Tanis the shadow years (d2-3) (17 page)

Tanis stopped breathing asb qrew dizzy-, the shock was so great. In a whisper, he finally managed to croak, "Huma of the Lance…" The man in white, backed by the variegated tones of vegetation seemingly gone mad, cocked a quizzical eyebrow at the half-elf. "They called me that, too. Then you've heard of me?" "Yes. Oh, yes," said Tanis, awestruck at the sight of the hero who, myth had it, had driven the evil dragons from Krynn during the Age of Dreams. "It's nice to be remembered," the dead Knight said simply. "But you must go now to find your way back to Life. If you fail, do come back again and see my flowers. I have the best garden in all of Death!" He caught Tanis's eye and then cocked his head back and laughed. "Or is that my pride talking7"

They marched for hours upon end, yet the sun never moved from its position directly overhead, the clouds did not sweep across the sky, and the dead who populated this world seemed not to stir. Finally they chanced upon an old, haggard woman with scraggly gray hair and a cherubic-looking little blond boy, who were fixing a wagon wheel. The wagon leaned at a precarious angle at a crossroad that sat hard upon a hill, down which streamed a fast-running brook.

"Can you help me and my grandson?" pleaded the woman in an aged, cracking voice. Dressed in a ragged, dark-blue dress that Tanis was sure hadn't been in fashion for centuries, the hag leaned wearily against the wagon. The little boy, wearing a similarly outdated tight-fitting shirt and breeches the color of dried blood, appeared subdued.

"If we can," agreed Tanis pleasantly. "That wheel doesn't look too badly broken."

The woman's skin was mottled with age spots and her hair was faded. She straightened and moved away from the wagon. "Not the wheel," she said sharply, eyes glinting over a thin nose. "The wagon can never be fixed. It's something else that we need."

"Oh?" Tanis found his hand drifting toward his broadsword, although he wasn't sure why.

"Come here," the woman insisted, pointing at the half- elf.

Brandella took Tanis's arm and held him back. "I don't trust her," she whispered in Tanis's ear. "Look how she hides something behind her back."

Tanis nodded. "Just tell me what you 'need' and I will do what I can," he called out, holding his ground.

The woman scowled. "Nothing much" she said weakly. Her voice broke and an expression of infinite melancholy spread over her features. "Only a little kindness." Tanis felt guilt wash over him like the petals of Huma's flowers. "A small sacrifice," she continued pathetically. "Perhaps your lives."

The little boy who was with her giggled, nodding his head appreciatively.

"Tanis, look at their eyes," Brandella warned.

Even from a distance, the half-elf could see the pair's eyes turn to fire, burning in their sockets with bright blue flame. The boy laughed again. "I see youl" he cried happily at Tanis and Brandella. "I see you live and that your hearts still beat." He turned to the old woman and excitedly cried, 'They still beat. They beat!"

"Demons?" Brandella whispered.

Tanis took hold of the handle of his sword but did not remove the blade from its scabbard. "I will not fight an old woman and a boy," he said.

The hag laughed along with the child as they jumped off the wagon and, slowly, confidently, advanced toward Tanis and Brandella. The crone slowly pulled her hand out from behind her back, revealing a small shovel with razor-sharp edges. It looked like a macabre version of one of Hint's children's toys, something to use to dig a modest hole in a very hard surface. She held the trowel in front of her body as if it were a weapon, while she and the boy began to circle to the right.

"Nice people," Brandella said under her breath. She and Tanis backed up, stepping off the trail and into the high grass in the direction of the nearby stream.

"It beats!" sang the boy.

"It beats!" echoed the old woman.

The sun poured over Tanis and the weaver, who repeatedly wiped their sleeves across their eyes. Brandella faltered. "We can't just keep on walking backward," she said. With their next footfall, Tanis and Brandella left the tall grass and stepped on a thin layer of leaves and sticks. In that moment, the ground beneath their feet broke apart with a splintering crack. They scrambled to keep their footing, kicking over a pile of small stones, but their momentum sent them falling into a fifteen-foot- deep pit in the earth.

Neither was badly hurt; the soft, damp soil had cushioned the worst of their fall. They scrambled to a crouch as two bloodless faces with blue-flame eyes appeared at the edge above them. "It worked, grandma I" the lad said to the harridan.

"But why?" Tanis asked Brandella quietly. And then he stood up and asked that same question of those above. "What do you want of us?"

"Your beating hearts!" cried the old woman, shaking the trowel. "To hold the beating heart of a living person in your hands is to leave Death and return to Life. We've waited at this crossroads three thousand eight hundred and eighty one years, hoping this day would come." She clapped her hands. "Our patience has been rewarded."

