Impressed by their obvious fear and distress, Caramon agreed to tone down his rhetoric, and the town fathers left happy. Caramon did actually comply, expressing his views in a moderate tone of voice as opposed to the booming outrage he’d used previously.
He reiterated his unorthodox views that morning to his breakfast companion, the young Solamnic.
“A terrible storm, sir,” said the Knight, seating himself opposite Caramon.
A group of his fellow Knights were breakfasting in another part of the Inn, but Gerard uth Mondar paid them scant attention. They, in their turn, paid him no attention at all.
“It bodes dark days to come, to my mind,” Caramon agreed, settling his bulk into the high-backed wooden booth, a booth whose seat had been rubbed shiny by the old man’s backside. “But all in all I found it exhilarating.”
“Father!” Laura was scandalized. She slapped down a plate of beefsteak and eggs for her father, a bowl of porridge for the Knight. “How can you say such things? With so many people hurt. Whole houses blown, from what I hear.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Caramon protested, contrite. “I’m sorry for the people who were hurt, of course, but, you know, it came to me in the night that this storm must be shaking Beryl’s lair about pretty good. Maybe even burned the evil old bitch out. That’s what I was thinking.” He looked worriedly at the young Knight’s bowl of porridge. “Are you certain that’s enough to eat, Gerard? I can have Laura fry you up some potatoes—”
“Thank you, sir, this is all I am accustomed to eat for breakfast,” Gerard said as he said every day in response to the same question.
Caramon sighed. Much as he had come to like this young man, Caramon could not understand any one who did not enjoy food. A person who did not relish Otik’s famous spiced potatoes was a person who did not relish life. Only one time in his own life had Caramon ever ceased to enjoy his dinner and that was following the death several months earlier of his beloved wife Tika. Caramon had refused to eat a mouthful for days after that, to the terrible worry and consternation of the entire town, which went on a cooking frenzy to try to come up with something that would tempt him.
He would eat nothing, do nothing, say nothing. He either roamed aimlessly about the town or sat staring dry-eyed out the stained glass windows of the Inn, the Inn where he had first met the red-haired and annoying little brat who had been his comrade in arms, his lover, his friend, his salvation. He shed no tears for her, he would not visit her grave beneath the vallenwoods. He would not sleep in their bed. He would not hear the messages of condolence that came from Laurana and Gilthas in Qualinesti, from Goldmoon in the Citadel of Light.
Caramon lost weight, his flesh sagged, his skin took on a gray hue.
“He will follow Tika soon,” said the townsfolk.
He might have, too, had not one day a child, one of the refugee children, happened across Caramon in his dismal roamings. The child placed his small body squarely in front of the old man and held out a hunk of bread.
“Here, sir,” said the child. “My mother says that if you don’t eat you will die, and then what will become of us?”
Caramon gazed down at the child in wonder. Then he knelt down, gathered the child into his arms, and began to sob uncontrollably. Caramon ate the bread, every crumb, and that night he slept in the bed he had shared with Tika. He placed flowers on her grave the next morning and ate a breakfast that would have fed three men. He smiled again and laughed, but there was something in his smile and in his laughter that had not been there before. Not sorrow, but a wistful impatience.
Sometimes, when the door to the Inn opened, he would look out into the sunlit blue sky beyond and he would say, very softly, “I’m coming, my dear. Don’t fret. I won’t be long.”
Gerard uth Mondar ate his porridge with dispatch, not really tasting it. He ate his porridge plain, refusing to flavor it with brown sugar or cinnamon, did not even add salt. Food fueled his body, and that was all it was good for. He ate his porridge, washing down the congealed mass with a mug of tar-bean tea, and listened to Caramon talk about the awful wonders of the storm.
The other Knights paid their bill and left, bidding Caramon a polite good-day as they passed, but saying nothing to his companion. Gerard appeared not to notice, but steadfastly spooned porridge from bowl to mouth.
