Amber and Iron

by Margaret Weis

  “I am not angry, Mina.” Chemosh took hold of her hands and raised her to her feet. “In truth, I am the one who should be asking for your forgiveness, my love.”

  He kissed her hands then kissed her lips. “I am in an ill humor these days. I took out my frustration and anger on you. I am sorry.”

  Mina’s amber eyes shone with pleasure and, he noted, relief.

  “My lord, I love you dearly,” she said softly. “Believe that if you believe nothing else.”

  “I do,” he assured her, stroking her auburn hair. “Now, go to our chamber and make yourself lovely for me. I will join you shortly.”

  “Come to me soon, my lord,” she said and, giving him a lingering kiss, she left him.

  Chemosh looked with annoyance at the Beloved who, now that Mina was gone, were once more milling about. Scowling, he made a peremptory gesture to Krell.

  The death knight scented blood, and he came forward with alacrity. “What is your command, my lord?”

  “She is up to something, and I need to know what. You will watch her, Krell,” said Chemosh. “Day and night. I want to know her every movement. I want to hear her every word.”

  “You will have the information, my lord.”

  “She must not suspect she is being spied upon,” Chemosh cautioned. “You cannot go bumbling about, rattling and clanking like a steam-powered golem created by some mad gnome. Can manage that, Krell?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Ausric Krell assured him.

  Chemosh saw the fiery glow of hatred burning in the empty eye sockets, and his doubts were satisfied. Krell had not forgotten that Mina had bested him in his own tower, taken him by surprise, nearly destroyed him. Nor would he forget that the Beloved had meekly obeyed her commands, while they’d scoffed at his.

  “You can rely on me, my lord.”

  “Good,” said Chemosh.

  Mina sat before a mirror in her bedchamber, brushing her long auburn hair. She wore a gown of finest silk that her lord had given her. Mina’s heart beat fast in the anticipation of his touch and with the joyful knowledge that Chemosh loved her still.

  She wanted to make herself pretty for him, and it was then she saw a string of black pearls lying on the nightstand. Thinking of her lord, Mina lifted the pearls. She heard instead the voice of Zeboim, found the goddess standing behind her.

  “The necklace is enchanted,” the sea goddess said. “It will bring you your heart’s desire.”

  Mina was troubled. “Majesty, thank you, but I have all that I desire. There is nothing I want …”

  She stopped in midsentence. She had just remembered there was something she wanted. Wanted very much.

  “The pearls will lead you to a grotto. Inside you will find what you long for. No need for thanks, child,” the sea goddess said. “I delight in making mortals happy.”

  Zeboim fussed with the pearls, arranged them to best advantage on Mina’s slender neck.

  “Remember who did this for you, child,” Zeboim told her as she vanished, leaving behind the lingering odor of bracing sea air.

  Chemosh entered the room to find Mina brushing her hair.

  “What—” He stared. “Where did you get that necklace?”

  “Zeboim gave it to me, my lord,” said Mina. She kept her gaze on her reflection as she continued to brush her hair. “I have never seen black pearls before. They shine with a lovely, strange radiance, don’t they? Like a dark rainbow. I think they are very beautiful.”

  “I think they look like rabbit turds on a string,” Chemosh said coldly. “Take them off.”

  “I believe you are jealous, lord,” said Mina.

  “I said take them off!” Chemosh commanded.

  Mina sighed, reluctantly raising her hands to the clasp. She fumbled at it, unable to release it. “My lord, if you could help me—”

  Chemosh was prepared to rip the pearls from her throat … Then he paused.

  Since when does the Sea Witch bestow gifts on mortals? he asked himself. Since when does that selfish bitch give gifts to anyone, for that matter? Why should Zeboim bring Mina pearls? There is more to this than meets the eye. They plot against me. I do wrong to object. I must appear to be as stupid as they obviously think I am.

  Chemosh lifted Mina’s luxuriant hair and put it aside. The tips of his fingers brushed the pearls.

  “There is magic here,” he said accusingly. “Godly magic.”