"Not yet, it hasn't," Tanis challenged. 'You don't know for certain that that tale is true. We were told that the path out of Death is to be found on the other side of Fis- tandantilus's mountain. And we were told this by none other than Huma of the Lance!"

"Who?" asked the old woman.

Tanis cast the hag a stunned look. "Why, the most famous hero in all of Krynn," he shouted.

She appeared to consider, then shook her head. "Must have been after my time. Never heard of him," she said with a shrug.

Tanis was beside himself with frustration. "Even if our beating hearts were your way out of Death, you can't get at them from where you stand, anymore than we can escape you from inside this pit."

"Wrong!" the little blond boy chirped. "You'll grow weak from hunger. You need to eat." He nodded wisely. "I used to eat. Food was good. I liked soup. Didn't I, Grandma?" he asked, tugging at the woman's blue skirts.

"Yes," she said, patting the boy on the head. "He was fond of my fish soup," she told her victims proudly.

"You will go to sleep before you die," the little boy continued. "Then we'll climb down and cut you open with grandma's shovel. Hold your hearts in our hands, go back to Life, and eat soup. Right, Grandma?"

She smiled and nodded, the movement loosening the knot of gray hair at the nape of her neck. "You can see why I'm so proud of him, can't you?"

Tanis sat on the soft earth, ignoring the gloating dead ones above, and tried to think.

Brandella plopped down with a sigh. "I know this isn't the time to mention it," she said, "but I'm getting hungry. And I'm awfully thirsty, too." She sighed again and picked at a thread hanging from her soft leather slippers.

"It'll pass," said Tanis.

"Yes, and so will we, and we're already in our grave."

They sat silently for a few moments, contemplating the truth of her words, until Brandella angrily banged her fist against the side of the pit. A large clump of dirt fell to the ground. Looking at the small hole she had made in the wall of their tomb, she lifted her head, saying, "That's it!"

Tanis just peered at her. "What?"

She scrabbled toward the half-elf, ignoring the dirt she was grinding into the knees of her woven trousers. 'The stream bends right behind this pit. That's probably why the ground is so soft and damp. Don't you see?" she exclaimed, her voice rising, "I think I know how we can get-"

Tanis clamped his hand over her mouth. "Softly," he said in her ear. "They're listening." Chastened, she nodded her head, and Tanis removed his hand from her mouth, leaving a dirty smudge on her cheek. She leaned close to the half-elf and in a low voice said, "The ground is so soft that we can dig our way out of here. The two up there won't have any idea where we're coming up." "It could take more time than we have left to live," he warned her. "How long will we live if we don't try it?" she asked, a crease between her exasperated eyes. "Do you have a better idea, Half-Elven?" Tanis pursed his lips and thought. Then he said, "Let's start digging." Tanis dug at the earth with his sword, which no longer glowed red, and Brandella used both hands to pull the loose dirt he broke from the wall out of their way. "What are you doing down there?" demanded the old woman, peering into the pit. Tanis and Brandella paid her no mind; they kept on digging at a ferocious pace. "What are they doing?" the old woman asked her grandson. "Digging a tunnel," guessed the little boy. With a self-satisfied grin, the boy's grandmother said, "They'll be dead long before they ever dig their way to the top. Foolish creatures." Sweat poured from their bodies as Tanis and Brandella clawed and scraped at the earth, flinging big clumps of wet dirt through their legs like dogs digging a hole for a bone. The harder they worked, the more they sweated, and the more they sweated, the drier became their throats. "How far are we from the pit?" panted Brandella after several hours of hard labor. A layer of soil had been added to the smudge Tanis had left on her cheek. "About six feet, I'd say." The damp walls of the tunnel made his voice seem dead, and the weaver shivered. She paused, a handful of dirt dropping from suddenly listless fingers. "We aren't going to make it, are we?" she asked. "Don't know," Tanis said. "Just keep digging." Every muscle in Tanis's body cried out from the work he was doing in such cramped quarters. Brandella fared no better with fingernails that were broken and bloody. Dirt caked their clothes, inside and out, and generous helpings of earth crept into their eyes, ears, and mouths. "I don't know how much longer I can keep this up," she said wearily. "Do you have a better idea?" Tanis gently mocked, echoing her earlier question. He couldn't tell if she gave a short laugh or a sob, but she kept on digging.

