The next morning’s march began the same as those before it. Samuval calculated that if all went well with Galdar’s business in Khur, the minotaur would catch up to them in another two days. Prior to this, Samuval had never had much use for minotaurs, but he was actually looking forward to seeing Galdar again.…
“Sir! Stop the men!” a scout shouted.
Samuval halted the column’s march and walked forward to meet the scout.
“What is it?” the captain demanded. “Ogres?”
“No, sir.” The scout saluted. “There’s a blind beggar on the path ahead, sir.”
Samuval was irate. “You called a halt for a blasted beggar?”
“Well, sir”—the scout was discomfited—“he’s blocking the path.”
“Shove him out of the way then!” Samuval said, infuriated.
“There’s something strange about him, sir.” The scout was uneasy. “He’s no ordinary beggar. I think you should come talk to him, sir. He said … he said he is waiting for Mina.” The soldier’s eyes were round.
Samuval rubbed his chin. He was not surprised to hear that word of Mina had spread abroad, but he was considerably surprised and not particularly pleased to hear that knowledge of their march and the route they were taking had also apparently traveled ahead of them.
“I’ll see to this,” he said and started to leave with the scout. Samuval planned to question this beggar to find out what else he knew and how he knew it. Hopefully, he would be able to deal with the man before Mina heard about it.
He had taken about three steps when he heard Mina’s voice behind him.
“Captain Samuval,” she said, riding up on Foxfire, “what is the problem? Why have we stopped?”
Samuval was about to say that the road ahead was blocked by a boulder, but, before he could open his mouth, the scout had blurted out the truth in a loud voice that could be heard up and down the column.
“Mina! There’s a blind beggar up ahead. He says he’s waiting for you.”
The men were pleased, nodding and thinking it only natural that Mina should rate such attention. Fools! One would think they were parading through the streets of Jelek!
Samuval could envision the road ahead lined with the poxed and the lame from every measly village on their route, begging Mina to cure them.
“Captain,” said Mina, “bring the man to me.”
Samuval went to stand by her stirrup. “Listen a moment, Mina,” he argued. “I know you mean well, but if you stop to heal every wretched cripple between here and Silvanost, we’ll arrive in the elf kingdom in time to celebrate Yule with ’em. That is if we arrive at all. Every moment we waste is another moment the ogres have to gather their forces to come meet us.”
“The man asks for me. I will see him,” Mina said and slid down off her horse. “We have marched long. The men could do with a rest. Where he is, Rolof?”
“He’s right up ahead,” said the scout, pointing. “About half a mile. At the top of the hill.”
“Samuval, come with me,” Mina said. “The rest of you, wait here.”
Samuval saw the man before they reached him. The road they were following led up and down small hillocks and, as the scout had said, the beggar was waiting for them at the top of one of these. He sat on the ground, his back against a boulder; a long, stout staff in his hand. Hearing their approach, he rose to his feet and turned slowly and sightlessly to face them.
The man was younger than the captain had expected. Long hair that shimmered with a silver sheen in the morning sunshine fell over his shoulders. His face was smooth and youthful. Once it might have been handsome. He was dressed in robes that were pearl gray in color, travel-worn and frayed at the hem, but clean. All this, Samuval noted later. For now, all he could do was stare at the hideous scar that disfigured the man’s face.
The scar looked to be a burn mark. The hair on the right side of the man’s head had been singed off. The scar slanted across the man’s face from the right side of his head to below the left side of his chin. He wore a rag tied around his right eye socket. Samuval wondered with morbid curiosity if the eye was still there or if it was destroyed, melted in the terrible heat that had seared the flesh and burned away the hair to the roots. The left eye remained, but it was useless seemingly, for it held no light. The horrible wound was fresh, not a month old. The man must be in pain from the injury, but if so he did not reveal it. He stood waiting for them silently and, though he could not see her, his face turned toward Mina. He must have picked out the sound of her lighter steps from Samuval’s heavier footfalls.
Mina paused, just a moment, and Samuval saw her stiffen, as if she were taken by surprise. Then, shrugging, she continued to walk toward the beggar. Samuval came behind, his hand on his sword hilt. Despite the fact that the man was blind, Samuval sensed him to be a threat. As the scout had said, there was something strange about this blind beggar.
“You know me, then,” the man said, his sightless eye gazing over her head.
“Yes, I know you,” she replied.
Samuval found it hard to look at the beggar’s horrid wounds. Yellow puss oozed from beneath the rag. The skin around the burn was fiery red, swollen and inflamed. The captain could smell the stink of putrefying flesh.
“When did this happen to you?” Mina asked.
“The night of the storm,” he replied.
She nodded gravely, as if she had expected that answer. “Why did you venture out into the storm?”
“I heard a voice,” he replied. “I wanted to investigate.”
“The voice of the One God,” Mina said.
The beggar shook his head, disbelieving. “I could hear the voice over the roaring of the wind and the crashing thunder, but I could not hear the words it spoke. I traveled far through rain and the hail in search of the voice, and I was near the source, I think. I was almost in Neraka when a lightning bolt struck me. I remember nothing after that.”
