Amber and Ashes

by Margaret Weis

  “I can’t be sure of that.” Rhys shook his head.

  “Yes, you can! Look in her eyes, Rhys! Look in her eyes!”

  Rhys looked into the girl’s eyes. He saw not emptiness, as he had seen in his brother’s eyes, but something more terrible. He had seen such a look once before and he tried to recall where. Then it came to him—the eyes of a starving wolf. Driven by hunger, desperate to feed, the animal’s need overrode every other instinct, including fear. Rhys had been armed with two flaming torches. Atta tore at the wolf’s flank with her teeth. The wolf had gone straight for Rhys’s throat …

  He saw the truth of the kender’s words in Lucy’s eyes. She would kill again to satisfy that desperate need. Again and again …

  Rhys lifted the emmide and jabbed it straight into the girl’s forehead. Her head snapped back and he heard, quite clearly, the neck bone crack. She slumped to the ground, her head twisted at an odd angle. Rhys whipped around to face his brother.

  Lleu lounged against a tree, his arms folded across his chest, watching the proceedings with a smile.

  Rhys gripped the staff and started to advance on his brother.

  “Look out! Behind you!” Nightshade’s voice rose shrilly.

  Rhys turned, stared, horrified.

  Lucy walked toward him, hips swaying, lips parted, hands outstretched.

  “Chemosh will have your soul,” she said to him, laughing, lilting. Her head was at an odd angle from where he’d broken her neck. With a twist and a jerk, she righted it and kept coming. “Whether you will it or not.”

  He could hear, behind him, the scraping of Lleu’s sword sliding from its scabbard. Rhys faced Lucy, holding her at bay with the emmide, his eyes watching her while his ears kept track of Lleu’s movements. Nightshade was yammering something and waving his hands, as though he was casting some sort of magic spell. Rhys wished the kender would be quiet. He heard a rustle in the grass, a crackle of brown pine needles, and Lleu’s sudden, indrawn breath.

  Rhys sprang sideways, twisting his body. The sword sliced the air where he had been standing.

  Lleu’s wild lunge carried him halfway across the clearing. Rhys smacked Lucy in the face with the emmide. The blow smashed her nose, spread it all over her face. A thin trail of blood trickled from the wound, but not the gushing torrent that should have flowed from such an injury. She cried out, more in anger than in pain, and staggered backward.

  Rhys shifted about to face Lleu in time to see his brother run at him again, sword in one hand, knife in the other.

  Rhys struck the sword with his staff, broke it in two. Twirling the staff rapidly so that it looked like a windmill in a high gale, he brought it down hard on Lleu’s wrist, heard the snap of bone. Lleu dropped the knife. Rhys remembered clearly the last time he’d struck Lleu, he’d also cried out in pain. Lleu did not cry out now, did not even appear to notice the fact that his hand no longer functioned.

  Weaponless, Lleu flung himself at his brother, grappling for his throat with one good hand, flailing at him with his broken hand, using it as a club.

  His soul sick with horror, Rhys side-stepped. Lleu lurched past him, and as he went, Rhys kicked his feet out from underneath him. Lleu fell onto his stomach.

  Standing over his fallen brother, Rhys drove the butt end of the staff with all his strength into Lleu’s spinal column, separating the vertebrae, smashing through to the spinal cord, severing it.

  Rhys fell back, on the defensive, watching his brother.

  “My mystic spell didn’t work!” Nightshade panted, running toward him. “I’ve cast that spell a hundred zillion times and it always stops undead. Usually bowls ’em over like nine pins. It didn’t even faze your brother.”

  Lleu grimaced, as if he’d stubbed his toe, then, slowly, as though putting himself back together, he started to regain his feet. He rubbed his back, arching it.

  “If you want my opinion, Rhys,” the kender added, gasping for breath, “you can’t do anything to kill them. Now would be a good time to run away!”

  Rhys didn’t answer. He was watching Lleu.

  “Right now!” Nightshade urged, tugging on Rhys’s sleeve.

