Tanis the shadow years (d2-3) (22 page)

The slig heard the noise before it saw the source. There was a pounding that made the earth shake. The creature was slow, however, in taking its eyes off Brandella's burning hair. When it looked up, Tanis, riding one of the bullboggs, was only feet away.

The half-elf kicked the slig in the chest, knocking it backward into the fire. It screamed and rolled. In the same motion, Tanis leaped off the bullbogg and, wielding his sword, hacked at Brandella's hair, cutting off the long braid at the base of her neck. With the next well- aimed stroke, he slashed her bonds. He sheathed the sword, leaped back on the bullbogg, and held out his arm to her. She sprang up and took it, swinging behind him onto the broad back of the bullbogg. Behind them, the slig leader continued to shriek from the blaze.

Tanis dug his heels into the animal's generous flanks, and it took off at a dead run, all six legs churning. Behind him thundered the second bullbogg, tied to the first.

Tanis rode the lumbering beast down the hill, in the same direction in which the band of sligs had run. He came up behind them and cut one down after another with the gray metal sword that Hint had forged for him. It wasn't as light and easy in his hands as when it had been enchanted by Kishpa, but it still did its work.

Plunging through the front ranks of the enemy, Tanis thought he saw movement ahead that contrasted with the herky-jerky running style of the lizardlike sligs. "Clotnik!" he bellowed.

"It's me!" came a relieved tenor.

Tanis slowed his bullbogg long enough for Clotnik to climb on the second animal. And then they galloped away, leaving the sligs cursing after them.

They watered the bullboggs at the pond in the glade, gathered their meager belongings, then quickly set out to the west, putting as much distance between themselves and the sligs as they could before exhaustion overtook them.

When they finally stopped to rest, Tanis took the first watch. Brandella had insisted on the second watch, and he went to wake her two hours later, just before the dawning. He kneeled next to her and watched her sleep, as peaceful as the nearly soundless forest night. He was thinking of the future; she would fit in fine with his small group of friends. Hint, Sturm, Caramon, and Tas would instantly see that she was one of them-although she'd have to keep an eye on her valuables around the kender. Even Raistlin might welcome her in order to learn about Kishpa's magic. Of course. Kit would hate her, but Brandella could hold her own with the swordswoman. Together, they would make quite a group. And maybe, over time, Brandella would come to see him in a new light. He could wait. And he would. Tanis reached down to touch her shoulder and wake her. His hand passed through her. "Brandella!" he cried. Startled out of a deep sleep, she sat straight up, her newly shortened curls dancing around her shoulders. "What's wrong? What's happened?" she demanded, looking all about for any sign of danger. "Sligs?" Shocked awake, Clotnik had run to the bullboggs before he realized he was the only one moving. He stopped and looked back at Tanis and Brandella. And he listened… "I wanted to wake you," Tanis said, confused. "Except there was nothing there to touch. My hand went right through you!" She touched her own hand and felt flesh and bone! "You must have fallen asleep and dreamed it," she said soothingly. "I'm still here. See?" She held out her hand to him. He reached out to take it, but although he could see it, he could not touch it or hold it. Brandella gasped. It was true. "Do you feel anything?" Tanis asked, trying to comfort her and to fathom what was happening. Her eyes flashed with terror. "I don't feel any different than I felt before. Tanis! I don't understand it!" The early morning fog seemed to flow right through her. It was as if she was becoming one with the fog, thin and airy. "Did the sligs do anything to you7" Tanis asked, his mind racing. "Did they give you anything to eat or drink?" She shook her head, bewildered. "No. Nothing." Tanis strained to think. "Wait!" he cried, putting out one hand but stopping just short of trying to touch her. "When you were at Kishpa's grave, did anything happen? Anything unusual?"

She brushed a dead leaf off the sleeve of Clotnik's borrowed white shirt. The leaf fell to the ground, and Tanis picked it up and crumpled it. That, at least, was real. Then she spoke quietly. 'There was no magic. Nothing like that. It must be something else." Despair began to tinge her husky voice.

"It is something else," said Clotnik. "It's something you cannot fight with a sword, Tanis. I'm sorry."

Tanis turned to face Clotnik, danger etched on the half-elf's face. He advanced upon the dwarf, saying, "You speak as if you know all about it."

Clotnik gave a half-smile filled with weariness. He didn't back up. "It will do you no good to take your anger out on me," he said softly, his eyes large and sad. "I didn't know. Kishpa only suggested that it might hap-' pen. Even he didn't know for sure."