Caramon watched the Knights depart and interrupted his story in mid-lightning bolt. “I appreciate the fact that you share your time with an old geezer like me, Gerard, but if you want to have breakfast with your friends—”
“They are not my friends,” said Gerard without bitterness or rancor, simply making a statement of fact. “I much prefer dining with a man of wisdom and good, common sense.” He raised his mug to Caramon in salute.
“It’s just that you seem …” Caramon paused, chewed steak vigorously. “Lonely,” he finished in a mumble, his mouth full. He swallowed, forked another piece. “You should have a girlfriend or … or a wife or something.”
Gerard snorted. “What woman would look twice at a man with a face like this?” He eyed with dissatisfaction his own reflection in the highly polished pewter mug.
Gerard was ugly; there was no denying that fact. A childhood illness had left his face cragged and scarred. His nose had been broken in a fight with a neighbor when he was ten and had healed slightly askew. He had yellow hair—not blond, not fair, just plain, straw yellow. It was the consistency of straw, too, and would not lie flat, but stuck up at all sorts of odd angles if allowed. To avoid looking like a scarecrow, which had been his nickname when he was young, Gerard kept his hair cut as short as possible.
His only good feature were his eyes, which were of a startling, one might almost say, alarming blue. Because there was rarely any warmth behind these eyes and because these eyes always focused upon their objective with unblinking intensity, Gerard’s blue eyes tended to repel more people than they attracted.
“Bah!” Caramon dismissed beauty and comeliness with a wave of his fork. “Women don’t care about a man’s looks. They want a man of honor, of courage. A young Knight your age … How old are you?”
“I have seen twenty-eight years, sir,” Gerard replied. Finishing his porridge, he shoved the bowl to one side. “Twenty-eight boring and thoroughly wasted years.”
“Boring?” Caramon was skeptical. “And you a Knight? I was in quite a few wars myself. Battles were lots of things, as I recall, but boring wasn’t one of them—”
“I have never been in battle, sir,” said Gerard and now his tone was bitter. He rose to his feet, placed a coin upon the table. “If you will excuse me, I am on duty at the tomb this morning. This being Midyear Day, and consequently a holiday, we expect an influx of rowdy and destructive kender. I have been ordered to report to my post an hour early. I wish you joy of the day, sir, and I thank you for your company.”
He bowed stiffly, turned on his heel as if he were already performing the slow and stately march before the tomb, and walked out the door of the Inn. Caramon could hear his booted feet ringing on the long staircase that led down from the Inn, perched high in the branches of Solace’s largest vallenwood.
Caramon leaned back comfortably in the booth. The sunshine streamed in through the red and green windows, warming him. His belly full, he was content. Outside, people were cleaning up after the storm, gathering up the branches that had fallen from the vallenwoods, airing out their damp houses, spreading straw over the muddy streets. In the afternoon, the people would dress in their best clothes, adorn their hair with flowers, and celebrate the longest day of the year with dancing and feasting. Caramon could see Gerard stalking stiff-backed and stiff-necked through the mud, paying no heed to anything going on around him, making his way to the Tomb of the Last Heroes. Caramon watched as long as he could see the Knight, before finally losing sight of him in the crowd.
“He’s a strange one,” said Laura, whipping away the empty bowl and pocketing the coin. “I wonder how you can eat alongside him, Father. His face curd
les the milk.”
“He cannot help his face, Daughter,” Caramon returned sternly. “Are there any more eggs?”
“I’ll bring you some. You’ve no idea what a pleasure it is to see you eating again.” Laura paused in her work to kiss her father tenderly on his forehead. “As for that young man, it’s not his face that makes him ugly. I’ve loved far uglier in looks in my time. It’s his arrogance, his pride that drives people away. Thinks he’s better than all the rest of us, so he does. Did you know that he comes from one of the wealthiest families in all of Palanthas? His father practically funds the Knighthood, they say. And he pays well for his son to be posted here in Solace, away from the fighting in Sanction and other places. It’s small wonder the other Knights have no respect for him.”
Laura flounced off to the kitchen to refill her father’s plate.
