The question now was, how to find his way out of the forest. All this time he’d been on the ground, the dead were flowing around him like fog with eyes and mouths and hands and feet, moving past him and over him, but he hadn’t really taken any notice, he’d been too busy thinking. He noticed now. Although being surrounded by dead people with their sad faces and their hands that plucked at one of his pouches wasn’t the most comfortable experience in the world, he thought perhaps they might make up for being so extremely cold and creepy by providing him with directions.
“I say, excuse me, sir— Madam, excuse me— Hobgoblin, old chum, could you tell me— I beg your pardon, but that’s my pouch. Hey, kid, if I give you a copper would you show— Kender! Fellow kender! I need to find a way to reach— Drat,” Tasslehoff said after several moments spent in a futile attempt to converse with the dead. “They don’t seem to see me. They look right through me. I’d ask Caramon, but just when he might be useful, he isn’t around. I don’t mean to be insulting,” he added in irritable tones, trying without success to find a path through the cypress trees that pressed thick around him, “but there really are a lot of you dead people! Far more than is necessary.”
He continued searching for a path—any sort of a path— but without much luck. Walking in the dark was difficult, although the dead were lit with a soft white light that Tas thought was interesting at first but after awhile, seeing that the dead looked very lost, sorrowful, and terrified, he decided that darkness—any darkness—would be preferable.
At least, he could put some distance between himself and Palin and Dalamar. If he, a kender who was never lost, was lost in these trees, he had no doubt that a mere human and a dark elf—wizards though they might be—would be just as lost and that by losing himself he was also losing them.
He kept going, bashing into trees and knocking his head against low branches, until he took a nasty tumble over a tree root and fell down onto a bed of dead cypress needles. The needles were sweet-smelling, at least, and they were decently dead—all brown and crispy—not like some other dead he could mention.
His legs were pleased that he wasn’t using them anymore. The brown needles were comfortable, after you got used to them sticking you in various places, and, all in all, Tasslehoff decided that since he was down here he might as well take this opportunity to rest.
He crawled to the base of the tree trunk, settled himself as comfortably as possible, pillowing his head on a bed of soft green moss. It was not surprising, therefore, that the last thing he thought of, as he was drifting off to sleep, was his father.
Not that his father was moss-covered.
It was his father telling him, “Moss always grows on the side of a tree facing—”
Facing. . .
Tas closed his eyes.
Now, if he could just remember what direction . . .
“North,” he said and woke himself up.
Realizing that he now could tell what direction he was traveling, he was about to roll over and go back to sleep when he looked up and saw one of the ghosts standing over him, staring down at him.
The ghost was that of a kender, a kender who appeared vaguely familiar to Tas, but then most kender appear familiar to their fellow kender since the odds are quite likely that in all their ambulations, they must have run into each other sometime.
“Now, look,” said Tasslehoff, sitting up. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have spent most of the day escaping from the Tower of High Sorcery, and—as I am certain you know—escaping from sorcerous towers makes a fellow extremely tired. So if you don’t mind, I’m just going to go to sleep.”
Tas shut his eyes, but he had the feeling the ghost of the kender was still there, still looking down at him. Not only that, but Tas continued to see the ghost of the kender on the backs of his eyelids, and the more he thought about it the more he was quite certain he had definitely met that kender somewhere before.
The kender was quite a handsome fellow with a taste in clothes that others might have considered garish and outlandish but that Tasslehoff considered charming. The kender was festooned with pouches, but that wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was the expression on the kender’s face
—sad, lost, alone, seeking.
A cold chill shivered through Tasslehoff. Not a thrilling, excited chill, like you feel when you’re about to pull the glittering ring off the bony finger of a skeleton and the finger twitches! This was a nasty, sickening kind of chill that scrunches up the stomach and squeezes the lungs, making it hard to breathe. Tas thought he would open his eyes, then he thought he wouldn’t. He squinched them shut very hard so they wouldn’t open by themselves and curled into an even tighter ball. He knew where he had seen that kender before.
“Go away,” he said softly. “Please.”
He knew quite well, though he couldn’t see, that the ghost hadn’t gone away.
“Go away, go away, go away!” Tas cried frantically, and when that didn’t work, he opened his eyes and jumped to his feet and yelled angrily at the ghost, “Go away!”
The ghost stood staring at Tasslehoff.
Tasslehoff stood staring at himself.
“Tell me,” Tas said, his voice quivering, “why are you here? What do you want? Are you . . . are you mad because I’m not dead yet?”
The ghost of himself said nothing. It stared at Tas a little longer, then turned and walked away, not as if it wanted to but because it couldn’t help itself. Tas watched his own ghost join a milling throng of other restless spirits. He watched until he could no longer distinguish his ghost from any other.
Tears stung his eyes. Panic seized him. He turned and ran as he had never run before. He ran and ran, not looking where he was going, smashing into bushes, caroming off tree trunks, falling down, getting up, running some more, running and running until he fell down and couldn’t get up because his legs wouldn’t work anymore.
Exhausted, frightened, horrified, Tasslehoff did something he had never done.
He wept for himself.
17
Mistaken Identity
While Tasslehoff was recalling with fond nostalgia his travels with Gerard, it may be truthfully stated that at this time Gerard was not thinking fond thoughts about the kender. He wasn’t thinking any sort of thoughts about the kender at all. Gerard assumed, quite confidently, that he would never have anything more to do with kender and put Tasslehoff out of his mind. The Knight had far more important and worrisome matters to consider.
Gerard wanted desperately to be back in Qualinesti, assisting Marshal Medan and Gilthas to prepare the city for the battle with Beryl’s forces. In his heart, he was there with the elves. In reality, he was on the back of the blue dragon, Razor, flying north—the exact opposite direction from Qualinesti, heading for Solanthus.
They were passing over the northern portion of Abanasinia— Gerard was able to see the vast shining expanse of New Sea from the air—when Razor started to descend. The dragon informed Gerard that he needed to rest and eat. The flight over New Sea was long, and once they started out over the water there would be nowhere to stop until they reached land on the other side.
Although he grudged the time, Gerard was in wholehearted agreement that the dragon should be well-rested before the flight. The blue extended his wings to slow his descent and began to circle around and around, dropping lower with every rotation, his destination a large expanse of sandy beach. The sea was entrancing seen from above. Sunlight striking the water made it blaze like molten fire. The dragon’s flight seemed leisurely to Gerard until Razor drew closer to the ground, or rather, when the ground came rushing up to meet them.