Chapter 3

Caramon said nothing. He stood silently, staring at Riverwind. He fell back a pace and leaned against Steel’s skull-carved bier. The attar of lilies surrounded him, a cloying scent that made him want to retch.

“How?” he asked.

The Plainsman nodded thoughtfully. “A fair question.” He bent down, lifting up his headdress, and gestured toward the door. “I will answer it, but not here. I have already broken a taboo of my people, speaking of death in such a place. Go on ahead, Caramon. I will finish saying my farewells, and then I will join you outside.”

Thankful to be out of the dark, close crypt, Caramon turned and hurried out of the Last Heroes’ Tomb. He didn’t stop until he was outside the gold and silver doors. The air outside was cold, heralding the coming autumn, and he drank it down deeply. His breath misted in the air before him.

There was movement off to his left. He glanced at it sharply, but it was just a pair of kender—come, no doubt, to pay honor to Tas. One of them, a male, held what looked like a burnt shoe. The other one was female; her hands were empty. They looked up at him, their eyes wide.

Not wanting to deal with kender just now, Caramon shook his head and marched across the meadow away from the tomb. After a few dozen paces he stopped, looking up at the single, pale moon. He continued to stare at it, even when he heard the scuff of soft boots in the grass.

“It still seems strange to me, as well,” said Riverwind, drawing to a halt beside Caramon. He looked up at the ivory disk. “I often dream of the red moon, you know. Sometimes, when we could steal away without anyone noticing, Goldmoon and I would climb the hills east of Qué-Shu and watch it rise. We would hold hands, and one thing would lead to another He smiled an old man’s smile, remembering. After a moment, it became a sly grin. “That’s how the girls came about, if you take my meaning.”

Caramon chuckled. “I certainly do. With Tika and me, it was sunsets.”

“ ‘Was?’ ” Riverwind asked, his eyes sparkling.

“Well-ll,” Caramon said.

They laughed together, then Riverwind grew solemn. “Be thankful, Caramon. You still have the sun. In my heart, this pale moon will never take the red one’s place.”

The wind gusted, icy fingers clawing up Caramon’s spine. He hunched his shoulders.

“So,” he murmured.

“So,” Riverwind agreed. “You asked me how, a moment ago. I’m glad you did—I owe you answers, after setting this burden upon your shoulders. Let us walk.”

They set out across the meadow toward the distant lights of Solace. The vallenwoods muttered as the wind played among their boughs.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been ill, my friend,” Riverwind said. “Five years ago, I woke one morning with a terrible pain inside me. It felt as though someone had set a hot stone in my belly. At first I thought it was nothing but food that disagreed with me—my stomach’s not as hardy as it once was—so I ignored it, waited for it to go away.

“It got worse, though, and I began to fear I had been poisoned. There were some, then, who might have done so. There still are. A man makes enemies doing what I have done—not everyone believes it is best that the tribes should unite as one. It was then that I first began to fear for my life, though for the wrong reasons.

“I hadn’t told Goldmoon about it yet. You may have noticed,” he added, with a wry smile, “I can be a bit stubborn at times. By the time I finally confided in her, the pain was such that I could no longer eat—not even plain corn porridge. When I told Goldmoon how sick I was, she was so angry she didn’t speak to me for a week.

“She tended me, though, and prayed to Mishakal. There was a foulness inside me, and it had grown so large I could feel it when I touched my belly. It was hard and sore, but the worst part was knowing it didn’t belong. I wanted to cut myself open, to pull it out and cast it into the fire. I might even have tried it, too, in my fever madness, but I lacked the strength.

“I lay in bed for nearly a month. Goldmoon acted as chieftain in my absence, keeping the Qué-Teh and Qué-Kiri tribes from slitting each other’s throats. My daughters fed me broth—the only thing I could keep down—and Goldmoon gave me medicine and chanted by my bedside. In time, the goddess blessed me. The pain subsided, and the corruption that had been growing inside me went away. I had never known such relief, my friend. My father died of such an illness when I was a child. It is a bad end.”

They reached the edge of the meadow, where the grasses gave way to the vallenwoods. Riverwind took a deep breath, then bent down and picked up a brown vallenwood leaf. He twirled it between his fingers, lost in thought. “A month ago, I woke with the pain again,” he said quietly. “Only now, Mishakal is not around to hear Goldmoon’s prayers. The foulness is growing within me again, and there is no stopping it. Before long, it will kill me.”

