“Believe it or not, Marshal Medan, you cheer me,” Gilthas said. He held out his hand. “I regret that we have been enemies.”
Medan took the king’s hand, rested his other hand over it. He knew the fear that was in Gilthas’s heart, and the Marshal honored him for not speaking it aloud, for not demeaning Laurana’s sacrifice.
“Please rest assured, Your Majesty, that the Queen Mother will be a sacred trust for me,” said Medan. “The most sacred of my life. I vow to you on my admiration and regard for her that I will be true to that trust to my last breath.”
“Thank you, Marshal,” Gilthas said softly. “Thank you.”
Their handshake was brief, and the king departed. Medan stood a moment in the doorway, watching Gilthas walk down the path that gleamed silver-gray in the moonlight. The future the Marshal faced was grim and bleak. He could count the remaining days of his life upon the fingers of one hand. Yet, he thought, he would not trade it for the future faced by that young man.
Yes, Gilthas would live, but his life would never be his own. If he had no care for his people, it would be different. But he did care, and the caring would kill him.
25
Alone Together
After a few more questions and some desultory discussion, the commanders departed. Medan and Laurana said nothing to each other, but between them words were no longer needed. She remained when the others had gone, and the two of them were alone together.
Alone together. Medan pondered that phrase. It was all two people could ever be to each other, he supposed. Alone. Together. For the dreams and secrets of our heart may be spoken, but words are poor handmaidens. Words can never fully say what we want them to say, for they fumble, stammer, and break the best porcelain. The best one can hope for is to find along the way someone to share the path, content to walk in silence, for the heart communes best when it does not try to speak.
The two sat in the garden beneath the moon that was strange and pale, as if it were the ghost of a moon.
“Beryl will come to Qualinost now,” said the Marshal with satisfaction. “She will not pass up the opportunity to see you— the Golden General who defeated Queen Takhisis—shrink in terror before her bloated majesty. We will give Beryl what she wants. We will put on an excellent show.”
“Indeed we will,” said Laurana. “I have some ideas on that score, Marshal Medan. I spoke to you of them earlier in the evening.” She cast a regretful look around the garden. “As beautiful as this place is, it seems a shame to leave it, yet what I have to show you should best be viewed under the cover of darkness. Will you accompany me back to Qualinost, Marshal?”
“I am yours to command, Madam,” he replied. “The road is long and might be dangerous. Who knows if Beryl has assassins lurking about? We should ride, if that will be suitable to you.”
They rode through the moonlit night. Their talk was of dragons.
“It is said of the Golden General that she was never daunted by dragonfear,” Medan said, regarding Laurana admiringly. She sat a horse superbly, although she claimed it had been years since she last rode one. Laurana laughed ruefully, shook her head. “Those who claimed that never knew me. The dragonfear was horrible. It never went away.”
“Then how did you function?” he asked. “For certainly you fought dragons, and you fought them well.”
“I was so afraid that the fear became a living part of me,” Laurana replied, speaking softly, looking not at him, but into the night. “I could feel its pulse and beat inside me as if I had grown a terrible kind of heart, a heart that did not quite fit in my chest, for it always seemed to cut off my breathing.”
She was silent a moment, communing with voices from the past. He no longer heard the voices from his past, but he remembered how they haunted a man or a woman, and he remained silent.
“I thought at first I could not continue on. I was too frightened, but then a wise man—his name was Elistan—taught me that I should not fear death. Death is inevitable, a part of life. It comes to all of us—humans, elves, even dragons. We defeat death by living, by doing something with our lives that will last beyond the grave. What I fear is fear, Marshal. I have never rid myself of that. I fight it constantly.”
They rode in silence, alone together. Then she said, “I want to thank you, Marshal, for paying me the compliment of not trying to dissuade me from this course of action.”
He bowed his head in acknowledgment but remained silent. She had more to say. She was thinking how to say it.
“I will use this opportunity to make reparation,” she continued, speaking now not to him alone but to those voices in the past. “I was their general, their leader. I left them. Abandoned them. The War of the Lance was at a critical stage. The soldiers looked to me for guidance, and I let them down.”
“You were faced with a choice between love and duty, and you chose love. A choice I, too, have made,” he said with a glance at the aspen trees through which they rode.
“No, Marshal,” she returned, “you choose duty. Duty to that which you love. There is a difference.”
“At the beginning, perhaps,” he said. “Not at the end.”
She looked over at him and smiled.
They were nearing Qualinost. The city was empty, appeared abandoned. Medan drew up his horse. “Where are we bound, Madam? We should not ride openly through the streets. We might be seen.”
“We are going to the Tower of the Sun,” she said. “The implements of my plan are to be found inside. You look dubious, Marshal. Trust me.”
She regarded him with a mischievous smile, as he assisted her to dismount. “I cannot promise to make the moon fall from the sky. But I can give you the gift of a star.”
The streets of Qualinost were empty, deserted. The two kept to the deep shadows, for they could feel the presence of watchers in the skies though they could not see them. Dragons would be difficult to see in the moonlight through the predawn mists that rose from the river, wound lovingly among the boles of the aspen trees.
The early morning was silent, eerily silent. The animals had gone to ground, the birds huddled hushed in the trees. The smell of burning, the smell of the dragon, the smell of death was in the air, and all creatures fled its coming.
“All those with sense,” Medan said to himself. “Then there are the rest of us.”
So deep was the silence that he thought if he listened closely he could hear the heartbeats of those hiding within the houses. Hearts that beat steadily, hearts that beat fast, hearts that trembled with fear. He could^imagine lovers and friends sitting in the darkness in the silence, hands clasped, their touch conveying the words they could not speak and must be inadequate anyway.
They reached the Tower of the Sun just as the moon was dropping down from the sky. Located on the far eastern border of Qualinost, the tower graced the tallest hill. It provided a spectacular view of the city. The tower was made of burnished gold that shone as brilliantly as another sun when morning’s first rays struck it, setting it aflame with warmth and life and the joy of a new day. So bright was the light that it dazzled the eyes. Approaching the tower in the daytime, Medan had often been forced to look away, lest it blind him.
At night, the tower reflected the stars, so that it was difficult to distinguish the tower—a myriad stars floating on its surface— from the night sky that was its backdrop.
They entered the tower through an entry hall whose doors were never locked and walked from there into the main chamber. Laurana had brought with her a small lantern to light their way. Torchlight would be too bright, too noticeable to anyone outside.