, battering and bruising flesh.

More dreadful, though, than wind or rain was the deadly, multicolored lightning that leaped from cloud to ground, striking the tree stumps, shattering them into brilliant balls of flame visible for miles. The booming rumble of thunder was constant, shaking the very ground, numbing the senses.

Desperately trying to find shelter from the storm’s violence, Tas and Caramon huddled beneath a fallen vallenwood, crouching in a hole Caramon dug in the gray, oozing mud. From this scant cover, they watched in disbelief as the storm wreaked further destruction upon the already dead land. Fires swept the sides of the mountains; they could smell the stench of burning wood. Lightning struck near, exploding trees, sending great chunks of ground flying. Thunder hit their ears with concussive force.

The only blessing the storm offered was rainwater. Caramon left his helmet out, upturned, and almost immediately collected water enough to drink. But it tasted horrible—like rotten eggs, Tas shouted, holding his nose as he drank—and it did little to ease their thirst.

Neither mentioned, though both thought of it, that they had no way to store water, nor was there anything to eat. Feeling more like himself since he now knew where he was and when he was (if not exactly why he was or how he got here), Tasslehoff even enjoyed the storm for the first hour or so.

“I’ve never seen lightning that color,” he shouted above the booming thunder, and he watched it with rapt interest. “It’s as good as a street illusionist’s show!” But he soon grew bored with the spectacle.

“After all,” he yelled, “even watching trees get blasted right out of the ground loses something after about the fiftieth time you’ve seen it. If you won’t be lonely, Caramon,” he added with a jaw—cracking yawn, “I think I’ll take a little nap. You don’t mind keeping watch, do you?”

Caramon shook his head, about to reply when a shattering blast made him start. A tree stump not a hundred feet from them disappeared in a blue-green ball of flame.

That could have been us, he thought, staring at the smoldering ashes, his nose wrinkling at the smell of sulfur. We could be next! A wild desire to run came into his head, a desire so strong that his muscles twitched and he had to force himself to stay where he was.

It’s certain death out there. At least here, in this hole, we’re below ground level. But, even as he watched, he saw lightning blow a gigantic hole in the ground itself, and he smiled bitterly. No, nowhere was safe. We’ll just have to ride it out and trust in the gods.

He glanced over at Tas, prepared to say something comforting to the kender. The words died on his lips. Sighing, he shook his head. Some things never changed—kender among them. Curled up in a ball, completely oblivious to the horrors raging around him, Tas was sound asleep.

Caramon crouched down farther into the hole, his eyes on the churning, lightning-laced clouds above him. To take his mind off his fear, he began to try to sort out what had happened, how they had landed in this predicament. Closing his eyes to the blinding lightning, he saw—once again—his twin standing before the dread Portal. He could hear Raistlin’s voice, calling on the five dragons heads that guarded the Portal to open it and permit his entry into the Abyss. He saw Crysania, cleric of Paladine, praying to her god, lost in the ecstasy of her faith, blind to his brother’s evil. Caramon shuddered, hearing Raistlin’s words as clearly as if the archmage were standing beside him.

She will enter the Abyss with me. She will go before me and fight my battles. She will face dark clerics, dark magic-users, spirits of the dead doomed to wander in that cursed land, plus the unbelievable torments that my Queen can devise. All these will wound her in body, devour her mind, and shred her soul. Finally, when she can endure no more, she will slump to the ground to lie at my feet... bleeding, wretched, dying.

She will, with her last strength, hold out her hand to me for comfort. She will not as k me to save her. She is too strong for that. She will give her life for me willingly, gladly. All she will ask is that I stay with her as she dies...

But I will walk past her without a look, without a word. Why? Because I will need her no longer...

It was after hearing these words that Caramon had understood at last that his brother was past redemption. And so he had left him.

Let him go into the Abyss, Caramon had thought bitterly. Let him challenge the Dark Queen. Let him become a god. It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care what happens to him any longer. I am finally free of him—as he is free of me.

Caramon and Tas had activated the magical device, reciting the rhyme Par-Salian had taught the big man. He had heard the stones singing, just as he had heard them sing during the two other times he had been present at the casting of the time-travel spell.

But then, something had happened. Something that was different. Now that he had time to think and consider, he remembered wondering in sudden panic if something was wrong, but he couldn’t think what.

Not that I could have done anything about it anyway, he thought bitterly. I never understood magic—never trusted it either, for that matter.

Another nearby lightning strike shattered his concentration and even caused Tas to jump in his sleep. Muttering in irritation, the kender covered his eyes with his hands and slept on, looking like a dormouse curled up in its burrow.

With a sigh, Caramon forced his thoughts away from storms and dormice back to those last few moments when the magical spell had been activated.

I remember feeling pulled, he realized suddenly, pulled out of shape, as if some force were trying to drag me one way while another was tugging at me from the opposite direction. What was Raistlin doing then? Caramon struggled to recall. A dim image of his brother came to his mind.

He saw Raistlin, his face twisted in horror, staring at the Portal in shock. He saw Crysania, standing in the Portal, but she was no longer praying to her god. Her body seemed wracked by pain, her eyes were wide with terror.

Caramon shivered and licked his lips. The bitter-tasting water had left some kind of film behind that made his mouth taste as if he’d been chewing on rusty nails. Spitting, he wiped his mouth with his hand and leaned back wearily. Another blast made him flinch. And so did the answer. His brother had failed.

The same thing had happened to Raistlin that had happened to Fistandantilus. He had lost control of the magic. The magical field of the time-travel device had undoubtedly disrupted the spell he was casting. That was the only probable explanation Caramon frowned. No, surely Raistlin must have foreseen the possibility of that happening. If so, he would have stopped them from using the device, killed them just as he had killed Tas’s friend, the gnome.

Shaking his head to clear it, Caramon started over, working through the problem much as he had worked through the hated ciphering his mother’d taught him when he was a child. The magical field had been disrupted, that much was obvious. It had thrown him and the kender too far forward in time, sending them into their future.

Which means, I suppose, that all I have to do is activate the device and it will take us back to the present, back to Tika, back to Solace...

Opening his eyes, he looked around. But would they face this same future when they returned?

Caramon shivered. He was soaked through from the torrential rain. The night was growing chill, but it wasn’t the cold that was tormenting him. He knew what it was to live knowing what was going to happen in the future. He knew what it was to live without hope. How could he go back and face Tika and his friends, knowing that this awaited them? He thought of the corpse beneath the monument. How could he go back knowing what awaited him?

If that had been him. He remembered the last conversation between himself and his brother. Tas had altered time—so Raistlin had said. Because kender, dwarves, and gnomes were races created by accident, not design, they were not in the flow of time as were the human, elf, and ogre races.

Thus kender were prohibited from traveling back in time because they had the power to alter it.

But Tas had been send back by accident, leaping into the magical field just as Par-Salian, head of the Tower of High Sorcery, was casting the spell to send back Caramon and Crysania. Tas had altered time. Therefore, Raistlin knew he wasn’t locked into the doom of Fistandantilus. He had the power to change the outcome. Where Fistandantilus had died, Raistlin might live.

Caramon’s s shoulders slumped. He felt suddenly sick and dizzy. What did it mean? What was he doing here? How could he be dead and alive at the same time? Was that even his corpse? Since Tas had altered time, it could be someone else. But—most importantly—what had happened to Solace? “Did Raistlin cause this?” Caramon muttered to himself, just to hear the sound of his voice amid the flashing light and concussive blasts. “Does this have something to do with him? Did this happen because he failed or—”

Caramon caught his breath. Beside him, Tas stirred in his sleep and whimpered and cried out. Caramon patted him absently. “A bad dream,” he said, feeling the kender’s small body twitch beneath his hand. “A bad dream, Tas. Go back to sleep.”

Tas rolled over, pressing his small body close against Caramon’s s, his hands still covering his eyes. Caramon continued to pat him soothingly.