He released the leaf, and the wind sent it spinning away into the shadows. Caramon watched it go, then looked up at his friend. They regarded each other silently. Then Caramon gripped Riverwind’s muscular arm with his own massive hand. The Plainsman regarded him silently.

“Thank you for coming,” Caramon said. “It must have been a hard thing, convincing Goldmoon to let you travel.”

Riverwind shook his head, the feathers of his headdress rustling. “She does not know.”

“What?” Caramon’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I haven’t told her I’m sick again,” Riverwind answered. “And I’m not going to. Neither do I mean to tell my daughters. I have told Wanderer, Tika, and now you, but no one else must hear of it… least of all Goldmoon.”

“But,” Caramon sputtered, “she’s your wife, Riverwind.”

The Plainsman nodded sternly. “I know, my friend. She is my wife, and I love her more than anything in this world. I would spare her this pain. You didn’t see her face five years ago, when she learned I was ill. It… crumpled. She has lived through this before. When I was gone on my Courting Quest, Arrowthorn, her father, was stricken. When I left Qué-Shu, he was a strong man, a hunter and a warrior. By the time I returned, he was wasted and old, babbling and drooling. Goldmoon had to feed him, wash him, see to his every need. She watched him wither like grain after a frost, and there was nothing she could do about it.”

“And you don’t want to put her through that again,” Caramon said.

“I do not.” Riverwind sighed wearily. “How could I tell her, Caramon? At least before, she had her faith to draw upon. Mishakal gave her strength. Even if I had died, she would have known it was the goddess’s will. Whose will is it now, when the gods have gone?”

Caramon bowed his head, blinking back tears. When the Chaos War ended, the loss of the gods had struck everyone hard, but none had suffered more than those who had devoted their lives to their faith. All across Ansalon, priests had succumbed to madness or taken their lives in despair. In Tarsis, it was said, a monk of Majere had gone to the marketplace one day and killed six people before the guards could stop him. In Neraka, priests of Takhisis had doused themselves in oil and set themselves ablaze.

Goldmoon had always been strong-willed, however, even for a cleric. Caramon had taken comfort in the knowledge that her strength would not falter. It would take something truly awful to break her. Something like her husband slowly dying, of a sickness she no longer had the power to cure.

“Won’t she find out?” Caramon asked. “You said yourself—the first illness left you bedridden, unable to eat. How can you hide that from her?”

“I cannot.” Riverwind stared fiercely at Caramon. “This time, I will not let it come to that.”

Caramon blew a long, slow breath through his lips. “Are you sure it’s what you want?” he asked.

Riverwind nodded. “It will be better, for both of us. Goldmoon will not have to bear watching me waste away, like she did Arrowthorn. And as for me—” He broke off, then shook his head, chuckling grimly. “You know I am no coward, Caramon. But I know what lies ahead for me, and I am afraid. I am sixty-five years old. I have led a life I am proud of. I do not want to end it like that, in pain, waiting for the final hour to come.”

They stood together in silence, beneath the pale moon, listening as the cold wind ruffled the leaves. Then Caramon clasped his friend’s arms, letting the gesture convey what words could not.

“Come on,” he said, clapping the Plainsman on the back. “I’ll get you some spiced potatoes.”

Riverwind smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

The tavern at the Inn was almost empty. The elves had gone, presumably upstairs to their room. The tinker was lost to the world, his head on the table beside the empty bottle of dwarf spirits. He mumbled incoherently in his sleep. Caramon shook his head in pity, knowing well enough the signs of a lifelong drunk.

Of course Clemen, Borlos, and Osler were where he’d left them, playing cards by the kitchen. The game had switched to Bounty Hunter, and from the looks of things—the heap of steel coins in front of him, and Borlos and Osler’s glum faces—Clemen was laying waste to the other two. They were just ending a hand as Caramon and Riverwind came in, and Clemen grinned as he turned up his last card: the Dragon of Waves. Evidently Waves were trump, because Borlos cursed under his breath as Clemen raked the pot—which included two silver rings and a small opal—over to his side of the table.

“Evenin’, big guy,” Clemen said jovially as Caramon crossed the tavern. His eyes flicked to Riverwind. “And bigger guy, too. We can deal the two o’ ye in next hand if ye’re feeling game.”

“Save yourself,” Osler muttered grimly. “You’d have better luck in a head-butting contest with a minotaur tonight. I swear, this bugger’s put a hex on the cards.”

