Amber and Ashes

by Margaret Weis

  He took Rhys to one side, said in low tones, “Do you think that kender-herding dog of yours could keep an eye on your little friend for an hour or so? I want you to come to the prison with me. It’s about a prisoner I’ve got there.”

  “I would like Nightshade to accompany me,” said Rhys, thinking that if this was one of the Beloved of Chemosh, he would need the kender’s help. “He has special talents—”

  “I do, you know,” said Nightshade modestly.

  Both men turned and found the kender standing right behind them. Gerard glared at him.

  “Oh, by private, I guess you meant private,” Nightshade said. “Anyway, I was just going to add that I don’t mind staying with Atta, Rhys. I’ve already seen the Solace prison, and while it’s very nice,” he added hurriedly for Gerard’s benefit, “it’s not some place I want to visit again.”

  “Laura will give him a meal,” Gerard offered. “And the dog, too.”

  The meal cinched the deal, as far as Nightshade was concerned. “You don’t need me. You pretty much know what to look for,” he said in an undertone to Rhys. “The eyes. It’s all in the eyes.”

  Rhys sent Atta with Nightshade, telling the kender to keep an eye on the dog and commanding the dog, with a quiet word and a gesture, to keep an eye on the kender.

  Gerard walked off, and Rhys fell into step alongside him. The two traveled in silence through the streets of Solace. It was now about mid-morning, and despite the rain, the streets were crowded. People called out respectful and friendly greetings to Gerard, who answered with a cheerful wave or nod. Idlers took themselves off at his approach, or if he came upon them too quickly, ducked their heads in guilty nods. Strangers eyed him either boldly or furtively. Gerard took note of everyone, Rhys noticed. He could almost see the man storing up their images in his head for future reference.

  “You’re not much of a one for talking, are you, Brother,” Gerard said.

  Rhys, seeing no reason to reply, did not.

  Gerard smiled. “Anyone else would be pelting me with questions by now.”

  “I did not think you would answer them,” Rhys said mildly, “so I saw no reason to ask them.”

  “You’re right there. Though it’s more that I can’t answer them than I wouldn’t.”

  Gerard wiped rain water from his face.

  “That’s our prison, over there. Solace outgrew the old prison, more’s the pity, and so we built this one. It was just finished a month ago. I hear Lleu Mason left town this morning,” Gerard added in the same conversational tone. “You were leaving to go after him?”

  “I was, yes,” said Rhys.

  “Lleu appeared to behave himself while he was here,” Gerard said, casting a swift, intense glance at Rhys. “Your brother seems kind of peculiar, but no one made any complaints about him.”

  “What would you say, Sheriff, if I told you that my brother was a murderer?” Rhys asked. His staff thumped the ground, sending up little spurts of mud and water every time it struck. “That he killed a young woman in Solace night before last.”

  Gerard put out his hand, caught Rhys by the shoulder, and spun him around. The sheriff’s face was red, his blue eyes flaring.

  “What? What woman? What in hell do you mean by telling me this now, Brother? What do you mean letting him get away? By the gods, I’ll hang you in his place—”

  “The woman’s name is Lucy,” said Rhys. “Lucy Wheelwright.”

  Gerard stared at him. “Lucy Wheelwright? Why, Brother, you’re daft. I saw her alive and well as you are this morning. She and her husband. I asked them what they were doing up so early, and she said they were off to one of the neighboring villages in the east to visit a cousin.”

  Gerard’s gaze narrowed, hardened. “Is this some sort of joke, Brother? Because if so, it isn’t funny.”

  “I apologize if I upset you, Sheriff,” Rhys said quietly. “I merely posed it as a hypothetical question.”

  Gerard eyed Rhys. “Don’t do it again. You nearly got yourself throttled. Here we are. Not much to look at it, but it gets the job done.”

  Rhys barely glanced at the building that was located on the outskirts of the city. It looked more like a military barracks than it did a prison, and in this, Rhys recognized the hand of Gerard, the former Solamnic knight.

  Gerard led the way inside the structure that was made of wood covered with plaster. Numerous small iron-barred windows, no larger than man’s fist, dotted the walls. There was only one door, only one way in or out, and it was guarded twenty-four hours a day. Gerard nodded to the guards as he led Rhys into the prison.