  “I told you before, Rhys,” said Lleu. He reached down to his maimed hand, grabbed the wrist and snapped it back in place. “I am one of the Beloved of Chemosh. I have his gift. Life unending …”

  “I am also Beloved of Chemosh,” said Lucy. She appeared oblivious to the fact that her nose was mangled and bloodied. “I have his gift. Life unending. You can have it, too, Rhys. Give yourself to Chemosh.”

  The two corpses advanced on him, their eyes alight, not with life, but with the desperate need to take life.

  Bile filled Rhys’s mouth. His stomach clenched. He turned and fled, running through the forest, crashing into tree limbs, plunging headlong into weed patches. He stopped to be sick, and then he ran again, ran from the mocking laughter that danced among the trees, ran from the body of the girl in his arms, ran from the bodies in the mass grave at the monastery. He ran blindly, heedlessly, ran until he had no more strength and he fell to the ground, gasping and sobbing. He was sick again and again, even when there was nothing left to purge, and then he heaved up blood. At last, exhausted, he rolled over on his back and lay there, his body clenched and shaking.

  Here Nightshade found him.

  Although the kender had recommended running away, he hadn’t been prepared for Rhys to act on his advice in quite such a sudden manner. Caught off guard, Nightshade made a slow start. The hungry eyes of the two Beloved of Chemosh turning in his direction put an extra spring in the kender’s step. He couldn’t see Rhys, but he could hear him tearing and slashing his way through the forest. Kender have excellent night vision, much better than humans, and Nightshade soon came across Rhys, lying on the forest floor, eyes closed, breathing labored.

  “Now don’t you go dying on me,” the kender ordered, squatting down beside his friend.

  He laid his hand on Rhys’s forehead and felt it warm. His breathing was harsh and rasping from his raw throat, but strong. Nightshade recited a little singsong chant he’d learned from his parents and stroked the monk’s hair soothingly, much the way the kender petted Atta.

  Rhys sighed deeply. His body relaxed. He opened his eyes and, seeing Nightshade bending over him, gave a wan smile.

  “How are you feeling?” Nightshade asked anxiously.

  “Much better,” Rhys said. His stomach had ceased to churn, his raw throat felt warm and soothed, as if he’d drunk a honey posset. “You have hidden talents, seemingly.”

  “Just a little healing spell I picked up from my parents,” Nightshade replied modestly. “It comes in handy sometimes—mending broken bones and stopping bleeding and making fevers go away. I can’t do anything major, not like bringing back the dead—” He gulped, bit his lip. “Oops. Sorry. Didn’t mean to mention that.”

  Rhys rose swiftly to his feet. “How long was I unconscious?”

  “Not long. You might have waited for me, you know?”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” Rhys said softly. “I couldn’t think of anything except how horrible—” He shook his head. “Are they coming after us?”

  Nightshade glanced back over his shoulder. “I don’t know. I guess not. I don’t hear them, do you?”

  Rhys shook his head. “I wish I could.”

  “You want them to chase after us? They want to kill us! Give us to Chemosh!”

  “Yes, I know. But if they were coming after us, it would mean that they fear us. As it is—” He shrugged. “They don’t care what happens to us. That’s disturbing.”

  “I see,” said Nightshade solemnly. “They know there’s nothing we can do to stop them. And they’re right. My magic had no effect on them. And that’s never happened to me before. Well, not since I was a little kender and just starting out. Maybe if we had a holy weapon—”

  “The emmide is a holy weapon blessed by the god. Majere gave it to me, a parting gift.” Rhys tightened his grip on the s
taff. He could see Atta prancing with it in her mouth and he felt a momentary warmth in the midst of the chill darkness. “Even though the wielder of the staff may not be blessed by Majere, the weapon is. And you as you saw, it could not slay my brother or even slow him down much. As Lleu said, he’s not afraid that we might tell someone that he is a murderer. Who would believe us?”

  “I guess you’re right,” said Nightshade. “I never thought about it that way. So what do we do?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think rationally any more.” Rhys looked around. “I have no idea where we are or how to get back to the Inn. Do you?”

  “Not much,” said Nightshade cheerfully. “But I see lights over in that direction. Don’t you?”

