She forgot the danger and gave herself over to the enchantment.
Schools of silver fish flipped and spun in quicksilver unity. Tiny fish darted at her, nibbled at her hands. Others hid from sight, disappearing into coral doorways and diving through coral windows.
Suddenly, Chemosh hissed a warning. Catching hold of her, he dragged her into the shadows of green and undulating branches.
“What is it?” she asked softly.
“Look! Look there!” he said, disbelieving, and furious.
A building with walls of smooth, glistening crystal thrust up from the ocean floor. The crystalline structure caught the drowned shafts of sunlight and made them captive, so that the building gleamed with shimmering panes of watery light. A dome of black marble topped the building. Atop the dome, a circlet made of burnished red-gold twined with silver flashed in the sunlight. The center of the circlet was jet black, as if a hole had been opened up in the sea to reveal the emptiness of the universe.
“What is that place, my lord?” Mina asked, awed.
“The desecrated, burned-out, meteor-struck, fire-gutted, rubble-strewn Tower of High Sorcery of Istar,” said Chemosh, adding, with a curse, “Somehow, some way, it has been rebuilt.”
8
One moment Rhys and Nightshade were in Zeboim’s cell, patiently arguing with the goddess, trying to make her see reason. The next moment, between the space of one breath and the next, one word and the next, one rant and the next, Rhys was standing on crumbling flagstone in the middle of an island fortress, with the lingering echo of a raging sea roaring in his head. Having grown weary of his argument, Zeboim had brought it to an end.
Rhys had never been to the Storm’s Keep. He had heard tales of it, but he had paid scant attention to the stories. He was not one who yearned for adventure. He did not join the younger monks, who thrilled to hear ghost stories told round the fire on a winter’s night. More often than not, he left that cozy fire to go walking alone across the frozen hills, rejoicing in the cold, glittering beauty of the frost-rimed stars.
The bodies of those young monks lay beneath the earth. Their ghosts, it was to be hoped, were roaming free among those very stars. He had set out to solve the mystery of their deaths. Knowing how, he had yet to discover why. His search had brought him here. Looking back on the road that he had traveled, he could not see it for all the bends and twists and turns it had taken.
If he had obeyed Majere and remained at the monastery to seek perfection of body and mind, what would he be doing now? He knew the answer well. The hour was sunset. Almost time to bring the sheep down from the hills. He would be sitting at his ease in the tall grass, his staff cradled in his arms, Atta lying by his side. She would be watching the sheep and watching him, waiting for the command that would send her skimming over the grass, racing up the hillside.
The scene was peaceful, but he was not. His spirit was troubled, plagued by doubt and inner turmoil. No longer was he free to walk out among the stars at night. He would go every evening to visit the mass grave and he would feel, as he gazed down at the new grass starting to cover it, that he had failed his brethren, failed his family, failed mankind. Rhys looked at what might have been and the image faded away. If he should die in this dread place—as seemed most likely—his spirit would go forth on the next stage of the journey content in the knowledge that he had done right, though it had turned out all wrong.
A gaudy sunset washed the sky with reds and golds and purples, splashing the gray walls of Storm’s Keep with lurid color. Rhys’s first incongruous thought was that the fortress was ill-named. No storms raged on Storm’s Keep. The sky was empty, save for a single, solitary wisp of white cloud that ran away swiftly, afraid of being caught. No breeze stirred on land or water. The sea sloshed sullenly against the cliffs. Wavelets slobbered at the bottoms of the jagged rocks, fawning, caressing them.
Rhys studied his surroundings, looking them over long and intently—the formidable towers jutting up into the garish sky, the parade ground on which he stood, the various outbuildings scattered amid the rocks. And beyond and all around him, the sea, avidly watching his every move.
His every move. His and his alone. The kender was nowhere in sight. Rhys sighed and shook his head. He’d tried to explain to Zeboim that the presence of the kender was essential to his plan. He had thought he’d convinced her—of that, at least, if nothing else. Perhaps the kender had tumbled out of the ethers onto a different part of the isle. Perhaps…
“Nightshade?” Rhys called softly.
A outraged squeal answered. The squeal came from the leather scrip that hung on Rhys’s belt, and after a moment’s startled amazement, he breathed easier. Zeboim had acted on his plan with her usual impetuosity, just not bothering to tell him she’d done so.
“Rhys!” Nightshade wailed, his voice muffled by the scrip in which he was ensconced, “what happened? Where am I? It’s pitch dark in here and it stinks of goat cheese!”
“Keep quiet, my friend,” Rhys ordered and he placed his hand reassuringly over the scrip.
The scrip obediently fell silent, though he could feel it quivering against his thigh. He gave the kender a soothing pat.
“You’re inside my scrip. The scrip and I are on Storm’s Keep.”
The scrip gave a lurch.
“Nightshade,” said Rhys, “you must keep perfectly still. Our lives depend on it.”
“Sorry, Rhys,” squeaked the kender. “I’m just a little surprised, that’s all. This was all so sudden!” He shrieked the last word.
“I know,” Rhys said, striving to keep his tone calm. “I didn’t expect to make this journey, either. But we’re here now, and we have to carry on with our plan as we discussed it. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Rhys. I lost control there for a moment. It’s kind of a shock, you know, finding yourself ,three inches tall and stuck in a sack that smells of goat cheese and then discovering you’ve dropped in on a death knight.” Nightshade sounded bitter.
“I understand,” said Rhys, glad that the kender could not see his smile.
“I’m over all that now, though,” Nightshade added after a pause to catch his breath. “You can count on me.”
“Good.” Rhys glanced about again. “I have no idea where we are or where we are supposed to go. Zeboim sent us off before I could ask her.”
The towers of a massive fortress rose from the cliffs. The buildings all appeared to have been carved from the island as a sculptor carves his work from the marble block, leaving the base rough-hewn, the top smooth and shaped and crafted. Rhys had the eerie sensation that he was standing on the very topmost point of a jagged splinter of earth, with the rest of the world falling away all around him. On his hillside, he had always felt himself to be at one with a benevolent universe. Here he felt himself alone, isolated and abandoned, in a universe that didn’t give a damn.
The flagstones of the parade ground radiated the heat of the afternoon sun into the air. Sweat trickled down Rhys’s neck and his chest. The kender, he thought, must be suffocating. Rhys opened the scrip slightly to let in more air.
“Keep quiet,” he reiterated. “And keep still.”
Two enormous towers that must be the fortress’s main buildings stood at one end of the island. Rhys would have to traverse the length of the parade ground to reach them. Gazing up at the myriad windows in the tall towers, Rhys realized the death knight, Ausric Krell, might be standing, watching him.