“Your Majesty. What have you to say?”
“I agree with my mother. She told me of this device, described its powers to me. I will not give the device to the dragon.”
“Do you realize what you are doing? You sentence your nation to death! No magical artifact is worth this,” Medan protested angrily.
“This one is, Marshal,” Laurana said. “You must trust me.”
Medan regarded her intently.
She met his gaze, held it, did not blink or flinch away.
“Hush!” Planchet warned. “Someone’s coming.”
They could hear footfalls on the stairs, taking them two at a time.
“My aide,” Medan replied.
“Can he be trusted?” Laurana asked.
Medan gave a wry smile. “Judge for yourself, Madam.”
A Knight entered the room. His black armor was covered in blood and gray dust. He stood still for some moments, breathing heavily, his head bowed, as if climbing those stairs had drained every last ounce of his energy. At length, he raised his head, lifted his hand, held out a scroll to the marshal.
“I have it, sir. Groul is dead.”
“Well done, Sir Gerard,” said the Marshal, accepting the scroll. He looked at the Knight, at the blood on his armor. “Are you wounded?” he asked.
“To be honest, my lord, I can’t tell,” Gerard said with a grimace. “There isn’t one single part of me that doesn’t hurt. But if I am, it’s not serious, or else I’d be lying out there dead in the street.”
Laurana was staring, amazed.
“Queen Mother,” Gerard said, bowing.
Laurana seemed about to speak, but, glancing at Medan, she caught herself.
“I do not believe that we have met, sir,” she said coolly.
Gerard’s blood-masked face relaxed into a faint smile. “Thank you, madam, for trying to protect me, but the marshal knows I am a Solamnic Knight. I am the marshal’s prisoner, in fact.”
“A Solamnic?” Gilthas was startled.
“The one I told you about,” Laurana said. “The Knight who accompanied Palin and the kender.”
“I see. And so you are the marshal’s prisoner. Did he do this to you?” Gilthas demanded angrily.
“No, Your Majesty,” said Gerard. “A draconian did this to me. Beryl’s messenger. Or rather, Beryl’s former messenger.” He sank down in a chair, sighed, and closed his eyes.
“Some wine here,” Medan ordered. “The dragon won’t be receiving any more information from Qualinesti,” he added with satisfaction. “Beryl will wait at least a day to hear from me. When she does not, she will be forced to send another messenger. We have gained some time, at least.”
He handed Gerard a glass of wine.
“No, my lord,” said Gerard, accepting the wine, but not drinking it. “We haven’t. The dragon deceived us. Beryl’s forces are on the march. Groul figured that they might already be crossing the border. The largest army assembled since the Chaos War is marching on Qualinesti.”
A silence as of death settled over the room. Each person listened unmoving, absorbing the news. No one’s eyes sought another’s. No one wanted to see the reflection of his own fear.
Marshal Medan smiled ruefully, shook his head.
“I am not to die of old age, after all, it seems,” he said, and poured himself another glass of wine.
31
The Pale River of the Dead
hat night, Goldmoon left the hospital, ignoring the pleas of the Healers and Lady Camilla.
“I am well,” Goldmoon said, fending off their attempts to keep her in bed. “I need rest, that is all, and I will not find rest here!”
Not with the dead.
She walked swiftly through the gardens and courtyards of the citadel complex, bright with lights. She looked neither to the left nor the right. She did not answer greetings. She kept her gaze fixed upon the path before her. If she looked anywhere else, she would see them. They were following her.
She heard their whispered beggings. She felt their touch, soft as milkweed, upon her hands, her face. They wrapped around her like silken scarves. She was afraid, if she looked at them, she would see Riverwind. Then she thought, perhaps this is why his spirit has not come to me. He is lost and foundering in this river, swept away. I will never find him.
Reaching the Grand Lyceum, she ran swiftly up the many stairs leading to her chambers. For the first time, she blessed this strange, young body, which was not only quick but was eager to meet the physical demands she now placed upon it. Brought to bay, Goldmoon turned to face them.
