Amber and Ashes

by Margaret Weis

  “Well, yes,” the kender admitted. “Some of the dead develop a really nasty attitude and take it out on the first person they come across. I’ve had a few close calls.”

  “What do you do if you’re attacked? How do you defend yourself? You carry no weapon.”

  “Spirits don’t like the sight of steel,” Nightshade replied. “Or maybe it’s the smell of iron. I was never very clear on that. Anyhow, if I’m attacked, I just take to my heels. I’m faster than any old rattle-bones.”

  When darkness fell, Nightshade departed for battlefield. Rhys gave the kender a lengthy head-start, then he and Atta set off after him.

  The night was clear. Solinari was on the wane and Lunitari full and bright, giving the shadows a reddish tinge. The evening air was soft and scented with the perfume of wild roses. The woodland creatures were going about their business, their rustlings and barks and howls causing Atta no end of concern.

  In what he was now thinking of as his past life, Rhys would have enjoyed walking through the perfumed night. In that life, his own spirit would have been tranquil, his soul composed. He did not think he been blind to the evil in the world, to the ugliness of life. He understood that one was needed to balance the other. Or rather, he’d thought he’d understood. Now it was as if his brother’s hand had torn aside a curtain to show Rhys evil he had never imagined existed. In a way, Rhys conceded, he had been blind because he’d seen only what he’d wanted to see. He would never allow that to happen again.

  He had much to think about as he walked. He believed he was very close to catching up with his brother. Lleu had been in this village until two days ago. He had taken the road to Haven, a road that because of brigands and goblins was not now safe to travel. People who dared go abroad traveled in large groups for protection.

  Rhys had little to fear about from bandits. “Poor as a monk” was a household expression. One glimpse of monkish robes (even those of a strange color) and thieves turned away in disgust.

  Atta’s low rumble caused Rhys to abandon his thoughts and turn his attention to the task ahead. They had reached the battlefield and he could see Nightshade quite clearly, the red moon smiling down on him brightly, as if Lunitari found it all quite funny.

  Rhys chose a place in the shadows beneath a tree that, by its splintered branches, had been caught up in the fighting. He felt a prick from his conscience for spying on the kender, but the matter was too important, too urgent to be left to chance.

  “At least I’ve given Nightshade the benefit of the doubt,” Rhys said to Atta, as he watched the kender prowl hopefully around the battlefield. “Anyone else hearing such a tale would have hauled him off to the cells for the insane.”

  The battlefield was a large stretch of open ground, several acres in length and breadth. The battle had been fought only a few years previous, and although the field was now overgrown with weeds and grass, some scars of the conflict could still be seen.

  Any intact armor or weapons had been looted by either the victors or the townspeople. Left behind were broken spears, rusted bits of armor, a worn boot, a torn gauntlet, splintered arrows. Rhys had no idea who had been fighting whom in the battle. Not that it mattered.

  Nightshade roamed about. Once he stopped to pick up something off the ground. After examining it carefully, he dropped it into his pouch.

  He glanced about, sighed dismally, then shouted out, in neighborly tones, “Hullo! Anybody home?”

  No one replied. Nightshade roamed on. The night was calm, peaceful, and Rhys felt sleep start to overcome him. He shook his head to shake off the fuzziness, rubbed his eyes and drank some water from his flask. Atta tensed. Rhys could feel her body stiffen. Her ears pricked.

  “What—” he began, then his voice stuck in his throat.

  Nightshade had stooped to pick up a battered and dented helm. Pleased with his find, the kender put the helm on his head. The helm was far too large, but that didn’t bother Nightshade. He thunked himself on the top of the helm with his fist and endeavored to flip up the visor, which was somewhere around his chin.

  He was fumbling with the visor, which was rusted, and missed seeing the ghostly apparition rising up out of the ground almost directly in front of him. Rhys saw it clearly and even then he might have doubted his senses, but he could tell from Atta’s stare and her rigid muscles, taut beneath his hand, that she could see it, too.

