Tasslehoff rose to present the novel idea that perhaps the kender should not be sent back to die, but at this juncture Dalamar fixed Tas with a cold eye and said that in his opinion the most important thing they could do to help save the world, short of slaying the humungous dragons, was to send Tasslehoff back to die and that they would have to figure out some way to do it without the Device of Time Journeying.
Dalamar and Palin began snatching books from the shelves, paging through them, muttering and mumbling about rivers of time and Graygems and kender jumping in and mucking things up and a lot of other mind-numbing stuff. Dalamar magicked up a fire in the large fireplace, and the room that had been cold and dank, grew warm and stuffy, smelling of vellum, mildew, lamp oil, and dead roses. Since there was no longer anything of interest to see or hear, Tasslehoff’s eyes decided to close. His ears agreed with his eyes, and his mind agreed with his ears, and all of them took another brief nap, this one of his own choosing.
Tas woke to something poking him uncomfortably in the posterior. His nap had apparently not been as brief as he thought, for it was dark outside the window—so dark that the darkness had overflowed from outside and was now inside. Tasslehoff could not see a thing. Not himself, not Dalamar, and not Palin.
Tasslehoff squirmed about in the chair in order to stop whatever was sticking him in a tender region from sticking him. It was then, after he woke up a bit, that he realized the reason he couldn’t see either Palin or Dalamar was that they were no longer in the room. Or, if they were, they were playing at hide and seek, and while that was a charming and amusing game, the two of them didn’t seem the type to go in for it. Leaving his chair, Tasslehoff fumbled his way to Dalamar’s desk, where he found the oil lamp. A few embers remained in the fireplace. Tas felt about on the desk until he discovered some paper. Hoping that the paper didn’t have a magic spell written on it or if did, it was a spell that Dalamar didn’t want anymore, Tas stuck the end of the paper in the fireplace, lit it, and lit the oil lamp.
Now that he could see, he reached into his back pocket to find out what had been poking him. Taking out the offending object, he held it to the oil lamp.
“Uh, oh!” Tas exclaimed.
“Oh, no!” he cried.
“How did you get here?” he wailed.
The thing that had been poking him was the chain from the Device of Time Journeying. Tas threw it onto the desk and reached back into his pocket. He pulled out another piece of the device, then another and another. He pulled out all the jewels, one by one. Spreading the pieces on the desk, he gazed at them sadly. He might have actually shaken his fist at them, but such a gesture would not have been worthy of a Hero of the Lance, and so we will say here that he did not.
As a Hero of the Lance, Tas knew what he should do. He should gather up all the pieces of the device in his handkerchief (make that Palin’s handkerchief) take them straightway to wherever Palin and Dalamar were, and hand them over and say, quite bravely, that he was prepared to go back and die for the world. That would be a Noble Deed, and Tasslehoff had been ready once before to do a Noble Deed. But one had to be in the proper mood for being Noble, and Tas discovered he wasn’t in that mood at all. He supposed that one also had to be in the proper mood to be stepped on by a giant, and he wasn’t in that particular mood either. After seeing the dead people roaming about aimlessly outside—especially the dead kender, who didn’t even care what they had in their pouches—
Tasslehoff was in the mood to live and go on living.
He knew this was not likely to happen if Dalamar and Palin discovered that he had the magical device in his pocket, even if it was broken. Fearing that any moment Palin and Dalamar might remember they’d left him here and come back to check on him or offer him dinner, Tasslehoff hurriedly gathered up the pieces of the magical device, wrapped them in the handkerchief, and stuffed them in one of his pouches.
That was the easy part. Now came the hard part.
Far from being Noble, he was going to be Ignoble. He thought that was the right word. He was going to Escape.
Leaving by the front door was out. He had tried the windows already, and they were no help. You couldn’t even break them by heaving a rock through the glass like you could an ordinary, respectable window. Tas had heaved, and the rock had bounced off and landed on his foot, smashing his toes.
“I have to consider this logically,” Tas said to himself. It may be noted as a historical fact that this was the only time a kender ever said such a thing and only goes to show how truly dire was the situation in which he found himself. “Palin got out, but he’s a wizard, and he had to use magic to do it. However, using logic, I say to myself—if nothing but a wizard can get out can anything other than a wizard get in? If so, what and how?”
Tas thought this over. While he thought, he watched the embers glow in the fireplace. Suddenly he let out a cry and immediately clapped his hand over his mouth, afraid that Palin and Dalamar would hear and remember him.
“I’ve got it!” he whispered. “Something does get in! Air gets in! And it goes out, too. And where it goes, I can go.”
Tasslehoff kicked and stomped on the embers until they went out. Picking up the oil lamp, he walked into the fireplace and took a look around. It was a large fireplace, and he didn’t have to stoop all that much to get inside. Holding the lamp high, he peered up into the darkness. He was almost immediately forced to lower his head and blink quite frantically until he dislodged the soot that had fallen into his eyes. Once he could see again, he was rewarded by a lovely sight—the wall of the chimney was not smooth. Instead it was nubbly, wonderfully nubbly, with the ends and fronts and sides of large stones sticking out every which way.
“Why, I could climb up that wall with one leg tied behind my back,”
Tasslehoff exclaimed.
This not being something he did on a regular basis, he decided that it would be far more efficient to use two legs. He couldn’t very well climb and hang onto the oil lamp, so he left that on the desk, thoughtfully blowing out the flame first so that he wouldn’t set anything on fire. Entering the chimney, he found a good foot-and handhold right off and began his climb.
He had gone only a short distance—moving slowly because he had to feel his way in the darkness and pausing occasionally to wipe gunk out of his eyes—when he heard voices coming from below. Tasslehoff froze, clinging like a spider to the wall of the chimney, afraid to move lest he send a shower of soot raining down into the fireplace. He did think, rather resentfully, that Dalamar might at least have spent some magic on a chimney sweep.
The voices were raised and heated.
“I tell you, Majere, your story makes no sense! From all we have read, you should have seen the past flow by you like a great river. In my opinion, you simply miscast the spell.”
“And I tell you, Dalamar, that while I may not have your vaunted power in magic, I did not miscast the spell. The past was not there, and it all goes wrong at the very moment Tasslehoff was supposed to die.”
“From what we have read in Raistlin’s journal, the death of the kender should be a drop in time’s vast river and should not affect time one way or the other.”
“For the fourteenth time the fact that Chaos was involved alters matters completely. The kender’s death becomes vitally important. What of this future he says he visited? A future in which everything is different?”
“Bah! You are gullible, Majere! The kender is a liar. He made it all up. Where is that blasted scroll? That should explain everything. I know it is here somewhere. Look over there in that cabinet.”