Margaret Weis: Dragons of Vanished Moon

“You mean Goldmoon!” Tasslehoff cried bleakly. “She used the blue crystal staff. Is Goldmoon dead?”

Laughter sliced through his flesh.

“Am I dead?” he cried. “I know you said I wasn’t, but I saw my own spirit.” You are dead and you are not dead, replied the voice, but that will soon be remedied.

“Stop jabbering!” Conundrum demanded. “You’re annoying me, and I can’t work when I’m annoyed.”

Tasslehoff’s head came up from the table with a jerk. He stared at the gnome, who had turned from his work to glare at the kender.

“Can’t you see I’m busy here? First you moan, then you groan, then you start to mumble to yourself. I find it most distracting.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tasslehoff.

Conundrum rolled his eyes, shook his head in disgust, and went back to his perusal of the Device of Time Journeying. “I think that goes here, not there,” the gnome muttered. “Yes. See? And then the chain hooks on here and wraps around like so. No, that’s not quite the way. It must go ... Wait, I see. This has to fit in there first.”

Conundrum picked up one of the jewels from the Device of Time Journeying and fixed it in place. “Now I need another of these red gizmos.” He began sorting through the jewels. Sorting through them now, as the other gnome, Gnimsh, had sorted through them in the past, Tasslehoff noted sadly.

The past that never was. The future that was hers.

“Maybe it was all a dream,” Tas said to himself. “That stuff about Goldmoon. I think I’d know if she was dead. I think I’d feel sort of smothery around the heart if she was dead, and I don’t feel that. Although it is sort of hard to breathe in here.”

Tasslehoff stood up. “Don’t you think it’s stuffy, Conundrum? I think it’s stuffy,” he answered, since Conundrum wasn’t paying any attention to him.

“These Towers of High Sorcery are always stuffy,” Tas added, continuing to talk. Even if he was only talking to himself, hearing his own voice was far, far better than hearing that other, terrible voice. “It’s all those bat wings and rat’s eyeballs and moldy, old books. You’d think that with the cracks in these walls, you’d get a nice breeze, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I wonder if Dalamar would mind very much if I broke one of his windows?”

Tasslehoff glanced about for something to chuck through the windowpane. A small bronze statue of an elf maiden, who didn’t seem to be doing much with her time except holding a wreath of flowers in her hands, stood on a small table. Judging by the dust, she hadn’t moved from the spot for half a century or so and therefore, Tas thought, she might like a change of scenery. He picked up the statue and was just about to send the elf maiden on her journey out the window, when he heard voices outside the Tower.

Feeling thankful that the voices were coming from outside the Tower and not inside him, Tas lowered the elf maiden and peered curiously out the window.

A troop of Dark Knights had arrived on horseback, bringing with them a horse-drawn wagon with an open bed filled with straw. The Knights did not dismount but remained on their horses, glancing uneasily at the circle of dark trees that surrounded them. The horses shifted restlessly. The souls of the dead crept around the boles of the trees like a pitiful fog. Tas wondered if the riders could see the souls. He was sorry he could, and he did not look at the souls too closely, afraid he’d see himself again.

Dead but not dead.

He looked over his shoulder at Conundrum, bent almost double over his work and still mumbling to himself.

“Whoo—boy, there are a lot of Dark Knights about,” Tas said loudly. “I wonder what these Dark Knights are doing here? Don’t you wonder about that, Conundrum?”

The gnome muttered, but did not look up from his work. The device was certainly going back together in a hurry.

“I’m sure your work could wait. Wouldn’t you like to rest a bit and come see all these Dark Knights?” Tas asked.

“No,” said Conundrum, establishing the record for the shortest gnome response in history. Tas sighed. The kender and the gnome had arrived at the Tower of High Sorcery in company with Tas’s former companion and longtime friend Goldmoon—a Goldmoon who was ninety years old if she was a day but had the body and face of a woman of twenty. Goldmoon told Dalamar that she was meeting someone at the Tower. Dalamar took Goldmoon away and told Palin to take Tasslehoff and the gnome away and put them in a room to wait—making this a waiting room. It was then Dalamar had said, You do understand the significance of the gnome?

Palin had left them here, after wizard-locking the door. Tas knew the door was wizard-locked, because he’d already used up his very best lockpicks in an effort to open it without success. The day lockpicks fail is a day wizards are involved, as his father had been wont to say. Standing at the window, staring down at the Knights, who appeared to be waiting for something and not much enjoying the wait, Tasslehoff was struck by an idea. The idea struck so hard that he reached up with the hand that wasn’t holding onto the bronze statue of the elf maiden to feel if he had a lump on his head. Not finding one, he glanced surreptitiously (he thought that was the word) back at the gnome. The device was almost back together. Only a few pieces remained, and those were fairly small and probably not terribly important.

Feeling much better now that he had a Plan, Tas went back to observing what was happening out the window, thinking that now he could properly enjoy it. He was rewarded by the sight of an immense minotaur emerging from the Tower of High Sorcery. Tas was about four stories up in the Tower, and he could look right down on the top of the minotaur’s head. If he chucked the statue out the window now, he could bean the minotaur.

Clunking a minotaur over the head was a delightful thought, and Tas was tempted. At that moment, however, several Dark Knights trooped out of the Tower. They bore something between them—a body covered with a black cloth.

Tas stared down, pressing his nose so hard against the glass pane that he heard cartilage crunch. As the troop carrying the body moved out of the Tower, the wind sighed among the cypress trees, lifted the black cloth to reveal the face of the corpse.

Tasslehoff recognized Dalamar.

Tas’s hands went numb. The statue fell to the floor with a crash.

Conundrum’s head shot up. “What in the name of dual carburetors did you do that for?” he demanded. “You made me drop a screw!”

More Dark Knights appeared, carrying another body. The wind blew harder, and the black cloth that had been thrown carelessly over the corpse slid to the ground. Palin’s dead face looked up at the kender. His eyes were wide open, fixed and staring. His robes were soaked in blood.

“This is my fault!” Tas cried, riven by guilt. “If I had gone back to die, like I was supposed to, Palin and Dalamar wouldn’t be dead now.”

“I smell smoke,” said Conundrum suddenly. He sniffed the air. “Reminds me of home,” he stated and went back to his work.

Tas stared bleakly out the window. The Dark Knights had started a bonfire at the base of the Tower, stoking it with dry branches and logs from the cypress forest. The wood crackled. The smoke curled up the stone side of the Tower like some noxious vine. The Knights were building a funeral pyre.

“Conundrum,” said Tasslehoff in a quiet voice, “how are you coming with the Device of Time Journeying? Have you fixed it yet?”

“Devices? No time for devices now,” Conundrum said importantly. “I have this contraption about fixed.”

“Good,” said Tasslehoff.

Another Dark Knight came out of the Tower. She had red hair, cropped close to her head, and Tasslehoff recognized her. He’d seen her before, although he couldn’t recall where. The woman carried a body in her arms, and she moved very slowly and solemnly. At a shouted command from the minotaur, the other Knights halted their work and stood with their heads bowed.