  The specter was about the height and bulk of a human male. He was clad in armor—nothing as sophisticated as a knight might wear; just a few cast-off pieces cobbled together. He wore no helm and there was a ghastly wound on his head, a gash that had cleaved through his skull. His features were twisted in a scowl. The specter reached out a ghostly hand toward the kender, who was still happily ensconced in the helm, with no inkling of the horror in front of him.

  Rhys tried to call out a warning. His throat and mouth were so dry that he could make no sound. He might have sent Atta, but the dog was shivering, terrified.

  “Whoo boy, it got cold all of a sudden,” said Nightshade, his voice echoing inside the helm.

  He managed to free the visor about that time and it popped open. “Oh, hullo, there!” he said to the specter, whose hand was inches from his face. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were here. How have you been?”

  At the sound of the kender’s voice, the specter dropped its hand. It hovered uncertainly in front of Nightshade, as if trying to make up its mind to something.

  Awed, Rhys listened and watched and tried to make some sense of what was happening. Nothing in his training, his prayers, or meditation had prepared him for this sight. He stroked Atta, soothing her and reassuring himself at the same time. It was good to touch something warm and alive.

  Nightshade pulled off the helm and let it fall to the ground. “Sorry. Was that yours?” He saw that the specter was missing about half its skull. “Oh, I guess not. You probably could have used it. So things haven’t been going real well for you. Would you like to tell me about it?”

  It seemed that the specter was speaking, though Rhys could not hear the voice. He could see the spectral hand making angry gestures. The spectral head would turn to look off into the distance.

  Nightshade listened with calm attentiveness, his expression one of sympathy and concern.

  “There’s nothing here for you now,” Nightshade said at last. “Your wife has married someone else by now. She had to, even though she grieved for you and missed you. There were the kids to raise and she couldn’t manage the farm by herself. Your comrades lift a glass to you and say things like, ‘Do you remember the time old Charley did such and such?’ But they’ve moved on with their lives, too. You need to move on with yours. No, I’m not trying to be funny. Death is a part of life. The sort of dark and quiet part, but definitely a part. You’re not doing yourself any good hanging about here, fretting about how unfair it all was.”

  Nightshade listened to the specter again, then said, “You could look at it that way or you could take the view that the unknown is filled with new and exciting possibilities. Anything’s better than this, right? Skulking about here lost and alone. At least, give what I’ve said some thought. You don’t happen to play khas, do you? Would you like a game before you leave?”

  The specter apparently wasn’t interested. The ghastly form began to dissipate like mist in the moonlight.

  “Oh, I almost forgot!” Nightshade called. “Have you seen or heard anything from Chemosh lately? Chemosh. God of the Dead. You never heard of him? Well, thanks anyway. Good luck to you! Have a safe journey.”

  Rhys tried to pick up the shattered pieces of what he’d thought he’d known about life and death and sort them all out and reassemble them. At length, he found he couldn’t and he simply threw them all away. Time to begin again. He walked over to where Nightshade was standing. The kender was eyeing the helm and eyeing his pouch, as if trying to determine if it would fit.

  Hearing movement, Nightshade turned his head. His face brightened. Dropping the helm, he
came dashing up to them. “Rhys! Did you see that? A specter! He was kind of a dismal specter. Most of them are livelier, so to speak. Oh, and he doesn’t know anything about Chemosh. My guess is the man died before the gods came back. I hope he feels better now that’s he’s on the next part of his journey. What’s the matter with Atta? She’s not sick, is she?” ”

  “Nightshade,” said Rhys contritely, “I want to apologize.”

  The kender’s face screwed up in a bemused wrinkle. “If you want to, Rhys, you can. I don’t mind. Who are you going to apologize to?”

  “You, Nightshade,” said Rhys, smiling. “I doubted you and I spied on you, and I’m sorry.”

  “You doubted—” The kender paused. He glanced at Rhys, glanced at the dog, glanced around the empty battle field. “I see. You came after me to make sure I wasn’t lying when I said I could talk to the dead.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I should have trusted you.”

