The man was younger than the captain had expected. Long hair that shimmered with a silver sheen in the morning sunshine fell over his shoulders. His face was smooth and youthful. Once it might have been handsome. He was dressed in robes that were pearl gray in color, travel-worn and frayed at the hem, but clean. All this, Samuval noted later. For now, all he could do was stare at the hideous scar that disfigured the man’s face.
The scar looked to be a burn mark. The hair on the right side of the man’s head had been singed off. The scar slanted across the man’s face from the right side of his head to below the left side of his chin. He wore a rag tied around his right eye socket. Samuval wondered with morbid curiosity if the eye was still there or if it was destroyed, melted in the terrible heat that had seared the flesh and burned away the hair to the roots. The left eye remained, but it was useless seemingly, for it held no light. The horrible wound was fresh, not a month old. The man must be in pain from the injury, but if so he did not reveal it. He stood waiting for them silently and, though he could not see her, his face turned toward Mina. He must have picked out the sound of her lighter steps from Samuval’s heavier footfalls.
Mina paused, just a moment, and Samuval saw her stiffen, as if she were taken by surprise. Then, shrugging, she continued to walk toward the beggar. Samuval came behind, his hand on his sword hilt. Despite the fact that the man was blind, Samuval sensed him to be a threat. As the scout had said, there was something strange about this blind beggar.
“You know me, then,” the man said, his sightless eye gazing over her head.
“Yes, I know you,” she replied.
Samuval found it hard to look at the beggar’s horrid wounds.
Yellow puss oozed from beneath the rag. The skin around the burn was fiery red, swollen and inflamed. The captain could smell the stink of putrefying flesh.
“When did this happen to you?” Mina asked.
“The night of the storm,” he replied.
She nodded gravely, as if she had expected that answer. “Why did you venture out into the storm?”
“I heard a voice,” he replied. “I wanted to investigate.”
“The voice of the One God,” Mina said.
The beggar shook his head, disbelieving. “I could hear the voice over the roaring of the wind and the crashing thunder, but I could not hear the words it spoke. I traveled far through rain and the hail in search of the voice, and I was near the source, I think. I was almost in Neraka when a lightning bolt struck me. I remember nothing after that.”
“You take this human form,” she said abruptly. “Why?”
“Can you blame me, Mina?” he asked, his tone rueful. “I am forced to walk through the land of my enemies.” He gestured with his staff. “This is the only way I am able to travel now—on two feet, with my stick to guide me.”
“Mina”—Samuval spoke to her, but he kept his eyes on the blind man—“we have many more miles to march this day. Say the word and I will rid both the path and the world of this fellow.”
“Easy, Captain,” Mina said quietly, resting her hand on his arm. “This is an old acquaintance. I will be only a moment longer. How did you find me?” she asked the blind man.
“I have heard the stories of your deeds everywhere I go,” the beggar answered. “I knew the name, and I recognized the description. Could there be another Mina with eyes the color of amber? No, I said to myself. Only one—the orphan girl who, years ago, washed up on the shores of Schallsea. The orphan girl who was taken in by Goldmoon and who won the First Master’s heart. She grieves for you, Mina. Grieves for you these three years as for one dead. Why did you run away from her and the rest of us who loved you?”
“Because she could not answer my questions,” Mina replied. “None of you could.”
“And have you found the answer, Mina?” the man asked and his voice was stem.
“I have,” she said steadily.
The beggar shook his head. He did not seem angry, only sorrowful.
“I could heal you,” Mina offered, and she took a step toward him, her hand outstretched.
Swiftly the beggar stepped backward. In the same movement, he shifted the staff from one hand to two and held it out in front of his body, barring her way. “No!” he cried. “As much as my wound pains me now, that pain is physical. It does not strike to my soul as would the pain of your so-called healing touch. And though I walk in darkness, my darkness is not so deep as the darkness in which you now walk, Mina.”
She smiled at him, her smile calm, radiant.
“You heard the voice, Solomirathnius,” she said. “You hear it still. Don’t you?”
He did not reply. He lowered his staff slowly, stared at her long moments. He stared so long that Samuval wondered suspiciously if the man could see out of that one milky white eye.
“Don’t you?” she pressed him.
Abruptly, angrily, the man turned away from her. Tapping the ground with his staff, he left the path and entered the woods. The end of his staff knocked brutally against the boles of trees and thrust savagely into bushes. His hand groped to feel his way.
“I don’t trust him,” Samuval said. “He has the stink of a Solamnic about him. Let me skewer him.”
Mina turned away. “You could do him no harm, Captain. He may look feeble, but he is not.”
“What is he then? A wizard?” Samuval asked with a slight sneer.
“No, he is much more powerful than any wizard,” Mina replied. “In his true form, he is the silver dragon known to most as Mirror. He is the Guardian of the Citadel of Light.”
“A dragon!” Samuval stopped dead in the path, stared back into the brush. He could no longer see the blind beggar, and that worried him more now than ever. “Mina,” he said urgently, “let me take a squadron of men after him! He will surely try to kill us all!”
Mina smiled slightly at Samuval’s fears. “We are safe, Captain. Order the men to resume the march. The path ahead is clear. Mirror will not trouble us.”
“Why not?” Samuval was frowning, doubtful.
“Because once, many years ago, every night, Goldmoon, the First Master of the Citadel of Light, brushed my hair,” Mina said softly.
Reaching up her hand, she touched, very lightly, her shaven head.
Chapter Twenty
Betrayed
The days of waiting had passed pleasantly for Gerard. The queen mother’s house was a sanctuary of peace and serenity. Every room was a bower of green and growing plants and flowers. The sounds of falling water soothed and relaxed. He was not in possession of the supposed time travel device, yet he had the feeling that here time was suspended. The sunlit hours melted into dusk that melted into night and back to sunlight again with no one seeming to notice the change of one day to next. No hourglass dropped its sands into elven lives, or so Gerard imagined. He was jolted back into harsh reality when, on the afternoon of the day they were to leave, he walked in the garden and saw, quite by chance, sunlight flash off shining black armor.
The Neraka Knight was distant, but he was plainly keeping watch on the house. Gerard ducked back into the doorway, his idyll of peace shattered. He waited tensely for the Neraka Knights to come beating on the door, but hours passed and no one disturbed them. He trusted, at last, that he had not been seen.
He took care not to venture outside after that, not until nightfall, when they were ready to depart.
Gerard had seen little of Palin Majere, for which he was not sorry. He deplored the mage’s rudeness to everyone in the household, but most particularly to Laurana. Gerard tried to make allowances. Palin Majere had suffered a great deal, the Knight reminded himself. But the mage’s dark moods cast a j shadow that dimmed the brightest sunlight. Even the two servant elves tiptoed around, afraid of making a sound that would bring down on them the mage’s irrational anger. When Gerard mentioned this to Laurana, making some comment on what he considered boorish human behavior, she smiled and urged him to be patient.