Dragonlance 16 - Dragons Of A Lost Star (28 page)

“Of course,” he said to himself. “Dalamar is taller than I am by a head and shoulders. I should have made allowances.”

The illusion of stone dispelled, Palin looked through it directly into the library. From his vantage point, he could see the desk, see the person seated at the desk, and observe any visitors. He could hear every word as clearly as if he were in the room, and he had to fight against an uneasy impression that those inside the library could see him as clearly as he could see them.

Perhaps the apprentice Dalamar had once hidden himself to spy upon Raistlin Majere, his Shalafi. The notion provided Palin some amusement, as he settled himself to watch—a rather uncomfortable proceeding, since he had to stand as tall as possible and stretch his neck to look through the opening in the stone wall. Recalling the fact that Raistlin had been aware that his apprentice had been spying on him did little to add to Palin’s sense of well-being. He reminded himself that he had been in this very library and had undoubtedly looked at this very wall without any notion that a small portion was not real.

The door opened. Dalamar ushered his visitors inside. One was a minotaur—hulkish and brutish with that gleam of intelligence in the animal eyes that was both disconcerting and dangerous. The other Dark Knight was, as Dalamar had said, “very strange.”

“Why . . .” Palin whispered, shocked as he watched her walk into Dalamar’s library, her armor gleaming in the light of the fire. “I know her! Or rather, I knew her. Mina!”

The girl entered the room and looked about her with what Palin at first took for childlike wonder. She looked at the shelves of books, the ornately carved and beautiful desk, the dusty velvet curtains, the frayed silk rugs of elven make that covered the stone floor. He knew teenage girls—he’d had them as pupils in his school—and expected the usual squeals at the sight of the more grisly objects, such as the skull of a baaz draconian. (Raistlin had once engaged on a study of these creatures, perhaps with the intent of recreating them himself. The full skeleton could be found in the old laboratory, along with some of the internal organs, kept in a solution in a jar.)

Mina remained silent and apparently unimpressed by anything she saw, including Dalamar.

She shifted her gaze around the room, taking in everything. She turned her face toward Palin. Eyes that were the color of amber focused on the place in the wall behind which he was hiding. Palin had the impression that they saw through the illusion, saw him as plainly as if he were standing in the room. He felt this so acutely that he recoiled, glanced about him to ascertain his route of escape, for he was certain that her next move would be to point him out, demand his capture.

The eyes fixed on him, absorbed him. The liquid amber surrounded him, solidified, passed on to continue the investigation of the room. She said nothing, made no mention of him, and Palin’s fast-beating heart began to return to some semblance of normal.

Of course, she had not seen him. He berated himself. How could she? He thought back to the last time he had seen her, an orphan in the Citadel of Light. She had been a scrawny little girl with skinned knees and a mass of glorious red hair. Now she was a slender young woman, the red hair cut off, playing at dress-up in a Knight’s armor. Yet she had a look on her face that was certainly not childlike. Resolute, purposeful, confident—all that and something more. Exalted . . .

“You are the wizard Dalamar,” Mina said, turning the amber eyes on him. “I was told I would find you here.”

“I am Dalamar, the Master of the Tower. I would be considerably interested to know who told you where to find me,” said Dalamar, folding his hands in the sleeves of his robes and giving a graceful bow.

“The Master of the Tower . . .” Mina repeated softly with a half-smile, as if she knew the truth of the matter. “As to how I found you, the dead told me.”

“Indeed?” Dalamar seemed to find this troubling. He tried to evade her eyes, slid out from beneath the amber gaze. “Who might you be, Lady Knight, that you are on such intimate terms with the dead?”

“I am Mina,” she said. She raised the amber eyes, and this time she caught him. She gestured. “This is my second-in-command, Galdar.”

The minotaur gave an abrupt nod of his horned head. He was not comfortable in the Tower. He kept glancing about darkly as if he expected something to spring out and attack at any moment. He was not worried about himself, however. His sole concern appeared to be for Mina. He was protective to the point of worship, adoration.

Palin was overcome by curiosity. Dalamar was wary.

“I am interested to know how you made your way unscathed through Nightlund, Lady Mina,” Dalamar said. He sat down in the chair behind his desk, perhaps trying to break that entrancing gaze. “Will you be seated?”