A bad dream. He wished that were all this was. He wished, most desperately, that he would wake up in his own bed, his head pounding from drinking too much. He wished he could hear Tika slamming plates around in the kitchen, cursing him for being a lazy, drunken bum even while she fixed his favorite breakfast. He wished that he could have gone on in that wretched, spirit-soaked existence because then he would have died, died without knowing...

Oh, please let it be a dream! Caramon prayed, lowering his head to his knees and feeling bitter tears creep beneath his closed eyelids.

He sat there, no longer even affected by the storm, crushed by the weight of his sudden understanding. Tas sighed and shivered, but continued to sleep quietly. Caramon did not move.

He did not sleep. He couldn’t. The dream he walked in was a waking dream, a waking nightmare.

He needed only one thing to confirm the knowledge that he knew, in his heart, needed no confirmation.

The storm passed gradually, moving on to the south. Caramon could literally feel it go, the thunder walking the land like the feet of giants. When it was ended, the silence rang in his ears louder than the blasts of the lightning. The sky would be clear now, he knew. Clear until the next storm. He would see the moons, the stars...

The stars...

He had only to raise his head and look up into the sky, the clear sky, and he would know.

For another moment he sat there, willing the smell of spiced potatoes to come to him, willing Tika’s laughter to banish the silence, willing a drunken aching in his head to replace the terrible ache in his heart.

But there was nothing. Only the silence of this dead, barren land, broken by the distant, faraway rumble of thunder.

With a small sigh, barely audible even to himself, Caramon raised his head and looked up into the heavens.

He swallowed the bitter saliva in his mouth, nearly choking. Tears stung his eyes, but he blinked them back so that he could see clearly.

There it was—the confirmation of his fears, the sealing of his doom.

A new constellation in the sky. An hourglass...

“What does it mean?” asked Tas, rubbing his eyes and staring sleepily up at the stars, only half awake.

“It means Raistlin succeeded,” Caramon answered with an odd mixture of fear, sorrow, and pride in his voice. “It means he entered the Abyss and challenged the Queen of Darkness and—defeated her!”

“Not defeated her, Caramon,” said Tas, studying the sky intently and pointing. “There’s her constellation, but it’s in the wrong place. It’s over there when it should be over here. And there’s Paladine.” He sighed. “Poor Fizban. I wonder if he had to fight Raistlin. I don’t think he’d like that. I always had the feeling that he understood Raistlin, perhaps better than any of the rest of us.”

“So maybe the battle is still going on,” Caramon mused. “Perhaps that’s the reason for the storms.” He was silent for a moment, staring up at the glittering shape of the hourglass. In his mind, he could see his brother’s eyes as they had been when he emerged—so long ago—from the terrible test in the Tower of High Sorcery—the pupils of the eyes had become the shape of hourglasses.

“Thus, Raistlin, you will see time as it changes all things,” Par-Salian had told him. “Thus, hopefully, you will gain compassion for those around you.”

But it hadn’t worked.

“Raistlin won,” Caramon said with a soft sigh. “He’s what he wanted to be—a god. And now he rules over a dead world”

“Dead world?” Tas said in alarm. “D-do you mean the whole world’s like this? Everything in Krynn—Palanthas and Haven and Qualinesti? K-kendermore? Everything?”

“Look around,” Caramon said bleakly. “What do you think? Have you seen any other living being since we’ve been here?” He waved a hand that was barely visible by the pale light of Solinari, visible now that the clouds were gone, shining like a staring eye in the sky. “You watched the fire sweep the mountainside. I can see the lightning now, on the horizon.” He pointed east. “And there, another storm coming. No, Tas. Nothing can live through this. We’ll be dead ourselves before long either blown to bits or—”

“Or... or something else...” Tas said miserably. “I-I really don’t feel good, Caramon. And it—it’s either the water or I’m getting the plague again.” His face twisting in pain, he put his hand on his stomach. “I’m beginning to feel all funny inside, like I swallowed a snake.”

“The water,” said Caramon with a grimace. “I’m feeling it, too. Probably some kind of poison from those clouds.”

“Are—are we just going to die here then, Caramon?” Tas asked after a minute of silent contemplation. “Because, if we are, I really think I’d like to go over and lie down next to Tika, if you don’t mind. It—it would make me feel more at home. Until I got to Flint and his tree.” Sighing, he rested his head against Caramon’s strong arm. “I’ll certainly have a lot to tell Flint, won’t I, Caramon? All about the Cataclysm and the fiery mountain and me saving your life and Raistlin becoming a god. I’ll bet he won’t believe that part. But maybe you’ll be there with me, Caramon, and you can tell him I’m truly not, well—er—exaggerating.”

“Dying would certainly be easy,” Caramon murmured, looking wistfully over in the direction of the obelisk. Lunitari was rising now, its blood-red light blending with the deathly white light of Solinari to shed an eerie purplish radiance down upon the ash-covered land. The stone obelisk, wet with rain, glistened in the moonlight, its crudely carved black letters starkly visible against the pallid surface.

“It would be easy to die,” Caramon’ repeated, more to himself than to Tas. “It would be easy to lie down and let the darkness take me.” Then, gritting his teeth, he staggered to his feet. “Funny,” he added as he drew his sword and began to hack a branch off the fallen vallenwood they had been using as shelter. “Raist asked me that once. ‘Would you follow me into darkness?’ he said.”

“What are you doing?” Tas asked, staring at Caramon curiously.

But Caramon didn’t answer. He just kept hacking away at the tree branch.

“You’re making a crutch!” Tas said, then jumped to his feet in sudden alarm. “Caramon! You cant be thinking that! That—that’s crazy! I remember when Raistlin asked you t hat question and I remember his answer when you told him yes! He said it would be the death of you, Caramon! As strong as you are, it would kill you!”

Caramon still did not reply. Wet wood flew as he sawed at the tree branch. Occasionally he glanced behind him at the new storm clouds that were approaching, slowly obliterating the constellations and creeping toward the moons.

“Caramon!” Tas grabbed the big mans arm. “Even if you went... there”—the kender found he couldn’t speak the name—“what would you do?”

“Something I should have done a long time ago,” Caramon said resolutely.

4

“You’re going after him, aren’t you?” Tas cried, scrambling out of the hole—a move which, more or less, put him at eye—level with Caramon, who was still chopping away at the branch. “That’s crazy, just crazy! How will you get there?” A sudden thought struck him. “Where is there anyway? You don’t even know where you’re going! You don’t know where he is!”

“I have a way to get there,” Caramon said coolly, putting his sword back in its sheath. Taking the branch in his strong hands, he bent and twisted it and finally succeeded in breaking it off. “Lend me your knife,” he muttered to Tas.

The kender handed it over with a sigh, starting to continue his protest as Caramon trimmed off small twigs, but the big man interrupted him.

“I have the magical device. As for where there is”—he eyed Tas sternly—“you know that!”

“The—the Abyss?” Tas faltered.

A dull boom of thunder made them both look apprehensively at the approaching storm, then Caramon returned to his work with renewed vigor while Tas returned to his argument. “The magical device got Gnimsh and me out of there, Caramon, but I’m positive it won’t get you in. You don’t want to go there anyway,” the kender added resolutely. “It is not a nice place.”

“Maybe it cant get me in,” Caramon began, then motioned Tas over to him. “Let’s see if this crutch I’ve made works before another storm hits. We’ll walk over to Tika’s the obelisk.”

Slashing off a part of his muddy wet cloak with his sword, the warrior bundled it over the top of the branch, tucked it under his arm and leaned his weight on it experimentally. The crude crutch sank into the mud several inches. Caramon yanked it out and took another step. It sank again, but he managed to move forward at least a little and keep his weight off his injured knee. Tas came over to help him walk and, hobbling along slowly, they inched their way across the wet, slimy ground.

Where are we going? Tas longed to ask, but he was afraid to hear the answer. For once, he didn’t find it hard to keep quiet. Unfortunately, Caramon seemed to hear his thoughts, for he answered his unspoken question.

