Gerard had put up with it for a long time, mostly due to the fact that the kender’s stories had a numbing effect on him, rather like repeatedly hitting his head against a stone wall. Frustrated, angry—angry at the Knights, angry at himself, angry at fate that had forced him into this untenable position—he lay on the hard plank, unable to go back to sleep, and worried about what was happening in Qualinesti. He wondered what Medan and Laurana must think of him. He should have returned by now, and he feared they must have decided he was a coward who, when faced with battle, had run away.
As to his predicament here, the Lord Knight had said he would send a messenger to Lord Warren, but the gods knew how long that would take. Could they even find Lord Warren? He might have pulled out of Solace. Or he might be fighting for his life against Beryl. The Lord Knights said they would inquire around Solanthus to find someone who knew his family, but Gerard gave that long odds. First someone would actually have to inquire and in his cynical and pessimistic mood, he doubted if the Knights would trouble themselves. Second, if someone did know his father, that person might not know Gerard. In the past ten years, Gerard had done what he could to avoid going back home.
Gerard tossed and turned and, as one is prone to do during a restless, sleepless night, he let his fears and his worries grow completely out of proportion. The kender’s voice had been a welcome distraction from his dark thoughts, but now it had turned into the constant and annoying drip of rain through a hole in the roof. Having fretted himself into exhaustion, Gerard turned his face to the wall. He ignored the kender’s pathetic wrigglings and squirmings, intended, no doubt, to make him—Gerard—feel guilty and ask for another story.
He was floating on sleep’s surface when he heard, or imagined he heard, someone singing a lullaby.
Sleep, love; forever sleep.
Your soul the night will keep.
Embrace the darkness deep.
Sleep, love; forever sleep.
The song was restful, soothing. Relaxing beneath the song’s influence, Gerard was sinking beneath peaceful waves when a voice came out of the darkness, a woman’s voice.
“Sir Knight?” the woman called.
Gerard woke, his heart pounding. He lay still. His first thought was that it was Lady Odila, come to torment him some more. He knew better almost at once, however. The voice had a different note, a more musical quality, and the accent was not Solamnic. Furthermore Lady Odila would have never referred to him as “Sir Knight.”
Warm, yellow light chased away the darkness. He rolled over on his side so that he could see who it was who came to him in the middle of the night in prison.
He couldn’t find her at first. The woman had paused at the bottom of the stairs to hear a reply, and the wall of the stairwell shielded her from his sight. The light she held wavered a moment, then began to move. The woman rounded the corner and he could see her clearly. White robes shimmered yellow-white in the candlelight. Her hair was spun silver and gold.
“Sir Knight?” she called again, looking searchingly about.
“Goldmoon!” cried out Tasslehoff. He waved his hand. “Over here!”
“Is that you, Tas? Keep your voice down. I’m looking for the Knight, Sir Gerard—”
“I am here, First Master,” Gerard said.
Sliding off the plank, bewildered, he crossed the cell to stand near the iron bars, so that she could see him. The kender reached the bars in a single convulsive leap, thrust both arms out between the bars and most of his face. The gnome was awake, too, picking himself up off the floor. Conundrum looked groggy, bleary-eyed, and extremely suspicious.
Goldmoon held in her hand a long, white taper. Lifting the light close to Gerard’s face, she studied him long and searchingly.
“Tasslehoff,” she said, turning to the kender, “is this the Knight of Solamnia you told me about, the same Knight who took you to see Palin in Qualinesti?”
“Oh, yes, this is the same Knight, Goldmoon,” said Tasslehoff.
Gerard flushed. “I know that you find this impossible to credit, First Master. But in this instance, the kender is telling the truth. The fact that I was found wearing the emblem of a Dark Knight—”
“Please say nothing more, Sir Knight,” Goldmoon interrupted abruptly. “I do believe Tas. I know him. I have known him for many years. He told me that you were gallant and brave and that you were a good friend to him.”
Gerard’s flush deepened. Tas’s “good friend” had been wondering, only moments earlier, how he might dispose of the kender’s body.
