D&D - Dragonlance - Anthologies - Dragons 03 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-07T21:08:20+00:00

“Come, my dragons, come. It’s time, past time!” Tarris muttered the chant to himself aloud while he dug, trying to persuade the noble beasts to appear. He hated the thought that the final vision would take the dragons away from him.

He knew he couldn’t keep his dragons, they’d told him that several times. At least he’d have memories of his beautiful metallic-hued companions for the rest of his life.

They appeared whether he waked or slept. Time of day or night meant nothing to his dragons. The trio-gold, bronze, and silver-always appeared in the distance where he could see their huge wings furl and strong tails lash. They always turned one by one to regard Tarris, coming closer until their magnificent heads filled his mind’s eye. Their mouths never opened when they spoke to him, but their dark, richly cavernous voices resounded in his head and they seemed to know everything about him.

During the first dream the dragons had spoken of Krynn’s aridness and of Tarris’s hidden ability to save people by finding liquid with a stick. At first he worried that he really was going crazy until he went hunting for the simple implement that, the dragons claimed, would allow him to bring about the salvation of Gurnn.

A forked stick had not been difficult to find. The correct forked stick eluded him for months. His hands had searched for a certain “feel” of wood, discarding one after another until he found an old hazelwood stick, debarked and bleached nearly white. His fingers clamped around it and he took it home. That evening the second dream occurred. He’d waited little more than seven days for the third, all the while walking through daylight’s blaze and ascertaining the hazel stick’s feel.

He learned to hold the “finder” in a loose grip, long end pointed ahead of him like the feeler of some ungainly insect. Any time it dived toward the earth, Tarris marked the spot with a stone or a twig. The old man didn’t mind that he forgot about his holes almost as soon as he

found them. They represented his practicing with the “finder.” He smiled and went on about his business. The dragons had told him that he would find liquid, if he showed faith and was conscientious.

After the dragons visited him the fourth time, he began carrying an old metal shovel along with the forked hazel twig, his small hide waterskin, and a bag of preserved meat and fruit. Wherever his stick pointed, Tarris dug with an energy and dedication that, at first, many townspeople envied. But when he didn’t find any water, and the holes began appearing all over town, they began to dismiss him-and worse.

Stopping to rest, absently rubbing the smoothed surface of the wooden handle with blistered fingers, Tarris remembered the old Gurnn. The place used to be pretty, he thought. Now bleached like the bones in the surrounding pastures, it was all one dun color beneath the castigating sky. The people looked exhausted from labors they continued to perform only because of a thread of hope it might rain soon.

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