He held the device over his head and brought to mind a vision of the Chaos War, his own part in it. His part and Tasslehoff’s.
Closing his eyes, Palin focused on the vision and gave himself to the magic. He surrendered himself to his longtime mistress.
She proved faithful to him.
The floor of the kitchen elongated, scrolled up into the air. The ceiling slid underneath the floor, the dishes on the shelves melted and trickled down the walls, the walls merged with the floor and the ceiling, and all began to roll into themselves, forming an enormous spiral. The spiral sucked in the house and then the woods beyond. Trees and grass wrapped around Palin, then the blue sky, and the ball in which he was the center started to revolve, faster and faster.
His feet left the floor. He was suspended in the center of a whirling, spinning kaleidoscope of places and people and events.
He saw Jenna and Tas whirl past, saw the blur of their faces, and then they disappeared. He was moving very slowly but the people around him were moving fast, or perhaps he was the one speeding past them while they walked by him as slowly if they were walking under water.
He saw forests and mountains. He saw villages and cities. He saw the ocean and ships on the ocean, and all of them were drawn up to form part of the great ball in the middle of which he drifted.
The spiral wound down. The spinning slowed, slowed. . . he could see people, objects more clearly. . .
He saw Chaos, the Father of All and of Nothing, a fearsome giant with beard and hair of flame, standing taller than the tallest mountain, the top of his head brushing eternity, his feet extending to the deepest part of the Abyss. Chaos had just smashed his foot down on the ground, presumably killing Tasslehoff but inflicting his death blow upon himself, for Usha would catch a drop of his blood in the Chaos jewel and banish him.
The spinning continued, carrying Palin on past that moment into...
Blackness. Utter darkness. A darkness so vast and deep that Palin feared he’d been struck blind. And then he saw light behind him, blazing firelight.
He glanced back into fire, looked ahead into darkness.
Looked into nothing.
Panic-stricken, he closed his eyes. “Go back beyond the Chaos War!” he said, half-suffocated with fear. “Go back to my childhood! Go back to my father’s childhood! Go back to Istar! Go back to the Kingpriest! Go back to Huma! Go back. . . go back. . .”
He opened his eyes.
Darkness, emptiness, nothing.
He took another step and realized that he had taken a step too far. He had stepped off the precipice.
He screamed, but no sound came from his throat. Time’s rushing wind carried it away from. He experienced the sickening sensation of falling that one feels in a dream. His stomach dropped.
Cold sweat bathed him. He tried desperately to wake himself, but then came the horrible knowledge that he would never wake.
Fear seized him, paralyzed him. He was falling, and he would continue to fall and fall and keep falling into time’s well of darkness.
Time’s empty well.
Having been the one using the device to travel back through time, Tasslehoff had never actually seen what happened to himself when he used it. He had always rather regretted this and had once tried to go back to watch himself going back, but that hadn’t worked. He was extremely gratified, therefore, to watch Palin using the device and quite charmed to see the mage disappear before his very eyes.
All that was interesting and exciting, but it lasted only a few moments. Then Palin was gone, and Tasslehoff and Jenna were alone in the Majere’s kitchen.
“We didn’t explode,” Tas observed.
“No, we didn’t,” Jenna agreed. “Disappointed?”
“A little. I’ve never seen anything explode before, not counting the time Fizban tried to boil water to cook an egg. Speaking of eggs, would you like something to eat while we wait? I could heat up some oatmeal.” Tas felt it incumbent upon himself to act as host in Usha’s and Palin’s absence.
“Thank you,” Jenna replied, glancing at the remains of the congealed oatmeal in the pot and making a slight grimace, “but I think not. If you could find some brandy, now, I believe I could use a drink—”
Palin materialized in the room. He was ashen, disheveled, and he clutched the device in a hand that shook so he could barely hold it.
“Palin!” Jenna cried, rising from her chair in amazement and consternation. “Are you hurt?”
He stared at her wildly, without recognition. Then he shuddered, gave a gasping sigh of relief. Staggering, he very nearly fell. His hand went limp. The device tumbled to the floor and bounced away in a flash of jewels. Tas chased after it, caught it before it rolled into the fireplace.
“Palin, what went wrong?” Jenna ran to him. “What happened? Tas, help me!”
Palin started to crumple. Between the two of them, Tas and Jenna eased the mage to the floor.
“Go fetch blankets,” Jenna ordered.
Tasslehoff dashed out of the kitchen, pausing only a moment to deposit the device in a pocket. He returned moments later, tottering under a load of several blankets, three pillows, and a feather mattress that he had dragged off the master bed.
Palin lay on the floor, his eyes closed. He was too weak to move or speak. Jenna put her hand on his wrist, felt his pulse racing. His breathing was rapid, rasping, his body chilled. He was shivering so that his teeth clicked together. She wrapped two of the blankets snugly around him.
“Palin!” she called urgently.
He opened his eyes, stared at her. “Darkness. All darkness.”
“Palin, what do you mean? What did you see in the past?”
He grasped her hand, hard, hurting her. He held fast to her as if he were being swept away by a raging river and she was his only salvation.
“There is no past!” he whispered through pallid lips. He sank back, exhausted.
“Darkness,” he murmured. “Only darkness.”
Jenna sat back on her heels, frowning.
“That doesn’t make any sense. Brandy,” she said to Tas.
She held the flask to Palin’s lips. He drank a little, and some color came to his pale cheeks. The shivering eased. Jenna took a swallow of the brandy herself, then handed the flask to the kender. Tas helped himself, just to be sociable.
“Put it back on the table,” Jenna ordered.
Tas removed the flask from his pocket and, after several more sociable gulps, he placed it on the table.
The kender looked down at Palin in remorseful concern.
“What’s wrong? Was this my fault? I didn’t mean it, if it was.”
Palin’s eyes flared open again. “Your fault!” he cried hoarsely. Flinging off the blankets, he sat up. “Yes, it’s your fault!”
“Palin, keep calm,” Jenna said, alarmed. “You’ll make yourself ill again. Tell me what you saw.”
“I’ll tell you what I saw, Jenna.” Palin said, his voice hollow. “I saw nothing. Nothing!”
“I don’t understand,” Jenna said.
“I don’t either.” Palin sighed, concentrated, tried to order his thoughts. “I traveled back in time and as I did so, time unrolled before me,like a vast parchment. I saw all that has passed in the Fifth Age. I saw the coming of the great dragons. I saw the dragon purge. I saw the building of this Citadel. I saw the raising of the shield over Silvanesti. I saw the dedication of the Tomb of the Last Heroes. I saw the defeat of Chaos, and that is where it all ends. Or begins.”
“Ends? Begins?” Jenna repeated; baffled. “But that can’t be, Palin. What of the Fourth Age? What of the War of the Lance? What of the Cataclysm?”
“Gone. All of it. I stood amidst the ether and saw the battle with Chaos, but when I tried to see beyond, when I looked into the past, I saw only darkness. I took a step and . . . ” He shuddered. “I fell into the darkness. A void where no light shines, no light has ever shone. Darkness that is eternal, everlasting. I had the feeling that I was falling through centuries of time and that I would continue to fall until death took me, and then my corpse would keep falling. . . .”