“Maybe that device cant get me into the Abyss,” Caramon repeated, breathing heavily, “but I know someone who can. The device’ll take us to him.”

“Who?” the kender asked dubiously.

“Par-Salian. He’ll be able to tell us what has happened. He’ll be able to send me... wherever I need to go.”

“Par-Salian?” Tas looked almost as alarmed as if Caramon had said the Queen of Darkness herself. “That’s even crazier!” he started to say, only he was suddenly violently sick instead.

Caramon paused to wait for him, looking pale and ill in the moonlight himself.

Convinced that he had thrown up everything inside him from his topknot down t o his socks, Tas felt a little better. Nodding at Caramon, too tired to talk just yet, he managed to stagger on.

Trudging through the slime and the mud, they reached the obelisk. Both slumped down on the ground and leaned against it, exhausted by the exertion even that short journey of only twenty or so paces had cost them. The hot wind was rising again, the sound of thunder getting nearer.

Sweat covered Tas’s face and he had a green tinge around his lips, but he managed nonetheless, to smile at Caramon with what he hoped was innocent appeal.

“Us going to see Par-Salian?” he said offhandedly, mopping his face with his topknot. “Oh, I don’t think that would be a good idea at all. You’re in no shape to walk all that way. We don’t have any water or food and—”

“I’m not going to walk.” Caramon took the pendant out of his pocket and begin the transformation process that would turn it into a beautiful, jeweled sceptre.

Seeing this and gulping slightly, Tas continued on talking more rapidly.

“I’m certain Par-Salian is—uh—is... busy. Busy! That’s it!” He gave a ghastly grin. “Much too busy to see us now. Probably lots of things to do, what with all this chaos going on around him. So let’s just forget this and go back to someplace in time where we had fun. How about when Raistlin put the charm spell on Bupu and she fell in love with him? That was really funny! That disgusting gully dwarf following him around...

Caramon didn’t reply. Tas twisted the end of his topknot around his finger.

“Dead,” he said suddenly, heaving a mournful sigh. “Poor Par-Salian. Probably dead as a doorknob. After all,” the kender pointed out cheerfully, “he was old when we saw him back in 356.

He didn’t look at all well then, either. This must have been a real shock to him—Raistlin becoming a god and all. Probably too much for his heart. Bam—he probably just keeled right over.”

Tas peeped up at Caramon. There was a slight smile on the big man’s lips, but he said nothing, just kept turning and twisting the pieces of the pendant. A bright flash of lightning made him start.

He glanced at the storm, his smile vanishing. “I’ll bet the Tower of High Sorcery’s not even there any more!” Tas cried in desperation. “If what you say is right and the whole world is... is like this”—he waved his small hand as the foul-smelling rain began to fall—“then the Tower must have been one of the first places to go! Struck by lightning! Blooey! After all, the Tower’s much taller than most trees I’ve seen—”

“The Tower’ll be there,” Caramon said grimly, making the final adjustment to the magical device.

He held it up. Its jewels caught the rays of Solinari and, for an instant, gleamed with radiance.

Then the storm clouds swept over the moon, devouring it. The darkness was now intense, split only by the brilliant, beautiful, deadly lightning.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Caramon grabbed his crutch and struggled to his feet. Tas followed more slowly, gazing at Caramon miserably.

“You see, Tas, I’ve come to know Raistlin,” Caramon continued, ignoring the kender’s woebegone expression. “Too late, maybe, but I know him now. He hated that Tower, just as he hated those mages for what they did to him there. But even as he hates it, he loves it all the same—because it is part of his Art, Tas. And his Art, his magic, means more to him than life itself. No, the Tower will be there.”

Lifting the device in his hands, Caramon began the chant, “‘Thy time is thine own. Though across it you travel—’” But he was interrupted.

“Oh, Caramon!” Tas wailed, clutching at him. “Don’t take me back to Par-Salian! He’ll do something awful to me! I know it! He might turn me into a—a bat!” Tas paused. “And, while I suppose it might be interesting being a bat, I’m not certain I could get used to sleeping upside down, hanging by my feet. And I am rather fond of being a kender, now that I think of it, and—”

“What are you talking about?” Caramon glared at him, then glanced up at the storm clouds. The rain was increasing in fury, the lightning striking nearer.

“Par-Salian!” cried Tas frantically. “I—I messed up his magical time-traveling spell! I went when I wasn’t supposed to! And then I stol—er—found a magical ring that someone had left lying about and it turned me into a mouse! I’m certain he must be rather peeved over that! And then I-I broke the magical device, Caramon. Remember? Well, it wasn’t exactly my fault, Raistlin made me break it! But a really strict person might take the unfortunate attitude that if I had left it alone in the first place—like I knew I was supposed to—then that wouldn’t have happened. And Par-Salian seems an awfully strict sort of person, don’t you think? And while I did have Gnimsh fix it, he didn’t fix it quite right, you know—”

“Tasslehoff,” said Caramon tiredly, “shut up.”

“Yes, Caramon,” Tas said meekly, with a snuffle. Caramon looked at the small dejected figure reflected in the bright lightning and sighed. “Look, Tas, I won’t let Par-Salian do anything to you. I promise. He’ll have to turn me into a bat first.”

“Truly?” asked Tas anxiously.

“My word,” said Caramon, his eyes on the storm. “Now, give me your hand and let’s get out of here.”

“Sure,” said Tas cheerfully, slipping his small hand into Caramon’s large one.

“And Tas... “Yes, Caramon?”

“This time—think of the Tower of High Sorcery in Wayreth! No moons!”

“Yes, Caramon,” Tas said with a profound sigh. Then he smiled again. “You know,” he said to himself as Caramon began to recite the chant again, “I’ll bet Caramon would make a whopping big bat—”

They found themselves standing at the edge of a forest. “It’s not my fault, Caramon!” Tas said quickly. “I thought about the Tower with all my heart and soul. I’m certain I never thought once about a forest.”

Caramon stared intently into the woods. It was still night, but the sky was clear, though storm clouds were visible on the horizon. Lunitari burned a dull, smoldering red. Solinari was dropping down into the storm. And above them, the starry hourglass.

“Well, we’re in the right time period. But where in the name of the gods are we?” Caramon muttered, leaning on his crutch and glaring at the magical device irritably. His gaze went back to the shadowy trees, their trunks visible in the garish moonlight. Suddenly, his expression cleared.

“It’s all right, Tas,” he said in relief. “Don’t you recognize this? It’s Wayreth Forest—the magical forest that stands guard around the Tower of High Sorcery!”

“Are you sure?” Tas asked doubtfully. “It certainly doesn’t look the same as the last time I saw it.

Then it was all ugly, with dead trees lurking about, staring at me, and when I tried to go inside it wouldn’t let me and when I tried to leave it wouldn’t let me and—”

“This is it,” Caramon muttered, folding the sceptre back into its nondescript pendant shape again.

“Then what happened to it?”

“The same thing that happened to the rest of the world, Tas,” Caramon replied, carefully slipping the pendant back into the leather pouch.

Tas’s thoughts went back to the last time he had seen the magical Forest of Wayreth. Set to guard the Tower of High Sorcery from unwelcome intruders, the Forest was a strange and eerie place. For one thing, a person didn’t find the magical forest—it found you. And the first time it had found Tas and Caramon was right after Lord Soth had cast the death spell on Lady Crysania. Tas had wakened from a sound sleep to discover the Forest standing where no forest had been the night before!

The trees then had appeared to be dead. Their limbs were bare and twisted, a chill mist flowed from beneath their trunks. Inside dwelt dark and shadowy shapes. But the trees hadn’t been dead. In fact, they had the uncanny habit of following a person. Tas remembered trying to walk away from the Forest, only to continually find himself—no matter what direction he traveled—always walking into it.

That had been spooky enough, but when Caramon walked into the Forest, it had changed dramatically. The dead trees began to grow, turning into vallenwoods! The Forest was transformed from a dark and forbidding wood filled with death into a beautiful green and golden forest of life. Birds sang sweetly in the branches of the vallenwoods, inviting them inside.

