Dragons of a Fallen Sun

by Margaret Weis

  “But you have no qualifications!” Konnal protested. “You are not of House Royal. You have not served in the Senate. Before this you were a wizard serving in the Tower of Shalost,” he stated brusquely.

  “Oh, but you yourself will recommend me,” said Glaucous, resting his hand on Konnal’s arm.

  “And what am I to say by way of recommendation?”

  “Only this—you will remind them that the Shield Tree grows in the Garden of Astarin, a garden that I oversee. You will remind them that I am the one who helped plant the Shield Tree. You will remind them that I am the one currently responsible for keeping the shield in place.”

  “A threat?” Konnal glowered.

  Glaucous gazed long at the general, who began to feel uncomfortable. “It is my fate never to be trusted,” Glaucous said at last. “To have my motives questioned. I accept that, a sacrifice I make to serve my people.”

  “I am sorry,” Konnal said gruffly. “It’s just that—”

  “Apology accepted. And now,” Glaucous continued, “we should make preparations to welcome the young king to Silvanost. You will declare a national holiday. We will spare no expense. The people need something to celebrate. We will have that minstrel who sang tonight sing something in honor of our new Speaker. What a lovely voice she has.”

  “Yes,” Konnal agreed absently, abstracted. He was beginning to think that this plan of Glaucous’s wasn’t a bad plan after all.

  “Ah, how very sad, my friend,” Glaucous said, pointing to the pond. “One of your swans is dying.”

  12

  Marching Orders

  he first day after the siege of Sanction, Mina tried to leave her tent to go stand in line with the other soldiers waiting for food. She was mobbed, surrounded by soldiers and camp followers who wanted to touch her for luck or who wanted her to touch them. The soldiers were respectful, awed in her presence. Mina spoke to each one, always in the name of the One, True God. But the press of men, women and children was overwhelming. Seeing that Mina was about to drop from exhaustion, her Knights, led by Galdar, drove the people away. Mina returned to her tent. Her Knights stood guard over her rest. Galdar brought her food and drink.

  The next day, Mina held a formal audience. Galdar ordered the soldiers to form ranks. She passed among them, speaking to many by name, recalling their bravery in battle. They left her presence dazzled, her name upon their lips.

  After the review, she visited the tents of the dark mystics. Her Knights had spread the story of how Mina had restored Galdar’s arm. Miracles of healing such as this had once been common in the Fourth Age, but not anymore.

  The mystic healers of the Knights of Neraka, healers who had stolen the means of healing from the Citadel of Light, had in years past been able to perform healing miracles that rivaled those the gods themselves had granted in the Fourth Age. But recently, the healers had noticed that they were losing some of their mystical powers. They could still heal, but even simple spells drained them of energy to the point where they found themselves near collapse.

  No one could explain this strange and dire occurrence. At first, the healers blamed the mystics of the Citadel of Light, saying that they had found a way to prevent the Knights of Neraka from healing their soldiers. But they soon heard reports from their spies within the Citadel that the mystics on Schallsea and in other locations throughout Ansalon were encountering the very same phenonmena. They, too, sought answers, but thus far, in vain.

  Overwhelmed by the number of casualties, forced to conserve their energy, the healers had aided Lord Milles and his staff first, for the army needed its commanders. Even then, they could do nothing for critical wounds. They could not restore hacked off limbs, they could not stop internal bleeding, they could not mend a cracked skull.

  The eyes of the wounded fixed on Mina the moment she entered the healers’ tent. Even those who had been blinded, whose eyes were covered with bloody bandages, turned their sightless gaze instinctively in her direction, as a plant languishing in shadow seeks the sunlight.

  The healers continued their work, pretending not to notice Mina’s entry. One did pause, however, to look up. He seemed about to order her out, then saw Galdar, who stood behind her and who had placed his hand upon the hilt of his sword.

  “We are busy. What do you want?” the healer demanded churlishly.

  “To help,” Mina replied. Her amber-eyed gaze roved swiftly about the tent. “What is that area back there? The place you have screened off?”

