Still, Kaz could not deny that the kender had proven a worthy comrade on occasion, even risking his life to save the minotaur’s. He was not willing to admit it to anyone but Helati, but Kaz had grown fond of the small creature. That, of course, did not mean he wanted a kender’s company on this journey.
“When morning comes, you’ll go back to wherever you came from and stay there. What I have to do, I do alone.”
“But, Kaz, I’ve never seen a whole empire of minotaurs, and Helati seemed so worried, which I couldn’t blame her for, what with the dream I had—which is why I knew you’d be traveling in the first place, and since you’re traveling, you need someone to go with you, which ought to be me, of course—”
Not for the first time Kaz wondered if the kender followed him because even his own race would not put up with his incessant talk. Then, a part of what Delbin had said caught his attention. “What’s that about a dream you say you had?”
“I had a dream and—” Delbin hesitated when he saw the minotaur’s expression. Speaking much slower, he continued. “It was about you, Kaz! You were riding toward a big place with a cheering crowd and other minotaurs fighting. Then something big, bigger than a bird, flew over, and—”
“That was it?”
“No, then you were fighting yourself in this place—I guess it was an arena—while a tall, really tall, minotaur in cleric robes looked down. Then he turned into a bird and flew away.” Delbin smiled. “Wasn’t that an interesting dream? Oh … I forgot about the gray man!”
“What gray man?” Kaz regretted asking the talkative kender to explain his dream. Of what possible use could such information be to the minotaur? Still, he listened.
“He was all gray, Kaz! Even his face and beard. He wore gray robes and carried a gray staff. I never saw a human so very, very, very gray.”
The description sparked a vague memory. Someone else had told the minotaur about such a gray man long ago. Much to his regret, however, Kaz could not summon the wraithlike memory. “All gray, then?”
“Yes, and he said you were leaving soon, so I should hurry to find you, and when I woke up I knew I better go, even though it was a dream—I just knew that I had to go.”
Rarely had the minotaur seen the kender so adamant. But to let Delbin come with him into the heart of the minotaur realm was to sign the creature’s death warrant. Minotaurs were not tolerant, especially when it came to kender. Delbin’s people were considered to be on a par with rats and other vermin.
“No. You can’t go, Delbin. It’s for your own good. You don’t know what the empire, much less Nethosak, is like. They would have you executed simply for being yourself.”
Delbin Knotwillow looked down at himself. “What’s wrong with me? So I’m a little big for a kender!”
“It’s not your height, and you know it, Delbin. Unlike me, most minotaurs aren’t very tolerant where kender are concerned. Most minotaurs would just as soon cut a kender up into fish bait …” Kaz despised himself for talking so, but he wanted to frighten his friend into turning back. “Go back.”
“The man in gray said I had to come.” Delbin crossed his arms, putting together as severe and determined an expression as a kender could muster. “So I am.”
“That was a dream.”
“A big dream.” Delbin cracked a smile. “So what’s Nethosak like, Kaz? Are there a lot of minotaurs there? Why are there two kingdoms called Mithas and Kothas, and do they look exactly the same?” Before Kaz could say another word, Delbin reached into a pouch at his side. “I need my book! I should write this all—gee, I wonder where this came from?”
The object in the kender’s hand was hard to make out in the fire’s flickering light. Kaz stepped closer, forgetting for the moment his anger and frustration. The object was vaguely familiar, a medallion of some sort.
At first Kaz had the strange notion it was the medallion of Paladine he had taken from the hand of Huma after Takhisis’s defeat, but that medallion he had hung on a tree branch not far from the great knight’s tomb. Besides, Huma’s medallion showed the symbol of Paladine, while this one featured another god, one just as familiar to Kaz as Huma’s deity, if not as respected by him as he once was.
Sargas. It did not look like a cleric’s medallion, however.
“Let me see that, Delbin.” The kender turned the round object over to him. Kaz held it near the flames. Memories began to wash over him as he at last recognized the medallion for what it was. Years ago, he had worn one exactly like it.
“ ‘Champion of all,’ ” Kaz muttered, reading the script that circled the edge. “ ‘Hero of the people.’ Where did you get this, Delbin? Come on, now. Think hard.”
The kender screwed up his face in concentration, then grinned. “I remember! The man in gray gave it to me!”
“A man in a dream gave it to you? You know that can’t be.”
“But he did! I remember! After he told me to go to you, he gave me the medallion. I think he said you lost it! Isn’t that neat? That’s what I mean about the dream. It’s important. I’ve never had a dream like it before.”
Kaz almost threw the medallion into the fire. He had indeed worn one that resembled it … until the day he decided that his life would not be lived—or lost—in the arena. Fighting as a slave-soldier under the human and ogre masters had seemed preferable to the insanity and hypocrisy of the circus.
This could not be the same medallion … could it?
“Do you know what it is, Kaz?” asked Delbin.
Kaz knew exactly what it was, a medallion given to the supreme champion of the games, the greatest warrior of any of the arenas, including, of course, the Great Circus. The supreme champion could challenge the emperor to single combat for the throne, and the emperor would have to agree to fight or lose face. When the two met, it was always to the death. Combatants did not leave their rivals alive to foment discord or challenge them again and perhaps win the next time.
