“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 ambereyed 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.