Dropping her weapon, she held out the hand that had been wielding the morning star to the moonlight. “Judge my truthfulness.”
Her soft palm was raw and bloody from opened blisters. Yet she had never once complained, never flinched in her strikes, though the pain of her wounds must have been excruciating.
Galdar regarded her with undisguised admiration. If there is one virtue the minotaurs prize, it is the ability to bear pain in stoic silence. “The spirit of some great warrior must live in you, Mina. My people believe that such a thing is possible. When one of our warriors dies courageously in battle, it is the custom in my tribe to cut out his heart and eat it, hoping that his spirit will enter our own.”
“The only hearts I will eat will be those of my enemies,” said Mina. “My strength and my skill are given to me by my god.” She bent to pick up the morning star.
“No, no more practice this night,” said Galdar, snatching it out from under her fingers. “We must tend to those blisters. Too bad,” he said, eyeing her. “I fear that you will not be able to even set your hand to your horses’ reins in the morning, much less hold a weapon. Perhaps we should wait here a few days until you are healed.”
“We must reach Sanction tomorrow,” said Mina. “So it is ordered. If we arrive a day late, the battle will be finished. Our troops will have suffered a terrible defeat.”
“Sanction has long been besieged,” Galdar said, disbelieving.
“Ever since the foul Solamnics made a pact with that bastard who rules the city, Hogan Bight. We cannot dislodge them, and they do not have the strength to drive us back. The battle is at a stalemate. We attack the walls every day and they defend. Civilians are killed. Parts of the city catch fire. Eventually they’ll grow weary of this and surrender. The siege has lasted for well over a year now. I don’t see that a single day will make any difference. Stay here and rest.”
“You do not see because your eyes are not yet fully open,”
Mina said. “Bring me some water to wash my hands and some cloth to wipe them clean of blood. Have no fear. I will be able to ride and to fight.”
“Why not heal yourself, Mina?” Galdar suggested, testing her, hoping to see another miracle. “Heal yourself as you healed me.”
Her amber eyes caught the light of the coming dawn, just starting to brighten the sky. She looked into the dawn and the thought came to his mind that she was already seeing tomorrow’s sunset.
“Many hundreds will die in terrible agony,” she said in a soft voice. “The pain I bear, I bear in tribute to them. I give it as gift to my god. Rouse the others, Galdar. It is time.”
Galdar expected more than half the soldiers to depart as they had threatened to do in the night. He found on his return to camp that the men were already up and stirring. They were in excellent spirits, confident excited, speaking of the bold deeds they would do this day. Deeds that they said had come to them in dreams more real than waking.
Mina appeared among them, carrying her shield and her morning star in hands that still bled. Galdar watched her with concern. She was weary from her exercise and from the previous day’s hard ride. Standing upon the road, isolated, alone, she seemed suddenly mortal, fragile. Her head drooped, her shoulders sagged. Her hands must bum and sting, her muscles ache.
She sighed deeply and looked heavenward, as if questioning whether or not she truly had the strength to carry on.
At sight of her, the Knights lifted their swords, clashed them against their shields in salute.
“Mina! Mina!” they chanted and their chants bounded back from the mountains with the stirring sound of a clarion’s call.
Mina lifted her head. The salute was wine to her flagging spirits. Her lips parted, she drank it in. Weariness fell from her like cast-off rags. Her armor shone red in the lurid light of the rising sun.
“Ride hard. We ride this day to glory,” she told them, and the Knights cheered wildly.
Foxfire came at her command. She mounted and grasped the reins firmly in her bleeding, blistered hands. It was then that Galdar, taking his place alongside her, running at her stirrup, noted that she wore around her peck a silver medallion upon a silver chain. He looked at it closely, to see what the medallion might have engraved upon its surface.
The medallion was blank. Plain silver, without mark.
Strange. Why should anyone wear a blank medallion? He had no chance to ask her, for at that instant Mina struck her spurs to her horse’s flank.
Foxfire galloped down the road.
Mina’s Knights rode behind her.
Chapter Six
The Funeral of Caramon Majere
At the rising of the sun—a splendid dawn of gold and purple with a heart of deep, vibrant red—the people of Solace gathered outside the Inn of the Last Home in silent vigil, offering their love and their respect for the brave, good and gentle man who lay inside.
There was little talk. The people stood in silence presaging the great silence that will fall eventually upon us all. Mothers quieted fretful children, who stared at the Inn, ablaze with lights, not understanding what had happened, only sensing that it was something great and awful, a sensation that impressed itself upon their unformed minds, one they would remember to the end of their own days.
“I’m truly sorry, Laura,” Tas said to her in the quiet hour before dawn.
Laura stood beside the booth where Caramon was accustomed to have his breakfast. She stood there doing nothing, staring at nothing, her face pale and drawn.
“Caramon was my very best friend in all the world,” Tas told her.
“Thank you.” She smiled, though her smile trembled. Her eyes were red from weeping.
“Tasslehoff,” the kender reminded her, thinking she had forgotten his name.
“Yes.” Laura appeared uneasy. “Er . . . Tasslehoff.”
“I am Tasslehoff Burrfoot. The original,” the kender added, recalling his thirty-seven namesakes-thirty-nine counting the dogs. “Caramon recognized me. He gave me a hug and said he was glad to see me.”
Laura regarded him uncertainly. “You certainly do look like Tasslehoff. But then I was just a little girl the last time I remember seeing him, and all kender look alike anyway, and it just doesn’t make sense! Tasslehoff Burrfoot’s been dead these thirty years!”
Tas would have explained-all about the Device of Time Journeying and Fizban having set the device wrong the first time so that Tas had arrived at Caramon’s first funeral too late to give his speech, but there was a lump of sadness caught in the kender’s gullet, a lump so very big that it prevented the words from coming out.
Laura’s gaze went to the stairs of the Inn. Her eyes filled again with tears. She put her head in her hands.
“There, there,” Tas said, patting her shoulder. “Palin will be here soon. He knows who I am, and he’ll be able to explain everything.”
“Palin won’t be here,” Laura sobbed. “I can’t get word to him. It’s too dangerous! His own father dead and him not able to come to the burial. His wife and my dear sister trapped in Haven, since the dragon’s closed the roads. Only me here to say good-bye to father. It’s too hard! Too hard to bear!”
“Why, of course, Palin will be here,” Tas stated, wondering what dragon had closed the roads and why. He meant to ask, but with all the other thoughts in his mind, this one couldn’t battle its way to the front. “There’s that young wizard staying here in the Inn. Room Seventeen. His name is . . . well, I forget his name, but you’ll send him to the Tower of High Sorcery in Wayreth, where Palin is Head of the Order of White Robes.”
“What tower in Wayreth?” Laura said. She had stopped crying and was looking puzzled. “The tower’s gone, disappeared, just like the tower in Palanthas. Palin was head of the Academy of Sorcery, but he doesn’t even have that, anymore. The dragon Beryl destroyed the academy a year ago, almost to this date. And there is no Room Seventeen. Not since the Inn was rebuilt the second time.”