Margaret Weis - Dragons of the Fallen Sun

Opening her door, she found Palin standing outside, his hand raised to knock.

“First Master,” he said. “We have all been worried. . .”

The dead were all around him. They plucked at the sleeves of his robes. Their lips pressed against his broken fingers, their ragged hands clutched at the magical ring he wore, trying to pull it loose, but not succeeding, to judge by their wails of frustration.

“What?” Palin halted in the middle of his speech of concern, alarmed by the expression on her face. “What is it, First Master? Why do you stare at me like that?”

She pushed past him, shoving him out of her way with such force that he staggered backward. Goldmoon caught up the skirts of her white robes and ran down the stairs, her cloak billowing behind her. She arrived in the hall, startling masters and students.

They called after her, some ran after her. The guards stood staring and helpless. Goldmoon ignored them all and kept running.

Past the crystal domes, past the gardens and the fountains, past the hedge maze and the silver stair, past Knights and guards, visitors and pupils, past the dead. She ran down to the harbor.

She ran down to the still, smooth sea.

Tas and the gnome were mapping the hedge maze—successfully mapping the hedge maze, which must be considered a first in the long and inglorious history of gnomish science.

“Are we getting close, do you think?” Tasslehoff asked the gnome. “Because I think I’m losing all the feeling in my left foot.”

“Hold still!” Conundrum ordered. “Don’t move. I’ve almost got it. Drat this wind,” he added irritably. “I wish it would stop. It keeps blowing away my map.”

Tasslehoff endeavored to do as he was ordered, although not moving was extremely difficult. He stood on the path in the middle of the hedge maze, balanced precariously on his left foot.

He held his right leg hoisted in a most uncomfortable position in the air, his foot attached to a branch of the hedge maze by the en of the thread of the unraveled right stocking. The stocking was considerably reduced in size, its cream-colored thread trailing along the path through the hedge maze.

The gnome’s plan to use the socks had proved a brilliant success, though Conundrum sighed inwardly over the fact that the means by which he was going to finally succeed in mapping the hedge maze lacked the buttons, the gears, the pulleys, the spindles and the wheels, which are such a comfort to the scientific mind.

To have to describe the wondrous mechanism by which he had achieved his Life Quest as “two socks, wool” was a terrible blow. He had spent the night trying to think of some way to add steam power, with the result that he developed plans for snow-shoes that not only went extremely fast but kept the feet warm as well. But that did nothing to advance his Life Quest.

At length Conundrum was forced to proceed with the simple plan he’d originally developed. He could always, he reflected, embellish the proceedings during the final report. They began early in the morning, up before the dawn. Conundrum posted Tasslehoff at the entry of the hedge maze, tied one end of the kender’s sock to a branch, and marched Tasslehoff forward. The sock unraveled nicely, leaving a cream-colored track behind.

Whenever Tasslehoff took a wrong turn and came to a dead end, he reversed direction, rolling up the thread, and proceeded down the path until he came to the right turn in the path, which was leading them deeper into the middle of the hedge maze.

Whenever they struck a correct turning, Conundrum would fall flat on his belly and mark the route on his map. By this means, he advanced farther than he’d ever been able to go. So long as Tasslehoff’s supply of hosiery held out, the gnome felt certain that he would have the entire hedge maze well and truly mapped by day’s end.

As for Tasslehoff, he was not feeling quite as cheery and pleased as one might expect for someone who was on the verge of wondrous scientific breakthrough. Every time he put his hand in a pocket he felt the prickly jewels and the cold, hard surface of the Device of Time Journeying. He more than half suspected the device of deliberately making a nuisance of itself by turning up in places and pockets where he knew for a fact it had not been ten minutes earlier. No matter where he put his hands, the Device was jabbing him or poking him.

Every time the device jabbed him or poked him, it was like Fizban’s bony finger jabbing him or poking him, reminding him of his promise to come right back.

Of course, kender have traditionally considered promises to be about as binding as a silken strand of gossamer—good for holding butterflies, but not much more. Normally anyone relying on a kender’s promise would be considered loony, unstable, incompetent and just plain daft, all of which descriptions fit Fizban to a tee. Tasslehoff would not have worried at all about breaking a promise he had really never intended to keep in the first place and that he had assumed Fizban knew he never meant to keep, but for what Palin had said about his—Tasslehoff’s—funeral.

That funeral speech seemed to indicate that Fizban expected Tasslehoff to keep his promise. Fizban expected it because Tas was not an ordinary kender. He was a brave kender, a courageous kender, and—that dreadful word—an honorable kender.

Tasslehoff looked honor up and he looked it down. He looked it inside out and sideways, and there were just no two ways about it. Honorable people kept promises. Even promises that were terrible promises, promises that meant one had to go back in time to be stepped on by a giant and squashed flat and killed dead.

“Right! That’s got it!” said the gnome briskly. “You can put your foot down. Now, just hop along around that comer. To your right. No, left. No, right. . .”

Tasslehoff hopped, feeling the sock unravel from around his leg. Rounding the comer, he came upon a staircase. A spiral staircase. A spiral staircase made all of silver. A silver spiral staircase in the middle of the hedge maze.

“We’ve done it!” The gnome shouted ecstatically.

“We have?” asked Tasslehoff, staring at the stair. “What have we done?”

“We’ve reached the very center of the hedge maze!” The gnome was capering about, flinging ink to the four winds.

“How beautiful!” said Tasslehoff and walked toward the silver stair.

“Stop! You’re unraveling too fast!” the gnome cried. “We still, have to map the exit.”

At that moment, Tasslehoff’s sock gave out. He barely noticed, he was so interested in the staircase. The stair seemed to rise up out of nothing. The stair had no supports, but hung suspended in the air, shining and fluid as quicksilver. The stair turned round and round upon itself, leading ever upward. Arriving at the bottom, he looked up to see the top.

He looked up and up and all he saw was sky, blue sky that seemed to go on and on like a bright and lovely summer’s day, which is so bright and so lovely that you never want the day to end. You want it to go on and on forever. Yet you know, the sky seemed to say, that night must come, or else there will be no day tomorrow. And the night has its own blessing, its own beauty.

Tasslehoff began to climb the silver stair.

A few steps below, Conundrum was also starting to climb.

“Strange construction,” he remarked. “No pylons, no struts, no rivets, no balusters, no hand railings—safety hazard. Someone should be reported.” The gnome paused about twenty steps up to look around. “My what a view. I can see the harbor—”