Read Dragonlance 15 - Dragons Of A Fallen Sun Online
Authors: Margaret Weis
The hospital, located in one of the crystal domes that were the
central structures of the Citadel of Light, consisted of a large room
filled with beds that stood in straight rows up one side and down
the other. Sweet herbs perfumed the air and sweet music added
its own healing properties. The healers worked among the sick
and injured, using the power of the heart to heal them, a power
Goldmoon had discovered and first used to heal the dying dwarf,
Jasper Fireforge.
She had performed many miracles since that time, or so
people claimed. She had healed those thought to be past hope.
She had mended broken bodies with the touch of her hands. She
had restored life to paralyzed limbs, brought sight to the blind.
Her miracles of healing were as wonderful as those she had
performed as a cleric of Mishakal. She was glad and grateful to be
able to ease the suffering of others. But the healing had not
brought her the same joy she had experienced when the blessing
of the healing art came to her as a gift from the god, when she and
Mishakal worked in partnership.
A year or so ago, her healing powers had begun to wane. At
first, she blamed the loss on her advancing age. But she was not
the only one of her healers to experience the diminution of heal-
ing power.
"It is as if someone has hung a gauze curtain between me and
my patient," one young healer had said in frustration. "I try to
draw the curtain aside to reach the patient, but there is another and
another. I don't feel as if I can come close to my patients anymore."
Reports had begun coming in from Citadel masters through-
out Ansalon, all bearing witness to the same dread phenomenon.
Some had blamed it on the dragons. Some had blamed it on the
Knights of Neraka. Then they had heard rumors that the Knights'
dark mystics were losing their powers, as well.
Goldmoon asked her counselor, Mirror, the silver dragon
who was the Citadel's guardian, if he thought that Malys was
responsible.
"No, First Master, I do not," Mirror replied. He was in his
human form then, a handsome youth with silver hair. She saw
sorrow and trouble in his eyes, eyes that held the wisdom of cen-
turies in them. "1 have felt my own magical powers start to wane.
It is rumored among dragonkind that our enemies are also feeling
their powers weaken."
"Then there is some good in this," Goldmoon said.
Mirror remained grave. "1 fear not, First Master. The tyrant who
feels power slipping away does not let loose. He tightens his grasp."
Goldmoon paused on the threshold of the hospital. The beds
were filled with patients, some sleeping, some talking quietly,
some reading. The atmosphere was restful, peaceful. Bereft of
much of their mystical power, the healers had gone back to the
herbal remedies once practiced by healers in the days following
the Cataclysm. The smells of sage and rosemary, chamomille and
mint spiced the air. Soft music played. Goldmoon felt the sooth-
ing influence of the restful solitude, and her heart was eased.
Here, perhaps, the healer would herself be healed.
Catching sight of Goldmoon, one of the master healers came
forward immediately to welcome her. The welcome was, of
necessity, low-key, lest the patients be disturbed by undue com-
motion or excitement. The healer said how pleased she was that
the First Master was returned to them and stared with all her
might at Goldmoon's altered face.
Goldmoon said something pleasant and innocuous and
turned her face from the amazed scrutiny to look around. She
asked after the patients.
"The hospital is quiet this night, First Master," said the healer,
leading the way into the ward. "We have many patients, but, for-
tunately, few who are really worrisome. We have a baby suffering
from the croup, a Knight who received a broken leg during a
joust, and a young fisherman who was rescued from drowning.
The rest of our patients are convalescing."
"How is Sir Wilfer?" Lady Camilla asked.
"The leg is mended, my lady," the healer replied, "but it is still
weak. He insists he is ready to be released, and I cannot convince
him that he would do better to remain another few days to fully
recover. I know that he finds it very dull here, but perhaps if you
were to-"
"I will speak to him," said Lady Camilla.
She moved among the rows of beds. Most of the patients
came from outside the Citadel, from villages and towns on
Schallsea. They knew the elderly Goldmoon, for she often visited
their homes. But they did not recognize this youthful Goldmoon.
Most thought her a stranger and paid little attention to her, for
which she was grateful. At the far end was the cradle with the
baby, his watchful mother at his side. He coughed still and
whimpered. His face was flushed with fever. The healers were
preparing a bowl of herbs to which they would add boiling
water. The steam would moisten the lungs and ease the child's
cough. Goldmoon drew near, intending to say a few words of
comfort to the mother.
As Goldmoon approached the cradle, she saw that another
figure hovered over the fretful baby. At first, Goldmoon thought
this to be one of the healers. She did not recognize the face, but
then she had been absent from them for weeks. Probably this was
a new student. . .
Goldmoon's steps slowed. She halted about three beds away
from that of the sick child, put out a hand to steady herself upon
the wooden bedpost.
The figure was not a healer. The figure was not a student. The
figure was not alive. A ghost hovered over the child, the ghost of
a young woman.
"If you will excuse me, First Master," said the healer, "1 will go
see what I can do for this sick child."
The healer walked over to the child. The healer laid her hands
upon the baby, but at the same instant, the fleshless hands of the
ghost intervened. The ghost grasped the healer's hands.
"Give me the blessed power," the ghost whispered. "1 must
have it, or I will be cast into oblivion!"
The baby's coughing grew worse. The mother hung over him
worriedly. The healer, shaking her head, removed her hands. Her
healing touch had failed the baby. The ghost had stolen the
energy for herself.
"He should breathe in this steam," the healer said, sounding
tired and defeated. "The steam will help keep his lungs clear."