  “No, but then I do not have a kender’s eyes.” Rhys put his hand on Nightshade’s shoulder. “You lead the way. Thank you for your help, my friend.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Nightshade. He sounded dispirited, though, not his usual cheerful self. He started walking, but he wasn’t watching where he was going and he almost immediately stepped into a hole.

  “Ouch,” he said and rubbed his ankle.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you, Rhys.”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “You’re not going to like it,” Nightshade warned.

  Rhys sighed. “Can it wait until morning?

  “I suppose it could. Except … well, it might be important.”

  “Go ahead then.”

  “I saw more people like your brother and Lucy. I mean, like those things that used to be your brother and Lucy. I saw them today, in Solace.”

  The kender’s face was a white glimmer in Solinari’s light.

  “How many?” Rhys asked, despairing.

  “Two. Both of them young women. Pretty, too. But dead. Dead as dead can be.” Nightshade shook his head sadly. “I would have told you before, except I didn’t know what I was seeing. Not until I saw your brother in the tavern. Then I knew. Those women were just like him—no spirit light shining from them, yet they were walking about as happy as you please, talking, laughing …”

  Rhys thought back to the miller’s daughter, who had taken up with Lleu, then run away from her home. How many more young women had Lleu seduced, murdered, and given their souls to Chemosh? Rhys saw again the terrible hunger in Lucy’s eyes. How many young men would these women seduce in their turn? Seduce and murder. The Beloved of Chemosh.

  “No one knows what they are about, because no one knows they are dead,” he said to himself, as the awful perfection of the god’s scheme struck him.

  Rhys knew the truth of the matter, but as he had told the kender, who would believe him? How could he convince anyone? Nightshade could always tell what he saw, but kender were not known for their veracity. Rhys might seize hold of Lucy, truss her up and drag her before the magistrates, demand that they look into her eyes. Rhys could envision their reaction. He would be the one arrested, locked up as a raving lunatic.

  Death had a new face and that face was young and beautiful; Death’s body whole and strong.

  Rhys could shout this to the world.

  And no one would believe him.

  ina ran her fingers through the man’s fair hair. He had soft, fine hair, like that of a child. The bangs were cut short and fell over his forehead, and she brushed it out of the way to see his eyes. She could not recall his name. She never remembered their names. She remembered the eyes, however, remembered the seeking, the yearning, and wondering. Pain, sometimes, unhappiness, anger, frustration. Adoration, of course. They all adored her. The young man seized her hand and kissed her fingers.

  During the War of Souls, her soldiers had adored her. They adored her as she led them to death. Adored her as she knelt over them and prayed for them, sent their souls into the vast river of the lost. She saw the fear in their eyes, fear of the unknown.

  So much fear. The fear of life, of living. She had the power to take away the fear. Take away the unknown. At her kiss, the spirit left the body, tottered a short distance, arms extended to Chemosh, as a babe totters to its mother. Chemosh sent the spirit back to the body, bathed, cleansed, stripped of all uncomfortable feeling. No love, no guilt, no anguish, no jealousy …

  “You will be beloved of Chemosh,” she said to the young man, his lips warm on her open palm. “You will have unending life. An end to pain. You will never know cold or hunger.”

  “One god’s the same as another, I suppose,” said the young man, and his breath was hot on her neck. “They promise and never deliver, at least from what I hear.”

  “Chemosh will give you all that I have promised,” Mina said, brushing back the fair hair. “Will you take him for your god?”

  “If you come with him,” said the young man, and he laughed.

  “She comes with him,” said a voice. “She brings him.”

  Her lover sprang to his feet. They had spread a blanket in a secluded place on the riverbank, a bower of damp leaves and tree roots and crushed grass.

  “Who are you?” the young man demanded of the handsome, elegantly dressed god who seemed to have sprung from the earth, for he had heard no sound of his approach.

  “Chemosh,” he answered, and as the young man’s jaw dropped, the god reached out his hand and touched the young man on his chest, over his heart. “And you are mine.”