“Thank you, no,” Mina replied and continued to stand. She now gazed down upon him, putting Dalamar at an unexpected disadvantage. “Why does my being in Nightlund astonish you, Wizard?”

Dalamar shifted in his chair, not willing to stand up, for that would make him appear vacillating and weak, yet not enjoying being looked down upon.

“I am a necromancer. I sense magic about you,” he said. “The dead drain magic, they feed off it. I am surprised that you were not mobbed.”

“That which you sense about me is not magic,” Mina replied, and her voice was unusually low and mature for one her age. “You feel the power of the God I serve, the One God. As to the dead, they do not touch me. The One God rules the dead. They see in me the One God, and they bow down before me.”

Dalamar’s lip twitched.

“It is true!” Galdar stated, growling in anger. “I saw it myself! Mina comes to lead—”

“—my army into Nightlund,” Mina concluded. Resting her hand upon the minotaur’s arm, she commanded silence.

“Lead your army against what?” Dalamar asked sarcastically. “The dead?”

“Against the living,” Mina replied. “We plan to seize control of Solamnia.”

“You must have a large army, Lady Knight,” Dalamar said. “You must have brought along every soldier in the Dark Knighthood.”

“My army is small,” Mina admitted. “I was required to leave troops behind to guard Silvanesti, which fell to our might not long ago—”

“Silvanesti. . . fallen . . .” Dalamar was livid. He stared at her. “I don’t believe it!”

Mina shrugged. “Your belief or disbelief is all one to me. Besides, what do you care? Your people cast you out, or so I have heard tell. I mentioned that only in passing. I have come to ask a favor of you, Master of the Tower.”

Dalamar was shaken to the core of his being. Palin saw that despite claiming not to believe her, the dark elf realized she spoke the truth. It was impossible to hear that calm, resolute, confident voice and not believe whatever she said.

Dalamar struggled to regain at least outward control of himself. He would have liked to have asked questions, demanded answers, but he could not quite see how to do this without revealing an uncharacteristic concern. Dalamar’s love for his people was a love that he constantly denied and in that denial constantly reaffirmed.

“You have heard correctly,” he said with a tight smile. “They cast me out. What favor can I do for you, Lady Mina?”

“I have arranged to meet someone here,” she began.

“Here? In the Tower?” Dalamar was astonished beyond words. “Out of the question. I am not running an inn, Lady Mina.”

“I realize that, Wizard Dalamar,” Mina replied, and her tone was gentle. “I realize that what I am asking will be an imposition, an inconvenience to you, an interruption to your studies. Rest assured that I would not ask this of you, but that there are certain requirements that must be met as to the location of this meeting. The Tower of High Sorcery fulfills all those requirements. Indeed, it is the only place on Krynn that fulfills the requirements. The meeting must take place here.”

“I am to have no say in this? What are these requirements of which you speak?” Dalamar demanded, frowning.

“I am not permitted to reveal them. Not yet. As to your say in this, what you do or say matters not at all. The One God has decided this will be, and therefore this will be.”

Dalamar’s dark eyes flickered. His face smoothed.

“Your guest is welcome in the Tower, Lady. In order to make the guest’s stay comfortable, it would help if I knew something about this person . . . male or female? A name, perhaps?”

“Thank you, Wizard,” Mina said, and turned away.

“When will the guest arrive?” Dalamar pursued. “How will I know that the person who comes is the person you expect?”

“You will know,” Mina replied. “We will leave now, Galdar.”

The minotaur had already crossed the room and was reaching for the door handle.

“There is a favor you could do for me in return, Lady,” Dalamar said mildly.

Mina glanced back. “What is that, Wizard?”

“A kender I was using in an important experiment has escaped,” Dalamar said, his tone casual, as if kender were like caged mice and were found or lost on a routine basis. “His loss would be of no importance to me, but the experiment was. I would like very much to recover him, and it occurs to me that perhaps, if you are bringing an army into Nightlund, you might come upon him. If you do, I would appreciate his return. He calls himself Tasslehoff,” Dalamar added with an offhanded and charming smile, “as so many of them do these days.”

“Tasslehoff!” Mina’s attention was caught directly. A crease marred her forehead. “The Tasslehoff who carried with him the magical Device of Time Journeying? You had him here? You had him and the device, and you lost him?”

