“We had better hurry, First Master,” Gerard warned. He would have been quite happy to leave both gnome and kender behind. “The jailer’s relief arrives two hours past midnight—”
“He will not come this night,” Goldmoon said. “He will sleep past his time. But you are right. We must make haste, for I am called. Tas, come out of that cell this minute.”
“Don’t make me, Goldmoon!” Tasslehoff begged in pitiful tones.
“Don’t make me go back to the Tower. You don’t know what they want to do to me. Dalamar and Palin mean to murder me.”
“Don’t be silly. Palin would never—” Goldmoon paused. Her severe expression softened. “Ah, I understand. I had forgotten. The Device of Time Journeying.”
Tasslehoff nodded.
“I thought it was broken,” he said. “Palin threw parts of it at the draconians, and it exploded, and I figured that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about anymore.”
He gave a mournful sigh. “Then I reached into my pocket, and there it was. Still in pieces, but all the pieces were back in my pocket. I’ve thrown them away, time and again. I even tried giving them away, but they keep coming back to me. Even broken, they keep coming back.” Tas looked at Goldmoon pleadingly. “If I go back to the Tower, they’ll find it, and they’ll fix it, and I’ll have to be stepped on by a giant, and I’ll die. I don’t want to die, Goldmoon! I don’t want to! Please don’t make me.”
Gerard almost suggested to Goldmoon that he hit the kender ‘ on the jaw and haul him out bodily, but on second thought, he kept silent. The kender looked so completely and utterly miserable that Gerard found himself feeling sorry for him. Goldmoon entered the cell and sat next to the kender.
“Tas,” Goldmoon said gently, reaching out her hand and stroking back a lock of hair that had escaped his topknot and was straggling over his face, “I can’t promise you that this will have a good and happy ending. Right now, to me it seems that it must end very badly. I have been following a river of souls, Tas. They gather at Nightlund. They do not go there of their own free will. They are prisoners, Tas. They are under some sort of terrible constraint. Caramon is with them, and Tika, Riverwind, and my daughter; perhaps all those we love. I want to find out why. I want to find out what is happening. You tell me that Dalamar is in Nightlund. I must see him, Tas. I must speak to him. Perhaps he is the cause. . . .”
Tasslehoff shook his head. “I don’t think so. Dalamar’s a prisoner, too, at least that’s what he told Palin.” The kender hung his head and plucked nervously at his shirt front. “There’s something else, Goldmoon. Something I haven’t told anyone. Something that happened to me in Nightlund.”
“What is it, Tas?” Goldmoon looked concerned.
The kender had lost his jaunty gaiety. He was drooping and wan and shivering—shivering with fright. Gerard was amazed. He had often felt that a really good scare would be beneficial for a kender, would teach the rattle-brained little imps that life was not picnics by the tomb and taunting sheriffs and swiping gewgaws. Life was earnest and hard, and it was meant to be taken seriously. Now, seeing Tas dejected and fearful, Gerard looked away. He didn’t know why, but he had the feeling that he had lost something, that he and the world had both lost something.
“Goldmoon,” said Tas in an awful whisper, “I saw myself in that wood.”
“What do you mean, Tas?” she asked gently.
“I saw my own ghost!” Tas said, and he shuddered. “It wasn’t at all exciting. Not like I thought seeing one’s own ghost would be. I was lost and alone, and I was searching for someone or something. It may sound funny, I know, but I always thought that after I died, I’d meet up with Flint somewhere. Maybe we’d go off adventuring together, or maybe we’d just rest, and I’d tell him stories. But I wasn’t adventuring. I was just alone . . . and lost. . . and unhappy.”
He looked up at her, and Gerard was startled to see the track of a single tear trickle down through the grime on the kender’s cheek.
“I don’t want to be dead like that, Goldmoon. That’s why I can’t go back.”
“Don’t you see, Tas?” Goldmoon said. “That’s why you have to go back. I can’t explain it, but I am certain that what you and I have both seen is wrong. Life on this world is meant to be a way-stop on a longer journey. Our souls are supposed to move on to the next plane, to continue learning and growing. Perhaps we may linger, wait to join loved ones, as my dear Riverwind waits for me and somewhere, perhaps, Flint waits for you. But none of us can leave, apparently. You and I together must try to free these prisoner souls who are locked in the cell of the world as surely as you were locked in this cell. The only way we can do that is to go back to Nightlund. The heart of the mystery lies there.”
She held out her hand to Tasslehoff. “Will you come?”
“You won’t let them send me back?” he bargained, hesitating.
“I promise that the decision to go back or not will be yours,” she said.
“I won’t let them send you back against your will.”
“Very well,” Tas said, standing up and dusting himself off and glancing about to see that he had all his pouches. “I’ll take you to the Tower, Goldmoon. It just so happens that I have an extremely reliable body compass. . . .”
At this juncture, Conundrum, who had finished scraping up the melted iron, began to discourse on such things as compasses and binnacles and lodestones and his great-great-uncle’s theory on why north could be found in the north and not in the south, a theory that had proved to be quite controversial and was still being argued to this day.
Goldmoon paid no attention to the gnome’s expostulations or Tasslehoff’s desultory replies. She was imbued with a fixed purpose, and she went forward to achieve it. Unafraid, calm, and composed, she led them up the stairs, past the slumbering warden slumped over his desk, and out of the prison.
They hastened through Solanthus, a city of sleep and silence and halflight, for the sky was pearl gray with the coming of dawn. The gnome wound down like a spent spring. Tasslehoff was uncharacteristically quiet. Their footfalls made no sound. They might have been ghosts themselves as they roamed the empty streets. They saw no one, and no one saw them. They encountered no patrols. They met no farmer coming to market, no carousers stumbling home from the taverns. No dog barked, no baby cried. Gerard had a strange impression of Goldmoon passing over the city streets, her cloak billowing out behind her, blanketing the city, closing eyes that were starting to open, lulling those who were waking back into sweet slumber.
They left Solanthus by the front gate, where no one was awake to stop them.
28
Overslept
Lady Odila woke to find the sun blazing in her eyes. She sat straight up in bed, irritated and annoyed. She was not generally a late sleeper; her usual time to rise being shortly before the gray light of dawn filtered through her window. She hated sleeping late. She was dull and listless, and her head ached. She felt as if she had spent the night carousing. True, after the Knights’ Council, she had gone to the Dog and Duck, a tavern favored by members of the Knighthood, but not to drink. She had done what she had promised the First Master she would do: She had asked around to see if anyone knew or had ever met Gerard uth Mondar. None of the Knights had, but one knew of someone who came from that part of Ansalon or thereabouts and another thought perhaps his wife’s seamstress had a brother who had been a sailor and might have worked for Gerard’s father. Not very satisfactory. Odila had lifted a mug of hard cider with her comrades and then gone to her bed.
She muttered imprecations to herself as she dressed, tugging on the padded leather tunic, linen shirt, and woolen socks she wore beneath her armor. She had intended to rise early to lead a patrol in search of the blue dragon, hoping to catch the beast while it was out hunting in the cool mists of early morning before it disappeared into its lair to sleep through the sunny part of the day. So much for that idea. Still, they might catch the beast napping.