  The healer cast a glance in that direction. Groans and moaning sounds came from behind the blanket which had been hastily strung up in the back end of the large hospital tent.

  “The dying,” he said, cold, casual. “We can do nothing for them.”

  “You do not give them anything for the pain?” Mina asked.

  The healer shrugged. “They are of no more use to us. Our supplies are limited and must go to help those who have a chance to return to the battle.”

  “You will not mind, then, if I give them my prayers?”

  The healer sniffed. “By all means, go ‘pray’ over them. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.”

  “I’m sure they will,” she said gravely.

  She walked to the back of the tent, passing along the rows of cots where lay the wounded. Many stretched out their hands to her or called out her name, begging her to notice them. She smiled upon them and promised to return. Reaching the blankets behind which lay the dying, Mina reached out her hand, parted the blankets and let them fall behind her.

  Galdar took his place in front of the blankets, turned, hand on his sword, to keep an eye on the healers. They made a fine show of paying no attention, but they cast sidelong glances in the direction of the blankets and then exchanged those glances with each other.

  Galdar listened to what was happening behind him. He could smell the stench of death. A look cast back through the curtain showed him seven men and two women. Some lay on cots, but others lay on the crude stretchers, which had been used to carry them from the battle field. Their wounds were horrendous, at least so Galdar perceived in that quick glance. Flesh cleaved open, organs and bone exposed. Blood dripped on the floor, forming gruesome pools. One man’s intentestines spewed out of him like a string of grotesque sausages. A woman Knight was missing half her face, the eyeball dangling hideously from beneath a blood-soaked bandage.

  Mina came to the first of the dying, the woman who had lost her face. Her one good eye was closed. Her breathing was labored. She seemed to have already started on her long journey. Mina rested her hand on the horrible wound.

  “I saw you fight in the battle, Durya,” Mina said softly. “You fought bravely, held your ground though those around you panicked and retreated. You must stay your journey, Durya. The One God has need of you.”

  The woman breathed easier. Her mangled face moved slowly toward Mina, who bent and kissed her.

  Galdar heard murmuring behind him, turned back quickly. The healer’s tent had grown quiet. All had heard Mina’s words. The healers made no more pretense of working. Everyone was watching, waiting.

  Galdar felt a hand touch him on the shoulder. Thinking it was Mina, he turned. He saw instead the woman, Durya, who had lain dying. Her face was covered with blood, she would always bear a hideous scar, but the flesh was whole, the eye back in its place. She walked, she smiled, she drew a tremulous breath.

  “Mina brought me back,” Durya said, her tone awed, wondering. “She brought me back to serve her. And I will. I will serve her all her days.”

  Exalted, her face radiant, Durya left the tent. The wounded cheered and began to chant, “Mina, Mina!” The healers started after Durya in shocked disbelief.

  “What is she doing in there?” demanded one, seeking to enter.

  “Praying,” Galdar said gruffly, blocking the way. “You gave her permission, remember?”

  The healer glowered and swiftly departed. Galdar saw the man hot-footing his way to Lord Milles’s tent.

&nbs
p; “Yes, you tell Lord Milles what you’ve witnessed,” Galdar advised the man silently, gleefully. “Tell him and add yet another twist of the knife that rankles in his chest.”

  Mina healed them all, healed every one of the dying. She healed a Talon commander who had taken a Solamnic spear in his gut. She healed a foot soldier who had been trampled by the slashing hooves of a battle horse. One by one, the dying rose from their beds and walked out to cheers from the other wounded. They thanked her and praised her, but Mina turned all their gratitude aside.

  “Offer your thanks and your loyalty to the One True God,” she told them. “It is by the god’s power that you are restored.”

  Indeed, it seemed that she was given divine assistance, for she did not grow weary or faint, no matter how many of the injured she treated. And that was many. When she came from helping the dying, she moved from one of the wounded to another, laying her hands upon them, kissing them, praising their deeds in battle.

  “The power of healing does not come from me,” she told them. “It comes from the God who has returned to care for you.”