“Be gone. I have nothing for you.”
The dead drew near, an old, old man, a thief, a warrior, a crippled child. Beggars all, their hands extended. Then, quite suddenly, they left—as if a voice had ordered them gone. But not her voice.
Goldmoon shut the door behind.
In her chamber, she was alone, truly alone. The dead were not here. Perhaps when she had refused to grant them what they sought, they had left her to seek other prey. She sank back against the door, overwhelmed by her vision. Standing in the darkness, she could see again, in her mind’s eye, the dead draining the life-giving power from her followers. This was the reason healing was failing in the world. The dead were robbing the living. But why? What need had the dead for mystical power? What force constrained them? Where were they bound with such urgency?
“And why has it been given to me to see them?” Goldmoon murmured.
A knock sounded on her door. She ignored it and felt to make certain the door was locked. The knock was repeated several times. Voices—living voices—called to her. When she did not answer, they were perplexed. She could hear them wondering aloud what to do.
“Go away!” she ordered finally, wearily. “Go away, and leave me in peace.”
And eventually, like the dead, the living also departed and left her alone.
Crossing her chambers, Goldmoon stood before the large windows that overlooked the sea and flung open the casement.
The waning moon cast a pallid light upon the ocean. The sea had a strange look to it. An oily film covered the water, and beneath this film, the water was smooth, still. No breeze stirred, not a breath. The air had a foul smell to it, tainted by the oil upon the water, perhaps. The night was clear. The stars bright. The sky empty.
Ships were putting out to sea, black against the moonlight waters. There was a smell of thunder in the air. Seasoned mariners were reading the signs and heading for the open waters, far safer for them than lying close to shore, where crashing waves could send them smashing up against the docks or the rocks of the island’s coast. Goldmoon watched them from her window, looking like toy boats gliding across a dark mirror.
There, moving over the ocean, were the dead.
Goldmoon sank to her knees at the window. She placed her hands upon the window frame, rested her chin upon her hands, and watched the dead cross the sea. The moon sank beneath the horizon, drowned in dark water. The stars shone cold and bleak in the sky, and they also shone in the water, which was so still that Goldmoon could not perceive where the sky ended and the sea began. Small waves lapped gently upon the shore with a forlorn urgency, like a sick and fretful child trying to capture someone’s attention. The dead were traveling north, a pallid stream, paying no attention to anything except to that call they alone could hear.
Yet not quite alone.
Goldmoon heard the song. The voice that sang the song was compelling, stirred Goldmoon to the depths of her soul.
“You will find him,” said the voice. “He serves me. You will be together.”
Goldmoon crouched at the window, head bowed, and shivered in awe and fear and an exaltation that made her cry out in longing, reach her hands out in longing for the singer of that song as the dead had reached out their hands to her in longing. She spent the night on her knees, her soul listening to the song with a thrill that was both pain and pleasure, watching the dead travel north, heeding the call, while the wavelets
of the still sea clung as long as they could to the shore, then receded, leaving the sand smooth and empty in their going.
Day dawned. The sun slid out of the oily water. Its light seemed covered with the same film of oil, for it had a greenish sheen smeared across the yellow. The air was tainted, hot, and unsatisfying to breathe. Not a cloud marred the sky.
Goldmoon rose from kneeling. Her muscles were stiff and sore from the uncomfortable position, but usage warmed and limbered them. She picked up a cloak, thick and heavy, and wrapped it around her, though the early morning was already hot.
Opening her door, she found Palin standing outside, his hand raised to knock.
“First Master,” he said. “We have all been worried …”
The dead were all around him. They plucked at the sleeves of his robes. Their lips pressed against his broken fingers, their ragged hands clutched at the magical ring he wore, trying to pull it loose, but not succeeding, to judge by their wails of frustration.
“What?” Palin halted in the middle of his speech of concern, alarmed by the expression on her face. “What is it, First Master? Why do you stare at me like that?”
