The chill sunlight illuminated the pyre, illuminated Mina’s face, shimmered in the golden cloth so that it seemed to burn with its own fire.
“Are we expecting anyone else?” Targonne demanded sarcastically.
“Dwarves, perhaps? A contingent of kender? If not, then get this over with, Dogah!”
“Certainly, my lord. First, you said you intended to speak her eulogy. As you said, my lord, the troops would appreciate hearing from you.”
Targonne glowered. He was growing increasingly nervous, and he could not explain why. Perhaps it was the strange way these three officers stared at him, with hatred in their eyes. Not that this was particularly unusual. There were many people on Ansalon who had good reason to hate and fear the Lord of the Night. What made Targonne uneasy was the fact that he could not enter their minds to discover what they were thinking, what they were plotting.
Targonne felt suddenly threatened, and he could not understand why that should make him nervous. He was surrounded by his own bodyguard, Knights who had good reason to make certain that he remained alive. He had seven dragons at his command, dragons who would make short work of humans and elves alike, if the Lord of the Night ordered. Still he could not argue away the feeling of imminent peril.
The feeling made him irritated, annoyed, and sorry he had ever come. This hadn’t turned out as he had planned. He had come to flaunt this victory as his own, to bask in the renewed adulation of the troops and their officers. Instead, he found himself overshadowed by a dead girl. Clearing his throat, Targonne straightened. In a voice that was cold and flat, he said, “She did her duty.”
The officers and men regarded him expectantly, waited for him to go on.
“That is her eulogy,” Targonne said coldly. “A fitting eulogy for any soldier. Dogah, give the command to light the pyre.”
Dogah said no word, but cast a helpless look at the other two officers. Captain Samuval was bleak, defeated. Galdar gazed with his soul in his eyes to the top of the pyre, where Mina lay still, unmoving. Or did she move? Galdar saw a quiver in the cloth of gold that covered her. He saw color return to her wan cheek, and his heart leaped with hope. He stared enthralled, waiting for her to rise. She did not, and he came to the bitter realization that the stirring of the cloth was caused by the gentle breeze and the mockery of warmth was the pale light of the sun. Lifting his voice in a ragged howl of grief and rage, Galdar snatched a torch from the hand of one of Mina’s Knights and hurled it with all the might of his strong right arm onto the top of Mina’s funeral pyre. The flaming torch landed at Mina’s feet, set the cloth that covered her ablaze.
Raising their own voices in hollow cries, the Knights under Mina’s command flung their own torches onto the pyre. The oil-soaked wood burst into flame. The fires spread rapidly, flames reaching out like eager hands to join together and encircle the pyre. Galdar kept watch. He stared at the top to keep sight of her, blinking painfully as smoke stung his eyes and cinders landed in his fur. At last the heat was so intense that he was forced to retreat, but he did not do so until he lost sight of Mina’s dear body in the thick smoke coiling around her.
Lord Targonne, coughing and flapping his hands at the smoke, backed away immediately. He waited long enough to make certain that the fire was blazing merrily, then turned to Dogah.
“Well,” said his lordship, “I’ll be off—”
A shadow blotted out the sun. Bright day darkened to night in the pause between one heartbeat and the next. Thinking it might be an eclipse—
albeit a strange and sudden one—Galdar lifted amazed eyes, still stinging from the smoke, to the heavens.
A shadow blotted out the sun, but it was not the round shadow of the single moon. Silhouetted against tendrils of fire was a sinuous body, a curved tail, a dragon’s head. Seen against the sun, the dragon appeared as black as time’s ending. When it spread its massive wings, the sun vanished completely, only to reappear as a burst of flame in the dragon’s eye. Darkness deep and impenetrable fell upon Silvanost and, in that instant, the flames that consumed the pyre were doused by a breath that was neither heard nor felt.
Galdar gave a roar of triumph. Samuval dropped to his knees, his hands covering his face. Dogah gazed at the dragon with wonder. Mina’s Knights stared upward in awe.
The darkness grew deeper, until Targonne could barely see those standing next to him.
“Get me out of here! Quick!” he ordered tersely.
No one obeyed his commands. His Knight escorts stared at the strange, immense dragon that had blotted out the sun, and they seemed, one and all, to have been changed to stone by the sight.
Now thoroughly frightened, feeling the darkness closing in around him, Targonne kicked at his Knights and swore at them. Fear shook him and shredded him and turned his bowels to water. One moment he threatened his officers he would see them flayed alive, the next he was promising them a fortune in steel to save him.
The darkness grew yet deeper. White lightning flared, splitting the unnatural night. Thunder crashed, shaking the ground. Targonne started to yell for his dragons to come rescue him.
The yell died in this throat.
The white lightning illuminated a figure standing atop the pyre, a figure wearing shining black armor and shrouded in a cloth of gold that was charred and burnt. The blue dragons flew above her, the lightning crackled around her. Swooping low over the ash-laden pyre, each blue dragon bowed its head to her.
“Mina!” The blue dragons sounded the paean. “Mina!”
“Mina!” Galdar sobbed and fell to his knees.
“Mina!” whispered General Dogah in relief.
“Mina!” Captain Samuval shouted in vindication.
Behind them, in the darkness, the elves took the word and made of it a song. “Mina . . . Mina . . .” The soldiers joined in, chanting, “Mina . . . Mina!”
The darkness lifted. The sun shone, and it was warm and dazzling to the eye. The strange dragon descended through the ethers. Such was the terror and the awe of its coming that few in the crowd could lift their shuddering gazes to look at it. Those who managed, and Galdar was one of them, saw a dragon such as they had never before beheld on Krynn. They were not able to look on it long, for the sight made their eyes water and burn, as if they stared into the sun.
The dragon was white, but not the white of those dragons who live in the lands of perpetual snow and frost. This dragon was the white of the flame of the forger’s hottest fire. The white that is in direct opposition to black. The white that is not the absence of color but the blending together of all colors of the spectrum.
As the strange looking dragon drifted lower to the ground, its wings did not stir the air, nor did the ground shake from the impact when it landed. The blue dragons, all seven of them, lowered their heads and spread their wings in homage.
“Death!” they cried together in a single voice, fell and terrible. “The dead return!”
Now they could see that the dragon was not a living dragon. It was a ghostly dragon, a dragon formed of the souls of the chromatic dragons who had died during the Age of Mortals, killed by their own kind. The death dragon lifted its front clawed foot and, turning it upward, placed that foot upon the top of the pyre. Mina stepped upon the upturned claw. The death dragon lowered her reverently to the charred, blackened, and ash-covered ground.
“Mina! Mina!” The soldiers were stamping their feet, clashing sword on shield, yelling until they were hoarse, and still the chant rang out. The elven voices had made of her name a madrigal whose beauty enchanted even the most obdurate and hardened human heart.