“The best friend,” Tasslehoff was saying. “The best friend I have in all the world. That’s why I came looking for him. Now we’ve found each other, and we’re locked up together, just like old times. I was telling Gerard all about Uncle Trapspringer—”
“Where am I?” the gnome asked suddenly. “Who are all of you?”
“First Master, I must explain—” Gerard began.
Goldmoon raised her hand, a commanding gesture that silenced all of them, including Tasslehoff. “I do not need explanations.” Her eyes were again intent upon Gerard. “You flew here on a blue dragon.”
“Yes, First Master. As I was about to tell you, I had no choice—”
“Yes, yes. It makes no difference. Haste is what counts. The Lady Knight said the dragon was still in the area, that they had searched for it but could not find it, yet they knew it was near. Is that true?”
“I … I have no way of knowing, First Master.” Gerard was mystified. At first he thought she had come to accuse him, then maybe to pray for him or whatever Mystics did. Now he did know what she wanted. “I suppose it might be. The blue dragon promised to wait for me to return. I had planned to deliver my message to the Knights’ Council, then fly back to Qualinesti, to do what I could to assist the elves in their battle.”
“Take me there, Sir Knight.”
Gerard stared at her blankly.
“I must go there,” she continued, and her voice sounded frantic. “Don’t you understand? I must find a way to go there, and you and your dragon will carry me. Tas, you remember how to get back, don’t you?”
“To Qualinesti?” Tas said, excited. “Sure, I know the way! I have all these maps—”
“Not Qualinesti,” Goldmoon said. “The Tower of High Sorcery. Dalamar’s Tower in Nightlund. You said you were there, Tas. You will show me the way.”
“First Master,” Gerard faltered, “I am a prisoner. You heard the charges against me. I cannot go anywhere.”
Goldmoon wrapped her hand around one of the bars of the cell. She tightened her grip until the knuckles on that hand grew as white as bare bone. “The warden sleeps under the enchantment I cast upon him. He will not stop me. No one will stop me. I must go to the Tower. I must speak with Dalamar and Palin. I could walk, and I will walk, if I have to, but the dragon is faster. You will take me, won’t you, Sir Gerard?”
Goldmoon had been the ruler of her people. All her life, she had been a leader. She was accustomed to command and to being obeyed. Her beauty moved him. Her sorrow touched him. Beyond that, she offered him his freedom. Freedom to return to Qualinesti, to join the battle there, to live or die with those he had come to care for.
“The key to the cell is on the ring the warden carries—” he began.
“I have no need of it,” Goldmoon said.
She closed her hand over the iron bars. The iron began to dissolve, melting like the wax of her candle. A hole formed in the center as the iron bars drooped, curled over.
Gerard stared. “How …” His voice was a hoarse croak.
“Hurry,” Goldmoon said.
He did not move but continued to stare at her.
“I don’t know how,” she said and a note of desperation made her voice tremble. “I don’t know how I have the power to do what I do. I don’t know where I heard the words to the song of enchantment I sang. I know only that whatever I want I am given.”
“Ah, now I remember who this woman is!” Conundrum
heaved a sigh. “Dead people.”
Gerard didn’t understand, but then this was nothing new. He had not understood much of anything that had happened to him in the past month.
“Why start now?” Gerard muttered, as he stepped through the bars. He wondered where they had stashed his sword.
“Come along, Tas,” Goldmoon said sternly. “This is no time to play games.”
Instead of leaping joyously to freedom, the kender had suddenly and inexplicably retreated to the very farthest corner of the cell.
“Thank you for thinking of me, Goldmoon,” Tasslehoff said, settling himself in the corner, “and thank you for melting the bars of the cell. That was wonderful and something you don’t see everyday. Ordinarily I’d be glad to go with you, but it would be rude to leave my good friend Conundrum here. He’s the best friend I have in all the world—”
Making a sound expressive of exasperation, Goldmoon touched the bars of the gnome’s cell. The bars dissolved, as had the others. Conundrum climbed out the hole. Brow furrowed, he squatted with his hands on his knees, and began scraping up the iron meltings, muttering to himself something about smelting.
