He lapsed into silence, his feeling of peace and ease suddenly draining from him.
Patrick regarded him strangely. “Did you know this abbot?”
“No,” said Rhys. “I had never seen him before. I did not think about it at the time—I was too upset—but now that I look back on our meeting, I find it very odd he would have known me. How could he?”
Nightshade tugged on his sleeve.
“Rhys,” said the kender, and then he stopped.
210
“What is it?” Rhys asked somewhat impatiently.
“It’s just that ... if you hadn’t been late, we would have reached the shack on time to stop Lieu before he could hurt the mother, then the little boy wouldn’t have had to hit the Beloved, and he wouldn’t have gone up in flames.”
Rhys stood in silence, gripping his staff.
“The priests kept you away just long enough, Rhys,” Nightshade persisted. “Just long enough for you to be late, but not long enough for you to be too late. Now Revered Patrick here tells us that there aren’t any priests of Majere for maybe a hundred miles in any direction and . . . well... I can’t help but wondering . . .”
Nightshade quit talking. He didn’t like the way Rhys looked.
“Wondering what?” Rhys asked harshly.
Nightshade didn’t know whether he should go on or not. “I think maybe this should wait until morning.”
“Tell me,” Rhys said.
“Maybe these priests weren’t real,” Nightshade suggested meekly.
“Do you think I am lying about this?” Rhys demanded.
“No, no, no, not that, Rhys.” Nightshade stumbled over his tongue in his haste. “I think you think the priests were real. It’s just—”
He didn’t know how to explain himself, and he looked to Patrick for help.
“He is saying that the priests were real, Brother—as real as Majere made them,” Patrick said.
Rhys stood in the peace of Mishakal’s temple, thinking back on the horrific events of that night. He was suddenly deeply and intensely angry.
“What do the gods want of me?” he cried out.
Patrick looked grave. Atta cringed at his tone, and Nightshade took a step backward.
“They play games with my life,” Rhys continued in a rage, “and with the lives of others. That poor child and his mother. Was it necessary to make them suffer like that? They will be cursed with the terrible memory of this night for the rest of their lives. If Majere wanted me to know how to destroy these Beloved, why didn’t he just come to me himself and tell me? Why does Zeboim bring Mina to me and then snatch her away?”
“Brother Rhys,” said Patrick, resting his hand on the monk’s arm. “The ways of the gods are not for mortals to understand. . . .”
Rhys looked at him coldly. “Spare me the sermon, Revered Son. I’ve heard it all before.”
He turned so suddenly he stepped on Atta, who yelped in pain. She gave her hurt paw a quick lick and then ran forgivingly after her master. Nightshade hesitated. He flashed Patrick an agonized glance.
“I think he’s really mad at me,” said the kender.
“No,” said Patrick. “He’s mad at the heavens. It happens to all of us at one time or another.” He gave a wan smile. “I have to admit I’m not overly pleased with the gods myself at this moment, but they understand. Go after him. He needs a friend.”
Rhys must have been walking very fast, for Nightshade saw no sign of him or Atta in the street. He called out Rhys’s name, but there was no answer. The kender called out Atta’s name, and he heard her bark.
Following the sound, he found Rhys’s staff lying on the pavement. Rhys was dragging the aqua-green robes over his head.
“Rhys,” said Nightshade, frightened. “What are you doing?”
“I quit,” Rhys said.
He flung the robes in a heap by the staff and walked off, clad only in his breeches and boots, his chest and shoulders bare. He looked back over his shoulder to see Nightshade standing rooted to the spot and Atta nosing the robes.
“You coming or not?” Rhys asked coldly.
“Uh, sure, Rhys,” said Nightshade.
“Atta!” Rhys called.
The dog looked at him and then lowered her head to pick up the staff.
“Leave it!” Rhys ordered savagely.
Atta jumped back. Startled by his tone, she stared at him.
“Atta, come!”
She assumed she was at fault, though she had no idea what she’d done wrong. Head down and tail drooping, the dog slunk toward him. Rhys waited for her, but he did not apologize for his bad temper, either to her or to the kender. He stalked off down the street.
Rhys had no idea where he was going. He needed to walk off his fury and let the sea breeze cool his fevered skin. He heard Nightshade panting behind him and Atta’s nails clicking on the pavement, so he knew they were following him. He didn’t look back. He just kept walking.
“Rhys,” said Nightshade after a few moments, “I don’t think you can quit a god.”
Rhys heard the kender’s voice and the dog’s barking, but it was muffled and disembodied, as if wrapped in a thick fog.
“Rhys,” Nightshade persisted.
“Please, just ... be quiet!” Rhys said through clenched teeth. “Keep Atta quiet, too.”
“All right, but before we’re both quiet I think you might want to know that someone’s following us.”
Rhys halted. He had broken the first rule of the Master. He had given in to his emotions. He had allowed rage to overcome him, completely forgetting in his blind fury that he and the kender were alone in the middle of a dark night in the very worst part of the city. He started to turn around to confront the threat behind and realized there was also a threat in front.
A large minotaur stepped out from an alley.
Rhys had never seen one of these man-beasts before and he was taken aback by the sheer size and brute strength of the beast. Rhys was tall for a human male, yet he came only to the minotaur’s chest. Clad in a leather vest and loose-fitting pants, the minotaur was a daunting sight. His feet were bare and covered with fur. A golden ring encircled the top of one of his sharp horns, and gold glinted in one ear. Dark eyes, set close together above a fur-covered snout, gazed coolly down on Rhys.
“Those are my lads coming up behind you,” the minotaur remarked. He glared down at Atta, who was in a frenzy of barking. The minotaur laid a gigantic hand on the hilt of a huge dagger he wore in a broad sash at his waist. “Silence the mutt or I’ll silence her for you.”
“Atta, quiet,” Rhys said. Atta’s barks subsided to growls interspersed with pants. He could feel her body quivering against his leg.
“We have no money,” Rhys said as calmly as he could. “It would be useless to rob us.”
“Money?” The minotaur snorted and then laughed so that the gold on his horn Hashed red in the light of several flaring torches now surrounding Rhys and Nightshade. “We’re not after money. We got money!”
The beast thrust his muzzle into Rhys’s face. “What we need are hands and legs and strong backs.”
He straightened and gestured. “Take him, mates.”
“Aye, Capt’n,” called out several guttural voices.
Two burly minotaurs approached Rhys, who realized now what kind of trouble had found them. They’d run afoul of a press gang, minotaur pirates, seeking slaves for their ships.
7
“This un’s a kender, Capt’n,” stated one of the minotaurs in disgust. He held his torch so close to Nightshade’s head that the smell of singed hair wafted on the air. “You want him, too?”
“Sure, I like kender,” said the captain with a chortle. “Baked, with an apple in his mouth. And grab the dog. I like dogs, too.”
“I would not grab me, if I were you!” Nightshade said in his deepest voice, which sounded rather like he was suffering from a cold in the head. He held up his left hand and pointed his finger at the minotaur. “Any who dare touch me will find himself feeble as a newborn babe. Er, make that calf.”