Dragons of a Fallen Sun, page 41
She eyed Palin speculatively. “Tell me, my friend, would you take this device to Dalamar if you had the chance?”
Palin stirred restlessly. “Probably not, now that I think of it. If he knew I had it, the device would not remain long in my possession. “
“Do you truly intend to use it?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Palin was evasive. “What do you think? Would it be dangerous?”
“Yes, very,” she answered.
“But the kender used it—”
“If you believe him, he used it in his own time,” she said.
“And that was the time of the gods. The artifact is now in this time. You know as well as I do that the magic of the artifacts from the Fourth Age is erratic in nature. Some artifacts behave perfectly predictably and others go haywire.”
“So I won’t really find out until I try,” Palin said. “What do you suppose could happen?”
“Who knows!” Jenna lifted her hands, the jewels on her fingers glittered. “The journey alone might kill you. You might be stranded back in time, unable to return. You might accidently do something to change the past and, in so doing, obliterate the present. You might blow up this house and everything around it for a twenty-mile radius. I would not risk it. Not for a kender tale.”
“Yet I would like to go back to before the Chaos War. Go back simply to look. Perhaps I could see the moment where destiny veered off the path it should have taken. Then we would know how to steer it back on the right course.”
Jenna snorted. “You speak of time as if it were a horse and cart. For all you know, this kender has made up this nonsensical story of a future in which the gods never left us. He is a kender, after all.”
“But he is an unusual kender. My father believed him, and Caramon knew something about traveling through time.”
“Your father also said the kender and the device were to be given to Dalamar,” Jenna reminded him.
Palin frowned. “I think we have to find out the truth for ourselves,” he argued. “I believe that it is worth the risk. Consider this, Jenna. If there is another future, a better future for our world, a future in which the gods did not depart, no price would be too great to pay for it.”
“Even your life?” she asked.
“My life!” Palin was bitter. “Of what value is my life to me now? My wife is right. The old magic is gone, the new magic is dead. I am nothing without the magic!”
“I do not believe that the new magic is dead,” Jenna said gravely. “Nor do I believe those who say that we ‘used it all up.’ Does one use up water? Does one use up air? The magic is a part of this world. We could not consume it.”
“Then what has happened to it?” Palin demanded impatiently. “Why do our spells fail? Why do even simple spells require so much energy that one has to go to bed for a week after casting them?”
“Do you remember that old test they used to give us in school?” Jenna asked. “The one where they put an object on the table and tell you to move it without touching it. You do, and then they put the object on a table behind a brick wall and tell you to move it. Suddenly, it’s much more difficult. Since you can’t see the object, it’s difficult to focus your magic on it. I feel the same when I try to cast a spell— as if something is in the way. A brick wall, if you will. Goldmoon told me her healers were experiencing similar feelings—”
“Goldmoon!” Tas cried eagerly. “Where is Goldmoon? If anyone could fix things around here, it’s Goldmoon.” He was on his feet, as if he would run out the door that instant. “She’ll know what to do. Where is she?”
“Goldmoon? Who brought up Goldmoon? What does she have to do with anything?” Palin glowered at the kender. “Please sit down and be quiet! You’ve interrupted my thoughts!”
“I’d really like to see Goldmoon,” Tas said, but he said it quietly, under his breath, so as not to disturb Palin.
The mage lifted the device carefully in his hand, turned it over, examined it, caressed it.
“Your wife was right,” Jenna stated. “You’re going to use the device, aren’t you, Palin?”
“Yes, I am,” he replied, closing his hands over it.
“No matter what I say?”
“No matter what anyone says.” He glanced at her, appeared embarrased. “Thank you for your help. I’m certain my sister can find you a room at the Inn. I’ll send word.”
“Did you really think I would leave and miss this?” Jenna asked, amused.
“It’s dangerous. You said—”
“These days, walking across the street is dangerous.” Jenna shrugged. “Besides, you will need a witness. Or at the very least,” she added lightly, “you’ll need someone to identify your body.”
“Thank you very much,” Palin said, but he managed a smile, the first Tas had seen the mage wear. Palin drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. His hands holding the device trembled.
“When should we try this?” he asked.
“No time like the present,” Jenna said and grinned.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE JOURNEY BACK
“And that’s the rhyme,” said Tasslehoff. “Do you want me to repeat it again?”
“No, I have it memorized,” Palin said.
“Are you sure?” Tas was anxious. “You’ll need to recite it to return to this time. Unless you want to take me with you?” he added excitedly. “Then I could bring us.”
“I am quite sure I have the spell memorized,” Palin said firmly. And, indeed, the words were emblazoned in his mind. It seemed to him that he could see their fiery images on the backs of his eyes. “ And, no, I’m not taking you with me. Someone needs to stay here and keep Mistress Jenna company.”
“And to identify the body,” Tas said, nodding and settling down in his chair, kicking his feet against the rungs. “Sorry, I forgot about that. I’ll stay here. You won’t be gone long anyway. Unless you don’t come back at all,” he mentioned, as an afterthought. Twisting in his chair, he looked at Jenna, who had dragged her chair to a far corner in the kitchen. “Do you really think he’ll blow up?”