Caramon chuckled, glancing at Riverwind, but the Plainsman shook his head. “The only games I know are wrestling and pole sparring,” Riverwind said.

“Pole sparring, eh?” drawled Borlos. “Well, maybe we can arrange something. Caramon, get Clem a broom.”

“All right,” Caramon said. He started toward a nearby closet.

Clemen’s face turned white as a cleric’s robes. The others held their straight faces for a moment, but it was a losing battle, and soon Osler and Borlos were howling with laughter, pounding the table. Caramon chuckled along with them, and even Riverwind cracked a smile.

“Had ye goin’ there, didn’t we?” roared Borlos, slapping Clemen on the shoulder. “Thought ye’d be gettin’ yer head clonked by a genuine Hero of the Lance, eh?”

Riverwind glanced at Caramon, surprised. “They know who I am?”

“Oh, great gods, yeah,” said Osler.

“Don’t believe them, Riverwind,” said Tika. She emerged from the kitchen, the smell of spices wafting behind her. “They heard me tell Caramon you were in town.”

Osler reddened. “Well, aye, but I reckon I’d’a known ye the moment I saw ye, Plainsman. Not many o’ yer kind taller than Caramon, here. He’s told us all about the whole lot o’ ye.”

“And told us, and told us… .“ droned Clemen. Suddenly everyone—Tika included—was laughing again, at Caramon’s expense.

“Pull up a seat,” offered Osler, gesturing at an empty chair. “You can tell us the truth about the War of the Lance. It’d be nice to hear something other than Caramon’s tall tales for a change.”

Riverwind looked at Caramon, who waved a hand. “Go ahead. It’s a good night for war stories. The boys are right—they’ve heard everything a hundred times—but don’t let that stop you. They’re easily amused.” He ignored the snorts and scowls the three card players tossed his way. “I’ll be right back.”

He left the others and went to a storeroom in the back of the Inn. There he bent down and opened a trapdoor in the middle of the floor. Taking a lantern from a nearby cresset, he stepped through the open hatch and climbed down a steep flight of stairs. The stairway smelled of sap, for it led into the trunk of the great vallenwood tree whose branches cradled the Inn. Caramon had built the stairway when the Knights of Takhisis took control of Solace. Hewn out of the living wood, its entrance concealed beneath a wine cask even he could barely lift, it led to a room that had been a safe house for refugees who needed hiding from the Dark Knights. Now, with the Chaos War long over, it served as a cellar where he kept his best stock.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and shone the lantern around the cramped room. Bottles of elven wine and Solamnian brandy sparkled in the ruddy light, but he ignored them. Instead, he walked to a worn, oaken keg. The barrel, carefully sealed, held the last of the ale he’d brewed before the Second Cataclysm. He’d been waiting for almost two years for the right occasion to tap it.

“Well,” he said, bending down and hoisting it up beneath his massive arm, “looks like this is an occasion.”

The ale was fine, some of the best ever he’d ever brewed. Caramon didn’t drink it, of course—he hadn’t taken a drink in more than thirty years, and never would again—but Tika, the card-players, and Riverwind all praised its rich, nutty flavor.

So did Riverwind’s daughters. They had come in while Caramon was in the cellar, and had pulled up chairs beside their father. Moonsong and Brightdawn were twins, twenty-four years old and beautiful enough that Tika had to smack Clemen and Osler across the backs of their heads for staring. In many ways they resembled their mother, sharing Goldmoon’s silver-gold hair and sky-blue eyes, but there was something of their father in them too—a solemnness in Moonsong’s face, a strength to Brightdawn’s jaw.

Moonsong, who was the older sister by a few minutes, was the more graceful of the two. Destined, according to Qué-Shu custom, to succeed her mother as high priestess of the Plains, she had trained as a healer under Goldmoon’s tutelage. Her hands were soft, her skin unblemished, and she wore her hair loose, held in place by a silver circlet hung with feathers. She was clad in a gown of pale blue, embroidered with abstract patterns in threads of red and gold. Gold shone at her ears, wrists and fingers.

While Moonsong had lived a structured life, ordered by her duties as Chieftain’s Daughter, Brightdawn’s childhood had been at once rougher and more carefree. A tomboy from an early age, the younger twin had learned wrestling and archery, and had accompanied her father on hunts in the grasslands. She had calluses on her hands, a small white scar on her chin, and her hair was shorter than her sister’s, gathered in a single plait that hung down her back. Instead of a circlet, she wore a red headband, which marked her as a warrior—as did the flanged mace that hung from her belt. She was clad in plain, buckskin clothes—brown leggings and a beige vest—and her arms were tanned and bare. She was clad in no jewelry anywhere on her body.