And now the Forest had changed again. Tas stared at it, puzzled. It seemed to be both forests he remembered—yet neither of them. The trees appeared dead, their twisted limbs were stark and bare. But, as he watched, he thought he saw them move in a manner that seemed very much alive! Reaching out, like grasping arms...

Turning his back on the spooky Forest of Wayreth, Tas investigated his surroundings. All else was exactly as it had been in Solace. No other trees stood at all—living or dead. He was surrounded by nothing but blackened, blasted stumps. The ground was covered with the same slimy, gray mud. For as far as he could see, in fact, there was nothing but desolation and death...

“Caramon,” Tas cried suddenly, pointing.

Caramon glanced over. Beside one of the stumps lay a huddled figure.

“A person!” Tas cried in wild excitement. “Someone else is here!”

“Tas!” Caramon called out warningly, but before he could stop him, the kender was dashing over.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Hullo! Are you asleep? Wake up.” Reaching down, he shook the figure, only to have it roll over at his touch, lying stiff and rigid.

“Oh!” Tas took a step backward, then stopped. “Oh, Caramon,” he said softly. “It’s Bupu!”

Once, long ago, Raistlin had befriended the gully dwarf. Now she stared up at the starlit sky with empty, sightless eyes. Dressed in filthy, ragged clothing, her small body was pitifully thin, her grubby face wasted and gaunt. Around her neck was a leather thong. Attached to the end of the thong was a stiff, dead lizard. In one hand, she clutched a dead rat, in the other she held a dried-up chicken leg. As death approached, she had summoned up all the magic she possessed, Tas thought sadly, but it hadn’t helped.

“She hasn’t been dead long,” Caramon said. Limping over, he knelt down painfully beside the shabby little corpse. “Looks like she starved to death.” He reached out his hand and gently closed the staring eyes. Then he shook his head. “I wonder how she came to live this long? The bodies we saw back in Solace must have been dead months, at least.”

“Maybe Raistlin protected her,” Tasslehoff said before he thought.

Caramon scowled. “Bah! It’s just coincidence, that’s all,” he said harshly. “You know gully dwarves, Tas. They can live on anything. My guess is that they were the last creatures to survive. Bupu, being the smartest of the lot, just managed to survive longer than the rest. But—in the end, even a gully dwarf would perish in this god-cursed land.” He shrugged. “Here, help me stand.”

“What—what are we going to do with her, Caramon?” Tas asked bleakly. “Are—are we just going to leave her?”

“What else can we do?” Caramon muttered gruffly. The sight of the gully dwarf and the nearness of the Forest were bringing back painful, unwelcome memories. “Would you want to be buried in that mud?” He shivered and glanced about. The storm clouds were rushing closer; he could see the lightning streaking down to the ground and hear the roar of the thunder. “Besides, we don’t have much time, not the way those clouds are moving in.”

Tas continued to stare at him sorrowfully.

“There’s nothing left alive to bother her anyway, Tas,” he snapped irritably. Then, seeing the grieved expression on the kender’s face, Caramon slowly removed his own cloak and carefully spread it over the emaciated corpse. “We better get going,” he said.

“Good-bye, Bupu,” Tas said softly. Patting the stiff little hand that was tightly clutching the dead rat, he started to pull the corner of the cloak over it when he saw something flash in Lunitari’s red light. Tas caught his breath, thinking he recognized the object. Carefully, he pried the gully dwarf’s death-stiffened fingers apart. The dead rat fell to the ground and—with it—an emerald. Tas picked up the jewel. In his mind, he was back to... where had it been? Xak Tsaroth?

They had been in a sewer pipe hiding from draconian troops. Raistlin had been seized by a fit of coughing... Bupu gazed at him anxiously, then thrust her small hand into her bag, fished around for several moments, and came up with an object that she held up to the light. She squinted at it then sighed and shook her head. “This not what I want,” she mumbled. Tasslehoff, catching sight of a brilliant, colorful flash, crept closer. “What is it?” he asked, even though he knew the answer.

Raistlin, too, was staring at the object with wide glittering eyes. Bupu shrugged. “Pretty rock,” she said without interest, searching through the bag once more.

“An emerald!” Raistlin wheezed.

Bupu glanced up. “You like?” she asked Raistlin. “Very much!” The mage gasped.

“You keep.” Bupu put the jewel in the mage’s hand. Then, with a cry of triumph, she brought out what she had been searching for. Tas, leaning up close to see the new wonder, drew back in disgust. It was a dead—very dead—lizard. There was a piece of chewed-on leather tied around the lizard’s stiff tail. Bupu held it toward Raistlin.

“You wear around neck,” she said. “Cure cough.”

“So Raistlin was here,” Tas murmured. “He gave this to her, he must have! But why? A charm... a gift?...” Shaking his head, the kender sighed and stood up. “Caramon—” he began, then he saw the big man standing, staring into the Forest of Wayreth. He saw Caramon’s pale face and he guessed what he must be thinking, remembering.

Tasslehoff slipped the emerald into a pocket.

The Forest of Wayreth seemed as dead and desolate as the rest of the world around them. But, to Caramon, it was alive with memories. Nervously he stared at the strange trees, their wet trunks and decaying limbs seeming to glisten with blood in Lunitari’s light.

“I was frightened the first time I came here,” Caramon said to himself, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “I wouldn’t have gone in at all if it hadn’t been for Raistlin. I was even more frightened the second time, when we brought Lady Crysania here to try to find help for her. I wouldn’t have gone in then for any reason except those birds lured me with their sweet song.” He smiled grimly.

“‘Easeful the forest. Easeful the mansions perfected. Where we grow and decay no longer’, they sang. I thought they promised help. I thought they promised me all the answers. But I see now what the song meant. Death, that is the only perfect mansion, the only dwelling place where we grow and decay no longer!”

Staring into the woods, Caramon shivered, despite the oppressive heat of the night air. “I’m more frightened of it this time than ever before,” he muttered. “Something’s wrong in there.” A brilliant flash lit up sky and ground with the brightness of day, followed by a dull boom and the splash of rain upon his cheek. “But at least it’s still standing,” he said. “Its magic must be strong—to survive the storm.” His stomach wrenched painfully. Reminded of his thirst, he licked his dry, parched lips. “‘Easeful the forest,’” he muttered.

“What did you say?” asked Tas, coming up beside him. “I said as good one death as another,”

Caramon answered, shrugging.

“You know, I’ve died three times,” said Tas solemnly. “The first was in Tarsis, where the dragons knocked a building down on top of me. The second was in Neraka, where I was poisoned by a trap and Raistlin saved me. And the last was when the gods dropped a fiery mountain on me.

And, all in all”—he pondered a moment “I think I could say that was a fair statement. One death is just about the same as another. You see, the poison hurt a great deal, but it was over pretty quickly. While the building, on the other hand—”

“C’mon”—Caramon grinned wearily—“save it to tell Flint.” He drew his sword. “Ready?”

—Ready,” answered Tas stoutly. “‘Always save the best for last, my father used to say. Although”—the kender paused “I think he meant that in reference to dinner, not to dying. But perhaps it has the same significance.”

Drawing his own small knife, Tas followed Caramon into the enchanted Forest of Wayreth.

5

The darkness swallowed them. Light from neither moon nor stars could penetrate the night of the Forest of Wayreth. Even the brilliance of the deadly, magical lightning was lost here. And though the booming of the thunder could be heard, it seemed nothing but a distant echo of itself. Behind them, Caramon could hear, too, the drumming of the rain and the pelting of the hail. In the Forest, it was dry. Only the trees that stood on the outer fringes were affected by the rain.

“Well, this is a relief!” said Tasslehoff cheerfully. “Now, if we just had some light. I—”

His voice was cut off with a choking gurgle. Caramon heard a thud and creaking wood and a sound like something being dragged along the ground.

“Tas?” he called.

“Caramon!” Tas cried. “It’s a tree! A tree’s got me! Help, Caramon! Help!”

