The Bargain
It was nearly morning when the fire finally burned itself out. The wood was a smoking relic, and ash swirled above the lake on desultory breezes. Clotnik lay half in and half out of the water, one leg wrapped around the stub of a branch sticking out of the log on which he was sprawled. The other leg, as well as one arm, dangled in the cold water. Tanis, who had just awakened from a short and troubled sleep, gazed at the juggler with sympathy. Clotnik looked like an abandoned child who had run out of everything, including hope. But Clotnik would be fine with a little rest. The half-elf's gaze passed to the thin, old man, propped in the crevice between the partially submerged tree trunk and one of its sturdy limbs. Tanis watched, frozen, until the man's chest rose again. He still lived, then. At least the cold water soothed the old man's badly burned skin; it was a small blessing.
Tanis pushed away the dirty surface water with a few flicks of his hand and then splashed his face. Although stiff from being in the water all night, the half-elf began to kick his legs and stroke with one arm, slowly maneuvering the log toward the shore.
He had nearly reached an open batch of land when a hoarse voice croaked, "You."
The half-elf immediately glanced at Clotnik, thinking the juggler had revived. But the dwarf snored on.
"Here," said the voice. "It's me."
Tanis adjusted his gaze to the crook of the tree limb and was surprised to see that the old man's blue eyes were open. He stopped swimming.
"Keep going," ordered the ancient one. "Get me out of this water before I shrivel up."
"You're badly burned, old one," Tanis said softly. 'The pain is going to be very bad when I lay you down on the ground."
"What do you know of pain?" the old man asked sarcastically. "Just do as I say."
Clotnik finally stirred. He lifted his arm to stretch and promptly slid off the log and into the water. Hailing for a handhold on the tree trunk, the juggler splashed and screamed for help, not realizing that he was a mere dozen yards from land.
Gliding easily through the ash covered water, Tanis grabbed Clotnik around the neck and pulled his head high above the surface of the lake. Dirty water streamed from the dwarf's brown beard. "Easy," Tanis said firmly. "You're okay. Take hold of the log," he said, gesturing with his head. "We're almost on dry ground."
"Good!" gasped Clotnik, grasping the log.
While Tanis pushed the log closer to the shoreline. Clotnik glanced over at the old one, who was smiling- or maybe grimacing. The ancient's face was badly burned. And despite the best efforts of Tanis and Clotnik, cinders had burned away portions of the old man's iron-gray hair.
"I didn't think you'd live till morning," Clotnik said solemnly.
The man's voice carried the hoarseness of pain and exhaustion. "I had no choice."
*****
Tanis dug up their meager belongings, then took a blanket from his pack and dunked it into the lake, spreading it out on a flat piece of ground.
"Help me," Tanis said to Clotnik, indicating the old man.
Clotnik swallowed and came to stand knee-deep in the water on the other side of the ancient.
"Gently now," said Tanis.
As they lifted the old one, the stench of his dying flesh assailed them. Clotnik made a point of not looking at the poor man-at least not until they put him down. That's when the juggler saw that his own hands and arms were covered with burnt loose skin and congealed blood- and it was not his own. His stomach revolting, he shot a look at the ancient. "By Reorx!" said Clotnik. He quickly turned away from the sight, staggered a few steps away, and vomited into the lake.
"It seems I'm rather overcooked," the old one said.
"You accept your fate with surprising calm," said Tanis respectfully.
"It was my own fault," the man rejoined, blue eyes filming over with tears, doubtless from the pain of his burns.
Tanis frowned. "You can't blame yourself for not outrunning a grass fire," he said gently.
"I don't." The blue eyes cleared again and studied the half-elf. "I blame myself for starting it."
Tanis raised his eyebrows. "Why did you set it?"
"Sligs were after me," the old one explained. "Quite a lot of them, in fact. I thought the fire would stop them or kill them."
Tanis looked around. Nearby, Clotnik was recovering from his bout of nausea. Steam and smoke still rose from blackened trunks and boughs. Any animals in the area had long since disappeared. Sligs, huge, intelligent cousins of the hobgoblins, would have a hard time hiding in the lake's blaze-scarred surroundings.
"It seems to have worked," Tanife agreed. He paused, then resumed as if talking to himself. "I've never known sligs to travel in this part of the world. They must have been after something valuable." The old man averted his eyes but didn't reply, and Tanis went on. 'The fire stretched from one horizon to the other. You must have set the fire some distance from here."
The old one tried to shake his head and winced. The numbness from his overnight stay in the cold water appeared to be wearing off, and the terrible pain was only just beginning, Tanis saw. The blue eyes seemed to go out of focus again, and the man sighed and closed them.