Despite the twins’ beauty however, it was Riverwind who held everyone’s attention. The Plainsman sat on a high stool by the fire, his back erect and his eyes gleaming beneath his stem brow. His left hand gripped his flagon of ale, his right dancing like a weaver’s shuttle at the loom as he recounted the story of his first meeting with Caramon and the Companions.

“We never expected anything more than a meal and a bed for the night, Goldmoon and I,” he said. “We were led here by a man who wore the armor of a Knight of Solamnia—Sturm Brightblade. He was polite, but…” He searched for the right word. “Diffident. When he decided we were safe, he went to join his friends, whom he told us he had not seen in a very long time. We sat by the fire, much as we are now, although the Inn was very crowded that night. There was an old man there, telling ancient stories to a young boy. He was the one who started it all.”

The tale spun on. Riverwind told of the song he and Goldmoon had played, of how the Seeker Hederick had fallen into the hearthfire while trying to arrest them for heresy, and of how the blue crystal staff had shone after Tasslehoff used it to heal the Seeker’s bums. He recalled his shock when the old man—who, he would learn much later, was Paladine himself in disguise—had called for the guards, forcing the Plainsfolk to escape through the inn’s kitchen. Joining with Tanis and Sturm, Caramon and Raistlin, Flint and Tasslehoff, they had fled to Tika’s house while the goblins searched for them.

“There we were,” the old Plainsman recalled, his eyes distant with memory, “hiding in the dark like bandits. I didn’t know any of the others yet—and, to be honest, I didn’t trust them.”

“The man’s a good judge of character,” drawled Borlos, taking a long pull from his tankard.

“Aw, shut up,” Caramon said, scowling. Everyone laughed.

Osler cuffed Borlos on the arm. “Let the man tell his story, Bor.”

Riverwind took a drink from his own mug, smiling as the fine ale moistened his parched throat. “The goblins were thorough that night, searching house-to-house,” he continued, setting down the flagon. “Our plan was to pretend there was no one home, but somehow no one remembered to shut the door. By the time Tanis realized, it was too late—the goblins were almost on top of us.

“Caramon went over by the doorway and waited. When the goblins came in, he grabbed them from behind, and—” he clapped his hands, the sudden sound making the card players jump “—he cracked their heads together. They were dead before they knew what hit them.”

The others laughed at this, but Riverwind raised a hand, silencing them. “That’s not the best part,” he said, smiling. “When Tanis asked what had happened, Caramon just sighed and said ‘I think I hit ‘em too hard.’ ”

The card players laughed uproariously. Riverwind’s daughters joined in, and even Tika—who had heard this tale more than any of them—chuckled at her husband’s expense. Sighing, Caramon shook his head and rose.

“Who’s for another?” he asked.

Everyone, Riverwind included, raised their tankards in the air.

Caramon walked to the keg, listening to Riverwind describe how they had deliberately smashed up Tika’s house after killing the goblins—and Tika’s half-joking declaration that they could have been less thorough about it. As he poured a new round of drinks for his friends, the door swung open. He glanced up, raising his eyebrows in surprise when he saw who walked in.

It was the pair of kender he had seen outside the Last Heroes Tomb. The female looked to be the older of the pair, as she had more wrinkles on her otherwise girlish face, but it was the male who led the way into the tavern. They were both brightly attired—she in a red blouse and white trousers, he in hunting greens and a vivid yellow sash. The woman held a hoopak in her hands, and the man had something that looked like a dubious mixture of axe and slingshot slung across his back. They both wore their hair—hers was lustrous black, his chestnut brown—in the same style: long ponytails hanging down their backs, and short, tight braids dangling at their cheeks. Caramon had a vague recollection of Tasslehoff saying once that the strange hairstyle was a sign of noble blood among the kender. Flint had had a thing or two to say about using “noble” and “kender” in the same sentence.

The laughter by the fireside faded as Riverwind and his audience watched them walk in, striding straight up to the bar.

“Caramon Majere?” asked the male.

Caramon blinked, taken aback. “Uh,” he said, “yes?”

“I’m Kronn-alin Thistleknot, son of Kronin Thistleknot,” the male stated. He nodded sideways, at his companion. “This is my sister Catt. We need you to come with us to Kendermore.”