“Chemosh,” Krell was howling. “You son-of-a-bitch! Come get me out of here!”
Nightshade jerked his thumb upward.
“What happens when Mina gets mad at us? Maybe she’ll shoot us off to a moon and leave us stranded there. Or pick up a mountain and drop it on top of our heads. Or feed us to a dragon.”
“I made a promise,” said Rhys.
Nightshade sighed and, sitting down, he pulled on one of his boots and tugged.
“You made that promise before you knew all the facts,” Nightshade stated, pulling on the other boot. “Do you even know where Godshome is-that is, if it is?”
“Legend holds that Godshome is in the Khalkist mountains, somewhere near Neraka,” Rhys replied.
“Oh, well, that’s all right,” Nightshade grumbled. “Neraka is the most horrible, evil place on the continent. Not to mention that it’s on the other side of the-world.”
“Not quite that far,” said Rhys, smiling.
They left the grotto, where Krell was still hanging from the ceiling, twisting and swearing. Chemosh appeared to be in no hurry to rescue his champion.
“In my opinion, you were hoodwinked,” Nightshade continued. He halted at the entrance, looking up at his friend. “Rhys, I want you to consider one thing.”
“What’s that, my friend?”
“Our story is over, Rhys,” said Nightshade earnestly. “We had a happy ending-you and me and Atta. Let’s close the book and go home.”
The kender gestured to Mina, who was running among the sand dunes, laughing wildly. “This is god-business, Rhys. We shouldn’t be getting mixed up in it.”
“A wise person once told me, ‘You can’t quit a god,’” said Rhys.
“The person who said that to you was a kender,” Nightshade returned grumpily. “And you know you can’t trust them.”
“I trusted one with my life,” said Rhys, resting his hand on Nightshade’s head. “And he did not let me down.”
“Well, then, you got lucky,” Nightshade muttered. He shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked at a rock.
“My story is not finished. No one’s story is ever really finished. Death is just the turning of another page. But you are right, my friend,” Rhys said with an involuntary sigh. “Traveling with her will be dangerous and difficult. Your story may not be finished, but perhaps now you should turn the page, take a different path.”
Nightshade thought this over. “Are you sure Majere won’t help me pick locks?”
“I cannot say for certain,” Rhys replied, “but I really doubt it.”
Nightshade shrugged. “Then I guess I’ll stay with you. Otherwise I’d starve.”
He grinned and winked. “I’m only fooling, Rhys! You know I’d never leave you and Atta. What would you two do without me? You’d get yourselves killed by crazy gods!”
That may yet be the end of our tale, Rhys thought. Chemosh will not be the only god seeking Mina.
He kept the thought to himself however, and, whistling to Atta, he gave his hand to Mina, who came skipping up to him.
7
Mina set off, but she did not head toward the road. She started walking toward the sea.
“I thought you wanted to go to Godshome,” said Nightshade, who was not in a good mood. “What are you going to do? Swim there?”
“Oh, we’ll go to Godshome,” said Mina. “But first I want you to come with me to the tower.”
“Which tower?” Nightshade asked. “There are lots of towers in the world. There’s a very famous tower in Nightlund. I’ve always wanted to visit Nightlund, because it is filled with the roving spirits of the dead. I can talk to roving spirits, if you ever-”
“That tower.” Mina added proudly, “My tower.”
She pointed to the tower that stood in the middle of the Blood Sea.
“Why do you want to go there?” Rhys asked.
“Because she’s crazy,” Nightshade said in a low voice.
Rhys gave him a look, and the kender lapsed into a gloomy silence.
Mina stood gazing out across the sea.
“My mother will be mad at me for running away,” Mina said. “I want to bring Goldmoon a present so she will forgive me.”
Rhys recalled Revered Son Patrick, cleric of Mishakal, telling the story of Goldmoon and Mina. After Mina ran away, Goldmoon had grieved for the lost girl and hoped someday she would return. Then came Takhisis, the One God, and the War of Souls began with Mina leading the armies of darkness. Hoping to turn Goldmoon, who was now an elderly, frail woman, to the side of Darkness, Takhisis gave Goldmoon youth and beauty. Goldmoon did not want her youth back. She was ready to die, to proceed on the next stage of her life’s journey where her beloved, Riverwind, waited for her. Though Mina tried to persuade Goldmoon to change her mind, Goldmoon defied Takhisis and died in Mina’s arms.