  By midnight, the healer’s tent was empty.

  Under orders from Lord Milles, the dark mystics kept close watch on Mina, trying to figure out her secret so as to discredit her, denounce her as a charlatan. They said that she must be resorting to tricks or sleight-of-hand. They poked pins into limbs she had restored, trying to prove they were illusion, only to see real blood flow. They sent patients to her suffering from horrible contagious diseases, patients the healers themselves feared to approach. Mina sat beside these sufferers, laid her hands upon their open sores and oozing pustules and bid them be well in the name of the One God.

  The grizzled veterans whispered that she was like the clerics of old, who were given wondrous powers by the gods. Such clerics, they said, had once been able to raise the dead. But that miracle, Mina either would not or could not perform. The dead received special attention from her, but she did not restore them to life, though she was often begged to do so.

  “We are brought into this world to serve the One True God,” Mina said. “As we serve the True God in this world, the dead do important service in the next. It would be wrong to bring them back.”

  By her command, the soldiers had carried all the bodies from the field—bodies of friend and foe alike—and arranged them in long rows on the bloodstained grass. Mina knelt beside each corpse, prayed over each no matter which side the person had fought on, commended the spirit of each to the nameless god. Then she ordered them to be buried in a mass grave.

  At Galdar’s insistence, the third day after the siege Mina held counsel with the Neraka Knights’ commanders. They now included almost all the officers who had formerly reported to Lord Milles, and to a man these officers urged Mina to take up the siege of Sanction, to lead them to what must be a resounding victory over the Solamnics.

  Mina refused their entreaties.

  “Why?” Galdar demanded this morning, the morning of the fifth day, when he and Mina were alone. He was frustrated at her refusal. “Why will you not launch an attack? If you conquer Sanction, Lord Targonne will not be able to touch you! He will be forced to recognize you as one of his most valued Knights!”

  Mina was seated at a large table she had ordered be brought into her tent. Maps of Ansalon were spread out upon it. She had studied the maps every day, moving her lips as she went over them, speaking silently the names of the towns and cities and villages to herself, memorizing their locations. Ceasing her work, she looked up at the minotaur.

  “What do you fear, Galdar?” she asked mildly.

  The minotaur scowled, the skin between his eyes, above his snout, creased into folds. “My fear is for you, Mina. Those who are deemed a threat to Targonne disappear from time to time. No one is safe from him. Not even our former leader, Mirielle Abrena. It was put about that she died after eating spoiled meat, but everyone knows the truth.”

  “And that truth is?” Mina asked in abstracted tones. She was looking again at the map.

  “He had her poisoned, of course,” Galdar returned. “Ask him yourself if you ever chance to meet him. He will not deny it.”

  Mina sighed. “Mirielle is fortunate. She is with her God. Though the Vision she proclaimed was false, she now knows the truth. She has been punished for her presumption and is now performing great deeds in the name of the One who shall be nameless. As for Targonne”—Mina lifted her gaze again—“he serves the One True God in this world, and so he will be permitted to remain for the time being.”

  “Targonne?” Galdar gave a tremendous snort. “He serves a god all right, the god of currency.”

  Mina smiled a secret, inward smile. “I did not say that Targonne knows he is serving the One, Galdar. But serve he does. That is why I will not attack Sanction. Others will fight that battle. Sanction is not our concern. We are called to greater glory.”

  “Greater glory?” Galdar was astonished. “You do not know what you are saying, Mina! What could be greater than seizing Sanction? Then the people would see that the Knights of Neraka are once again a powerful force in this world!”

  Mina traced a line on the map with her finger, a line that came to rest near the southern portion of the map. “What about the conquering of the great elven kingdom of Silvanesti?”

  “Hah! Hah!” Galdar roared his laughter. “You have me there, Mina. I concede. Yes, that would be a magnificent victory. And it would be magnificent to see the moon drop out of the sky and land on my breakfast plate, which is just about as likely to happen.”

  “You will see, Galdar,” Mina said quietly. “Bring me word the moment the messenger arrives. Oh, and Galdar …”

  “Yes, Mina?” The minotaur had turned to go.

