The Magic Of Krynn

Dragonlance - Tales 1 1 - The Magic of Krynn Various

“No! No! Please don't leave!” cried Tasslehoff Burrfoot and, before we could stop him, the
kender grabbed hold of our magical device that would have transported us out of Krynn and
ran off with it down the road!

So here we are, back again, ready for more adventures. If you are one of our long-time
fellow travelers, we welcome you along. If you have never journeyed with us through the
DRAGONLANCE worlds, we hope this anthology will serve as an interesting and exciting
introduction.

A favorite fantasy theme is magic and those who practice it. In these pages, you will find
tales of the magic of Krynn. Some were written by us, some written by old friends, and
some written by new friends we've met along the way.

Riverwind and the Crystal Staff is a narrative poem that describes a haunting search for a
magical artifact. A Stone's Throw Away is the story of that irrepressible kender, Tassle-
hoff Burrfoot, and his comic, perilous adventure of the tele- porting ring.

The Blood Sea Monster tells about “the one that got away.” Dreams of Darkness, Dreams of
Light recounts the tale of Pig-Face William and the magical coin.

Otik the innkeeper has unusual problems in Love and Ale. The young mage, Raistlin, faces
danger in the Tower of High Sorcery in The Test of the Twins. Draconians stumble into a
mysterious village of elves in Wayward Children.

Finding the Faith is a high-adventure tale of the elf maid, Laurana, and her search for
the famed dragon orb in Icewall Castle. A young Tanis and his friend, Flint the dwarf,
learn about love that redeems and love that kills in Harvests.

Finally, in the novella, The Legacy, a young mage must face the fact that his evil
uncle-the powerful wizard, Raistlin - may be trying to escape eternal torment by stealing
his nephew's soul!

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

HERE ON THE PLAINS WHERE THE WIND EMBRACES LIGHT AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT, WHERE THE WIND
IS THE VOICE OF THE GODS COME DOWN,

THE RUMOR OF SONG BEFORE SINGING BEGINS,

HERE THE PEOPLE UNDER THE WINDS ARE WANDERING EVER TOWARDS HOME, FOREVER IN MOVEMENT AN
OLD MAN IS SINGING THE SONG OF AN ABSENT COUNTRY, BEAUTIFUL, HEARTLESS AS SUNLIGHT, COLD
AS IMAGINED WINDS BEHIND THE EYE OF THE RAIN, AND WIDE BEFORE US, MY SONS AND FATHERS, THE
SONG OF THE COUNTRY CENTERS AND SWOOPS LIKE A HAWK IN A SLEEPING LAND, BORNE UPON HUNGER
AND THERMALS, SINGING FOREVER, SINGING:

It was not always after the wars, it was a time once when fire did not rise on its own out
of the dead grass, a time of waters and of vanishing light, when we did not imagine new
country arising out of the long mirage of countries remembered from mother to daughter in
a ruinous dream that would not have let this happen, nor did the dance of the moons, the
opened hearts of hawks, nor did the wind itself foresee the fires hot as shrew's blood

in the veins of the land consuming our dream while we slept in our journeys, while these
things came to pass.

The outrunners found the child among waves of grass and darkness, on the night when the
moon and the moon wed one another and canceled their light and the sky was black

except for a wedge of silver turned like a blade in the heart of the heavens.

And the night they found him was his naming night, and the years unnamed were the years
behind him, the time among leopards

who must have raised him in the waves of grass and darkness, though he did not remember
this, did not recount the graves upon graves to which he gave infancy, where he buried the
first words of childhood,

And the night they found him was his naming night. Riverwind the name he borrowed,
borrowed for him

out of the grass and the darkness moving, out of their fear of the sky and the blade of
the swallowed moon.

And honored he was among families, as the source of the blood was lost in the people, as
the path of the eland,

the high call of the hawk buried themselves in words and the long wind died at the back of
his head

as he moved and he moved, as the Que-Shu contained him, becoming his country, as the dream
of the Que-Shu wed to his dreaming like dark to the moon, until he remembered the plains
and the wind and the wandering only.

