Dragonlance 15 - Dragons Of A Fallen Sun (37 page)

Did you hear something? See something? What?"

"That! That right there!" Tasslehoff clutched the Knight's shirt

and pointed.

Sir Gerard regarded the kender with an extremely grim look.

"Is this your idea of a joke?"

"Oh, no," Tas stated. "My idea of a joke is this. I say, 'Knock,

knock,' and you say, 'Who's there?' and I say, 'Minotaur,' and you

say 'Minotaur who,' and I say, 'so that's what you stepped in.'

That's my idea of a joke. This has to do with that strange light in

the sky."

"That's the moon," said Sir Gerard through gritted teeth.

"No!" Tasslehoff was astonished. "Really? The moon?"

He looked back at it. The thing did appear to have certain

moonlike qualities: it was orb-shaped, and it was in the sky

alongside the stars, and it glowed. But that was where the resem-

blance ended.

"If that's Solinari," Tas said, eyeing the moon skeptically.

"Then what happened to him? Is he sick?"

Sir Gerard did not answer. He lay back down on his blanket,

placed his sword within hand's reach, and, grabbing hold of a

comer of his blanket rolled himself up in it. "Go to sleep," he said

coldly, "and stay that way until moming."

"But I want to know about the moon!" Tas persisted, hun-

kering down beside the Knight nothing daunted by the fact that

Gerard's back was turned and his head covered up by the blan-

ket and that he was still obviously extremely irate at having

been violently wakened for nothing. Even his back looked

angry. "What happened to make Solinari look so pale and

sickly? And where's lovely red Lunitari? I guess I'd wonder

where Nuitari was if I'd been able to see the black moon in the

first place, which I couldn't, so it might be there and I just

wouldn't know it-"

Sir Gerard flipped over quite suddenly. His head emerged

from the bl~nket, revealing a stem and unfriendly eye. "You

know perfectly well that Solinari has not been seen in the skies

these past thirty-odd years, ever since the end of the Chaos War.

Lunitari either. So you can stop this ridiculous nonsense. I am

now going to sleep. I am to be awakened for nothing less than an

invasion of hobgoblins. Is that clear?"

"But the moon!" Tas argued. "I remember when I came to

Caramon's first funeral Solinari shown so very brightly that it

was like day only it was night. Palin said this was Solinari's way

of honoring his father and-"

Gerard flipped over again and covered his head.

Tas continued talking ootil he heard the Knight start to snore.

Tas gave the Knight an experimental poke. in the shoulder, to no

avail. The kender thought that he might try prying open one of

Gerard's eyelids to see if he was really asleep or just shamming,

a trick which had never been known to fail with Flint, although it

usually ended with the irate dwarf chasing the kender around the

room with the poker.

Tas had other things to think about, however, and so he left

the Knight alone and returned to his own blanket. Lying down,

he put his hands beneath his head and gazed at the strange moon,

which gazed back at him without the slightest hint of recognition.

This gave Tas an idea. Abandoning the moon, he shifted his gaze

to the stars, searched for his favorite constellations.

They were gone, as well. The stars he looked at now were cold

and distant and unfamiliar. The only understanding star in the

night sky was a single red star burning brightly not far from the

strange moon. The star had a warm and comforting glow about

it, which made up for the empty cold feeling in the pit of Tas's

stomach, a feeling he had once thought, when he was a young

kender, meant he needed something to eat but that he now knew,

after years of adventuring, was his inside's way of telling him

that something was wrong. In fact, he'd felt pretty much this

same way just about the time the giant's foot had been poised

over his head.

Tas kept his gaze on the red star, and after awhile the cold,

empty feeling didn't hurt so much anymore. Just when he was

feeling more comfortable and had put the thoughts of the strange

moon and the unfriendly stars and the looming giant out of his

mind, and just when he was starting to enjoy the night, sleep

crept up and nabbed him again.

The kender wanted to discuss the moon the next day, and dis-

cuss it he did, but only with himself. Sir Gerard never responded

to any of Tasslehoff's innumerable questions, never turned

around, just rode along at a slow pace, the reins of Tas's pony in

his hands.

The Knight rode in silence, though he was watchful and

alert, constantly scanning the horizon. The entire world seemed

to be riding in silence today, as well, once Tasslehoff quit talk-

ing, which he did after a couple of hours. It wasn't so much that

he was bored with talking to himself, it was the answering him-

self that grew old fast. They met no one on the road, and now

even the sounds of other living creatures came to an end. No

bird sang. No squirrel scampered across the path. No deer

walked among the shadows or ran from them, white tail flash-

ing an alarm.

"Where are the animals?" Tas asked Gerard.

"They are in hiding," the Knight answered, the first words

he'd spoken all morning. "They are afraid."

The air was hushed and still, as if the world held its breath,

fearful of being heard. Not even the trees rustled and Tas had the

feeling that if they had been able to make the choice, they would

have dragged their roots out of the ground and run away.

"What are they afraid of?" Tasslehoff asked with interest,

looking around in excitement, hoping for a haunted castle or a

crumbling manor or, at the very least, a spooky cave.

"They fear the great green dragon. Beryl. We are in the West

Plains now. We have crossed over into her realm."

"You keep talking about this green dragon. I've never heard

of her. The only green dragon I knew was na~ed Cyan Blood-

bane. Who is Beryl? Where did she come from?"

"Who knows?" Gerard said impatiently. "From across the sea,

I suppose, along with the great red dragon Malystryx and others

of their foul kind."

"Well, if she isn't from around these parts, why doesn't some

hero just go stick a lance into her?" Tas asked cheerfully.

Gerard halted his horse. He tugged on the reins of Tasslehoff's

pony, who had been trudging behind, her head down, every bit

as bored as the kender. She came plodding up level with the

black, shaking her mane and eyeing a patch of grass hopefully.

