Dragonlance 16 - Dragons Of A Lost Star (27 page)

21

An Unexpected Visitor

Palin looked up from the book he had been studying and rubbed his watery eyes and the back of his neck. His vision, once so clear and keen, had deteriorated with age. He could still see well at a distance, but he was forced to read through spectacles that magnified the text or—in their absence— (he was forever misplacing them)—he had to read with his head bent close to the page. Slamming shut the book in frustration, he shoved it across the stone table, there to reside with the other books that had been of no help.

Palin glanced with little hope at the other books he had found upon the shelves and had yet to read. He had chosen these simply because he recognized his uncle’s handwriting on the covers and because they pertained to magical artifacts. He had no reason to suppose they referred specifically to the Device of Time Journeying.

To be truthful, he found them depressing. Their references to magic and the gods of magic filled him with memories, longings, desires. This room where he sat—his uncle’s laboratory—was the same, depressing.

He thought back to his conversation with Dalamar yesterday, the day the kender had been discovered missing, the day Palin had insisted on entering his uncle’s old laboratory, searching through Raistlin’s books on magic in hopes of finding useful information on the Device of Time Journeying.

“I know that the Wizards’ Council ordered Raistlin’s laboratory shut,” Palin said as they wended their way up the treacherous stairs that spiraled around the dark heart of the Tower of High Sorcery—a misnomer now, if ever there was one. “But they are gone, as the magic is gone. I doubt they’ll come looking for us.”

Dalamar glanced at him, seemed amused. “What a fool you are, Majere. Did you really think I would let rules laid down by Par-Salian stop me from entering? I broke the seal to the laboratory long ago.”

“Why?”

“Can’t you guess?” Dalamar asked caustically.

“You were hoping to find the magic.”

“I thought. . . well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.” Dalamar shrugged. “The Portal to the Abyss . . . the spellbooks . . . something might be left. Perhaps I was hoping that some of the Shalafi’s power might have lingered where he once walked. Or maybe I was hoping I would find the gods. . . .”

Dalamar spoke softly, gazing into the darkness, into the emptiness. “My mind was fevered. I wasn’t well. Instead of the gods, I found death. I found necromancy. Or perhaps it found me.”

They climbed the stairs, stood before the door that held so many memories. The door that had once looked so imposing, so forbidding, seemed now small and shabby. Palin reminded himself that many, many years had passed since he had last seen it.

“The undead that once guarded it are gone now,” Dalamar remarked. “There is no longer any need for them.”

“What of the Portal to the Abyss?” Palin asked.

“It leads to nowhere and to nothing,” Dalamar answered.

“My uncle’s spellbooks?”

“Jenna could fetch a high price for them at that shop of hers, but only as antiques, curiosities.” Dalamar broke the wizard-lock. “I wouldn’t have even locked the door if it hadn’t been for the kender.”

“Aren’t you coming?” Palin asked.

Dalamar refused. “Hopeless as it may seem, I’m going to continue to search for the kender.”

“He’s been missing a day and a night. If Tas were here, he certainly could not go that long without popping up to annoy one of us. Face it, Dalamar, he has managed to escape.”

“I have ringed this Tower round with magic,” Dalamar stated grimly. “The kender could not have escaped.”

“Famous last words,” Palin remarked.

Palin felt a thrill of awe and excitement as he entered the laboratory that had been his Uncle Raistlin’s, the place where his uncle had worked some of his most powerful and awful magic. Those feelings soon evaporated, to be replaced by the sadness and disappointment experienced by those of us who return to the home of our childhood to find that it is smaller than we remembered and that the current owners have let it fall into neglect.

The fabled stone table, a table so large a minotaur could lie down full length upon it, was dusty and covered in mouse dung. Jars that had once held the experiments of Raistlin’s attempts to create life still stood upon the shelves, their contents dead and desiccated. The fabled spellbooks belonging not only to Raistlin Majere but to the archmage Fistandantilus, lay scattered about in disarray, their spines rotting, their pages grimy and covered in cobwebs.