  “One of the prisoners has asked to see you,” said Gerard.

  “Asked to see me?” Rhys repeated, startled. “I don’t understand.”

  “Me neither,” muttered Gerard. He was still in a bad humor, still annoyed by Rhys’s earlier pronouncement. “Especially as this person is also a stranger here in Solace. Asked for you by name. I sent over to the Inn, but you’d already left.”

  Taking a key from the jailer, Gerard led Rhys down a long corridor lined with doors on either side. The prison had the usual prison stench, though it was cleaner than most Rhys had seen. One large open cell was filled entirely with kender, who waved merrily as the sheriff passed by and called out in cheerful tones to ask when they would be set free. Gerard growled something unintelligible and continued down the corridor past more large open cells that he termed holding pens.

  “Places where drunks can sleep it off, couples can get over their spats, con artists can cool their heels.”

  Rounding a corner, he entered a corridor lined with wooden doors.

  “These are our private cells,” he said. “For the more dangerous prisoners.”

  He thrust a key into the iron padlock on a cell door, turned the lock, and as the door opened, he added, “And the lunatics.”

  A ray of sunshine slanted through the small window, leaving most of the cell in shadow. At first Rhys saw nothing in the cell except a bed, a slop bucket, and a stool. He was about to tell Gerard that the cell was empty, then he heard a rustling sound. Huddled in a corner of the cell, crouched in the darkest part of the cell, was a dark and shapeless bundle of clothes that he assumed held a person. He could not tell for certain, for he could not see a face.

  “I am Rhys,” he said, stepping inside the cell. He did not feel fear, only pity for the person’s obvious misery. “The sheriff says that you asked to see me.”

  “Tell him to leave us,” said the person in a muffled voice, the face still hidden. “And close the door.”

  “Nothing doing,” said Gerard firmly. “Like I said—crazy.”

  He rolled his eyes and wiggled his fingers around his temples.

  “I am capable of taking care of myself, Sheriff,” said Rhys with a faint smile. “Please …”

  “Well, all right,” Gerard said reluctantly. “But five minutes. That’s it. I’ll be down the corridor. If you need me, yell.”

  Gerard shut the cell door behind him. The room grew darker. The air was stuffy and smelled of rain. Rhys propped his staff against the wall, then ventured closer to the prisoner. He knelt down beside the shapeless bundle.

  “What can I do to help?” he asked gently.

  A beautiful and shapely hand slid out of the bundle of black robes. The hand grasped hold of Rhys’s arm. Sharp nails dug into his flesh. Sea green eyes glittered, and a voice hissed from the shadows of the cowl.

  “Slay Ausric Krell,” said Zeboim, hissing the name in venomous hatred, “and save my son.”

  eboim’s eyes shone with a wild and lurid light. Her face was deathly pale, her cheeks marred by bloody scratches, as though she had clawed herself. Her lips were cracked and rimed with a white powder, like sea salt or perhaps the salt of her tears.

  “Majesty?” Rhys said, bewildered. “What are you doing in this place? In prison? Are you … are you ill?”

  He knew that was a stupid question, but the situation was so bizarre and unreal that he was
having trouble ordering his thoughts and he said the first thing that came into his head.

  “Gods, why do I bother with you mortals!” cried Zeboim. She gave him a shove that flung him off-balance, sent him toppling sideways. Then, casting her cowl over her head, she hid her face in her hands and began to sob.

  Rhys gazed grimly at the goddess. He did not know which he was more inclined to do—comfort her or shake her until her immortal teeth rattled.

  “What are you doing here, Majesty, in a prison cell?” he asked.

  No answer. The goddess sobbed stormily.

  He tried again. “Why did you send for me?”

  “Because I need your help, damn it!” she cried in tear-muffled tones.