She pushed past him, shoving him out of her way with such force that he staggered backward. Goldmoon caught up the skirts of her white robes and ran down the stairs, her cloak billowing behind her. She arrived in the hall, startling masters and students. They called after her, some ran after her. The guards stood staring and helpless. Goldmoon ignored them all and kept running.
Past the crystal domes, past the gardens and the fountains, past the hedge maze and the silver stair, past Knights and guards, visitors and pupils, past the dead. She ran down to the harbor. She ran down to the still, smooth sea.
Tas and the gnome were mapping the hedge maze—successfully mapping the hedge maze, which must be considered a first in the long and inglorious history of gnomish science.
“Are we getting close, do you think?” Tasslehoff asked the gnome. “Because I think I’m losing all the feeling in my left foot.”
“Hold still!” Conundrum ordered. “Don’t move. I’ve almost got it. Drat this wind,” he added irritably. “I wish it would stop. It keeps blowing away my map.”
Tasslehoff endeavored to do as he was ordered, although not moving was extremely difficult. He stood on the path in the middle of the hedge maze, balanced precariously on his left foot. He held his right leg hoisted in a most uncomfortable position in the air, his foot attached to a branch of the hedge maze by the end of the thread of the unraveled right stocking. The stocking was considerably reduced in size, its cream-colored thread trailing along the path through the hedge maze.
The gnome’s plan to use the socks had proved a brilliant success, though Conundrum sighed inwardly over the fact that the means by which he was going to finally succeed in mapping the hedge maze lacked the buttons, the gears, the pulleys, the spindles and the wheels, which are such a comfort to the scientific mind.
To have to describe the wondrous mechanism by which he had achieved his Life Quest as “two socks, wool” was a terrible blow. He had spent the night trying to think of some way to add steam power, with the result that he developed plans for snowshoes that not only went extremely fast but kept the feet warm as well. But that did nothing to advance his Life Quest.
At length Conundrum was forced to proceed with the simple plan he’d originally developed. He could always, he reflected, embellish the proceedings during the final report. They began early in the morning, up before the dawn. Conundrum posted Tasslehoff at the entry of the hedge maze, tied one end of the kender’s sock to a branch, and marched Tasslehoff forward. The sock unraveled nicely, leaving a cream-colored track behind. Whenever Tasslehoff took a wrong turn and came to a dead end, he reversed direction, rolling up the thread, and proceeded down the path until he came to the right turn in the path, which was leading them deeper into the middle of the hedge maze.
Whenever they struck a correct turning, Conundrum would fall flat on his belly and mark the route on his map. By this means, he advanced farther than he’d ever been able to go. So long as Tasslehoff’s supply of hosiery held out, the gnome felt certain that he would have the entire hedge maze well and truly mapped by day’s end.
As for Tasslehoff, he was not feeling quite as cheery and pleased as one might expect for someone who was on the verge of wondrous scientific breakthrough. Every time he put his hand in a pocket he felt the prickly jewels and the cold, hard surface of the Device of Time Journeying. He more than half suspected the device of deliberately making a nuisance of itself by turning up in places and pockets where he knew for a fact it had not been ten minutes earlier. No matter where he put his hands, the Device was jabbing him or poking him.
Every time the device jabbed him or poked him, it was like Fizban’s bony finger jabbing him or poking him, reminding him of his promise to come right back.
Of course, kender have traditionally considered promises to be about as binding as a silken strand of gossamer—good for holding butterflies, but not much more. Normally anyone relying on a kender’s promise would be considered loony, unstable, incompetent and just plain daft, all of which descriptions fit Fizban to a tee. Tasslehoff would not have worried at all about breaking a promise he had really never intended to keep in the first place and that he had assumed Fizban knew he never meant to keep, but for what Palin had said about his—Tasslehoff’s—funeral.
That funeral speech seemed to indicate that Fizban expected Tasslehoff to keep his promise. Fizban expected it because Tas was not an ordinary kender. He was a brave kender, a courageous kender, and—that dreadful word—an honorable kender.
