Krell would have sacrificed far more in order to be able to knock Mina off that high perch on which she stood, sneering down at him.
Mina had never made any secret of the fact that she despised him for his betrayal of Lord Ariakan. Not only that, she had bested him in combat, and she had humiliated him in front of the Lord of Death. The Beloved had no respect for Krell, not even when he was hacking them to bits, but Mina had only to quirk her little finger and they fawned over her and cried out her name.
Krell could have killed her outright, but he knew he would never get away with it. Chemosh might glower at her and curse her, but he still jumped into her bed every night. Then there was Zeboim, his archenemy, lavishing gifts on her. Zeboim might take offense if Krell murdered her darling and thus the death knight had to restrain himself, act subtly. A difficult task, but hatred can move mountains.
Now all Krell had to do was catch Mina in an act of betrayal. He knew from sad experience what happened when you angered a god, and Krell entertained himself, as he sneaked after her, by picturing in vivid detail the torment Mina was going endure. It is amazing how long someone can live after being disemboweled.
As Krell watched Mina enter the grotto, he leaped to the conclusion that she was going to meet a lover. Slipping close, Krell was immensely pleased to hear a man’s deep voice. He was somewhat disconcerted to hear what sounded suspiciously like the shrill voice of a kender as well, but Krell was open-minded. Whatever takes your fancy had always been his motto.
Rubbing his gloved hands in glee, he sidled near the entrance, hoping to hear more clearly. He found, to his disappointment, that the sounds emanating from the grotto were muffled and indistinct. Krell was not worried. It didn’t matter what was truly going on in there. He could always make something up. The jealous Chemosh would be quick to believe the worst. Krell hunkered down outside the grotto and waited for Mina to emerge.
3
Rhys lost all sense of time aboard the minotaur ship. The journey through the lashing waves of night, tossed on the storms of magic, seemed endless. Winds wailed in the rigging, sails billowed. The ship heeled precariously. The captain roared, and the crew cheered and shouted defiance into the wind.
As for him, he spent the dark night in prayer. Rhys had quit the god, but his god had refused to quit him. He knelt on the deck, his head bowed in shame and contrition, his cheeks wet with tears, as he asked humbly for the god’s forgiveness. Though the night and the ghostly voyage were terrible, he was at peace.
Day dawned. The ship sailed out of the sea of magic and settled down on calm water. The minotaur captain hauled the quivering kender and the limp dog out of their crates and handed them over to his crew. He looked down at Rhys, who still knelt on the deck.
“You’ve been praying, I suppose,” said the captain with an approving nod. “Well, Brother, your prayers are answered. You made it safely through the night.”
“I did indeed, sir,” said Rhys quietly, and he rose to his feet.
The minotaurs manhandled them into the shore boat, then rowed them onto an unknown landing. Rhys stared down into seawater that was the color of blood. He looked into a sun rising up out of the sea, and realization smote him. During the tumultuous night, their ship had sailed through time and space. They were now on the other side of the continent.
Rhys saw a fortress castle silhouetted against the fading stars, but that was all he saw before the minotaurs lifted him from the boat and dragged him over a wet beach and across sand dunes to the side of a cliff.
Arriving at the site of a rockslide, the minotaurs dumped Rhys and the kender and the dog onto the ground and began to lift up gigantic boulders and hurl them aside. He did not understand their language, but he heard the words “grotto” and “Zeboim” and he had the impression, from their hushed and reverent attitude, that behind the rockslide was some sort of shrine to the sea goddess.
At last, the minotaurs cleared the slide and entered the grotto, leaving Rhys outside with a guard. He heard banging and hammering and the clanking of iron. The minotaurs returned and picked up Rhys and hauled him inside, along with Atta and Nightshade.
Chains dangled from iron rings that had been newly driven into the stone walls. Working by the dim light that managed to straggle inside, the minotaurs chained Rhys and Nightshade to the iron rings, tossed down a small sack of food and a bucket of water, then departed without a word, refusing to answer any of Rhys’s questions.
The chains were attached to heavy manacles at the ankles and wrists and were long enough to allow Rhys and Nightshade limited movement. Each of them could lie down on the stone floor or stand up and walk about five paces.
Traumatized by the events aboard ship, Atta was too shaken to stand. She rolled over onto her side and lay panting on the cavern floor. Rhys, exhausted, took the terrified dog in his arms and did his best to try to soothe her. Nightshade’s clothes were soaked, and the grotto was cold.
He sat huddled in a miserable heap, trying to warm himself by slapping himself on the arms.
“Those minotaurs weren’t ghosts, Rhys,” Nightshade said. “I thought at first they might be, but they weren’t. They were extremely real. Too real, if you ask me.” He rubbed his shoulder where one of the minotaurs had pinched him. “I’ll be black and blue for a month.”
There was no answer, and Nightshade saw that Rhys had fallen asleep sitting up, with his back against the rock wall.
“I guess there’s nothing else to do except sleep,” Nightshade said to himself. He closed his eyes and hoped that when he woke up, this would prove a dream, and he would find himself in the Inn of the Last Home on chicken dumpling day....
Rhys woke suddenly, jolted out of sleep by a bright shaft of sunlight falling on his face. The light illuminated the grotto, and he could see, at the far end, a few feet from him, an altar carved out of stone. The altar was covered with dust and had seemingly been long abandoned. Frescoes adorned the cavern walls. They were so faded he could not make out what they had been. A large conch shell adorned the altar.
Nightshade lay on the floor beside him. Atta was curled around his legs. And there was his staff propped up against a wall some distance away. On orders of their captain, the minotaurs had brought the staff wrapped up in a large piece of leather. They had left it for him, though out of his reach.
The grotto in which they were imprisoned was circular in shape, about twenty paces across in any direction. The ceiling was high enough that the minotaurs had been able to stand without stooping, though Rhys remembered the large beasts had experienced considerable difficulty making their way inside and down the narrow corridor that opened into this chamber.
Fresh air flowed into the grotto from the shaft. Rhys did not remember seeing any other passages, but he was the first to admit he’d been too drained and exhausted to pay much attention.
Atta woke refreshed from her nap. Jumping to her feet, she regarded Rhys expectantly, tail wagging, ready for him to say they were going to leave this place and head out for the road. Rhys rose stiffly to his feet, chains clanking. The sound frightened Atta. She jumped back away from him, as the chains dragged across the stone floor. Then, warily, she crept forward to give the chains a sniff and watched in puzzled wonderment as Rhys, grimacing from the stiffness in his back and neck, hobbled across the floor to the water bucket.