It did not come this day. He felt distinctly dissatisfied. What was supposed to go right was going all wrong. He’d lost control, and he had no idea how it had slipped away. It was as if he were cursed....
With that word, he realized suddenly why he had been drawn here, realized what it was he sought.
He stood in the Hall of Souls Passing, and he saw again the first soul that had come before him when the world was returned—the mortal soul of Takhisis. All the gods had been present at her passing. He heard again her words—part desperate plea and part defiant snarl.
“You are making a mistake!” Takhisis had said to them. “What I have done cannot be undone. The curse is among you. Destroy me, and you destroy yourselves.”
Chemosh could not judge her. None of the gods could do that. She had been one of them, after all. The High God had come to claim the soul of his lost child, and the reign of Takhisis, Queen of Darkness, was ended, and time and the universe continued on.
Chemosh had thought nothing of her prediction then. Rants, ravings, threats—Takhisis had spewed such venom for eons. He could not help but think of it now, think of it and wonder uneasily just what the late and unlamented Queen had meant.
There was one person who might know, one person who’d been closer to the Takhisis than anyone else in history. The one person he’d banished from his sight.
Mina.
9
Nightshade left the grotto with a heavy heart—a heart that was too heavy to stay properly in his chest but sank down to his stomach, where it took offense to the salt pork and gave him a bellyache. From there, his heart sank still further, adding its weight to his feet so they moved slower and slower, until it was an effort to make them move at all. His heart grew heavier the farther he went.
Nightshade’s brain kept telling him he was on an Urgent Mission to save Rhys. The problem was his heart didn’t believe it, so that not only was his heart down around his shoes, flummoxing his feet, his heart was in an argument with his head, not to mention the salt pork.
Nightshade ignored his heart and obeyed his head. The head was Logic, and humans were impressed with Logic and were always stressing how important it was to behave logically. Logic dictated Nightshade would stand a better chance of rescuing Rhys if he brought back help in the form of monks of Majere than if he—a mere kender—stayed with Rhys in the grotto. It was the Logic of Rhys’s argument that had persuaded Nightshade to leave, and this same Logic kept him moving ahead when his heart urged him to turn around and run back.
Atta stayed close at his heels, as she’d been commanded. Her heart must have bothered her as well, for she kept stopping, drawing severe scoldings from the kender.
“Atta! Here, girl! You’ve got to keep up with me!” Nightshade admonished. “We don’t have time for lollygagging about.”
Atta would trot after him because that was what she’d been told to do, but she was not happy, and neither was Nightshade.
The walking itself was another problem. Solinari and Lunitari were both in the sky this night. Solinari was half-full and Lunitari completely full, so that it seemed the moons were winking at Nightshade like mismatched eyes. He could see the ridgeline up above where he walked and he calculated—logically—that on top of this ridge he would find a road, and that road would lead to Flotsam. The ridge didn’t look to be that far away—just a hop, skip, and a jump over some sand dunes, followed by a scramble among some boulders.
The sand dunes proved difficult to navigate, however. Hop, skip, and jump failed utterly. The sand was loose and squishy and slid out from underneath his boots that were already slick from the salt pork. He envied Atta, who pattered along on top of the sand, and wished he had four feet. Nightshade floundered through the sand for what seemed forever, spending more time on his hands and knees than he did on his feet. He grew hot and worn out, and whenever he looked he found the ridge appeared to be moving farther away.
All things do come to an end, however, even sand dunes. This left the boulders. Nightshade figured boulders had to be better than dunes, and he started climbing the ridge with relief.
Relief that soon evaporated.
He didn’t know boulders came in such immense sizes or that they would be this sharp, or that climbing them would be this difficult, or that the rats living among the boulders would be this big and nasty. Fortunately, he had Atta with him, or the rats might have carried him off for they weren’t in the least afraid of a kender. They did not like the dog, however. Atta barked at the rats. They glared at her with red eyes, chittered at her, then slunk away.
After only a short sojourn among the boulders, Nightshade’s hands were cut and bleeding. His ankle hurt from where he’d slipped and wedged it in a crack. He had to stop once to throw up, but that at least took care of the salt pork problem.
Then, just when it seemed like these boulders must go on forever, he reached the top of the ridge.
Nightshade stepped out on the road that would take him to Flotsam and the monks, and he looked up the road and he looked down the road. His first thought was that the word “road” was paying this strip of rocky wagon ruts a compliment it did not deserve. His second though was more somber. The so-called road stretched on and on, as far as he could see in both directions.
There was no city at the end of either direction.
Flotsam was immense. He’d heard stories about Flotsam all his life. Flotsam was a city that never slept. It was a city of torchlight, tavern lights, bonfires on the beaches, and home fires shining in the windows of the houses. Nightshade had assumed that when he reached the road, he’d be able to see Flotsam’s lights.
The only lights he could see were the cold, pale stars and the maddening winking eyes of the two moons.
“So where is it?” Nightshade turned one way, and then the other. “Which way do I go?”
Truth sank home. Truth sank his heart. Truth sank logic.
“It doesn’t matter which way Flotsam is,” said Nightshade in sudden, awful realization. “Because no matter which way Flotsam is, it’s too far. Rhys knew it! He knew we’d never make it to Flotsam and back in time. He sent us away because he knew he was going to die!”
The kender sat down in the dirt and, wrapping his arms around the dog’s neck, he hugged her close. “What are we going to do, Atta?”
In answer, she pulled away from him and ran back to the boulders. Halting, she looked at him eagerly and wagged her tail.
“It won’t do any good to go back, Atta,” said Nightshade miserably. “Even if I could climb down those stupid rocks again without breaking my neck, which I don’t think I can, it wouldn’t matter.”
He wiped the sweat from his face.
“We can’t save Rhys, not by ourselves. I’m a kender and you’re a dog. We need help.”
He sat in the road, mired in despair, his head in his hands. Atta licked his cheek and nudged him with her nose under his armpit, trying to prod him into action.
Nightshade lifted his head. A thought had occurred to him, a thought that made him burning mad.
“Here we are, Atta, half-killing ourselves to help Rhys, and what is his god doing all this time? Nothing, that’s what! Gods can do anything! Majere could have put Flotsam where we could find it. Majere could have made that squishy sand hard and those sharp boulders soft. Majere could make Rhys’s chains fall off! Majere could send me six monks right now, walking along the road to save Rhys. Do you hear that, Majere?” Nightshade hollered up to heaven.
He waited a few moments, giving the god a chance, but six monks did not appear.
“Now you’ve done it,” said the kender ominously, and he stood up on his two feet, and he gazed up into the heavens, put his hands on his hips and gave the god a talking-to.
“I don’t know if you’re listening to me or not, Majere,” Nightshade said in stern tones. “Probably not, since I’m a kender and no one listens to us, and also I’m a mystic, which means I don’t worship you. Still, you know, that shouldn’t make any difference. You’re a god of good, according to what Rhys says, and that means you should listen to people—all people, including kender and mystics—whether we worship you or not.