“Uh, if you’ll pardon me, Master, I will just go attend to the cleaning up....” Basalt tried to sidle out of the room.
“Where is Mina?” Nuitari demanded.
Basalt glanced about furtively, as if hoping he she might be hiding under the couch. Not finding her, he looked back at the Master and almost immediately looked away again.
“It was Caele’s fault,” Basalt said, mumbling into his beard. “He tried to kill her, but he bungled it as usual, and she took his knife—”
“You snake!” Caele hissed. Crawling weakly out of the coffin, he raised a feeble hand against the dwarf.
“Stop it, both of you!” Nuitari commanded. “Where is Mina?”
“Everything happened at once, Master.” Caele whined. “Zeboim started shaking the Tower, and the next thing I knew Mina had my knife and was threatening to kill me—”
“That is true, Master,” said Basalt. “Mina threatened to kill poor Caele if I tried to stop her, and of course, I feared for his life, and then Chemosh came and forced us inside these coffins—”
“You lie,” Nuitari said calmly. “The Lord of Death may not enter my Tower. Not anymore.”
“I heard his voice, Master,” gasped Basalt, flinching. “His voice was everywhere. He spoke to Mina. He said the Tower was hers. Except for the guardian . . .”
“The guardian,” repeated Nuitari, and he knew where Mina had gone—the Hall of Sacrilege. He relaxed. “Midori will deal with her, which means there won’t be much left. I must come up with something to placate my sister. I will put Mina’s remains in a pretty box. Zeboim can trade that to Chemosh for whatever it is he has promised her—a promise he probably doesn’t mean to keep anyway.”
He looked back at his two wizards, who stood cringing before him. “Start cleaning up this mess.” He glanced at the coffins. “Don’t get rid of those. They might come in useful in the future if you dare disobey me again.”
“No, Master,” Basalt mumbled.
“Yes, Master,” Caele gulped.
Satisfied, Nuitari departed to retrieve Mina’s corpse.
Nuitari expected to find the sea globe in an uproar—blood in the water, the dragon looking satiated, sharks fighting over the scraps.
Instead, jellyfish undulated about the globe in maddening calm and the dragon was asleep on the sandy bottom.
Apparently he’d been worried over nothing. Mina had not come here after all. Nuitari sent an urgent message to his wizards to search the Tower for her and was starting to leave to assist them when the dragon spoke.
“If you’re looking for the human, she’s inside your sand castle.”
Nuitari stood aghast for a moment, then surged through the crystal wall to confront the dragon.
Midori watched him from deep within the black depths of her shell.
“You allowed her to enter?” Nuitari raged. “What kind of guardian are you?”
“She told me you had sent her,” replied the dragon. The shell shifted slightly. “She said you wanted her to make certain the holy artifacts had not been damaged by the quakes.”
“And you believed her lies?” Nuitari was aghast.
“No,” said Midori, green-gold eyes glittering. “Not any more than I believe your lies.”
“My lies?” Nuitari could not make sense of this. He’d never lied to the dragon, not about anything important. “What— Never mind that! Why did you let her pass?”
“Next time, do your own dirty work,” Midori snarled, drawing her head back into her shell. She closed her eyes and feigned sleep.
Nuitari didn’t have time to puzzle out what was bothering the dragon. He had to stop Mina from walking off with his artifacts. Unseen and unheard, the god materialized inside the Solio Febalas.
There was Mina. She was not ransacking the place, as he expected. She was on her knees, her head bowed, her hands clasped.
“Gods of Darkness and Gods of Light and those Gods who love the twilight in between, forgive my desecration of this holy place,” Mina was praying softly. “Forgive the ignorance of mortals, forgive the arrogance and fear that led them to commit this crime against you. Though the souls of those who stole these sacred objects are long since passed, the weakness in men remains. Few bow down before you. Few honor you. Many deny your existence or claim man has outgrown his need of you. If they could but see this blessed sight as I see it and feel your presence as I feel it, all mankind would fall to your feet and worship.”
Nuitari had intended to grab her by the scruff of her neck and twist her body in his bare hands until her bones cracked and her blood ran red. Like his wizards, he did not believe in using magic for frivolous purposes.
But he did not kill her. Looking around the chamber, he saw what she saw—not artifacts to be bartered like pigs on market day. He saw the sacred altars. He saw the divine light. He saw the awful power of the gods. He felt what she felt—a holy presence. Nuitari drew back his hand.
“You are the most irritating human,” he said, exasperated. “I do not understand you.”
Mina lifted her head and turned to look at him. Her face was stained with tears. She reminded him of a lost child.
“I do not understand myself, Lord,” she said. She bowed her head. “Take my life as punishment for my transgression into this holy place. I deserve to die.”
“You do deserve to die,” Nuitari told her grimly. “But today you are lucky. I have promised you to my sister who has, in turn, promised you to Chemosh.”
He might have been talking of someone else. Mina remained where she was, crouched on the floor, crushed, ground down by the weight of heaven.
“Didn’t you hear me? You are free to go,” he said. “Though I must warn you that if you have, by some mischance, tucked a blessed ring or a vial of life-restoring potion up your sleeve, you should divest yourself of it before you depart. Otherwise, you will find your luck has run out.”
“I have touched nothing, Lord,” she said.
Rising to her feet, she walked toward the door. She moved slowly,
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as though reluctant to leave. Her eyes lingered on the holy relics of the gods.
“I don’t suppose it would do me any good to ask how you managed to circumvent my magical safeguards?” Nuitari asked. “How you broke into a door that was magically sealed and trapped, and then made your way through rune-encrusted crystal walls, and how you came to breathe seawater as easily as air. I suppose Chemosh aided you in all this.”
“I prayed to my lord, yes,” Mina replied absently.
Nuitari waited for details, but she did not elaborate.
“I would like to know, though,” Nuitari continued, “how you managed to slip past the dragon. She said you told her some far-fetched story that I had sent you. I think, in truth, she must have been asleep and is afraid to admit it to me.”
Mina smiled a half-smile at this. “I believe I did say something of the sort, Lord. The dragon was wide awake. She saw me, spoke to me, and posed riddles for me to answer. After that, the dragon permitted me to enter the globe.”
“Riddles?” Nuitari was skeptical. “What riddles?”
Mina thought back. “There were two: ‘Where did you come from?’ the dragon asked me, and ‘Where have you been?’ ”
“Not much in the way of riddles,” Nuitari stated dryly.
Mina nodded. “I agree, Lord. However, the dragon grew angry when she thought I was evading the questions. That is what made me think they were riddles meant to trick me.”
The sea floor heaved and lurched. The Tower shook on its foundations, and a voice called out in warning, “Make haste, Brother! I grow weary of waiting!”