"Keep your voice down!" Gerard said in a low voice. He

looked as grim and stern as the kender had ever seen him.

"Beryl's spies are everywhere, though we do not see them. Noth-

ing moves in her realm but she is aware of it. Nothing moves here

without her permission. We crossed into her realm an hour ago,"

he added. "1 will be very surprised if someone doesn't come to

take a look at us- Ah, there. What did I tell you?"

He had shifted in his saddle, to gaze intently to the east. A

large speck of black in the sky was growing steadily larger and

larger and larger with every passing moment. As Tas watched, he

saw the speck develop wings and a long tail, saw a massive

body--a massive green body.

Tasslehoff had seen dragons before, he'd ridden dragons

before, he'd fought dragons before. But he had never seen or

hoped to see a dragon this immense. Her tail seemed as long as

the road they traveled; her teeth, set in slavering jaws, could have

served as the high, crenellated walls of a formidable fortress. Her

wicked red eyes burned with a hotter fire than the sun and

seemed to illuminate all they looked upon with a glaring light.

"As you have any regard for your life or mine, kender,"

Gerard said in a fierce whisper, "do or say nothing!"

The dragon flew directly over them, her head swiveling to

study them from all angles. The dragonfear slid over them like

the dragon's shadow, blotting out the sunshine, blotting out

reason and hope and sanity. The pony shook and whimpered.

The black whinnied in terror and kicked and plunged. Gerard

clung to the bucking horse's back, unable to calm the animal, prey

to the same fear himself. Tasslehoff stared upward in open-

mouthed astonishment. He felt a most unpleasant sensation come

over him, a stomach-shriveling, spine-watering, knee-buckling,

hand-sweating sort of feeling. As feelings went, he didn't much

like it. For making a person miserable, it ranked right up there

with a bad, sniffly cold in the head.

Beryl circled them twice and, seeing nothing more interesting

than one of her own Knight allies with a kender prisoner in tow,

she left them alone, flying lazily and unhurriedly back to her lair,

her sharp eyes taking note of everything that moved upon her

ground.

Gerard slid off his horse. He stood next to the shivering

animal, leaned his head against its heaving flanks. He was ex-

ceedingly pale and sweating, a tremor shook his body. He opened

and shut his mouth several times and at one point looked as if he

might be sick, but he recovered himself. At length his breathing

evened out.

"I have shamed myself," he said. "I did not know I could

experience fear like that."

"I wasn't afraid," Tas announced in voice that seemed to

have developed the same shakiness as his body. "I wasn't afraid

one bit."

"If you had any sense, you would have been," Gerard said

dourly.

"It's just that while I've seen some hideous dragons in my

time I've never seen one quite that. . ."

Tasslehoff's words shriveled under Gerard's baleful stare.

"That. . . imposing," the kender said loudly, just in case any

of the dragon's spies were listening. "lmposing," he whispered to

Gerard. "That's a sort of compliment, isn't it?"

The Knight did not reply. Having calmed himself and his

horse, he retrieved the reins to Tasslehoff's pony and, holding

them in his hand, remounted the black. He did not set off imme-

diately, but continued to sit some time in the middle of the road,

gazing out to the west.

"I had never seen one of the great dragons before," he said

qurietly. "1 did not think it would be that bad."

He sat quite still for several more moments, then, with a set

jaw and pale face, he rode forward.

Tasslehoff followed along behind because he couldn't do any-

thing else except follow along behind, what with the Knight hold-

ing onto the pony's reins.

"Was that the same dragon who killed all the kender?" Tassle-

hoff asked in a small voice.

"No," Gerard replied. "That was an even bigger dragon. A red

dragon named Malys."

"Oh," said Tas. "Oh, my."

An even bigger dragon. He couldn't imagine it, and he very

nearly said that he would like to see an even bigger dragon when

it came to him quite forcibly that, in all honesty, he wouldn't.

"What is the matter with me?" Tasslehoff wailed in dismay. "I

must be coming down with something. I'm not curious! I don't

want to see a red dragon that might be bigger than Palanthas. This

is just not like me."

Which led to an astounding thought, a thought so astounding

Tas almost tumbled off the pony.

"Maybe I'm not me!"

Tasslehoff considered this. After all, no one else believed he

was him except Caramon, and he was pretty old and almost dead

at the time so perhaps he didn't count. Laura had said that she

thought Tasslehoff was Tasslehoff but she was probably only

being polite, so he couldn't count on that either. Sir Gerard had

said that he couldn't possibly be Tasslehoff Burrfoot and Lord

Warren had said the same thing, and they were Solamnic Knights,

which meant that they were smart and most likely knew what

they were talking about.

"That would explain everything," said Tasslehoff to himselt

growing cheerier the more he thought about it. "That would ex-

plain why nothing that happened to me the first time I went to

Caramon's funeral happened the second time, because it wasn't

me it was happening to. It was someone else entirely. But if that's

the case," he added, b~coming rather muddled, "if I'm not me, I

wonder who I am?"

He pondered on this for a good half-mile.

"One thing is certain," he said. "I can't keep calling myself

Tasslehoff Burrfoot. If I meet the real one, he would be highly an-

noyed that I'd taken his name. Just the way I felt when I found

out that there were thirty-seven other Tasslehoff Burrfoots in

Solace-thirty-nine counting the dogs. I suppose I'll have to give

him back the Device of Time Journeying, too. I wonder how I

came to have it? Ah, of course. He must have dropped it."

Tas kicked his pony in the flanks. The pony perked up and

trotted forward until Tas had caught up with the knight.

"Excuse me, Sir Gerard," Tas said.

The Knight glanced at him and frowned. "What?" he asked

coldly.