Tanis the shadow years

30

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 The little boy, wearing a similarly outdated tight-fitting shirt and breeches the color of dried blood, appeared subdued.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.