"No," he whispered. "It was not very far away, at all. It was my magic that spread it so wide."
"You're a mage?"
"What's left of one," he replied with a dull laugh.
Something didn't add up, Tanis thought. "If you saved yourself from the sligs with magic, why didn't you cast another spell to save yourself from the fire?"
"I couldn't… "-and his voice trailed off before he visibly pulled himself together-"I couldn't cast another spell so soon after the first. My strength is not what it used to be." He shook his head, remembering. "Once the fire was started, I had no way of controlling it. I got a good head start, but when the wind changed direction and it came after me, I didn't think I'd make it."
Clotnik heard the last of this as he returned from the lake. He was pale and trembling, one hand held at his stomach as if to keep it calm, the other wrapped tightly around his chest as if to ward off a chill despite the rapidly rising sun.
"The only reason you live is Tanis," the juggler said. "He saved your life."
"I remember," whispered the pain-wracked mage. "When I saw him, at first I thought he was his father."
Tanis felt himself go lightheaded. His mind was a jumble of questions, yet he couldn't find his voice. Please, he thought, let him live long enough to tell me what he knows.
Clotnik reached out and carefully drew a waterlogged twig from the old man's grizzled hair. "You should rest," he gently advised the wizard.
The mage responded by tightening his lips. The old man must have shown a mulish streak in healthier days, Tanis thought. "You know better," the wizard objected.' "There is too little time. I must talk to the half-elf while I can."
The mage tried to turn to look at Tanis, but the effort brought him only unendurable pain. He groaned down deep in his soul as his eyes rolled up into his head.
Tanis hastened to speak. "We'll stay with you until-" The half-elf couldn't finish.
"Until I die?" the mage told Tanis through clenched teeth. "No. Not you."
Tanis did not know what to say.
"We must strike a bargain," the old mage said slowly, with increasing difficulty. "A deal. Knowledge of your father… in return for a favor."
"Of course," Tanis said without a moment's delay. 'Tell me what you want, and if I can do it, it is yours."
The blue eyes suddenly turned steely in his ash- smeared face. "I want you to find someone for me… someone who will perish without your help." He cried out the final words, and his hands shot up and grabbed Tanis's tunic. His fire-blackened fingers curled, and he used his handhold both to pull Tanis closer and to raise himself up off the ground. In a strangled voice, he exclaimed, "She must be saved! I need your word!"
"Was the woman you speak of out there on the plains with you when the fire struck?" Tanis asked in alarm, preparing to rise and search for what, at best, would be a charred corpse.
The mage shook his head, however, and pulled Tanis closer with strength born of desperation. "She's very far away," the old wizard said sadly.
Tanis eased the man back down onto the blanket. "Who is she?"
"She is Brandella," he said simply. "There is no other like her. And you must find her, save her, so that she can live on after I die."
Clotnik finally interjected, "Kishpa, you haven't explained it to him."
"Give me water," demanded the mage. Once he had sipped from Clotnik's water bag, he gave a deep sigh and continued. 'Three years ago I cast a search spell, hoping that my magic would tell me whom I should seek. My magic told me to find you, Tanthalas," he said, using Tanis's elven name. Kishpa coughed, and Clotnik offered him more water. The old wizard refused it and went on. "I have sought you ever since. My hold on you is simple. Your father came to my village ninety-eight years ago. I will lead you to him if you will give me Brandella."
The old man rested a moment, catching his breath.
Tanis was having nearly as much trouble breathing as the old mage. His father. Was it possible? Ninety-eight years were but a short time to an elf, but Tanis's father was human. He couldn't still be alive. Tanis wondered if his doubts showed in his face.
"How am I to find this woman, this Brandella?" Tanis asked hurriedly.
Kishpa's blistered lips cracked into a bleeding smile. "The same way you will find your father. You will look for both of them in my past. They live in my memory."
The Mage's Plea
Tanis felt his hopes crash around him like one of the burned-out tree trunks that now marred the landscape. Kishpa's blue eyes gleamed with an intensity that doubly alarmed the half-elf. "The old man is delirious," Tanis said. "Clotnik, help me set up the other blankets to form a tent around him. We ought to protect-" But Clotnik continued to kneel impassively on the sandy dirt next to the mage. "He isn't delirious," the dwarf said firmly. Tanis glanced from the juggler to the mage, thinking, Maybe I'm the one who's delirious.
