Amber and Iron

Prologue

Timothy Tanner was not a bad man, just a weak one.

He had a wife, Gerta, and a new baby son, who was healthy and cute. He loved both of them dearly and would have given his life for them. He just couldn’t manage to stay faithful to them. He felt wretchedly guilty over his “tomcatting” as he called it, and when the new baby arrived he promised himself that he would never so much as look at another woman.

Three months passed, and Timothy kept his promise. He’d actually turned down a couple of his previous lovers, telling them he was a changed man, and it seemed that he was, for he truly adored his son and felt nothing but gratitude and love for his wife.

Then one day Lucy Wheelwright came into his shop.

Though he came from a family of tanners, Timothy had been apprenticed to a cobbler and now made his living making leather shoes and boots.

“I want to know if this shoe can be mended,” Lucy said.

She placed her foot on a short-legged stool and hiked up her skirt well past her knees to reveal a very shapely leg and more beyond that.

“Well, Master Cobbler?” she said archly.

Timothy wrenched his gaze from her leg to the shoe. It was brand new.

He looked up at her. She smiled at him. Lowering her skirt, she bent over, pretending to lace her shoe, but all the while providing him a view of her full bosom. He noticed an odd mark over her left breast—it looked like a kiss from two lips. He pictured placing his own lips on that spot, and he caught his breath.

Lucy was one of the prettiest girls in Solace and also one of the most unobtainable, though there were rumors ...

She was married, like Timothy. Her husband was a big brute of man and intensely jealous.

She straightened, tugging her chemise back in place, and glanced at the door. “Could you work on the shoe now? I really have a need for it. An aching need ...”

“Your husband?” Timothy coughed.

“He’s away on a hunting trip. Besides, you could bolt the door so that no one interrupts you in your work.”

Timothy thought of his wife and his child, but they were not here and Lucy was. He rose from his bench and went over to the door, shutting it and locking it. The hour was almost noon; customers would think he’d gone home for his midday meal.

Just to be safe, he led Lucy to the storeroom. Even as they made their way through the shop, she was kissing him, fondling him, undoing his shirt, her hands fumbling at his breeches. He’d never known a woman so ardent, and he was consumed with passion. They tumbled down on a pile of leather skins. She wriggled out of her chemise, and he kissed the place on her breast over the strange birthmark of two lips.

Lucy put her hand over his mouth. “I want you to do something for me, Timothy,” she said, breathing fast.

“Anything!” He pressed his body close to hers.

She held him at bay. “I want you to give yourself to Chemosh.”

“Chemosh?” Timothy laughed. This was a most inopportune moment to be discussing religion! “The god of death? What made you think of that?”

“Just a fancy of mine,” said Lucy, winding his hair around and around her finger. “I’m one of his followers. He’s a god of life, not death. Those horrid clerics of Mishakal say such bad things about him. You mustn’t believe them.”

“I don’t know. . ..” Timothy thought this all very odd.

“You want to please me, don’t you?” said Lucy, kissing his ear lobe. “I’m very grateful to men who please me.”

She moved her hands down his body. She was skilled, and Timothy groaned with desire.

“Just say the words ‘I give myself to Chemosh’,” Lucy whispered. “In return, you’ll have unending life, unending youth, and me. We can make love like this every day if you want.”

Timothy wasn’t a bad man, just weak. He had never wanted any woman as much as he wanted Lucy at that moment. He wasn’t all that religious, and he didn’t see the harm in pledging himself to Chemosh if it made her happy.

“I give myself to Chemosh .. . and Lucy,” he said teasingly.

Lucy smiled at him and pressed her lips on his left breast over his heart.

Terrible pain shot through Timothy. His heart began to beat wildly and erratically. Pain burned through his arms and down his torso and into his legs. He tried frantically to push Lucy off him, but she had incredible strength and she pinned him down and kept pressing her lips on his chest. His heart lurched. He tried to scream, but he didn’t have the breath. His body shuddered, convulsed, and stiffened as the pain, like the hand of an evil god, took him and twisted him, wrung him, shredded him and carried him off into darkness.

Timothy came out of the darkness. He entered a world that seemed all twilight. He saw objects that looked familiar, but he couldn’t place them. He knew where he was, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t care. The woman he’d been with was gone. He tried to think of her name, but he couldn’t.

Only one name was in his mind and he whispered that name, “Mina ...”

He knew her, though he’d never met her. She had beautiful amber eyes.

“Come to me,” said Mina. “My lord Chemosh has need of you.”

“I will,” Timothy promised. “Where do I find you?”

“Follow the road into the sunrise.”

“You mean leave my home? No, I can’t—”

Pain stabbed Timothy, horrible pain that was like the pain of dying.

“Follow the road into the sunrise,” said Mina.

“I will!” he gasped, and the pain eased.

“Bring disciples to me,” she told him. “Give others the gift you have been given. You will never die, Timothy. You will never age. You will never know fear. Give others this gift.”

An image of his wife came into his mind. Timothy had the vague notion that he didn’t want to do this, that he would hurt Gerta terribly if he did this to her. He wouldn’t. . .

Pain tore at him, bent and twisted him.

“I will, Mina!” he moaned. “I will!”

Timothy went home to his family. His baby was sleeping in the cradle, taking his afternoon nap. Timothy paid no attention to the child. He didn’t recall that it was his child. He cared nothing about it. He saw only his wife and he heard only the voice, Mina’s voice, saying, “Bring her....”

“My dear!” Gerta greeted him, pleased but surprised. “What are you doing home? It’s the middle of the day?”

“I came home to be with you, my love,” said Timothy. He put his arms around her and kissed her. “Come to bed, wife.”

“Tim!” Gerta giggled and tried, half-heartedly, to push him away. “It’s still daylight!”

“What does that matter?” He was kissing her, touching her, and he felt her melt into his arms.

She made a last faint protest. “The baby—”

“He’s asleep. Come on.” Timothy pulled his wife down onto their bed. “Let me prove that I love you!”

