“If that is the risk we run for our beliefs,” said Paladine, “then so be it. Your queen, Sargonnas, disdained free will. She found it easier to rule slaves. You opposed her in that. Would your minotaurs worship a god who made them slaves? A god who denied them their right to determine their own fate, a right to find honor and glory?”
“No, but then my minotaurs have sense. They are not brainless kender,” muttered Sargonnas, but he muttered it into his fur. “That brings us to the next question, however. Providing this kender does not yet get us all killed”—he cast a baleful glance at Paladine—“what punishment do we mete out to the goddess whose name I will never more speak? The goddess who betrayed us?”
“There can be only one punishment,” said Gilean, resting his hand upon the book. Paladine looked around. “Are we all agreed?”
“So long as the balance is maintained,” said Hiddukel, the keeper of the scales. Paladine looked at each of the gods. Each, in turn, nodded. Last, he looked at his mate, his beloved Mishakal. She did not nod. She stood with her head bowed.
“It must be,” said Paladine gently.
Mishakal lifted up her eyes, looked long and lovingly into his. Then, through her tears, she nodded.
Paladine rested his hand upon the book. “So be it,” he said.
27
Tasslehoff Burrfoot
Tasslehoff’s life had been made up of glorious moments. Admittedly, there had been some bad moments, too, but the glorious moments shone so very brightly that their radiance overwhelmed the unhappy moments, causing them to fade back into the inner recesses of his memory. He would never forget the bad times, but they no longer had the power to hurt him. They only made him a little sad.
This moment was one of the glorious moments, more glorious than any moment that had come before, and it kept improving, with each coming moment shining more gloriously than the next. Tas was now growing accustomed to traveling through space and time, and while he continued to feel giddy and disoriented every time the device dumped him out at a destination, he decided that such a sensation, while not suited to everyday use, made for an exhilarating change. This time, after landing and stumbling about a bit and wondering for an exciting instant if he was going to throw up, the wooziness receded, and he was able to look around and take note of his surroundings.
The first thing he saw was an immense silver dragon, standing right beside him. The dragon’s eyes were horribly wounded by a jagged scar that slashed across them, and Tas recognized the blind man who had spoken to him in the Knights’ Council. The dragon, like Tas, appeared to have taken the journey through time in stride, for he was fanning his wings gently and turning his head this way and that, sniffing the air and listening. Either traveling through time did not bother dragons, or being blind kept one from getting dizzy. Tas wondered which it was and made a mental note to ask during a lull in the proceedings.
His other two companions were not faring quite as well. Gerard had not liked the journey the first time, so he could be excused for really not liking it the second time. He swayed on his feet and breathed heavily.
Odila was wide-eyed and gasping and reminded Tas of a poor fish he’d once found in his pocket. He had no idea how the fish had come to be there, although he did have a dim sort of memory that someone had lost it. He’d managed to restore the fish to water, where, after a dazed moment, it had swum off. The fish had the same look that Odila had now.
“Where are we?” she gasped, clinging to Gerard with a white-knuckled grip. He looked grimly at the kender. One and all, they looked grimly at the kender.
“Right were we’re supposed to be,” Tas said confidently. “Where the Dark Queen has kept the gold and silver dragons prisoners.” Gripping the device tightly in his hand, he added a soft, “I hope!” that didn’t come out all that softly and rather spoiled matters. Tas had never been anywhere like this before. All around him was gray rock and nothing except gray rock as far as the eye could see. Sharp gray rocks, smooth gray rocks, enormous gray rocks, and small gray rocks. Mountains of gray rock, and valleys of the same gray rock. The sky above him was black as the blackest thing he’d ever seen, without a single star, and yet he was bathed in a cold white light. Beyond the gray rock, on the horizon, shimmered a wall of ice.
“I feel stone beneath my feet,” said Mirror, “and I do not smell vegetation, so I assume the land in which we have arrived is bleak and barren. I hear no sounds of any kind: not the waves breaking on the shore, not the wind rushing through the trees, no sound of bird or animal. I sense that this place is desolate, forbidding.”
“That about sums it up,” said Gerard, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Add to that description the fact that the sky above us is pitch black, there is no sun, yet there is light; the air is colder than a troll’s backside, and this place appears to be surrounded by what looks like a wall made of icicles, and you have said all there is to say about it.”
“What he didn’t say,” Tas felt called upon to point out, “is that the light makes the wall of ice shimmer with all sorts of different colors—”
“Rather like the scales of a many-colored dragon?” Mirror asked.
“That’s it!” Tas cried, enthused. “Now that you come to mention it, it does look like that. It’s lovely in a sort of cold and unlovely way. Especially how the colors shift whenever you look at them, dancing all along the icy surface . ..”
“Oh, shut up!” ordered Gerard.
Tas sighed inwardly. As much he liked humans, traveling with them certainly took a lot of joy out of the journey.
The cold was biting. Odila shivered, wrapped her robes around her more closely. Gerard stalked over to the ice wall. He did not touch it. He looked it up and down. Drawing his dagger, he jabbed the weapon’s point into the wall.
The blade shattered. Gerard dropped the knife with an oath, wrung his hand in pain, then slid his hand beneath his armpit.
“It’s so damn cold it broke the blade! I could feel the chill travel through the metal and strike deep into my bone. My hand is still numb.”
“We can’t survive long in this,” Odila said. “We humans will perish of the cold, as will the kender. I can’t speak for the dragon.”
Tas smiled at her to thank her for including him.
“As for me,” said Mirror, “my species is cold-blooded. My blood will thicken and grow sluggish. I will soon lose my ability to fly or even to think clearly.”
“And except for you,” said Gerard grumpily, looking around the barren wasteland on which they stood, “I don’t see a single dragon.”
Tasslehoff was forced to admit that he was feeling the chill himself and that it was causing very unpleasant sensations in his toes and the tips of his fingers. He thought with regret back to a fur-lined vest he’d once owned, and he wondered whatever became of it. He wondered also what had become of the dragons, for he was absolutely positive—well, relatively certain—that this was the place where he’d been told he would find them. He peered under a few gray rocks with no luck.
“You better take us back, Tas,” said Odila, as best she could for her teeth clicking together.
“He can’t take us back,” said Mirror, and the dragon was oddly complacent. “This place was constructed as a prison for dragons. It has frozen the magic in my blood. I doubt if the magic of the device will work either.”
“We’re trapped here!” Gerard said grimly. “To freeze to death!” Tasslehoff drew himself up. This was a glorious moment, and while admittedly it didn’t look or feel very glorious (he’d lost all feeling in his toes), he knew what he was doing.