Amber and Blood

by Margaret Weis

  “Maybe Majere will help us escape them.”

  “I’m not sure he can,” Rhys replied.

  “What about Zeboim? I’d even be glad to see her right now and I never thought I’d say that!” Nightshade said, gasping for breath.

  “I do not believe any of the gods can help us. We witnessed their failure in Solace. Remember? Kiri-Jolith’s paladin could not kill the Beloved, nor could the magic of Mistress Jenna. The Beloved are bound to Mina.”

  “But she doesn’t remember them!” Nightshade waved his arms wildly and almost took a tumble down the stairs. “She’s terrified of them!”

  “Yes,” Rhys agreed, steadying him. “She is.”

  Nightshade glared at him.

  “I’m sorry, my friend,” said Rhys helplessly. “I don’t know what to tell you. Except that we must have faith—”

  “In what?” Nightshade demanded. “Mina?”

  Rhys patted the kender’s shoulder. “In each other.”

  “ ‘Don’t borrow trouble,’ my father used to say,” Nightshade muttered, “though dear old Dad borrowed everything else that wasn’t nailed down—”

  They were interrupted by a shrill scream and the sound of pleading voices.

  Mina came tumbling back down the stairs. “Mister Monk! Those horrible dead people are up there! Someone opened the door—”

  “Someone?” Nightshade growled.

  “I guess I may have opened it,” Mina admitted. Her face was pale, her amber eyes wide. She looked plaintively at Rhys. “I know you told me to stay with you. I’m sorry I didn’t.” She took hold of his hand, clasping it firmly. “I’ll stay with you now. I promise. But I don’t think the dead people are going to let us out,” she added with a quiver in her voice. “I think they want to hurt me.”

  “You should have thought of that before you made them dead!” Nightshade shouted.

  Mina stared at him in bewilderment. “Why are you yelling at me? I don’t know anything about them. I hate them!” She burst into tears and, flinging her arms around Rhys, she buried her head against his stomach.

  “Mina, Mina …” the Beloved called.

  They were gathering on the landing, massing beneath the arched entryway. Rhys could not count their numbers. None of them were looking at him. None looked at Nightshade or Atta. The Beloved’s dead eyes were fixed on Mina. The dead mouths formed her name.

  Mina peeked out from the folds of Rhys’s robes and, seeing the Beloved staring at her, she cringed and whimpered. “Don’t let them take me!”

  “I won’t. Don’t be afraid. We have to keep moving,” Rhys said, trying to speak calmly.

  “No, I won’t!” Mina clung to Rhys, dragging him back. “Don’t make me go up there!”

  “Nightshade, take my staff,” said Rhys. He reached down and picked up the girl. “Keep tight hold.”

  Mina flung her arms around his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist and hid her face against his shoulder. “I’m not going to look!”

  “I wish I didn’t have to look,” Nightshade muttered. “You wouldn’t want to carry me, too, would you?”

  “Keep walking,” Rhys said.

  They climbed the stairs, moving slowly, but steadily. One of the Beloved took a step toward them. Nightshade froze, sheltering behind Rhys. Atta barked and lunged, jaws wide, teeth flaring. Mina screamed and hung onto Rhys so tightly she nearly choked him.

  “Atta! Leave it!” Rhys commanded sharply, and the dog fell back. Atta padded along at his side, growling a warning, her lip curled back to show her fangs.

  “Keep moving,” Rhys said to the kender.

  Nightshade kept moving, crowding close behind Rhys. The Beloved paid no attention to monk, kender or dog.

  “Mina!” cried the Beloved, reaching out to her. “Mina.”

  She shook her head and kept her face hidden. Rhys placed his foot on the last stair. He raised himself slowly. Ascending the last stair, he stood on the landing beneath the archway.

  The Beloved blocked his way.

  Nightshade closed his eyes and hung onto Rhys’s robes with one hand and the emmide with the other.

  “We’re dead,” said Nightshade. “I can’t look. We’re dead. I can’t look.”

  Rhys, holding Mina in his arms, took a step forward into the throng of Beloved.