"Didn't know what?" Brandella pleaded. "What's happening to me, Clotnik?"

"You're as real as life to Tanis," the dwarf said tenderly. "For him, your heart beats, your skin feels warm to the touch, your voice is like music played by an inspired musician."

Brandella blushed. Embarrassed that his secret was so obvious, Tanis studied the nearby trees.

"It's because he sees you as real that you are real," Clotnik said. 'The way it was supposed to work was that Tanis would return from Kishpa's memory alone, remembering you in his own mind. Instead, he went one step further, physically bringing you out of Kishpa's memory to exist in his own world. Kishpa said it could happen. But he also said that if it did, it wouldn't last."

"Why?" demanded Tanis. "Why can't it last? Why can't she stay here with me7" There. Now she knew. When he looked at her, her eyes were moist with tears. Yet even now, he didn't know if they were tears of regret or tears of pity.

With infinite sadness, Clotnik said, "She cannot stay because she is a memory. And like all memories, she must fade."

"If she didn't fade from Kishpa's memory," Tanis challenged, "she won't fade from mine."

"That was Kishpa's wish," the dwarf said. "But you will have to remember her only in your mind's eye. There is nothing we can do. She is fading."

Tanis ached to hold her in his arms, but now it was impossible. "Walk with me," he whispered to Brandella. He wanted to be alone with her.

Clotnik bowed his head as they passed him on their way to a nearby deer path. "Good-bye," he said in a low voice.

She stopped. Although trembling with her own fear, not quite knowing her fate, she kissed Mertwig's son on the cheek. There was no sense of touch between them, yet there was no doubt in Clotnik's mind that he had just been blessed.

Streaks of sunlight slanted low across the land as day was born. The light seemed to cut through Brandella as if she weren't there. She cried out and stumbled off the trail, searching for shadows.

Tanis hurried after her, calling out, "Don't be afraid."

"Afraid!" she bitterly replied. "After I fade, I will be just a memory, something that happened in your past. You will go on, but I will not."

"Brandella, oh, my Brandella," he said. Fallen leaves crunched under his knees as he dropped down beside her. "Think of it this way. My memory is a world by itself, like Kishpa's. You'll be alive there. And not a single day will pass when you won't find something new and fresh to discover."

She cocked her head to one side, her slender body seemingly afloat in the shadows. "Listen," he persisted, "memory and imagination are like colors on a painter's palette, constantly being mixed to create something new. And that's what you'll find inside me, Brandella: a whole new world that's yours to explore." He struggled to find words to reassure her. "Everything I remember about you will be changing. Some days, when I wonder what you were like as a little girl, I'll picture you as a child. And you'll be young again. Some nights I'll be walking along a city street-a place you've never been-but I'll be thinking of you, talking to you. You'll answer in my mind. You'll be anywhere and everywhere."

She clasped her hands, edging farther out of the light. "I hope what you're saying is true."

ТЙ never forget you," he promised as she faded away, blending into the shadows.

"And I'll always be with you," she said in a voice so soft that Tanis wasn't sure if he'd heard it. And perhaps he hadn't. It may have come from somewhere inside him.

Zarjephwu, the leader of the sliqs, bathed nis burned body in the pond that they'd found in the glade. They had followed the tracks of the bullboggs in the moonlight, but, fearing the night, decided to go no farther. They had not, however, given up the chase. As far as Zarjephwu was concerned, the woman who had escaped certainly knew where the enchanted quill was; otherwise why would those two have risked their lives to save her7 When dawn broke, Zarjephwu roused himself from the same water that had so recently soothed Kishpa's burned flesh. The slig summoned his warriors.

"We have come a long way in search of the enchanted quill," said the slig. "We will not stop now."

"But the others have bullboggs to ride. How could you let this happen7" complained Ghuchaz, a young, ambitious warrior who chafed under Zarjephwu's leadership.

The entire band seemed to hold its breath. To question Zarjephwu was tantamount to a death sentence. Silently, they backed away from young Ghuchaz, who quickly sensed that he had gone too far. Meanwhile, Zarjephwu licked the top of his snout while he considered the upstart's challenge. His tiny eyes flickered.

Sligs don't apologize, nor do they make excuses. Ghuchaz, however, was smarter than the others. Before Zarjephwu made his move, the young warrior hurriedly made his own, piping up to say, "I think I know how we can overtake the bullboggs and catch our prey."

