“Yet you admit yourself you are not certain that Tasslehoff, either dead or alive, has anything to do with the world’s problems.”
“You don’t understand, First Master—” Palin began wearily.
“You are right. I don’t understand. And therefore what would you have me say to him?” she asked sharply. “How can I offer counsel when I do not comprehend what is happening?”
She shook her head. “The decision is his alone to make. I will not interfere.”
Goldmoon rested her hand on her smooth cheek. She could feel her fingers against her skin, but her skin could not sense the touch of her fingers. She might have been placing her fingers on a waxen image.
The banquet ended, finally. Goldmoon rose to her feet and the others rose in respect. One of the acolytes, an exuberant youngster, gave a cheer. Others picked it up. Soon they were applauding and yelling lustily.
The cheering frightened Goldmoon. The noise will draw attention to us, was her first panicked thought. She wondered at herself a moment later. She’d had the strangest feeling that they were trapped in a house and that something evil was searching for them. The feeling passed, but the cheering continued to jar on her nerves. She lifted her hands to halt the shouting.
“I thank you, my friends. My dear friends,” Goldmoon said, moistening lips that were stiff and dry. “I. . . I ask you to keep me in your hearts, to surround me with your good thoughts. I feel I need them.”
The people glanced at each other, troubled. This wasn’t what any of them had expected to hear her say. They wanted to hear her tell them about the wondrous miracle that had been wrought upon her. How she would perform the same miracles for them.
Goldmoon made a gesture of dismissal. People filed out, returning to their work or their studies, glancing back at her often and talking in low voices.
“I beg your pardon for disturbing you, First Master,” Lady Camilla said, approaching. Her eyes were cast down. She was trying very hard not to look at Goldmoon’s face. “The patients in the hospital have missed you. I was wondering, if you are not too tired, if you would come. . .”
“Yes, assuredly,” said Goldmoon readily, glad to have something to do. She would forget herself in her work. She was not in the least fatigued. The strange body was not, that is.
“Palin, would you care to accompany us?” she asked.
“What for? Your healers can do nothing for me,” he returned irritably. “I know. They have tried.”
“You speak to the First Master, sir,” Lady Camilla said in rebuke.
“I am sorry, First Master,” Palin said with a slight bow. “Please forgive my rudeness. I am very tired. I have not slept in a long time. I must find the kender, then I plan to go straight to my bed. I bid you a good night.”
He bowed and turned and walked away.
“Palin!” Goldmoon called after him, but either he didn’t hear or he was ignoring her.
Goldmoon accompanied Lady Camilla to the hospital—a separate building located on the Citadel grounds. The night was cool, unusually cool for this time of year. Goldmoon gazed up at the stars, at the pale moon to which she had never grown truly accustomed but always saw with a sense of shock and unease.
This night, she looked at the stars, but they seemed small and distant. For the first time, she looked beyond them, to the vast and empty darkness that surrounded them.
“As it surrounds us,” she said, chilled.
“I beg your pardon, First Master,” Lady Camilla said. “Were you speaking to me?”
The two women had been antagonists at one point in their lives. When Goldmoon made the decision to build the Citadel of Light on Schallsea, Lady Camilla had been opposed. The Solamnic was loyal to the old gods, the departed gods. She was suspicious and .distrustful of this new “power of the heart.” Then she had come to witness the tireless efforts of the Citadel’s mystics to do good in the world, to bring light to the darkness. She had come to love and to admire Goldmoon. She would do anything for the First Master, Lady Camilla was wont to say, and she had proved that statement, spending an inordinate amount of time and money on a fruitless search for a lost child, a child who had been dear to Goldmoon, but who had gone missing three years earlier, a child whose name no one mentioned, to avoid causing the First Master grief.
Goldmoon often thought of the child, especially whenever she walked along the seashore.
“It wasn’t important,” Goldmoon said, adding, “You must forgive me, Lady Camilla. I am poor company, I know.”
“Not at all, First Master,” said Lady Camilla. “You have much on your mind.”
The two continued their walk to the hospital in silence.
The hospital, located in one of the crystal domes that were the central structures of the Citadel of Light, consisted of a large room filled with beds that stood in straight rows up one side and down the other. Sweet herbs perfumed the air and sweet music added its own healing properties. The healers worked among the sick and injured, using the power of the heart to heal them, a power Goldmoon had discovered and first used to heal the dying dwarf, Jasper Fireforge.
She had performed many miracles since that time, or so people claimed. She had healed those thought to be past hope.
She had mended broken bodies with the touch of her hands. She had restored life to paralyzed limbs, brought sight to the blind.
Her miracles of healing were as wonderful as those she had performed as a cleric of Mishakal. She was glad and grateful to be able to ease the suffering of others. But the healing had not brought her the same joy she had experienced when the blessing of the healing art came to her as a gift from the god, when she and Mishakal worked in partnership.
A year or so ago, her healing powers had begun to wane. At first, she blamed the loss on her advancing age. But she was not the only one of her healers to experience the diminution of healing power.
“It is as if someone has hung a gauze curtain between me and my patient,” one young healer had said in frustration. “I try to draw the curtain aside to reach the patient, but there is another and another. I don’t feel as if I can come close to my patients anymore.”
Reports had begun coming in from Citadel masters throughout Ansalon, all bearing witness to the same dread phenomenon.
Some had blamed it on the dragons. Some had blamed it on the Knights of Neraka. Then they had heard rumors that the Knights’ dark mystics were losing their powers, as well.
Goldmoon asked her counselor, Mirror, the silver dragon who was the Citadel’s guardian, if he thought that Malys was responsible.
“No, First Master, I do not,” Mirror replied. He was in his human form then, a handsome youth with silver hair. She saw sorrow and trouble in his eyes, eyes that held the wisdom of centuries in them. “I have felt my own magical powers start to wane. It is rumored among dragonkind that our enemies are also feeling their powers weaken.”
“Then there is some good in this,” Goldmoon said.
Mirror remained grave. “I fear not, First Master. The tyrant who feels power slipping away does not let loose. He tightens his grasp.”
Goldmoon paused on the threshold of the hospital. The beds were filled with patients, some sleeping, some talking quietly, some reading. The atmosphere was restful, peaceful. Bereft of much of their mystical power, the healers had gone back to the herbal remedies once practiced by healers in the days following the Cataclysm. The smells of sage and rosemary, chamomille and mint spiced the air. Soft music played. Goldmoon felt the soothing influence of the restful solitude, and her heart was eased.
Here, perhaps, the healer would herself be healed.
Catching sight of Goldmoon, one of the master healers came forward immediately to welcome her. The welcome was, of necessity, low-key, lest the patients be disturbed by undue commotion or excitement. The healer said how pleased she was that the First Master was returned to them and stared with all her might at Goldmoon’s altered face.