  The Beloved hesitated, then, their eyes fixed on Mina, they fell back to let him pass. Rhys heard them move in behind him. He continued to walk at a slow and even pace, and they passed beneath the archway and into the main hall. He halted, overwhelmed with dismay. Nightshade made a choking sound.

  The Beloved had invaded the tower. The spiral staircase continued upward to the very top of the tower and the Beloved stood on every stair. The Beloved massed in the hallway, their bodies pressed against each other, jostling and shoving, as each tried to glimpse Mina. And more Beloved were pushing their way through the entrance, shoving their way inside.

  “There are thousands!” Nightshade gulped. “Every Beloved in Ansalon must be here.”

  Rhys had no idea what to do. The Beloved could kill them even without meaning to. If they surged forward to seize Mina, the press of bodies would crush them.

  “Mina,” said Rhys, “I have to set you down.”

  “No!” she whimpered, clinging to him.

  “I have to,” he repeated firmly and he lowered her to the floor.

  Nightshade handed Rhys the emmide. Rhys took it and held it out horizontally in front of them.

  “Mina, get behind me. Nightshade, take hold of Atta.”

  Nightshade caught the dog by the scruff of her neck and hauled her close. Atta snarled and snapped whenever the Beloved drew too near, leaving her tooth marks in more than one, but they paid no heed. Mina pressed against Rhys, clinging to his robes. Rhys stood in front of them, holding his staff in both hands, keeping the Beloved at bay. He started walking toward the double doors.

  The Beloved surged around him, vying with each other to try to touch Mina. Her name resounded through the tower. Some whispered “Mina,” as though the name was too holy to say aloud. Others repeated “Mina” over and over frantically, obsessively. Others wailed her name in pleading tones. Whether they whispered her name or spoke it, the voices seemed laden with sorrow, lamenting their fate.

  “Mina, Mina, Mina.” Her name was a mournful wind sighing in the darkness.

  “Make them stop!” Mina cried, her hands covering her ears. “Why do they call my name? I don’t know them! Why are they doing this to me?”

  The Beloved moaned and surged toward her. Rhys struck at them with his staff, but it was like trying to beat back the endless waves. The mournful lamenting had taken on a different tone. It was now tinged with anger. The eyes of the Beloved had at last turned to him. He heard the scrape of steel.

  Atta yelped in pain. Nightshade struggled against the massing bodies and pulled the dog out from under trampling feet and hauled her up in his arms. Atta’s eyes were wide with terror, her mouth open, panting. Her paws scrabbled against his chest, trying to keep hold.

  The air was fetid, stank of decay. Rhys’s strength was flagging. He could not hold the Beloved back much longer and once he dropped the staff, he would be overwhelmed.

  Light flared off a knife blade. Rhys struck at the blade with the end of the staff and managed to deflect the killing stroke, though the knife raked over Nightshade’s arm, slicing a deep cut. Nightshade cried out and dropped Atta, who crouched, quivering at his feet.

  Mina stared at the blood, and her face went ashen. “I don’t want to be here,” she said in a trembling voice. “I don’t want this to be happening … I don’t know them … We’ll go away, far away …”

  “Yes!” cried Nightshade, clasping his hand over his bleeding arm.

  “No,” said Rhys.

  Nightshade gaped at him.

  “Mina, you do know them,” Rhys told her in stern tones. “You can’t run away. You kissed them and they died.”

  Mina was at first bewildered
, then understanding lit the amber eyes.

  “That was Chemosh!” she cried. “Not me! It wasn’t my fault.”

  She glared at the Beloved and clenched her fist and screamed at them, “I gave you what you wanted! You cannot be hurt. You can never feel pain or sickness or fear! You will always be young and beautiful—”

  “—and dead!” Nightshade cried. He thumped himself on the chest. “Look at me, Mina. This is life! Pain is life! Fear is life! You took all that from them! And worse than that. You locked them up inside death and threw away the key. They have nowhere to go. They’re stuck, trapped.”

  Mina stared at the kender in perplexity, and Rhys could picture what she was seeing—he and Nightshade, disheveled, bloody, sweating, gasping for breath, shoving at the Beloved with the staff, keeping a grip on the shivering dog. She could hear the kender’s voice shake with terror and exasperation, and his voice filled with desperation, and she could hear, by the contrast, the empty, hollow voices of the Beloved.