“Is this a joke, Tas?” Caramon asked sternly. “Because it’s not funny—”

“No!” Tas screamed. “It’s got me and it’s dragging me off somewhere!”

“What... where?” Caramon yelled. “I cant see in this damn darkness? Tas?”

“Here! Here!” Tas screamed wildly. “It’s got hold of my foot and it’s trying to tear me in two!”

“Keep yelling, Tas!” Caramon cried, stumbling about in the rustling blackness. “I think I’m close—”

A huge tree limb bashed Caramon in the chest, knocking him to the ground and slamming his breath from his body. He lay there, trying to draw in air, when he heard a creaking to his right. As he slashed at it blindly with his sword, he rolled away. Something heavy crashed right where he’d been lying. He staggered to his feet, but another limb struck him in the small of his back, sending him sprawling face first onto the barren floor of the Forest.

The blow to the back caught him in the kidneys, making him gasp in pain. He tried to struggle back up, but his knee throbbed painfully, his head spun. He couldn’t hear Tas anymore. He couldn’t hear anything except the creaking, rustling sounds of the trees closing in on him.

Something scraped along his arm. Caramon flinched and crawled out of its reach, only to feel something grab his foot. Desperately he hacked at it with his sword. Flying wood chips stung his leg, but apparently did no harm to his attacker.

The strength of centuries was in the tree’s massive limbs. Magic gave it thought and purpose.

Caramon had trespassed on land it guarded, land forbidden to the uninvited. It was going to kill him, he knew.

Another tree limb caught hold of Caramon’s thick thigh. Branches clutched at his arms, seeking a firm grip. Within seconds, he would be ripped apart... He heard Tas cry out in pain...

Raising his voice, Caramon shouted desperately, “I am Caramon Majere, brother of Raistlin Majere! I must speak to Par-Salian or whoever is Master of the Tower now!”

There was a moment’s silence, a moment’s hesitation. Caramon felt the will of the trees waver, the branches loosen their grip ever so slightly.

“Par-Salian, are you there? Par-Salian, you know me! I am his twin. I am your only hope!”

“Caramon?” came a quavering voice. “Hush, Tas!” Caramon hissed.

The silence was as thick as the darkness. And then, slowly, he felt the branches release him. He heard the creaking and rustling sounds again, only this time they were moving slowly away from him. Gasping in relief, weak from fear and the pain and the growing sickness inside him, Caramon lay his head on his arm, trying to catch his breath.

“Tas, are you all right?” he managed to call out.

“Yes, Caramon,” came the kender’s voice beside him. Reaching out his hand, Caramon caught hold of the kender and pulled him close.

Though he heard the sounds of movement in the darkness and knew the trees were withdrawing, he also had the feeling the trees were watching his every move, listening to every word. Slowly and cautiously, he sheathed his sword.

“I am truly thankful you thought of telling Par-Salian who you are, Caramon,” Tas said, panting for breath. “I was just imagining trying to explain to Flint how I’d been murdered by a tree. I’m not certain whether or not you’re allowed to laugh in the Afterlife, but I’ll bet he would have roared—”

“Shhhh,” Caramon said weakly.

Tas paused, then whispered, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, just let me catch my breath. I’ve lost my crutch.”

“It’s over here. I fell over it.” Tas crawled off and returned moments later, dragging the padded tree branch. “Here.” He helped Caramon stagger to his feet.

“Caramon,” he asked after a moment, “how long do you think it will take us to get to the Tower? I—I’m awfully thirsty and, while my insides are a little better since I was sick a while back, I still get queer squirmy feelings in my stomach sometimes.”

“I don’t know, Tas,” Caramon sighed. “I can’t see a damn thing in this darkness. I don’t know where we’re going or what’s the right way or how we’re going to manage to walk without running smack into something—”

The rustling sounds suddenly started again, as though a storm wind were tossing the branches of the trees. Caramon tensed and even Tas stiffened in alarm as they heard the trees start to close in around them once more. Tas and Caramon stood helpless in the darkness as the trees came nearer and nearer. Branches touched their skin and dead leaves brushed their hair, whispering strange words in their ears. Caramon s shaking hand closed over his sword hilt, though he knew it would do little good. But then, when the trees were pressed close around them, the movement and the whispering ceased. The trees were silent once more.

Reaching out his hand, Caramon touched solid trunks to his right and his left. He could feel them massed behind him. An idea occurred to him. He stretched his arm out into the darkness and felt around ahead of him. All was clear.

“Keep close to me, Tas,” he ordered and, for once in his life, the kender didn’t argue. Together, they walked forward into the opening provided by the trees.

At first they moved cautiously, fearful of stumbling over a root or a fallen branch or becoming entangled in brush or tumbling into a hole. But gradually they came to realize that the forest floor was smooth and dry, cleared of all obstacles, free from undergrowth. They had no idea where they were going. They walked in absolute darkness, kept to some irreversible path only by the trees that parted before them and closed in after them. Any deviation from the set path brought them into a wall of trunks and tangled branches and dead, whispering leaves.

The heat was oppressive. No wind blew, no rain fell. Their thirst, lost in their fear, returned to plague them. Wiping the sweat from his face, Caramon wondered at the strange, intense heat, for it was much greater here than outside the Forest. It seemed as if the heat were being generated by the Forest itself. The Forest was more alive that he had noticed the last two times he had been here. It was certainly more alive than the world outside. Amid the rustling of the trees, he could hear—or thought he heard—movements of animals or the rush of birds’ wings, and sometimes he caught a glimpse of eyes shining in the darkness. But being among living beings once more brought no sense of comfort to Caramon. He felt their hatred and their anger and, even as he felt it, he realized that it wasn’t directed against him. It was directed against itself.

And then he heard the birds’ songs again, as he had heard them the last time he’d entered this eerie place. High and sweet and pure, rising above death and darkness and defeat, rose the song of a lark. Caramon stopped to listen, tears stinging his eyes at the beauty of the song, feeling his heart’s pain ease.

But even as the lark’s song pierced his heart with its sweetness, a harsh cackle made him cringe.

Black wings fluttered around him, and his soul was filled with shadows.

“What does it mean, Caramon?” Tas asked in awe as they continued to grope their way through the Forest, guided, always, by the angry trees.

The answer to his question came, not from Caramon, but from other voices, mellow, deep, sad with the ancient wisdom of the owl.

“It means the magic is out of control,” Caramon said softly. “Whatever will holds this Forest in check is just barely hanging on.” He shivered. “I wonder what we’ll find when we get to the Tower.”

“If we get to the Tower,” Tas muttered. “How do we know that these awful, old trees aren’t leading us to the edge of a tall cliff?”

Caramon stopped, panting for breath in the terrible heat. The crude crutch dug painfully into his armpit. With his weight off of it, his knee had begun to stiffen. His leg was inflamed and swollen, and he knew he could not go on much longer. He, too, had been sick, purging his system of the poison, and now he felt somewhat better. But thirst was a torment. And, as Tas reminded him, he had no idea where these trees were leading them.

Raising his voice, his throat parched, Caramon cried out harshly, “Par-Salian! Answer me or I’ll go no farther! Answer me!”

The trees broke out in a clamor, branches shaking and stirring as if in a high wind, though no breeze cooled Caramon’s feverish skin. The birds’ voices rose in a fearful cacophony, intermingling, overlapping, twisting their songs into horrible, unlovely melodies that filled the mind with terror and foreboding.

Even Tas was a bit startled by this, creeping closer to Caramon (in case the big man needed comfort), but Caramon stood resolutely, staring into the endless night, ignoring the turmoil around him.

“Par-Salian!” he called once more.

Then he heard his answer—a thin, high-pitched scream. At the dreadful sound, Caramon’s skin crawled. The scream pierced through the darkness and the heat. It rose above the strange singing of the birds and drowned out the clashing of the trees. It seemed to Caramon as if all the horror and sorrow of the dying world had been sucked up and released at last in that fearful cry.