“You take this human form,” she said abruptly. “Why?”
“Can you blame me, Mina?” he asked, his tone rueful. “I am forced to walk through the land of my enemies.” He gestured with his staff. “This is the only way I am able to travel now—on two feet, with my stick to guide me.”
“Mina”—Samuval spoke to her, but he kept his eyes on the blind man—“we have many more miles to march this day. Say the word and I will rid both the path and the world of this fellow.”
“Easy, Captain,” Mina said quietly, resting her hand on his arm. “This is an old acquaintance. I will be only a moment longer. How did you find me?” she asked the blind man.
“I have heard the stories of your deeds everywhere I go,” the beggar answered. “I knew the name, and I recognized the description. Could there be another Mina with eyes the color of amber? No, I said to myself. Only one—the orphan girl who, years ago, washed up on the shores of Schallsea. The orphan girl who was taken in by Goldmoon and who won the First Master’s heart. She grieves for you, Mina. Grieves for you these three years as for one dead. Why did you run away from her and the rest of us who loved you?”
“Because she could not answer my questions,” Mina replied. “None of you could.”
“And have you found the answer, Mina?” the man asked and his voice was stern.
“I have,” she said steadily.
The beggar shook his head. He did not seem angry, only sorrowful.
“I could heal you,” Mina offered, and she took a step toward him, her hand outstretched.
Swiftly the beggar stepped backward. In the same movement, he shifted the staff from one hand to two and held it out in front of his body, barring her way. “No!” he cried. “As much as my wound pains me now, that pain is physical. It does not strike to my soul as would the pain of your so-called healing touch. And though I walk in darkness, my darkness is not so deep as the darkness in which you now walk, Mina.”
She smiled at him, her smile calm, radiant.
“You heard the voice, Solomirathnius,
” she said. “You hear it still. Don’t you?”
He did not reply. He lowered his staff slowly, stared at her long moments. He stared so long that Samuval wondered suspiciously if the man could see out of that one milky white eye.
“Don’t you?” she pressed him.
Abruptly, angrily, the man turned away from her. Tapping the ground with his staff, he left the path and entered the woods. The end of his staff knocked brutally against the boles of trees and thrust savagely into bushes. His hand groped to feel his way.
“I don’t trust him,” Samuval said. “He has the stink of a Solamnic about him. Let me skewer him.”
Mina turned away. “You could do him no harm, Captain. He may look feeble, but he is not.”
“What is he then? A wizard?” Samuval asked with a slight sneer.
“No, he is much more powerful than any wizard,” Mina replied. “In his true form, he is the silver dragon known to most as Mirror. He is the Guardian of the Citadel of Light.”
“A dragon!” Samuval stopped dead in the path, stared back into the brush. He could no longer see the blind beggar, and that worried him more now than ever. “Mina,” he said urgently, “let me take a squadron of men after him! He will surely try to kill us all!”
Mina smiled slightly at Samuval’s fears. “We are safe, Captain. Order the men to resume the march. The path ahead is clear. Mirror will not trouble us.”
“Why not?” Samuval was frowning, doubtful.
“Because once, many years ago, every night, Goldmoon, the First Master of the Citadel of Light, brushed my hair,” Mina said softly.
Reaching up her hand, she touched, very lightly, her shaven head.
20
Betrayed
he days of waiting had passed pleasantly for Gerard. The queen mother’s house was a sanctuary of peace and serenity. Every room was a bower of green and growing plants and flowers. The sounds of falling water soothed and relaxed. He was not in possession of the supposed time travel device, yet he had the feeling that here time was suspended. The sunlit hours melted into dusk that melted into night and back to sunlight again with no one seeming to notice the change of one day to next. No hourglass dropped its sands into elven lives, or so Gerard imagined. He was jolted back into harsh reality when, on the afternoon of the day they were to leave, he walked in the garden and saw, quite by chance, sunlight flash off shining black armor.
The Neraka Knight was distant, but he was plainly keeping watch on the house. Gerard ducked back into the doorway, his idyll of peace shattered. He waited tensely for the Neraka Knights to come beating on the door, but hours passed and no one disturbed them. He trusted, at last, that he had not been seen. He took care not to venture outside after that, not until nightfall, when they were ready to depart.
Gerard had seen little of Palin Majere, for which he was not sorry. He deplored the mage’s rudeness to everyone in the household, but most particularly to Laurana. Gerard tried to make allowances. Palin Majere had suffered a great deal, the Knight reminded himself. But the mage’s dark moods cast a shadow that dimmed the brightest sunlight. Even the two servant elves tiptoed around, afraid of making a sound that would bring down on them the mage’s irrational anger. When Gerard mentioned this to Laurana, making some comment on what he considered boorish human behavior, she smiled and urged him to be patient.
“I was a prisoner once,” she said, her eyes dark with memory, “a prisoner of the Dark Queen. Unless you have been a prisoner, Sir Knight; until you have been shut away in darkness, alone in pain and in fear, I don’t believe you can understand.”
Gerard accepted the gentle rebuke and said nothing more.