  The little girl dissolved before Rhys’s startled eyes and the woman, Mina, stood before him as he had seen her in the grotto. She was tall and slender. Her auburn hair was shoulder length and framed her face in soft waves. Her amber eyes were large and shining with anger, peopled with souls. She wore a diaphonous black gown that coiled around her lithe body like the shades of night. She turned to face the Beloved, gazed out at the restless, dreadful sea of her victims.

  “Mina …” they chanted. “Mina!”

  “Stop it!” she cried.

  The sea of dead moaned and wailed and whispered.

  “Mina …”

  The Beloved closed in around Rhys. He struck at them with the staff, but there were too many, and he was slammed back against the wall. Nightshade was on his hands and knees, trying to avoid the tramping feet, but his hands were bloody and his nose was bleeding. Rhys could not see Atta, though he could hear her whimper in pain. The heaving mass gave another surge, and he was smashed between the wall and the bodies and could not move; he could not breathe.

  “Mina! Mina!” Rhys heard her name dimly, as everything started to fade.

  Mina clenched her fists and raised her head and shouted into the echoing of her own name.

  “I made you gods!” she screamed. “Why aren’t you happy?”

  The Beloved went silent. Her name ceased.

  Mina opened her hands and amber flames flared from her palms. She opened her eyes and amber flames shot from the pupils. She opened her mouth and gouts of flame poured out. She grew in size, taller and taller, screaming her frustration and pain to the heavens as the fire of her wrath blazed out of control.

  One moment Rhys was being crushed beneath bodies and the next moment searing heat washed over him and the bodies were incinerated, leaving him covered in greasy ash.

  Blinded by the blazing light, Rhys coughed as smoke and ash flew down his windpipe. He groped about for his friends and grabbed hold of Nightshade at the same time the kender grabbed hold of him.

  “I can’t see!” Nightshade choked, clutching at Rhys in a panic. “I can’t see!”

  Rhys found Atta and dragged her and Nightshade back through the archway and into the stairwell, away from the heat and flames and the greasy black ash that swirled about the tower in a horrid blizzard.

  The kender rubbed his eyes, as the tears streamed down his cheeks, making tracks in the ash that smeared his face.

  Rhys watched the wrath of an unhappy god destroy her failure.

  The burning went on a long time.

  Finally, the amber light grew dim and went out, Mina’s rage exhausted. Ashes continued to drift down in a gray cloud. Rhys helped Nightshade to his feet. They left the stairwell and plowed their way through horrible black drifts that nearly buried the dog. Nightshade gagged and covered his mouth with his hand. Rhys held his sleeve over his nose and mouth. He looked for Mina, but there was no sign of her and Rhys was too shaken to wonder what had become of her. He wanted only to escape the horror.

  They fled through the double doors and stumbled out into sunlight and the blessed fresh air blowing off the sea.

  “Where have you been?” Mina said accusingly. “I’ve been waiting and waiting for you!”

  The little girl stood in front of them, staring. “How did you get so dirty?” She held her nose. “You stink!”

  Nightshade looked at Rhys.

  “She doesn’t remember,” Rhys said quietly.

  The sea was unusually calm, he noticed, the waves subdued, as if in shock. Rhys washed his face and hands. Nightshade rinsed off as best he could, while Atta dove into the water.

  Mina set the sail on the small boat. The wind blew strong and favorably, as though eager to help them get away, and the boat went bounding over the waves.

  They were nearing shore and Rhys was poised to lower the sail, when Nightshade cried out.

  “Look, Rhys! Look at that!”

  Rhys turned to see the tower being sucked slowly down beneath the waves. The tower sank lower and lower until all that was left were the small crystal fingers at the top, like a hand reaching up to heaven. Then those, too, vanished.

  “The Beloved are gone, Rhys,” Nightshade said in an awed voice. “She set them free.”

  Mina did not turn around at the kender’s shout. She did not look behind. She was concentrating on sailing the boat, steering it safely to shore.

  I made you gods.

