“The clerics of Paladine taught that the blessed spirits departed this stage of life to travel on to the next,” Palin said. “That is what my father and mother believed. Yet—”
He glanced out the window, hopeful—and fearful—of seeing his father’s spirit among those unhappy ghosts.
“I will tell you what I think,” said Dalamar. “Mind you, this is only what I think, not what I know. If the dead were once allowed to depart, they are not being allowed to leave now. The night of the storm . . . Did you mark that terrible storm?”
“Yes,” said Palin. “It was no ordinary storm. It was fraught with magic.”
“There was a voice in the storm,” Dalamar said. “A voice that boomed in the thunder and cracked in the lightning. Almost I could hear it and understand it. Almost, but not quite. The voice sent out a call that night, and it was then the dead began to congregate in Nightlund in force. I watched them from my window, flowing from all directions, an immense river of souls. They have been summoned here for a purpose. As to what the purpose is—”
“Hail the Tower!” a voice called out from below the laboratory window. Simultaneously, a battering knock sounded on the Tower door. Astounded, Palin and Dalamar stared at one another.
“Who can that be?” Palin asked, but at the very moment he spoke the words, he saw that he was talking to himself.
Dalamar’s body stood before him, but that body might have been a wax dummy on exhibit at some traveling fair. The eyes were open, stared straight at Palin, but they did not see him. The body breathed, but that was all it did.
Before Palin could react, Dalamar’s eyes blinked. Life and light and intelligence returned.
“What is it?” Palin demanded.
“Two Knights of Neraka, as they are calling themselves these days. One is a minotaur, and the other is very strange.”
As he talked, Dalamar began half-leading, half-dragging Palin across the room. Reaching a far wall, he pressed on a stone in certain way. Part of the wall slid aside, revealing a narrow opening and a staircase.
“They must not find you here!” Dalamar said, shoving Palin inside. Palin had come to the same conclusion himself. “How did; they travel through the forest? How did they find the Tower—”
“No time! Down those stairs!” Dalamar hissed. “They lead to a chamber located in the library. There is an opening in the wall-You’ll be able to hear and to see. Go quickly! They will start to get suspicious.”
The pounding on the door and the shouting had increased.
“The wizard Dalamar!” the deep voice of the minotaur rumbled. “We have come a long distance to talk to you!”
Palin ducked inside. Dalamar pressed his hand against the panel, and the wall slid noiselessly in place, leaving Palin in complete darkness. He took a moment to calm himself after the alarm and the flurry, put a hand against the cold stone. He tried casting a light spell, uncertain of his success. To his relief, the spell worked perfectly. A flame like the flame of a candle burned in the palm of his hand.
Palin traversed the stairs quietly and swiftly, keeping one hand against the wall to steady his steps, the other lifted to light his way. The staircase spiraled down at such a steep angle that rounding the last turn in the stair, he came up against a blank wall with a suddenness that nearly caused him to bash his head against the stones.
He searched for the opening Dalamar had promised him but found nothing. The stones were set solidly in place. There was no chink or crack in the mortar. He might have feared that Dalamar had used this ruse to imprison him except that he could hear voices growing steadily louder. Palin reached out his hand, began to touch each of the stones. The first several were solid—cold, hard, rough. He moved higher. Reaching over his head, he tried to touch one of the stones and saw his hand pass right through.
“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.