"There's water trickling in!" Brandella cnied fearfully. "I can hear it dripping!" From inside the pit, they couldn't tell in which direction they were digging. Obviously, they'd headed toward the stream. A mud puddle quickly formed at the base of the tunnel, and a short while later the water flow grew from a trickle into a thin but steady stream. Soon, the whole bottom of the gently sloping tunnel turned into a muddy mess, making it difficult for the two to work; they kept slipping and sliding as they tried to dig. Tanis was in front, stretched out with his head and arms at the location where the water was coming into the tunnel. Brandella was behind him, reaching forward to get at the dirt that Tanis pushed back in her direction. It was her job to take that dirt and move it still farther back into the tunnel.

The last thing she expected at that moment was to feel something tickling her ankle and feet; she'd long since lost her shoes. She screamed, kicking her feet.

Tanis squirmed to one side; she could barely see his mud-striped face in the gloom. "What is it7" he asked.

"I… don't know," she said, fearing that the little blond boy had climbed down after them. In the positions they were in, barely able to move, even a child could easily get at them from behind.

The tickling continued despite her thrashing. Then it stopped. Started. Stopped.

Tanis, frantic to try to help her, turned on his side; making a desperate attempt to slide backward and squeeze next to her.

But the tickling feeling had come from dirt beginning to fall on her legs from the roof of their tunnel. She knew what it was when the entire tunnel began collapsing on her feet…

"Cave-in!" she screamed.

Tanis hadn't gotten far when he heard her cry. He reached back and grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her out of harm's way. At least for the moment.

When the dust and dirt that nearly choked them finally began to settle, Brandella rested her head on Tanis's stomach and said in despair, "We're trapped. We can't get out now; we can't get back to the pit. When the water gets higher, we'll drown."

Tanis was thinking the same thing; there would be no more digging in this lifetime. The only consolation he cculd think of was that those two ghouls waiting at the top of the pit would not be able to get at them while the half-elf and weaver still lived. Stroking Brandella's mud-encrusted hair, Tanis did not speak. He leaned his head back against the wall from where the water was seeping and thought, not about his coming death, but about the living. Kitiara. And Laur- ana, the elven princess he'd grown up with, who'd had a crush on him for years and who'd given him the ring of golden ivy leaves that he still wore. His companions…

"I'm sorry you didn't get to know Hint," he finally said, closing his eyes against the gloom. He continued to stroke the weaver's hair.

She shifted to try to peer at him. "Who's Hint?"

'The dwarf in the inn. He was my closest friend."

"You'll miss him," she said simply. "And he'll miss you. I'm so sorry that I'm the cause of your loss."

He traced one finger around the curve of her ear. "No," he said. "Don't ever think that. I did what Kishpa asked of my own free will. It was my choice. You have no blame."

"Still-" she persisted.

His hand moved to the nape of her neck. She had been Kishpa's while the mage lived. Perhaps in the little time that remained to them, she could now be his.

'Tell me, Tanis," she asked sleepily, almost resigned to death, "did wars finally end in your time?"

He laughed bitterly. "What would all the generals do? How would they survive?"

She pushed herself to her elbows and reached forward through the gloom. Her fingers found his chin, his cheek, his pointed ear. "You don't think much of people, do you, Tanis?" she asked gently.

"I like certain people a very great deal," he countered meaningfully. He wished he could see her expression.

"So do I," she whispered. Now, more than ever, he wished there was at least a little light shining on her face. Even his elvensight was of little use to him here; the angle wasn't right. What was she trying to say to him? Or, rather, what was he trying to hear?

He wondered why he was being so diffident. Why couldn't he be more direct with her? After all, there wasn't much time left. The water rose ever faster; the tunnel was nearly half-filled with cold, suffocating slime, all of it running downhill toward their feet.

"How long do we have?" Brandella asked quietly.

"Not long," he said gently. "Another hour. Maybe less."

Tanis's mind drifted. He remembered a time when he was young. He and Laurana had gone off together to take a swim. The water had been cold, and they'd huddled close on the shore for warmth. Even the memory kept the chill away.

"Do you hear something?" Brandella asked.

Reluctantly pulled from his reverie, Tanis could only focus on the sound of the water spilling into the tunnel. "No," he said, listening for voices and hearing none. An instant later, though, he knew what she meant. There was a low thumping sound, and the water seemed to be making far more noise as it gushed into the deepening pond in which they were sprawled.

The earth behind Tanis, where the water came into the tunnel, began to break away from the wall in big clumps. The chunks of muddy earth slid and fell down the wall, and with each new piece of the tunnel that fell, more water shot inside.

The water level began to rise very fast. Death, Tanis realized, would come much sooner than he had figured. The water was rising to their shoulders and would soon reach their heads. It would be only a matter of minutes after that before the water would cover their mouths and noses.

They hugged each other, savoring the warmth.

Suddenly, the clumping sound exploded into a roar. The wall that they'd been digging at broke wide open, and a tide of cold water smashed into the tunnel.