“Name of the gods!” Tas breathed in awe, catching hold of Caramon’s hand (in case the big man should feel frightened). “What’s happening?”

Caramon didn’t answer. He could feel the anger in the Forest grow more intense, mingled now with an overwhelming fear and sadness. The trees seemed to be prodding them ahead, crowding them, urging them on. The screaming continued for as long as it might take a man to use up his breath, then it quit for the space of a man drawing air into his lungs, then it began again.

Caramon felt the sweat chill on his body.

He kept walking, Tas close by his side. They made slow progress, made worse by the fact that they had no idea if they were making progress at all, since they could not see their destination nor even know if they were headed in the right direction. The only guide they had to the Tower was that shrill, inhuman scream.

On and on they stumbled and, though Tas helped as best he could, each step for Caramon was agony. The pain of his injuries took possession of him and soon he lost all conception of time. He forgot why they had come or even where they were going. To stagger ahead, one step at a time through the darkness that had become a darkness of the mind and soul, was Caramon’s only thought.

He kept walking and walking and walking one step, one step, one step...

And all the time, shrilling in his ears, that horrible, undying scream...

“Caramon!”

The voice penetrated his weary, pain-numbed brain. He had a feeling he had been hearing it for some time now, above the scream, but—if so—it hadn’t pierced the fog of blackness that enshrouded him.

“What?” he mumbled, and now he became aware that hands were grasping him, shaking him. He raised his head and looked around. “What?” he asked again, struggling to regain his grasp of reality. “Tas?”

“Look, Caramon!” The kender’s voice came to him through a haze, and he shook his head, desperately, to clear away the fog in his brain.

And he realized he could see. It was light—moonlight! Blinking his eyes, he stared around. “The Forest?”

“Behind us,” Tas whispered, as though talking about it might suddenly bring it back. “It’s brought us somewhere, at least. I’m just not certain where. Look around. Do you remember this?”

Caramon looked. The shadow of the Forest was gone. He and Tas were standing in a clearing.

Swiftly, fearfully, he glanced around.

At his feet yawned a dark chasm.

Behind them, the Forest waited. Caramon did not have to turn to see it, he knew it was there, just as he knew that they would never reenter it and get out alive. It had led them this far, here it would leave them. But where was here? The trees were behind them, but ahead of them lay nothing just a vast, dark void. They might have been standing on the very edge of a cliff, as Tas had said.

Storm clouds darkened the horizon, but—for the time being—none seemed close. Up above, he could see the moons and stars in the sky. Lunitari burned a fiery red, Solinari’s s silver light glowed with a radiant brilliance Caramon had never seen before. And now, perhaps because of the stark contrast between darkness and light, he could see Nuitari the black moon, the moon that had been visible only to his brother’s eyes. Around the moons, the stars shone fiercely, none brighter than the strange hourglass constellation.

The only sounds he could hear were the angry mutterings of the Forest behind him and, ahead of him, that shrill, horrible scream.

They had no choice, Caramon thought wearily. There was no turning back. The Forest would not permit that. And what was death anyhow except an end to this pain, this thirst, this bitter aching in his heart.

“Stay here, Tas,” he began, trying to disengage the kender’s small hand as he prepared to step forward into the darkness. “I’m going to go ahead a little way and scout—”

“Oh, no!” Tas cried. “You’re not going anywhere without me!” The kender’s hand gripped his even more firmly. “Why, just look at all the trouble you got into by yourself in the dwarf wars!” he added, trying to get rid of an annoying choking feeling in his throat. “And when I did get there, I had to save your life.” Tas looked down into the darkness that lay at their feet, then he gritted his teeth resolutely and raised his gaze to meet that of the big man. “I—I think it would be awfully lonely in—in the Afterlife without you and, besides, I can just hear Flint “Well, you doorknob, what have you gone and done this time? Managed to lose that great hulking hunk of lard, did you? It figures. Now, I suppose I’ll have to leave my nice soft seat here under this tree and set off in search of the muscle-bound idiot. Never did know when to come in out of the rain—”

“Very well, Tas,” Caramon interrupted with a smile, having a sudden vision of the crotchety old dwarf. “It would never do to disturb Flint. I’d never hear the end of it.”

“Besides,” Tas went on, feeling more cheerful, “why would they bring us all this way just to dump us in a pit?”

“Why, indeed?” Caramon said, reflecting. Gripping his crutch, feeling more confident, he took a step into the darkness, Tas following along behind.

“Unless,” the kender added with a gulp, “Par-Salian’s still mad at me...”

6

The Tower of High Sorcery loomed before them—a thing of darkness, silhouetted against the light of moon and stars, looking as though it had been created out of the night itself. For centuries it had stood, a bastion of magic, the repository of the books and artifacts of the Art, collected over the years.

Here the mages had come when they were driven from the Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas by the Kingpriest, here they brought with them those most valued objects, saved from the attacking mobs. Here they dwelt in peace, guarded by the Forest of Wayreth. Young apprentice magic users took the Test here, the grueling Test that meant death to those who failed it.

Here Raistlin had come and lost his soul to Fistandantilus. Here Caramon had been forced to watch as Raistlin murdered an illusion of his twin brother.

Here Caramon and Tas had returned with the gully dwarf, Bupu, bearing the comatose body of Lady Crysania. Here they had attended a Conclave of the Three Robes—Black, Red, and White.

Here they had learned Raistlin’s s ambition to challenge the Queen of Darkness. Here they had met his apprentice and spy for the Conclave—Dalamar. Here the great archmage Par-Salian had cast a time-travel spell on Caramon and Lady Crysania, sending them back to Istar before the mountain fell.

Here, Tasslehoff had inadvertently upset the spell by jumping in to go with Caramon. Thus, the presence of the kender—forbidden by all the laws of magic—allowed time to be altered.

Now Caramon and Tas had returned—to find what? Caramon stared at the Tower, his heart heavy with foreboding and dread. His courage failed him. He could not enter, not with the sound of that pitiful, persistent screaming echoing in his ears. Better to go back, better to face quick death in the Forest. Besides, he had forgotten the gates. Made of silver and of gold, they still stood, steadfastly blocking his way into the Tower. Thin as cobweb they seemed, looking like black streaks painted down the starlit sky. A touch of a kender’s hand might have opened them. Yet magical spells were wound about them, spells so powerful an army of ogres could have hurled itself against those fragile seeming gates without effect.

Still the screaming, louder now and nearer. So near, in fact, that it might have come from Caramon took another step forward, his brow creased in a frown. As he did so, the gate came clearly into view.

And revealed the source of the screaming...

The gates were not shut, nor were they locked. One gate stood fast, as if still spellbound. But the other had broken, and now it swung by one hinge, back and forth, back and forth in the hot, unceasing wind. And, as it blew back and forth slowly in the breeze, it gave forth a shrill, high-pitched shriek.

“It’s not locked,” said Tas in disappointment. His small hand had already been reaching for his lockpicking tools.

“No,” said Caramon, staring up at the squeaking hinge. “And there’s the voice we heard—the voice of rusty metal.” He supposed he should have been relieved, but it only deepened the mystery. “If it wasn’t Par-Salian or someone up there”—his eyes went to the Tower that stood, black and apparently empty before them—“who got us through the Forest, then who was it?”

“Maybe no one,” Tas said hopefully. “If no one’s here, Caramon, can we leave?”

“There has to be someone,” Caramon muttered. “Something made those trees let us pass.”

Tas sighed, his head drooping. Caramon could see him in the moonlight, his small face pale and covered with grime. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes, his lower lip quivered, and a tear was sneaking down one side of his small nose.

Caramon patted him on the shoulder. “Just a little longer,” he said gently. “Hold out just a little longer, please, Tas?”

Looking up quickly, swallowing that traitor tear and its partner that had just dripped into his mouth, Tas grinned cheerfully. “Sure, Caramon,” he said. Not even the fact that his throat was aching and parched with thirst could keep him from adding, “You know me—always ready for adventure.