  “Take care,” she said to him, her amber eyes piercing him through, as if they had been sharpened to arrow points. “Your mockery offends the God. Do not make that mistake again.”

  Galdar felt a throbbing pain in his sword arm. The fingers went numb.

  “Yes, Mina,” he mumbled. Massaging the arm, he ducked out of the tent, leaving Mina to study her map.

  Galdar calculated it would take two days for one of Lord Milles’s flunkies to ride to the Knights’ headquarters in Jelek, a day to report to Lord of the Night Targonne, two days to ride back. They should hear something today. After he left Mina’s tent, the minotaur roamed about the outskirts of camp, watching the road for riders.

  He was not alone. Captain Samuval and his Archer Company were there, as well as many of the soldiers of Milles’s command. They stood with weapons ready. They had sworn among themselves that they would stop anyone who tried to take Mina from them.

  All eyes were on the road. The pickets who were supposed to be watching Sanction kept looking behind them, instead of ahead at the besieged city. Lord Milles, who had made one experimental foray out of his tent following the siege and who had been harried back inside by a barrage of horse turds, cat-calls and jeers, parted the tent flaps to glare impatiently up that road, never doubting but that Targonne would come to his commander’s aide by sending troops to help him put down the mutiny.

  The only eyes in camp who did not turn to the road were Mina’s. She remained in her tent, absorbed in studying her maps.

  “And that is the reason she gave for not attacking Sanction? That we are going to attack Silvanesti?” Captain Samuval said to Galdar as the two stood in the road, awaiting the arrival of the messenger. The captain frowned. “What nonsense! You don’t suppose she could be afraid, do you?”

  Galdar glowered. Placing his hand on the hilt of his sword, he drew it halfway from its sheath. “I should cut out your tongue for saying such a thing! You saw her ride alone into the front ranks of the enemy! Where was her fear then?”

  “Peace, Minotaur,” Samuval said. “Put away your sword. I meant no disrespect. You know as well as I that when the blood burns hot in battle, a man thinks himself invincible and he does deeds he would never dream of doing in cold blood. It is
only natural she should be a little frightened now that she has taken a good long look at the situation and realized the enormity of the task.”

  “There is no fear in her,” Galdar growled, sheathing his blade. “How can there be fear in one who speaks of death with a wistful, impatient look in her eyes, as if she would rush to embrace it if she could and is constrained to continue living against her will.”

  “A man may fear many things besides death,” Samuval argued. “Failure, for one. Perhaps she fears that if she leads these worshipers of hers into battle and fails, they will turn against her as they did against Lord Milles.”

  Galdar twisted his horned head, looked back over his shoulder, back to where Mina’s tent stood by itself upon a small rise, the bloody standard hanging before it. The tent was surrounded by people standing silent vigil, waiting, watching, hoping to catch a glimpse of her or hear her voice.

  “Would you leave her now, Captain?” Galdar asked.

  Captain Samuval followed the minotaur’s gaze. “No, I would not,” he said at last. “I don’t know why. Perhaps she has bewitched me.”

  “I’ll tell you why,” Galdar said. “It’s because she offers us something to believe in. Something besides ourselves. I mocked that something just now,” he added humbly, rubbing his arm, which still tingled unpleasantly. “And I am sorry I did so.”

  A trumpet call rang out. The pickets placed at the entrance to the valley were letting those in camp know that the expected messenger approached. Every person in camp stopped what they were doing and looked up, ears pricked to hear, necks craned to see. A large crowd blocked the road. They parted to let the messenger on his steaming horse gallop past. Galdar hastened to take the news to Mina.

  Lord Milles emerged from his command tent at precisely the same moment Mina left hers. Confident that the messenger was here to bring word of Targonne’s anger and the promise of a force of armed Knights to seize and execute the imposter, Lord Milles glared triumphantly at Mina. He felt certain that her downfall was imminent.

  She did not so much as glance at him. She stood outside her tent, awaiting developments with calm detachment, as if she already knew the outcome.