Riverwind, borrowed from night, grew as the eyes of the People, reading the air, the
descending wind, the back of his mind

a prophet, a jackal, while the cry of the leopard, unheard by the People except at the
place where the world falls over, choired at the back of his head. And his hand, with the
grace of the falconer's hand or the falcon herself, unjessed in the diving air, was the
hand of the People, the left hand, the off-hand, the hand that steadies the bow. And so it
would be, my sons and fathers, until the night of the dancing moons when the sky to the
east was silver and black, red the sky in the westland falling, the night when we bring
forth the daughters. Robed in the friends of the people, robed in eland, robed in the fox,
in the falcon's high feathers ten winters counting, came forth the daughter of chieftains,
the daughter unwed to man or to sorrow, unwed to the things she could not be.

Grace of the fathers dove through her veins like a wind that the world obeyed.

Heart of the hunter she was at the heart of the wandering, gold of the eyes imagining gold
of the moon descended her naming night, and Riverwind knew that the journey, the truce
with horizons, was ending in light and the promise of light. And holy the days he drew
near her, holy the air that carried his songs of endearment, the country behind him a song
like a choir of bees at the edge of hearing, telling him HERE IS GREAT SWEETNESS HERE IS
PAIN AND YOU WILL HAVE TO LEARN ABOUT THIS.

And seven the summers in which she eluded him, winters in which the cold and the country
collapsed on the words CHIEFTAIN'S DAUGHTER. The halved heart of the eland steamed from
the spinning ground below him and Old Man, Grandfather, Wanderer, reader of skies, reading
the face of the boy arising out of the face of the man, as the binding of moons on his
naming night, repeating the words like a charm, like a warding, CHIEFTAIN'S DAUGHTER, the
old enduring story of love and of distance, of the borders at which the heart bows down.

But the eyes of Wanderer never the lone eyes watching as these things came to pass, in the
eyes of the daughter the leopard's eye reflected upon reflection, until

it mirrors itself into forever like the thoughts of a long hall never the lone eyes
watching, and the eyes of Goldmoon for the Chieftain looked on at the dance of the eyes
and whispers, looked on from the place of judgment deciding this could not be, and he set
for River-wind three tasks unapproachable, saying PAY COURT TO MY DAUGHTER ONLY WHEN YOU
CAN RETURN TO MY HEARTHSIDE BEARING THE MOON IN YOUR HANDS, THE STARS ON A DYING BLANKET,
AND WHEN YOU CAN COME FROM THE EAST, BEARING THE CRYSTAL STAFF, THE ARM OF THE GODS IN
FORGOTTEN COUNTRY, THE SOURCE OF THE MAGICS. And Wanderer hearing this heard the NO and
again the NO at the heart of the words, and knew that the magic was fractured light, the
light at the heart of a crystal, bending and bending upon itself, forever becoming
nothing. Knew that the magic was fractured light when Riverwind spread his cloak on the
dew, when the waters gathered, spangling stars, and the hunter cupped water alight in the
palms of his hands, and returned to the Chieftain, bearing the moon in his hands, the
stars trapped on a dying blanket. And the third task then was the terrible one, for the
others were easy, were riddles set before children set before huntsmen set before those
whom the Chieftain could never remember, and the heart and the mind of Wanderer bent like
the light

of the one true crystal, turning to words and to whispers, to the counsel that Riverwind
heard that night at the brink of the journey, and traveling eastward under the reeling
moons toward the source of the light in the heart of the Staff, again that night was his
naming night.

III

The plains are long as thought, my fathers, as memory, where the traveler sees at the edge
of the sky the dead children walking,

and closer, as the sky recedes, the children accept his name, in the terrible dust
becoming, as the sky recedes, the skins of himself

he abandoned in wandering.