“I’ll bring the gnome, Tas,” Goldmoon said impatiently. “Now come out of there at once.”
“We had better hurry, First Master,” Gerard warned. He would have been quite happy to leave both gnome and kender behind. “The jailer’s relief arrives two hours past midnight—”
“He will not come this night,” Goldmoon said. “He will sleep past his time. But you are right. We must make haste, for I am called. Tas, come out of that cell this minute.”
“Don’t make me, Goldmoon!” Tasslehoff begged in pitiful tones. “Don’t make me go back to the Tower. You don’t know what they want to do to me. Dalamar and Palin mean to murder me.”
“Don’t be silly. Palin would never—” Goldmoon paused. Her severe expression softened. “Ah, I understand. I had forgotten. The Device of Time Journeying.”
Tasslehoff nodded.
“I thought it was broken,” he said. “Palin threw parts of it at the draconians, and it exploded, and I figured that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about anymore.”
He gave a mournful sigh. “Then I reached into my pocket, and there it was. Still in pieces, but all the pieces were back in my pocket. I’ve thrown them away, time and again. I even tried giving them away, but they keep coming back to me. Even broken, they keep coming back.” Tas looked at Goldmoon pleadingly. “If I go back to the Tower, they’ll find it, and they’ll fix it, and I’ll have to be stepped on by a giant, and I’ll die. I don’t want to die, Goldmoon! I don’t want to! Please don’t make me.”
Gerard almost suggested to Goldmoon that he hit the kender on the jaw and haul him out bodily, but on second thought, he kept silent. The kender looked so completely and utterly miserable that Gerard found himself feeling sorry for him. Goldmoon entered the cell and sat next to the kender.
“Tas,” Goldmoon said gently, reaching out her hand and stroking back a lock of hair that had escaped his topknot and was straggling over his face, “I can’t promise you that this will have a good and happy ending. Right now, to me it seems that it must end very badly. I have been following a river of souls, Tas. They gather at Nightlund. They do not go there of their own free will. They are prisoners, Tas. They are under some sort of terrible constraint. Caramon is with them, and Tika, Riverwind, and my daughter; perhaps all those we love. I want to find out why. I want to find out what is happening. You tell me that Dalamar is in Nightlund. I must see him, Tas. I must speak to him. Perhaps he is the cause.…”
Tasslehoff shook his head. “I don’t think so. Dalamar’s a prisoner, too, at least that’s what he told Palin.” The kender hung his head and plucked nervously at his shirt front. “There’s something else, Goldmoon. Something I haven’t told anyone. Something that happened to me in Nightlund.”
“What is it, Tas?” Goldmoon looked concerned.
The kender had lost his jaunty gaiety. He was drooping and wan and shivering—shivering with fright. Gerard was amazed. He had often felt that a really good scare would be beneficial for a kender, would teach the rattlebrained little imps that life was not picnics by the tomb and taunting sheriffs and swiping gewgaws. Life was earnest and hard, and it was meant to be taken seriously. Now, seeing Tas dejected and fearful, Gerard looked away. He didn’t know why, but he had the feeling that he had lost something, that he and the world had both lost something.
“Goldmoon,” said Tas in an awful whisper, “I saw myself in that wood.”
“What do you mean, Tas?” she asked gently.
“I saw my own ghost!” Tas said, and he shuddered. “It wasn’t at all exciting. Not like I thought seeing one’s own ghost would be. I was lost and alone, and I was searching for someone or something. It may sound funny, I know, but I always thought that after I died, I’d meet up with Flint somewhere. Maybe we’d go off adventuring together, or maybe we’d just rest, and I’d tell him stories. But I wasn’t adventuring. I was just alone … and lost … and unhappy.”
He looked up at her, and Gerard was startled to see the track of a single tear trickle down through the grime on the kender’s cheek.
“I don’t want to be dead like that, Goldmoon. That’s why I can’t go back.”
