The Beloved served her, when they were meant to serve him. Mina had done to him what she’d done to Takhisis. The miracles she had performed in the name of Chemosh had been her own miracles. Men worshipped Mina, not him. The Beloved were subject to her will, not his.
And, if he believed Majere, Mina had done this in all innocence. She had no idea she was the god who had given the Beloved terrible life.
What a fool I’ve been! Chemosh reproached himself, but even as he did, an idea came to him. He remember the broken-hearted look she had cast him before she had leapt into the sea.
She still loves me. I can win her hack. With her at my side, I can supplant that thick-skulled bovine, Sargonnas. I can cast down Kiri-Jolith and thwart Mishakal and thumb my nose at know-it-all Gilean. Mina will gain me access to the Hall of Sacrilege. I will seize all the artifacts. I can rule Heaven…
All he had to do now was find her.
Chemosh cast his immortal gaze upon the world. He saw all beings everywhere: elves and humans, ogres and kender, gnomes and dwarves, fish and hounds, cats and goblins. His vision encompassed them, surrounded them, studied them, all simultaneously, all within the splitting of a split second. He found every living being on this planet and all who weren’t living in the ordinary sense of the word.
None of them were her.
Chemosh was baffled. Where could Mina be? How could she hide from him?
He had no idea and while he was puzzling this out, he realized that back in his castle, Gilean was asking the gods to swear an oath they would not interfere with Mina. Whatever choice she made about her place in the pantheon, whatever side she might choose, or if she would leave the world altogether, the decision had to be hers.
If I take this oath, Gilean will see to it that the oath is enforced. I will be barred from trying to seduce her.
Chemosh was confident in his power over her. All he needed was to see her, talk to her, take her into his arms…
He could not search for her, not at this moment, not while Nuitari was watching him like a snake watches a rat; not while Sargonnas was eyeing him with dark suspicion and Gilean was demanding that each god swear. Chemosh could not search for Mina, but he had someone at his command who could. Fortunately, he had a little time. The Gods of Magic were demanding to know why they needed to swear the oath at all.
Chemosh sent out a call, his thoughts speeding rapidly through the castle to Ausric Krell, the former death knight, cursed by Mina to become human again. Chemosh had to hurry. He had to issue his orders to find Mina before he took the oath. He could not be blamed if Mina came to him of her own free will.
One tiny little shove in his direction would hardly count.
“We should not have to take this oath,” Nuitari was arguing. “We were not even born when this child-god came into being.”
“We care nothing about Mina,” stated Lunitari.
“She has naught to do with magic. Leave us out of this,” added Solinari.
“Oh, but she does have something you want,” said Morgion, God of Disease, speaking in his soft, sickly voice. “Mina has in her possession a Tower of High Sorcery. And she has locked you out!”
“Is that true?” asked Gilean, frowning.
“It is true,” Solinari admitted. “Yet even if we are forced to take this oath, we deem it only fair that we be allowed to try to reclaim the tower, which is rightly ours and which she has basely stolen.”
“Losers weepers,” said Hiddukel with a chuckle.
“I have as much right to that tower as they do,” stated Zeboim. “After all, it is standing in my ocean.”
“I built it,” cried Nuitari, seething. “I raised it up from charred ruins! And you should all of you know,” he added with a baleful glance at Chemosh, “that inside that tower, in its depths, is the Solio Febalas, the Hall of Sacrilege. Inside that Hall are many holy artifacts and relics thought to have been lost during the Cataclysm. Your holy artifacts and relics.”
The gods were no longer smiling. They stared at Nuitari in amazement.
“You should have told us that the Hall had been found,” said Mishakal, blazing with white flame.
“And you should have told us about Mina,” Nuitari returned. He clasped his hands over his black robes. “I say that makes us even.”
“Are our blessed objects safe?” Kiri-Jolith demanded.
“I cannot say,” Nuitari returned with a shrug. “They were, while the tower under my control. I don’t vouch for them now. Especially as the tower was currently being overrun by the Beloved.”
The gods turned their gazes onto Chemosh.
“That was not my fault!” he cried. “Those ghoulish fiends are her creations!”
“Enough!” said Gilean. “The only thing this proves is that it is more important now than ever that all of us take this oath. Or will each of you risk taking the chance that another might succeed where you fail?”
The gods grumbled, but, in the end, they agreed. They had no choice. Each was forced to take the oath if for no other reason than to make sure the others took it, though each was perhaps privately thinking how he or she might twist it, or at least bend it a little.
“Place your hands on the Book,” said Gilean, calling the sacred volume into being, “and swear by your love for the High God who brought us into being, and your fear of Chaos, who would destroy us, that you will neither threaten, cajole, seduce, plead, or bargain with the goddess known as Mina in order to try to influence her decision.”
The Gods of Light each placed a hand upon the Book, as did the Gods of Neutrality. When it came the turn of the Gods of Darkness, Sargonnas thumped down his hand, as did Morgion. Zeboim hesitated.
“I’m sure my only concern,” she said, dabbing a salt tear from her eye, “is for that poor, unhappy girl. She’s like a daughter to me.”
“Just swear, damn it,” growled Sargonnas.
Zeboim sniffed and put her hand on the Book.
After her, last of all, came Chemosh.
“I so swear,” he said.
4
Death had been good to Ausric Krell, and he wanted it back.
Krell had once been a powerful death knight. Cursed by the Sea Goddess, Zeboim, he had known immortality. He could kill with a single word. He was so fearsome and horrible to look upon, in his black armor with the ram’s head skull helm, that some poor wretches had dropped down dead of terror at the mere sight of his awful visage.
No longer. When he looked in the mirror, he did not see reflected back the red-glowing eyes of undeath. He saw the squinty pig-eyes of a middle-aged human male with heavy jowls and a sullen brutish face, spindly limbs, flabby flesh, and a paunch. Krell, the death knight, had once reigned supreme on Storm’s Keep, a mighty fortress in the north of Ansalon. (At least, that was how he remembered it. In truth, he’d been a prisoner there, and he’d hated it, but not so much as he hated what he was now.)
Of all the undead who walk Krynn, a death knight is one of the most fearsome. Cursed by the gods, a death knight is forced to exist in a world of the living, hating them, even as he fiercely envies them. A death knight is unable to sleep or find rest. He is a prisoner of his own immortality, forced to reflect constantly on his crimes and the wayward passions that brought him to this unhappy state, until he comes to repent and his soul can move onto the next stage of its journey.
That, at least, was the gods’ plan.
Unfortunately, with Krell the plan hadn’t worked. In life, Krell had been a traitor, a murderer, a thief. He had duped, deceived, destroyed, and betrayed all who had ever trusted him. Possessed of no great intellect, Krell had relied on low cunning, small-minded trickery, a complete lack of conscience, and brute strength to batter his way through life. Krell was a bully and, as with all bullies, he had lived every day in secret terror and died a screaming, craven coward at the hands of the Sea Goddess, Zeboim, who could never forgive him for having slain her beloved son.