“The monk was sitting next to a man… He was a dead man. I don’t know his name.” Mina paused, then said with a catch in her voice, “So many of them… and I didn’t know any of their names. But I know the monk’s name. He is Brother Rhys. And he knows my name. He knows me. He knows who and what I am. And yet, he walked with me anyway. He guided me.” She smiled sadly. “He yelled at me…”
Valthonis rested his hand on Rhys’ neck, felt the lifebeat. The monk’s face was bloody, but Valthonis could not find any injuries. He said nothing in response to Mina. He had the instinctive feeling she did not want him to speak. She wanted, needed, to hear only herself in the deathlike silence of the valley of Neraka.
“The kender knew me, too. When he first saw me, he began to weep. He wept for me. He wept out of pity for me. He said ‘You are so sad’… And the minotaur, Galdar, was my friend. A good and faithful friend…”
Mina shifted her gaze from the minotaur to the barren, ghastly surroundings. “I hate this place. I know where I am. I am in Neraka, and awful things have happened because of me… And more awful things will happen… because of me…”
She shifted her gaze to Valthonis, looked at him, pleading.
“You know what I mean. Your name means ‘the Exile’ in elven. And you are my father. And both of us-mortal father, wretched daughter-are exiles. Except you can never go back.” Mina sighed, long and deep. “And I must.”
Valthonis walked to over the minotaur. He placed his hand on the strong, bull-like neck.
“I am a god,” Mina said. “I live in all times simultaneously. Though,” she added, a frown line again marring her smooth forehead, “there is a time before time I do not remember, and a time yet to come I cannot see…”
The wind whistled among the rocks, as through rotting teeth, but Valthonis did not hear anything except Mina. It was as if the physical world had dropped out from beneath him, leaving him suspended in the ethers and there was only her voice and the amber eyes that, as he watched, filled with tears.
“I have done evil, Father,” Mina said, as the tears spilled over and slid slowly down her cheeks. “Or rather, I do evil, for I live in all times at once. They say I am a god born of light and yet I bring forth darkness. Thousands of innocents die because of me. I slaughter those who trust me. I take away life and give back living death. Some say I am duped by Takhisis, and that I do not know I am doing wrong.”
Mina smiled through her tears, and her smile was strange and cold. “But I know what I am doing. I want to hear them sing my name, Father. I want them to worship me-Mina! Not Takhisis. Not Chemosh. Mina. Only Mina.”
She made no move to wipe away the tears. “The two who were mothers to me both died in my arms. When Goldmoon was dying, she looked at me from the twilight, and she saw the truth, the ugliness inside me. And she turned from me.”
Mina rose to her feet and ran over to the minotaur. She crouched beside him but did not touch him. She rose and walked over to where the kender’s body lay beneath the green cloak. Reaching down, she carefully replaced a corner the wind had blown askew. Her empty amber eyes shimmered.
“I can fix him,” she said. She stood up and flung her arms wide, encompassing the wounded and the dead, encompassing the blasted temple, the accursed valley. “I am a god! I can make all this as if it never happened!”
“You can,” said Valthonis. “But to do that you would have to go back to the first second of the first minute of the first day and start time again.”
“I don’t understand!” Mina cried, perplexed. “You speak in riddles.”
“All of us would start over if we could, Mina. All of us would wipe out past mistakes. For mortals this is impossible. We accept, we learn, we go on. For a god, it is possible. But it means wiping out creation and beginning again.”
Mina looked rebellious, as though she didn’t believe him, and Valthonis feared for one frightening moment that she was in such pain she might actually try to ease her own suffering by plunging herself and the world into oblivion.
Mina sank to her knees and lifted her face to heaven.
“You gods! You pull at me and tug me in all directions!” she shouted. “You each want me for you own ends. Not one of you cares what I want.”
“What do you want, Mina?” Valthonis asked.
She looked about, as though wondering herself. Her gaze went to the kender, lying broken and lifeless beneath the green cloak. Her gaze went to the unconscious Galdar, loyal friend. Her gaze went to Rhys, who had comforted her when she woke crying the night.
“I want to go back to sleep,” she whispered.
Valthonis’ heart ached. His own tears blurred his vision, choked off his voice.
“But I can’t.” Mina said brokenly. “I know. I have tried. They call my name and wake me…”
She gave a sudden, anguished cry. The tears flooded her amber eyes, so that the Walking God’s reflection seemed to be drowning.
“Make them stop, Father!” she begged, rocking back and forth in her terrible agony. “Make them stop!”
Valthonis crossed the stone floor of the valley of Neraka and came to stand beside his daughter. She knelt before him, clutched at his boots. He took hold of her and raised her up.
“The voices will not stop,” he said. “For you, they will never stop-until you answer them.”
“But what do I say?”
“That is what you must decide.”
Valthonis handed her the scrip Rhys had carried for so long. Mina regarded it, puzzled. Unwrapping it, she looked inside. Her two gifts lay there, the Necklace of Sedition, the crystal Pyramid of Light.
“Do you remember these?” Valthonis asked.
Mina shook her head.
“You found them in Hall of Sacrilege. You were going to give them as gifts to Goldmoon when you came to Godshome.”
Mina gazed long at the two artifacts, one of consuming darkness, one of enduring light. She wrapped them back up, reverently and carefully.
“Is the way to Godshome far, Father?” she asked. “I am so very tired.”
“Not far, daughter,” he answered. “Not far now.”
8
A hairy finger pried open one of Rhys’ eyelids, causing him to wake with a start, startling Galdar who nearly poked out Rhys’ eye. The minotaur withdrew his hand and grunted in satisfaction. Sliding an enormous arm beneath Rhys’ shoulders, he heaved Rhys to a sitting position and thrust a vial between Rhys’ lips, dumping some sort of foul-tasting liquid into his mouth.
Rhys choked and started to spit it out.
“Swallow!” ordered Galdar, giving him a thump on the back that caused Rhys to cough and sent the liquid trickling down his throat.
He gagged and wondered if he’d just been poisoned.
Galdar grinned at him, showing all his teeth, and grunted, “Poison tastes a lot better than this stuff. Sit still for a moment and let it do its work. You’ll be feeling better soon.”
Rhys obeyed. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t feel strong enough yet to be prepared for the answers. His jaw ached and throbbed, though it was no longer broken. His diaphragm was sore, every breath hurt. The potion seeping through his body began to ease the pain of his wounds, if not the pain in his heart.
Galdar, meanwhile, took hold of Atta’s muzzle, gripping it tightly while another minotaur in soldier’s harness, bearing the emblem of Sargas, deftly smeared brown glop over her wound.
“You’d like to bite my hand off, wouldn’t you, mutt?” said Galdar, and Atta growled in response, causing him to chuckle.
When the minotaur was finished with his ministrations, he nodded to his companion. Galdar released the dog and both minotaurs sprang back. Atta rose, somewhat wobbly, to her feet. Keeping a distrustful eye on the minotaur, Atta came to Rhys to be petted. Then she limped over to the green cloak. She sniffed at it and pawed the cloak and looked back at Rhys and wagged her tail, as though saying, “You’ll fix this, Master. I know you will.”