Dragonlance 03 - Dragons of Spring Dawning (37 page)

And now it was as if that sword wound had spewed out the foul, gangrenous poison corrupting his soul. Now the wound could heal. The grief and sorrow of Flint’s death was like a soothing balm poured inside, reminding him of goodness, of higher values. Tanis felt himself freed at last of the dark shadows of his guilt. Whatever happened, he had done his best to try and help, to try and make things right. He had made mistakes, but he could forgive himself now and go on.

Perhaps Berem saw this in Tanis’s eyes. Certainly he saw grief, he saw compassion. Then, “I am tired, Tanis,” Berem said suddenly, his eyes on the half-elf’s tear-reddened eyes. “I am so very tired.” His glance went to the black pool of rock. “I—I envy your friend. He is at rest now. He has found peace. Am I never to have that?” Berem’s fist clenched, then he shuddered and his head sank into his hands. “But I am afraid! I see the end, it is very close. And I am frightened!”

“We’re all frightened.” Tanis sighed, rubbing his burning eyes. “You’re right—the end is near, and it seems fraught with darkness. You hold the answer, Berem.”

“I’ll—I’ll tell you, what I can—” Berem said haltingly, as if the words were being dragged out of him. “But you’ve got to help me!” His hand clutched Tanis’s. “You must promise to help me!”

“I cannot promise,” Tanis said grimly, “not until I know the truth.”

Berem sat down, leaning his back against the blood-stained rock. The others settled around him, drawing their cloaks close as the wind rose, whistling down the sides of the mountains, howling among the strange boulders. They listened to Berem’s tale without interruption, though Tas was occasionally seized by a fit of weeping, and he snuffled quietly, his head resting on Tika’s shoulder.

At first Berem’s voice was low, his words spoken reluctantly. Sometimes they could see him wrestling with himself, then he would blurt forth the story as if it hurt. But gradually he began speaking faster and faster, the relief of finally telling the truth after all these years flooding his soul.

“When—when I said I understood how you”—he nodded at Caramon—“felt about, about losing your brother, I spoke the truth. I—I had a sister. We—we weren’t twins, but we were probably as close as twins. She was just a year younger. We lived on a small farm, outside of Neraka. It was isolated. No neighbors. My mother taught us to read and write at home, enough to get by. Mostly we worked on the farm. My sister was my only companion, my only friend. And I was hers.

“She worked hard—too hard. After the Cataclysm, it was all we could to do to keep food on the table. Our parents were old and sick. We nearly starved that first winter. No matter what you have heard about the Famine Times, you cannot imagine.” His voice died, his eyes dimmed. “Ravenous packs of wild beasts and wilder men roamed the land. Being isolated, we were luckier than some. But many nights we stayed awake, clubs in our hands, as the wolves prowled around the outside of the house—waiting.… I watched my sister—who was a pretty little thing—grow old before she was twenty. Her hair was gray as mine is now, her face pinched and wrinkled. But she never complained.

“That spring, things didn’t improve much. But at least we had hope, my sister said. We could plant seeds and watch them grow. We could hunt the game that returned with the spring. There would be food on the table. She loved hunting. She was a good shot with a bow, and she enjoyed being outdoors. We often went together. That day—”

Berem stopped. Closing his eyes, he began to shake as if chilled. But, gritting his teeth, he continued.

“That day, we’d walked farther than usual. A lightning fire had burned away the brush and we found a trail we’d never seen before. It had been a bad day’s hunting and we followed the trail, hoping to find game. But after a while, I saw it wasn’t an animal trail. It was an old, old path made by human feet; it hadn’t been used in years. I wanted to turn back, but my sister kept going, curious to see where it led.”

Berem’s face grew strained and tense. For a moment Tanis feared he might stop speaking, but Berem continued feverishly, as if driven.

“It led to a—a strange place. My sister said it must have been a temple once, a temple to evil gods. I don’t know. All I know is that there were broken columns lying tumbled about, overgrown with dead weeds. She was right. It
did
have an evil feel to it and we should have left. We should have left the evil place.…” Berem repeated this to himself several times, like a chant. Then he fell silent.

No one moved or spoke and, after a moment, he began speaking so softly the others were forced to lean close to hear. And they realized, slowly, that he had forgotten they were there or even where he was. He had gone back to that time.

