Chemosh took hold of her. “The next kiss I give you, Mina, will take away your mortal’s breath. You will feel suffocated for an instant, but an instant only. I will breathe into your lungs the breath of the gods. For as long as you are beneath the water, my breath will sustain you. The water will be to you as the air is now.”
“I understand, my lord,” Mina replied. Her hair swirled in the water, flame dipped in blood.
“I am not sure you do, Mina,” said Chemosh, regarding her intently. “The water is as air to you. That means, the air will be as water. Once I do this, if you come to the surface, you will drown.”
In answer, she touched her lips to his, closed her eyes, and held him fast. He seized her, crushed her to him, and putting his mouth over hers, he drew the air from her body, sucked the life from her lungs.
The water rose over her head. Mina could not breathe. She gasped for the air, but water flowed in her mouth. She choked, strangled. Chemosh held her fast. She tried not to struggle, but she couldn’t help it. Her body’s instinct to survive overrode her heart. She fought to wrench herself free of the god’s grip, but he was too strong. His fingers dug into her flesh and muscle and bone, his legs pinned her down beneath the water.
“He is killing me,” she thought. “He lied to me …”
Her heart throbbed, her chest burned. Hideous star-bursts obscured her vision. She writhed in his grip and gasped and water flowed into her lungs and into her body as the sea rose higher and higher, gently rocking her. She was too tired to fight, so she closed her eyes and gave herself to the blood-tinged darkness.
7
Mina woke to a world that had never known sunlight, a world of heavy, eternal night.
Sea water pressed on her, surrounded her, enveloped and encompassed her. It pushed her and pulled her, constantly in motion. There was no up, no down. Nothing beneath her feet or above her head to orient her. She was adrift, alone.
Mina could breathe the water as well as she had once breathed air; at least she tried telling herself she could. She felt smothered, half-suffocated. Panic fluttered inside her. She was suddenly afraid she might be trapped here in the squeezing, fluid darkness forever. Her impulse was to swim to the surface, but she forced herself to abandon that idea. She had no idea where the surface was, and flailing about in the water, she might sink deeper, not rise.
She could not call out to Chemosh. She could not cry out or scream. The water swallowed up her voice. She forced the panic down, tried to remain calm, relax.
“I have walked the dark places of Krynn,” Mina told herself. “I have walked the dark places of the mind of a god. I am not alone …”
A hand touched hers. She clasped the hand thankfully, held it fast.
“Not afraid, were you?” Chemosh said, half-teasing, half-serious. “You can talk, Mina. Remember, the water is for you as air. Speak. I’ll hear your words.”
“I was going to say that if I was afraid, it is only because fear is the curse of mortals, my lord,” said Mina.
“That is true,” said Chemosh, his tone grown grim. “Fear gives mortals good instincts.”
“Is something wrong, my lord?”
“There is a stirring, an energy that was not here when I came here before only a year ago. It may have nothing to do with our treasure-hunt, yet I do not like it. It has the smell of a god about it.”
“Zeboim?” Mina asked.
Chemosh shook his head. “I thought as much, and I returned to the surface. No storm clouds gather, no lashing winds howl. The sea is so flat that birds are starting to build nests on the water. No, whatever is amiss is down here; Zeboim is not to blame,”
“What other gods might be at work in the sea, Lord?”
”Habbakuk holds sway over the sea creatures. I do not worry about him, however. He is indolent and lazy, as one might expect of a god who spends his time among fish.”
He paused, listening. Mina listened, too, but despite what Chemosh said, her ears were stopped up with water. She could hear nothing except the sound of her own pulsing blood and the voice of the god.
“I don’t hear anything,” he said at last, and he sounded perplexed, “yet the feeling persists. Perhaps it is only my imagination. Come, let us find that which we seek. The ruins are not far.”
He walked through the water as though he walked on dry land. Mina tried to imitate him, but found walking difficult. She ended up half-swimming, half-walking, propelling herself forward with broad strokes of her arms, kicking with her legs. The fathomless darkness began to grow lighter; she and Chemosh were rising nearer to the surface, to the sunlight.
He halted again, his expression dour. He looked at her, looked at the filmy, silky gown she wore. “I should never have allowed you to come down here unarmed with no armor to protect you. I will send you back—”
“Do not send me away, my lord. I am armored in my faith in you. My love for you is my weapon.”
Chemosh drew her near. Her hair floated free in the water, shifting about her head and shoulders in sensuous waves. Her amber eyes seemed luminescent, the blood-red water lending them an orange hue, so that they had a fiery glow.
“It is no wonder I chose you as my High Priestess, Mina,” said Chemosh. “Yet I will give you something more substantial than faith to protect your mortal body, and a weapon more capable of doing damage.
He dove down into the darkness, plunging down to the bottom of the ocean. In a few moments he returned, carrying a human skeleton.
“Not very pretty, but it’s functional. You will not feel squeamish wearing a man’s ribcage, will you, Mina?”
“The armor Takhisis gave me was wet with the blood of a man who dared to mock her,” Mina replied. “Will you be my squire, my lord?”
“Just this once,” he said with a smile, and he began to fasten the bony armor to her body. “Does this fit? If it does not, I can find something that will. We have an unlimited supply of skeletons.”
“The fit is perfect, my lord.”
Her cuirass was a man’s breastbone and ribs. Collarbones protected her shoulders, shin bones her legs, and arm bones her arms. Chemosh welded them together with his power, strengthened them with his might. When he had dressed her, he eyed her accouterments and was satisfied.
“And now, your helm,” he said.
“Not a skull, my lord,” Mina protested. “I do not want to look like Krell.”
“God forbid!” Chemosh said dryly. “No, Mina. Here is your helm.”
He took her head in his two hands, kissed her on the forehead, on her cheeks, her chin and, finally, on her mouth.
“There, you are protected.” He hesitated, keeping hold of her. His grip on her tightened. “Mina,” he said softly, “I—” “What, my lord?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said abruptly. He drew back from her, away from her touch, her amber eyes.
“Have I displeased you, my lord?” Mina asked, troubled. “No,” he said, and he repeated, “No.”
He looked at her, at her body, warm and yielding and soft, clasped in the ghastly armor of a dead man’s bones, and it was the Lord of Death who shuddered.
He snatched the bones off her, tearing them from her and casting them back into the sea.
“It really did not bother me, my lord,” Mina protested. “It bothered me,” he said and turned away abruptly.
They drifted through the sunlit depths, searching for the ruins of the Tower.
Whatever power Chemosh sensed down here was growing, not diminishing, or so Mina judged by his increasingly dark expression. He did not speak to her. He did not look at her.
She tried to remain focused, to watch for danger. She found it difficult, however. She was in a different world, a world of strange and exotic beauty, and she was constantly distracted. Fish swam past her, darted around her, some eyeing her curiously, some completely ignoring her. Shelves of pink-tinged coral rose up from the ocean floor, home to a veritable forest of strange-looking plants and beings that appeared to be plants but weren’t, as she discovered when she touched what she thought was a flower and it lashed out at her, stung her. The colors of everything—fish and plants—were brighter, more vivid and vibrant than any colors she had seen on land.