JEAN RABE
The Eve of the Maelstrom
For Mary and Jerry
Prologue
Kindred Spirits
The glaive Dhamon Grimwulf clutched was simple in design yet starkly beautiful, an axe-like blade affixed to a long, polished wooden haft. The edge, curved gently like a smile, gleamed silver in the light that spilled through the window. The weapon was drawn back, steadied. Dhamon’s eyes were steady, too, fixed on Goldmoon’s.
“My faith will protect me,” Goldmoon whispered as she stepped back, trying to put some distance between herself and the weapon. A few moments would buy time to convince Dhamon this was wrong. Goldmoon’s fingers touched the medallion about her neck, a symbol of her departed goddess Mishakal, and of her undying faith in the goddess.
“Dhamon, you can fight this. Fight the dragon....”
There were other voices in the chamber beside hers—that of the dwarf, Jasper, her favored student of many years, and those of Feril, Blister, and Rig. Shouted words, pleading, angry, incredulous words all aimed at Dhamon Grimwulf, the tall man with wheat-blonde hair and piercing eyes. They were meant to stop the glaive, to stop him. But the words ere thrust aside by the red dragon who controlled Dhamon. Against his will, Dhamon listened to the dragon voice inside his head and advanced on the healer.
Goldmoon, too, thrust all the words aside, and concentrated. “My faith will protect me. My faith... no!”
Dhamon swung the blade down, striking Jasper, who had suddenly leapt in front of him trying to save Goldmoon. Before the others could react, the weapon was pulled back, this time gleaming red with the dwarf’s blood.
“Jasper,” Goldmoon whispered.
The blade poised for the most fleeting of moments. It was suspended for a heartbeat, no more, before continuing on a lethal path toward the famed healer and Hero of the Lance.
“My faith will protect me,” Goldmoon repeated in a slightly stronger voice. Then she felt the coolness of the metal as it touched her; surprisingly she felt no pain. The gleam of the blade filled her vision. Then she saw nothing. Dhamon and the voices of her friends were gone, as her life was gone.
She slipped from Krynn.
A welcoming blackness swallowed Goldmoon, tactile like velvet and somehow comforting. This was death, she knew, and she was not afraid of death. She had never been afraid of it. Death had claimed her husband and one of her daughters years before, had claimed cherished friends—Tanis, Tasslehoff, Flint. Jasper too? In death, she expected to greet them all again.
The darkness, like a gentle vise, held her briefly, then receded. As the darkness changed to a charcoal gray, it lessened its grip, but it did not release her. Then the space around her lightened further, until her surroundings became almost white, the shade of pale smoke. No floor to stand on, no walls, only a limitless mist. She hovered in its soft embrace, seemingly alone. But she knew he must be here with her.
“Riverwind.” She spoke the word, though her lips didn’t move. She spoke the word with her mind and heard it clearly, as she also heard the response.
“Beloved.” He appeared before her as if by magic, young and strong, looking as he had on the day she’d first glimpsed him. His skin was tan, his eyes dark and full, his arms muscular and now wrapped around her. His long black hair fluttered in an intangible breeze.
“Riverwind... husband, I’ve missed you so.” Goldmoon clung tightly to him and inhaled his scent. Memories flooded her mind: his courtship of her under the disapproving gaze of her father; the exhilarating danger they had experienced together during the War of the Lance; the time they had spent apart; and, above all, his death far from her side. Even after Riverwind had been killed helping the kender against Malystryx the Red, she had sensed that he was with her, part of her.
“I’ve missed you, too,” Riverwind answered. “I’ve not been complete without you.”
“To be together again,” she said wistfully. “Complete. For-ever.
“Forever.” He stared at her. She looked as she had decades ago, full of hope and life, skin shining, silver-gold hair festooned with the feathers and beads of the Que-shu tribe. “Forever, yes. But forever must wait. Goldmoon, you can’t stay here. You must go back.”
“Go back? To what? Krynn? The Citadel of Light? I don’t understand.”
“It isn’t your time to die. You have to go back. Feril... the Kagonesti... she can heal you.”
“Not my time to die?”
“No. Not yet.” He shook his head. “At least not for a while, love. Forever will have to wait a while longer.”
“I think not, husband.”
“Goldmoon...”
“I’m more than eighty years old. I’ve walked more than enough years on Krynn. Few people are fortunate to live as long. And I’ve had enough of living.”
He ran a finger across her cheek, his spirit form as vibrant and warm as it had been in life. “But Krynn hasn’t had enough of you, beloved. Not just yet, anyway.”
“And who or what force decides this? I am dead, River-wind. Am I not?”
“Dead? Yes. Still... it’s not easy to explain,” he began. “There is still time, if you hurry. Feril can—” He tried to say more, but she cut him off.
“I will admit I hadn’t expected to die this way. I didn’t think Dhamon would kill me, could bring himself to kill me. I thought he was strong enough to resist the beast that possesses him.”
“Malystryx.”
Goldmoon nodded. “She controls him through a scale on his leg. I was so certain he could overcome that. I thought he was the one, the man who could lead the fight against the overlords. I myself chose him, Riverwind, chose him months upon months ago as he kneeled outside the Last Heroes’ Tomb. I looked into his heart. I erred....”
“Things don’t always turn out the way we expect,” Riverwind replied.
“No.”
“The others need your help.”
“They can continue the cause without me. Palin, Rig, Blister, Feril...”
“They need you.” Riverwind’s voice was firm. “There are things you’ve yet to accomplish. The dragons...”
“How do you know this? Are the gods not truly gone? Do they speak to you? Are they...”
“You weren’t supposed to die this day. That’s all I know. And that’s all you are permitted to know right now. Another was so fated.”
“Another was to die? Not me?”
Riverwind drew his lips into a thin line. With a gesture of his hand the mists parted. They were hovering above the chamber in the Citadel of Light—ghostlike, for no one saw them there. The floor below was covered with blood—Goldmoon’s, Jasper’s, Rig’s. The dwarf was seriously wounded, barely clinging to life, but he was clinging to Goldmoon’s body, sobbing, his eyes wide with disbelief.
“I will miss them all,” she whispered, her fingers reaching out toward the dwarf.
“There is still time. Return to them, beloved. Let the Kagonesti aid you. Then help Jasper. Hurry.”
“Let Feril help Jasper.”
Riverwind and Goldmoon could faintly discern words swirling in the air—grieving words over Goldmoon and Jasper, venomous words about Dhamon, words of shock that something like this could have happened, words demanding revenge.
“It wasn’t Dhamon’s fault,” Goldmoon said. “They have to understand that. They’ll eventually realize that.”
“One of them was to die,” Riverwind repeated. “Not you. Not yet. Dhamon wasn’t meant to kill you.”
“It wasn’t Dhamon’s fault. The dragon... the scale on his leg... who was supposed to die instead of me?”
Riverwind shook his head.
“Who?” she insisted.
“I can’t tell you. All I can tell you is that you must go back.” Riverwind’s voice was firm, tinged with sadness. “We’ll be together again, I promise. It will be soon enough. And you know I’ll always be with you.”