Or this is the way it always happens, the story they tell us of blindness in the country
of leopards when our eyes say NO MORE, SAY WE ARE DONE WITH LOOKING, WITH THE CHILDREN,

WITH SKINS AND WITH DUST AND WITH MEMORY.

But the time of the Staff was no time, as Old Man told him it would be, knowing, reading
the hawk's heart, reading the switch of the wind, knowing the Staff was calling, changing
the country,

changing the heart and the way the memory wanders the heart. And the moons crossed at
impossible angle,

Solinari to rest in the source of the sun, Lunitari to rest in the dragons.

So Riverwind knew when the leopard approached him, skin full of light, of dark, of
darkness boiling in light, bone and muscle giving way in imagined tunnels of plains and
movement. Something behind him sang with the leopard, his left eye shining straight
through the leopard to the edge of the world, and behind him something saying LIE DOWN,
GIVE THIS AWAY AT ONCE, GIVE THIS AWAY BEFORE IT BEGINS, OUR SON, OUR YOUNG ONE, FOR YOU
CAN LEARN NOTHING OF THIS MYSTERY, NOTHING FROM THIS MYSTERY BUT DRY GRASS BUT DARK BUT
YEARNING BUT THE GRAVES OF YOUR CHILDHOOD OPEN TO MOONLIGHT, AND THE DEAD THE UNSPEAKING
DEAD YOU SEE WHERE THE SKY MEETS THE PLAINS WILL BE ALWAYS YOUR OWN, APPROACHING.

And he knows that he dreams this story out of wandering out of night and the long singing
he kept away from the People from Goldmoon from the Chieftain from Old Man himself, the
weaver of blood, a dream that he cannot remember where the hawk scuttles over the ground,
dragging its wing like a trophy, a kill, surrendered wind in its eyes. And as he
approaches, the leopard, the hawk vanish like water, reflections of moon over moon at the
heart of the place of the Staff. He follows each vanishing,

awaiting the snares of the moon, and OLD MAN, he whispers, OLD MAN, I AM LEARNING THIS
MAPLESS COUNTRY.

But the wanderer travels through hunger's ambush, through the thirst of the country that
drives away knowing and knowledge, and the words of the Old Man translate the country
behind him but the country before him is rumors of water, is crystal arising distorted by
moonlight, by thought and the absence of thought, and water arises like blue crystal
before him. THIS TIME THE DREAMING IS OVER, he thinks, AND THIS TIME AND THIS TIME but the
water escapes him bearing the moons in its depths like memories, like the speculations of
gods, until the water is standing before him and down in the water he sees himself looking
upwards, the knotted moons at his shoulders, and kneeling to drink he drinks too long, for
out of the water his arms are rising, terrible, cold as the wind, and drawing him downward
to moons and to darkness to peace past remembering, peace that whispers JOIN ME MY BROTHER
MY DOUBLE over his vanishing face, and the words of the Wanderer returning, drawing him
upwards, the air in the words sustaining him after belief falls to the floors of the
waters that never were, for somewhere the Old Man is saying,

is saying BELIEF IS A FACET OF CRYSTAL THAT TURNING, CATCHES THE LIGHT AND BENDS IT TO
SHAPES AND MIRAGES, BENDS IT TO FOXFIRE

THAT LIES AT THE HEART OF THE CRYSTAL, WHERE NOTHING LIES BUT THE LIGHT THAT IS DAMAGED
AND BROKEN BEYOND THOSE THINGS

YOU REMEMBER, MY SON, YOU REMEMBER, and Riverwind, doused and redeemed by the words, by
the saving air, is saying, OLD MAN, I HAVE PASSED THIS, TOO, I AM LEARNING THIS MAPLESS
COUNTRY.

