Reluctantly, Haimya rose.
Pirvan and Jemar were already on deck when she joined them. Pirvan put an arm around her, but she turned her head away. He knew what that meant-tears he was not supposed to see-and said nothing.
Smoke and flame spewed from one of the huts atop the slope. As the smoke drifted away and the stones rattled down on the roofs below, Pirvan recognized which hut it had been.
“Rubina again,” he said. “Making sure that no one will ferret out Waydol’s secrets from his hut.”
“Out oars!” Jemar shouted. “Deck crew, stand by to make sail.” He scurried aft toward the deckhouse.
Haimya’s head slipped down onto Pirvan’s shoulder, and he felt her trembling.
* * * * *
Only one circle of fire now burned in the distance. Rubina sat on a log outside the stronghold entrance, with a patch of melted rock slowly cooling only a few paces away.
Wearily, she rose to her feet and began to climb the slope to where she could find a view of the sea. She could have levitated there, but not without breaking the spell that maintained the last fire circle.
That she would maintain until the last ship was out to sea.
It was a long climb for a wizard who had spent her strength freely for a whole day. If she had been in the Tower of High Sorcery after such a day’s work, it would have been sleep and hearty meals for several days.
She had her doubts about the prospect of hearty meals in this land. She was more certain about the sleep.
Several times she was tempted to throw away her staff and robes. They were mere weight now, and she could end the fire circle with only a few simple words. Simple, at least, compared to what it had taken to raise the three fire circles with which she had begun the day’s work.
Yet she had worn the robe and carried the staff for so many years, it would seem unnatural to be without them. She did not care to feel thus, in her last hours of life.
Also, if those hours took her into night, it would be cold without the robes. When she was younger, she had taken much delight in outdoor trysts-she remembered one sturdy soldier, whose name she had never known, and a rose-laden breeze blowing over them both-
The sea spread out before her, so abruptly that she had to dig in her staff and grip a branch to keep from sliding over the edge.
There lay the sea, and on it ships. Two fleets, one to the east and so far off she could barely count it. One to the west, much closer, but just too far off to recognize any particular ships. And a single ship making its way toward the eastern fleet, low-built like a galley, and apparently moving under oars.
She sat down, in sight of the water but a safe distance from the drop. She raised her staff, and cast what she knew would be her last spell, one to briefly improve her vision so that she could make out which fleet was which.
The eastern fleet first. Closer needs less strength.
Her eyes watered, her vision blurred, then cleared-and Windsword seemed to be almost near enough to touch.
She even thought she could recognize Pirvan and Haimya standing forward, close together.
She had not wept all day. She did not weep now, until she finished counting Jemar’s ships. All ten were there, besides Gullwing.
Her work was finished. Why not just take a few steps forward?
Because your friends are now safe from Takhisis’s vengeance. The only people left on this coast are enemies. Do you want them safe, too?
That thought ended Rubina’s brief tears. It was pleasant to realize that one could go on fighting even after death, if one enlisted the Dark Queen on one’s side.
Perhaps the Black Robe was not such a bad decision after all.
* * * * *
Darin would gladly have swum to Windsword the moment Gullwing was close enough, but Jemar already had a boat over the side.
There was no more news of Waydol to read in the men’s faces. He knew there would have been some if the Minotaur was either healed or dead, even if no one had put it into words.
Indeed, the silence seemed to hang over the sea and Jemar’s fleet like a mist. The water rolled gently, the air was still, and it was as if there had never been death, terror, or magic here today.
Jemar was first to welcome him aboard the bannership, but then he stepped back and let Pirvan speak.
“Waydol spent himself long after he should have given up fighting,” Pirvan said.
“Is that your judgment or the priest’s?”
“I trust the priest.”
“He is not a warrior. He is-he is not without honor, but it is not a minotaur’s honor. Or a warrior’s. You are a warrior. What do you say?”
“In Waydol’s position, I would have done the same.”
Darin gripped Pirvan by both shoulders. “Thank you is only small words. If I find something better to do or say-”
“No haste,” the knight said. “Now go below, before Sirbones has to put Waydol to sleep for the healing.”
Darin cracked his head on overhead beams several times before finding the main cabin. Sirbones opened the door, and Darin’s first thought was that the priest of Mishakal needed a healer himself.
“I must go to work soon,” Sirbones said. “I have regained enough strength-I think. I cannot wait longer, regardless.”
“Do not be afraid,” Darin said. “If my father’s time has come-”
Sirbones darted away, with more speed than Darin would have thought he had in his legs.
From the cabin, a hoarse voice said, “What did you just call me?”
Darin bit his lip and wished that he would bite out his unruly tongue. He also wanted to stop blushing, but knew that if he waited for that, Waydol might be gone before he entered the cabin.
So he stepped in and knelt beside the pallet.
Presently he felt a large hand ruffling his hair. There was not much of it to ruffle, as he had close-shorn it before going to sea. Not much for a funeral offering, either.
“Now, what did you call me?”
“Father.”
“Hmmm. I am not-not the father of your body. But in all else-I will not-not refuse the title.”
“The one who teaches a child honor is the father of his soul.”
“Did you just make that-ah-did you make that up?”
“I have never read it.”
“No, there were not many books in the stronghold, or many lovers of books. Ask Sir Pirvan properly, and I think he will give you the run of his library.”
Darin wanted to do many things besides talk of his future education. One of them was to weep. He would prefer to be flung into the Abyss.
“Well, you or whoever said it are all right. So go and fetch Sirbones, my son. If I am not to exhaust him to no purpose-”
A gasp of pain interrupted the speech, and Darin felt the Minotaur shudder. Then a small hand touched his shoulder.
“You stay with your father, Darin. I will go for Sirbones.”
It was Lady Eskaia. She wore only a nightdress that concealed so much less than her normal clothing that Darin felt himself flushing all over again. He also remembered that she had been near to death herself.
“Now, don’t argue, Darin,” she said firmly in a voice that recalled Waydol’s in the days of Darin’s childish pranks. “I can certainly walk ten paces to find where Sirbones is biting his nails in a dark corner.”
She went out, followed by a faint rumbling noise that Darin finally recognized as Waydol-as his father-laughing.
* * * * *
Sir Niebar had changed his plans several times on the way from Tiradot Manor to the Chained Ogre. Each time, it was because of something new that he learned about Pirvan’s men-at-arms.
Most of what he learned was how much they had learned from Sir Pirvan, about the skills of what they delicately called “their knight’s former occupations.” Since this included such arts as entering a house from the top instead of the bottom, making watchdogs useless without killing them, and moving in a silence normally associated with incorporeal beings. Sir Niebar was not ungrateful to the Knight of the Crown for those teachings.