Amber and Blood Page 5

  Rhys stared at her, dumbstruck.

  “I can see you’re not.” Zeboim shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t much matter. You’re stuck with her. To continue my story, poor Mina had the misfortune to fall in love with Chemosh and—just like a man—he broke her heart. Mina tried to win him back by giving him a gift. She dragged the Tower of High Sorcery up out of my sea and stuck it on that island out there. We were all very impressed. That was the first hint most of us had that she was a god. Majere, of course, already knew.”

  “I don’t believe … I can’t believe …” Rhys paused, recalling the name of the place she had referred to as home. “If what you say is true, Majesty, how did she come to be like this? A child?”

  “The gods only know,” said Zeboim. “No, wait. I take that back. We gods haven’t a clue. You think I’m lying, don’t you?”

  Rhys was embarrassed. “Majesty—”

  She grasped hold of his arm, digging her nails through the fabric of his robes into his flesh. Staring into his eyes, past his eyes, into his very soul, she hissed at him.

  “Believe me or not, as you choose. As I said, it doesn’t matter. Mina came to you. What I want to know is … why? Did Majere send her to you? We took an oath, all of us. We’re not supposed to interfere. Did Majere break that oath?”

  Rhys realized in that instant that Zeboim was telling the truth, and a shudder ran through him. He looked past the goddess at the forlorn little girl, wrapped in a frayed altar cloth, asleep on the cold, damp floor of a cave, and he remembered her floundering in the waves of the god-driven storm. He did not understand the workings of heaven, but he did know something of the suffering of mortals.

  “Perhaps she came because she is alone and afraid,” said Rhys, “and she needed a friend.”

  Zeboim tore Rhys apart with her gaze, studied the pieces, then hurled him away from her, sent him staggering back against the stone wall.

  “Good luck with your new little friend, then, Monk.”

  The Sea Goddess vanished in a blast of wind and rain.

  Shaken, Rhys gazed down at the child.

  “Majere,” he prayed, troubled, “is it your will that I undertake this task?”

  “Rhys!” yelled a voice, and Rhys was momentarily startled. Then he realized the voice belonged to Nightshade.

  “Rhys! Is it safe to come in?” the kender yelled from outside the grotto. “Is Zeboim gone?”

  “She is gone.” For the time being, Rhys added mentally, certain this was not the last they would see of her.

  Nightshade entered cautiously, staring hard into the shadows as though certain she would jump out at him. Then he saw the fire and he snapped his fingers.

  “Oops, I knew I forgot something. I was supposed to go fetch tinder—”

  “No need now,” said Rhys, smiling.

  “Yeah, I can see that. I guess I forgot about the tinder because I was so excited about finding something else. I didn’t want to bring it in if you-know-who was still here. But since she’s gone, I’ll go get it.”

  He darted out of the grotto and returned carrying a long, slender piece of driftwood. He held it out proudly.

  “I found it washed up on shore. Doesn’t it remind you of your old staff? The emetic or whatever it was you called it? Anyway, Atta and I thought you might be able to use it.”

  “Emmide,” said Rhys softly. He took hold of the staff, clasped his fingers around it. A pleasant warmth stole into his arm and spread throughout his body. And it was in this warmth that he heard the god’s voice, knew Majere’s answer.

  Rhys rested the staff against the wall and spread the girl’s wet smock near the fire to dry. She slept deeply, her breathing even and quiet. He sank down onto the floor and leaned back against the wall. He was exhausted, mentally and physically. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept.

  “I heard Zeboim yelling at you. What did she want?” Nightshade asked.

  “You and Atta were right. This little girl is Mina,” said Rhys. He closed his eyes.

  “Whoo boy!” breathed Nightshade.

  He removed his pouches, then took off his boots and emptied out the water and arranged them close to the blaze to dry off.

  “My boots still smell of salt pork,” he said. “Which reminds me. It’s been a long time since dinner. I wonder if there’s any of that pork left.”

  He went over to the barrel of salt pork the minotaur had left them for food and peered inside. Atta watched him hopefully. He shook his head, and the dog’s ears drooped.