Learning until the red of the moon, the silver, combine in the air and the light was gold
as the perfumed candles

of Istar, forgotten perhaps terrible, and Goldmoon walks like a leopard there at the edge
of hearing and faith saying LIE DOWN, GIVE THIS AWAY AT ONCE, GIVE THIS AWAY BEFORE IT
BEGINS,

OUR DARLING, OUR YOUNG ONE, FOR YOU CAN LEARN ALL OF THIS MYSTERY, ALL FROM THIS MYSTERY
DRY GRASS AND DARK AND YEARNING, THE SOURCE OF THE CHILDREN BLOSSOMS FOR YOU IN THE
WINTER. LIE DOWN, MY LOVE, LIE DOWN.

Still he walks toward the daughter of the chieftains, and still she recedes, the story of
days and of years circles like diving water

and Old Man, he whispers. Old Man, I am learning this mapless country, but still she
recedes into the arms and the keeping

of son after chieftain's son rising like skins of the dead spangled in stars forever
before him, forever embracing her as she turns,

her eyes green steeples of light, her eyes his eyes in the twisting moon, as she smiles,
as she gives him to warriors, and Old Man, he whispers. Old Man, I AM GIVING THIS
KNOWLEDGE AWAY, THIS TERRIBLE DREAM OF THE STAFF IS A TERRIBLE DREAM WHEN THE STAFF
SURRENDERS, and under the moons he follows his losses until his skin turns against him,
dappling, gold upon black upon gold, his strong hands remember a nest of knives and the
front of the head bows down to the hot wind to the choir of leopards and in her golden
throat in the throat of her numberless chieftains the blood is dancing is rising like a
mirage like a thermal, and there are no words for this as he dreams this dream and the
throats unravel.

Forward he moves, remembering nothing, no movement and cry of the People no hunt at the
head of the movement no horizons no crossing moons of the naming

nights. He has left them behind him utterly, surrendering all to the skin full of light,
of dark, of darkness boiling in light, bone and muscle giving way in imagined tunnels of
plains and movement. Something behind him sings in his ear, his left eye shining straight
through mirages to the edge of the world, and the smell of the blood is fading to the
smell of rock of water and of things below rock and water wise and lethal and good beyond
thought. Upright, out of the leopard's salvation he stalks into light, his first and his
last skin recalled and surrendered,

robed once more in the long dream shining. There in a temple of rock, cold, insubstantial
as rain cold as the silence of stone,

lies the Staff it is singing, singing ARISE, YOU HAVE EARNED THIS PEACE AT THE EDGE OF THE
WORLD, BEHIND YOU A VANISHING COUNTRY. TAKE ME UP LIKE A TROPHY, LIKE A THIRD MOON IN THE
SKY FAMILIAR, AND INSTEAD OF THE ARM OF THE CHIEFTAIN, BECOME THE CHIEFTAIN HIMSELF, THE
LORD OF A LAND OF LEOPARDS, and Riverwind cold as the silence of stones, remembering the
edge of the sky, the dead children walking, and the staff shines sudden in the reach of
his hand refusing. There in his grasp the world rolls, at the back of his head the voice
of the leopard descends into words, is singing LIE DOWN, GIVE THIS AWAY AT ONCE, GIVE THIS
AWAY BEFORE IT BEGINS, OUR SON, OUR YOUNG ONE, FOR YOU CAN LEAM NOTHING OF THIS MYSTERY,
NOTHING FROM THIS MYSTERY BUT DRY GRASS BUT DARK BUT YEARNING BUT THE GRAVES OF YOUR
CHILDHOOD OPEN TO MOONLIGHT, AND THE DEAD THE UNSPEAKING DEAD YOU SEE WHERE THE SKY MEETS
THE PLAINS WILL BE ALWAYS YOUR OWN, APPROACHING.

In the light of the Staff he surrenders the Staff. More brightly it bums as it shines on
the country of trials, on the three moons balancing now,

on the night turning in on the heart of the night creating blue light, the light of the
crystal brought forth by the hand of the warrior out of the lineage of leopards,

the long heart of the people remembered past memory, but Riverwind, cold as the silence of
stones, laughs the first time since the west has vanished, for this is the country he
knows he has failed in winning, for under the plains lies nothing, and victory walks in
the skins of the children through damaging years of light.