Dragons of a Lost Star

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 was 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.

“Of course,” he said to himself. “Dalamar is taller than I am by a head and shoulders. I should have made allowances.”

The illusion of stone dispelled, Palin looked through it directly into the library. From his vantage point, he could see the desk, see the person seated at the desk, and observe any visitors. He could hear every word as clearly as if he were in the room, and he had to fight against an uneasy impression that those inside the library could see him as clearly as he could see them.

Perhaps the apprentice Dalamar had once hidden himself to spy upon Raistlin Majere, his Shalafi. The notion provided Palin some amusement, as he settled himself to watch—a rather uncomfortable proceeding, since he had to stand as tall as possible and stretch his neck to look through the opening in the stone wall. Recalling the fact that Raistlin had been aware that his apprentice had been spying on him did little to add to Palin’s sense of well-being. He reminded himself that he had been in this very library and had undoubtedly looked at this very wall without any notion that a small portion was not real.

The door opened. Dalamar ushered his visitors inside. One was a minotaur—hulkish and brutish with that gleam of intelligence in the animal eyes that was both disconcerting and dangerous. The other Dark Knight was, as Dalamar had said, “very strange.”

“Why . . .” Palin whispered, shocked as he watched her walk into Dalamar’s library, her armor gleaming in the light of the fire. “I know her! Or rather, I knew her. Mina!”

The girl entered the room and looked about her with what Palin at first took for childlike wonder. She looked at the shelves of books, the ornately carved and beautiful desk, the dusty velvet curtains, the frayed silk rugs of elven make that covered the stone floor. He knew teenage girls—he’d had them as pupils in his school—and expected the usual squeals at the sight of the more grisly objects, such as the skull of a baaz draconian. (Raistlin had once engaged on a study of these creatures, perhaps with the intent of recreating them himself. The full skeleton could be found in the old laboratory, along with some of the internal organs, kept in a solution in a jar.)

Mina remained silent and apparently unimpressed by anything she saw, including Dalamar.

She shifted her gaze around the room, taking in everything. She turned her face toward Palin. Eyes that were the color of amber focused on the place in the wall behind which he was hiding. Palin had the impression that they saw through the illusion, saw him as plainly as if he were standing in the room. He felt this so acutely that he recoiled, glanced about him to ascertain his route of escape, for he was certain that her next move would be to point him out, demand his capture.

The eyes fixed on him, absorbed him. The liquid amber surrounded him, solidified, passed on to continue the investigation of the room. She said nothing, made no mention of him, and Palin’s fast-beating heart began to return to some semblance of normal.

Of course, she had not seen him. He berated himself. How could she?

He thought back to the last time he had seen her, an orphan in the Citadel of Light. She had been a scrawny little girl with skinned knees and a mass of glorious red hair. Now she was a slender young woman, the red hair cut off, playing at dress-up in a Knight’s armor. Yet she had a look on her face that was certainly not childlike. Resolute, purposeful, confident—all that and something more. Exalted . . .

“You are the wizard Dalamar,” Mina said, turning the amber eyes on him. “I was told I would find you here.”

“I am Dalamar, the Master of the Tower. I would be considerably interested to know who told you where to find me,” said Dalamar, folding his hands in the sleeves of his robes and giving a graceful bow.

“The Master of the Tower . . .” Mina repeated softly with a half-smile, as if she knew the truth of the matter. “As to how I found you, the dead told me.”

“Indeed?” Dalamar seemed to find this troubling. He tried to evade her eyes, slid out from beneath the amber gaze. “Who might you be, Lady Knight, that you are on such intimate terms with the dead?”

“I am Mina,” she said. She raised the amber eyes, and this time she caught him. She gestured. “This is my second-in-command, Galdar.”

The minotaur gave an abrupt nod of his horned head. He was not comfortable in the Tower. He kept glancing about darkly as if he expected something to spring out and attack at any moment. He was not worried about himself, however. His sole concern appeared to be for Mina. He was protective to the point of worship, adoration.

Palin was overcome by curiosity. Dalamar was wary.

“I am interested to know how you made your way unscathed through Nightlund, Lady Mina,” Dalamar said. He sat down in the chair behind his desk, perhaps trying to break that entrancing gaze. “Will you be seated?”

