Human, half-elf, and dark elf watched the Portal in silence. A water clock on the mantle kept track of time, the drops falling one by one with the regularity of a heartbeat. The tension in the room stretched until it seemed it must snap and break, whipping around the laboratory with stinging fury. Dalamar began muttering in elven. Tanis glanced at him sharply, fearing the dark elf might be delirious. The mage’s face was pale, cadaverous, his eyes surrounded by deep, purple shadows had sunken into their sockets. Their gaze never shifted, they stared always into the swirling void.
Even Caramon’s calm appeared to be slipping. His big hands clenched and unclenched nervously, sweat covered his body, glistening in the light of the five heads of the dragon. He began to shiver, involuntarily. The muscles in his arms twitched and bunched spasmodically. And then Tanis felt a strange sensation creep over him. The air was still, too still. Sounds of battle raging in the city outside the Tower—sounds that he had heard without even being aware of it—suddenly ceased. Inside the Tower, too, sound hushed. The words Dalamar muttered died on his lips.
The silence blanketed them, as thick and stifling as the darkness in the corridor, as the evil within the room. The dripping of the water clock grew louder, magnified, every drop seeming to jar Tanis’s bones. Dalamar’s eyes jerked open, his hand twitched, nervously grasping his black robes between white-knuckled fingers.
Tanis moved closer to Caramon, only to find the big man reaching out for him.
Both spoke at once. “Caramon...”
“Tanis...”
Desperately, Caramon grasped hold of Tanis’s arm. “You’ll take care of Tika for me, wont you?”
“Caramon, I cant let you go in there alone!” Tanis gripped him. “I’ll come—”
“No, Tanis,” Caramon’s voice was firm. “If I fail, Dalamar will need your help. Tell Tika good-bye, and try to explain to her, Tanis. Tell her I love her very much, so much I—” His voice broke. He couldn’t go on. Tanis held onto him tightly.
“I know what to tell her, Caramon,” he said, remembering a letter of good-bye of his own. Caramon nodded, shaking the tears from his eyes and drawing a deep, quivering breath. “And say good-bye to Tas. I-I don’t think he ever did understand. Not really.” He managed a smile. “Of course, you’ll have to get him out of that flying castle first.”
“I think he knew, Caramon,” Tanis said softly.
The dragon’s heads began to make a shrill sound, a faint scream that seemed to come from far away.
Caramon tensed.
The screaming grew louder, nearer, and more shrill. The Portal burned with color, each head of the dragon glistened brilliantly.
“Make ready,” Dalamar warned, his voice cracking.
“Good-bye, Tanis.” Caramon held onto his hand tightly.
“Good-bye, Caramon.”
Releasing his hold on his friend, Tanis stepped back.
The void parted. The Portal opened.
Tanis looked into it—he knew he looked into it, for he could not turn away. But he could never recall clearly what he saw. He dreamed of it, even years later. He knew he dreamed of it because he would wake in the night, drenched in sweat. But the image was always just fading from his consciousness, never to be grasped by his waking mind. And he would lie, staring into the darkness, trembling, for hours after.
But that was later. All he knew now was that he had to stop Caramon! But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t cry out. Transfixed, horror-stricken, he watched as Caramon, with a last, quiet look, turned and mounted the golden platform.
The dragons shrieked in warning, triumph, hatred... Tanis didn’t know. His own cry, wrenched from his body, was lost in the shrill, deafening sound.
There was a blinding, swirling, crashing wave of many colored light.
And then it was dark.
Caramon was gone.
“May Paladine be with you,” Tanis whispered, only to hear, to his discomfiture, Dalamar’s cool voice, echo, “Takhisis, my Queen, go with you.”
“I see him,” said Dalamar, after a moment. Staring intently into the Portal, he half-rose, to see more clearly. A gasp of pain, forgotten in the excitement, escaped him. Cursing, he sank back down into the chair, his pale face covered with sweat.
Tanis ceased his restless pacing and came to stand beside Dalamar. “There,” the dark elf pointed, his breath coming from between clenched teeth.
Reluctantly, still feeling the effects of the shock that lingered from when he had first looked into the Portal, Tanis looked into it again. At first he could see nothing but a bleak and barren landscape stretching beneath a burning sky. And then he saw red-tinged light glint off bright armor. He saw a small figure standing near the front of the Portal, sword in hand, facing away from them, waiting...
“How will he close it?” Tanis asked, trying to speak calmly though grief choked his voice.
“He cannot,” Dalamar replied.
Tanis stared at him in alarm. “Then what will stop the Queen from entering again?”
“She cannot come through unless one comes through ahead of her, half-elf,” Dalamar answered, somewhat irritably. “Otherwise, she would have entered long before this. Raistlin keeps it open. If he comes through it, she will follow. With his death, it will close.”
“So Caramon must kill him—his brother?”
“Yes.”
“And he must die as well,” Tanis murmured.
“Pray that he dies!” Dalamar licked his lips. The pain was making him dizzy, nauseated. “For he cannot return through the Portal either. And though death at the hands of the Dark Queen can be very slow, very unpleasant, believe me, Half-Elven, it is far preferable to life!”
“He knew this—”
“Yes, he knew it. But the world will be saved, Half-elven,” Dalamar remarked cynically. Sinking back into his chair, he continued staring into the Portal, his hand alternately crumpling, then smoothing, the folds of his black, rune-covered robes.
“No, not the world, a soul,” Tanis started to reply bitterly, when he heard, behind him, the laboratory door creak.
Dalamar’s gaze shifted instantly. Eyes glittering, his hand moved to a spell scroll he had slipped into his belt.
“No one can enter,” he said softly to Tanis, who had turned at the sound. “The guardians—”
“Cannot stop him,” Tanis said, his gaze fixed upon the door with a look of fear that mirrored, for an instant, the look of frozen fear upon Kitiara’s dead face.
Dalamar smiled grimly, and relapsed back into his chair. There was no need to look around. The chill of death flowed through the room like a foul mist.
“Enter, Lord Soth,” Dalamar said. “I’ve been expecting you...
5
Caramon was blinded by the dazzling light that seared even through his closed eyelids. Then darkness wrapped around him and, when he opened his eyes, for an instant he could not see, and he panicked, remembering the time he had been blind and lost in the Tower of High Sorcery. But, gradually, the darkness, too, lifted, and his eyes became accustomed to the eerie light of his surroundings. It burned with a strange, pinkish glow, as if the sun had just set, Tasslehoff had told him. And the land was just as the kender had described—vast, empty terrain beneath a vast, empty sky. Sky and land were the same color everywhere he looked, in every direction.
Except in one direction. Turning his head, Caramon saw the Portal, now behind him. It was the only swatch of colors in the barren land. Framed by the oval door of the five heads of the dragon, it seemed small and distant to him even though he knew he must be very near. Caramon fancied it looked like a picture, hung upon a wall. Though he could see Tanis and Dalamar quite clearly, they were not moving. They might well have been painted subjects, captured in arrested motion, forced to spend their painted eternity staring into nothing.