He had seen little of the kender, as well, for which the Knight was extremely grateful. Palin Majere kept Tasslehoff closeted away for hours at a time, having the kender relate in detail his ridiculous stories over and over. No torture devised by the cruelest Neraka Knight could match being forced to endure the kender’s shrill voice for hours on end.
The night they were to leave Qualinesti came all too soon. The world beyond, the world of humans, seemed a hurried, grasping, sordid sort of place. Gerard was sorry to be returning to it. He had come to understand why the elves were loathe to travel outside their beautiful, serene realm.
Their elven guide stood waiting. Laurana kissed Tas, who, feeling a snuffle coming on, was quiet for all of three minutes. She thanked Gerard graciously for his help and gave him her hand to kiss, which he did with respect and admiration and a true feeling of loss. She spoke last to Palin, who had remained aloof, off to one side. He was obviously impatient to be gone.
“My friend,” she said to him, placing her hand on his arm, “I believe that I know something of what you are thinking.”
He frowned at this and shook his head slightly.
Laurana continued, “Be careful, Palin. Think long and well before you act.”
He made no answer but kissed her as was the elven custom between old friends and told her, rather curtly, not to worry. He knew what he was about.
As he followed their elven guide into the night, Gerard looked back at the house on the cliff. Its lights shone brilliant as stars, but, like the stars, they were too small to bring day to night.
“Yet without the darkness,” said Palin suddenly, “we would never be aware that the stars exist.”
So that’s how you rationalize evil, Gerard thought. He made no comment, and Palin did not speak again. The mage’s morose silence was more than made up for by Tasslehoff.
“One would think that a cursed kender would talk less,” Gerard grumbled.
“The curse isn’t on my tongue,” Tasslehoff pointed out. “It’s on my insides. It made them go all squirmy. Have you ever been cursed like that?”
“Yes, the moment I set eyes on you,” Gerard retorted.
“You are all making noise enough to wake a drunken gully dwarf!” their elven guide said irritably, speaking Common. Gerard had no idea if this was Kalindas or Kelevandros. He could never keep the two brothers straight. They were as alike as twins, although one was older than the other, or so he had been told. Their elven names, both beginning with K, blurred in his mind. He might have asked Palin, but the mage was disinclined to talk, appeared absorbed in his own dark thoughts.
“The kender’s chatter is like the twittering of birds compared to the rattle and clank of your armor, Sir Knight,” the elf added. “Not that it would be much different if you were naked. You humans cannot even draw a breath without making noise. I could hear the huffing and bellowing of your breathing a mile distant.”
“We’ve been on the move through this forest for hours,” Gerard countered. “Are we anywhere near our destination?”
“Quite near,” the elf replied. “The clearing where you will meet the griffon is straight ahead at the end of this trail. If you had elven sight you could see it from here. In fact, this would be a good place to halt, if you would like to rest. We should keep under cover until the last possible moment.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere,” Gerard said gratefully. Dropping his pack, he sank down at the base of a tall aspen tree, leaned his back against it, closed his eyes and stretched his legs. “How long until morning?”
“An hour. And now I must leave you for a while to go hunting. We should be prepared to offer the griffons fresh meat. They will be hungry from their long flight and will appreciate the courtesy. You should be safe here, provided none of you wander off.” The elf looked at the kender as he spoke.
“We will be fine,” Palin said the first words he had spoken in hours. He did not sit down, but paced beneath the trees, restless and impatient. “No, Tas. You stay here with us. Where is the device? You still have it, don’t you? No, don’t bring it out. I just want to know it’s safe.”
“Oh, it’s safe,” the kender said. “It couldn’t be unsafe, if you know what I mean.”
“Damn funny time to go hunting,” Gerard observed, watching the elf slip off into the darkness.
/>
“He leaves on my orders,” Palin said. “The griffons will be in a much better humor when they have eaten, and we will have a safer ride. I was once on the back of a griffon who decided that her empty belly was more important than her rider. Spying a deer on the ground, she swooped down upon it. I could do nothing but cling to her in terror. Fortunately we all came out of it alive, including the deer, who heard my cries to the griffon to stop and dashed off into the forest. The griffon was in a foul mood, however, and refused to carry me farther. Since then, I have always made certain that I brought a gift of food.”
“Then why didn’t the elf do that before we left instead of waiting to go hunting now?”
“Probably because he did not want to walk for miles lugging a deer carcass over his shoulder,” Palin said sardonically. “You must take into account the fact that the smell of fresh-killed meat makes many elves sick to their stomachs.”
Gerard said nothing, fearing to say too much. By the mage’s tone, Palin took the Knight for an idiot. Perhaps he had not meant it that way, but that was how Gerard understood it.
“By the way, Sir Gerard,” Palin said stiffly, “I want you to know that I consider that you have done your part in fulfilling my father’s dying request. I will take up the matter from here. You need no longer concern yourself with it.”
“As you wish, sir,” Gerard returned.
“I want to thank you for what you have done,” Palin added after a pause during which the chill in the air could have caused snow to start falling in midsummer. “You have performed a great service at the risk of your own life. A great service,” he repeated softly. “I will recommend to Lord Warren that you be given a commendation.”
Dragons of a Fallen Sun Page 37
