“Do you think we will ever find out what happens to her, Brother?” he asked wistfully.
“I don’t know,” Rhys answered evasively.
In his heart, he feared very much that they would.
9
Valthonis and Mina walked slowly to Godshome, taking their time, for each knew that no matter what happened, what choice Mina made, this would be their final journey together.
The two had talked of many things for many hours, but now Mina had fallen silent. Godshome was only about ten miles from Neraka, but the road was difficult, steep and winding and narrow-a rock-strewn, desolate track forced to pick its way among steep canyon walls, constrained by strange rock formations to take them in directions they did not want to go.
The sky was dark and overcast, obscured by the steamy snortings of the Lords of Doom. The air stank of sulfur and was hard to breathe, drying the mouth and stinging the nostrils.
Mina soon grew weary. She did not complain, however, but continued walking. Valthonis told her she could take her time. There was no hurry.
“You mean I have all eternity before me?” Mina said to him with a twisted smile. “That is true, Father, but I feel compelled to go on. I know who I am, but now I must now find out why. I can no longer rest easy in the twilight.”
She carried with her the two artifacts she had brought from the Hall of Sacrilege. She held them fast in her hand and would not relinquish them, though their burden sometimes made traversing the steep trail difficult for her. When she finally gave in and sat down to rest, she unwrapped the artifacts and gazed down at them, studying them, taking up each in turn and holding it in her hands, running her fingers over them as would a blind man trying to use his hands to see what his sightless eyes cannot. She said nothing about her thoughts to Valthonis, and he did not ask.
As they drew nearer Godshome, the Lords of Doom seemed to release their hold on the travelers, sanctioning their going. The path grew easier to walk, led them down a gentle slope. A warm breeze, like spring’s breath, blew away the sulfur fumes and the steam. Wild flowers appeared along the trail, peeking out from beneath boulders, or growing in the cracks of a stone wall.
“What is wrong?” Valthonis asked, calling a halt, when he noticed that Mina had begun to limp.
“I have a blister,” she answered.
Sitting down on the path, she drew off her shoe, looking with exasperation at the raw and bloody wound.
“The gods play at being mortal,” she said. “Chemosh could make love to me and receive pleasure from the act-or so he convinced himself. But in truth, they can only pretend to feel. No god ever has a blister on his heel.”
She held up the blood-stained shoe for him to see.
“So why do 7 have a blister?” she demanded. “I know I am a god. I know this body is not real, I could leap off this cliff and plummet onto the rocks below and no harm would come to me. I know that, but still”-she bit her lip-“my foot hurts. As much as I would like to say it doesn’t really, it really does!”
Takhisis had to convince you that you were human, Mina, said Valthonis. “She lied to you in order to enslave you. If you knew the truth, that you were a god, she feared you would become her rival. You had to be made to believe you were human and thus you had to feel pain. You had to know illness and grief. You had to experience love and joy and sorrow. She took cruel pleasure in making you believe you were mortal. She thought it made you weak.”
“It does!” flashed Mina, and the amber eyes glittered in anger. “And I hate it. When I take my place among the pantheon, I cannot show weakness. I must teach myself to forget what I have been.”
“I am not so sure,” said Valthonis, and he knelt down before her and regarded her intently. “You say the gods play at being mortal. They do not ‘play’ at it. By taking an aspect of mortality, a god tries to feel what mortals feel. The gods try to understand mortals in order to help and guide them or, in some cases, to coerce and terrorize them. But they are gods, Mina, and try as they might, they cannot truly understand. You alone know the pain of mortality, Mina.”
She thought this over. “You are right,” she said at last, thoughtful. “Perhaps that is why I am able to wield such power over mortals.”
“Is that what you want? To wield power over them?”
“Of course! Isn’t it what all we all want?” Mina frowned. “I saw the gods at work that day in Solace. I saw the blood spilled and the bodies stacked up in front of the altars. If mortals will fight and die for their faith, why should they not go to their deaths singing my name as well as another?”
She slipped her shoe back on her foot and stood up and started walking. She seemed bound to try to convince herself that she felt nothing and tried to walk normally, but she could not stand it. Wincing in pain, she came to a halt.
“You were a god,” she said. “Do you remember anything of what you were? Do you remember the moment before creation? Does your mind yet encompass the vastness of eternity? Do you see to the limits of heaven?”
“No,” Valthonis answered. “My mind is that of a mortal. I see the horizon and sometimes not that, if the clouds obscure it. I am glad for this. I think it would be too terrible to bear otherwise.”
“It is,” said Mina softly.
She yanked off both her shoes and threw them off the side of the cliff. She started walking barefoot, stepping gingerly on the path, and almost immediately cut her foot on a sharp pebble. She gasped and came up short. She clenched her fists in frustration.
“I am a god!” she cried. “I have no feet!”
She stared at her bare toes, as if willing them to disappear.
Her toes remained, wriggling and digging into the dust.
Mina moaned and sank down, crouched down, huddled into herself.
“How can I be a god if I will always be a mortal? How can I walk among the stars when I have blisters on my feet? I don’t know how to be a god, Father! I know only how to be human…”
Valthonis put his arms around her and lifted her up. “You need walk no farther, daughter. We are here,” he said.
Mina stared at him, bewildered. “Where?”
“Home,” he replied.
In the center of a smooth-sided, bowl-shaped valley, nineteen pillars stood silent watch around a circular pool of shining black, fire-blasted obsidian. Sixteen pillars stood together. Three pillars stood apart. One of these was black jet, one red granite, the other white jade. Five of the remaining pillars were of white marble. Five were of black marble.
Six were made of marble of an indeterminate color.
Once twenty-one pillars had guarded the pool. Two of them had toppled to the ground. One, a black pillar, had shattered in the fall. Nothing remained of it but a heap of broken rubble. The other fallen pillar was still intact, its surface shining in the sunlight, swept free of dust by loving hands.
Mina and Valthonis stood outside the stone pillars, looking in. The sky was cloudless, achingly blue. The sun teetered precariously on the peaks of the Lords of Doom, still casting its radiant light, though any moment it would slide down the mountain and fall into night. The valley was filled with the twilight; shadows cast by the mountains, sunlight gleaming on the obsidian pool.
Mina gazed with rapt fascination on the black pool. She walked toward it, prepared to squeeze her way through the narrow gap between two pillars, when she realized Valthonis was no longer at her side. She turned to see him standing near the small crack in the rock wall through which they had entered.
“The pain will never end, will it?” she asked.
His answer was his silence.
Mina unwrapped the artifacts of Paladine and Takhisis and held them, one in each hand. She lay the scrip that had belonged to the monk at the foot of a pillar of white marble streaked with orange, then walked between the pillars and stepped onto the pool of shining black obsidian. Lifting her amber eyes, she stared into the heavens and saw the constellations of the gods shining in the sky.