Goldmoon must have died in sorrow, Rhys realized, believing the child she had loved was lost forever, bound to evil. No wonder Mina had obliterated that memory.
He determined he should at least make the attempt to help her understand the truth.
“Mina,” said Rhys, taking hold of the child’s hand, “Goldmoon is dead. She died many, many months ago-”
“You’re wrong,” said Mina serenely, speaking with unwavering certainty. “Goldmoon is waiting for me at Godshome. That’s why I’m going there. To beg her not to be mad at me anymore. I will take her a present so she will love me again.”
“Goldmoon never stopped loving you, Mina,” said Rhys. “Mothers don’t ever stop loving their children.”
Mina looked back at him, her eyes wide. “Not even if they do bad things? Really, really bad things?”
Rhys was caught off guard by her question. If this was truly madness, it held a strange and terrible wisdom.
He rested his hand on her slender shoulder. “Not even then.”
“Maybe so,” said Mina, though she sounded doubtful. “But you can’t be sure, and so I want to take Goldmoon a present. And the present I want to take her is inside that tower.”
“What sort of tower is it?” Nightshade asked, his curiosity getting the best of him. “Where did it come from?”
“It didn’t come from anywhere, stupid,” Mina scoffed. “It’s always been there.”
“No, it hasn’t,” argued Nightshade.
“Yes, it has.”
“No-” Nightshade caught Rhys’ eye and changed the subject. “So who built it, if it’s been there all this time?”
“Wizards built it. It used to be a Tower of High Sorcery. But it’s my tower now.” Mina flashed Nightshade a defiant glance, daring him to disagree. “And Goldmoon’s present is inside.”
“A Tower of High Sorcery!” Nightshade gasped, his jaw sagging. “Are there wizards inside it?”
Mina shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. Wizards are stupid anyway, so it doesn’t matter. What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
“The tower is the middle of the sea, Mina,” Rhys said. “We don’t have a boat-”
“That’s right!” Nightshade struck in happily. “We’d love to visit your tower, Mina, but we can’t. No boat! Say, is anyone else hungry? I hear there’s an inn in Flotsam that makes a really good meat pie-”
“There’s a boat,” Mina interrupted. “Behind you.”
Nightshade looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, a small sailboat rested on its keel on the shore, not fifteen paces from where they were standing.
“Rhys, do something,” said Nightshade out of the corner of his mouth. “You and I both know there wasn’t a boat there a second ago. I don’t want to sail in a boat that didn’t used to be there…”
Mina began tugging Rhys excitedly toward the sail boat. Nightshade, sighing deeply, followed, dragging his feet.
“Do you even know how to sail this thing?” he asked. “I’ll bet you don’t.”
“I bet I do,” she answered smugly. “I learned at the Citadel.”
Nightshade sighed again. Mina climbed inside the
boat and began to rummage around, sorting out a tangle of ropes and instructing Rhys on how to raise the sail. Nightshade stood beside the boat, his lower lip thrust out.
Mina regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. “You said you were hungry. Someone might have left food in the boat. I’ll look.” She felt about under one of the wooden plank seats and came up holding a large sack.
“I was right!” she announced, pleased. “See what I found.”
She reached into the sack and took out a meat pie, and handed it to Nightshade.
He did not touch it. It looked like a meat pie and it certainly smelled like a meat pie. Both his mouth and his stomach agreed this was definitely a meat pie, and Atta added her vote, as well. The dog eyed the pie and licked her chops.
“You said you were hungry,” Mina reminded him.
Still, Nightshade hesitated. “I don’t know…”
Atta took matters into her own hands-or rather into her mouth. A leap, a snap, a couple of gulps, and the meat pie was a grease smear on her nose.
“Hey!” cried Nightshade indignantly. “That was mine.”