Palin carefully ignored the kender.
“I will chant the magic that activates the device. If the spell works, I believe that I will vanish from your sight. As the kender says, I should not be gone long. I do not plan to stay in the past. I am going to my father’s first funeral where, hopefully, I will be able talk to Dalamar. Perhaps I’ll even talk to myself.” He smiled grimly. “I’ll try to find out what went wrong—”
“Take no action, Palin,” Jenna warned. “If you do find out anything useful, return and report. We will need to think long and hard before acting upon it.”
“Who is ‘we’?” Palin demanded, frowning.
“I suggest a gathering of the wise,” Jenna said. “The elven king Gilthas, his mother Laurana, Goldmoon, Lady Crysania—”
“And while we are spreading the word of what we’ve found far and wide and waiting for all these people to come together, Beryl murders us and steals the device,” Palin said acerbically.
“She uses it, and we’re all dead.”
“Palin, you are talking about altering the past,” Jenna said in stern rebuke. “We have no idea what the ramifications would be to those of us living in the present.”
“I know,” he said, after a moment. “I understand. I will return and report. But we must be prepared to act rapidly after that.”
“We will. How long do you think you will be gone?”
“According to Tasslehoff, hundreds of days will pass me for each second of time that passes for you. I estimate that I may be gone an hour or two marked by our time.”
“Good fortune on your journey,” Jenna said quietly. “Kender, come over here and stand beside me.”
Palin took hold of the device, moved to the center of the kitchen. The jewels glinted and sparkled in the sunshine.
He closed his eyes. He stood for long moments in deep thought and concentration. His hands cherished the device. He delighted in the feel of the magic. He began to give himself tp the magic, let it cherish him, caress him. The dark years slipped away like receding waves, leaving memory’s shoreline smooth and clean. Palin was, for a moment, young and filled with hope and promise. Tears blurred his vision.
“Holding the pendant in my hand, I repeat the first verse, turning the face of the device up toward myself.” Palin recited the first words of the spell: “ ‘Thy time is thy own.’ “ Acting as he had been instructed, he twisted the face plate of the device.
“Next, at the second verse, I move the face plate from the right to the left.” He moved the face of the device in the direction indicated and recited the second verse of the chant: “ ‘Though across it you travel.’ ”
“At the recitation of the third verse, the back plate drops to form two spheres connected by rods. “ ‘Its expanses you see.’ ”
Palin gave the device another twist and smiled with pleasure when it performed as designed. He no longer held an egg-shaped bauble in his hand but something that resembled a scepter. “At the fourth verse, twist the top clockwise-a chain will drop down.”
Palin repeated the fourth verse: “ ‘Whirling across forever.’ ”
The chain dropped as Tas had foretold. Palin’s heartbeat increased with excitement and exultation. The spell was working.
“The fifth verse warns me to make certain that the chain is clear of the mechanism. As the sixth verse instructs, I hold the device by each sphere and rotate the spheres forward, while reciting the seventh verse. The chain will wind itself into the body. I hold the device over my head, repeating the final verse, and summon a clear vision of where I want to be and the time I want to be there.”
Palin drew in a deep breath. Manipulating the device as instructed, he recited the rest of the chant: “ ‘Obstruct not its flow. Grasp firmly the end and the beginning. Turn them forward upon themselves. All that is loose shall be secure. Destiny will be over your own head.’ ”
He held the device over his head and brought to mind a vision of the Chaos War, his own part in it. His part and Tasslehoff’s.
Closing his eyes, Palin focused on the vision and gave himself to the magic. He surrendered himself to his longtime mistress. She proved faithful to him.
The floor of the kitchen elongated, scrolled up into the air. The ceiling slid underneath the floor, the dishes on the shelves melted and trickled down the walls, the walls merged with the floor and the ceiling, and all began to roll into themselves, forming an enormous spiral. The spiral sucked in the house and then the woods beyond. Trees and grass wrapped around Palin, then the blue sky, and the ball in which he was the center started to revolve, faster and faster.
His feet left the floor. He was suspended in the center of a whirling, spinning kaleidoscope of places and people and events. He saw Jenna and Tas whirl past, saw the blur of their faces, and then they disappeared. He was moving very slowly but the people around him were moving fast, or perhaps he was the one speeding past them while they walked by him as slowly if they were walking under water.
He saw forests and mountains. He saw villages and cities. He saw the ocean and ships on the ocean, and all of them were drawn up to form part of the great ball in the middle of which he drifted.
The spiral wound down. The spinning slowed, slowed. . . he could see people, objects more clearly. . .
He saw Chaos, the Father of All and of Nothing, a fearsome giant with beard and hair of flame, standing taller than the tallest mountain, the top of his head brushing eternity, his feet extending to the deepest part of the Abyss. Chaos had just smashed his foot down on the ground, presumably killing Tasslehoff but inflicting his death blow upon himself, for Usha would catch a drop of his blood in the Chaos jewel and banish him.
The spinning continued, carrying Palin on past that moment into...
Blackness. Utter darkness. A darkness so vast and deep that Palin feared he’d been struck blind. And then he saw light behind him, blazing firelight.