“Don’t you see, Tas?” Goldmoon said. “That’s why you have to go back. I can’t explain it, but I am certain that what you and I have both seen is wrong. Life on this world is meant to be a way-stop on a longer journey. Our souls are supposed to move on to the next plane, to continue learning and growing. Perhaps we may linger, wait to join loved ones, as my dear Riverwind waits for me and somewhere, perhaps, Flint waits for you. But none of us can leave, apparently. You and I together must try to free these prisoner souls who are locked in the cell of the world as surely as you were locked in this cell. The only way we can do that is to go back to Nightlund. The heart of the mystery lies there.”
She held out her hand to Tasslehoff. “Will you come?”
“You won’t let them send me back?” he bargained, hesitating.
“I promise that the decision to go back or not will be yours,” she said. “I won’t let them send you back against your will.”
“Very well,” Tas said, standing up and dusting himself off and glancing about to see that he had all his pouches. “I’ll take you to the Tower, Goldmoon. It just so happens that I have an extremely reliable body compass.…”
At this juncture, Conundrum, who had finished scraping up the melted iron, began to discourse on such things as compasses and binnacles and lodestones and his great-great-uncle’s theory on why north could be found in the north and not in the south, a theory that had proved to be quite controversial and was still being argued to this day.
Goldmoon paid no attention to the gnome’s expostulations or Tasslehoff’s desultory replies. She was imbued with a fixed purpose, and she went forward to achieve it. Unafraid, calm, and composed, she led them up the stairs, past the slumbering warden slumped over his desk, and out of the prison.
They hastened through Solanthus, a city of sleep and silence and half-light, for the sky was pearl gray with the coming of dawn. The gnome wound down like a spent spring. Tasslehoff was uncharacteristically quiet. Their footfalls made no sound. They might have been ghosts themselves as they roamed the empty streets. They saw no one, and no one saw them. They encountered no patrols. They met no farmer coming to market, no carousers stumbling home from the taverns. No dog barked, no baby cried.
Gerard had a strange impression of Goldmoon passing over the city streets, her cloak billowing out behind her, blanketing the city, closing eyes that were starting to open, lulling those who were waking back into sweet slumber.
They left Solanthus by the front gate, where no one was awake to stop them.
28
Overslept
ady Odila woke to find the sun blazing in her eyes. She sat straight up in bed, irritated and annoyed. She was not general
ly a late sleeper; her usual time to rise being shortly before the gray light of dawn filtered through her window. She hated sleeping late. She was dull and listless, and her head ached. She felt as if she had spent the night carousing. True, after the Knights’ Council, she had gone to the Dog and Duck, a tavern favored by members of the Knighthood, but not to drink. She had done what she had promised the First Master she would do: She had asked around to see if anyone knew or had ever met Gerard uth Mondar.
None of the Knights had, but one knew of someone who came from that part of Ansalon or thereabouts and another thought perhaps his wife’s seamstress had a brother who had been a sailor and might have worked for Gerard’s father. Not very satisfactory. Odila had lifted a mug of hard cider with her comrades and then gone to her bed.
She muttered imprecations to herself as she dressed, tugging on the padded leather tunic, linen shirt, and woolen socks she wore beneath her armor. She had intended to rise early to lead a patrol in search of the blue dragon, hoping to catch the beast while it was out hunting in the cool mists of early morning before it disappeared into its lair to sleep through the sunny part of the day. So much for that idea. Still, they might catch the beast napping.
Sliding the tunic, embroidered with the kingfisher and rose of the Solamnic Knighthood, over her head, Odila buckled on her sword, locked her door, and hurriedly left her quarters. She lived on the upper floor of a former inn that had been turned over to the Knighthood to house those who served in Solanthus. Clattering down the stairs, she noted that her fellow Knights appeared to be moving as slowly as she was this morning. She nearly collided with Sir Alfric, who was supposed to be in charge of the changing of the guard at the city’s front gate and who would be late for his duty. Carrying his shirt and his sword belt in one hand, his helm in the other, he came dashing out of his room.
“And a good morning to you, too, my lord,” said Odila, with a pointed stare at the front of his breeches.
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