“I know you love me,” said Gerta, and she nestled next to him and began to return his kisses.

She started to unlace his tunic, but he clasped his hands over her hands.

“There’s one thing you must do to prove that you love me, wife. I have recently become a follower of the god, Chemosh. I want you to share the joy I have found in following the god.”

“Why, of course, husband, if that’s what you want,” said Gerta. “But I know nothing of the gods. What sort of god is this Chemosh?”

“A god of unending life,” said Timothy. “Will you pledge yourself to him?”

“I will do anything for you, husband.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then stopped. She sensed some inner struggle within him. His face twisted in pain.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, alarmed.

“Nothing!” he gasped. “A cramp in my foot. That’s all. Say the words: ‘I pledge myself to Chemosh.’”

Gerta repeated the words and added, “I love you.”

Then Timothy said something very strange as he bent over and pressed his lips on her left breast above her heart.

“Forgive me. . ..”

1

Ausric Krell, death knight, watched in astonishment, the white kender khas piece went racing across the board, lunged full-tilt at his own dark knight khas piece, and grappled with it. Both pieces fell off the board and began rolling around on the floor.

“Here, now! That’s against the rules,” was Krell’s first outraged thought.

His second, more bemused thought was, “I never saw a khas piece do that before.”

His third thought included dawning revelation. “That’s no ordinary khas piece.”

His fourth thought was deeply suspicious. “Something funny’s going on here.”

His thoughts after this were muddled, undoubtedly due to the fact that he was engaged in a battle for his undead life against a horrible giant mantis.

Krell had always detested bugs, and this particular mantis was truly terrifying, for it was ten feet tall with bulbous eyes, a green shell, and six huge green legs, two of which held onto Krell while its mandibles clamped onto his cringing spirit and began to chomp into his brain.

Krell figured out after a horrifying moment that this was no ordinary bug. There was a god mixed up in this somewhere, a god who didn’t much like him. This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Krell had managed to offend several gods during his lifetime, including the late and unlamented Takhisis, Queen of Darkness, and her chaotic, vindictive daughter, the Sea Goddess Zeboim, who had been outraged when she found out that Krell was the one responsible for the betrayal and murder of her beloved son, Lord Ariakan.

Zeboim had captured Krell and killed him slowly, taking her time.

When there was finally no spark of life left within his mangled body, she had cursed him by changing him into a death knight and imprisoning him on the isolated and accursed isle of Storm’s Keep, where he had once served the man he had betrayed, there to live out his eternal existence with the memory of his crime always before him.

Zeboim’s punishment had not had quite the impact she had hoped for. Another famous death knight, Lord Soth, had been a tragic figure, consumed by remorse and eventually finding salvation. Krell, on the other hand, rather liked being a death knight. He found in death what he’d always enjoyed in life—the ability to bully and torment those weaker than himself. In life, the spoilsport Ariakan had prevented Krell from indulging in his sadistic pleasures. Now Krell was one of the most powerful beings on Krynn and he took joyful advantage of it.

Just the sight of him in his black armor and helm with the ram’s horns, behind which blazed red eyes of undeath, struck terror into the hearts of those foolish or daring enough to venture onto Storm’s Keep in search of the treasure the knights had supposedly left behind. Krell enjoyed such company immensely. He forced his victims to play khas with him, livening up the game by torturing them until they eventually succumbed.

Zeboim had been a bother, holding him prisoner on Storm’s Keep until he’d attracted the notice of Chemosh, Lord of the Dead. Krell had struck up a deal with Chemosh and gained his freedom from Storm’s Keep. With Chemosh protecting him, Krell had even been able to thumb his rotting nose at Zeboim.

Chemosh had in his possession the soul of Lord Ariakan, the beloved son of the sea goddess. The soul was trapped in a khas piece. Chemosh was holding that soul hostage for Zeboim’s “good behavior.” He had designs upon a certain tower located in the Blood Sea, and he didn’t want the sea goddess meddling.

Zeboim, incensed, had sent one of her faithful—some wretched monk—to Storm’s Keep to rescue her son. Krell had discovered the monk snooping about and, always happy to have visitors, had “invited” the monk to play khas with him.

To be fair to Krell, he had not known that the monk was sent by the goddess. The thought that the monk might be there to steal the khas piece containing Ariakan’s soul never entered Krell’s brain—a brain that admittedly was not all that large to begin with and was now further hampered by being encased in a ponderous and fearsome steel helm; a brain on which a giant bug, sent by a god, was now feasting.

The god belonged to this blasted monk, a monk who had not played fair. First, the monk had brought in an unlawful khas piece; second, that khas piece had made an illegal move; and third, the monk—instead of writhing and moaning in agony after Krell had broken several of his fingers—had physically attacked the death knight with a staff that turned out to be a god.

Krell fought the mantis in a blind panic, punching, kicking and flailing at it until, suddenly, it disappeared.

The monk’s staff was a staff again, lying on the floor. Krell was prepared to stomp it to splinters when a fifth thought came to him.

Suppose touching the staff would cause it to turn back into a bug?

Keeping a wary eye on the staff, Krell made a wide detour around it as he took stock of the situation. The monk had run off. That was only to be expected. Krell would deal with him later. After all, he wasn’t going anywhere, not off this accursed rock. The massive fortress stood atop sheer cliffs raked by the lashing waves of the turbulent sea. Krell righted the board that the monk had overturned. He gathered up the pieces, just to make certain the precious khas piece given to him by Chemosh was safe.

It wasn’t.

Feverishly Krell placed all the pieces on the khas board. Two were missing, one of which was the khas piece containing the soul of Ariakan; the khas piece that Chemosh had ordered Krell to guard with his undead life.

The death knight broke into a chill sweat, not an easy thing to do when one has no shivering flesh, palpitating heart, or clenching bowels. Krell fell to his knees. He peered under the table and groped about with his hands. The knight piece was not there; neither was the kender.

“The monk!” Krell snarled.

Spurred on by the vivid image of what Chemosh would do to him if he lost the khas piece containing the soul of Lord Ariakan, Krell set off in pursuit.

