Amber and Ashes - Margaret Weis [137]
“Try to open it,” suggested Nuitari.
Chemosh, playing along, put his hand to the handle in front. The chest began to glow with a faint reddish radiance. The lid would not budge. Nuitari flicked his pallid hand at one of the closed doors. It, too, began to give off the same reddish glow.
“Wizard-locked,” said Nuitari.
“God-opened,” Chemosh returned.
He struck the chest with his hand. The oak planks split apart. The silver handles clanged onto the floor, burying the golden latch in a pile of oak kindling. The books inside the chest spilled out onto the floor at the feet of the Lord of Death.
“So much for your wizard locks. Shall I kick in the door next? I warn you, Nuitari, I will find my artifacts if I have to break apart all the boxes and doors in this Tower, so be reasonable. It will be far less work for your carpenters if you just hand over my artifacts—”
“Your mortal is dying,” said Nuitari.
Chemosh paused in what he was saying, realizing, in the instant of pausing, that he had made a mistake. He should have said immediately and impatiently, “What mortal?” as if he had no idea what Nuitari was talking about and could care less.
He did say those words, but it was too late. He’d given himself away.
Nuitari smiled. “This mortal,” he said and he held out his hand.
Something lay wriggling on his palm. The image was blurry and Chemosh thought at first it was some sort of sea creature, for it was wet and flopped about inside a net like a new-caught fish.
Then he saw that it was Mina.
Her eyes bulged in her head. Her mouth gaped, gasping. She writhed in agony, trying desperately to find air. Her blue-tinged lips formed a word.
“Chemosh …”
He was ready with his response and he spoke it calmly enough, though he could not wrench his gaze from her.
“I have so many mortals in my service and all of them dying—for such is the lot of mortals—that I have no idea who she is.”
“She prays to you. Do you not hear her?”
“I am a god,” said Chemosh carelessly. “Countless pray to me.”
“Yet her prayers are special to you, I think,” Nuitari said, cocking his head.
Mina’s voice echoed from the darkness.
Chemosh … I come to you. I am not afraid. I embrace death. For now I will no longer be mortal.
“Such devout love and faith,” said Nuitari. “Imagine the surprise of my wizards when, while fishing for tuna, they catch instead a beautiful young woman. And imagine their surprise to find that she breathes water and drowns in air.”
The spell had only to be reversed and Mina would live. Chemosh had to locate her, though. She was somewhere in this Tower, but the Tower was immense and she had only seconds left. She was losing consciousness, her body shuddering.
“She is one mortal, nothing more. I can have a hundred, a thousand if I wanted them,” he told himself, even as he cast forth tendrils of his power, searching for her. “She is a burden to me. I am inside the Tower. I can take what I came for and Nuitari cannot not stop me.”
He could not find her. A shroud of darkness surrounded her, hid her from him.
“She dies,” said Nuitari.
“Let her,” said Chemosh.
“Are you certain, my lord?” Nuitari displayed Mina in his palm, placed his other hand over her, holding her suspended in time. “Look at her, Lord of Death. Your Mina is a magnificent woman. More than one god envies you, to have such a mortal in your service …”
“She will be mine in death as she was in life,” Chemosh returned, off-handedly.
“Not quite the same,” said Nuitari dryly.
Chemosh chose to ignore the salacious innuendo. “In death, her soul will come to me. You cannot stop that.”
“I wouldn’t dream of trying,” said Nuitari.
Mina’s eyes flickered open. Her dying gaze found Chemosh. She held out her hand to him, not in supplication. In farewell.
Chemosh stood with his arms at his side. His fists,