He determined he should at least make the attempt to help her understand the truth.

“Mina,” said Rhys, taking hold of the child’s hand, “Goldmoon is dead. She died many, many months ago-”

“You’re wrong,” said Mina serenely, speaking with unwavering certainty. “Goldmoon is waiting for me at Godshome. That’s why I’m going there. To beg her not to be mad at me anymore. I will take her a present so she will love me again.”

“Goldmoon never stopped loving you, Mina,” said Rhys. “Mothers don’t ever stop loving their children.”

Mina looked back at him, her eyes wide. “Not even if they do bad things? Really, really bad things?”

Rhys was caught off guard by her question. If this was truly madness, it held a strange and terrible wisdom.

He rested his hand on her slender shoulder. “Not even then.”

“Maybe so,” said Mina, though she sounded doubtful. “But you can’t be sure, and so I want to take Goldmoon a present. And the present I want to take her is inside that tower.”

“What sort of tower is it?” Nightshade asked, his curiosity getting the best of him. “Where did it come from?”

“It didn’t come from anywhere, stupid,” Mina scoffed. “It’s always been there.”

“No, it hasn’t,” argued Nightshade.

“Yes, it has.”

“No-” Nightshade caught Rhys’ eye and changed the subject. “So who built it, if it’s been there all this time?”

“Wizards built it. It used to be a Tower of High Sorcery. But it’s my tower now.” Mina flashed Nightshade a defiant glance, daring him to disagree. “And Goldmoon’s present is inside.”

“A Tower of High Sorcery!” Nightshade gasped, his jaw sagging. “Are there wizards inside it?”

Mina shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. Wizards are stupid anyway, so it doesn’t matter. What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

“The tower is the middle of the sea, Mina,” Rhys said. “We don’t have a boat-”

“That’s right!” Nightshade struck in happily. “We’d love to visit your tower, Mina, but we can’t. No boat! Say, is anyone else hungry? I hear there’s an inn in Flotsam that makes a really good meat pie-”

“There’s a boat,” Mina interrupted. “Behind you.”

Nightshade looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, a small sailboat rested on its keel on the shore, not fifteen paces from where they were standing.

“Rhys, do something,” said Nightshade out of the corner of his mouth. “You and I both know there wasn’t a boat there a second ago. I don’t want to sail in a boat that didn’t used to be there…”

Mina began tugging Rhys excitedly toward the sail boat. Nightshade, sighing deeply, followed, dragging his feet.

“Do you even know how to sail this thing?” he asked. “I’ll bet you don’t.”

“I bet I do,” she answered smugly. “I learned at the Citadel.”

Nightshade sighed again. Mina climbed inside the boat and began to rummage around, sorting out a tangle of ropes and instructing Rhys on how to raise the sail. Nightshade stood beside the boat, his lower lip thrust out.

Mina regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. “You said you were hungry. Someone might have left food in the boat. I’ll look.” She felt about under one of the wooden plank seats and came up holding a large sack.

“I was right!” she announced, pleased. “See what I found.”

She reached into the sack and took out a meat pie, and handed it to Nightshade.

He did not touch it. It looked like a meat pie and it certainly smelled like a meat pie. Both his mouth and his stomach agreed this was definitely a meat pie, and Atta added her vote, as well. The dog eyed the pie and licked her chops.

“You said you were hungry,” Mina reminded him.

Still, Nightshade hesitated. “I don’t know…”

Atta took matters into her own hands-or rather into her mouth. A leap, a snap, a couple of gulps, and the meat pie was a grease smear on her nose.

“Hey!” cried Nightshade indignantly. “That was mine.”

Atta slurped her tongue over her nose and began to hungrily paw the sack. Rhys rescued the remainder of the pies and handed them out. Mina nibbled on hers and ended up feeding most of it to Atta. Nightshade ate his hungrily and, finding Rhys could not finish his, the kender ate it for him. He helped Rhys hoist the sail and, acting under Mina’s direction, pushed the boat out into the waves.

Mina took the tiller and steered the boat into the wind. The waves had calmed. A light breeze caught the sail, and the boat glided over the waves, heading out to sea. Atta crouched at the bottom, nosing the sack hopefully.

“For a god-baked pie, that wasn’t bad,” Nightshade remarked, falling down onto the seat beside Rhys when the sailboat took an unexpected lurch. “Maybe a little less onion and more garlic. Next I think I’ll ask her to cook up some beefsteak with crispy potatoes-”

“We should be very careful not to ask for anything,” Rhys suggested.

Nightshade mulled this over.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. We might get it.” The kender shifted his gaze to the tower. “What do you know about Towers of High Sorcery?”

Rhys shook his head. “Not much, I am afraid.”

“Me neither. And I have to say I’m not really looking forward to the experience. Wizards don’t like kender for some reason. They might turn me into a frog.”

“Mistress Jenna liked you,” Rhys reminded him.

“That’s true. All she did was slap my hand.”

Nightshade caught hold of the gunwale as the boat gave another sudden lurch. They were sailing quite fast now, bounding over the waves, and the tower was coming nearer. It looked extremely dark. Not even the bright sunlight shining on the crystal walls seemed to be able to brighten it.

“I suppose most kender would give their topknots to visit a Tower of High Sorcery, but then I guess I’m not most kender,” Nightshade remarked. “My father said I wasn’t. He said it came from spending my time in graveyards talking to the dead. They were a bad influence on me.” Nightshade looked at little downcast at this.

“I think most kender would give their topknots to be able to do that,” Rhys told him.

Nightshade scratched his head. He’d never considered this. “You know. You might be right. Why, I remember once meeting a fellow kender in Solace, and when I told him I was a Nightstalker, he said-”

Nightshade stopped talking. He stared out to sea. Blinking, he rubbed his eyes, stared again, then tugged on Rhys’ sleeve.

“There are people out there in the water…” Nightshade cried. “Maybe they’re drowning! We have to help save them!”

Alarmed, Rhys risked standing up in the rocking boat to gain a better view. At first all he could see were sea birds and the occasional frothy white cap. Then he saw a person in the water, and then another, and still another.

“Mina!” Nightshade cried. “Steer the boat over to those people-”

“No, don’t,” Rhys said suddenly.

The people were far from shore, yet they were swimming strongly, not floundering or flailing. Hundreds of them, swimming, far from shore, heading for the tower…

“Rhys!” Nightshade cried. “Rhys, they’re Beloved and they’re swimming to the tower. Mina, stop! Turn the boat around!”

Mina shook her head. Her amber eyes gleamed with pleasure, her lips were parted in a smile, and she laughed for no other reason than pure joy. The sail boat traveled faster, seeming to leap over the waves.

“Mina!” Rhys called urgently. “Turn the boat around!”

She looked at him and smiled and waved.

“Those people are dangerous!” he cried, and he jabbed his finger in the direction of the undead, some of whom had reached the tower and were crawling onto the shore. He could see many more clustering around the entrance. “We must turn back!”

Mina stared at the Beloved in bewilderment, which quickly changed to dismay and then to anger.

“They have no business going to my tower,” she said and she steered the boat straight toward them.

“Rhys!” Nightshade howled.