He didn’t expect this to take long. The monk was broken—both in bones and in spirit. He could barely walk, much less run.

Krell left the tower, where they’d been having such a comfortable, friendly game until the monk ruined it, and entered the keep’s central courtyard. He saw immediately that the monk had an ally—Zeboim, the Goddess of the Sea. At the sight of Krell, storm clouds gathered thick in the sky and a sizzling bolt of lightning struck the tower he’d just left.

Krell was not one of the world’s great intellectual thinkers, but he did have occasional flashes of desperate brilliance.

“Don’t you lay a hand on me, you Sea Bitch, you,” Krell bellowed. “Your monk stole the wrong khas piece! Your son is still in my possession. If you do anything to help the thief escape, Chemosh will melt down your pretty pewter boy and hammer his soul into oblivion!”

Krell’s ruse worked. Lightning flickered uncertainly from cloud to cloud. The wind died. The sky grew sullen. A few hailstones clunked down on Krell’s steel helm. The goddess spat rain at him, and that was all.

She dared do nothing to him. She dared not come to the monk’s aid.

As to the monk, he was gamely hobbling over the rocks, vainly trying to escape Krell. The man’s shoulders sagged. He sobbed for breath. He was about finished. His goddess had abandoned him. Krell expected the monk to give up, surrender, fall to his knees and plead for his miserable life. That was what Krell himself had done when in a similar situation. It hadn’t worked for him, and it wasn’t going to work for this monk.

Again, the monk didn’t play fair. Instead of surrendering, he hobbled with the last of his strength straight for the cliff’s edge.

Mother of the Abyss! Krell realized, shocked. The bastard’s going to jump!

If he jumped, he’d take with him the khas piece, and there was no way Krell could recover it. He had no intention of going for a swim in Zeboim-infested waters.

Krell had to catch the monk and stop him from jumping. Unfortunately, that was not proving an easy task to accomplish. His hulking form encased in the plate and chain mail armor of a death knight, Krell lumbered. He could not run.

Krell’s armor clanked and clattered. His ponderous footfalls sent tremors through the ground. He watched, in mounting terror, the monk outdistance him.

Krell found an unexpected ally in Zeboim. She, too, feared for the khas piece the monk was carrying. She tried to stop him. She pummeled the monk with rain and knocked him off his feet with a wind gust. The wretched monk stood up and kept going.

He reached the edge of the cliff. Krell knew what lay below—a seventy-foot fall onto sharp-edged granite boulders.

“Stop him, Zeboim,” Krell raged. “If you don’t, you’ll be sorry!”

The monk held a small leather bag in his hand. He thrust that bag into the bosom of his bloodstained robes.

Krell clambered and stumbled among the rocks, swearing and waving his sword.

The monk climbed onto a promontory that extended out into the sea. He lifted his face to the storm-shrouded heavens lit bright as day by the goddess’s fear.

“Zeboim,” the monk cried, “we are in your hands.”

Krell roared.

The monk jumped.

Krell blundered his way among the rocks, his momentum carrying him along at such a frantic pace that the edge of the cliff was upon him before he realized it, and he very nearly went over into the sea himself.

Krell teetered back and forth for what would have been a heart-stopping moment, if he’d had a heart, before hastily regaining his balance. He stumbled back several paces, then, creeping forward an inch at a time, he peered cautiously over the edge. He expected to see the monk’s mangled body lying sprawled on the rocks, with Zeboim lapping up his blood.

Nothing.

“I’m screwed,” Krell muttered glumly.

Krell glanced at the sky where the clouds were growing darker and thicker. The wind started to rise. Rain began to pour down on him, along with hailstones and lightning bolts, sleet and snow, and large chunks of a nearby tower.

Krell might have run for protection to Chemosh, but sadly, Chemosh was the god who had given Krell the khas piece for safekeeping—the khas piece that Krell had now lost. The Lord of Death was not known to be either merciful or forgiving.

“Somewhere on this island,” Krell reasoned, as he narrowly missed being flattened by a stone gargoyle hurtling past him, “there must be a hole deep enough and dark enough where no god can find me.”

Krell turned on his heel and lumbered off through the raging storm.

2

Rhys Mason was the monk who had made the desperate decision to leap off the cliffs of Storm’s Keep. He was making a gamble, staking his life and that of his friend, the kender, Nightshade, on the fact that Zeboim would not let them die. She could not let them die, for Rhys had in his possession the soul of her son.

At least, this is what Rhys was hoping. The thought was also in his mind that if the goddess abandoned him, he could either die slowly and in torment at the cruel whim of the death knight, or he could die swiftly on the rocks below.

As luck would have it, Rhys jumped into the water in an area around Storm’s Keep that was free of rocks. He plunged into the sea, sinking so deep that he left the light of day far above him. He floundered in the bone-chilling darkness, with no way to tell which way was up and which was down. Not that it mattered anyway. He could never reach the surface. He was drowning, his lungs bursting. When he opened his mouth, he would draw in gurgling, choking death. ...

The immortal hand of a furious goddess reached into the depths of her ocean, gripped Rhys Mason by the scruff of his neck, plucked him from the seas, and flung him on shore.

“How dare you endanger my son?” the goddess cried. She raged on, but Rhys did not hear her. Her fury closed over his head like the dark waters of the sea, and he knew nothing.

Rhys lay facedown in the warm sand. His monk’s robes were soaking wet, as were his shoes. His sodden hair trailed over his face. His lips were rimmed with salt, as was the inside of his mouth and his throat. He gagged, retched and fought to breathe.

Suddenly strong hands began to pummel him on his back, and swung his arms over his head, working his arms up and down in a pumping action to force the water out of his lungs.

Coughing, he spewed seawater out of his mouth.

“About time you came around,” Zeboim said, continuing to yank him and pump him.

Groaning, Rhys managed to croak, “Stop! Please!” He gagged up more water.

The goddess let go, allowing his arms to drop limply to the sand.

