War of the Twins (11 page)

“You see time passing, even as we sit here,” Raistlin said, his voice tinged with an unconscious pride. “And thus, Astinus, no longer will you have to rely on your unseen messengers from the planes beyond for your knowledge of what happens in the world around you. Your own eyes will be your messengers from this point forward.”

“Yes! Yes!” Astinus breathed, the eyes that looked into the globe glimmering with tears, the hands that rested upon it shaking.

“And now my payment,” Raistlin continued coldly. “Where is the Portal?”

Astinus looked up from the globe. “Can you not guess, Man
of the Future and the Past? You have read the histories.…”

Raistlin stared at Astinus without speaking, his face growing pale and chill until it might have been a deathmask.

“You are right. I
have
read the histories. So that is why Fistandantilus went to Zhaman,” the archmage said finally.

Astinus nodded wordlessly.

“Zhaman, the magical fortress, located in the Plains of Dergoth … near Thorbardin—home of the mountain dwarves. And Zhaman is in land controlled by the mountain dwarves,” Raistlin went on, his voice expressionless as though reading from a textbook. “And where, even now, their cousins, the hill dwarves, go—driven by the evil that has consumed the world since the Cataclysm to demand shelter within the ancient mountain home.”

“The Portal is located—”

“—deep within the dungeons of Zhaman,” Raistlin said bitterly. “Here, Fistandantilus fought the Great Dwarven War—”

“Will
fight …” Astinus corrected.

“Will
fight,” Raistlin murmured, “the war that will encompass his own doom!”

The mage fell silent. Then, abruptly, he rose to his feet and moved to Astinus’s desk. Placing his hands upon the book, he turned it around to face him. Astinus observed him with cool, detached interest.

“You are right,” Raistlin said, scanning the still-wet writing on the parchment. “I
am
from the future. I have read the
Chronicles
, as you penned them. Parts of them, at any rate. I remember reading this entry—one you
will
write there.” He pointed to a blank space, then recited from memory. “ ‘As of this date, After Darkwatch falling 30, Fistandantilus brought me the Globe of Present Time Passing.’ ”

Astinus did not reply. Raistlin’s hand began to shake. “You
will
write that?” he persisted, anger grating in his voice.

Astinus paused, then acquiesced with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

Raistlin sighed. “So I am doing nothing that
has not been done before!”
His hand clenched suddenly and, when he spoke
again, his voice was tight with the effort it was taking to control himself.

“Lady Crysania came to you, several days ago. She said you were writing as she entered and that, after seeing her, you crossed something out. Show me what that was.”

Astinus frowned.

“Show me!” Raistlin’s voice cracked, it was almost a shriek.

Placing the globe to one side of the table, where it hovered near him, Astinus reluctantly removed his hands from its crystal surface. The light blinked out, the globe grew dark and empty. Reaching around behind him, the historian pulled out a great, leatherbound volume and, without hesitation, found the page requested.

He turned the book so that Raistlin could see.

The archmage read what had been written, then read the correction. When he stood up, his black robes whispering about him as he folded his hands within his sleeves, his face was deathly pale but calm.

“This alters time.”

“This alters nothing,” Astinus said coolly. “She came in his stead, that is all. An even exchange. Time flows on, undisturbed.”

“And carries me with it?”

“Unless you have the power to change the course of rivers by tossing in a pebble,” Astinus remarked wryly.

Raistlin looked at him and smiled, swiftly, briefly. Then he pointed at the globe. “Watch, Astinus,” he whispered, “watch for the pebble! Farewell, Deathless One.”

The room was empty, suddenly, except for Astinus. The historian sat silently, pondering. Then, turning the book back, he read once more what he had been writing when Crysania had entered.

On this date, Afterwatch rising 15, Denubis, a cleric of Paladine, arrived here, having been sent by the great archmage, Fistandantilus, to discover the whereabouts of the Portal. In return for my help, Fistandantilus will make what he has long promised me—the Globe of Present Time Passing.…

Denubis’s name had been crossed out, Crysania’s written in.

