Dragons of Spring Dawning - Margaret Weis [117]
Tanis stroked the kender’s topknot, then—glancing up—stopped.
“Wait! What are you doing, old man?” he cried.
Setting Tas back down on the ground, Tanis rose quickly to his feet. The frail old mage had lifted Flint’s body in his arms and, as Tanis watched in shock, began walking toward the strange circle of stones.
“Stop!” Tanis ordered. “We must give him a proper ceremony, build a cairn.”
Fizban turned to face Tanis. The old man’s face was stern. He held the heavy dwarf gently and with ease.
“I promised him he would not travel alone,” Fizban said simply.
Then, turning, he continued to walk toward the stones. Tanis, after a moment’s hesitation, ran after him. The rest stood as if transfixed, staring at Fizban’s retreating figure.
It had seemed an easy thing to Tanis to catch up with an old man bearing such a burden. But Fizban moved incredibly fast, almost as if he and the dwarf were as light as the air. Suddenly aware of the weight of his own body, Tanis felt as if he were trying to catch a wisp of smoke soaring heavenward. Still he stumbled after them, reaching them just as the old mage entered the ring of boulders, carrying the dwarf’s body in his arms.
Tanis squeezed through the circle of rocks without thinking, knowing only that he must stop this crazed old mage and recover his friend’s body.
Then he stopped within the circle. Before him spread what he first took to be a pool of water, so still that nothing marred its smooth surface. Then he saw that it wasn’t water, it was a pool of glassy black rock! The deep black surface was polished to a gleaming brilliance. It stretched before Tanis with the darkness of night and, indeed, looking down into its black depths, Tanis was startled to see stars! So clear were they that he looked up, half-expecting to see night had fallen, though he knew it was only mid-afternoon. The sky above him was azure, cold and clear, no stars, no sun. Shaken and weak, Tanis dropped to his knees beside the pool and stared once more into its polished surface. He saw the stars, he saw the moons, he saw three moons, and his soul trembled, for the black moon visible only to those powerful mages of the Black Robes was now visible to him, like a dark circle cut out of blackness. He could even see the gaping holes where the constellations of the Queen of Darkness and the Valiant Warrior had once wheeled in the sky.
Tanis recalled Raistlin’s words, “Both gone. She has come to Krynn, Tanis, and he has come to fight her.…”
Looking up, Tanis saw Fizban step onto the black rock pool, Flint’s body in his arms.
The half-elf tried desperately to follow, but he could no more force himself to crawl out upon that cold rock surface than he could have made himself leap into the Abyss. He could only watch as the old mage, walking softly as if unwilling to waken a sleeping child in his arms, moved out into the center of glistening black surface.
“Fizban!” Tanis called.
The old man did not stop or turn but walked on among the glittering stars. Tanis felt Tasslehoff creep up next to him. Reaching out, Tanis took his hand and held it fast, as he had held Flint’s.
The old mage reached the center of the rock pool … and then disappeared.
Tanis gasped. Tasslehoff leaped past him, starting to run out onto the mirrorlike surface. But Tanis caught him.
“No, Tas,” the half-elf said gently. “You can’t go on this adventure with him. Not yet. You must stay with me awhile. I need you now.”
Tasslehoff fell back, unusually obedient, and as he did so, he pointed.
“Look, Tanis!” he whispered, his voice quivering. “The constellation! It’s come back!”
As Tanis stared into the surface of the black pool, he saw the stars of the constellation of the Valiant Warrior return. They flickered, then burst into light, filling the dark pool with their blue-white radiance. Swiftly