There’s bound to be lots of magical, wonderful things in there, don’t you think?” he added, glancing at the silent Tower. “Things no one would miss. Not magical rings, of course. I’m finished with magical rings. First one lands me in a wizard’s castle where I met a truly wicked demon, then the next turns me into a mouse. I—”

Letting Tas prattle on, glad that the kender was apparently feeling back to normal, Caramon hobbled forward and put his hand upon the swinging gate to shove it to one side. To his amazement, it broke off—the weakened hinge finally giving way The gate clattered to the gray paving stone beneath it with a clang that made both Tas and Caramon cringe. The echoes bounded off the black, polished walls of the Tower, resounding through the hot night and shattering the stillness.

“Well, now they know we’re here,” said Tas.

Caramon’s hand once again closed over his sword hilt, but he did not draw it. The echoes faded.

Silence closed in. Nothing happened. No one came. No voice spoke.

Tas turned to help Caramon limp ahead. “At least we won’t have to listen to that awful sound anymore,” he said, stepping over the broken gate. “I don’t mind saying so now, but that shriek was beginning to get on my nerves. It certainly sounded very ungate-like, if you know what I mean. It sounded just like... just like...”

“Like that,” Caramon whispered.

The scream split the air, shattering the moonlit darkness, only this time it was different. There were words in this scream—words that could be heard, if not defined.

Turning his head involuntary, though he knew what he would see, Caramon stared back at the gate. It lay on the stones, dead, lifeless.

“Caramon,” said Tas, swallowing, “it—it’s coming from there—the Tower... .”

“End it!” screamed Par-Salian. “End this torment! Do not force me to endure more!”

How much did you force me to endure, O Great One of the White Robes? came a soft, sneering voice into Par-Salian’s mind. The wizard writhed in agony, but the voice persisted, relentless, flaying his soul like a scourge. You brought me here and gave me up to him—Fistandantilus! You sat and watched as he wrenched the lifeforce from me, draining it so that he might live upon this plane.

“It was you who made the bargain,” Par-Salian cried, his ancient voice carrying through the empty hallways of the Tower. “You could have refused him—”

And what? Died honorably? The voice laughed. What kind of choice is that? I wanted to live! To grow in my Art! And I did live. And you, in your bitterness, gave me these hourglass eyes—these eyes that saw nothing but death and decay all around me. Now, you look, Par-Salian! What do you see around you? Nothing but death... Death and decay... So we are even.

Par-Salian moaned. The voice continued, mercilessly, pitilessly.

Even, yes. And now I will grind you into dust. For, in your last tortured moments, Par-Salian, you will witness my triumph. Already my constellation shines in the sky. The Queen dwindles. Soon she will fade and be gone forever. My final foe, Paladine, waits for me now. I see him approach.

But he is no challenge—an old man, bent, his face grieved and filled with the sorrow that will prove his undoing. For he is weak, weak and hurt beyond healing, as was Crysania, his poor cleric, who died upon the shifting planes of the Abyss. You will watch me destroy him, Par-Salian, and when that battle is ended, when the constellation of the Platinum Dragon plummets from the sky, when Solinari’s light is extinguished, when you have seen and acknowledged the power of the Black Moon and paid homage to the new and only god—to me then you will be released, Par-Salian, to find what solace you can in death!

Astinus of Palanthas recorded the words as he had recorded Par-Salian s scream, writing the crisp, black, bold letters in slow, unhurried style. He sat before the great Portal in the Tower of High Sorcery, staring into the Portal’s shadowy depths, seeing within those depths a figure blacker even than the darkness around him. All that was visible were two golden eyes, their pupils the shape of hourglasses, staring back at him and at the white-robed wizard trapped next to him.

For Par-Salian was a prisoner in his own Tower. From the waist up, he was living man—his white hair flowing about his shoulders, his white robes covering a body thin and emaciated, his dark eyes fixed upon the Portal. The sights he had seen had been dreadful and had, long ago, nearly destroyed his sanity. But he could not withdraw his gaze. From the waist up, Par-Salian was living man. From the waist down he was a marble pillar. Cursed by Raistlin, Par-Salian was forced to stand in the topmost room of his Tower and watch—in bitter agony—the end of the world.

Next to him sat Astinus—Historian of the World, Chronicler, writing this last chapter of Krynn’s brief, shining history. Palanthas the Beautiful, where Astinus had lived and where the Great Library had stood, was now nothing but a heap of ash and charred bodies. Astinus had come to this, the last place standing upon Krynn, to witness and record the world’s final, terrifying hours.

When all was finished, he would take the closed book and lay it upon the altar of Gilean, God of Neutrality. And that would be the end.

Sensing the black-robed figure within the Portal turning its gaze upon him, when he came to the end of a sentence, Astinus raised his eyes to meet the figure’s golden ones.

As you were first, Astinus, said the figure, so shall you be last. When you have recorded my ultimate victory, the book will be closed. I will rule unchallenged.

“True, you will rule unchallenged. You will rule a dead world. A world your magic destroyed. You will rule alone. And you will be alone, alone in the formless, eternal void,” Astinus replied coolly, writing even as he spoke. Beside him, Par-Salian moaned and tore at his white hair.

Seeing as he saw everything—without seeming to see Astinus watched the black-robed figure’s hands clench. That is a lie, old friend! I will create! New worlds will be mine. New peoples I will produce—new races who will worship me!

“Evil cannot create,” Astinus remarked, “it can only destroy. It turns in upon itself, gnawing itself. Already, you feel it eating away at you. Already, you can feel your soul shrivel. Look into Paladine’s face, Raistlin. Look into it as you looked into it once, back on the Plains of Dergoth, when you lay dying of the dwarf’s sword wound and Lady Crysania laid healing hands upon you. You saw the grief and sorrow of the god then as you see it now, Raistlin. And you knew then, as you know now but refuse to admit, that Paladine grieves, not for himself, but for you.

“Easy will it be for us to slip back into our dreamless sleep. For you, Raistlin, there will be no sleep. Only an endless waking, endless listening for sounds that will never come, endless staring into a void that holds neither light nor darkness, endless shrieking words that no one will hear, no one will answer, endless plotting and scheming that will bear no fruit as you turn round and round upon yourself. Finally, in your madness and desperation, you will grab the tail of your existence and, like a starving snake, devour yourself whole in an effort to find food for your soul.

“But you will find nothing but emptiness. And you will continue to exist forever within this emptiness—a tiny spot of nothing, sucking in everything around itself to feed your endless hunger...

The Portal shimmered. Astinus quickly looked up from his writing, feeling the will behind those golden eyes waver. Staring past the mirrorlike surface, looking deep into their depths, he saw—for the space of a heartbeat—the very torment and torture he had described. He saw a soul, frightened, alone, caught in its own trap, seeking escape. For the first time in his existence, compassion touched Astinus. His hand marking his place in his book, he half-rose from his seat, his other hand reaching into the Portal...

Then, laughter... eerie, mocking, bitter laughter—laughter not at him, but at the one who laughed. The black-robed figure within the Portal was gone.

With a sigh, Astinus resumed his seat and, almost at the same instant, magical lightning flickered inside the Portal. It was answered by flaring, white light—the final meeting of Paladine and the young man who had defeated the Queen of Darkness and taken her place.

Lighting flickered outside, too, stabbing the eyes of the two men watching with blinding brilliance. Thunder crashed, the stones of the Tower trembled, the foundations of the Tower shook. Wind howled, its wail drowning out Par-Salian’s moaning.

Lifting a drawn, haggard face, the ancient wizard twisted his head to stare out the windows with an expression of horror. “This is the end,” he murmured, his gnarled, wasted hands plucking feebly at the air. “The end of all things.”

“Yes,” said Astinus, frowning in annoyance as a sudden lurching of the Tower caused him to make an error. He gripped his book more firmly, his eyes on the Portal, writing, recording the last battle as it occurred.

Within a matter of moments, all was over. The white light flickered briefly, beautifully, for one instant. Then it died.