  Mina’s reflection looked out at him. Her amber eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “The pearls are enchanted, my lord. Zeboim told me that they would bring me my heart’s desire.”

  Mina took his hand, pressed her lips upon it. “I know that I have lost your regard. I would do anything to raise myself again in your esteem. Anything to recover the happiness we once shared. You are my heart’s desire, my lord. The pearls are meant to please you, to bring you back to me!”

  She was so lovely, so contrite. He could almost believe she was telling the truth.

  Almost.

  “Keep the pearls,” Chemosh said magnanimously. He took the brush from her and set it aside. He gathered her into his embrace. “The necklace is beautiful, but not so beautiful as you, my dear one.”

  He kissed her, and she yielded to his touch, and he gave himself to pleasure.

  He could afford to enjoy her.

  Ausric Krell was watching from the shadows.

  ina slept fitfully, drifting in and out of dreams. She woke to find herself alone in the bed. Chemosh had left sometime during the night; she was not certain when.

  Unable to go back to sleep, Mina watched the pale, gray shadow of morning steal through her window and thought of Zeboim and the goddess’s gift. Her heart’s desire.

  She had not lied to the god. Chemosh was her heart’s desire, but there was another, something else she wanted just as much as she wanted his love. Something she needed, perhaps more than his love.

  She threw off the blankets and rose from her bed. She cast off the silken gown and dressed in a plain linen shift she had found in the abandoned servants’ quarters and a pair of soft leather shoes. She hoped to be able to slip out of the castle without attracting Chemosh’s attention. If she did run into him, she had her excuse prepared. She did not like lying to her lord, however, and hoped she could avoid him and also avoid the Beloved who, if they saw her, would start their clamorous pleading and moaning.

  She wrapped herself in a thick, warm shawl and drew it over her head. Leaving her bedchamber, Mina padded softly through hallways that were still dark.

  She pondered her lies to her lord. She had told Chemosh the truth when she said that she loved him and would do anything to regain his favor. She did love him, more than her life. Why lie to him about this? Why not tell him the truth?

  Because a god would not understand.

  Mina was not sure she herself understood entirely. Goldmoon had told her time and again it did not matter who Mina’s parents had been. The past was past. It was the here and now of her life that mattered. If her father had been a fishmonger, and her mother a fishmonger’s wife, would that make a difference?

  “But what if,” the small Mina had argued, “my father was a king and my mother a queen? What if I am a princess? Wouldn’t that make a difference?”

  Goldmoon had smiled and said, “I was a princess, Mina, and I thought that made a difference. I found out, when I opened my heart to Mishakal, that such titles are meaningless. It is what we are in the sight of the gods that truly matters. Or rather, what we are in our hearts,” Goldmoon had added with a sigh, for the gods had been gone a long time by then.

  Mina had tried to understand and tried to put all thoughts of her parents from her mind, and for a time, she had succeeded. She had, of course, asked the One God, but Takhisis had given Mina much the same answer as Goldmoon, only not as gently. The One God had considered this longing of Mina’s a weakness, a cancer that would eat away at her unless it was swiftly and brutally cut out.

  Perhaps it was the terrible memory of Takhisis
’s punishment that made Mina reluctant to speak of this to Chemosh. He was a god. He could not possibly understand. Her secret was only a little one. It was harmless. She would tell him everything once she knew the truth. Then, together, they could both laugh over the fact that she was a fishmonger’s daughter.

  Keeping to back stairs and ruined passages, Mina made her way to what had once been the kitchen and from there to a buttery, where the castle’s former owners had stored barrels of ale, casks of wine, baskets of apples and potatoes, smoked meats, bags of onions. The ghosts of good smells still lingered, but there were so many ghosts flitting about the palace of the Lord of Death that Mina paid scant attention. She hungered, but not for food.

  Mina had no idea where Chemosh was. Perhaps he was recruiting disciples or judging souls or playing khas with Krell, or doing all three at once. She would have given odds that she knew where he wasn’t—in the storeroom. His sudden appearance, therefore, standing right in front of her, came as a considerable shock.

