The Cataclysm by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman

flick
     the reins, and continue on - the hour was growing late - but curiosity got the better of
     her. She slid from the wagon's bench, pushed through the weeds, and headed toward the glimmer she had seen. The nettles scratched at her ankles, but in a moment Matya forgot
     the sting.
    “Why, 'tis a knight 1” she gasped aloud, staring at the man who lay, unmoving, in the
     weeds at her feet.
    The man was clad in armor of beaten steel, but his visage was more that of a shiftless
     vagabond than a noble knight. His eyes were deeply set, his features thin and careworn,
     and the mouse-brown moustache that drooped over his mouth was coarse and scraggly.
    Whether he was, in truth, a knight or a looter in stolen armor, it didn't much matter now,
     Matya thought. His hair was matted with blood, and his skin was ashen with the pallor of
     death. She said the familiar words to appease the spirit of the dead, then knelt beside
     the corpse.
    The steel armor alone would be worth a fortune, but it was terribly heavy, and Matya was
     not entirely certain she would be able to remove it. However, the knight wore a leather
     purse at his belt, and that boded well for Matya's fortunes. Deftly, she undid the
     strings, peered inside, and gasped in wonder.
    A woman's face gazed out of the purse at her. The tiny face was so lifelike that, for a
     moment, Matya almost fancied it was real - a small, perfect maiden hidden within the pouch.
    “Why, it's a doll,” she realized after a heartbeat had passed.
    The doll was exquisitely made, fashioned of delicate bone-white porcelain. The young
     maiden's eyes were two glowing sapphires, and her cheeks and lips were touched with a
     blush of pink. It was a treasure fit for a lord's house, and Matya's eyes glimmered like
     gems themselves as she reached to lift it from the purse.
    A hand gripped her arm, halting her. Matya froze, biting her lip to stifle a scream. It
     was the dead man. His fingers, sticky with dried blood, dug into the flesh of her arm, and
     he gazed at her with pale, fey eyes.
    The knight was very much alive. *****
    “Tambor . . .” the knight whispered. He lay slumped against the wheel of Matya's wagon,
     his eyes shut. “She sings . . . Tambor . . .” His mumbling faded, and he drifted deeper into a feverish sleep. Matya sat near the small fire, sipping a cup of rose hip tea and watching the knight carefully. Twilight had descended on the grove of aspen trees
     where she had made camp, transforming all the colors of the world to muted shades of gray.
    Tambor, Matya thought. There's that word again. She had heard it several times in the
     knight's fevered rambling, but she did not know what it meant, or even whether it was the
     name of a place or a person. Whatever it was, it was important to him. As important as
     that doll, she thought. Even now, in his sleep, the knight clutched tightly at the purse
     that held the small porcelain figurine. It had to be valuable indeed.
    While Matya was not one to go out of her way to help others when it was unclear what - if
     any - reward she might gain from it, neither was she without a heart. The knight would
     have died had she left him there by the road, and she would not have wanted that weighing
     on her conscience to the end of her days. Besides, she suspected there was a good chance
     the knight would die regardless of her aid, in which case the doll would be hers, free and
     clear. Either way, it was worth her while to help.
    Getting the knight into her wagon had been no simple task. Fortunately, Matya was a strong
     woman, and the knight had roused himself enough to stumble most of the way with her help.
     She had hoped to make Garnet by nightfall, but she had tarried too long at the crossroads.
     Shadows were lengthening, and the town still lay many leagues ahead. Knowing night was not
     far off, fearful of Rabbit stumbling into a hole or missing the trail in the dark, she had
     made camp in