Amber and Ashes - Margaret Weis [105]
He looked in bitter frustrated at Lleu, who was sauntering jauntily down the main street of Solace, his hat tipped back, as if to feel the morning sunshine on his face, except that it was drizzling rain. It had been drizzling rain for days now, and Solace was a sea of mud and sodden, grumpy inhabitants.
Lleu hummed as he went along. Once he’d sung a dance tune. Then he hummed snatches and fragments of it. Now his humming was no longer recognizable, off-key and jarring, as if he’d forgotten the song, which, Rhys thought, he probably had. Just as he forgot from one moment to the next if he’d eaten or drunk. Just as he forgot Rhys. Just as he forgot his victims the moment he’d slain them.
“Rhys,” said Nightshade suddenly, tugging on Rhys’s wet sleeve. “Look! Where’s he going?”
Rhys had been absorbed in his thoughts that were as gloomy as the day, not paying attention. He had assumed that Lleu would be returning to the Trough, which was where he spent his time when he wasn’t making deadly love to some doomed young woman. Rhys peered through the desultory rain to see that Lleu had veered off in a different direction. He was walking toward the main highway.
“I think he’s leaving town,” said Nightshade.
“I think you’re right,” said Rhys, stopping so fast that he took Atta by surprise. She pattered on a few steps before she realized that she’d lost her master. She turned around, fixed him with a hurt look, as though to say he could have given her some notice, before she shook off the rainwater and came trotting back.
“Come to think of it,” said Nightshade. “I didn’t see any of the Beloved when I went through the market this morning and there were none in the Inn, either. There’s usually always one or two hanging about there.”
“They’re moving on,” said Rhys. “I went to visit the parents of poor Lucy. I was hoping to talk to her, but they said that she had disappeared and so had her husband. Look at how Lleu has moved from town to town. Perhaps, after the Beloved of Chemosh fulfill their mission in one place, they are ordered to move on to the next and the next after that. That way, no one becomes suspicious, as they might if they stayed around too long. And they are all traveling east.”
“How do you know that?” Nightshade asked.
“I don’t, for certain,” Rhys admitted, “except that all this time Lleu has been traveling in that direction. It’s as if something is drawing him …”
“Someone,” Nightshade corrected darkly.
“Chemosh, yes,” said Rhys. “For what reason, I wonder? What purpose?”
Nightshade shrugged. He saw no point in continually asking questions that couldn’t be answered and he came back to the practical.
“Are we going after him?”
“Yes,” said Rhys, resuming walking. “We are.”
Nightshade heaved a dismal sigh. “This is not really getting us anywhere you know. Going from one place to the next, watching your brother eat twenty meals a day and drink enough dwarf spirits to choke a kobold—”
“There’s nothing else to be done,” Rhys returned, frustrated. “The goddess is no help. I’ve asked her to assist me in finding this Mina and in trying to discover what Chemosh is plotting. Zeboim won’t answer my prayers. I went to her shrine and found that it was closed, the door locked. I think she’s deliberately avoiding me.”
“So we just follow your brother and hope he leads us somewhere? Somewhere besides the next tavern, that is.”
“That’s right,” said Rhys.
Nightshade shook his head and trudged on. They had traveled only about a quarter of a mile, however, when they heard shouting and the sound of hoof beats.
Rhys stepped to the side of the road. One of the city guard reigned in his horse next to them.
Nightshade flung his hands in the air. “I didn’t take it,” he said promptly, “or if I did, I’ll give it back.”
The guardsman ignored the kender. “Are you Rhys Mason?”
“I am,” Rhys replied.
“You’re wanted back in Solace. The sheriff sent me to fetch you.”
Rhys looked after the figure of his brother, disappearing into the fog and rain. Whatever Gerard wanted with