Dragonlance 17 - Dragons Of A Vanished Moon (51 page)

away from me and I lost him. I knew where to look for him, however, and thus, when next he used the device, I was ready. I took him to a time we both recognized, and he began to know me. Finally, I carried him to the present. Past and present are now linked. You have only to follow the one, and it will lead you to the other."

"What do you see?" Paladine asked Zivilyn.

"I see the world," said Zivilyn softly, tears misting his eyes. "I see the past, and I see the present, and I see the future."

"Which future?" asked Mishakal.

"The path the world walks now," Zivilyn replied.

"Then it is not possible to alter it?" Mishakal asked.

"Of course, it is possible," said Raistlin caustically. "We may all yet cease to exist."

"You mean that the blasted kender is not yet dead?" Sar-gonnas growled.

"He is not. The power of Queen Takhisis has grown immense. If you are to have any hope of defeating her, Tasslehoff has yet one important task to accomplish with the Device of Time

Journeying. If he accomplishes this task—"

"—he must be sent back to die," said Sargonnas.

"He will be given the choice," Paladine corrected. "He will not be forced back or sent against his wishes. He has freedom of will, as do all living beings upon Krynn. We cannot deny that to him, just because it suits our convenience."

"Suits our convenience!" Sargonnas roared. "He could destroy us all!"

"If that is the risk we run for our beliefs," said Paladine, "then so be it. Your queen, Sargonnas, disdained free will. She found it easier to rule slaves. You opposed her in that. Would your

minotaurs worship a god who made them slaves? A god who denied them their right to determine their own fate, a right to find honor and glory?"

"No, but then my minotaurs have sense. They are not brainless

kender," muttered Sargonnas, but he muttered it into his fur. "That brings us to the next question, however. Providing

this kender does not yet get us all killed"—he cast a baleful glance at Paladine—"what punishment do we mete out to the goddess whose name I will never more speak? The goddess who betrayed us?"

"There can be only one punishment," said Gilean, resting his hand upon the book.

Paladine looked around. "Are we all agreed?"

"So long as the balance is maintained," said Hiddukel, the keeper of the scales.

Paladine looked at each of the gods. Each, in turn, nodded. Last, he looked at his mate, his beloved Mishakal. She did not nod. She stood with her head bowed.

"It must be," said Paladine gently.

Mishakal lifted up her eyes, looked long and lovingly into his. Then, through her tears, she nodded.

Paladine rested his hand upon the book. "So be it," he said.

27

Tasselhoff Burrfoot

Tasslehoff's life had been made up of glorious moments. Admittedly, there had been some bad moments, too, but the glorious moments shone so very brightly that their radiance overwhelmed the unhappy moments, causing them to fade back into the inner recesses of his memory. He would never forget the bad times, but they no longer had the power to hurt him. They only made him a little sad.

This moment was one of the glorious moments, more glorious

than any moment that had come before, and it kept improving,

with each coming moment shining more gloriously than the next.

Tas was now growing accustomed to traveling through space and time, and while he continued to feel giddy and

disoriented every time the device dumped him out at a destination, he decided that such a sensation, while not suited to everyday use, made for an exhilarating change. This time, after landing and stumbling about a bit and wondering for an exciting instant

if he was going to throw up, the wooziness receded, and he was able to look around and take note of his surroundings.

The first thing he saw was an immense silver dragon, standing

right beside him. The dragon's eyes were horribly wounded by a jagged scar that slashed across them, and Tas recognized the blind man who had spoken to him in the Knights' Council. The dragon, like Tas, appeared to have taken the journey through time in stride, for he was fanning his wings gently and turning his head this way and that, sniffing the air and listening. Either traveling through time did not bother dragons, or being blind kept one from getting dizzy. Tas wondered which it was and made a mental note to ask during a lull in the proceedings.

His other two companions were not faring quite as well. Gerard had not liked the journey the first time, so he could be excused for really not liking it the second time. He swayed on his feet and breathed heavily.