  I made you gods. Why aren’t you happy?

  hough they were all exhausted from their ordeal in the tower, Rhys did not deem it wise to remain long in the vicinity of Chemosh’s castle. He asked Mina if the small sailboat could make it to Flotsam and she stated that it could, provided they did not venture too far out to sea. They sailed up the coast, north to the harbor city of Flotsam.

  They made the journey in safety, with only one brief scare, when Nightshade suddenly toppled over and lay in the bottom of the boat, where he was heard to faintly murmur the words: “meat pie”. Deeply concerned, Mina searched the boat and, sure enough, discovered more pies tucked away in a sack. Nightshade revived wonderfully upon smelling the food and, taking one pie with him, retired to the rear of the boat to eat, thereby avoiding Rhys’s reproving gaze.

  They spent several days in Flotsam, resting and recovering. Rhys found an innkeeper willing to give him work in exchange for floor space and blankets in the common room. While he mopped floors and washed mugs, Nightshade and Mina explored the city. Rhys had at first prohibited Mina from leaving the inn, thinking that a six-year-old girl should not be roaming around Flotsam even if she was a god. But after a day spent trying to do his work and keep Mina from pestering the guests, infuriating the cook, and rescuing her after she tumbled down the well, Rhys decided it would be less dangerous if she went off exploring with Nightshade.

  Rhys’s main concern was that Mina would go blabbing to strangers about the holy artifacts. Nightshade had described the nature of the artifacts’ miraculous powers, which were truly formidable. Rhys explained to Mina that the holy artifacts were immensely valuable and because of that, people might want to steal them, might even kill to possess them.

  Mina listened to him with grave attention. Alarmed at the thought she might lose her gifts for Goldmoon, she promised Rhys solemnly and faithfully that she would keep them a secret. Rhys could only hope she meant it. He took Nightshade aside and impressed upon the kender the need to keep Mina from talking, then sent them both off, with Atta to guard them, to take in the sights of Flotsam so that he could get some work done.

  Once, Flotsam had been a swaggering, rollicking, boisterous and free-wheeling rogue of a city. With a reputation for being disreputable, Flotsam had been a haven for pirates, thieves, mercenaries, deserters, bounty-hunters, and gamblers. Then came the Dragon Overlords, the largest and most terrible of which was an enormous red dragon named Malys. She seemed to take delight in tormenting Flotsam, periodically swooping down on the city to set parts of it ablaze, killing or driving off many of the inhab
itants.

  Malys was now gone and Flotsam was slowly recovering, but the wild child had been forced to grow up, and was now a sadder, though wiser, city.

  Most of the ships now in the harbor belonged to the minotaur race, who ruled the seas from their islands to the north to the conquered lands of the former elven nation of Silvanesti to the south and beyond, for the minotaur nation was reaching out to humans, working hard to try to gain their trust. Well aware that their economic survival depended on trade with human nations, the minotaurs were ordered by their commanders to be on their best behavior while in Flotsam. The people of Flotsam, meanwhile, were conscious of their own economic survival and signs welcoming the minotaurs were posted in nearly every tavern and shop in town.

  Consequently a city once known throughout Ansalon for its chair-breaking, table-hurling, mug-smashing, bone-crushing bar fights was now reduced to a few bloodied noses and a cracked rib. If a fight did break out, it was quickly squelched by either the local citizenry or minotaur guards. Offenders were hauled away to prison or permitted to sleep it off below decks.

  As Nightshade would soon discover, Flotsam was in line to become a model citizen. Crime was down. There was no longer even a Thieves Guild, for the members hadn’t been able to raise enough cash to pay the dues. A settlement of gnomes located outside the city offered the only chance for excitement, but the mere thought of Mina among gnomes made Nightshade shudder.

  “Might well bring about the end of civilization as we know it,” he told Rhys.

  The kender was pleased, however, to find people interested in his abilities as a Nightstalker. A great many people had been killed by the dragon, and Nightshade’s ability to speak to the departed was much in demand. He lined up a client the second night they were in Flotsam.

  Mina was eager to go with Nightshade to the graveyard “to see the spooks” as she put it. Nightshade, considerably offended by this undignified term, told her quite sternly that his encounters with spirits were private, between him and his clients, not to be shared. Mina sulked and pouted, but the kender was firm, and that night after dinner, he went off by himself, leaving Mina with Rhys.