Dragonlance 15 - Dragons Of A Fallen Sun (59 page)

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 indi-

cated 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 in-

creased 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 recit-

ing 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 in-

structed, 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 enor-

mous 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 extend-

ing to the deepest part of the Abyss. Chaos had just smashed his

foot down on the ground, presumably killing Tasslehoff but in-

flicting 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 dar~ss.

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 child"""

hood! 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 rush-

ing wind carried it away from. He experienced the sickening sen-

sation 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 him-

self 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 count-

ing 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 shud-

dered, 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 hap-

pened? 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, tot-

tering 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!!iore

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 your-

self 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?"

"Gone. All of it. I stood amidst the ether and saw the battle

with Chaos, but when I tried to see beyond, when I looked into

the past, I saw only darkness. I took a step and . . . " He shud-

dered. "I fell into the darkness. A void where no light shines, no

light has ever shone. Darkness that is eternal, everlasting. I had

the feeling that I was falling through centuries of time and that I

would continue to fall until death took me, and then my corpse

would keep falling. . . ."

"If that is true, what does it mean?" Jenna pondered.

"I'll tell you what it means," Palin said raggedly. He pointed

at Tasslehoff. "This is Tas's fault. Everything that has happened is

his fault."

"Why? What does he have to do with it?"

"Because he's not dead!" Palin said, hissing the words through

clenched teeth. "He changed time by not dying! The future he saw

was the future that happened because he died and by his death, we

were able to defeat Chaos. But he's not dead! We didn't defeat Chaos.

The Father of All and Nothing banished his children, the gods, and

these past forty years of death and tunnoil have been the result!"

Jenna looked at Tas. Palin was looking at Tas, this time as if

he'd grown five heads, wings and a tail.

"Let's all have another drink of brandy," Tas suggested,

taking his own advice. "Just to make us feel better. Clear our

heads," he added pointedly.

"You could be right, Palin," Jenna said thoughtfully.

"I know I'm right!" he said grimly.

"And we all know that two rights make a wrong," Tas ob-

served helpfully. "Would anyone like oatmeal?"

"What other explanation could there be?" Palin continued, ig-

noring the kender.

"I'm not sure," said Tas, backing up a few steps toward the

kitchen door, "but if you give me a moment, I'll bet I could think

of several."

Palin threw off the blanket and rose to his feet. "We have to

send Tas back to die."

"Palin, I'm not so sure. . ." Jenna began, but he wasn't

listening to her.

"Where's the device?" he demanded feverishly. "What hap-

pened to it?"

"While it is true," Tas said, "that I had promised F~zban I

would go back in time for the giant to step on me, the more I

think about that part of it, the less I like it. For while being

stepped on by a giant might be extremely interesting, it would be

interesting for only a few seconds at most, and then as you said

I would be dead."

Tas bumped up against the kitchen door.

"And while I've never been dead," he continued, "I've seen

people being dead before, and I must say that it looks like about

the most uninteresting thing that could happen to a person."

"Where is the device?" Palin demanded.

"It rolled into the ashes!" Tas cried and pointed at the fire-

place. He took another gulp of brandy.

"I'll look," Jenna offered. Seizing the poker, she began to sift

through the ashes.

Palin peered over her shoulder. "We must find it!"

Tasslehoff put his hand in his pocket and, taking hold of the

Device of Time Journeying, he began to turn it and twist it and

slide it, all the while speaking the rhyme under his breath.

"'Thy time is thy own, though across it you travel. . .'

"Are you sure it went under here, Tas?" Jenna asked. "Be-

cause I can't see anything except cinders-"

Tas spoke faster, his nimble fingers working swiftly.

" 'Whirling across forever. Obstruct not its flow,' " he

whispered.

This was going to be the tricky part.

Palin's head jerked up. Turning around, he made a diving

leap for the kender.

Tas whipped the device out of his pocket and held it up. "Des-

tiny be over your own head!" he cried, and he was pleased to re-