“I’m dead,” said Tasslehoff Burrfoot.

He waited expectantly a moment.

“I’m dead,” he said again. “My, my. This must be the Afterlife.”

Another moment passed.

“Well,” said Tas, “one thing I can say for it—it certainly is
dark.”

Still nothing happened. Tas found his interest in being dead beginning to wane. He was, he discovered, lying on his back on something extremely hard and uncomfortable, cold and stony-feeling.

“Perhaps I’m laid out on a marble slab, like Huma’s,” he said, trying to drum up some enthusiasm. “Or a hero’s crypt, like where we buried Sturm.”

That thought entertained him a while, then, “Ouch!” He pressed his hand to his side, feeling a stabbing pain in his ribs and, at the same time, he noticed another pain in his head. He also came to realize that he was shivering, a sharp rock was
poking him in the back, and he had a stiff neck.

“Well, I certainly didn’t expect this,” he snapped irritably. “I mean, by all accounts when you’re dead, you’re not supposed to feel anything.” He said this quite loudly, in case someone was listening. “I said you’re not supposed to feel anything!” he repeated pointedly when the pain did not go away.

“Drat!” muttered Tas. “Maybe it’s some sort of mix-up. Maybe I’m dead and the word just hasn’t gotten around my body yet. I certainly haven’t gone all stiff, and I’m
sure
that’s supposed to happen. So I’ll just wait.”

Squirming to get comfortable (first removing the rock from beneath his back), Tas folded his hands across his chest and stared up into the thick, impenetrable darkness. After a few minutes of this, he frowned.

“If this is being dead, it sure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” he remarked sternly. “Now I’m not only dead, I’m bored, too. Well,” he said after a few more moments of staring into the darkness, “I guess I can’t do much about being dead, but I can do something about being bored. There’s obviously been a mix-up. I’ll just have to go talk to someone about this.”

Sitting up, he started to swing his legs around to jump off the marble slab, only to discover that he was—apparently—lying on a stone floor. “How rude!” he commented indignantly. “Why not just dump me in someone’s root cellar?”

Stumbling to his feet, he took a step forward and bumped into something hard and solid. “A rock,” he said gloomily, running his hands over it. “Humpf! Flint dies and
he
gets a tree!
I
die and I get a rock. It’s obvious someone’s done something all wrong.

“Hey!—” he cried, groping around in the darkness. “Is anyone—Well, what do you know? I’ve still got my pouches! They let me bring everything with me, even the magical device. At least that was considerate. Still”—Tas’s lips tightened with firm resolve—“someone better do something about this pain. I simply won’t put up with it.”

Investigating with his hands, since he couldn’t see a thing, Tas ran his fingers curiously over the big rock. It seemed to be
covered with carved images—runes, maybe? And
that
struck him as familiar. The shape of the huge rock, too, was odd.

“It isn’t a rock after all! It’s a table, seemingly,” he said, puzzled. “A rock table carved with runes—” Then his memory returned. “I know!” he shouted triumphantly. “It’s that big stone desk in the laboratory where I went to hunt for Raistlin and Caramon and Crysania, and found that they’d all gone and left me behind. I was standing there when the fiery mountain came down on top of me! In fact, that’s the place where I died!”

He felt his neck. Yes, the iron collar was still there—the collar they had put on him when he was sold as a slave. Continuing to grope around in the darkness, Tas tripped over something. Reaching down, he cut himself on a something sharp.

“Caramon’s sword!” he said, feeling the hilt. “I remember. I found it on the floor. And that means,” said Tas with growing outrage, “that they didn’t even
bury
me! They just left my body where it was! I’m in the basement of a ruined Temple.” Brooding, he sucked his bleeding finger. A sudden thought occurred to him. “And I suppose they intend for me to
walk
to wherever it is I’m going in the Afterlife. They don’t even provide transportation! This is really the last straw!”

He raised his voice to a shout. “Look!” he said, shaking his small fist. “I want to talk to whoever’s in charge!”