“Thank you, no,” Mina replied and continued to stand. She now gazed down upon him, putting Dalamar at an unexpected disadvantage. “Why does my being in Nightlund astonish you, Wizard?”

Dalamar shifted in his chair, not willing to stand up, for that would make him appear vacillating and weak, yet not enjoying being looked down upon.

“I am a necromancer. I sense magic about you,” he said. “The dead drain magic, they feed off it. I am surprised that you were not mobbed.”

“That which you sense about me is not magic,” Mina replied, and her voice was unusually low and mature for one her age. “You feel the power of the God I serve, the One God. As to the dead, they do not touch me. The One God rules the dead. They see in me the One God, and they bow down before me.”

Dalamar’s lip twitched.

“It is true!” Galdar stated, growling in anger. “I saw it myself! Mina comes to lead—”

“—my army into Nightlund,” Mina concluded. Resting her hand upon the minotaur’s arm, she commanded silence.

“Lead your army against what?” Dalamar asked sarcastically. “The dead?”

“Against the living,” Mina replied. “We plan to seize control of Solamnia.”

“You must have a large army, Lady Knight,” Dalamar said. “You must have brought along every soldier in the Dark Knighthood.”

“My army is small,” Mina admitted. “I was required to leave troops behind to guard Silvanesti, which fell to our might not long ago—”

“Silvanesti. . . fallen . . .” Dalamar was livid. He stared at her. “I don’t believe it!”

Mina shrugged. “Your belief or disbelief is all one to me. Besides, what do you care? Your people cast you out, or so I have heard tell. I mentioned that only in passing. I have come to ask a favor of you, Master of the Tower.”

Dalamar was shaken to the core of his being. Palin saw that despite claiming not to believe her, the dark elf realized she spoke the truth. It was impossible to hear that calm, resolute, confident voice and not believe whatever she said.

Dalamar struggled to regain at least outward control of himself. He would have liked to have asked questions, demanded answers, but he could not quite see how to do this without revealing an uncharacteristic concern. Dalamar’s love for his people was a love that he constantly denied and in that denial constantly reaffirmed.

“You have heard correctly,” he said with a tight smile. “They cast me out. What favor can I do for you, Lady Mina?”

“I have arranged to meet someone here,” she began.

“Here? In the Tower?” Dalamar was astonished beyond words. “Out of the question. I am not running an inn, Lady Mina.”

“I realize that, Wizard Dalamar,” Mina replied, and her tone was gentle. “I realize that what I am asking will be an imposition, an inconvenience to you, an interruption to your studies. Rest assured that I would not ask this of you, but that there are certain requirements that must be met as to the location of this meeting. The Tower of High Sorcery fulfills all those requirements. Indeed, it is the only place on Krynn that fulfills the requirements. The meeting must take place here.”

“I am to have no say in this? What are these requirements of which you speak?” Dalamar demanded, frowning.

“I am not permitted to reveal them. Not yet. As to your say in this, what you do or say matters not at all. The One God has decided this will be, and therefore this will be.”

Dalamar’s dark eyes flickered. His face smoothed.

“Your guest is welcome in the Tower, Lady. In order to make the guest’s stay comfortable, it would help if I knew something about this person . . . male or female? A name, perhaps?”

“Thank you, Wizard,” Mina said, and turned away.

“When will the guest arrive?” Dalamar pursued. “How will I know that the person who comes is the person you expect?”

“You will know,” Mina replied. “We will leave now, Galdar.”

The minotaur had already crossed the room and was reaching for the door handle.

“There is a favor you could do for me in return, Lady,” Dalamar said mildly.

Mina glanced back. “What is that, Wizard?”

“A kender I was using in an important experiment has escaped,”

Dalamar said, his tone casual, as if kender were like caged mice and were found or lost on a routine basis. “His loss would be of no importance to me, but the experiment was. I would like very much to recover him, and it occurs to me that perhaps, if you are bringing an army into Nightlund, you might come upon him. If you do, I would appreciate his return. He calls himself Tasslehoff,” Dalamar added with an offhanded and charming smile, “as so many of them do these days.”

“Tasslehoff!” Mina’s attention was caught directly. A crease marred her forehead. “The Tasslehoff who carried with him the magical Device of Time Journeying? You had him here? You had him and the device, and you lost him?”

