Amber and Ashes - Margaret Weis [115]
Chemosh took hold of Mina’s hand and brought it to his lips and kissed her fingers. Her heart beat fast and her breath came short. He could rouse her to desire with a touch, a look.
“You spoke the truth, Mina. No one else, not even one of the other gods, would dare say such a thing to me. Most lack the capacity to see it. You are so young, Mina. You are not yet one and twenty. Where do you find such wisdom? Not from your late Queen, I think,” Chemosh added sardonically.
Mina gave this consideration, gazing out upon a sea that was flat but not particularly calm. The water stirred restlessly, back and forth, reminding her of someone endlessly, nervously pacing.
“I saw it in the eyes of the dying,” she said. “Not those who now give their souls to you, my lord. Those who once gave their souls to me.”
The Battle of Beckart’s Cut. The Solamnic knights broke out of Sanction, broke the siege of that city by the Dark Knights of Takhisis, then known, ignominiously, as the Knights of Neraka. The knights and soldiers of Neraka turned and fled as the Solamnics poured out of the fortress. The Neraka command crumbling, Mina took charge. She ordered her troops to slay those who were fleeing, ordered them to kill their comrades, kill friends, brothers. Inspired by the light of golden glowing amber, they obeyed her. The bodies piled up high, choking the pass. Here, the Solamnic charge ground to a halt, brought to a stop by a dam made of broken bone and bloody flesh. The day was Mina’s. She’d turned a rout into victory. She walked the field of battle, held the hands of those who were dying by her command, and she prayed over them, giving their souls to Takhisis.
“Except that the souls didn’t come to Takhisis,” said Mina softly to the sea that had rocked her as a child. “The souls came to me. Like flowers, I plucked them and gathered them to my heart, holding them close, even as I spoke her name.”
She turned to Chemosh. “That is my truth, my lord. I didn’t know it for a long time. I shouted, ‘For the glory of Takhisis’ and I prayed to her every day and every night. But when the troops chanted my name, when they shouted, ‘Mina, Mina,’ I did not correct them. I smiled.”
She was silent, watching the waves wander aimlessly to the shore, watched them deposit filth at her feet.
“Once more mankind will fear the gods,” said Chemosh, “or at least one of them. Down there”—he pointed beneath the filth, the debris, the garbage—“down there lies the beginning of my rise as King of the Pantheon. I am going to tell you a story, Mina. Below the sea lies a graveyard, the largest in the world, and this is the tale of those who are buried beneath the waves.…”
My story begins in the Age of Dreams, when a powerful wizard known as Kharro the Red determined that the Orders of Magic needed safe havens where wizards could meet together, study together, work together. They needed places where they could safely store spell books and artifacts. He proposed that the wizards build Towers of High Sorcery, strongholds of magic.
Kharro sent mages throughout Ansalon to locate sites on which to build these new Towers. The White Robes, under the leadership of a wizardess named Asanta, chose as their location a poor fishing village known as Istar.
The Black Robes and the Red chose large and prosperous cities in which to build the Towers. Kharro summoned Asanta to Wayreth and demanded to know the reason for her choice. Asanta was a seer. She saw the future of Istar and predicted that one day its glory would eclipse all other cities on Ansalon. The White Robes were given permission to start work upon the Tower, and forty years later, Asanta led the incantation that raised the Tower of High Sorcery of Istar.
Asanta had been given a glimpse of Istar’s rise. She did not foresee its fall. Not even we gods could foresee that.
For many decades, the wizards of the Tower of Istar ruled benevolently over the people of that small village and were instrumental in its rapid growth. Soon Istar was no longer a village but a thriving, prosperous city. Not long after