Rhys’s eyes burned from the salt. He could barely open them. He peered through half-shut lids to see the hem of a green gown rippling over the sand near his head. The toe of a bare, shapely foot prodded him.

“Where is he, monk?” Zeboim demanded.

The goddess knelt down beside him. Her blue-green eyes glowed. A restless wind stirred her sea foam hair. She grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head off the ground and glared into his eyes.

“Where is my son?”

Rhys tried to speak. His throat was sore and parched. He passed his tongue over his salt-coated lips and rasped, “Water!”

“Water!” Zeboim flared. “You swallowed half my ocean as it is! Oh, very well,” she added huffily, as Rhys’s eyes closed and he fell back limply in the sand. “Here. Don’t drink too much. You’ll throw up again. Just rinse out your mouth.”

Her hand propped him up as she held a cup of cool water to his lips. The goddess’s touch could be gentle when she wanted. He sipped the cool liquid gratefully. The goddess brushed moist fingertips across his lips and eyelids, wiping away the salt.

“There,” Zeboim said soothingly. “You’ve had your water.” Her voice hardened. “Now stop stalling. I want my son.”

As Rhys started to reach into the bosom of his robes where he’d stuffed the leather scrip, pain shot through him and he gasped. He lifted his hands. His fingers were purple and swollen and bent at odd angles. He couldn’t move them.

Zeboim regarded him with a sniff.

“I am not the goddess of healing, if that’s what you’re thinking!” she said coldly.

“I did not ask you to heal me, Your Majesty,” Rhys returned through clenched teeth.

He slowly thrust his injured hand inside his robes and sighed in relief at the feel of wet leather. He had been afraid that he might have lost the scrip in his dive off the cliff. He fumbled at the bag, but his broken fingers would not work well enough for him to open it.

The goddess seized hold of his fingers and, one by one, yanked the bones back into place. The pain was excruciating. Rhys feared for a moment he was going to pass out. When she was finished, however, his broken bones were mended. The bruising faded. The swelling started to recede. Zeboim had her own healing touch, it seemed.

Rhys lay in the sand, bathed in sweat, waiting for the nausea to pass.

“I warned you,” Zeboim said serenely. “I’m not Mishakal.”

“No, Your Majesty.” Rhys murmured. “Thank you anyway.”

His healed hands reached into his robe and drew forth the leather bag. Opening the drawstring, he upended the bag. Two khas pieces fell out onto the sand—a dark knight mounted on a blue dragon and a kender.

Zeboim snatched up the dark knight piece. Holding it in her hand, she lovingly caressed the figure and crooned to it. “My son! My dearest son! Your soul will be freed. We’ll go to Chemosh immediately.”

There was a pause, as though she were listening, then she said, her voice altering, “Don’t argue with me, Ariakan. Mother knows what is best!”

Cradling the khas piece in her hands, Zeboim stood up. Storm clouds darkened the heavens. The wind lifted, blowing stinging sand into Rhys’s face.

“Don’t leave yet, Your Majesty!” he cried desperately. “Remove the spell from the kender!”

“What kender?” Zeboim asked carelessly. Wisps of cloud coiled around her, ready to carry her off.

Rhys jumped to his feet. He snatched up the kender piece and held it before her.

“The kender risked his life for you,” said Rhys, “as did I. Ask yourself this question, Majesty. Why should Chemosh free your son’s soul?”

“Why? Because I command it, that’s why!” Zeboim returned, though not with her usual spirit. She looked uncertain.

“Chemosh did this for a reason, Majesty,” Rhys said. “He did it because he fears you.”

“Of course, he does,” Zeboim returned, shrugging. “Everyone fears me.”

She hesitated, then said, “But I don’t mind hearing what you have to say on the subject. Why do you think Chemosh fears me?”

“Because you have learned too much about the Beloved, these terrible undead that he has created. You have learned too much about the woman, Mina, who is their leader.”

“You’re right. That chit, Mina. I had forgotten all about her.” Zeboim cast Rhys a glance of grudging acknowledgement. “You are also right in that the Lord of Death will not free my son’s soul, not without coercion. I need something to force his hand. I need Mina. You have to find her and bring her to me. A task, I recall, that I gave you in the first place.”

Zeboim glowered at him. “So why haven’t you done it?”

“I was saving your son, Your Majesty,” Rhys said. “I will resume my search, but to find Mina I require the services of the kender—”

“What kender?”

“This kender. Nightshade, Your Majesty,” Rhys said, holding up the khas piece that was frantically waving its tiny arms. “The kender nightstalker.”

“Oh, very well!” Zeboim flicked sand over the khas piece and Nightshade, all four-and-one half-feet of him, blossomed at Rhys’s side.

“Get me back to normal!” the kender was bellowing.

He looked around and blinked. “Oh, you did. Whew! Thanks!”

Nightshade patted himself all over. He lifted his hand to his head to make certain his topknot was there and it was. He looked at his shirt to make certain he still had one and he did. He had his britches, too—his favorite color, purple, or at least, they’d once been purple. They were now a peculiar color of mauve. He wrung the water out of his shirt, pants, and topknot, and felt better.

“I’ll never complain about being short again,” he confided to Rhys in heartfelt tones.

“If that is all I can do for the two of you,” Zeboim said bitingly, “I have urgent business ...”

“One more thing, Your Majesty,” Rhys said. “Where are we?”

Zeboim cast a vague glance around. “You are on a beach by the sea. How should I know where? It is all the same to me. I pay no attention to these things.”

“We need to be back in Solace, Your Majesty,” said Rhys, “in order to search for Mina. I know you are in a hurry, but if you could just take us there—”

“And would you like me to fill your pockets with emeralds?” Zeboim asked with a sarcastic curl of her lip. “And give you a castle overlooking the shores of the Sirrion Ocean?”

“Yes!” cried Nightshade eagerly.

“No, Majesty,” said Rhys. “Just send us back to—”

He quit speaking because there was no longer any goddess to hear him. There was only Nightshade, several extremely startled looking people, and a mighty vallenwood tree holding a gabled building in its stalwart branches.

