“But the moon!” Tas argued. “I remember when I came to Caramon’s first funeral Solinari shown so very brightly that it was like day only it was night. Palin said this was Solinari’s way of honoring his father and—”
Gerard flipped over again and covered his head.
Tas continued talking until he heard the Knight start to snore.
Tas gave the Knight an experimental poke. in the shoulder, to no avail. The kender thought that he might try prying open one of Gerard’s eyelids to see if he was really asleep or just shamming, a trick which had never been known to fail with Flint, although it usually ended with the irate dwarf chasing the kender around the room with the poker.
Tas had other things to think about, however, and so he left the Knight alone and returned to his own blanket. Lying down, he put his hands beneath his head and gazed at the strange moon, which gazed back at him without the slightest hint of recognition.
This gave Tas an idea. Abandoning the moon, he shifted his gaze to the stars, searched for his favorite constellations.
They were gone, as well. The stars he looked at now were cold and distant and unfamiliar. The only understanding star in the night sky was a single red star burning brightly not far from the strange moon. The star had a warm and comforting glow about it, which made up for the empty cold feeling in the pit of Tas’s stomach, a feeling he had once thought, when he was a young kender, meant he needed something to eat but that he now knew, after years of adventuring, was his inside’s way of telling him that something was wrong. In fact, he’d felt pretty much this same way just about the time the giant’s foot had been poised over his head.
Tas kept his gaze on the red star, and after awhile the cold, empty feeling didn’t hurt so much anymore. Just when he was feeling more comfortable and had put the thoughts of the strange moon and the unfriendly stars and the looming giant out of his mind, and just when he was starting to enjoy the night, sleep crept up and nabbed him again.
The kender wanted to discuss the moon the next day, and discuss it he did, but only with himself. Sir Gerard never responded to any of Tasslehoff’s innumerable questions, never turned around, just rode along at a slow pace, the reins of Tas’s pony in his hands.
The Knight rode in silence, though he was watchful and alert, constantly scanning the horizon. The entire world seemed to be riding in silence today, as well, once Tasslehoff quit talking, which he did after a couple of hours. It wasn’t so much that he was bored with talking to himself, it was the answering himself that grew old fast. They met no one on the road, and now even the sounds of other living creatures came to an end. No bird sang. No squirrel scampered across the path. No deer walked among the shadows or ran from them, white tail flashing an alarm.
“Where are the animals?” Tas asked Gerard.
“They are in hiding,” the Knight answered, the first words he’d spoken all morning. “They are afraid.”
The air was hushed and still, as if the world held its breath, fearful of being heard. Not even the trees rustled and Tas had the feeling that if they had been able to make the choice, they would have dragged their roots out of the ground and run away.
“What are they afraid of?” Tasslehoff asked with interest, looking around in excitement, hoping for a haunted castle or a crumbling manor or, at the very least, a spooky cave.
“They fear the great green dragon. Beryl. We are in the West Plains now. We have crossed over into her realm.”
“You keep talking about this green dragon. I’ve never heard of her. The only green dragon I knew was named Cyan Bloodbane. Who is Beryl? Where did she come from?”
“Who knows?” Gerard said impatiently. “From across the sea, I suppose, along with the great red dragon Malystryx and others of their foul kind.”
“Well, if she isn’t from around these parts, why doesn’t some hero just go stick a lance into her?” Tas asked cheerfully.
Gerard halted his horse. He tugged on the reins of Tasslehoff’s pony, who had been trudging behind, her head down, every bit as bored as the kender. She came plodding up level with the black, shaking her mane and eyeing a patch of grass hopefully.
“Keep your voice down!” Gerard said in a low voice. He looked as grim and stern as the kender had ever seen him.
“Beryl’s spies are everywhere, though we do not see them. Nothing moves in her realm but she is aware of it. Nothing moves here without her permission. We crossed into her realm an hour ago,” he added. “I will be very surprised if someone doesn’t come to take a look at us—Ah, there. What did I tell you?”
He had shifted in his saddle, to gaze intently to the east. A large speck of black in the sky was growing steadily larger and larger and larger with every passing moment. As Tas watched, he saw the speck develop wings and a long tail, saw a massive body—a massive green body.
Tasslehoff had seen dragons before, he’d ridden dragons before, he’d fought dragons before. But he had never seen or hoped to see a dragon this immense. Her tail seemed as long as the road they traveled; her teeth, set in slavering jaws, could have served as the high, crenellated walls of a formidable fortress. Her wicked red eyes burned with a hotter fire than the sun and seemed to illuminate all they looked upon with a glaring light.
“As you have any regard for your life or mine, kender,”
Gerard said in a fierce whisper, “do or say nothing!”
The dragon flew directly over them, her head swiveling to study them from all angles. The dragonfear slid over them like the dragon’s shadow, blotting out the sunshine, blotting out reason and hope and sanity. The pony shook and whimpered.
The black whinnied in terror and kicked and plunged. Gerard clung to the bucking horse’s back, unable to calm the animal, prey to the same fear himself. Tasslehoff stared upward in open-mouthed astonishment. He felt a most unpleasant sensation come over him, a stomach-shriveling, spine-watering, knee-buckling, hand-sweating sort of feeling. As feelings went, he didn’t much like it. For making a person miserable, it ranked right up there with a bad, sniffly cold in the head.
Beryl circled them twice and, seeing nothing more interesting than one of her own Knight allies with a kender prisoner in tow, she left them alone, flying lazily and unhurriedly back to her lair, her sharp eyes taking note of everything that moved upon her ground.
Gerard slid off his horse. He stood next to the shivering animal, leaned his head against its heaving flanks. He was exceedingly pale and sweating, a tremor shook his body. He opened and shut his mouth several times and at one point looked as if he might be sick, but he recovered himself. At length his breathing evened out.
“I have shamed myself,” he said. “I did not know I could experience fear like that.”
“I wasn’t afraid,” Tas announced in voice that seemed to have developed the same shakiness as his body. “I wasn’t afraid one bit.”
“If you had any sense, you would have been,” Gerard said dourly.
“It’s just that while I’ve seen some hideous dragons in my time I’ve never seen one quite that. . .”
Tasslehoff’s words shriveled under Gerard’s baleful stare.
“That... imposing,” the kender said loudly, just in case any of the dragon’s spies were listening. “Imposing,” he whispered to Gerard. “That’s a sort of compliment, isn’t it?”
The Knight did not reply. Having calmed himself and his horse, he retrieved the reins to Tasslehoff’s pony and, holding them in his hand, remounted the black. He did not set off immediately, but continued to sit some time in the middle of the road, gazing out to the west.