Odila was wide-eyed and gasping and reminded Tas of a poor fish he'd once found in his pocket. He had no idea how the fish had come to be there, although he did have a dim sort of memory that someone had lost it. He'd managed to restore the fish to water, where, after a dazed moment, it had swum off. The fish had the same look that Odila had now.

"Where are we?" she gasped, clinging to Gerard with a

white-knuckled grip.

He looked grimly at the kender. One and all, they looked grimly at the kender.

"Right were we're supposed to be," Tas said confidently. "Where the Dark Queen has kept the gold and silver dragons prisoners." Gripping the device tightly in his hand, he added a soft, "I hope!" that didn't come out all that softly and rather spoiled matters.

Tas had never been anywhere like this before. All around him was gray rock and nothing except gray rock as far as the eye could see. Sharp gray rocks, smooth gray rocks, enormous gray rocks, and small gray rocks. Mountains of gray rock, and valleys of the same gray rock. The sky above him was black as

the blackest thing he'd ever seen, without a single star, and yet he was bathed in a cold white light. Beyond the gray rock, on the horizon, shimmered a wall of ice.

"I feel stone beneath my feet," said Mirror, "and I do not smell vegetation, so I assume the land in which we have arrived is bleak and barren. I hear no sounds of any kind: not the waves breaking on the shore, not the wind rushing through the trees, no sound of bird or animal. I sense that this place is desolate, forbidding."

"That about sums it up," said Gerard, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "Add to that description the fact that the sky above us is pitch black, there is no sun, yet there is light; the air is colder than a troll's backside, and this place appears to be surrounded by what looks like a wall made of

icicles, and you have said all there is to say about it."

"What he didn't say," Tas felt called upon to point out, "is that the light makes the wall of ice shimmer with all sorts of different

colors—"

"Rather like the scales of a many-colored dragon?" Mirror asked.

"That's it!" Tas cried, enthused. "Now that you come to mention

it, it does look like that. It's lovely in a sort of cold and unlovely way. Especially how the colors shift whenever you look at them, dancing all along the icy surface ..."

"Oh, shut up!" ordered Gerard.

Tas sighed inwardly. As much he liked humans, traveling with them certainly took a lot of joy out of the journey.

The cold was biting. Odila shivered, wrapped her robes around her more closely. Gerard stalked over to the ice wall. He did not touch it. He looked it up and down. Drawing his dagger, he jabbed the weapon's point into the wall.

The blade shattered. Gerard dropped the knife with an oath, wrung his hand in pain, then slid his hand beneath his armpit.

"It's so damn cold it broke the blade! I could feel the chill travel through the metal and strike deep into my bone. My hand is still numb."

"We can't survive long in this," Odila said. "We humans will perish of the cold, as will the kender. I can't speak for the dragon."

Tas smiled at her to thank her for including him.

"As for me," said Mirror, "my species is cold-blooded. My blood will thicken and grow sluggish. I will soon lose my ability to fly or even to think clearly."

"And except for you," said Gerard grumpily, looking around the barren wasteland on which they stood, "I don't see a single dragon."

Tasslehoff was forced to admit that he was feeling the chill himself and that it was causing very unpleasant sensations in his toes and the tips of his fingers. He thought with regret back to a fur-lined vest he'd once owned, and he wondered whatever became of it. He wondered also what Rad become of the dragons, for he was absolutely positive—well, relatively certain—that this was the place where he'd been told he would find them. He peered under a few gray rocks with no luck.

"You better take us back, Tas," said Odila, as best she could for her teeth clicking together.

"He can't take us back," said Mirror, and the dragon was oddly complacent. "This place was constructed as a prison for dragons. It has frozen the magic in my blood. I doubt if the magic of the device will work either."

"We're trapped here!" Gerard said grimly. "To freeze to death!"

Tasslehoff drew himself up. This was a glorious moment, and while admittedly it didn't look or feel very glorious (he'd lost all feeling in his toes), he knew what he was doing.

"Now, see here," he said sternly, eyeing Gerard. "We've been through a lot together, you and I. If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be where you are today. That being the case," he added hurriedly, before Gerard could reply, "follow me."