A joyful bark split the air. A black and white dog bounded off the landing where she’d been dozing in the sun. The dog came tumbling down the stairs, dodging in and out of people’s legs, nearly upending several.

Speeding across the lawn, Atta launched herself at Rhys and jumped into his arms.

He clasped the wriggling, furry body and hugged her close, his head buried in her fur, his eyes wet with softer water than that of the sea.

Brightly colored stained glass windows caught the last rays of the afternoon sun. People wended their way up and down the long staircase that led from the ground to the Inn of the Last Home in the treetop.

“Solace,” Nightshade said in satisfaction.

3

“Well, I’ll be the son of a blue-eyed elf-loving ogre!” Gerard clapped Rhys on the back, and then shook his hand and then clapped him on the back again, and then stood grinning at him. “I never expected to see you again this side of the Abyss.”

Gerard paused, then said half-joking and half-not, “I guess you’ll want your kender-herding dog back . . .”

Atta dashed over to give Nightshade a wriggle and a quick lick, then ran back to Rhys. She sat at his feet, gazing up at him, her mouth wide and her tongue hanging out.

“Yes,” said Rhys, reaching down to fondle her ears. “I want my dog back.”

“I was afraid of that. Solace now has the most well-behaved kender in all of Ansalon. No offense, friend,” he added with a glance at Nightshade.

“None taken,” said Nightshade cheerfully. He sniffed the air. “What’s the special on the Inn’s menu tonight?”

“All right, you people, go about your business,” Gerard said, waving his hands at the crowd that had gathered. “The show’s over.” He glanced sidelong at Rhys and said in an undertone, “I take it the show is over, Brother? You’re not going to spontaneously combust or anything like that?”

“I trust not,” answered Rhys cautiously. When Zeboim was involved, he knew better than to promise.

A few still lingered, hoping for more excitement, but when the minutes passed and they saw nothing more interesting than a dripping wet monk and a soaked kender, even the idlers wandered off.

Gerard turned back to stare at Rhys. “What have you been doing, Brother? Washing your robes with yourself inside them? The kender, too.” Reaching out his hand, he plucked a bit of slimy, brownish red plant life from the kender’s hair. “Seaweed! And the nearest ocean is a hundred miles from here.”

Gerard eyed them. “But then, why am I surprised? The last I saw you two, you were both locked inside a jail cell with a crazy woman. The next 20 thing I know, you’ve both vanished and I’m left with a lunatic female who has the power to fling me out of her cell with a flick of her finger, then she locks me out of my own jail and won’t let me back inside. And then she vanishes!”

“I believe I owe you an explanation,” said Rhys.

“I believe you do!” Gerard grunted. “Come into the Inn. You can dry off in the kitchen and Laura will fix you both something to eat—”

“What’s today?” Nightshade interrupted to ask.

“Today? Fourth-day,” said Gerard impatiently. “Why?”

“Fourth-day . . . Oh, the menu special will be lamb chops!” Nightshade said excitedly. “With boiled potatoes and mint jelly.”

“I don’t think going to the Inn would be a good idea,” said Rhys. “We need to speak privately.”

“Oh, but Rhys,” Nightshade wailed, “it’s lamb chops!”

“We’ll go to my house,” said Gerard. “It’s not far. I don’t have lamb chops,” he added, seeing Nightshade looking glum. “But no one stews a chicken better, if I do say so myself.”

People stared at the monk and kender as they walked along the streets of Solace, obviously wondering how the two had managed to get so wet on a day when the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. They hadn’t gone far, however, before Nightshade came to a sudden stop.

“Why are we walking toward the jail?” he asked suspiciously.

“Don’t worry,” Gerard assured him. “My house is located near the prison. I live close by the jail in case there’s trouble. The house comes as part of my pay.”

“Oh, well, that’s all right then,” said Nightshade, relieved.

“We’ll have something to eat and drink, and you can retrieve your staff while you’re there, Brother,” Gerard added as an afterthought. “I’ve been keeping it for you.”

“My staff!” Now it was Rhys who halted. He regarded his friend in astonishment.

“I guess it’s yours,” said Gerard. “I found it in the prison cell after you’d left. You were in such a hurry,” he added wryly, “you forgot it.”

“Are you sure the staff is mine?”

“If I wasn’t sure, Atta was,” said Gerard. “She sleeps beside it every night.”

Nightshade was staring at Rhys with wide eyes.

“Rhys—” said the kender.

Rhys shook his head, hoping to ward off the questions he knew was coming.

Nightshade was persistent. “But, Rhys, your staff-—”

“—has been in safe hands all this time,” said Rhys. “I need not have been worried about it.”

Nightshade subsided, though he continued to cast puzzled glances at Rhys as they walked on. Rhys hadn’t forgotten his staff. The emmide had been with him when they’d made their unexpected journey to the death knight’s castle. The staff had probably saved their lives, undergoing a miraculous transformation, changing from a shabby wooden staff into a gigantic praying mantis that had attacked the death knight. Rhys had thought the staff lost to Storm’s Keep and he’d felt a pang of regret, even as he was fleeing for his life, at having to leave it behind. The emmide was sacred to Majere, the god Rhys had abandoned.

The god who apparently refused to abandon Rhys.

Humbled, grateful and confused, Rhys pondered Majere’s involvement in his life. Rhys had thought the sacred staff a parting gift from his god, a sign from Majere that he understood and forgave his backsliding follower. When the emmide had transformed itself into the praying mantis to attack Krell, Rhys had taken that to be the god’s final blessing. Yet now the emmide was back. It had been given for safekeeping to Gerard, a former Solamnic knight—a sign, perhaps, that this man could be trusted, and also a sign that Majere still took a keen interest in his monk.

“The way to me is through you,” Majere taught. “Know yourself and you come to know me.”

Rhys had thought he’d known himself, and then had come that terrible day when his wretched brother had murdered their parents and the brethren of Rhys’s order. Rhys realized now he’d known only the side of himself that walked in the sunshine along the riverbank. He had not known the side of himself that crawled about in his soul’s dark chasm. He had not known that side until it had burst out to shriek its fury and desire for vengeance.