  “That’s all right,” said Nightshade, though he said it with a little sigh. “I’m used to being not trusted. Comes with the territory.”

  “Will you forgive me?” Rhys asked.

  “Did you bring any food with you?”

  Rhys reached into his scrip, pulled out a hunk of cheese, and handed it to the kender.

  “I forgive you,” said Nightshade, taking a large and contented bite. He cocked an eye at Rhys. “It’s very odd.”

  “It’s ordinary goat cheese—”

  “Not the cheese. It’s quite good. No, what I mean is that it’s odd that the specter didn’t know Chemosh. None of the specters or ghosts or haunts I’ve met have been visited by him or his clerics. True, Chemosh wasn’t around when that particular specter was alive, but it seems to me that if I were the Lord of Death, the first thing I would have done when I came back was to send out my clerics to do a sweep of all the battlefields and dungeons and dragon lairs, to enslave as many wandering spirits to serve me as I could find.”

  “Maybe the clerics just missed this one,” Rhys suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” said Nightshade. He munched his cheese with a thoughtful expression.

  “What do you think is going on then?” Rhys prodded, truly interested to hear what the kender had to say. He’d developed a good deal of respect for Nightshade in the past hour.

  The kender gazed out over the dark and empty field. “I think Chemosh has no need for dead slaves.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because he’s finding slaves among the living.”

  “Like my brother,” said Rhys, with a sudden cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. Other than their first conversation in the graveyard, when Rhys had told Nightshade about Lleu and the murders, the two had not discussed it much. The subject was not one Rhys liked to dwell on. Apparently Nightshade had been giving the matter thought, however.

  Nightshade nodded. He handed back the remainder of the cheese and Rhys returned it to the scrip, much to Atta’s disappointment.

  “How do you suppose Chemosh is doing that?” Rhys asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nightshade answered, “but if I’m right, it’s pretty scary.”

  Rhys had to agree. It was very scary.

  aven was a large city, the largest Rhys had visited thus far. He and Nightshade spent days tramping from place to place, patiently giving a descripion of his brother, searching for someone who had seen Lleu. When they finally found a tavern owner who remembered him, Rhys learned that his brother had not stayed in Haven long but had almost immediately moved on. The best guess was that he’d gone to Solace, the reasoning being that everyone traveling through Abanasinia ended up in Solace. Rhys, Nightshade, and Atta journeyed on.

  Rhys had been to Solace with his father when he was a child and he clearly remembered the city, famous in legend and lore for the fact that its houses and shops were built among the branches of enormous vallenwood trees. Its very name conjured up images of a place where the wounded of heart and mind and body could go to find comfort.

  Rhys’s childhood memories of Solace were of a town of remarkable beauty and friendly people. He found Solace much changed. The town had grown into a city of noise and bustle, confusion and turmoil, roaring with a loud and raucous voice. Rhys could honestly say that had if it not been for the legendary Inn of the Last Home, he would not have recognized the place. And even the Inn had changed, having grown and expanded so that it now sprawled across the branches of several vallenwood trees.

  Because the original dwellings had been built in the treetops, the citizens of Solace had not needed to build walls to protect their homes and businesses. That had worked well in the days when Solace was a small town. Now, however, travelers flowed in and out of the city unchecked, with no guards to ask questions. People of all sorts filled the streets: elves, dwarves, kender by the score. Rhys saw more different races in thirty seconds in Solace than he’d seen in all his thirty years.

  He was astonished beyond measure to see two draconians, one male and one female, stroll down the main road with as much confidence as if they owned the place. People went out of their way to avoid the “lizard men,” but no one appeared to be alarmed by their presence, except Atta, who growled and barked at them. He heard someone say they were from the draconian city of Teyr and that they were here to meet some hill dwarves to discuss trade deals.