He turned around, bravely confident, ready to proceed forward,

without having the least idea where he was going.

A voice said softly, distinctly, in his ear, "Over the ridge."

"Over the ridge," said Tasslehoff. Pointing at the first ridge of gray rock that he saw, he marched off that direction.

"Should we go after him?" Odila asked.

"We don't dare lose him," said Gerard.

Tas clamored among the gray stones, dislodging small rocks that slid and slithered out from under him and went clattering and bounding down behind him, seriously impeding Odila and Gerard, who were attempting to climb up after him. Glancing back, Tas saw that Mirror had not moved. The silver dragon

continued to stand where he had landed, fanning his wings and twitching his tail, probably to try to keep his blood stirring.

"He can't see," said Tasslehoff, stung by guilt. "And we've left him behind, all alone. Don't worry, Mirror!" he called out. "We'll come back for you."

Mirror said something in response, something that Tas couldn't quite hear clearly, what with all the noise that Odila and Gerard were making dodging rocks, but it seemed to him that he heard, "The glory of this moment is yours, kender. I will be waiting."

"That's the great thing about dragons," Tas said to himself, feeling warm all over. "They always understand."

Topping the ridge, he looked down, and his breath caught in his throat.

As far as the eye could see were dragons. Tasslehoff had never seen so many dragons in one place at one time. He had never imagined that there were so many gold and silver dragons in the world.

The dragons slumbered in a cold-induced torpor. They pressed together for warmth, heads and necks entwined, bodies lying side by side, wings folded, tails wrapped around themselves or their brother dragons. The strange light that caused rainbows to dance mockingly in the ice wall stole the colors from the dragons, left them gray as the rocky peaks that surrounded them.

"Are they dead?" Tas asked, his heart in his throat.

"No," said the voice in his ear, "they are deeply asleep. Their slumber keeps them from dying."

"How do I wake them?"

"You must bring down the ice wall."

"How do I do that? Gerard's knife broke when he tried it."

"A weapon is not what is needed."

Tas thought this over, then said doubtfully, "Can I do it?"

"I don't know," the voice said. "Can you?"

"By all that is wonderful!" Gerard exclaimed. Pulling himself up to the top of the ridge, he now stood beside Tasslehoff. "Would you look at that!"

Odila said nothing. She stood long moments, gazing down at the dragons, then she turned and ran back down the ridge. "I will go tell Mirror."

"I think he knows," said Tasslehoff, then he added, politely, "Excuse me. I have something to do."

"Oh, no. You're not going anywhere!" Gerard cried and made a snatch at Tasslehoff's collar.

He missed.

Tasslehoff began running full tilt, as fast as he could run. The climb had warmed his feet. He could feel his toes—essential for running—and he ran as he had never run before. His feet skimmed over the ground. If he stepped on a loose rock that might have sent him tumbling, he didn't touch it long enough to matter. He fairly flew down the side of the ridge.

He gave himself to the running. The wind buffeted his face and stung his eyes. His mouth opened wide. He sucked in great mouthfuls of cold air that sparkled in his blood. He heard shouts, but their words meant nothing in the wind of his running. He ran without thought of stopping, without the means of stopping. He ran straight at the ice wall.

Wildly excited, Tas threw back his head. He opened his mouth and cried out a loud "Yaaaa" that had absolutely no meaning but just felt good. Arms spread wide, mouth open wide, he crashed headlong into the wall of shimmering ice.

Rainbow droplets fell all around him. Sparkling in a radiant silver light, the droplets plopped down on his upturned face. He raced through the curtain of water that had once been a wall of ice, and he continued to run, out of control, running, madly

running, and then he saw that just ahead of him, almost at his feet, the gray rock ended abruptly and there was nothing below it except black.

Tas flailed his arms, trying to stop. He struggled with his feet, but they seemed to have minds of their own, and he knew with certainty that he was going to sail right off the edge.

My last moment, but a glorious one, he thought.

He was falling, and silver wings flew above him. He felt a claw seize hold of his collar (not a new sensation, for it seemed that someone was always seizing hold of his collar), except that this was different. This was a most welcome seize.