The Great Circus made for glorious entertainment for the masses.
“No,” Kaz finally replied, putting the medallion into a pouch attached to the belt of his kilt. His eyes watched the campfire’s darting flames. “No, I don’t.”
He sat down, leaning his axe nearby. Delbin watched him solemnly, wisely saying nothing. Kaz had forgotten about the kender. The dancing tentacles of the fire resurrected images of past opponents locked in duels. Kaz watched himself wrestle to the ground a reddish black minotaur taller than him, but then that adversary became a shorter but more muscular one carrying an axe longer than Honor’s Face. Kaz deflected the blow with an axe of his own, then countered with a bone-cutting swing. The images went on and on, battle after battle, until somewhere along the way Kaz fell asleep.
When the next day came, Kaz said nothing to the kender about the previous night’s conversation. For the time being, he allowed Delbin to ride beside him. He still did not want to put Delbin at risk, but silently welcomed the kender’s company. Delbin could be so diverting that Kaz might forget for a time the dangers awaiting him in the imperial capital of the minotaur kingdom of Mithas.
For the next two days, they traveled in relative peace, the only vexation being the kender’s relentless questions about the minotaur lands. Some of them Kaz had answered more than once over the years, ever since he first encountered Delbin on a dock in the southern reaches of Ansalon. Now and then the kender asked a question about the minotaur’s own life, which Kaz deflected by telling him something fascinating about his homeland.
“One thing I can never understand—why are there two kingdoms?” Delbin asked, for the umpteenth time.
“Because it’s more competitive. Each kingdom strives to raise the greatest champions.” Although there was only one emperor, the minotaur homeland was divided between the kingdoms of Mithas and Kothas. Mithas, with the imperial capital located within its boundaries, had some advantage, but Kothas was known for its own share of emperors.
“You were in the arena, weren’t you?”
&
nbsp; “All minotaurs go to the arenas.”
“But you were in the arena a lot! You must have been a great champion! Don’t champions become emperor if they defeat the old emperor, because that’s what I heard, and you said something like that once, so if you were a great champion, then you could have become emperor, which—”
“Take a breath, Delbin!” Kaz suddenly snarled. He tried to be patient with the kender, but couldn’t help the occasional angry outburst. The kender overflowed with questions, and endlessly repeated his favorite ones. This time Delbin shut his mouth and remained silent for nearly a mile, something approaching a miracle.
On the fourth night, they made camp near a range of hills. The woods had grown thicker. The forest covered everything. Kaz was vaguely familiar with the lay of the land, but their progress was slowed a bit. All the better—each day’s travel brought Kaz nearer a place to which he had no desire to return, a place that in some ways he feared.
After tethering the horses, Kaz decided it was time to tell Delbin that he could go no farther. His life would be in jeopardy. The minotaur was surprised at how guilty he felt about letting his small companion ride this far. But the woodlands would provide good cover for him as he retraced his steps and found other kender to rejoin.
“Delbin—” Kaz started to say, turning … but the kender was nowhere to be seen. His mount was tied up and some of his belongings lay near the fire, but Delbin himself had vanished.
The moon Solinari was only a wisp in the heavens, but the stars were visible this night. Trust Delbin to go exploring now. Snorting in annoyance, Kaz searched the ground for some sign of the direction in which the kender had departed. Delbin’s race was notoriously light-footed. The minotaur knelt to peer for tracks.
“Kaz! Look what I fou—What’re you doing there? Did you lose something? Can I help?” Delbin materialized out of nowhere beside the minotaur and fell to his knees. He earnestly began surveying the ground for whatever he thought Kaz had dropped.
“I was looking for you!” Rising, the beast-man looked down at his small comrade. “That’s it!” He overplayed his attitude, pretending to be very annoyed. “Come tomorrow, Delbin, you’re heading back to your kind! You can’t go running off at night in the middle of nowhere … or even during the day, for that matter!”
“I was just curious—”
Kaz thrust a finger at the kender. “In Nethosak, or any other place in the homelands, being curious like that will get you killed, Delbin … and me along with you, by the way! I want you to promise to return to your people at first light!”
Delbin Knotwillow looked down. He seemed tiny and vulnerable at the moment, so chastened that Kaz found himself feeling guilty again.
“I … I don’t want to. They all think I’m so serious! All my friends stay away from me!”
“What? Why?”
“Because I get bored with them! They’re not as much fun as you and Helati are, Kaz! Not in the same way! You always come up with interesting things to do, interesting places to see! I told them all about everything we’ve done, and they were interested at first, but then they got tired of hearing about minotaurs and wanted to hear about anything else, and Noppel even made fun of you, and I didn’t like that, so—”
“Take a breath, Delbin.” The minotaur blinked. “So this … Noppel … made fun of me, and you got angry because of that?”
A wide smile spread across the kender’s childlike features. “You’re my friend, Kaz!”
And obviously a worse influence on you than I could have imagined, the minotaur thought. He felt a slight twinge of shame for making his companion a veritable outcast among his own people. He could not send the kender away … not after learning that Delbin had stuck up for him … well, at least not right away.