  “Oh, well. I guess we can wait until lunch, can’t we, girl?” Nightshade said, giving her a pat. “Say, Rhys, did Zeboim tell you how Mina turned into a little kid? I’ve heard of people aging ten years overnight, but never the other way around. Did the goddess have something to do with that? Did she? Rhys?”

  The kender poked him. “Rhys, are you asleep?”

  “What?” Rhys woke with a start.

  “Sorry,” said Nightshade remorsefully. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “That’s all right. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. What was your question?” Rhys asked patiently.

  “I was asking if Zeboim did this. She seems fond of shrinking people.” The kender was still bitter over the time the goddess had reduced him to the size of a khas piece and stuffed him inside Rhys’s pouch, then sent them both off to fight a death knight.

  Rhys shook his head. “The Sea Goddess was shocked to see Mina as a child.”

  “So what did she say happened?”

  “According to Zeboim, Mina is a god who doesn’t know she’s a god. A god who was tricked by Takhisis into thinking she was human. Mina is a god of light, duped into serving Darkness.”

  Nightshade regarded Rhys with narrowed eyes. “Did you hit your head again?”

  “I’m fine,” Rhys assured him.

  “Mina a god.” Nightshade snorted. “If you ask me, it’s all a bunch of hooey. Zeboim did this. She turned Mina into a little kid and sent her to us just to annoy us.”

  “I don’t think so,” Rhys said quietly. “Mina woke up while you were gone. She told me she had run away from home and she asked me to take her back.”

  Nightshade found this news cheering. “See there? Where does the kid want to go? Flotsam? It’s not far, just up the coast. She probably got swept out to sea—”

  “Godshome,” said Rhys.

  Nightshade’s brow wrinkled. “Godshome? That’s not a place. No one lives in Godshome except the—”

  He gulped, and his eyes got round, and he gave a low whistle that made Atta’s ear twitch.

  “I don’t think Zeboim told her to say that,” Rhys added with a sigh.

  Nightshade looked at Mina and chewed his lower lip. Suddenly, he brightened.

  “I’ll bet you heard her wrong. I’ll bet she said ‘Goat’s Home’.”

  “Goat’s Home?” Rhys repeated, smiling. “I have never heard of such a place, my friend.”

  “You don’t know everything,” Nightshade stated, “even if you are a monk. There are lots and lots of places you’ve never heard of.”

  “I have heard of Godshome,” Rhys said.

  “Stop saying that!” Nightshade ordered. “You know we’re not going there. It’s not possible.”

  “Why?” Rhys yawned again.

  “Well, for one reason because nobody knows where Godshome is, or even if Godshome is. And for two reasons, if Godshome is anywhere, it’s close to Neraka, and that’s a bad place, a very bad place. And for three reasons, if Godshome is close to Neraka, that means it’s far from here—clear on the other side of the continent—and it would take us months, maybe years, to travel …”

  Nightshade stopped. “Rhys? Rhys! Are you listening to my reasons?”

  Rhys wasn’t. He sat with his back against the wall, his head slumped forward, his chin resting on his chest. He was asleep, fast asleep, so deeply asleep that the kender’s voice and even a couple of pokes on the arm could not wake him.

  Nightshade sig
hed and then he stood up and walked over to the little girl and squatted down to stare at her closely. She certainly didn’t look like a god. She looked like a drowned rat. He felt again the overwhelming sadness that he had felt when he’d seen Mina, the grown-up Mina. He didn’t like that, and so he wiped his eyes and nose on his sleeve and then glanced back surreptitiously at Rhys.

  His friend was still asleep and would probably sleep for a good long time. Long enough for Nightshade to have a talk with this kid—whoever she was—and tell her that where she really wanted to go was the thriving metropolis of Goat’s Home and that she should travel there on her own, and she should leave now very quietly so as not to disturb Rhys.

  “Hey, kid,” Nightshade whispered loudly, and he reached out his hand to shake her awake.

  His hand hung, poised, in midair. His fingers started to tremble a little at the thought of actually touching her, and he snatched his hand back. He continued to squat there, gazing at Mina and chewing on his lip.