“But there is one beautiful, beautiful object in the ruins: the base of a broken column, encrusted with jewels!” Berem’s voice was soft with awe. “I have never seen such beauty! Or such wealth! How can I leave it? Just one jewel! Just one will make us rich! We can move to the city! My sister will have suitors, as she deserves. I—I fall to my knees and I take out my knife. There is one jewel—a green gemstone—that glitters brightly in the sunlight! It is lovely beyond anything I have ever seen! I will take it. Thrusting the knife blade”—here Berem made a swift motion with his hand—“into the stone beneath the jewel, I begin to pry it out.

“My sister is horrified. She cries to me, she commands me to stop.

“ ‘This place is holy,’ she pleads. ‘The jewels belong to some god. This is sacrilege, Berem!’ ”

Berem shook his head, his face dark with remembered anger.

“I ignore her, though I feel a chill in my heart even as I pry at the jewel. But I tell her—‘If it belonged to the gods, they
have abandoned it, as they have abandoned us!’ But she won’t listen.”

Berem’s eyes flared open, they were cold and frightening to see. His voice came from far away.

“She grabs me! Her fingernails dig into my arm! It hurts!

“ ‘Stop, Berem!’ she commands me—me, her older brother! ‘I will not let you desecrate what belongs to the gods!’

“How dare she talk to me like that? I’m doing this for her! For our family! She should not cross me! She knows what can happen when I get mad. Something breaks in my head, flooding my brain. I can’t think or see. I yell at her—‘Leave me be!’—but her hand grabs my knife hand, jarring the blade, scratching the jewel.

Berem’s eyes flashed with a crazed light. Surreptitiously Caramon laid his hand on his dagger as the man’s hands clenched to fists and his voice rose to an almost hysterical pitch.

“I—I shove her … not that hard … I never meant to shove her that hard! She’s falling! I’ve got to catch her, but I can’t. I’m moving too slowly, too slowly. Her head … hits the column. A sharp rock pierces her here”—Berem touched his temple—“blood covers her face, spills over the jewels. They don’t shine anymore. Her eyes don’t shine either. They stare at me, but they don’t see me. And then … and then …”

His body shuddered convulsively.

“It is a horrible sight, one I see in my sleep every time I close my eyes! It is like the Cataclysm, only during that, all was destroyed! This is a creation, but what a ghastly, unholy creation! The ground splits open! Huge columns begin to reform before my eyes. A temple springs up from a hideous darkness below the ground. But it isn’t a beautiful temple—it is horrible and deformed. I see Darkness rise up before me, Darkness with five heads, all of them twisting and writhing in my sight. The heads speak to me in a voice colder than a tomb.

“ ‘Long ago was I banished from this world, and only through a piece of the world may I enter again. The jeweled column was—for me—a locked door, keeping me prisoner. You have freed me, mortal, and therefore I give you what you seek—the green gemstone is yours!’

“There is terrible, mocking laughter. I feel a great pain in my chest. Looking down, I see the green gemstone embedded
in my flesh, even as you see it now. Terrified by the hideous evil before me, stunned by my wicked act, I can do nothing but stare as the dark, shadowy shape begins to grow clearer and clearer. It is a dragon! I can see it now—a five-headed dragon such as I had heard nightmarish tales about when I was a child!

“And I know then that once the dragon enters the world, we are doomed. For at last I understand what I have done. This is the Queen of Darkness the clerics teach us about. Banished long ago by the great Huma, she has long sought to return. Now—by my folly—she will be able again to walk the land. One of the huge heads snakes toward me, and I know I am going to die, for she must not allow any to witness her return. I see the slashing teeth. I cannot move. I don’t care.

“And then, suddenly, my sister stands in front of me! She is alive, but when I try to reach out to her, my hands touch nothing. I scream her name, ‘Jasla!’

“ ‘Run, Berem!’ she calls. ‘Run! She cannot get past me, not yet! Run!’

