Zeboim looked at him. She looked at his robes. She looked back to him. She ceased to see him. Her gaze grew abstracted.
“I wonder . . .” she said softly.
Her eyes narrowed, her focus coming back to him. She crouched in front of him, lithe, graceful and deadly. “Give yourself to me, monk, and I will set you free. This minute. I will even free the kender and the mutt. Pledge your faith to me, and I will summon the minotaur ship, and they will carry you wherever it is in this wide world that you want to go.”
“I cannot pledge to you what I no longer have to give, Lady,” Rhys replied gently. “My faith, my soul are in the hands of Majere.”
“Mina is as good as her word,” Zeboim returned angrily. She pointed at Nightshade. “She will kill both your dog and the wretch of a kender. They will die slowly and in agony, all because of you.”
“Majere watches over his own,” Rhys said. He looked at the staff, propped up against the wall.
“You will let those who trust you die in torment just so you can find salvation! A fine friend you are, Brother!”
“Rhys is not letting us die in torment!” Nightshade cried stoutly. “We want to die in torment, don’t we, Atta! Oops,” he added in a low voice. “That didn’t come out quite right.”
Zeboim rose, majestic and cold. “So be it, monk. I would slay you myself right now, but I would not deprive Mina of the pleasure. Rest assured, I will be watching and savoring every drop of blood! Oh, and just in case you were thinking that this might help you—”
She pointed a finger at the staff, and it exploded in a blast of ugly green flame. Splinters of wood flew about the cavern. One of the splinters sliced the flesh on Rhys’s hand. He covered the wound swiftly, so that Zeboim would not see.
The goddess vanished with a clap of thunder, a gust of rain-laden wind, and a sneer.
Rhys looked down at his hand, at the long, jagged tear made by the splinter. Blood welled from the wound. He pressed the hem of his sleeve over it. All that remained of the staff—the splinter that had cut him—lay on the floor at his side. He picked up the splinter and closed his hand over it.
He had Majere’s answer, and he was content.
“Don’t look sad, Rhys,” Nightshade was saying cheerfully. “I don’t mind dying. Neither does Atta. It might be kind of fun to be a ghost—I could slide through walls and go bump in the night. Atta and I will come visit you in our ghostly forms. Not that I’ve seen many dog ghosts, mind you. I wonder why? Maybe because the souls of dogs have already completed their journeys, and they are free to run off to play forever in grassy fields. Maybe they chase the souls of rabbits. That is, if rabbits have souls—don’t get me started on rabbits. . . .”
Rhys waited patiently for the kender to finish his metaphysical ramblings. When Nightshade had talked himself out and was settling down to play rock, cloth, and knife with Atta, Rhys said, “You can squeeze your hands through the manacles, can’t you?”
Nightshade pretended not to hear. “Cloth covers rock. You lose again, Atta.”
“Nightshade . ..” Rhys persisted.
“Don’t interrupt us, Rhys,” Nightshade said, interrupting. “This is a very serious game.”
Rhys tried again. “Nightshade, I know—”
“No, you don’t!” cried Nightshade, glaring at Rhys. Going back to the game, the kender slapped Atta lightly on the paw. “That’s cheating. You can’t change your mind in the middle! You said ‘rock’ the first time.. . .”
Rhys kept quiet.
Nightshade kept glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, squirming uncomfortably. He continued to play, but he forgot what he’d said he was—rock, cloth, or knife—and that confused the game.
Suddenly he cried, “All right already! The manacles on my wrists might be a little loose.”
He looked down at his feet and brightened. “But I could never squeeze my feet through the manacles on my ankles!”
“You could,” Rhys said, “if you smeared some of the grease from the salt pork on them.”
The kender thrust out his lower lip. “It’ll ruin my boots.”
Rhys glanced at the boots. Two of the kender’s pink toes could be seen poking out through holes in the soles.
“When it grows dark,” Rhys said, “you will squeeze loose and take Atta and leave.”
Nightshade shook his head. “Not without you. We’ll use the grease to free your hands—”
“The manacles are tight on my wrists and tighter still around my ankles. I cannot escape. You and Atta can.”
“Don’t make me go!” Nightshade pleaded.
Rhys put his arm around the kender’s shoulders. “You are a good and loyal friend, Nightshade, the best friend I have ever known. Your wisdom brought me back to my god. Look at me.”
Nightshade shook his head and stared stubbornly at the floor.
“Look at me,” Rhys said gently.
Nightshade lifted his head. Tears stained his cheeks.
“I can bear the pain,” Rhys said. “I am not afraid of death. Majere waits to receive me. What I could not bear is to see the two of you suffer. My death will be so much easier if I know you and Atta are both safe. Will you make this last sacrifice for me, Nightshade?”
Nightshade had to swallow a few times, and then he said miserably, “Yes, Rhys.”
Atta gazed at her master. It was a good thing she could not understand what he was saying. She would have most decidedly refused.
“That is well,” said Rhys. “Now I think we should have something to eat and drink, and then get some rest.”
“I’m not hungry,” Nightshade mumbled.
“I am,” Rhys stated. “I know Atta is.”
At the mention of food, the dog licked her chops and stood up, wagging her tail.
“I think maybe you are, too,” Rhys added, smiling.
“Well, just a little,” said Nightshade and, with a mournful sigh, he slipped his hands out of the manacles and clanked over to the sack of salt pork.
5
The ocean boiled as Zeboim stalked into the water, and she was wreathed in steam when she boarded the minotaur vessel. The captain bowed low to her, and the crew knuckled their shaggy foreheads. “Where are you bound, Most Glorious One?” the captain asked humbly.
“The Temple of Majere,” said the goddess.
The captain rubbed his snout and regarded her with an apologetic air. “I fear I do not know—”
Zeboim waved her hand. “It is on some mountain somewhere. I forget the name. I will guide you. Make haste.”
“Yes, Most Glorious One.” The captain bowed again and then began to bellow orders. The crew raced into the rigging.
Zeboim lifted her hands and summoned the wind, and the sails billowed.
“North,” she said, and the waves curled and foamed beneath the prow as the wind bore the ship over the waves and up into the clouds, The winds of the goddess’s will drove her ship through the ethers foaming beneath the keel and carried her to a remote realm that appeared on no maps of Krynn, for few mortals had ever seen it or were aware it existed. Those who did know of it had no need to map it, for they knew where they were.
It was a land of tall mountains and deep valleys. Nothing grew on the towering mountains. The valleys were gashes cut into the stone with smatterings of grassy hillocks and the occasional scraggly pine or wind-bent spruce. The nomads who dwelt in this desolate region roamed the mountains with their herds of goats, eking out a harsh existence. These humans lived now as they had lived centuries ago, knowing nothing of the world beyond and asking nothing from that world except to be left alone.
As the goddess neared her destination, she shrouded the ship in clouds, for fear Majere, who was a solitary, reclusive god, would know of her coming and depart before she could speak to him.
“Gracious Lady, this is madness,” said the minotaur captain. He cast a haggard look over the prow. Whenever the clouds parted, he could see his ship sailing perilously close to jagged, snow-capped peaks. “We will smash headlong into a mountain and that will be the end of us!”