  What did he see when he looked at her? What made her different in his sight from other mortals? What made her different from the dead he could see and talk to? What made her different from the undead? Nightshade looked intently at the child, and tears again flooded his eyes. He saw beauty, unimaginable beauty. Beauty that shamed the most radiant, glorious sunrise and made the glittering stars seem pale and plain in comparison. Her beauty made his very soul stand still in awe, for fear the slightest whisper might cause the wondrous sight to slip away from him. But it wasn’t her beauty that wrenched his heart and caused the tears to roll down his cheeks.

  Her beauty was clothed in ugliness. She was smeared with blood, cloaked in the shroud of death and destruction. Evil, dread and horrible, was a pall over her.

  “She is a god,” he said under his breath. “A god of light who’s done really horrible things. I’ve known it all along. I just didn’t know I knew it. That’s what made me feel all weepy inside.”

  Nightshade didn’t think he could explain this to Rhys, because he wasn’t sure he could explain it to himself. He decided to talk it all over with Atta. He’d found that telling things to a dog was a lot easier than telling things to humans, mainly because Atta never asked questions.

  But when he turned around to discuss Mina with Atta, he saw that the dog had rolled onto her side and was deep in slumber.

  Nightshade slumped against the wall beside Rhys. The kender was sitting there, thinking mind-boggling thoughts, and listening to Rhys’s soft breathing, and the girl’s soft breathing, and Atta’s soft breathing, and the wind’s soft breathing, sighing over the sand dunes, and the waves coming to shore and leaving the shore and coming back to the shore and leaving the shore …

  ightshade woke suddenly, jolted awake by Atta’s bark.

  Atta was on her feet. Her legs were stiff, her hackles raised, and she was staring intently at the opening of the grotto. Nightshade could hear the sounds of crunching, as of heavy footfalls walking in their direction.

  They were close and getting closer.

  Atta gave another sharp, warning bark. Mina stirred at the sound and drew the cloth over her head and went back to sleep. The heavy crunching noise stopped. A shadow fell over the entrance, blotting out the sun.

  “Monk! I know you’re in there.”

  That voice was muffled, yet Nightshade had no trouble recognizing it.

  “Krell!” he yelped. “Rhys, it’s Krell!”

  Nightshade was as immune to fear as the next kender, but he was also blessed with a good deal more common sense than most kender; a fact which he attributed to spending a lot of his time conversing with the dead. And so, instead of rushing out to greet the death knight, as any other kender would have done, Nightshade scuttled backward on all fours and yelled again for Rhys.

  “I am awake,” said Rhys calmly.

  He was on his feet, the emmide in his hands.

  “Atta, silence. Here.”

  The dog trotted over to stand beside him. She no longer barked, though she continued to growl.

  Krell swaggered into the grotto. He was no longer wearing the accursed armor of a death knight. His armor was that of death. His helm was a ram’s skull. The horns curled back from his head, and his eyes were visible inside the skull’s eye sockets. His breastplate was made of bone—the top part of the skull of some gigantic beast. His arms and legs were encased in bone, as if he wore his skeleton on the outside of his body. Bony spines protruded from his hands and elbows and shoulders, and he carried a sword with a bone hilt.

  He was a formidable sight, yet the eyes that glared out from behind the ram’s skull did not burn with the terrifying fire of undeath. His eyes were dull and flat. He did not stink of death. He just stank; he was sweating under the weight of his armor. His breath rasped, for the armor was heavy, and he’d been forced to walk all the way from the castle.

  Nightshade quit crawling and sat back on his heels.

  “Krell, you’re alive!” said Nightshade, though he was not sure this was an improvement. “You’re not a death knight anymore.”

  “Shut up!” Krell snarled. He looked searchingly around the grotto, glanced without interest at the sleeping child, glared at the kender, then turned back to Rhys. “I’ve come for Mina. In the name of my lord Chemosh, I demand to know where she is.”

  “Not here,” said Nightshade promptly. “We don’t know where she is. We haven’t seen her, have we, Rhys?”

  Rhys was silent.

  Krell’s eyes narrowed. Though dimly lit, the grotto wasn’t very big and there were no nooks or crannies where someone could hide.

  “Where’s Mina?” Krell asked again.