  She expected recriminations, accusations, a tirade. He regarded her with mild interest, as though they’d met over breakfast, and asked, “You are up early, my dear. Going out?”

  “I thought I would go for a swim in the sea, my lord,” Mina replied faintly, giving the excuse she had prepared.

  She could not know, of course, that this was the one excuse that Chemosh would find most suspicious.

  “Isn’t it a bit cold for sea-bathing?” he asked archly, a peculiar smile on his lips.

  “Though the air is cold, the water is warm and will seem that much warmer,” Mina faltered, her cheeks burning.

  “You still wear the pearls, I see. They hardly go with such a plain gown. Aren’t you afraid you will lose them?”

  “The clasp is strong, my lord,” Mina said. Her hand went involuntarily to the necklace. “I don’t think—”

  “Why are you in the storeroom?” he asked, glancing around.

  “This way is closer to the shore, my lord,” Mina returned. She had overcome her shock and was now starting to feel irritated. “My lord, am I your prisoner, that you feel the need to question my comings and goings?”

  “I lost you once, Mina,” Chemosh said quietly. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

  Mina was suddenly overwhelmed with guilt. “I am yours, my lord, always and forever, until—”

  “Until you die. For you will die someday, Mina.”

  “That is true, my lord,” she replied. She looked at him uneasily, wondering if this was a threat.

  He was opaque, unreadable.

  “Have a good swim, my dear,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.

  Mina remained for long moments after he left, her hand clutching the pearls. Her heart failed her. Her conscience rebuked her. She almost turned to run back to her room.

  To do what? To pace away the hours, as she had done in the Tower of High Sorcery? To be a pawn of first one god, then another, then another, and another after that. Takhisis, Chemosh, Zeboim, Nuitari … “What is it they want of me?” Mina demanded in frustration.

  She stood alone in the cold and empty storeroom, staring, unseeing, into the darkness. “I don’t understand! I give and I give to them, and they give me nothing in return. Oh, they say they do. Chemosh claims he gave me power over the Beloved, yet when he sees that I wield power over them, he is clearly jealous. Zeboim gives me pearls that promise me my heart’s desire and they bring me nothing but trouble. I cannot please these gods. Any of them!

  “I must do something for me. For Mina. I must know who I am.”

  Resolute, she continued on her way.

  Chemosh had given her the secret to the magical portals that allowed entrance and exit from the castle. Mina feared he might have negated the magic, and she was relieved when the portal worked and she was able to leave. The storeroom opened into a yard filled with tumbledown outbuildings. Beyond this, a gate in the wall opened onto a path leading to the shore. The gate itself was gone. Rusting iron bands and blackened timbers were all that was left.

  Once outside the castle wall, Mina stopped to look around. She had no clear idea where to go to find this grotto. Zeboim had said only that the pearls would guide her. Mina touched the pearls, thinking she might feel some sensation or an image would leap into her head.

  The early morning sun shone on the water. The castle was built on a rock-bound promontory. Here, where Mina stood, the shoreline swept back from the promontory to form an inlet that had been carved out of the rock and was fronted by a crescent-shaped sandy beach that extended for about a half-mile, ending at a rock groin jutting out into the water. The groin on one side and the cliffs on the other broke the force of the waves, so that by the time they came to shore on the beach, they rolled meekly over the sand, leaving behind bits of foam and seaweed.

  The sand was wet, and so were the rock walls behind it. Mina—child of the sea—realized that when the tide was in, the beach would be under water. Only when the tide was out could someone walk or play on the shore.

  Mina scanned the cliff face and saw no grotto. She felt a bleak sense of disappointment. Her fingers ran over the pearls, one by one.

  They felt bumpy—like pearls.

  Movement out to sea caught her eye. A ship—a minotaur vessel to judge by the garishly painted sail—plied the ocean. She watched curiously, thinking it might be sailing in her direction, then realized it was moving rapidly away from her. She watched the ship until it vanished over the horizon line and disappeared from sight.

  Mina sighed and looked around again and wondered what to do. She decided to go for a swim.

