Her joy over her queen’s death was immediately subsumed in grief and very real sorrow. Mina could not forgive herself for that initial burst of relief, for being glad that the decision to give up her life for her queen had been taken out of her hands.
“What would I have done when she came to kill me? Would I have fought her? Or would I have let her slay me?”
Every night, lying awake in front of the hidden entrance to the Dark Queen’s mountain tomb, Mina asked herself that question.
“You would have fought for your life,” answered Chemosh.
He drew near the bed. The silver that trimmed his coat glittered in the candlelight. His pale face had a light of its own, as did the dark eyes. He took Mina’s hand, resting on the cambric sheet that wound around her body, and raised it to his lips. His kiss made her heart jump, tore at her breath.
“You would have fought because you are mortal and you have a strong need to survive,” he added, “a struggle we gods never know.”
He seemed to brood over this, for she felt his attention leave her, shift away from her. He stared into a darkness that was endless, eternal, and awful. He stared long, as if seeking answers, then he shook his head, shrugged, and looked back at her with a smile.
“And thus you mortals could say,” he added, with a tone that was part mocking, part deadly earnest, “that the all-knowing gods are not so very all-knowing.”
She started to reply, but he would not let her. He bent down, kissed her swiftly on the lips, then he strode in a leisurely manner away from the bed, took a turn around the candlelit room. She watched his walk, strong and masterful.
“Do you know where you are, Mina?” Chemosh asked, turning to her abruptly.
“No, my lord,” she answered calmly. “I do not.”
“You are in my dwelling place.” He watched her intently. “In the Abyss.”
Mina cast a glance around her then returned her gaze to him. He regarded her with admiration. “You wake to find yourself alone in the Abyss, yet you are not afraid.”
“I have walked in darker places,” replied Mina.
Chemosh looked at her long, then he nodded in understanding. “The trials of Takhisis are not for the faint of heart.”
Mina threw aside the cambric sheets. She climbed out of the bed and came to stand before him. “And what of the trials of Chemosh?” she asked him boldly.
The god smiled. “Did I say there would be trials?”
“No, my lord, but you will want me to prove myself. And,” she added, looking up in the dark eyes that held her, Mina, inside them, “I want to prove myself to you.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her, long and ardently. She returned his kiss, clasping him in her arms, swept by passion that left her weak and trembling when he finally released her.
“Very well, Mina,” said Chemosh. “You will prove yourself to me. I have a task for you, one for which you are uniquely qualified.”
She tasted his kiss upon her lips, spicy and heady, like the scent of myrrh. She was unafraid, even eager.
“Set me any task, my lord. I will undertake it.”
“You destroyed the death knight, Lord Soth—” he began. “No, lord, I did not destroy him …” Mina hesitated, uncertain how to continue.
He understood her dilemma and he waved it away. “Yes, yes, Takhisis destroyed him. I understand, yet you were the instrument of his destruction.”
“I was, my lord.”
“Lord Soth was a death knight, a terrifying being,” said Chemosh, “someone even we gods might fear. Were you afraid to face him, Mina?”
“Within a few days time, Lord Soth, armies of both the living and the dead will sweep down on Sanction. The city will fall to my might.” Mina did not speak with bravado. She was stating a fact, nothing more. “At that time, the One God will perform a great miracle. She will enter the world as she was long meant to do, join the realms of the mortal and the immortal. Once she exists on both planes, she will conquer the world, rid it of such vermin as the elves, and establish herself as the ruler of Krynn. I am to be made captain of the army of the living. The One God offers you the captaincy of the army of the dead.”
“She ‘offers’ me this?” Soth asked.
“Offers it,” said Mina. “Yes, of course.”
“Then she will not be offended if I turn down her offer,” said Soth.
“She would not be offended,” Mina replied, “but she would be deeply grieved at your ingratitude, after all that she has done for you.”
“All she has done for me.” Soth smiled. “So this is why she brought me here. I am to be a slave leading an army of slaves. My answer to this generous offer is no.”
“I was not afraid, my lord,” said Mina, “for I was armed with the wrath of my queen. What was his power, compared to that?”
“Oh, nothing so much,” said Chemosh. “Nothing except the ability to kill you with a single word. He could have simply said, `die,’ and you would have died. I doubt if even Takhisis could have saved you.”
“As I told you, my lord,” Mina replied gravely, “I was armed with the wrath of my queen.” She frowned slightly, thinking. “You cannot want me to face Lord Soth. The Dark Queen destroyed him. Is there another death knight? One that is troublesome to you, my lord?”
“Troublesome?” Chemosh laughed. “No, he is no trouble to me nor to anyone else on Krynn for that matter. Not now at least. He was once trouble for a great many people—most notably, the late Lord Ariakan. Ausric Krell is his name. He is known in history, I believe, as the Betrayer.
“The traitor who brought about Lord Ariakan’s death at the hand of Chaos,” said Mina heatedly. “I have heard the story, my lord. The knights all spoke of it. None knew what ever happened to Krell.”
“None would want to know,” said Chemosh. “Ariakan was the son of Zeboim, goddess of the sea, and the Dragon Highlord Ariakan. The father was dead, slain during the War of the Lance. Zeboim doted on the boy, who was her only child. When he died by Krell’s treacherous hand during the Chaos War, the tears of the goddess flowed so copiously that they raised the level of the seas the world over, or so they say.
“The fire of Zeboim’s rage soon dried her tears, however. Sargonnas, god of vengeance, is her father, and Zeboim is her father’s daughter. She hunted down the wretched Krell, dragged him from the miserable hole in which he’d been trying to hide, and set about punishing him. She tortured him for days on end, and when the pain and torment was too much for him and his heart burst, she restored him to life, tortured him until he died, brought him back and did this again and again. When she finally grew weary of the sport, she ferried what was left of him—his remains filled a small bucket, I am told—across the North Sirrion Sea to Storm’s Keep, the island fortress built for the Knights of Takhisis and given to Lord Ariakan by his mother. There she cursed Krell, changed him into a death knight, and left him to fret out his sorry days upon that abandoned rock, surrounded by sea and storm that never let him forget what he had done.
“And there, for over thirty years, Lord Ausric Krell has been a prisoner, forced to live eternally in the fortress where he pledged his loyalty and his life to Lord Ariakan.”
“And he is there still? During all those years, the gods were gone,” Mina stated, wondering. “Zeboim was not in the world. She could not have stopped him from leaving. Why didn’t he?”
“Krell is not Soth,” said Chemosh dryly. “Krell is sneaky and underhanded, with the nobility of a weasel, the honor of a toad, and the brains of a cockroach. Isolated on his rock, he had no way of knowing that Zeboim was not around to keep an eye on him. The seas lashed the cliffs of his prison as relentlessly as when she was there. The storms that are so prevalent in that part of the world beat upon his prison walls. When he did eventually discover that he’d missed his chance, he was so furious that a single blow from his fist knocked down a small tower.”