He glanced back into fire, looked ahead into darkness. Looked into nothing.
Panic-stricken, he closed his eyes. “Go back beyond the Chaos War!” he said, half-suffocated with fear. “Go back to my childhood! Go back to my father’s childhood! Go back to Istar! Go back to the Kingpriest! Go back to Huma! Go back. . . go back. . .”
He opened his eyes.
Darkness, emptiness, nothing.
He took another step and realized that he had taken a step too far. He had stepped off the precipice.
He screamed, but no sound came from his throat. Time’s rushing wind carried it away from. He experienced the sickening sensation of falling that one feels in a dream. His stomach dropped. Cold sweat bathed him. He tried desperately to wake himself, but then came the horrible knowledge that he would never wake.
Fear seized him, paralyzed him. He was falling, and he would continue to fall and fall and keep falling into time’s well of darkness.
Time’s empty well. Having been the one using the device to travel back through time, Tasslehoff had never actually seen what happened to himself when he used it. He had always rather regretted this and had once tried to go back to watch himself going back, but that hadn’t worked. He was extremely gratified, therefore, to watch Palin using the device and quite charmed to see the mage disappear before his very eyes.
All that was interesting and exciting, but it lasted only a few moments. Then Palin was gone, and Tasslehoff and Jenna were alone in the Majere’s kitchen.
“We didn’t explode,” Tas observed.
“No, we didn’t,” Jenna agreed. “Disappointed?”
“A little. I’ve never seen anything explode before, not counting the time Fizban tried to boil water to cook an egg. Speaking of eggs, would you like something to eat while we wait? I could heat up some oatmeal.” Tas felt it incumbent upon himself to act as host in Usha’s and Palin’s absence.
“Thank you,” Jenna replied, glancing at the remains of the congealed oatmeal in the pot and making a slight grimace, “but I think not. If you could find some brandy, now, I believe I could use a drink—”
Palin materialized in the room. He was ashen, disheveled, and he clutched the device in a hand that shook so he could barely hold it.
“Palin!” Jenna cried, rising from her chair in amazement and consternation. “Are you hurt?”
He stared at her wildly, without recognition. Then he shuddered, gave a gasping sigh of relief. Staggering, he very nearly fell. His hand went limp. The device tumbled to the floor and bounced away in a flash of jewels. Tas chased after it, caught it before it rolled into the fireplace.
“Palin, what went wrong?” Jenna ran to him. “What happened? Tas, help me!”
Palin started to crumple. Between the two of them, Tas and Jenna eased the mage to the floor.
“Go fetch blankets,” Jenna ordered.
Tasslehoff dashed out of the kitchen, pausing only a moment to deposit the device in a pocket. He returned moments later, tottering under a load of several blankets, three pillows, and a feather mattress that he had dragged off the master bed.
Palin lay on the floor, his eyes closed. He was too weak to move or speak. Jenna put her hand on his wrist, felt his pulse racing. His breathing was rapid, rasping, his body chilled. He was shivering so that his teeth clicked together. She wrapped two of the blankets snugly around him.
“Palin!” she called urgently.
He opened his eyes, stared at her. “Darkness. All darkness.”
“Palin, what do you mean? What did you see in the past?”
He grasped her hand, hard, hurting her. He held fast to her as if he were being swept away by a raging river and she was his only salvation.
“There is no past!” he whispered through pallid lips. He sank back, exhausted.
“Darkness,” he murmured. “Only darkness.”
Jenna sat back on her heels, frowning. “That doesn’t make any sense. Brandy,” she said to Tas.
She held the flask to Palin’s lips. He drank a little, and some color came to his pale cheeks. The shivering eased. Jenna took a swallow of the brandy herself, then handed the flask to the kender. Tas helped himself, just to be sociable.
“Put it back on the table,” Jenna ordered.
Tas removed the flask from his pocket and, after several more sociable gulps, he placed it on the table.
The kender looked down at Palin in remorseful concern.
“What’s wrong? Was this my fault? I didn’t mean it, if it was.”
Palin’s eyes flared open again. “Your fault!” he cried hoarsely. Flinging off the blankets, he sat up. “Yes, it’s your fault!”
“Palin, keep calm,” Jenna said, alarmed. “You’ll make yourself ill again. Tell me what you saw.”
“I’ll tell you what I saw, Jenna.” Palin said, his voice hollow.
“I saw nothing. Nothing!”
“I don’t understand,” Jenna said.
“I don’t either.” Palin sighed, concentrated, tried to order his thoughts. “I traveled back in time and as I did so, time unrolled before me, like a vast parchment. I saw all that has passed in the Fifth Age. I saw the coming of the great dragons. I saw the dragon purge. I saw the building of this Citadel. I saw the raising of the shield over Silvanesti. I saw the dedication of the Tomb of the Last Heroes. I saw the defeat of Chaos, and that is where it all ends. Or begins.”
“Ends? Begins?” Jenna repeated; baffled. “But that can’t be, Palin. What of the Fourth Age? What of the War of the Lance? What of the Cataclysm?”
