“Yes! Yes!” Astinus breathed, the eyes that looked into the globe glimmering with tears, the hands that rested upon it shaking.
“And now my payment,” Raistlin continued coldly. “Where is the Portal?”
Astinus looked up from the globe. “Can you not guess, Man of the Future and the Past? You have read the histories... .”
Raistlin stared at Astinus without speaking, his face growing pale and chill until it might have been a death mask.
“You are right. I have read the histories. So that is why Fistandantilus went to Zhaman,” the archmage said finally.
Astinus nodded wordlessly.
“Zhaman, the magical fortress, located in the Plains of Dergoth... near Thorbardin—home of the mountain dwarves. And Zhaman is in land controlled by the mountain dwarves,” Raistlin went on, his voice expressionless as though reading from a textbook. “And where, even now, their cousins, the hill dwarves, go—driven by the evil that has consumed the world since the Cataclysm to demand shelter within the ancient mountain home.”
“The Portal is located—”
“—deep within the dungeons of Zhaman,” Raistlin said bitterly. “Here, Fistandantilus fought the Great Dwarven War—”
“Will fight...” Astinus corrected.
“Will fight,” Raistlin murmured, “the war that will encompass his own doom!”
The mage fell silent. Then, abruptly, he rose to his feet and moved to Astinus’s desk. Placing his hands upon the book, he turned it. around to face him. Astinus observed him with cool, detached interest.
“You are right,” Raistlin said, scanning the still-wet writing on the parchment. “I am from the future. I have read the Chronicles, as you penned them. Parts of them, at any rate. I remember reading this entry—one you will write there.” He pointed to a blank space, then recited from memory. “‘As of this date, After Darkwatch falling 30, Fistandantilus brought me the Globe of Present Time Passing.’”
Astinus did not reply. Raistlin’s hand began to shake. “You will write that?” he persisted, anger grating in his voice.
Astinus paused, then acquiesced with a slight shrug of his shoulders.
Raistlin sighed. “So I am doing nothing that has not been done before! “His hand clenched suddenly and, when he spoke again, his voice was tight with the effort it was taking to control himself.
“Lady Crysania came to you, several days ago. She said you were writing as she entered and that, after seeing her, you crossed something out. Show me what that was.”
Astinus frowned.
“Show me!” Raistlin’s voice cracked, it was almost a shriek.
Placing the globe to one side of the table, where it hovered near him, Astinus reluctantly removed his hands from its crystal surface. The light blinked out, the globe grew dark and empty. Reaching around behind him, the historian pulled out a great, leather-bound volume and, without hesitation, found the page requested.
He turned the book so that Raistlin could see.
The archmage read what had been written, then read the correction. When he stood up, his black robes whispering about him as he folded his hands within his sleeves, his face was deathly pale but calm.
“This alters time.”
“This alters nothing,” Astinus said coolly. “She came in his stead, that is all. An even exchange. Time flows on, undisturbed.”
“And carries me with it?”
“Unless you have the power to change the course of rivers by tossing in a pebble,” Astinus remarked wryly.
Raistlin looked at him and smiled, swiftly, briefly. Then he pointed at the globe. “Watch, Astinus,” he whispered, “watch for the pebble! Farewell, Deathless One.”
The room was empty, suddenly, except for Astinus. The historian sat silently, pondering. Then, turning the book back, he read once more what he had been writing when Crysania had entered.
On this date, Afterwatch rising 15, Denubis, a cleric of Paladine, arrived here, having been sent by the great archmage, Fistandantilus, to discover the whereabouts of the Portal. In return for my help. Fistandantilus will make what he has long promised me—the Globe of Present Time Passing...
Denubis’s name had been crossed out, Crysania’s written in.
7
“I’m dead,” said Tasslehoff Burrfoot.
He waited expectantly a moment.
“I’m dead,” he said again. “My, my. This must be the Afterlife.”
Another moment passed.
“Well,” said Tas, “one thing I can say for it—it certainly is dark.”
Still nothing happened. Tas found his interest in being dead beginning to wane. He was, he discovered, lying on his back on something extremely hard and uncomfortable, cold and stony feeling.
“Perhaps I’m laid out on a marble slab, like Huma’s,” he said, trying to drum up some enthusiasm. “Or a hero’s crypt, like where we buried Sturm”
That thought entertained him a while, then, “Ouch!” He pressed his hand to his side, feeling a stabbing pain in his ribs and, at the same time, he noticed another pain in his head. He also came to realize that he was shivering, a sharp rock was poking him in the back, and he had a stiff neck.
“Well, I certainly didn’t expect this,” he snapped irritably. “I mean, by all accounts when you’re dead, you’re not supposed to feel anything.” He said this quite loudly, in case someone was listening. “I said you’re not supposed to feel anything!” he repeated pointedly when the pain did not go away.
“Drat!” muttered Tas. “Maybe it’s some sort of mix-up. Maybe I’m dead and the word just hasn’t gotten around my body yet. I certainly haven’t gone all stiff, and I’m sure that’s supposed to happen. So I’ll just wait.”
Squirming to get comfortable (first removing the rock from beneath his back), Tas folded his hands across his chest and stared up into the thick, impenetrable darkness. After a few minutes of this, he frowned.
“If this is being dead, it sure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” he remarked sternly. “Now I’m not only dead, I’m bored, too. Well,” he said after a few more moments of staring into the darkness, “I guess I can’t do much about being dead, but I can do something about being bored. There’s obviously been a mix-up. I’ll just have to go talk to someone about this.”
Sitting up, he started to swing his legs around to jump off the marble slab, only to discover that he was—apparently—lying on a stone floor. “How rude!” he commented indignantly. “Why not just dump me in someone’s root cellar!”
Stumbling to his feet, he took a step forward and bumped into something hard and solid. “A rock,” he said gloomily, running his hands over it. “Humpf! Flint dies and he gets a tree! I die and I get a rock. It’s obvious someone’s done something all wrong.
“Hey!—” he cried, groping around in the darkness. “Is anyone—Well, what do you know? I’ve still got my pouches! They let me bring everything with me, even the magical device. At least that was considerate. Still”—Tas’s lips tightened with firm resolve—“someone better do something about this pain. I simply won’t put up with it.”
Investigating with his hands, since he couldn’t see a thing, Tas ran his fingers curiously over the big rock. It seemed to be covered with carved images—runes, maybe? And that struck him as familiar. The shape of the huge rock, too, was odd.
“It isn’t a rock after all! It’s a table, seemingly,” he said, puzzled. “A rock table carved with runes—” Then his memory returned. “I know!” he shouted triumphantly. “It’s that big stone desk in the laboratory where I went to hunt for Raistlin and Caramon and Crysania, and found that they’d all gone and left me behind. I was standing there when the fiery mountain came down on top of me! In fact, that’s the place where I died!”