Amber and Blood
Margaret Weis
I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.
Book I
The Gifts
Prologue
What has happened to me?
Where am I?
Who are all these beings, strange and beautiful, awful and majestic, gathered around me? Why do they point at me, and why do they shout with thunderous clamor that makes heaven tremble?
Why are they so angry?
Angry at me?
I have done nothing except give my lover a gift! Chemosh wanted the Tower of High Sorcery that lay beneath the sea and I gave it to him. And now he stares at me with amazement and shock… and loathing.
They all stare.
At me.
I am nobody. I am Mina. Chemosh once loved me. He hates me now, and I do not know why. I did nothing but what he asked of me. I am nothing but what he made me, though these others say I am… something else…
I hear their voices, yet I can make no sense of their words.
She is a god who does not know she is a god. She is a god who was tricked into thinking she is human.
I lie on the cold stone of the castle’s battlements, and I see them staring at me and shouting. The thunder hurts my ears. The light of their holiness is blinding. I turn away from the watching eyes and the clamorous voices, and I look down over the walls into the sea far below.
The ever-moving, ever-changing, ever-living sea…
The waves rush in and lap the shore, and they swirl back out and rush in again, over and over, unending. A soothing rhythm, back and forth, back and forth…
A cradle rocking… rocking me to sleep for an eternity.
I was never meant to wake.
I want to go home. I am lost and tired and afraid, and I want to go home.
These voices… the quarrelsome squawkings of sea birds.
The sea closes blessedly over me.
And I am gone.
1
A storm raged on the Blood Sea. A strange storm, of heavenly make, it swirled above a castle that stood high atop a cliff. Clouds boiled around the castle walls. Thunder crackled, and the lightning dazzled and blinded the mortal onlookers—a monk, a kender, and a dog—who were struggling to walk among the sand dunes on the shore far below. The three stood braced against the whipping wind that flung sand into their eyes. They were all three soaked from the spray of salt water, flung up by the waves that came crashing headlong onto the shore. Once there, the waves clutched at the sand with grasping fingers, trying to hold on, but were forced to let go as the motion of the world dragged them back.
Whenever the lightning flared, the monk could see a tower far out to sea. The tower had not been there yesterday. It had appeared in the night, wrenched up out of the depths of the ocean by some catastrophic force, and now it stood with water dripping from its eaves, looking lost, as though wondering, along with men and gods, how it had come to be here.
The monk, Rhys, was almost bent double, his robes plastered against him, his spare, muscular body fighting for every step against the buffeting wind. He was making headway, but just barely. Nightshade, being a kender and built slighter and smaller than his human friend, was having a more difficult time. He had been bowled over twice and was managing to remain on his feet only by hanging onto Rhys’ arm. Atta, the dog, was lower to the ground and therefore was somewhat sheltered by the dunes, but she was having difficulty as well. When the next gust nearly plucked Nightshade from Rhys’ grasp and threw Atta into a pile of driftwood, Rhys decided they should return to the grotto they’d just left.
The smallish cave was cheerless and still awash in sea water, but at least they were sheltered from the wind and deadly lightning.
Nightshade sat down beside his friend on the wet rocks and gave a great whoosh of relief. He wrung water from his topknot, then tried the same with his shirt, which was considerably worn, its color so faded from the rigors of his travels that he could no longer tell what it had been. Atta did not lie down, but paced nervously, her furry black and white body flinching whenever a loud crack of thunder shook the ground.
“Rhys,” Nightshade said, wiping sea water from his eyes, “was that Chemosh’s castle we could see up there on the top of the cliff?”
Rhys nodded.
A lightning bolt sizzled nearby and thunder came rolling down the cliff face. Atta quivered and barked at the rumbling. Nightshade huddled closer to Rhys.
“I can hear voices in the thunder,” the kender said, “but I can’t understand what the voices are saying or make out who is talking. Can you?”
Rhys shook his head. He petted Atta, trying to calm the dog.
“Rhys,” said Nightshade after a moment, “I think those must be gods up there. Chemosh is a god, after all, and maybe he’s throwing a party for his fellow gods. Though I have to say he didn’t strike me as the type to go dancing, what with him being the God of Death and all. Still, maybe he has a fun side.”
Rhys watched the dazzling light flash outside the grotto and listened to the voices and thought of the old saying, “When the gods rage, man trembles.”
“So many things are happening—so many strange things,” Nightshade emphasized, “that I’m feeling sort of muddled. I’d like to talk it over, just to make sure that you think happened what /think happened. And, to be honest, talking makes the howling wind and lightning seem not so bad. You don’t mind if I talk, do you?”
Rhys did not mind.
“I guess I’ll start with us being chained up in the cave,” said Nightshade. “No, wait. I have to say how we got chained up in the cave, so we should start with the minotaur. Except the minotaur didn’t come along until after you fought with your dead brother the Beloved and the little boy killed him—”
“Start with the minotaur,” Rhys suggested. “Unless you want to go all the way back to the time I met you in the graveyard.”
Nightshade thought that over. “No, I don’t think my voice will last long enough for going back that far. I’ll start with the minotaur. We were walking down the street, and you were really, really angry at Majere and said you were going to quit serving him or any god, when suddenly all these minotaurs came out of nowhere and took us prisoner.
“I cast a spell on one,” Nightshade added proudly. “I made him fall down and flop around on the street like a fish. The minotaur captain said I was a ‘kender with horns’. Do you remember that, Rhys?”
“I do,” Rhys returned. “The captain was right. You were very brave.”
“Then the minotaur picked me up and put me in a sack and took us both on board his ship, only it wasn’t an ordinary ship. It was a ship that belonged to the Sea Goddess, and it sailed through the air, not the water, and I told you then that you couldn’t quit a god…”
“And you were right,” said Rhys.
Thirty years old, he had been a monk dedicated to Majere for what seemed most of his life. And though not long ago he had lost faith in Majere, the god had refused to lose faith in him. This knowledge humbled Rhys and filled him with thankfulness and joy. He had stumbled and groped through the darkness, taken many wrong turns, ended up in a few blind alleys, but he had found his way back to his god, and Majere had welcomed him with loving arms.
“The minotaur ship brought us here to the other side of the continent where Chemosh built his castle. And the minotaur chained us up in the cave—see, I came to that part.”