Caramon stared after his daughter in astonishment. He’d been eating breakfast with this young man every day for the past two months, and he had no notion of any of this. They’d developed what he considered a close relationship, and here was Laura, who’d never said anything to the young Knight beyond, “Sugar for your tea?” knowing his life’s history.
“Women,” Caramon said to himself, basking in the sunlight. “Eighty years old and I might as well be sixteen again. I didn’t understand them then, and I don’t understand them now.”
Laura returned with a plate of eggs piled high with spiced potatoes on the side. She gave her father another kiss and went about her day.
“She’s so much like her mother, though,” Caramon said fondly and ate his second plate of eggs with relish.
Gerard uth Mondar was thinking about women, as well, as he waded through the ankle-deep mud. Gerard would have agreed with Caramon that women were creatures not to be understood by men. Caramon liked women, however. Gerard neither liked them nor trusted them. Once when he had been fourteen and newly recovered from the illness that had destroyed his looks, a neighbor girl had laughed at him and called him “pock face.”
Discovered in gulping tears by his mother, he was comforted by his mother, who said, “Pay no attention to the stupid chit, my son. Women will love you one day.” And then she had added, in a vague afterthought, “You are very rich, after all.”
Fourteen years later, he would wake in the night to hear the girl’s shrill, mocking laughter, and his soul would cringe in shame and embarrassment. He would hear his mother’s counsel and his embarrassment would burn away in anger, an anger that burned all the hotter because his mother had proved a prophetess. The “stupid chit” had thrown herself at Gerard when they were both eighteen and she had come to realize that money could make the ugliest weed beautiful as a rose. He had taken great pleasure in scornfully snubbing her. Ever since that day, he had suspected that any woman who looked at him with any interest whatsoever was secretly calculating his worth, all the while masking her disgust for him with sweet smiles and fluttering lashes.
Mindful of the precept that the best offense is a good defense, Gerard had built a most excellent fortress around himself, a fortress bristling with sharp barbs, its walls stocked with buckets of acidic comments, its high towers hidden in a cloud of dark humors, the entire fortress surrounded by a moat of sullen resentment.
His fortress proved extremely good at keeping out men, as well. Laura’s gossip was more accurate than most. Gerard uth Mondar did indeed come from one of the wealthiest families in Palanthas, probably one of the wealthiest in all of Ansalon. Prior to the Chaos War, Gerard’s father, Mondar uth Alfric, had been the owner of the most successful shipyard in Palanthas. Foreseeing the rise of the Dark Knights, Sir Mondar had wisely converted as much of his property into good solid steel as possible and moved his family to Southern Ergoth, where he started his shipbuilding and repairing business anew, a business which was now thriving.
Sir Mondar was a powerful force among the Knights of Solamnia. He contributed more money than any other Knight to the support and maintenance of the Knighthood. He had seen to it that his son became a Knight, had seen to it that his son had the very best, the safest posting available. Mondar had never asked Gerard what he wanted from life. The elder Knight took it for granted that his son wanted to be a Knight and the son had taken it for granted himself until the very night he was holding vigil before the ceremony of knighthood. In that night, a vision came to him, not a vision of glory and honor won on the battlefield, but a vision of a sword rusting away in its scabbard, a vision of running errands and posting guard detail over dust and ashes that didn’t need guarding.
Too late to back out. To do so would break a family tradition that supposedly extended back to Vinas Solamnus. His father would renounce him, hate him forever. His mother, who had sent out hundreds of invitations to a celebratory party, would take to her bed for a month. Gerard had gone through with the ceremony. He had taken his vow, a vow he considered meaningless. He had donned the armor that had become his prison.
He had served in the Knighthood now for seven years, one of which had been spent in the “honorary” duty of guarding a bunch of corpses. Before that, he’d brewed tar-bean tea and written letters for his commanding officer in Southern Ergoth. He had requested posting to Sanction and had been on the verge of leaving, when the city was attacked by the armies of the Knights of Neraka and his father had seen to it that his son was sent instead to Solace. Returning to the fortress, Gerard cleaned the mud from his boots and left to join the fellow of his watch, taking up his hated and detested position of honor before the Tomb of the Last Heroes.