“I stand staring for a moment. My sister hovers between me and the Dark Queen. Horrified, I see the five heads rear back in anger, their screams split the air. But they cannot pass my sister. And, even as I watch, the Queen’s shape begins to waver and dim. She is still there, a shadowy figure of evil, but nothing more. But her power is great. She lunges for my sister.…

“And then I turn and run. I run and run, the green gemstone burning a hole in my chest. I run until everything goes black.”

Berem stopped speaking. Sweat trickled down his face as if he had truly been running for days. None of the companions spoke. The dark tale might have turned them to stone like the boulders around the black pool.

Finally Berem drew a shuddering breath. His eyes focused and he saw them once more.

“There follows a long span of my life of which I know nothing. When I came to myself, I had aged, even as you see me now. At first I told myself it was a nightmare, a horrible dream. But then I felt the green gemstone burning in my flesh, and I knew it was real. I had no idea where I was. Perhaps I had traveled the length and breadth of Krynn in my
wanderings. I longed desperately to return to Neraka. Yet that was the one place I knew I couldn’t go. I didn’t have the courage.

“Long years more I wandered, unable to find peace, unable to rest, dying only to live again. Everywhere I went I heard stories of evil things abroad in the land and I knew it was my fault. And then came the dragons and the dragonmen. I alone knew what they meant. I alone knew the Queen had reached the summit of her power and was trying to conquer the world. The one thing she lacks is me. Why? I’m not certain. Except that I feel like someone who is trying to shut a door another is trying to force open. And I am tired …”

Berem’s voice faltered. “So tired,” he said, his head dropping into his hands. “I want it to end!”

The companions sat silently for long moments, trying to make sense of a story that seemed like something an old nursemaid might have told in the dark hours of the night.

“What must you do to shut this door?” Tanis asked Berem.

“I don’t know,” Berem said, his voice muffled. “I only know that I feel drawn to Neraka, yet it’s the one place on the face of Krynn I
dare
not enter! That’s—that’s why I ran away.”

“But you’re going to enter it,” Tanis said slowly and firmly. “You’re going to enter it with us. We’ll be with you. You won’t be alone.”

Berem shivered and shook his head, whimpering. Then suddenly he stopped and looked up, his face flushed. “Yes!” he cried. “I cannot stand it anymore! I will go with you! You’ll protect me—”

“We’ll do our best,” Tanis muttered, seeing Caramon roll his eyes, then look away. “We’d better find the way out.”

“I found it.” Berem sighed. “I was nearly through, when I heard the dwarf cry out. This way.” He pointed to another narrow cleft between the rocks. Caramon sighed, glancing ruefully at the scratches on his arms. One by one, the companions entered the cleft.

Tanis was the last. Turning, he looked back once more upon the barren place. Darkness was falling swiftly, the azure blue sky deepening to purple and finally to black. The strange boulders were shrouded in the gathering gloom. He could no longer see the dark pool of rock where Fizban had vanished.

It seemed odd to think of Flint being gone. There was a great emptiness inside of him. He kept expecting to hear the dwarf’s grumbling voice complain about his various aches and pains or argue with the kender.

For a moment Tanis struggled with himself, holding onto his friend as long as he could. Then, silently, he let Flint go. Turning, he crept through the narrow cleft in the rocks, leaving Godshome, never to see it again.

Once back on the trail, they followed it until they came to a small cave. Here they huddled together, not daring to build a fire this near to Neraka, the center of the might of the dragonarmies. For a while, no one spoke, then they began to talk about Flint—letting him go—as Tanis had done. Their memories were good ones, recalling Flint’s rich, adventurous life.

They laughed heartily when Caramon recounted the tale of the disastrous camping trip, how he had overturned the boat, trying to catch a fish by hand, knocking Flint into the water. Tanis recalled how Tas and the dwarf had met when Tas “accidentally” walked off with a bracelet Flint had made and was trying to sell at a fair. Tika remembered the wonderful toys he had made for her. She recalled his kindness when her father disappeared, how he had taken the young girl into his own home until Otik had given her a place to live and work.

All these and more memories they recalled until, by the end of the evening, the bitter sting had gone out of their grief, leaving only the ache of loss.

That is—for most of them.

Late, late in the dark watches of the night, Tasslehoff sat outside the cave entrance, staring up into the stars. Flint’s helm was clutched in his small hands, tears streamed unchecked down his face.

KENDER MOURNING SONG