Startled, the leader of the sligs held back from his intended attack, asking, "How?"

Ghuchaz smiled knowingly. Zarjephwu was bigger and stronger, but the younger slig was far more cunning. In a short while, he would be the head of the band… and he would soon possess the enchanted quill.

In order to lull Zarjephwu into thinking he was cowed, Ghuchaz put on a meek face and eased up next to his leader to whisper the plan in his ear. 'The bullboggs' tracks lead due west, and they're easy to follow," he said softly, tiny eyes flickering at his mates, who avoided the gaze of the young upstart. "We should head northwest; there's a settlement of humans there. We can raid them and get horses and bullboggs of our own. If the weather holds and there are no rain or dust storms, we can easily pick up the tracks of our prey again. We'll catch them in a matter of days."

Zarjephwu listened impassively. He knew the young one was right. It would be good to have someone this clever at his right hand. Or it might be dangerous. The latter thought was on Zarjephwu's mind when Ghuchaz suddenly lowered his head and bit deep with his long, sharp teeth into his leader's unprotected throat. But he did not rip. Zarjephwu had been caught off- guard, yet was able to strike back with such speed and force that Ghuchaz's head was crushed before he even knew he'd been hit with two rocklike fists. The young slig's body slid to the ground.

Blood ran down Zarjephwu's neck, covering his hard, scaled body. The importance of the enchanted quill was never more apparent. Such a deceit would not have been possible if Zarjephwu had had possession of the writing instrument. It would protect his band-and, especially, protect him-by foretelling the future. His bite wound, his burns, they were just pains he had to endure. They were not important. The only thing that mattered was getting that quill.

Clotnik paced in front of the bullboggs, the tethered animals watching the dwarf in stolid, buffalolike contentment. The dwarf kept looking down the shadowed deer trail, waiting to learn of Brandella's fate.

After the morning fog had burned off, Clotnik spied Tanis walking slowly up the trail, back to their camp. He was alone, his expression unreadable.

The dwarf's question was clear in Clotnik's face. Looking up at the sky, gazing anywhere but at Clotnik, trying to keep his emotions under control, Tanis answered, "She was afraid at first."

"And then?" Clotnik moved closer.

"I think she found hope."

The dwarf nodded even though he didn't understand what Tanis was talking about. Mostly, he just wanted to console the half-elf. "If there's anything I can do…"

Tanis thought for a moment. "Yes," he finally said. 'There is something. Tell me everything you know about Brandella. I want to hear it, and remember it all."*****

Clotnik talked, and Tanis listened. They sat on a hillock, catching cool breezes, as the dwarf told him the stories that Kishpa had passed down to him about Brandella. It helped, but even now the jealousy still gnawed at Tanis; he resented that everything he was learning was based on Kishpa's recollections. He wanted so much for her to speak to him directly.

Then he remembered that she had written him a note.

She'd told him that it was just for him, and that it was buried in Ankatavaka. He jumped to his feet.

"What is it7" asked Clotnik.

Tanis didn't answer at first. Doubt shot through him like an arrow. She had written the note to him when they were in Kishpa's memory. As far as he knew, it had happened only in the old mage's mind; in reality, Tanis had never been to the village. If he went to Ankatavaka, would the note actually be there? It didn't seem possible, but he had to find out.

"Come. We're going," he said, putting his hand out to the dwarf.

"Where?" asked Clotnik, taking the offered hand and hoisting himself up off the ground.

'To Ankatavaka."

Tanis thought of Brandella, picturing her writing the note. Each time he imagined it differently. Once he saw her weeping upon the parchment as she wrote a letter of farewell. A second time he conjured up the image of her writing it with painstaking care, crumbling one sheet of parchment after another, unable to find the words to convey her feelings. The third time, she wrote a letter that told him how to find her if ever she were lost. He imagined that she wrote, "Look for me in your dreams." He promised himself that he would.

Clotnik, seeing the half-elf deep in thought, did not bother him. They rode side by side, heading west toward Ankatavaka, just one more day's journey away. When the dwarf told Tanis that the village was in ruins, abandoned decades ago after a damaging flood, it hadn't deterred him. He still wanted to go, telling the dwarf there was something there that he hoped to find.

To amuse himself, Clotnik reached for his traveling bag and took out several of his juggling balls: the brass, gold, and the glass. He hadn't practiced in more than a week, and he didn't want to get rusty. As the bullbogg beneath him lumbered along the trail, Clotnik began tossing the balls into the air in a lazy, steady circle.