The tomb was a simple structure of elegant design, built by dwarves of white marble and black obsidian. The tomb was surrounded by trees, that had been planted by the elves, and which bore fragrant flowers all year long. Inside lay the bodies of Tanis Half-elven, fallen hero of the battle of the High Clerist’s Tower, and Steel Brightblade, son of Sturm Brightblade and the hero of the final battle against Chaos. Here also were the bodies of the knights who had fought the Chaos god. Above the door of the tomb was written a single name, Tasslehoff Burrfoot, the kender hero of the Chaos war.
Kender came from all over Ansalon to pay tribute to their hero, feasting and picnicking on the lawns, singing songs of Uncle Tas and telling stories about his brave deeds. Unfortunately, some years after the tomb had been built, the kender took it into their heads to each come away with a piece of the tomb for luck. To this end, they began to attack the tomb with chisels and hammers, forcing the Solamnic knights to erect a wrought-iron fence around the tomb that was starting to have the appearance of being nibbled by mice.
The sun blazing down on him, his armor baking him slowly as Laura was slowly baking her beef roast, Gerard marched with slow and solemn step the one hundred paces that took him from the left of the tomb to the center. Here he met his fellow who had marched an equal distance. They saluted one another. Turning, they saluted the fallen heroes. Turning, they marched back, each guard’s motions mirroring exactly the motions of the guard opposite.
One hundred paces back. One hundred paces forth.
Over and over and over.
An honor to some, such as the Knight who stood watch this day with Gerard. This Knight had purchased this posting with blood, not with money. The veteran Knight walked his beat with a slight limp, but he walked it proudly. Small blame to him that every time he came face to face with Gerard, he regarded him with lip-curling enmity.
Gerard marched back and forth. As the day progressed, crowds gathered, many having traveled to Solace especially for this holiday. Kender arrived in droves, spreading lunches on the lawn, eating and drinking, dancing and playing games of goblin ball and kender-keep-away. The kender loved to watch the Knights, loved to annoy them. The kender danced around the Knights, tried to make them smile, tickled them, rapped on their armor, called them “Kettle Head” and “Canned Meat,” offered them food, thinking they might be hungry.
Gerard uth Mondar disliked humans. He distrusted elves. He hated kender. Actively hated them.
Detested them. He hated all kender equally, including the so-called “afflicted” kender, whom most people now viewed with pity. These kender were survivors of an attack by the great dragon Malys on their homeland. They were said to have seen such acts of violence and cruelty that their merry, innocent natures had been forever altered, leaving them much like humans: suspicious, cautious, and vindictive. Gerard didn’t believe this “afflicted” act. To his mind, it was just another sneaky way for kender to get their grubby little hands into a man’s pockets.
Kender were like vermin. They could flatten their boneless little bodies and crawl into any structure made by man or dwarf. Of this Gerard was firmly convinced, and so he was only a little surprised when, sometime nearing the end of his watch, drawing on late afternoon, he heard a shrill voice hallooing and hollering. The voice came from inside the tomb.
“I say!” cried the voice. “Could someone let me out? It’s extremely dark in here, and I can’t find the door handle.”
The partner of Gerard’s watch actually missed a step. Halting, he turned to stare. “Did you hear that?” he demanded, regarding the tomb with frowning concern. “It sounded like someone was in there.”
“Hear what?” Gerard said, though he himself had heard it plainly. “You’re imagining things.”
But they weren’t. The noise grew louder. Knocking and pounding were now added to the hallooing and hollering.
“Hey, I heard a voice inside the tomb!” shouted a kender child, who had dashed forward to retrieve a ball that had bounced off Gerard’s left foot. The kender put his face to the fence, pointed inside at the tomb’s massive and sealed doors. “There’s someone trapped in the tomb! And it wants out!”
The crowd of kender and other residents of Solace who had come to pay their respects to the dead by swilling ale and munching cold chicken forgot their suppers and their games. Gasping in wonder, they crowded around the fence, nearly overrunning the Knights.
Dragons of a Fallen Sun Page 7