“Go away!” she ordered finally, wearily. “Go away, and leave me in peace.”
And eventually, like the dead, the living also departed and left her alone.
Crossing her chambers, Goldmoon stood before the large windows that overlooked the sea and flung open the casement.
The waning moon cast a pallid light upon the ocean. The set had a strange look to it. An oily film covered the water, and beneath this film, the water was smooth, still. No breeze stirred, not a breath. The air had a foul smell to it, tainted by the oil upon the water, perhaps. The night was clear. The stars bright. The sky empty.
Ships were putting out to sea, black against the moonlight waters. There was a smell of thunder in the air. Seasoned mariners were reading the signs and heading for the open waters, far safer for them than lying close to shore, where crashing waves could send them smashing up against the docks or the rocks of the island’s coast. Goldmoon watched them from her window, looking like toy boats gliding across a dark mirror.
There, moving over the ocean, were the dead.
Goldmoon sank to her knees at the window. She placed her t hands upon the window frame, rested her chin upon her hands, and watched the dead cross the sea. The moon sank beneath the horizon, drowned in dark water. The stars shone cold and bleak in the sky, and they also shone in the water, which was so still that Goldmoon could not perceive where the sky ended and the sea began. Small waves lapped gently upon the shore with a forlorn urgency, like a sick and fretful child trying to capture someone’s attention. The dead were traveling north, a pallid stream, paying no attention to anything except to that call they alone could hear.
Yet not quite alone.
Goldmoon heard the song. The voice that sang the song was compelling, stirred Goldmoon to the depths of her soul.
“You will find him,” said the voice. “He serves me. You will be together.”
Goldmoon crouched at the window, head bowed, and shivered in awe and fear and an exaltation that made her cry out in longing, reach her hands out in longing for the singer of that song as the dead had reached out their hands to her in longing. She spent the night on her knees, her soul listening to the song with a thrill that was both pain and pleasure, watching the dead travel north, heeding the call, while the wavelets of the still sea clung as long as they could to the shore, then receded, leaving the sand smooth and empty in their going.
Day dawned. The sun slid out of the oily water. Its light seemed covered with the same film of oil, for it had a greenish sheen smeared across the yellow. The air was tainted, hot and unsatisfying to breathe. Not a cloud marred the sky.
Goldmoon rose from kneeling. Her muscles were stiff and sore from the uncomfortable position, but usage warmed and limbered them. She picked up a cloak, thick and heavy, and wrapped it around her, though the early morning was already hot.
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.