Tasslehoff looked honor up and he looked it down. He looked it inside out and sideways, and there were just no two ways about it. Honorable people kept promises. Even promises that were terrible promises, promises that meant one had to go back in time to be stepped on by a giant and squashed flat and killed dead.
“Right! That’s got it!” said the gnome briskly. “You can put your foot down. Now, just hop along around that corner. To your right. No, left. No, right …”
Tasslehoff hopped, feeling the sock unravel from around his leg. Rounding the corner, he came upon a staircase. A spiral staircase. A spiral staircase made all of silver. A silver spiral staircase in the middle of the hedge maze.
“We’ve done it!” The gnome shouted ecstatically.
“We have?” asked Tasslehoff, staring at the stair. “What have we done?”
“We’ve reached the very center of the hedge maze!” The gnome was capering about, flinging ink to the four winds.
“How beautiful!” said Tasslehoff and walked toward the silver stair.
“Stop! You’re unraveling too fast!” the gnome cried. “We still have to map the exit.”
At that moment, Tasslehoff’s sock gave out. He barely noticed, he was so interested in the staircase. The stair seemed to rise up out of nothing. The stair had no supports, but hung suspended in the air, shining and fluid as quicksilver. The stair turned round and round upon itself, leading ever upward. Arriving at the bottom, he looked up to see the top.
He looked up and up and all he saw was sky, blue sky that seemed to go on and on like a bright and lovely summer’s day, which is so bright and so lovely that you never want the day to end. You want it to go on and on forever. Yet you know, the sky seemed to say, that night must come, or else there will be no day tomorrow. And the night has its own blessing, its own beauty.
Tasslehoff began to climb the silver stair.
A few steps below, Conundrum was also starting to climb. “Strange construction,” he remarked. “No pylons, no struts, no rivets, no balusters, no hand railings—safety hazard. Someone should be reported.” The gnome paused about twenty steps up to look around. “My what a view. I can see the harbor—”
The gnome let out a shriek that might have been mistaken for the Mt. Nevermind noon whistle, which generally goes off at about three in the morning.
�
�My ship!”
Conundrum dropped his maps, he spilled his ink. He dashed down the stair, his wispy hair flying in the wind, tripped over Tasslehoff’s stocking, which was tied to the end of the hedge, picked himself up and ran toward the harbor with a speed that the makers of the steam-powered, piston-driven snowshoes might have tried hard to emulate.
“Stop thief!” the gnome bellowed. “That’s my ship!”
Tasslehoff glanced down to see what all the excitement was about, saw it was the gnome, and thought nothing more about it. Gnomes were always excitable.
Tasslehoff sat down on the stairs, put his small pointed chin in his hand and thought about promises.
Palin tried to catch up with Goldmoon, but a cramp in his leg had brought him up, gasping in pain. He massaged the leg and then, when he could walk, he limped down the stairs to find the hall in an uproar. Goldmoon had come running through like a madwoman. She had run out before any could stop her. The masters and healers had been taken by such surprise that only belatedly had some thought to chase after her. By that time, she had vanished. The entire Citadel was being turned upside down, searching for her.
Palin kept to himself what Goldmoon had said to him. The others were already speaking of her in tense whispers. Her wild talk about the dead feeding off him would only convince them—as it had convinced him—that the poor woman had been driven insane by her amazing transformation. He could still see her look of horror, still feel the powerful blow that had sent him falling back against the wall. He offered to search for her, but Lady Camilla told him curtly that both her Knights and the citadel guards had been sent to locate the First Master and that they were quite capable of handling the situation.
Not knowing what else to do, he returned to his rooms, telling Lady Camilla to be certain to notify him upon the First Master’s return.
“In the meantime,” he said to himself, sighing, “the best I can do is to leave Schallsea. I’ve made a mess of things. Tas won’t come near me, and I can’t blame him. I am only adding to Goldmoon’s burdens. Perhaps I am the one responsible for her madness!”
Dragons of a Fallen Sun Page 57
