“How—how can you be sure?” he faltered, still fighting, still refusing to believe.
“I’m sure,” Caramon said bitterly. “Look at this.” The handle wiggled, the head wobbled when he touched it. “I made it when I was—was still drinking.” He wiped his eyes with his hand. “It isn’t made very well. The head used to come off about half the time. But then”—he choked—“I never did much work with it anyway.”
Weakened from the running, Caramon’s injured leg suddenly gave out. This time, he didn’t even try to catch himself, but just slumped down into the mud. Sitting in the clear patch of ground that had once been his home, he clutched the hammer in his hand and began to cry.
Tas turned his head away. The big man’s grief was sacred, too private a thing for even his eyes.
Ignoring his own tears, which were trickling past his nose, Tas stared around bleakly. He had never felt so helpless, so lost and alone. What had happened? What had gone wrong? Surely there must be a clue, an answer.
“I-I’m going to look around,” he mumbled to Caramon, who didn’t hear him.
With a sigh, Tas trudged off. He knew where he was now, of course. He could refuse to admit it no longer. Caramon’s house had been located near the center of town, close to the Inn. Tas continued walking along what had once been a street running between rows of houses. Even though there was nothing left now—not the houses, not the street, not the vallenwoods that held the houses—he knew exactly where he was. He wished he didn’t. Here and there he saw branches poking up out of the mud, and he shivered. For there was nothing else. Nothing except...
“Caramon!” Tas called, thankful to have something to investigate and to, hopefully, take Caramon’s mind off his sorrow. “Caramon, I think you should come see this!”
But the big man continued to ignore him, so Tas went off to examine the object by himself.
Standing at the very end of the street, in what had once been a small park, was a stone obelisk.
Tas remembered the park, but he didn’t remember the obelisk. It hadn’t been there the last time he’d been in Solace, he realized, examining it.
Tall, crudely carved, it had, nevertheless, survived the ravages of fire and wind and storm. Its surface was blackened and charred but, Tas saw as he neared it, there were letters carved into it, letters that, once he had cleaned away the muck, he thought he could read.
Tas brushed away the soot and muddy film covering the stone, stared at it for a long moment, then called out softly, “Caramon.”
The odd note in the kender’s voice penetrated Caramon’s haze of grief. He lifted his head. Seeing the strange obelisk and seeing Tas’s unusually serious face, the big man painfully heaved himself up and limped toward it.
“What is it?” he asked.
Tas couldn’t answer, he could only shake his head and point.
Caramon came around to the front and stood, silently reading the roughly carved letters and unfinished inscription.
Hero of the Lance
Tika Waylan Majere
Death Year 358
Your life’s tree felled too soon.
I fear, lest in my hands the axe be found.
“I—I’m sorry, Caramon,” Tas murmured, slipping his hand into the big man’s limp, nerveless fingers. Caramon’s head bowed. Putting his hand on the obelisk, he stroked its cold, wet surface as the wind whipped around them. A few raindrops splattered against the stone. “She died alone,” he said. Doubling his fist, he bashed it into the rock, cutting his flesh on the sharp edges.
“I left her alone! I should have been here! Damn it, I should have been here!”
His shoulders began to heave with sobs. Tas, looking over at the storm clouds and realizing that they were moving again, and coming closer, held Caramon s hand tightly.
“I don’t think there would have been anything you could have done, Caramon, if you had been here—” the kender began earnestly.
Suddenly, he bit his words off, nearly biting his tongue in the process. Withdrawing his hand from Caramon’s—the big man never even noticed—the kender knelt down in the mud. His quick eyes had caught sight of something shining in the sickly rays of the pale sun. Reaching down with a trembling hand, Tas hurriedly scooped away the muck.
“Name of the gods,” he said in awe, leaning back on his heels. “Caramon, you were here!”
“What?” he growled. Tas pointed.
Lifting his head, Caramon turned and looked down. There, at his feet, lay his own corpse.
3
At least it appeared to be Caramon’s corpse. It was wearing the armor he had acquired in Solamnia—armor he had worn during the Dwarfgate War, armor he had been wearing when he and Tas left Zhaman, armor he was wearing now... .
But, beyond that, there was nothing specific that identified the body. Unlike the bodies Tas had discovered that had been preserved beneath layers of mud, this corpse lay relatively close to the surface and had decomposed. All that was left was the skeleton of what had obviously been a large man lying at the foot of the obelisk. One hand, holding a chisel, rested directly beneath the stone monument as if his final act had been to carve out that last dreadful phrase. There was no sign of what had killed him.
“What’s going on, Caramon?” Tas asked in a quivering voice. “If that’s you and you’re dead, how can you be here at the same time?” A sudden thought occurred to him. “Oh, no! What if you’re not here!” He clutched at his topknot, twisting it round and round. “If you’re not here, then I’ve made you up. My!” Tas gulped. “I never knew I had such a vivid imagination. You certainly look real.” Reaching out a trembling hand, he touched Caramon. “You feel real and, if you don’t mind my saying so, you even smell real!” Tas wrung his hands. “Caramon! I’m going crazy,” he cried wildly. “Like one of those dark dwarves in Thorbardin!”
“No, Tas,” Caramon muttered. “This is real. All too real.” He stared at the corpse, then at the obelisk that was now barely visible in the rapidly fading light. “And it’s starting to make sense. If only I could—” He paused, staring intently at the obelisk. “That’s it! Tas, look at the date on the monument!”
With a sigh, Tas lifted his head. “358,” he read in a dull voice. Then his eyes opened wide. “358?” he repeated. “Caramon—it was 356 when we left Solace!”
“We’ve come too far, Tas,” Caramon murmured in awe. “We’ve come into our own future.”
The boiling black clouds they had been watching mass along the horizon like an army gathering its full strength for the attack surged in just before nightfall, mercifully obliterating the final few moments of the shrunken sun’s existence.
The storm struck swiftly and with unbelievable fury. A blast of hot wind blew Tas off his feet and slammed Caramon back against the obelisk. Then the rain hit, pelting them with drops like molten lead. Hail beat on their heads, battering and bruising flesh.
More dreadful, though, than wind or rain was the deadly, multicolored lightning that leaped from cloud to ground, striking the tree stumps, shattering them into brilliant balls of flame visible for miles. The booming rumble of thunder was constant, shaking the very ground, numbing the senses.
Desperately trying to find shelter from the storm’s violence, Tas and Caramon huddled beneath a fallen vallenwood, crouching in a hole Caramon dug in the gray, oozing mud. From this scant cover, they watched in disbelief as the storm wreaked further destruction upon the already dead land. Fires swept the sides of the mountains; they could smell the stench of burning wood. Lightning struck near, exploding trees, sending great chunks of ground flying. Thunder hit their ears with concussive force.
The only blessing the storm offered was rainwater. Caramon left his helmet out, upturned, and almost immediately collected water enough to drink. But it tasted horrible—like rotten eggs, Tas shouted, holding his nose as he drank—and it did little to ease their thirst.