  The young man gasped in pain and clutched his chest. His body shuddered. He sank to his knees. His eyes stared at the god, as the light slowly faded from them. He pitched forward on his face and lay still. Chemosh stepped over the body. He looked at Mina, his expression dark and frowning.

  “I do not like this,” he said.

  “How have I displeased you, my lord?” asked Mina. She rose with dignity to face him. “I do all that you require of me.”

  What she had said was perfectly true and that only made Chemosh angrier; that and the fact that he did not understand why he should be angry with at her at all.

  “You are a High Priestess of the Lord of Death,” Chemosh stated. “It is not fitting that these yokels should paw at you with their coarse, ham-fisted hands. You seem to take great pleasure in their pawing and mauling, however. Perhaps I do wrong to stop you.”

  “My gentle lord,” said Mina, moving close to him, looking up at him. Her amber eyes, liquid and golden, poured over him. “You command me to bring these young ones to you. I obey your commands.”

  She moved closer still, so that he could feel her warmth, smell the fragrance of her hair and the scent of her flesh that was still soft and pliable with desire.

  “The hands that touch me are your hands,” she said to him. “The lips that kiss mine are your own. None other.”

  Chemosh took her in his arms and kissed her hard, brutally, venting his anger on her, who was the cause of it, though he could not say precisely why. Mina returned his kiss, fierce and desperate, as on the field of battle, when all the turmoil of the fight fades away and leaves the two combatants, locked together in a precious moment that will live until one of them dies.

  “My lord …” Mina breathed. “Would you have me grant him your blessing?”

  She gestured to the body of the young man that lay upon the blanket beside the river bank.

  “I will deal with it,” he said and, bending down, he placed his hand on the young man’s still breast.

  The eyes of the corpse opened. He had green eyes and fair blonde hair. He looked to Chemosh and he knew the Lord of the Dead, and there was reverence in his gaze. He rose to his feet and bowed.

  “You are one of my Beloved,” Chemosh said to the young man. “Travel east, into the morning of your new life. And, as you go, find others who will swear to worship me and bring them to my service.”

  “Yes, lord.” The young man made another low bow to Chemosh, who brushed him off with a wave of his hand.

  The young man’s eyes stol
e to Mina, who smiled on him, a smile that didn’t know his name. Chemosh’s brows lowered, and the young man turned and ran away.

  “If you can wrench your mind from your conquest, perhaps we can get back to business,” Chemosh said. He knew he was being unjust. Mina was doing nothing more than he had instructed her to do. He couldn’t help himself, however.

  “You are in an ill humor this day, my lord,” said Mina, entwining her hands over his arm. “What has happened to cast this dark shadow over you?”

  “You would not understand,” he said shortly, pushing her hands aside. “You are a mortal.”

  “A mortal who has touched the mind of a god.”

  Chemosh looked at her sharply. If she was smiling, smug and triumphant, he would slay her where she stood.

  He saw her serious, unknowing. She loved him, adored him.

  He sighed deeply, reassured.

  “It is Sargonnas. The horned god puffs and struts about heaven as if he were the king of us all.” Chemosh fumed as he walked, pacing back and forth along the river bank. “He flaunts his victories in Silvanesti, brags that he has crushed the elves, laughs at how he has cozened the ogres into believing that his minotaur are their allies. He boasts that he and his cows will soon be the unchallenged rulers of the eastern third of Ansalon.”

  “Mere braggadocio, my lord,” said Mina dismissively.

  “No,” said Chemosh. “The bull-god may be a boorish churl, but he has a crude sort of honor and does not lie.” Chemosh halted in his pacing, turned to face Mina. “It is time for us to put our plan into action.”

  “Surely, it is early yet, my lord,” Mina protested. “The numbers of our Beloved grow, but there are not near enough and they are mostly in the west of Ansalon, not the east.”

  Chemosh shook his head. “We cannot wait. Sargonnas gains in strength daily and the other gods are either blind to his ambition or too preoccupied with their own concerns to see the danger. If he wins the east, do they truly believe he will be content with that? After centuries of being trapped on their isles, the minotaur have finally gained a foothold upon the main continent. He seeks to rule not only the east, but all the world and heaven into the bargain.”