"Brandella is living and breathing inside me," said Kishpa hoarsely. "So is your father. Or at least they will be for as long as I live. That's why I need you, Tanis." The mage suddenly coughed up blood. He wiped it off his fire-scarred face, breathlessly forging on. "While I'm still conscious, I'm going to cast a spell. I will send you deep into my memory, back to the time when I knew my Brandella best and when your father came to my village." He stopped and Clotnik gave him a worried look.
Few sounds broke the morning calm; pieces of charred wood occasionally thumped against each other in the lake, and a branch broke with a crack and dropped to the littered ground only yards away. The smell of smoke was still strong. The half-elf and the dwarf were silent as they waited for the aging wizard to overcome the latest spasm of pain. Tanis watched the mage's shallow breath barely move the charred robes that once, he knew, had been red and velvety.
A fierce expression crossed the mage's face; he refused to let the pain stand in his way. "Learn what you will about your father," he said, "but find my Brandella and escape from my mind with her so that when I die, she will live on. I don't want her memory to die with me, Tanis. Do you understand? I love her too much to see her perish with me. Find her. Free her."
The old man slumped back, watching Tanis with a stare that now waned from demanding to hopeful. "Will you do it?" Kishpa asked weakly.
To actually see his father? To meet him? "Yes," he replied. There could be no other answer.
The mage managed a smile. "There is much you should know," he said, "but I must concentrate now and build my strength for the spell. Clotnik," he called, "tell Tanis what to expect. And be quick. Time is short."
Clotnik took Tanis by the arm and led him a short distance away. They seated themselves on the log, now wedged on the bank, that had sustained them during the night. Clotnik looked out over the lake, his thoughtful green eyes soft as moss agates. Wrinkles creased the dwarf's skin around his eyes, and Tanis realized that his companion might not be as young as he'd thought. Clotnik began speaking as if from a long distance.
"Kishpa knew Brandella long ago, during a time of war," explained the juggler. 'There was disease, and humans were in flight, sending their armies westward to untainted lands. They marched against scattered elven villages north of Qualinesti, vowing to drive those in their path into the Straits of Algoni."
Tanis knew of the wars between the humans and elves, of course. Those invasions were yet another reason the two races remained suspicious of each other-and another reason members of both sides considered Tanis, a product of those violent years, an outcast.
"And my father?" he prompted.
Clotnik looked at him for the first time, his eyes sympathetic. "Your father was among those soldiers. I tell you this so that you are prepared for what lies ahead. Violence and bloodshed will surround you, and you could become their victim. It is possible that you could die in Kishpa's memory."
"I will be careful," Tanis promised.
Clotnik shook his head, however, and put one hand on Tanis's muscular forearm. "Death is only one of the dangers," he warned.
Tanis looked aside at the old mage, lying a few yards away on the sandy ground and marshaling his strength for the ordeal ahead. The half-elf replied, "I must take the risks." Then, when the dwarf remained silent, Tanis looked back at him. "All right. Explain them."
Clotnik removed his hand from Tanis's arm and ventured on. "Kishpa doesn't know what will happen if a stranger enters his past. You may change the whole direction of his life, you may change only his memories, or you may change nothing at all. He is willing to risk any consequences just as long as you find Brandella and return with her before he dies. If he should breathe no more, neither will you." The dwarvish gaze grew as sharp as one of Hint's forged swords. "At least not in his memory," Clotnik went on. "What will happen to you- whether you will ever be able to return to this life-he does not know, either."
Tanis sat silently, assessing the situation. All his companions, from huge Caramon to tiny Tas, were off on their own adventures. But he'd be willing to wager they were keeping their booted feet in the present, at least. The half-elf started to speak, but Clotnik hurried on. "All I can tell you," the dwarf said, 'Is that you must find her and get out of Kishpa's memory before he dies."
"How?" Tanis asked.
Clotnik looked surprised. "With magic, of course."
Tanis felt that somehow the juggler was hedging. "And Kishpa will get us out?" Tanis pressed.
Clotnik smiled oddly before saying, "If all goes well." When moments stretched long without comment from the half-elf, Clotnik chewed briefly on his lower lip, leaned back, and asked, "What is it?"
"Kishpa looks human," Tanis said, his face hard. "How could he have been a young man in love with a woman nearly one hundred years ago?"
Clotnik allowed himself a brief laugh before sobering and responding. "He looks human under all those burns? Reorx's beard, no!" he replied. "His grandfather was elven." Clotnik's voice took on a gossipy tone. "As best as I can figure, he's one-quarter elf and three-quarters human. The elven features, admittedly, are rather hidden. His longevity, though, is obvious proof of his heritage."
