“There you stand, awaiting my commands. And just what am I supposed to tell you to do? Go out and recruit followers for my worship? Wait!” he commanded irritably. Some of the decaying bodies, having mistaken this for a command, were heading for the exit. “That wasn’t an order, you brainless jumble of bones. I can imagine the sort of followers you are likely to bring me. Everyone is eager to worship a god whose devotees are in the last stages of rot.”
Chemosh glowered at them, then made a sudden, impatient gesture. “Oh, go on! Get out of here. You turn my stomach. Go terrorize some village. With any luck,” he added, as they clanked and clattered and shuffled their way out, dropping body parts all the way, “some holy cleric of Mishakal will find the lot of you and smash you to bits.”
Chemosh sat on the lid of a sarcophagus and flicked a fragment of bone off the black velvet of his breeches.
“Where are the young, the strong, the beautiful?” he demanded. “Why don’t they come to me? I’ll tell you why.” He cast a disgusted glance at the departing skeletons. “The young don’t think of death. They think of life, of living, of joy and happiness, youth and beauty. Speak of Chemosh, and they laugh at the thought. ‘Come back to talk to me of him when I am old and ugly,’ they say. Those are the worshippers I attract—arthritic old geezers who haven’t a tooth in their heads, cackling old crones who chant my name and wave black cats at me. Cats!” he muttered. “What do I want with cats?”
Chemosh kicked at the skull and sent it rolling. The rat went skittering off into a dusty corner. “What I want is youth, strength, power. Converts who come to me willingly, eagerly. Converts who will frequent my temples in broad daylight and proclaim that they are proud to worship me. That’s what I want. That’s what I need.” His fist clenched. “To gain the seat of power in the heavens, that is what I must have.”
He stood up and roved restlessly about the vault. “Sargonnas has his minotaur empire that grows larger every day. The namby-pamby Mishakal. How they adore her, all flocking to her worship with cries of ‘Heal me, heal me!’ How can I compete with that?” 4
He paused to brush strands of sticky cobweb from his black velvet coat. “Even Zeboim, that wanton trollop, has the heart of every sailor in the fleet. Me? I have large quantities of mold and mildew. And spiders. How can I become a king among the pantheon when the most intelligent of my followers are the maggots who feed off them?”
Chemosh wiped the dust from his hands, shook the dirt and bone fragments from his boots, and stalked out the broken-down door that led into the vault. He wound his way up the stairwell that led back to the surface, back to sunshine and fresh air.
“I am going to make changes,” he vowed. “Death will have a new face. A face with bright eyes and ruby lips.”
He emerged into the night and paused to gaze up at the stars, the newly formed constellations, the newly returned three moons. Chemosh smiled.
“Lips people will be dying to kiss.”
Book 1
Amber
1
Mina buried her queen beneath a mountain.
The queen had raised that mountain, molded it, shaped it, lifted it up with her immortal hand. And now she lay beneath it.
The mountain would die. Gnawed by the teeth of the wind, savaged by the drops of rain, slowly, over time, century upon century, the magnificent mountain Takhisis had created would crumble into dust, mingle, and become lost among the ashes of its dead creator. The final ignominy. The final, bitter irony.
“They will pay,” vowed Mina, watching the sun set beyond the mountain, watching its shadow steal across the valley.“They will pay—all those who had a hand in this, mortal and immortal. I would make them pay, if I weren’t so tired. So very tired.”
She woke up tired; if one could use the term “waking,” for she never truly slept She passed the night in a restless doze in which she remained conscious of every shift in the wind, every animal grunt or cry, every dimming of the moonlight or flicker of the stars. Sleep lapped at her feet, ripples wetting her toes. Whenever sleep’s waves, silent and calm, restful and peaceful, would start to carry her away, she would jerk to wakefulness with a gasp, as though she were drowning, and sleep would recede.
Mina spent the daylight hours guarding the Dark Queen’s burial site. She never moved far from that tomb beneath the mountain, though Galdar nagged at her constantly to leave, if only for a little while.
“Go for a walk among the trees,” the minotaur begged her, “or bathe in the lake or climb the rocky cliffs to see the sunrise.”
Mina could not leave. She had a terrible fear that some person of Ansalon would find this holy site, and once that happened, the gawkers would come to stare and poke at the body and giggle and smirk. The treasure seekers and despoilers would come to rip off the jewels and lug away the holy artifacts. Takhisis’s enemies would come to triumph over her. Her faithful would come, desperate to have their prayers answered, to try to bring her back.
That would be worst of all, Mina decided. Takhisis, a queen who had ruled heaven and the Abyss, forever chained to the whining pleas of those who had done nothing to try to save her when she died except wring their hands and whimper, “What will become of me?”
Day in and day out, Mina paced before the entrance to the tomb beneath the mountain where she had placed the body of the dead queen. She had worked hard, for weeks, for months maybe—she had no sense of time—to hide the fact that there was an entrance, planting trees, bushes, and wild flowers in front of it, training them to grow over it.
Galdar helped her in her task, and so did the gods, though she was not aware of their help and would have scorned it if she’d known of it.
The gods who had judged Takhisis, Queen of Darkness, and found her guilty of breaking the immortal oath they had all sworn at time’s beginning, knew as well as Mina what would happen if mortals discovered the location of the Dark Queen’s resting place. Trees that were seedlings when Mina planted them grew ten feet tall in a month. Brush and bramble bushes sprang up overnight. A howling wind that never ceased to blow polished the cliff face smooth, so that no trace of the entrance to the tomb remained visible.
Even Mina could no longer find the entrance, at least when she was awake. She could see it always in her dreams. Now there was nothing left for her to do except to guard it from everyone—mortal and immortal. She had become distrustful even of Galdar, for he had been among those responsible for her queen’s downfall. She didn’t like the way the minotaur was always urging her to leave. She suspected that he was waiting for her to depart and then he would break into the tomb.
“Mina,” Galdar swore to her over and over, “I have no idea where the entrance to the tomb is. I could not even find this mountain if I left it, for the sun never rises in the same place twice!” He gestured to the horizon. “The gods themselves conceal it. East is west one day and west is east another. That is why it is safe to leave, Mina. Once you leave, you will never find your way back. You can move on with your life.”
She knew the truth of that in her heart. She knew it and longed for it and was terrified of it.
“Takhisis was my life,” Mina said to Galdar in answer. “When I looked in a mirror, her face was the face I saw. When I spoke, her voice was the voice I heard. Now she is gone, and when I look in the mirror, no face looks back. When I speak, there is only silence. Who am I, Galdar?”
“You are Mina,” he replied.
“And who is Mina?” she asked.
Galdar could only stare at her, helpless.
They had this conversation often, almost every day. They had it again this morning. This time, though, Galdar’s answer was different. He had been thinking long about this and when she said, “Who is Mina?” he responded quietly, “Goldmoon knew who you were, Mina. In her eyes you could see yourself. You didn’t see Takhisis.”