That dark side of himself had prompted Rhys to renounce Majere as a “do nothing” god in order to join forces with Zeboim. He had left the monastery to go out into the world to find his accursed brother, Lieu, and bring him to justice. He had found his brother, but things hadn’t been that simple.

Perhaps Majere and his teachings weren’t that simple either. Perhaps the god was a great deal more complicated than Rhys had realized. Certainly life was far more complicated than he’d ever imagined.

A sharp tug on Rhys’s sleeve brought him back from his musings. He looked at Nightshade.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Not me,” said the kender, pointing. “Him.”

Rhys realized Gerard must have been talking to him all this time. “I beg your pardon, Sheriff. I started down a path of thought and could not find my way back. Did you ask me something?”

“I asked if you’d seen anything of that lunatic woman who apparently feels free to let herself in and out of my prison whenever she feels like it.”

“Is she there now?” Rhys asked, alarmed.

“I don’t know,” returned Gerard dryly. “I haven’t looked in the last five minutes. What do you know about her?”

Rhys made up his mind. Though much was still murky, the god’s sign seemed clear. Gerard was a man he could trust. And, the gods knew, Rhys had to trust someone! He could no longer carry this burden by himself.

“I will explain everything to you, Sheriff, at least, as much as can be explained.”

“Which isn’t much,” Nightshade muttered.

“I will be grateful for anything at this point,” Gerard stated feelingly.

The explanation was put off for a short while. The salt water crusted on their skin was starting to itch, and so both Rhys and Nightshade decided to bathe in Crystalmir Lake. The Sea Goddess, having recovered her son, had generously deigned to remove the curse that she’d put on it, and the lake had been restored to its state of crystal purity. The dead fish that had choked the lake had been carted off and dumped into the fields for use in nurturing the crops, but the stench still lingered in the air, and the two washed as swiftly as possible. After he had bathed, Rhys cleansed the blood and salt out of his robes and Nightshade scrubbed his own clothes. Gerard provided clothes for them to wear while their own dried in the sun.

While they bathed, Gerard stewed a chicken in broth flavored with onions, carrots, potatoes, and what he named as his own special secret ingredient—cloves.

Gerard’s house was small but comfortable. It was built on ground level, not in the branches of one of Solace’s famous vallenwood trees.

“No offense to tree dwellers,” Gerard said, ladling out the chicken stew and handing it around. “I like living in a place where if I happen to sleepwalk, I don’t break my neck.”

He gave Atta a beef bone and she settled down on top of Rhys’s feet to gnaw contently. Rhys’s staff stood in the corner next to the chimney.

“Is it your—what do you call it?” Gerard asked.

“Emmide.” Rhys ran his hand over the wood. He recalled every imperfection, every bump and gnarl, every nick and cut that the emmide had acquired over five hundred years of protecting the innocent.

“The staff is imperfect, yet the god loves it,” Rhys said softly. “Majere could have a staff of the same magical metal that forged the dragonlances, yet his staff is wood—plain and simple and flawed. Though flawed, it has never broken.”

“If you’re saying something important, Brother,” said Gerard, “then you need to speak up.”

Rhys gave the staff a last, lingering look, then returned to his chair.

“The staff is mine,” he said. “Thank you for keeping it for me.”

“It’s not much to look at,” said Gerard. “Still, you seemed to set store by it.”

He waited until Rhys had helped himself to food and then said quietly, “Very well, Brother. Let’s hear your story.”

Nightshade was holding a hunk of bread in one hand and a chicken leg in the other, alternating bites of each and eating very fast, so fast that at one point he nearly choked himself.

“Slow down, kender,” Gerard said. “What’s the rush?”

“I’m afraid we may not be here very long,” Nightshade mumbled as broth dribbled down his chin.

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re not going to believe us. I give you about three minutes to toss us out the door.”

Gerard frowned and turned back to Rhys. “Well, Brother? Am I going to toss you out?”

Rhys was silent a moment, wondering where to start.

“Do you remember a few days ago I posed a hypothetical question to you. ‘What would you say if I told you my brother was a murderer?’ You remember that?”

“Do I!” Gerard exclaimed. “I almost locked you up for failure to report a murder. Something about your brother, Lieu, killing a girl— Lucy Wheelwright, wasn’t it? You sounded like you meant that, Brother. I would have believed you if I hadn’t seen Lucy for myself that very morning, alive as you are and a whole lot prettier.”

Rhys regarded Gerard intently. “Have you seen Lucy Wheelwright since?”

“No, I haven’t. I saw her husband, though.” Gerard was grim. “What was left of him. Hacked to pieces with an axe and the remnants tied up in a sack and dumped in the woods.”

“Gods save us!” Rhys exclaimed, horrified.

“Maybe he said he didn’t want to worship Chemosh,” Nightshade said somberly. “Like your monks.”

“What monks?” Gerard demanded.

Rhys didn’t answer immediately. “You said Lucy has disappeared?”

“Yeah. She told people she and her husband were leaving town to visit a neighboring village, but I checked. Lucy never came back and, of course, we know now what happened to her husband.”

“You checked on them?” Rhys asked, startled. “I thought you didn’t take me seriously.”

“I didn’t, at first,” Gerard admitted, settling back comfortably in his chair. “But then after we found the body of her husband, I got to thinking. Like I said to you during that same conversation, you’re not much of a talker, Brother. There had to be some reason for you to say what you said, and so, the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. I fought in the War of Souls. I battled an army of ghosts. I wouldn’t have believed that if someone had told me about it. I sent one of my men to the village to see if he could find Lucy.”

“I take it he couldn’t.”

“No one in that village had ever heard of her. As it turned out, she never went near the place, and she’s not the only one to disappear. We’ve had a rash of young people up and vanishing. Leaving their homes, their families, quitting good paying jobs without a word. One young couple, Timothy and Gerta Tanner, abandoned their three-month-old baby—a son they both loved dearly.” He cocked an eye at Nightshade. “So you don’t have to gobble your food, kender. I’m not going to throw you out.”

