He thrust aside the flap and entered the command tent.
“What is it, Galdar?” she asked.
He was never certain if she was awake before he entered or if she woke on hearing him enter. Either way, she was always alert, responsive.
“The prisoner has escaped, Mina. The female Solamnic Knight. We can’t find her captor, either. We believe they were in this together.”
She slept in her clothes, woolen hose, and tunic. Her armor and her morning star stood at the foot of the bed. He could see her face, pale white, colder, more awful than the gibbous moon.
She evinced no surprise.
“Did you know of this, Mina? Did someone else come to tell you?” Galdar frowned. “I gave orders you were not to be disturbed.”
“Yet now you disturb me, Galdar.” Mina smiled.
“Only because all our efforts to find the Solamnic and this traitor Knight have failed.”
“They are back in Solanthus now,” Mina replied. Her eyes had no color in the darkness. He felt more comfortable with her in the darkness. He could not see himself in the amber. “They have been greeted as heroes. Both of them.”
“How can you take this so calmly, Mina?” Galdar demanded. “They have been in our camp. They have tallied our numbers. They know how few of us there are.”
“They can see that from the walls, Galdar.”
“Not clearly,” he argued. He had been opposed to this wild scheme from the beginning. “We have done what we could to deceive them. Put up empty tents, kept the men milling about so that they could not be easily counted. Our efforts have gone for naught.”
Mina propped herself up on one elbow. “You remember that you wanted to poison their water supply, Galdar?”
“Yes,” he said dourly.
“I counseled against it, for then the city would be useless to us.” He snorted. The city was useless to them right now and would remain so, for all he could see.
“You have no faith, Galdar,” Mina said sadly.
Galdar sighed. His hand stole to his right arm, rubbed it involuntarily. It always seemed to ache now, as with rheumatism.
“I try, Mina. I truly do. I thought I had settled my doubts back in Silvanost, but now . . . I do not like our new allies, Mina,” he stated abruptly. “And I am not alone.”
“I understand,” Mina said. “That is why I have been patient with you and with the others. Your eyes are clouded by fear, but the time will come when you will see clearly. Your eyes will be the only eyes that see clearly.”
She smiled at her own jest.
Galdar did not smile. This was no laughing matter, as far as he was concerned.
She looked at him and very slightly shook her head. “As to the Solamnic, I have sent her into the city carrying a poison more destructive than the nightshade you wanted to dump in the city well.”
He waited, suppressing a yawn. He had no idea what she was talking about. All he could think of was that it had all been for nothing. Hours of lost sleep sending out search parties, ransacking the camp, all for nothing.
“I have sent them the knowledge that there is a god,” Mina continued, “and that the One God fights on our side.”
Their escape had been ridiculously easy. So easy, Gerard would have said that it had been facilitated, if he could have thought of one single reason why the enemy would want them to return to Solanthus in possession of damning information about the enemy army camped outside their walls.
The only really tense moments came at Solanthus’s outer gate, when there was some question as to whether or not the sentries were going to shoot them full of arrows. Gerard blessed Odila’s strident voice and mocking tone, for she was immediately recognized and, on her word, they were both allowed admittance.
After that came hours of questioning from the officers of the Knighthood. The sun was rising now, and they were still at it. Gerard had not had much sleep the night before. The day’s strain and tension and the night’s adventure had left him completely worn out. He’d told them everything he had seen or heard twice and was propping his eyelids open with his fingers when Odila’s next words caused a minor explosion that jolted him into full wakefulness.
“I saw the mind of God,” she said.
Gerard groaned and slumped back in his chair. He’d tried to warn her to keep quiet on that score, but, as usual, she had not listened to him. He’d been hoping for his bed, even if it was back in his cell, whose cool, quiet, and kenderless darkness was now strongly appealing. Now they were going to be here the rest of the day.
“What do you mean, exactly, Lady Odila?” Lord Tasgall asked carefully. He was thirty years Gerard’s senior. His hair was iron gray and worn long, and he had the traditional mustaches of the Solamnic Knight. Unlike some Rose Knights Gerard had met, Lord Tasgall was not, as someone once disparagingly phrased it, a “solemnic” Knight. Although his face was suitably grave on serious occasion, laugh lines around the mouth and eyes testified that he had a sense of humor. Obviously respected by those under his command, Lord Tasgall appeared to be a sensible, wise leader of men.
“The girl called Mina touched my hand, and I saw . . . eternity. There’s no other way to describe it.” Odila spoke in low tones, halting, obviously uncomfortable. “I saw a mind. A mind that could encompass the night sky and make it seem small and confining. A mind that could count the stars and know their exact number. A mind that is as small as a grain of sand and as large as the ocean. I saw the mind, and at first I knew joy, because I was not alone in the universe, and then I knew fear, terrible fear, because I was rebellious and disobedient and the mind was displeased. Unless I submitted, the mind would become angrier still. I . . . I could not understand. I did not understand. I still don’t understand.”
Odila looked helplessly at the Lord Knights as if expecting answers.
“What you saw must have been a trick, an illusion,” Lord Ulrich replied soothingly. He was a Sword Knight, only a few years older than Gerard. Lord Ulrich was on the pudgy side, with a choleric face that indicated a love of spirits, perhaps more than was entirely good for him. He had a bright eye and a red nose and a broad smile. “We all know that the dark Mystics cause members of the Knighthood to experience false visions. Isn’t that true, Starmaster Mikelis?”
The Starmaster nodded, agreed almost absently. The Mystic looked worn and haggard. He had spent the night searching for Goldmoon and had been amazed and bewildered when Gerard told him that she had left on the back of a blue dragon, flying to Nightlund in search of the wizard Dalamar.
“Alas,” the Starmaster had said sadly. “She is mad. Quite mad. The miracle of her returned youth has overthrown her mentally. A lesson to us, I suppose, to be content with what we are.”
Gerard would have been inclined to think so himself, except that her actions last night had been those of a sane person who is in command of the situation. He made no comment, kept his thoughts to himself. He had come to feel a great admiration and reverence for Goldmoon, although he had known her only one night. He wanted to keep the memory of their time together secret, sacred. Gerard closed his eyes.
The next moment, Odila elbowed him. Gerard jerked awake, sat up straight, blinking his eyes and wondering uneasily if anyone had noticed him napping.
“I tend to agree with Lord Ulrich,” Lord Tasgall was saying. “What you saw, Lady Odila—or thought you saw—was not a miracle, but a trick of a dark mystic.”
Odila was shaking her head, but she held her tongue, for which miracle Gerard was grateful.
“I realize we could debate the subject for days or even weeks and never reach a satisfactory conclusion,” Lord Tasgall added. “However, we have much more serious matters that require our immediate attention. I also realize that you are both probably very tired after your ordeal.” He smiled at Gerard, who flushed deeply and squirmed uncomfortably in his chair.