  “And I need yours, Majesty,” Rhys said. “I have discovered some profoundly disturbing things about these followers of Chemosh. I have prayed to you countless times in the past few days and you have not answered me. All of these disciples are dead. They appear to be alive, but they are not. They go out among the living and trick innocent young people into proclaiming their loyalty to Chemosh, and then they murder—”

  “Chemosh!” Zeboim raised her swollen and tear-streaked face to glare at him. “Chemosh is behind this, you know. That steel-plated idiot Krell could not have come up with this on his own. Not that it matters. Not that any of it matters. My son. He is all that matters.”

  “Majesty, please try to control yourself—”

  Zeboim sprang up suddenly, seized hold of Rhys’s arms, clutched at him with both hands. “You must save him, monk! They’ll destroy him, otherwise. I can do nothing …” Her voice rose to a shriek. “You must save him!”

  “Are you all right, Brother?” Gerard called, his voice echoing down the long corridor.

  “All is well, Sheriff,” Rhys returned hastily. “Give me just a few more moments.”

  He took hold of Zeboim’s hands, pressed them tightly. He spoke to her in soothing tones, his voice low and firm. “You need to explain to me what is the matter, Majesty. I cannot help you if I don’t know what you are talking about. We don’t have much time.”

  Zeboim drew in a sobbing breath. “You are right, monk. I will be calm. I promise. I have to be. I must be.”

  She began to pace about the prison cell, beating her hands together as she spoke.

  “My son, Lord Ariakan. Yes, I know he’s dead,” she added, forestalling the question on Rhys’s lips. “My son died long ago in the Chaos War.” Her hands clenched to fists. “He died due to the treachery, the perfidy of a man he trusted. A man he had raised up from the muck—”

  “Majesty, please …” Rhys prompted quietly.

  Zeboim passed a hand over her brow, distracted.

  “When my son died, I thought … I assumed that his spirit would continue on to the next stage of the soul’s journey. Instead”—she struggled for breath—“instead Chemosh kept his spirit, imprisoned it. He’s held my son captive all these long years.”

  Zeboim’s voice dropped, low and throbbing with fear. “Now he has given the spirit of my son to the death knight who betrayed him. A death knight named Ausric Krell”—she choked on the name, as though it were a foul taste in her mouth—“is threatening to destroy my son’s spirit, to cast him into oblivion. Of course, Krell is acting under orders from Chemosh.”

  “I assume, then, Majesty, that Chemosh is holding your son’s spirit hostage so that you will do something for him in return. What does he want you to do?”

  “First, I am to stop you,” said Zeboim. “Chemosh finds you annoying.”

  “I don’t know why,” Rhys said bitterly. “I’m not a threat to him or likely to be one, the way things are going.”

  “Further, I am not to interfere with any of Chemosh’s plots and schemes. I have no idea what those may be,” the goddess added, “but I’m not to do anything to thwart him.”

  “So Chemosh is plotting something …” Rhys murmured.

  “Oh, yes,” said Zeboim with a vicious snap. “He is plotting something grand, of that you may certain. And whatever it is, he fears me. He fears that I will stop him, which I would!”

  “And he fears me, it seems,” Rhys added.

  “You?” Zeboim laughed, then said grudgingly, “Well, yes, I suppose he does. I am to rid myself of you and the kender, but that is not what is important. My son is important. I can do nothing to help him. If a drop of rain so much as falls on his helm, Krell will destroy my son’s soul. But you, monk …”

  Zeboim sidled closer. Taking hold of Rhys’s hands, she stroked, carressed him. “You could go to Storm’s Keep. Krell wouldn’t suspect you.”

  “Majesty,” protested Rhys, taken aback, “I can hardly get in the middle of a battle between two gods—”

  “You are already in the middle,” Zeboim retorted angrily, shoving him away. “Chemosh commands that I get rid of you. Do you think he means that I am to send you back to your monastery with a pat on the ass and orders to be a good little boy?”

  Rhys stood in the prison cell, his gaze fixed on the goddess.

  Zeboim settled her robes around her, smoothed her disheveled hair. “You will go to Storm’s Keep. I will transport you through the ethers, don’t worry about that. You will need to make up some excuse for your presence there so that Krell won’t be suspicious. He has less brains than a mollusk, so that won’t be hard. Perhaps you will say you are sent by me to negotiate. Yes, Krell will like that. He’s easily bored and he enjoys tormenting his victims. It is too bad you are not more charming, entertaining. He likes to be entertained.”