Dalamar stared, confounded. The elven wizard was older by hundreds of years than this girl. He had been deemed one of the great mages of his or any time. Though he worked in magic’s shadows, he had gained the respect, if not the love, of those who worked in the light. Mina’s ambereyed gaze pinned the powerful wizard to the chair. Dalamar wriggled beneath her gaze, struggled, but she had caught him and held him fast. Two bright spots of color stained Dalamar’s pale cheeks. The elf’s slender fingers nervously stroked a bit of carving on the desk, an oak leaf. The too-thin fingers traced its shape over and over until Palin longed to rush from his hiding place and seize that nervous hand to make it stop.

“Where is the device?” Mina demanded, advancing on him until she stood at his desk, gazing down at him. “Did he have it with him? Do you have it here?”

Dalamar had reached his limit. He rose from his chair, looked down at her, looked down the length of his aquiline nose, looked down from his greater height, looked down from the confidence of his own power.

“What business can this possibly be of yours, Lady Mina?”

“Not my business,” Mina said, not at all intimidated. Indeed, it was Dalamar who seemed to shrink as she spoke. “The business of the One God. All that happens in this world is the business of the One God. The One God sees into your heart and into your mind and your soul, Wizard. Though you may hide the truth from my mortal eyes, you cannot hide the truth from the One God. We will search for this kender, and if we find him we will do with him what needs to be done.”

She turned again and walked away calm, unruffled.

Dalamar remained standing at his desk, the hand that had nervously traced the oak leaf clenched tightly in a fist that he concealed beneath his robes.

Arriving at the door, Mina turned around. Her gaze passed over Dalamar, another insect in her display case, and fixed on Palin. In vain he told himself she could not see him. She caught him, held him.

“You believe the artifact was lost in the Citadel of Light. It was not. It came back to the kender. He has it in his possession. That is why he ran away.”

Palin doused the magical light. In the darkness, he could see nothing but those amber eyes, hear nothing but her voice. He remained there so long that Dalamar came searching for him. The elf’s footsteps were soft upon the stone stairs, and Palin did not hear him until he sensed movement. He looked up in alarm, found Dalamar standing in front of him.

“What are you still doing here? Are you all right? I thought for certain something had happened to you,” Dalamar said, irritated.

“Something did happen to me,” Palin returned. “She happened to me. She saw me. She looked straight at me. The last words she spoke were to me!”

“Impossible,” Dalamar said. “No eyes, not even amber eyes, can see through solid stone and magic.”

Palin shook his head, unconvinced. “She spoke to me.”

He expected a sarcastic rejoinder from Dalamar, but the dark elf was in no mood to banter, apparently, for he climbed the stairs leading back to the laboratory in silence.

“I know that girl, Dalamar,” Palin said.

Dalamar halted on the staircase, turned to stare. “How?”

“I haven’t seen her in a long time. Not since she ran away. She was an orphan. A fisherman found her washed upon the shore of Sancrist Isle. He brought her to the Citadel of Light, to the orphans’ home. She became a favorite of Goldmoon’s, almost a daughter to her. Three years ago she ran away. She was fourteen. Goldmoon was devastated. Mina had a good home. She was loved, pampered. She seemed happy, except I never knew a child to ask so many questions. None of us could understand why she ran off. And now . . . a Dark Knight. Goldmoon will be heartbroken.”

“That is very odd,” Dalamar said thoughtfully, and they resumed their climb. “So she was raised by Goldmoon. . . .”

“Do you suppose what she said about Tas and the device was true?”

Palin asked, as they emerged from the hidden stairwell.

“Of course, it was true,” Dalamar replied. He walked over to the window, stared down into the cypress trees below. “That explains why the kender ran away. He feared we would find it.”

“We would have, if we had bothered to think through this rationally, instead of haring off in a panic. What ninnies we are! The device will always return to the one who owns it. Even in pieces, it will always return.”

Palin was frustrated. He felt the urgent need to do something, yet there was nothing he could do.

“You could search for him, Dalamar. Your spirit can walk this world, at least—”

“And do what?” Dalamar demanded. “If I did find him— which would be a miracle to surpass all miracles—I could do nothing except frighten him into burrowing deeper into whatever hole he’s dug.”

Dalamar had been staring out the window. He stiffened. His body went rigid.

“What is it?” Palin asked, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

Dalamar made no answer, except to point out the window.

Mina walked through the forest, trod upon the brown pine needles. The dead gathered around her. The dead bowed to her.