Palin rose to stretch the kinks from his legs. Lifting the lamp that lighted his work, he walked to the very back of the lab to the Portal to the Abyss.

The dread Portal, created by the mages of Krynn to allow those with faith and courage and powerful magicks to enter the dark realm of Queen Takhisis. Raistlin Majere had done that, to his great cost. So potent was the evil of the Portal that Dalamar, as Master of the Tower, had sealed up the laboratory and everything inside.

The cloth that had once covered the Portal was rotted away, fell in rags about it. The carved heads of the five dragons that had glowed radiantly in homage to the Queen of Darkness were dark. Cobwebs covered their eyes, spiders crawled into their mouths. Once they had given the impression of silently screaming. Now they appeared to be gasping for air. Palin looked past the heads, looked inside the Portal.

Where once had been eternity was now only an empty room, not very large, covered with dust, populated by spiders.

Hearing the rustling of robes on the stairs leading to the laboratory, Palin hastily left the Portal. He returned to his seat, pretended to be absorbed in once more studying the ancient spellbooks.

“The kender has escaped,” Dalamar reported, shoving open the door.

Taking one look at the elf’s cold and angry expression, Palin bit his tongue on the “I told you so.”

“I cast a spell that would reveal to me the presence of any living creature in the building,” Dalamar continued. “The spell located you and myriad rodents but no kender.”

“How did he get out?” Palin asked.

“Come with me to the library, and I will show you.”

Palin was not sorry to leave the laboratory. He brought the books he had not yet read with him. He did not plan on coming back. He was sorry he had ever returned.

“Shortsighted of me, no doubt, but it never occurred to me to spellbind the chimney!” Dalamar stated. Bending down to peer into the fireplace, he made an irritated gesture. “Look, you can see a great quantity of soot in the grate, as well as several bits of broken stone that appear to have been dislodged. The chimney is narrow, and the climb long and arduous, but that would only encourage a kender, not stop him. Once he was outside, he could shinny down a tree trunk and so make his way into Nightlund.”

“Nightlund is filled with the dead—” Palin began.

“An added inducement for a kender,” Dalamar interjected dryly.

“It’s my fault. I should have been keeping an eye on him. But, to be honest, I did not think there was any possible way he could escape.”

“It’s just like the perversity of the little beasts,” said Dalamar. “When you want to lose one, you can’t possibly. The one time we actually want to keep one, we can’t hang onto him. No telling where he has gone. He could be halfway to Flotsam by now.”

“The dead—”

“They would not bother him. It’s magic they are after.”

“To give to you” Palin said bitterly.

“Only a pittance. What they do with the rest of it, I haven’t been able to discover. I can almost see it out there, like a vast ocean, yet I receive but a trickle, barely enough to slake my thirst. Never enough to satisfy it. At first, when the Shadow Sorcerer led me to discover necromancy, I was given all I wanted. My power vvas immense. I thought to increase that power by removing to this location. I discovered, too late, that I had walked into my own prison cell.

“Then I heard from Jenna that you had come across the magical Device of Time Journeying. For the first time in years, I felt hope. At last, this would offer a way out.”

“For you,” Palin said coldly.

“For all of us!” Dalamar returned with a flash of his dark eyes. “Yet what do I find? You have broken it. Not only that, but you managed to scatter pieces of it throughout the Citadel of Light!”

“Better than Beryl having it!”

“Perhaps she has it already. Perhaps she had brains enough to gather up the bits and pieces—”

“She would not be able to put it back together. I’m not even sure we could put it back together.” Palin gestured toward the books piled up on the desk. “I can find no reference to what to do if the artifact breaks.”

“Because it was never meant to break. Its maker had no notion of the dead feeding off it. How could he? Such a thing never happened in the Krynn of the gods. The Krynn we knew.”