“That’s a relief,” said Nightshade, brushing crumbs off his borrowed shirt. He helped himself to an apple.

“Not to mention your own mysterious disappearance from the jail cell,” Gerard added. “But let’s start with Lucy and your brother, Lieu. You claim he murdered her—”

“He did,” said Rhys calmly. He felt suddenly relieved, as though a heavy burden had been lifted from his heart. “He murdered her in the name of Chemosh, Lord of Death.”

Gerard sat forward, looking Rhys in the eyes. “She was alive when I saw her, Brother.”

“No, she wasn’t,” Rhys returned, “and neither was my brother. Both of them were ... are ... dead.”

“Dead as a dormouse,” said Nightshade complacently, biting into the apple. He wiped away the juice with the back of his hand. “It’s in the eyes.”

Gerard shook his head. “You best start from the start, Brother.”

“I wish I could,” said Rhys softly.

4

“You see, Sheriff, I don’t know where the story starts,” Rhys explained. “The story seems to have found me somewhere in the middle. It began when my brother, Lieu, came to visit me in the monastery. Our parents brought him. He had been running wild, carousing, keeping bad company. I saw nothing more in this than the high spirits of youth. As it turned out, I was blind. The Master of our order and Atta both saw clearly what I could not—that there was something terribly wrong with Lieu.”

Atta raised her head and looked at Rhys and wagged her tail. He stroked her soft fur. “I should have listened to Atta. She realized immediately that my brother was a threat. She even bit him, something she never does.”

Gerard eyed the dog, rubbed his chin. “True enough. Though she’s had provocation.” He was silent, thoughtful, gazing at the dog. “Now, I wonder . . .”

“Wonder what, Sheriff?”

Gerard waved his hand. “Never mind for now, Brother. Go on.”

“That night,” Rhys continued, “my brother poisoned my brethren and our parents. He murdered twenty people in the name of Chemosh.”

Gerard sat bolt upright. He regarded Rhys in astonishment.

“He tried to murder me, too. Atta saved my life.” Rhys rested his hand gratefully on the dog’s head. “That night, I lost my faith in my god. I was angry with Majere for allowing such evil to happen to those who were his loyal and devoted servants. I sought a new god, one who would help me find my brother and avenge the deaths of those I loved. I cried out to the heavens, and a god answered me.”

Gerard looked grave. “A god answering you. That’s never good.”

“The goddess was Zeboim,” said Rhys.

“But you didn’t take her up on it. . .” Gerard stared. “By heaven, you did! That’s why you’re not a monk anymore! And that woman . . . That crazy female in my jail . . . And the dead fish . . . Zeboim,” he finished, awed.

“She was distraught,” Rhys said by way of apology. “Chemosh was holding the soul of her son in thrall.”

“She turned me into a khas piece,” interjected Nightshade. “Without asking!” Indignantly, he helped himself to more chicken. “Then she whooshed us off to Storm’s Keep to face a death knight. A death knight! Someone who goes around mangling people! How crazy is that? And then there’s her son, Ariakan. Don’t get me started on him!”

“Lord Ariakan,” Gerard said slowly. “The commander of the dark knights during the Chaos War.”

“That’s the one.”

“The one who’s been dead fifty or so years?”

“As the tombstones say, ‘Dead but not forgotten,’ ” quoted Nightshade. “That was his whole problem. Lord Ariakan couldn’t forget. And do you think he was grateful that Rhys and I were there trying to save him? Not a bit of it. Lord Ariakan flatly refused to go with me. I had to run across the board and knock him to the floor. That part was kind of exciting.”

Nightshade grinned at the memory, then was suddenly remorseful. “Or it would have been, if Rhys hadn’t been bleeding with pieces of bone sticking out of his skin where the death knight broke his fingers.”

Gerard glanced at Rhys’s hands. His fingers seemed perfectly whole.

“I see,” he said. “Broken fingers.”

.

“What happened to us is not important, Sheriff,” said Rhys. “What is important is that we must find some way to stop these Beloved of Che -mosh, as they call themselves. They are monsters who go about killing young people and turning them into Chemosh’s slaves. They appear to be alive but, in fact, they are dead—”

“I can vouch for that,” said Nightshade.

“And, what is more, they cannot be destroyed. I know,” Rhys added simply. “I tried. I killed my brother. I broke Lleu’s neck with the emmide. He shook it off as you would shake off bumping into a door.”

“And I tried casting one of my spells on him. I’m a mystic, you know,” Nightshade added proudly. Then he sighed. “I don’t think Lieu even noticed. I cast one of my more powerful spells on him, too.”

“You must appreciate the dire nature of this situation, Sheriff,” Rhys continued earnestly. “The Beloved are luring unsuspecting youth to their doom and they cannot be stopped—at least not by any means we have tried. What’s more, we cannot warn people about them because no one will believe us. The Beloved look and act in all respects just like anyone else. I could be one of them now, Sheriff, and you would never know.”

“He’s not, by the way,” said Nightshade. “I can tell.”

“How can you tell?” Gerard asked.

“My kind can see that they’re dead right off,” said Nightshade. “There’s no warm glow coming from their bodies, like there is from you and Rhys and Atta and anyone else who’s alive.”

“Your kind,” said Gerard. “You mean kender?”

“Not just any old kender. Kender nightstalkers. My dad says there aren’t a lot of us around, though.”

“What about you, Brother? Can you tell by looking?” Gerard was plainly working hard at not sounding skeptical.

“Not at first glance. But, if I get close enough, as Nightshade says, I can see it in the eyes. There is no light there, no life. The eyes of the Beloved are the dead, blank eyes of a corpse. There are other means by which they can be identified. The Beloved of Chemosh have incredible strength. They cannot be harmed or killed. And I think it likely that they each have a mark upon the left breast, over the heart. The mark of the deadly kiss that has killed them.”

Rhys sat in thought, trying to remember all he could about his brother.