Tanis nodded once, slowly. There were other questions to ask. "How will I find my father? And Brandella? What do they look like?"
"You will find them both in a village named Anka- tavaka, on the northeast shore of the Straits of Algoni. You will recognize your father because, as Kishpa described him to me, he looks a little like you-in the eyes and in the mouth. There are differences, though. Kishpa told me that, unlike you, your father had long, black hair, a badly broken nose, and, during the short time he was in Ankatavaka, a slash wound in the right leg from a broadsword."
"What of my mother? Did she live in Kishpa's village, too7" Tanis held his breath. To also meet his mother, who had died shortly after his birth, would be worth all the dangers the old mage's plan could present.
"No," Clotnik said, his face averted. "Kishpa did not know her. On this question, I cannot help you."
Tanis sighed deeply. "All right. Then tell me about Brandella."
"She was a weaver when Kishpa knew her. You will recognize her when you see her, Tanis. Of this there is no doubt."
"But how?" Out in the lake, a pair of waterfowl tried to land on the scummy surface. Squawking in apparent' dismay, they took off immediately and flew west. Tanis's gaze followed them.
"You will know her because Kishpa loved her, and you will be in his memory." The dwarf tried to look reassuring. "You will come to understand."
Tanis wasn't so sure. Nonetheless, he did not pursue the matter.
The dwarf made motions as if to return to Kishpa, and the half-elf asked, "What about you, Clotnik? Why have you done this for the old man?"
'This7 This is nothing," the juggler said sorrowfully. "I wanted to make the journey instead of you. Kishpa wouldn't let me. It had to be you, he said; the search spell had been specific." He took a deep breath, glanced back at Kishpa over his shoulder, and said in a low voice, "But I don't believe him. He just didn't want me to go."
"Why?"
"For the same reason I wanted to go," he said obliquely, toying with a bit of sodden bark from the log on which they sat. He tossed the bark away and looked Tanis full in the face. "Should you survive your journey, I will tell you. And you will have things to tell me. But enough now. The time for talk is over. Kishpa is ready." The dwarf rose, cutting off further questions, and hurried back to the wizard. Tanis followed more deliberately.
The mage looked up at them with eyes suddenly malignant, and Tanis fought back second thoughts. He'd always been cautious-too cautious, his companions sometimes told him. This time he would push ahead without continual second-guessing, he vowed.
With some effort, the ancient wizard plucked two objects from a small, charred, watertight pouch that hung from his belt; he held them up. The first was a tattered piece of cloth that Tanis could see had once been bright and colorful, full of shades of red, yellow, and purple. The second object was a simple wooden writing instrument. The wizard handed Tanis the quill but kept the fragment of fabric.
"The cloth is all I have left from her," the mage said sadly. "It is the last remaining shred of a scarf she once made for me. Take it and give it to her as a token of my love."
"And the quill?" asked Tanis.
'Take it with you, also, and leave it in the past. It was for this that the sligs were after me. This plan is the safest way of keeping it out of their reach."
Sligs, known for their sharp teeth, ugliness, and generally antisocial attitudes, were rare near Solace. "Why would these sligs want your quill?" questioned Tanis. "It looks ordinary."
'The quill foretells danger," the mage replied. "Whoever possesses it will never be caught by surprise. You can see how valuable it would be to an army of such creatures intent upon conquest." Kishpa's lips tightened in resolve. "They must not have it, Tanthalasl"
Tanis was about to ask another question when Clotnik interceded. "Kishpa is weak. We must hurry." The mage stroked the faded piece of cloth and handed it reluctantly to Tanis. The half-elf carefully concealed the cloth and the quill inside his tunic.
The wizard nodded his thanks and then closed his eyes.
But suddenly just before he began his spell-casting, the relic of a being that once was full of life lifted his raw, bleeding hands, seemingly oblivious to pain, and pointed at the half-elf. 'There is one more thing you must know," Kishpa whispered. "Someone will try to stop you from freeing my Brandella."
"Who?" asked Tanis, leaning lower to hear better.
"Me."
As Tanis recovered from his surprise, the mage intoned words that Tanis had never heard before. The otherworldly sounds were musical, not so much language as an intricate series of notes. Kishpa repeated them again, then a third time. Tanis glanced at Clotnik.
"It's not working," the half-elf said softly.
Clotnik glared. "Shhh!"
But then the mage closed his hands into two fists, shook them, and then opened them again. Dead skin dropped from his fingers in ribbons, but the mage didn't appear to notice. He closed his fists a second time. Shook them. Opened them. Closed them a third time. Shook them… and then Tanis disappeared.