  Her story concocted, she had better keep to it. Chemosh might be watching. That thought in mind, she glanced back at the castle ramparts. He was not there, or if he was, he was taking care not to be seen.

  She stepped onto the path leading down to the beach. The moment her foot touched it, Mina knew exactly where to go. Though she had never set foot upon this path, she felt she knew it as well as if she had walked it every day for the past year.

  Whispering an apology to Zeboim for having doubted her, Mina hastened toward the beach. She did not know where she was going, yet she knew where she was and she knew that every footfall brought her closer. The sensation was most disconcerting.

  Mina kept on, running across the wet sand that was firm underfoot. She eyed the waves, trying to determine if the tide was coming in or going out. Judging by the wetness of the rocks, the tide was coming in. When the tide was in, the water level would be at least up to her shoulders, maybe higher, depending on the cycle of the moons.

  Mina reached the rock groin with still no sign of a grotto. She clambered over jagged-edged boulders of granite, cursing the fact that her soft leather shoes had not been made for rock climbing.

  On the far side of the groin, the shoreline curved sharply. Mina, looking back over her shoulder, could not see the castle, and anyone walking the castle walls could not see her.

  Sand dunes extended beyond the rock groin. At the top, the land flattened out. There was likely a road up there, a road that led to the castle. Mina took a step forward, heading into the dunes, and knew immediately this was the wrong way. She was lost, with no idea where she was or where she was going.

  Mina shifted direction, walking back toward the cliffs, and the sensation of being somewhere familiar returned. She continued on, leaving the sand dunes behind and climbing over rock-strewn ground, pausing every so often to look at the cliffs, trying to spot an opening.

  She saw nothing but trusted now that she was heading in the right direction, and she kept going. She was further convinced by signs on the ground that someone else had recently come this way before her. She saw the print of a boot in a sandy patch—an extremely large boot.

  Mina began to think she should have brought a weapon. She kept on walking, moving more cautiously, keeping her ears and eyes open.

  The grotto turned out to be so well concealed she passed it without knowing. Only when the next step gav
e her the sinking sensation of being lost did she realize she’d missed the mark. She turned around and stared at the cliff face, and still she could not find it.

  At length, she ventured around a large heap of rock and there was the opening to the grotto, half-buried by a rockslide. At one time the grotto must have been wholly buried, she realized, venturing near it. She could see where debris had been cleared, piled up on either side. The work had been done recently, by the looks of it. The ground beneath the slide was still moist.

  Mina stood outside the grotto. Now that she’d reached it, she was hesitant to go inside. This was an ideal place for an ambush, out of sight of the castle walls. No one could see or hear her if she needed help. She remembered the large boot print. It had been three times the size of her own foot.

  Putting her hand to the pearls, Mina felt their reassuring warmth. She had come all this way, risked her lord’s ire. She could not go back now.

  The opening was large enough for two broad-shouldered men to pass through it, but the ceiling was low. She had to stoop her head and shoulders to make her way inside. She was bending down when, from somewhere inside, she heard a dog bark.

  Mina’s heartbeat quickened in excitement. Fear vanished. The monk had been in her mind’s eye ever since their encounter. His visage was clear; she could have painted his portrait. She could see his face—chiseled, gaunt. Eyes—large and calm as dark water. Orange robes—the color sacred to Majere, decorated with the god’s rose motif, hung from his thin, muscular shoulders; the robes were belted around a lean waist. His every move, his every word—controlled and disciplined.

  And the dog, black and white, looking to the monk as master.

  “Thank you, Majesty,” Mina said softly, and she raised the pearls to her lips and kissed them.

  Then she entered the grotto.

  Ausric Krell, moving silently and stealthily, followed Mina at a discreet distance. Surprisingly, Krell could move silently and stealthily when he wanted to. The death knight didn’t like sneaking around like some slimy gutter-living thief. Krell enjoyed clanking about in his armor. Rattling steel meant death, struck terror into those who heard him coming. But he could manage stealth when required. Like his life, his armor was the stuff of accursed magic, and though he was bound to his armor forever, he could clang and clatter or not, as he chose.