“There is something else that is odd about Lieu and might apply to all the Beloved. Over time, my brother—or, rather—the thing that was my brother—appeared to lose his memory. Lieu has no remembrance of me at all now. He has no memory of slaying his parents, or any of the other crimes he has committed. He is apparently unable to remember anything for very long. I have seen him eat a full meal and in the next breath complain that he is starving.”

“Yet he remembers he’s supposed to kill in the name of Chemosh,” said Gerard.

“Yes.” Rhys agreed somberly. “That is the one thing they do remember.”

“Atta knows the Beloved when she sees one,” said Nightshade, with a pat for the dog, who accepted his pat with a good grace, though she was obviously hoping for another bone. “If Atta knows, maybe other dogs know.”

“That might explain a little mystery I’ve been wondering about,” said Gerard, regarding Atta with interest. He shook his head. “Though if it does, then it’s sorrowful news. You see, I’ve been keeping her with me when I do my work. She helps with the kender problem and she’s useful to me in other ways, too. She’s a good companion. I’ll miss her, Brother. I don’t mind telling you.”

“Perhaps, when I return to the monastery, I can train another dog, Sheriff-—” Rhys paused, wondering at what he’d just said. When I return. He’d never meant to go back there.

“Would you, Brother?” Gerard was pleased. “That would be great! Anyway, back to what I was saying. Every day Atta and I have lunch at the Inn of the Last Home. Everyone there—the usual crowd—has gotten to know Atta. My friends come pet her and talk to her. She is always a lady. Very gracious and polite.”

Rhys stroked the dog’s silky ears.

“Well, one day—yesterday it was—one of the regulars, a farmer come to sell his wares at the market—took his lunch at the Inn as usual. He bent down to pet Atta like he always does. Only this time she growled at him and snapped. He laughed and backed off, saying he must have got on her bad side. Then he started to sit down next to me. Atta was on her feet in a flash. She moved her body between me and him. Her fur bristled. She bared her teeth, her lip curling back. I couldn’t imagine what had gotten into her!”

Gerard looked uncomfortable. “I spoke to her pretty sharply, I’m afraid, Brother. And I marched her off to the stables to tie her up until she learned to behave herself. Now I’m thinking I owe her an apology.” Taking a strip of chicken, he handed it to the dog. “I’m sorry, Atta. It seems you knew what you were doing all along.”

“What happened to the farmer?”

Gerard shook his head. “I haven’t seen him since.” He sat back in his chair, frowning.

“What are you thinking, Sheriff?” Rhys asked.

“I’m thinking that if these two can recognize one of these Beloved by sight, that we could set a trap. Catch one in the act.”

“I did that,” said Rhys grimly. “I stood by helplessly as my brother killed an innocent young girl. I won’t be party to the same mistake again.”

“That won’t happen this time, Brother,” Gerard argued. “I have a plan. We’ll take guards with us. My best men. We’ll ask the Beloved to surrender. If that doesn’t work, we’ll use more drastic measures. No one will get hurt. I’ll see to that.”

Rhys remained unconvinced.

“One other question,” Gerard said. “What does Zeboim have to do with all this?”

“It seems that there is a war among the gods—”

“Just what we need,” Gerard burst out angrily. “We mortals finally achieve peace on Ansalon—relatively speaking—and now the gods start slugging it out again. Some sort of power struggle now that the Queen of Darkness is dead and gone, I’ll bet. And we poor mortals are caught in the middle. Why can’t the gods just leave us alone, Brother? Let us work out our own problems!”

“We’ve done so well so far,” Rhys said dryly.

“All the trouble that has ever plagued this world has been caused by the gods,” Gerard stated heatedly.

“Not by gods,” Rhys countered gently. “By mortals in the name of the gods.”

Gerard snorted. “I don’t say that things were great when the gods were gone, but at least we didn’t have dead people walking around committing murder—” He saw that Rhys was looking uncomfortable and stopped his harangue.

“I’m sorry, Brother. Don’t mind me. I get riled up over this. Go on with your story. I need to know all I can if I’m going to fight these things.”

Rhys hesitated, then said quietly, “When I lost my own faith, I called upon a god—any god—to side with me. Zeboim answered my prayer. One of the few times she has ever answered any of my prayers. The goddess told me that the person behind all of this was someone called Mina—”

“Mina!”

Gerard stood up so fast he upset the bowl of stew, spilling it to the floor, much to Atta’s delight. She was too well trained to beg, but, by the Immortal Law of Dogs, if food falls on the floor, it’s up for grabs.

Nightshade gave a dismayed cry and dove to save lunch, but Atta was too quick for him. The dog gulped down the rest of the chicken, not even bothering to chew it first.

“What do you know of this Mina?” asked Rhys, startled by Gerard’s intense reaction.

“Know of her. Brother, I’ve met her,” said Gerard. He ran his hand through his yellow hair, causing it to stand straight up. “And I tell you, Rhys Mason, it’s not something I ever want to do again. She’s fey, that one. If she’s behind this ...” He fell silent, brooding.

“Yes,” Rhys prompted. “If she’s behind this, what?”

“Then I’m thinking I’d better rethink my plan,” said Gerard grimly. He headed for the door. “You and the kender sit tight. I have work to do. I’ll need you to in Solace a few days, Brother.”

Rhys shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sheriff, but I must continue my search for my brother. I’ve lost precious time as it is—”

Gerard halted in the open doorway, turned around.

“And if you find him, Brother, what then? Will you just keep trailing after him, watching him kill people? Or do you want to stop him for good?”

Rhys made no reply. He gazed at Gerard in silence.

“I could use your help, Brother. Yours and Atta’s and, yes, even the kender’s,” Gerard added grudgingly. “Will all three of you stay, just for a few days?”

“A sheriff asking a kender for help!” Nightshade said, awed. “I’ll bet that’s never happened in the whole history of the world. Let’s stay, Rhys.”

Rhys’s eyes were drawn to the emmide, standing in the corner. “Very well, Sheriff. We will stay.”