“He is,” said Palin.
Jenna shifted her gaze to him. “Oh, come now.” She scrutinized him more closely. “By the lost gods, I believe that you are serious. Tasslehoff Burrfoot died—”
“I know!” Palin said impatiently. “Thirty-odd years ago. Or thereabouts. I’m sorry, Jenna.” He sighed. “It’s been a long night. Beryl found out about the artifact. We were ambushed by Neraka Knights. The kender and I barely escaped with our lives, and the Solamnic who brought Tas to me didn’t escape at all. Then we were attacked in the air by one of Beryl’s greens. We escaped the dragon only by making a harrowing flight into a thunderstorm.”
“You should get some sleep,” Jenna advised, regarding him with concern.
“I can’t sleep,” Palin returned, rubbing his eyes, which were red-rimmed and burning. “My thoughts are in turmoil, they give me no rest. We need to talk!” he added in a kind of frantic desperation.
“That’s why I am here, my friend,” Jenna said. “But you should at least eat something. Let us go to your house and drink a glass of wine. Say hello to your wife, who has just returned herself from what I gather was a very harrowing journey herself.”
Palin grew calmer. He smiled at her wanly. “Yes, you are right, as usual. It’s just. . .” He paused, thinking what to say and how to say it. “That is the real Tasslehoff, Jenna. I’m convinced of it. And he has been to a future that is not ours, a future in which the great dragons do not exist. A future where the world is at peace. He has brought with him the device he used to travel to that future.”
Jenna gazed at him searchingly and intently. Seeing that he was in earnest, utterly serious, her eyes darkened, narrowed with interest.
“Yes,” she said at last. “We do need to talk.” She took his arm, they walked side by side.
“Tell me everything, Palin,” she said.
The Majeres’ house was a large structure that had once belonged to a Master Theobald, the man who had taught Raistlin Majere magic. Caramon had purchased the house at the master’s death, in memory of his brother, and had given the house as gift to Palin and Usha when they were married. Here their children had been born and grown up, going off on adventures of their own. Palin had transformed the classroom where the young Raistlin had once droned through his lessons into a studio for his wife, a portrait painter of some renown throughout Solamnia and Abanasinia. He continued to use the master’s old laboratory for his studies.
Tasslehoff had spoken truly when he told Palin that he remembered the house from Caramon’s first funeral. He did remember the house—it hadn’t changed. But Palin certainly had.
“I suppose having your fingers all mangled would give you a mangled view of life,” Tas was saying to Usha as he sat with her in the kitchen, eating a large bowl of oatmeal. “That must be the reason, because at Caramon’s first funeral, Palin’s fingers were just fine and so was he. He was cheerful and happy. Well, maybe not happy, because poor Caramon had just died and no one could feel truly happy. But Palin was happy underneath. So that when he was over being sad, I knew he would be happy again. But now he’s terribly unhappy, so unhappy that he can’t even be sad.”
“I . . . I suppose so,” Usha murmured.
The kitchen was a large one with a high, beamed ceiling and an enormous stone fireplace, charred and blackened with years of use. A pot hung from a black chain in the center of the fireplace.
Usha sat across from the kender at a large, butcher-block table used for chopping the heads off chickens and such, or so Tas supposed. Right now it was washed clean, no headless chickens lying about. But then it was only midmoming. Dinnertime was a long way off.
Usha was staring at him just like all the rest of them—as if he’d grown two heads or maybe was headless altogether, like the chickens. She had been staring at him that way ever since his arrival, when he had thrown open the front door (remembering to knock afterward), and cried out, “Usha! It’s me, Tas! I haven’t been stepped on by the giant yet!”
Usha Majere had been a lovely young woman. Age had enhanced her good looks, although, Tas thought, she doesn’t have quite the same prettiness she had when I came back here for Caramon’s funeral the first time. Her hair shone with the same silver sheen, her eyes glinted with the same gold, but the gold lacked warmth, the silver was dull and tarnished. She looked faded and tired.
She’s unhappy, too, Tas realized suddenly. It must be catching.
Like measles.
“That will be Palin now!” Usha said, hearing the front door open and close. She sounded relieved.
“ And Jenna,” Tas mumbled, his mouth full.
“Yes. Jenna,” Usha repeated, her voice cool. “You can stay here, if you like, er . . . Tas. Finish your oatmeal. There’s more in the pot.”
She rose to her feet and left the kitchen. The door swung shut behind her. Tas ate his oatmeal and eavesdropped with interest on the conversation being held in the entry hall. Ordinarily he would not have listened in on someone else’s conversation, because that wasn’t polite, but they were talking about him when he wasn’t there, which wasn’t polite, either, and so he felt justified.
Besides, Tas was starting not to like Palin very much. The kender felt badly about this, but he couldn’t help the feeling.
He’d spent a considerable amount of time with the mage when they were at Laurana’s, relating over and over everything he could remember about Caramon’s first funeral. The kender added the usual embellishments, of course, without which no kender tale is considered complete. Unfortunately, instead of entertaining Palin, these embellishments—which shifted from story to story—appeared to irritate him to no end. Palin had a way of looking at him—Tas—not as if he had two heads, but more as if the mage would like to rip off the kender’s single head and open it up to see what was inside.
“Not even Raistlin looked at me like that,” Tas said to himself, scraping the oatmeal out of the bowl with his finger. “He looked at me as if he’d like to kill me sometimes, but never like he wanted to turn me inside out first.” Usha’s voice came floating through the door “. . . claims he’s Tasslehoff . . .”
“He is Tasslehoff, my dear,” Palin returned. “You know Mistress Jenna, I believe, Usha? Mistress Jenna will be spending a few days with us. Will you make up the guest room?”
There was a silence that sounded as if it had been mashed through a sieve, then Usha’s voice, cold as the oatmeal had grown by now. “Palin, may I see you in the kitchen?”
Palin’s voice, colder than the oatmeal. “Please excuse us, Mistress Jenna.”
Tasslehoff sighed and, thinking he should look as if he hadn’t been listening, began to hum loudly to himself and started to rummage through the pantry, searching for something else to eat.
Fortunately, neither Palin nor Usha paid any attention to the kender at all, except for Palin to snap at him to stop that infernal racket.
“What is she doing here?” Usha demanded, her hands on her hips.
“We have important matters to discuss,” Palin answered evasively.
Usha fixed him with a look. “Palin, you promised me! This trip to Qualinesti would be your last! You know how dangerous this search for artifacts has become—”
“Yes, my dear, I do know,” Palin interrupted, his tone cool.
“That is why I think it would be best if you left Solace.”
“Left!” Usha repeated, astonished. “I’ve just come back home after being away for three months! Your sister and I were virtual prisoners in Haven. Did you know that?”
“Yes, I knew—”
“You knew! And you didn’t say anything? You weren’t worried? You didn’t ask how we escaped—”
“My dear, I haven’t had time—”