But there was no sound.

“No light,” Tas grumbled, falling over something else. “Stuck down in the bottom of a ruined temple—dead! Probably at the bottom of the Blood Sea of Istar.… Say,” he said, pausing to think, “maybe I’ll meet some sea elves, like Tanis told me about. But, no, I forgot”—he sighed—“I’m dead, and you can’t, as far as I’m able to understand, meet people after you’re dead. Unless you’re an undead, like Lord Soth.” The kender cheered up considerably. “I wonder how you get that job? I’ll ask. Being a death knight must be
quite
exciting. But, first, I’ve got to find out where I’m supposed to be and why I’m not there!”

Picking himself up again, Tas managed to make his way to
what he figured was probably the front of the room beneath the Temple. He was thinking about the Blood Sea of Istar and wondering why there wasn’t more water about when something else suddenly occurred to him.

“Oh, dear!” he muttered. “The Temple
didn’t
go into the Blood Sea! It went to Neraka! I was in the Temple, in fact, when I defeated the Queen of Darkness.”

Tas came to a doorway—he could tell by feeling the frame—and peered out into the darkness that was
so very
dark.

“Neraka, huh,” he said, wondering if that was better or worse than being at the bottom of an ocean.

Cautiously, he took a step forward and felt something beneath his foot. Reaching down, his small hand closed over—“A torch! It must have been the one over the doorway. Now, somewhere in here, I’ve got a tinderbox—” Rummaging through several pouches, he came up with it at last.

“Strange,” he said, glancing about the corridor as the torch flared to light. “It looks just like it did when I left it—all broken and crumbled after the earthquake. You’d think the Queen would have tidied up a bit by now. I don’t remember it being in such a mess when I was in it in Neraka. I wonder which is the way out.”

He looked back toward the stairs he had come down in his search for Crysania and Raistlin. Vivid memories of the walls cracking and columns falling came to his mind. “That’s no good, that’s for sure,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Ouch, that hurts.” He put his hand to his forehead. “But that was the only way out, I seem to recall.” He sighed, feeling a bit low for a moment. But his kender cheerfulness soon surfaced. “There sure are a lot of cracks in the walls, though. Perhaps something’s opened up.”

Walking slowly, mindful of the pain in his head and his ribs, Tas stepped out into the corridor. He carefully checked out each wall without seeing anything promising until he reached the very end of the hall. Here he discovered a very large crack in the marble that, unlike the others, made an opening deeper than Tas’s torchlight could illuminate.

No one but a kender could have squeezed into that crack, and, even for Tas, it was a tight fit, forcing him to rearrange all his pouches and slide through sideways.

“All I can say is—being dead is certainly a lot of bother!” he muttered, squeezing through the crack and ripping a hole in his blue leggings.

Matters didn’t improve. One of his pouches got hung up on a rock, and he had to stop and tug at it until it was finally freed. Then the crack got so very narrow he wasn’t at all certain he would make it. Taking off all his pouches, he held them and the torch over his head and, after holding his breath and tearing his shirt, he gave a final wiggle and managed to pop through. By this time, however, he was aching, hot, sweaty, and in a bad mood.

“I always wondered why people objected to dying,” he said, wiping his face. “Now I know!”

Pausing to catch his breath and rearrange his pouches, the kender was immensely cheered to see light at the far end of the crack. Flashing his torch around, he discovered that the crack was getting wider, so—after a moment—he went on his way and soon reached the end—the source of the light.

Reaching the opening, Tas peered out, drew a deep breath and said, “Now
this
is more what I had in mind!”

The landscape was certainly like nothing he had ever seen before in his life. It was flat and barren, stretching on and on into a vast, empty sky that was lit with a strange glow, as if the sun had just set or a fire burned in the distance. But the whole sky was that strange color, even above him. And yet, for all the brightness, things around him were very dark. The land seemed to have been cut out of black paper and pasted down over the eerie-looking sky. And the sky itself was empty—no sun, no moons, no stars. Nothing.