Within the Portal, all was darkness.

Par-Salian wept. His tears fell down upon the stone floor and, at their touch, the Tower shook like a living thing, as if it, too, foresaw its doom and was quaking in horror.

Ignoring the falling stones and the heaving of the rocks, Astinus coolly penned the final words. As of Fourthday, Fifthmonth, Year 358, the world ends.

Then, with a sigh, Astinus started to close the book.

A hand slammed down across the pages.

“No,” said a firm voice, “it will not end here.”

Astinus’s hands trembled, his pen dropped a blot of ink upon the paper, obliterating the last words.

“Caramon... Caramon Majere!” Par-Salian cried, pitifully reaching out to the man with feeble hands. “It was you I heard in the Forest!”

“Did you doubt me?” Caramon growled. Though shocked and horrified by the sight of the wretched wizard and his torment, Caramon found it difficult to feel any compassion for the archmage. Looking at Par-Salian, seeing his lower half turned to marble, Caramon recalled all too clearly his twin’s torment in the Tower, his own torment upon being sent back to Istar with Crysania.

“No, not doubted you!” Par-Salian wrung his hands. “I doubted my own sanity! Cant you understand? How can you be here? How could you have survived the magical battles that destroyed the world?”

“He didn’t,” Astinus said sternly. Having regained his composure, he placed the open book down on the floor at his feet and stood up. Glowering at Caramon, he pointed an accusing finger. “What trick is this? You died! What is the meaning...

Without speaking a word, Caramon dragged Tasslehoff out from behind him. Deeply impressed by the solemnity and seriousness of the occasion, Tas huddled next to Caramon, his wide eyes fixed upon Par-Salian with a pleading gaze.

“Do—do you want me to explain, Caramon?” Tas asked in a small, polite voice, barely audible over the thunder. “I—I really feel like I should tell why I disrupted the time-travel spell, and then there’s how Raistlin gave me the wrong instructions and made me break the magical device, even though part of that was my fault, I suppose, and how I ended up in the Abyss where I met poor Gnimsh.” Tas’s eyes filled with tears. “And how Raistlin killed him—”

“All this is known to me,” Astinus interrupted. “So you were able to come here because of the kender. Our time is short. What is it you intend, Caramon Majere?”

The big man turned his gaze to Par-Salian. “I bear you no love, wizard. In that, I am at one with my twin. Perhaps you had your reasons for what you did to me and to Lady Crysania back there in Istar. If so”—Caramon raised a hand to stop Par-Salian who, it seems, would have spoken—“if so, then you are the one who lives with them, not me. For now, know that I have it in my power to alter time. As Raistlin himself told me, because of the kender, we can change what has happened.

“I have the magical device. I can travel back to any point in time. Tell me when, tell me what happened that led to this destruction, and I will undertake to prevent it, if I can.”

Caramon’s gaze went from Par-Salian to Astinus. The historian shook his head. “Do not look to me, Caramon Majere. I am neutral in this as in all things. I can give you no help. I can only give you this warning: You may go back, but you may find you change nothing. A pebble in a swiftly flowing river, that is all you may be.”

Caramon nodded. “If that is all, then at least I will die knowing that I tried to make up for my failure.”

Astinus regarded Caramon with a keen, penetrating glance. “What failure is that you speak of, Warrior? You risked your life going back after your brother. You did your best, you endeavored to convince him that this path of darkness he walked would lead only to his own doom.” Astinus gestured toward the Portal. “You heard me speak to him? You know what he faces?”

Wordlessly, Caramon nodded again, his face pale and anguished.

“Then tell me,” Astinus said coolly.

The Tower shuddered. Wind battered the walls, lightning turned the waning night of the world into a garish, blinding day. The small, bare tower room in which they stood shook and trembled. Though they were alone within it, Caramon thought he could hear sounds of weeping, and he slowly came to realize it was the stones of the Tower itself. He glanced about uneasily.

“You have time,” Astinus said. Sitting back down on his stool, he picked up the book. But he did not close it. “Not long, perhaps, but time, still. Wherein did you fail?”

Caramon drew a shaking breath. Then his brows came together. Scowling in anger, his gaze went to Par-Salian. “A trick, wasn’t it, wizard? A trick to get me to do what you mages could not—stop Raistlin in his dreadful ambition. But you failed. You sent Crysania back to die because you feared her. But her will, her love was stronger than you supposed. She lived and, blinded by her love and her own ambition, she followed Raistlin into the Abyss.” Caramon glowered. “I don’t understand Paladine’s purpose in granting her prayers, in giving her the power to go there—”

“It is not for you to understand the ways of the gods, Caramon Majere,” Astinus interrupted coldly. “Who are you to judge them? It may be that they fail, too, sometimes. Or that they choose to risk the best they have in hopes that it will be still better.”

“Be that as it may,” Caramon continued, his face dark and troubled, “the mages sent Crysania back and thereby gave my brother one of the keys he needed to enter the Portal. They failed. The gods failed. And I failed.” Caramon ran a trembling hand through his hair.

“I thought I could convince Raistlin with words to turn back from this deadly path he walked. I should have known better” The big man laughed bitterly. “What poor words of mine ever affected him? When he stood before the Portal, preparing to enter the Abyss, telling me what he intended, I left him. It was all so easy. I simply turned my back and walked away.”

“Bah!” Astinus snorted. “What would you have done? He was strong then, more powerful than any of us can begin to imagine. He held the magical field together by his force of will and his strength alone. You could not have killed him—”

“No,” said Caramon, his gaze shifting away from those in the room, staring out into the storm that raged ever more fiercely, “but I could have followed him—followed him into darkness—even if it meant my death. To show him that I was willing to sacrifice for love what he was willing to sacrifice for his magic and his ambition.” Caramon turned his gaze upon those in the room. “Then he would have respected me. Then he might have listened. And so I will go back. I will enter the Abyss”—he ignored Tasslehoff’s cry of horror “and there I will do what must be done.”

“What must be done,” Par-Salian repeated feverishly. “You do not realize what that means! Dalamar—”

A blazing, blinding bolt of lightning exploded within the room, slamming those within back against the stone walls. No one could see or hear anything as the thunder crashed over them. Then above the blast of thunder rose a tortured cry.

Shaken by that strangled, pain-filled scream, Caramon opened his eyes, only to wish they had been shut forever before seeing such a grisly sight.

Par-Salian had turned from a pillar of marble to a pillar of flame! Caught in Raistlin’s spell, the wizard was helpless. He could do nothing but scream as the flames slowly crept up his immobile body.

Unnerved, Tasslehoff covered his face with his hands and cowered, whimpering, in a corner. Astinus rose from where he had been hurled to the floor, his hands going immediately to the book he still held. He started to write, but his hand fell limp, the pen slipped from his fingers. Once more, he began to close the cover...

“No!” Caramon cried. Reaching out, he laid his hands upon the pages.

Astinus looked at him, and Caramon faltered beneath the gaze of those deathless eyes. His hands shook, but they remained pressed firmly across the white parchment of the leather-bound volume. The dying wizard wailed in dreadful agony.

Astinus released the open book.

“Hold this,” Caramon ordered, closing the precious volume and thrusting it into Tasslehoff’s hands. Nodding numbly, the kender wrapped his arms around the book, which was almost as big as he was, and remained, crouched in his corner, staring around him in horror as Caramon lurched across the room toward the dying wizard.

“No!” shrieked Par-Salian. “Do not come near me!” His white, flowing hair and long beard crackled, his skin bubbled and sizzled, the terrible cloying stench of burning flesh mingling with the smell of sulfur.

“Tell me!” cried Caramon, raising his arm against the heat, getting as near the mage as he could.

“Tell me, Par-Salian! What must I do? How can I prevent this?”

The wizard’s eyes were melting. His mouth was a gaping hole in the black formless mass that was his face. But his dying words struck Caramon like another bolt of lightning, to be burned into his mind forever.

“Raistlin must not be allowed to leave the Abyss!”