Atta slurped her tongue over her nose and began to hungrily paw the sack. Rhys rescued the remainder of the pies and handed them out. Mina nibbled on hers and ended up feeding most of it to Atta. Nightshade ate his hungrily and, finding Rhys could not finish his, the kender ate it for him. He helped Rhys hoist the sail and, acting under Mina’s direction, pushed the boat out into the waves.
Mina took the tiller and steered the boat into the wind. The waves had calmed. A light breeze caught the sail, and the boat glided over the waves, heading out to sea. Atta crouched at the bottom, nosing the sack hopefully.
“For a god-baked pie, that wasn’t bad,” Nightshade remarked, falling down onto the seat beside Rhys when the sailboat took an unexpected lurch. “Maybe a little less onion and more garlic. Next I think I’ll ask her to cook up some beefsteak with crispy potatoes-”
“We should be very careful not to ask for anything,” Rhys suggested.
Nightshade mulled this over.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. We might get it.” The kender shifted his gaze to the tower. “What do you know about Towers of High Sorcery?”
Rhys shook his head. “Not much, I am afraid.”
“Me neither. And I have to say I’m not really looking forward to the experience. Wizards don’t like kender for some reason. They might turn me into a frog.”
“Mistress Jenna liked you,” Rhys reminded him.
“That’s true. All she did was slap my hand.”
Nightshade caught hold of the gunwale as the boat gave another sudden lurch. They were sailing quite fast now, bounding over the waves, and the tower was coming nearer. It looked extremely dark. Not even the bright sunlight shining on the crystal walls seemed to be able to brighten it.
“I suppose most kender would give their topknots to visit a Tower of High Sorcery, but then I guess I’m not most kender,” Nightshade remarked. “My father said I wasn’t. He said it came from spending my time in graveyards talking to the dead. They were a bad influence on me.” Nightshade looked at little downcast at this.
“I think most kender would give their topknots to be able to do that,” Rhys told him.
Nightshade scratched his head. He’d never considered this. “You know. You might be right. Why, I remember once meeting a fellow kender in Solace, and when I told him I was a Nightstalker, he said-”
Nightshade stopped talking. He stared out to sea. Blinking, he rubbed his eyes, stared again, then tugged on Rhys’ sleeve.
“There are people out there in the water…” Nightshade cried. “Maybe they’re drowning! We have to help save them!”
Alarmed, Rhys risked standing up in the rocking boat to gain a better view. At first all he could see were sea birds and the occasional frothy white cap. Then he saw a person in the water, and then another, and still another.
“Mina!” Nightshade cried. “Steer the boat over to those people-”
“No, don’t,” Rhys said suddenly.
The people were far from shore, yet they were swimming strongly, not floundering or flailing. Hundreds of them, swimming, far from shore, heading for the tower…
“Rhys!” Nightshade cried. “Rhys, they’re Beloved and they’re swimming to the tower. Mina, stop! Turn the boat around!”
Mina shook her head. Her amber eyes gleamed with pleasure, her lips were parted in a smile, and she laughed for no other reason than pure joy. The sail boat traveled faster, seeming to leap over the waves.
“Mina!” Rhys called urgently. “Turn the boat around!”
She looked at him and smiled and waved.
“Those people are dangerous!” he cried, and he jabbed his finger in the direction of the undead, some of whom had reached the tower and were crawling onto the shore. He could see many more clustering around the entrance. “We must turn back!”
Mina stared at the Beloved in bewilderment, which quickly changed to dismay and then to anger.
“They have no business going to my tower,” she said and she steered the boat straight toward them.
“Rhys!” Nightshade howled.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Rhys said, and for the first time he truly understood the dire peril of their situation.
How could he control a six-year-old girl who could suspend a minion of Chemosh by his heels from a ceiling, summon up a sailboat, and produce meat pies on a whim?
He was suddenly angry. Why didn’t the gods themselves deal with her? Why dump this in his lap?