“Why have the dead begun feeding now?” Palin wondered. “Why not five years ago or ten? The wild magic worked for me once, just as necromancy worked for you and healing worked for Goldmoon and the Mystics. The dead never interfered with us before.”

“The wisest among us never really knew what happened to the souls of the dead,” Dalamar said, musing. “We knew that some of the dead remained on this plane, those who had ties to this world, like your uncle, or those who were cursed to remain here. The god Chemosh ruled over these unquiet spirits. What of the rest? Where did they go? Because none ever returned to tell us, we never found out.”

“The clerics of Paladine taught that the blessed spirits departed this stage of life to travel on to the next,” Palin said. “That is what my father and mother believed. Yet—”

He glanced out the window, hopeful—and fearful—of seeing his father’s spirit among those unhappy ghosts.

“I will tell you what I think,” said Dalamar. “Mind you, this is only what I think, not what I know. If the dead were once allowed to depart, they are not being allowed to leave now. The night of the storm . . . Did you mark that terrible storm?”

“Yes,” said Palin. “It was no ordinary storm. It was fraught with magic.”

“There was a voice in the storm,” Dalamar said. “A voice that boomed in the thunder and cracked in the lightning. Almost I could hear it and understand it. Almost, but not quite. The voice sent out a call that night, and it was then the dead began to congregate in Nightlund in force. I watched them from my window, flowing from all directions, an immense river of souls. They have been summoned here for a purpose. As to what the purpose is—”

“Hail the Tower!” a voice called out from below the laboratory window. Simultaneously, a battering knock sounded on the Tower door.

Astounded, Palin and Dalamar stared at one another.

“Who can that be?” Palin asked, but at the very moment he spoke the words, he saw that he was talking to himself.

Dalamar’s body stood before him, but that body might have been a wax dummy on exhibit at some traveling fair. The eyes were open, stared straight at Palin, but they did not see him. The body breathed, but that was all it did.

Before Palin could react, Dalamar’s eyes blinked. Life and light and intelligence returned.

“What is it?” Palin demanded.

“Two Knights of Neraka, as they are calling themselves these days. One is a minotaur, and the other is very strange.”

As he talked, Dalamar began half-leading, half-dragging Palin across the room. Reaching a far wall, he pressed on a stone in certain way. Part of the wall slid aside, revealing a narrow opening and a staircase.

“They must not find you here!” Dalamar said, shoving Palin inside.

Palin had come to the same conclusion himself. “How did; they travel through the forest? How did they find the Tower—”

“No time! Down those stairs!” Dalamar hissed. “They lead to a chamber located in the library. There is an opening in the wall- You’ll be able to hear and to see. Go quickly! They will start to get suspicious.”

The pounding on the door and the shouting had increased.

“The wizard Dalamar!” the deep voice of the minotaur rumbled. “We have come a long distance to talk to you!”

Palin ducked inside. Dalamar pressed his hand against the panel, and the wall slid noiselessly in place, leaving Palin in complete darkness.

He took a moment to calm himself after the alarm and the flurry, put a hand against the cold stone. He tried casting a light spell, uncertain of his success. To his relief, the spell worked perfectly. A flame like the flame of a candle burned in the palm of his hand.

Palin traversed the stairs quietly and swiftly, keeping one hand against the wall to steady his steps, the other lifted to light his way. The staircase spiraled down at such a steep angle that rounding the last turn in the stair, he came up against a blank wall with a suddenness that nearly caused him to bash his head against the stones.

He searched for the opening Dalamar had promised him but found nothing. The stones were set solidly in place. There was no chink or crack in the mortar. He might have feared that Dalamar had used this ruse to imprison him except that he could hear voices growing steadily louder.

Palin reached out his hand, began to touch each of the stones. The first several were solid—cold, hard, rough. He moved higher. Reaching over his head, he tried to touch one of the stones and saw his hand pass right through.