The ghost of the woman drifted away. More insubstantial fig-
ures took her place, crowding around the sick baby, their burning
eyes staring avidly at the healer. When the healer moved to an-
other bed, they followed her, clinging to her like trailing cobweb.
When she put out her hands to try to heal another patient, the
dead grasped hold of her, crying and moaning.
"Mine! Mine! Give the power to me!"
Goldmoon staggered. If she had not been holding onto the
bedpost, she would have fallen. She closed her eyes tightly shut,
hoping the fearful apparitions would disappear. She opened her
eyes to see more ghosts. Legions of the dead crowded and jostled
each other as each sought to steal for his own the blessed life-
giving power that flowed from the healers. Restless, the dead
were in constant motion. They passed by Goldmoon like a vast
and turbulent river, all flowing in the same direction-north.
Those who gathered around the healers were not permitted to
linger long. Some unheard voice ordered them away, some
unseen hand pulled them back into the water.
The river of dead shifted course, swept around Goldmoon.
The dead reached out to touch her, begged her to bless them in
their hollow whisperings.
"No! Leave me alone!" she cried, cringing away. "I cannot
help you!"
Some of the dead flowed past her, wailing in disappointment.
Other ghosts pressed near her. Their breath was cold, their eyes
burned. Their words were smoke, their touch like ashes falling on
her skin.
Startled faces surrounded her. Faces of the living.
"Healer!" someone was calling. "Come quickly! The First
Master!"
The healer was in a flutter. Had she done something to offend
the First Master? She had not meant to.
Goldmoon recoiled from the healer in horror. The dead were
all around her, pulling on her arm, tugging at her robes. Ghosts
surged forward, rushing at her, trying to seize hold of her hands.
"Give us . . . " they pleaded in their terrible whisperings.
"Give us what we crave. . . what we must have. . ."
"First Master!" Lady Camilla's voice boomed through the
sibiliant hissings of the dead. She sounded panicked. "Please let
us help you! Tell us what is wrong!"
"Can't you see them?" Goldmoon cried. "The dead!" She
pointed. "There, with the baby! There, with the healer. Here, in
front of me! The dead are draining us, stealing our power. Can't
you see them?"
Voices clamored around Goldmoon, voices of the living. She
could not understand them, they made no sense. Her own voice
failed her. She felt herself falling and could do nothing to halt her
fall.
She was lying in a bed in the hospital. The voices still clam-
ored. Opening her eyes, she saw the faces of the dead surround-
ing her.
CHAPTER TWENTYEIGHT
THE DRAGON EDICT
General Medan rarely visited his own headquarters in
Qualinost. Constructed by humans, the fortress was ugly,
purposefully ugly. Squat, square, made of gray sandstone,
with barred windows and heavy, iron-bound doors, the fortress
was intended to be ugly, intended as an insult to the elves, to im-
press upon them who was master. No elf would come near it of
his own free will, though many had seen the inside of it, partic-
ularly the room located far below ground, the room to which
they were taken when the order was given to "put them to the
question."
Marshal Medan had developed an extreme dislike for this
building, a dislike almost as great as that of the elves. He pre-
ferred to conduct most of his business from his home where his
work area was a shady bower dappled with sunlight. He pre-
ferred listening to the song of the lark rather than to the sounds
of screams of the tortured, preferred the scent of his roses to that
of blood.
The infamous room was not much in use these days. Elves
thought to be rebels or in league with the rebels vanished like
shadows when the sun hides beneath a cloud before the Neraka
Knights could arrest them. Medan knew very well that the elves
were being spirited away somehow, probably through under-
grO:!:lnd tunnels. In the old days, when he had first taken on the
governing of an occupied land, he would have turned Qualinost
upside down and inside out, excavated, probed, brought in
Thorn Knights to look for magic, tortured hundreds. He did none
of these things. He was just as glad that his Knights arrested so
few. He had come to loathe the torturing, the death, as he had
come to love Qualinesti.
Medan loved the land. He loved the beauty of the land, loved
the peaceful serenity that meandered through Qualinesti as the
stream wound its sparkling way through his garden. Alexis
Medan did not love the elven people. Elves were beyond his ken,
his understanding. He might as well have said that he loved the
sun or the stars or the moon. He admired them, as he admired the
beauty of an orchid, but he could not love them. He sometimes
envied them their long life span and sometimes pitied them for it.
Medan did not love Laurana as a woman, Gerard had come to
realize. He loved her as the embodiment of all that was beautiful
in his adopted homeland.
Gerard was amazed, entranced, and astounded upon his first
entrance into Marshal Medan's dwelling. His amazement in-
creased when the marshal told him, proudly, that he had super-
vised the design of the house and had laid out the garden entirely
to his own liking.
Elves would not have lived happily in the marshal's house,
which was too ordered and structured for their tastes. He disliked
the elven practice of using living trees as walls and trailing vines
for curtains, nor did he want green grasses for his roof. Elves
enjoy the murmur and whispers of living walls around them in
the night. Medan preferred his walls to allow him to sleep. His
house was built of rough-hewn stone. He took care not to cut
living trees, an act the elves considered a grievous crime.
Ivy and morning glories clung to the surfaces of the rock walls.
The house itself was practically hidden by a profusion of flowers.
Gerard could not believe that such beauty could live in the soul of
this man, an avowed follower of the precepts of darkness.
Gerard had moved into the house yesterday afternoon. Acting
on Medan's orders, the healers of the Nereka Knights had pooled
their dwindling energies to restore the 50lamnic to almost com-
plete health. His wounds had knit with astonishing rapidity.