The boat shifted suddenly. The emmide, which had been lying on the seat beside him, rolled up against his hand. He grasped it and, though the staff was wet and slick with salt spray, he felt again a comforting warmth. One god, at least, had his reasons…
“Rhys! We’re getting closer!” Nightshade warned.
They were quite close to the tower now. The Beloved had already overrun the island, which was not very large, and more were arriving all the time. Some swam. Some crawled up out of the sea as though they had walked along the ocean floor They climbed over the rocks, sometimes slipping and falling back into the water, but always returning. They were mostly human, young and strong, and all of them were dead, yet horribly alive, chained to a world of unendurable pain, victims of Mina’s terrible kiss. Rhys’ heart ached to see them.
“What are all you people doing there?” Mina cried angrily. “This is my tower.”
She gave the rudder a twitch, took the boat out of the wind. The sail sagged and flapped, and the boat glided on its own momentum into the rock-bound shore. Rhys feared for a moment they would crash, but Mina proved a deft sailor, and she guided them to a safe landing among the rocks and coral and dripping seaweed.
“Hand me that line,” Mina said, jumping lightly onto shore, “so I can tie up the boat.”
“Rhys! What are you doing?” Nightshade cried, aghast. “Cast off! Sail away! We can’t stay here! They’ll kill us!”
The emmide was still warm in Rhys’ hand. He remembered his thought: her madness held a terrible wisdom. This was something she needed to do, seemingly. And he had promised. She was in no danger. She could not die. He wondered if she understood that he and Nightshade could.
From his vantage point, Rhys could see his reflection in the tower’s glistening black crystal walls. The entrance to the tower was only about a hundred paces away and the door stood open. Many of the Beloved must already be inside. Several hundred Beloved remained on the island, milling about aimlessly. Some of these, catching sight of the boat, turned to stare with their empty eyes.
“Too late!” Nightshade groaned. “They’ve seen us.”
Rhys hurriedly tied up the boat and, taking his staff, went to stand beside Mina. Nightshade helped Atta out of the boat, then he grabbed a boat hook and slowly and reluctantly followed Rhys.
“I could be in some nice graveyard about now,” the kender said dolefully, “visiting with any number of pleasant dead peop
le…”
“Mina!” One of the Beloved cried out her name and “Mina!” said another. The name spread among them. The Beloved began running toward the boat.
“How do they know me?” Mina quavered. She shrank back fearfully, pressing up against Rhys. “Why do they stare at me with their horrible eyes?”
The Beloved thronged around her, reaching out their hands to her, calling her name.
“I hate them! Make them go away!” Mina pleaded, turning away and burying her head in Rhys’ robes. “Make them go away!”
“Mina! Mina, touch me,” the Beloved begged her, stretching out their hands to her. “You made me what I am!”
One of the Beloved grabbed Mina’s arm, and she shrieked in a frenzy of panic. Rhys could not keep hold of Mina and, at the same time, fight off the Beloved. He had all he could do to retain the writhing, screaming child. He flung the emmide to Nightshade.
“It’s blessed by the god!” Rhys cried.
The kender understood. He dropped the boat hook and caught the staff. Swinging it like a club, he brought it down with all his might on the Beloved’s wrist.
At the staff’s touch, the flesh on the Beloved’s hand blackened and dropped off from the bone, leaving behind a skeletal hand that unfortunately retained its grasp. Bony fingers still clawed at Mina’s arm.
“That was a big help!” Nightshade shouted, casting the heavens an irate glance. “I should think a god could do better than that!”
More Beloved began crowding about. Nightshade struck at them with the staff, trying to beat them off and not having much luck. The fact that globs of flesh were turning black and falling off their bones didn’t seem to bother them in the least. They kept coming and Nightshade kept swinging. His arms were starting to ache, his palms were sweating and he was sick to his stomach at the gruesome sight of fleshless hands and arms flailing about him.
Atta snapped and barked and made darting runs at the Beloved, sinking her teeth into any part of them that came within her reach, but the dog bites had less effect on them than the staff.
“Back to the boat!” Rhys gasped, endeavoring to keep hold of Mina and fend off the Beloved. They paid no attention to him or the kender or the dog. They were desperate to seize Mina.
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