A flash of movement caught Tanis's attention and he glanced over at Clotnik. It amazed the half-elf that the dwarf could so comfortably juggle while being carried aloft by a moving creature. He watched in fascination- until he realized that Clotnik was juggling the exquisite clear glass ball with the blue and green markings.

Tanis's lips went dry. He wanted to tell Clotnik to stop, but he feared his voice would startle the dwarf and cause an accident.

Seeing that he had an audience, Clotnik's exercise turned into an elaborate act. The brass ball flew high in the air, followed by the gold, then the glass. What had been a small, tight circle became a breathtakingly large ellipse, at the apex of which the ball almost disappeared.

Tanis couldn't stand it anymore. In as calm a voice as he could muster, hoping it wouldn't break Clotnik's concentration, he said, "That's very good. But I wonder-"

Suddenly, the bullbogg beneath the dwarf stumbled in a rut just as he threw the glass ball high into the sky. It went up at a crazy angle, far over to his right.

Tanis judged the trajectory and spurred his bullbogg into a gallop. The animal ran faster than the half-elf expected. He overran the glass ball; it was coming down behind him. Letting go of the tether around the animal's neck, Tanis leaped off the creature's back and tried to catch the quickly falling glass ball.

Twisting in the air so that he was looking up into the sky, Tanis hit the ground hard, back first. The glass ball was falling from the sky above him. He lifted his hands to catch it… and Clotnik plucked it out of the air just above the half-elf's outstretched fingers, the dwarf's bullbogg nearly trampling Tanis as he trotted by.

The dwarf circled around and rode up to Tanis, asking, "Are you all right?"

The half-elf didn't answer. In a silent fury, he picked himself up, dusted himself off, and then reached up and grabbed the glass ball out of Clotnik's hand. "Don't you ever juggle with that ball again! Not ever!"

Clotnik tried to take the ball back. Tanis wouldn't give it to him. "Why is it so important to you?" questioned the dwarf. "Why should you care7"

"Because I know what that glass ball cost your father."

"It's pretty, but it's old. It can't be worth that much," protested Clotnik.

"It was worth his life," said Tanis.

The dwarf didn't move. He just stared at the beautifully detailed glass ball in Tanis's hand. The orb's delicate swirls carried memories of blue summer skies and green forests.

"It was the last gift he bought your mother," the half-elf explained, softening. "He wanted her to have it even though he could not afford the cost."

'Then he did steal?" Clotnik demanded coldly.

Tanis paused. What good would the truth do Clotnik? For his part, Tanis wished he had been told that his father had been a good and generous man instead of being left to search out the bitter truth. In the end, it wasn't the truth that mattered, anyway, but what you believed to be true. The half-elf was the only one who knew for certain that Mertwig had once made a terrible error in judgment. That secret, he decided, would die with him.

"Your father," said Tanis, "was someone to admire and respect." Thinking fast, he explained, "Mertwig paid for that glass ball with his life because he and your mother were attacked by goblins who tried to steal it. He wouldn't let them take it. And he died fighting them, saving my life in the bargain. So, my friend, please don't juggle this glass ball anymore. Keep it safe, and when you look upon it, think of the love your father had for your mother."

Tanis offered the trinket to Clotnik, who took it reverently in hand. "On the soul of my father, you have my word," said the dwarf.

The raid on the human settlement had gone well, Zarjephwu thought. Not a single human survived, and only one slig had been killed. The bold midday raid netted the remaining fifteen sligs a small herd of bullboggs and several horses, enough animals for each slig to have an extra mount.

They rode their animals hard, not caring if the beasts dropped dead along the way. When that happened, a slig would jump on another steed and keep on riding. By nightfall, they had caught the trail of the woman and her rescuers. Sometime during the following day, they would catch them.

That night, in their camp, the band praised Zarjephwu for his clever strategy and wise leadership. He wondered how many of them suspected that the idea of heading northwest to raid the humans had been Ghuchaz's. Not that it mattered. After what he had done to the young slig, he was safe from challenge. And once he had the enchanted quill, none of them would ever succeed if they dared to try.

Zarjephwu, lying on the hard ground, felt the pain of his burns. As he drifted off to sleep, his jaw opened and sharp teeth glistened in the light of the three-quarter moon. He remembered the man-or was it a half-elf?- who had kicked him into the cookfire and run off with the woman. His reptilian face settled into a smile. Sligs despised elves. He would see that one again tomorrow.