  “You can see for yourself,” said Nightshade loudly. “She’s not here.”

  “Then where is she?” Krell demanded. He kept his gaze on Rhys. “Remember the last time we met, Monk? Remember what I did to you? I broke almost every bone in your hand. Now I won’t waste time breaking bones. I’ll just cut your hand off the wrist—”

  Krell drew his sword and took a step toward Rhys.

  “Atta, stop—” Rhys began, but he was too late.

  Atta lunged at Krell and sank her teeth into his calf muscle, a part of his leg left unprotected by the bone shin-guards.

  Krell howled in pain and, twisting around, he peered down at his leg. Blood oozed from two rows of tooth marks. He snarled in rage and tried to slash at the dog with his sword. As Atta leaped deftly out of the way, Rhys blocked Krell’s blow with his staff.

  Krell snorted in derision and hacked at the staff with his blade, thinking to snap it. Rhys swiftly raised the staff and slammed it into Krell’s hand, knocking the sword from his grasp. Krell wrung his fingers and glared at Rhys, who had taken a step backward.

  Krell bent down to retrieve his blade.

  “Atta, guard,” said Rhys.

  Atta crouched over the sword. Her lip curled back from her teeth, and she snapped viciously at Krell’s hand. He snatched it back, his fingers bloody.

  “I think you should leave now,” Rhys said. “Tell your master that the Mina he seeks is not with me.”

  “You’re a rotten liar, Monk!” Krell said. His breath from the skull helm was foul. “You know where she is and you’ll tell me. You’ll be begging to tell me! I don’t need a sword to kill you in any number of nasty ways.”

  Rhys did not feel fear, as he had felt before in the presence of the death knight. He felt disgust, revulsion.

  Krell was not driven to kill by a holy curse. Krell killed now for small, mean reasons. He killed because he reveled in the pain and fear of his victim, and because he liked holding the power of life and death in his grubby hands.

  “Atta,” Rhys said calmly, “go to Nightshade.”

  The kender grabbed hold of the growling dog and clamped his hand over her muzzle.

  “Let Rhys handle this,” he whispered.

  “I just have to say a word to Chemosh, Monk,” said Krell. “And he’ll flay the flesh from your bones, for starters—�
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  Rhys gripped his staff firmly, holding it upright before him, his hands clasped over it. He had no idea if this staff was blessed as had been his other staff. Perhaps it was. Perhaps not. He knew Majere stood with him. He could feel the god as a core of peace and calm and tranquility.

  The gleam in Krell’s eyes turned ugly.

  “You’ll tell me.”

  He walked over to the girl, who had slept through the commotion, and reaching down, grabbed hold of the child by the hair and yanked her from her slumber.

  Mina gasped and cried out. Wriggling in Krell’s grasp, she tried to free herself.

  Krell gripped her tightly and put his huge hand to her throat.

  Mina gave a little whimper and went rigid and stiff in the man’s grasp.

  “I always did like ’em young,” Krell chortled. “Here’s a hint of what will happen to the girl if you don’t talk, Monk.”

  Krell dug long, yellow, skeleton-like nails into Mina’s throat. Thin trails of blood trickled from the cuts in her flesh. Mina flinched in pain, but she didn’t make a sound. Her amber eyes hardened into fixed resolve.

  “Uh-oh,” said Nightshade, and he dragged Atta back against the wall.

  “I’ll cut deeper next time. Where is Mina?” Krell demanded, glaring at Rhys.

  But it was Mina who answered.

  “Right here,” she said.

  She seized hold of the bone bracers on his arm and dug her fingers into them. The bracers split and cracked and fell off. She kept digging deeper and blood started to well up from beneath her fingers.

  Krell grunted in pain and tried to wrench his arm free.

  Mina gave his arm a twist. Bones snapped, and Krell screamed in agony and, moaning, sagged to his knees. The jagged edges of blood-covered bone could be seen jutting out from blue-tinged, bloody flesh.

  Mina glared at him.

  “You hurt me. You’re a bad man.” She wrinkled her nose. “And you smell. I don’t like you. My name is Mina. What do you want with me?”

  “This is some sort of trick—” he snarled.