  “And how do you propose I rescue your son, Majesty, if I am to be tortured and killed?” Rhys asked. “You say this Krell is a death knight. That means that his power is only slightly less than that of a god—”

  Zeboim waved that consideration away. “You serve me. I will grant you all the power you need.”

  “You haven’t thus far,” Rhys stated coolly.

  She cast him an angry glance. “I will. Don’t worry. As to how you save my son”—she shrugged—“that is up to you. You are clever, for a human. You will think of a way.”

  Rhys sank down on the bed, tried to organize his scattered thoughts. That was proving difficult, since he could not believe that he was having this conversation.

  “Where is Krell holding your son? I assume there are dungeons …”

  “He is not being held in a dungeon,” said Zeboim, her hands twisting together. “His spirit is imprisoned inside”—she drew in a seething breath, barely able to speak for her rage—“inside a khas piece!”

  “A khas piece,” Rhys repeated, stunned. “Are you certain?”

  “Of course I am certain! I saw it! Krell flaunted it before me, bragged that he played with it nightly.”

  “Which piece is it?”

  “One of the two black knights.”

  “Is there any way you can tell them apart?”

  “Yes,” she said in scathing tones, “one is my son. It looks just like him.”

  “Having never had the honor of meeting your son,” Rhys said carefully, “I do not know what he looks like. If you could give me something more to go on—”

  “He is riding a blue dragon. But then, the other was also riding a blue dragon. I don’t know!” Zeboim tore at her hair with her hands. “I can’t think! Leave me alone. Just take yourself off and rescue him—Wait a moment. The pieces are real. Real corpses. Shrunken. Except for the one that was me, of course. And the king. That was Chemosh.”

  Rhys rubbed his forehead. This was devolving into a strange and terrible dream.

  “It is Chemosh’s idea of a jest,” Zeboim said by way of explanation. “He means to humiliate me. See here, monk, is this really important? We’re wasting time—”

  “You are asking me to go on a hopeless venture, Majesty. Any information you can give me, however insignificant it seems to you, might help.”

  Zeboim heaved an exasperated sigh. “Very well. Let me try to think back. The White Queen and King are elv
es. The Black Queen is … is me. The Black King is Chemosh.” She ground the name with her teeth.

  “The two White clerics are monks of Majere.” Zeboim arched a brow at him. “Fancy that! The two Black Robe clerics are dwarves. The two White knights are elves riding silver dragons. The pawns on the side of darkness are goblins. The pawns on the side of light are kender. As I said, Chemosh created this to humiliate me. My gallant son, doing battle against the likes of monks and kender …”

  There came a thunderous knock on the door. Gerard’s voice boomed, “Time’s up, Brother.”

  “Just one moment,” Rhys called. Rising to his feet, he turned to Zeboim. “Let us understand each other, Majesty. Either I go to Storm’s Keep and rescue your son or you will slay me—”

  “I will do it, monk,” said Zeboim, calm as the eye of the storm. “Never think I won’t.”

  Wrapping herself in her dark and tattered robes, she sat down on the bed and stared at the wall across from her.

  Rhys bent near her, said to her softly, “You know, Majesty, my death would be quicker, easier if I told you just to kill me now.”

  Zeboim looked up at him with her sea-green eyes. “It might be, or it might not. Whether it would or it wouldn’t, you’re not taking into account your friend the kender, nor all those doomed young people, like your brother, murdered in the name of Chemosh. Nor all those thousands of sailors on board ships stranded in the middle of flat and listless seas. Sailors who will surely die—”

  Gerard banged on the door again. A key rattled in the lock.

  Rhys straightened. “I understand, Majesty,” he said with the calm of one who can either be calm or break down and weep.

  “I thought you might,” Zeboim said in languid tones. “Let me know your decision.”

  “Where will you be, Majesty?”

  Lying on the bed, the goddess gathered her robes around her, drew her cowl over her head, and turned her face to the wall. “Here. Where no one can find me.”

  “Time’s up,” said Gerard, entering the cell. “How’d everything go?” he asked in a low voice.