“What did you find?” Kaz asked.
Smiling, Delbin reached into his pouch. “You should see it! I think I know what it is, but … Hey, here’s my book! Just what I was looking for!”
It was one of the few times that Kaz could recall having ever seen the fabled book. It was battered and filled with loose sheets of paper that he suspected had been “borrowed” from everywhere the kender had visited. Somehow the sheets stayed more or less within the battered leather cover. Before Kaz could make out the lettering, though, Delbin put the tiny book back into the pouch and removed something else.
“Here it is!”
The kender’s latest acquisition was almost as unnerving as the medallion. Every muscle in the minotaur’s body tensed. Suddenly the forest seemed even darker, more filled with danger, than before.
“Isn’t this a neat knife? You know, I think this handle is bone, which makes a pretty sturdy handle, I guess, because bones hold our bodies up pretty good, don’t they—?”
“Be quiet, Delbin!” the warrior whispered. He seized the knife, turning it over. The handle was made of bone, just as his companion had said. But what Delbin did not know was that the bone had probably come from a thinking creature, possibly a human or even a minotaur.
Ogres did, after all, have preferences.
The knife was in very good condition and hardly rusted at all. “Did you clean this up?”
“No, I found it just like this—”
Kaz waved him silent and glanced out at the shadowy forest. The knife could have been lost some time ago, depending on the weather, but the very thought that ogres had ventured this far south almost made Kaz want to head back and warn the others. It occurred to him, however, that with the number of minotaurs now living in the settlement, it would take a fairly large force of ogres to attack them. Such a large force could certainly not have remained hidden in this region. Ogres were too clumsy not to leave signs of their passing.
“Show me where you found this.”
The kender did. The place was surprisingly close to the campsite. Delbin had found the knife lying next to a tree. It was proof of just how superior the short creature’s night vision was that he could have spotted it. Kaz found no other trace of ogres, but he knew the darkness might be masking some proof. When he rose at first light, he would do a thorough search of the vicinity.
The two of them returned to the fire, Kaz still clutching the blade. First the medallion … his medallion … and now this ogre weapon. There could not possibly be any connection between the two other than Delbin finding both, yet, the weary minotaur could not help but wonder.
Delbin sat, with a hopeful expression, next to the fire. Kaz realized that the kender wanted the knife back. It was a treasure to Delbin. The minotaur started to hand the blade over, then hesitated. He grunted. “I’ll give this back to you on one condition, Delbin.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t find anything else for a while, okay?”
The smile widened. “I’ll try real hard, Kaz.”
Snorting, Kaz handed back the knife. He turned his attention to food, his stomach reminding him that it had been a long time since either of them had eaten. The minotaur looked forward to his simple meal. Food had a way of temporarily erasing worries.
Often in the past he had grumbled to himself and others that the gods must surely be out to test him. How else to explain the rocky path Kaz had journeyed over the past several years? In his mind, he had suffered more than his share of trial and tribulation. The short time he had spent in the home he and Helati had built had been the only peaceful period in his life that he could recall. That respite was over now, though. Once more, it seemed as if he had become a pawn of the gods.
Maybe I’m just tired, he thought as he passed a bit of bread to Delbin. Maybe it’s just my imagination that the gods are steering me toward some dire adventure.
His arm came to rest against the pouch into which he had placed the medallion Delbin had supposedly been given by the gray man. He yanked the arm away and, ignoring the kender’s curious glance, chewed his food as if doing battle with it.
Tap-tap went the staff of the man sitting on the high rock.
“On the path agai
n … but do you know the way?”
Kaz stood in the middle of a mountain path. High peaks rose on each side of him. Ahead, the path seemed narrow, barely wide enough for him to pass. Behind him, it was wide and flat. In that direction, the minotaur could make out a beautiful forest and in that forest a dwelling he recognized as his own.
From the mountains in the other direction he heard what sounded like a child crying.
“He who hesitates is lost, they say. Are you lost?” The questioner tapped his staff against the rock again. He was a tall, elderly human … elderly but certainly not frail. He wore a hooded cloak that covered most of his form, and on his hands he wore long gloves that went up his wrists, eventually disappearing into his sleeves. On his feet the human wore boots that rose up almost knee high.
A long gray beard obscured what was a plain yet somehow intelligent face. The gray beard blended into a gray face, which in turn blended into the gray coloring of the cloak.
Kaz’s eyes narrowed. Everything about the man was gray, even his teeth, tongue, and eyes.
The crying continued.
“Will that crying never cease?” Kaz rumbled.
“He is out of balance.” The explanation seemed to suit the gray man despite its vagueness. “Hail to you, Supreme Champion.”
“NO!” roared Kaz, waving his hand in denial. “I’ve not worn that title or—” He suddenly realized that the medallion hung around his neck. With one massive hand, he tore the medallion from its chain and threw it as far as he could. The gray man watched him do it, his expression perfectly bland. “Not worn that title or that medallion since I left Nethosak! I reject what it stands for!”
Land of the Minotaurs Page 4