  Gully dwarves fought and scrabbled among the refuse and a goblinish face leered at Rhys from the shadows of an alleyway. The goblin vanished when a troop of guards, armed with pikes and wearing chain mail, marched down the street, accompanied by a parade of giggling small boys and girls wearing pots on their heads and carrying sticks.

  Humans were the predominant race. Black-skinned humans from Ergoth mingled with crudely dressed barbarians from the Plains and richly clothed humans from Palanthas, all of them jostling and shoving each other and trading insults.

  Every type of occupation was represented in Solace as well. Three wizards, two wearing red robes and one wearing black, bumped into Rhys. They were so absorbed in their argument that they never noticed him or begged his pardon. A group of actors, who referred to themselves as Gilean’s Traveling Troupe, came dancing down the street, beating a drum and banging tambours, adding to the noise level. Everyone either had something to sell or was looking for something to buy, and they all were shouting about it at the top of their lungs.

  While all this was happening on the streets below. Rhys looked up to see more people traveling along the swaying plank and rope bridges running from one vallenwood tree to the next, like the silken filaments of a gigantic spider web. Access to the tree levels was limited, it seemed, for he noted guards posted at various points, questioning and halting those who could not convince them that they had business up above.

  As he slogged through the mud churned up by an unending stream of traffic, Rhys marveled at the changes that had come to Ansalon while he’d been hidden away in the never-changing world of the monastery. From what he’d seen, he hadn’t missed much. The noise, the sights, the smells—ranging from rotting garbage to unwashed gully dwarf, from day-old fish to the scent of meat being roasted over hot coals and bread coming fresh from the baker’s oven—left Rhys longing for the solitude and tranquility of the hills, the simplicity of his former life.

  Atta, by her demeanor, was in agreement. She often looked up at him, her brown eyes moist with confusion, yet trusting him to guide them through it. Rhys petted her, reassuring her, if he could not reassure himself. He might be daunted by the size of Solace, by the numbers of people, but that did not change his resolve to continue to search for his brother. At least, he now knew where to look. Lleu had rarely missed stopping at a single inn or tavern along with the way.

  Rhys had one other option, or so he hoped. The idea came to him when he saw a small group of black-robed clerics walking openly down the street. A city the size and disposition of Solace might well have a temple dedicated to Chemosh.

  Rhys turned his steps toward the famous Inn of the Las
t Home, thinking that he would start by asking for information there. He had to stop once on the way to extricate Nightshade from a group of kender, who latched onto him as though he were a long-lost cousin (which, in fact, two of them claimed to be).

  The famous inn where, according to legend, the Heroes of the Lance had been accustomed to meet, was filled to capacity. People stood in line, waiting to enter. As customers departed, a certain number were admitted. The line began at the foot of the long flight of stairs and extended down the street. Rhys and Nightshade took their places at the end, waiting patiently. Rhys kept watch on all those traipsing up and down the stairs, hoping one of them might be Lleu.

  “Look at all these people!” exclaimed Nightshade with enthusiasm. “I’m certain to raise a few coppers here. That roasted goat meat smells wonderful, doesn’t it, Atta?”

  The dog sat at Rhys’s side, her gaze divided between her master and Nightshade. The kender thought happily that Atta had developed a true affection for him, for she never let him out of her sight. Rhys did not disabuse his companion of this notion. Atta took to “kender-herding” quite as well as she took to herding sheep.

  As he watched those leaving the Inn, Rhys listened to the chatter around him, picking up various bits of local gossip, hoping he might hear something that would lead him to Lleu. Nightshade was busy advertising his services, telling those ahead of him in line that he could put them in contact with any relative who had shuffled off this mortal coil for the bargain price of a single steel, payable upon delivery of the said relative. The watchful dog, meanwhile, kept the kender from accidentally “borrowing” any pouches, purses, knives, rings, or handkerchiefs by insinuating her body between that of Nightshade and any potential “customer.”

  The crowd was generally in a good humor, despite the fact that they were having to wait. That good humor suddenly deteriorated.

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear me the first time, gentlemen,” a man stated, his voice rising. “You have no right to cut in front of me.”