Dalamar stared, confounded. The elven wizard was older by hundreds of years than this girl. He had been deemed one of the great mages of his or any time. Though he worked in magic’s shadows, he had gained the respect, if not the love, of those who worked in the light. Mina’s amber-eyed gaze pinned the powerful wizard to the chair. Dalamar wriggled beneath her gaze, struggled, but she had caught him and held him fast.

Two bright spots of color stained Dalamar’s pale cheeks. The elf’s slender fingers nervously stroked a bit of carving on the desk, an oak leaf. The too-thin fingers traced its shape over and over until Palin longed to rush from his hiding place and seize that nervous hand to make it stop.

“Where is the device?” Mina demanded, advancing on him until she stood at his desk, gazing down at him. “Did he have it with him? Do you have it here?”

Dalamar had reached his limit. He rose from his chair, looked down at her, looked down the length of his aquiline nose, looked down from his greater height, looked down from the confidence of his own power.

“What business can this possibly be of yours, Lady Mina?”

“Not my business,” Mina said, not at all intimidated. Indeed, it was Dalamar who seemed to shrink as she spoke. “The business of the One God. All that happens in this world is the business of the One God. The One God sees into your heart and into your mind and your soul, Wizard. Though you may hide the truth from my mortal eyes, you cannot hide the truth from the One God. We will search for this kender, and if we find him we will do with him what needs to be done.”

She turned again and walked away calm, unruffled.

Dalamar remained standing at his desk, the hand that had nervously traced the oak leaf clenched tightly in a fist that he concealed beneath his robes.

Arriving at the door, Mina turned around. Her gaze passed over Dalamar, another insect in her display case, and fixed on Palin. In vain he told himself she could not see him. She caught him, held him.

“You believe the artifact was lost in the Citadel of Light. It was not. It came back to the kender. He has it in his possession. That is why he ran away.”

Palin doused the magical light. In the darkness, he could see nothing but those amber eyes, hear nothing but her voice. He remained there so long that Dalamar came searching for him. The elf’s footsteps were soft upon the stone stairs, and Palin did not hear him until he sensed movement. He looked up in alarm, found Dalamar standing in front of him.

“What are you still doing here? Are you all right? I thought for certain something had happened to you,” Dalamar said, irritated.

“Something did happen to me,” Palin returned. “She happened to me. She saw me. She looked straight at me. The last words she spoke were to me!”

“Impossible,” Dalamar said. “No eyes, not even amber eyes, can see through solid stone and magic.”

Palin shook his head, unconvinced. “She spoke to me.”

He expected a sarcastic rejoinder from Dalamar, but the dark elf was in no mood to banter, apparently, for he climbed the stairs leading back to the laboratory in silence.

“I know that girl, Dalamar,” Palin said.

Dalamar halted on the staircase, turned to stare. “How?”

“I haven’t seen her in a long time. Not since she ran away. She was an orphan. A fisherman found her washed upon the shore of Sancrist Isle. He brought her to the Citadel of Light, to the orphans’ home. She became a favorite of Goldmoon’s, almost a daughter to her. Three years ago she ran away. She was fourteen. Goldmoon was devastated. Mina had a good home. She was loved, pampered. She seemed happy, except I never knew a child to ask so many questions. None of us could understand why she ran off. And now . . . a Dark Knight. Goldmoon will be heartbroken.”

“That is very odd,” Dalamar said thoughtfully, and they resumed their climb. “So she was raised by Goldmoon. . . .”

“Do you suppose what she said about Tas and the device was true?” Palin asked, as they emerged from the hidden stairwell.

“Of course, it was true,” Dalamar replied. He walked over to the window, stared down into the cypress trees below. “That explains why the kender ran away. He feared we would find it.”

“We would have, if we had bothered to think through this rationally, instead of haring off in a panic. What ninnies we are! The device will always return to the one who owns it. Even in pieces, it will always return.”

Palin was frustrated. He felt the urgent need to do something, yet there was nothing he could do.

“You could search for him, Dalamar. Your spirit can walk this world, at least—”

“And do what?” Dalamar demanded. “If I did find him— which would be a miracle to surpass all miracles—I could do nothing except frighten him into burrowing deeper into whatever hole he’s dug.”

Dalamar had been staring out the window. He stiffened. His body went rigid.

“What is it?” Palin asked, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

Dalamar made no answer, except to point out the window.

Mina walked through the forest, trod upon the brown pine needles.

The dead gathered around her. The dead bowed to her.