Amber and Ashes - Margaret Weis [27]
Mina tried to puzzle this out. “Did she look into my heart and see the truth? Did she see I was coming to free Krell? Or is this just a whim of hers? Pitting the two of us against each other for an hour’s entertainment.”
Thinking back to her conversation with the goddess, Mina guessed the latter. She pondered what to do and it was then a thought occurred to her. She opened her eyes, looked back up at the peak where she had seen Krell standing.
“He could have killed me if he’d wanted to,” she realized. “Cast a spell on me, or if nothing else, dropped a rock on my head. He didn’t. He’s waiting to confront me. He wants to toy with me. Taunt me before killing me. Krell is no different from other undead. No different, even, than the god of death himself.”
From months of commanding a legion of souls, Mina knew that the dead have a weakness—a hunger for the living.
The part of Krell that remembered what it was to be alive craved interaction with the living. He needed to feel vicariously the life that he had lost. He hated the living, and so he would kill her eventually. But she could be assured that at least he would not slay her outright, before she had a chance to speak, to tell him her plan. The knowledge lent her hope and raised her spirits, though it did nothing to ease the cramps in her legs or the bone-numbing chill. She had a long and dangerous trek ahead of her and she had to be ready, both physically and mentally, to meet a deadly foe at the end of it.
The name of Chemosh came, warm to her numb lips. She sensed the god’s presence, sensed him watching her.
She did not pray for help. He had told her he had none to give, and she would not demean herself by begging. She whispered his name, held it fast in her heart to give her strength, and placed her foot carefully on the next stair, testing it.
The stair held firm, as did the next. Gaining that stair, she had her eyes on her footing, watching where she was going, using her hands to feel her way along the cliff face. Inching her hands along, she was startled to feel nothing, so startled that she almost lost her grip. A narrow fissure split the rock wall.
Balancing precariously on the stair, Mina placed her hands on either side of the crack and peered inside. The gray light of day did not penetrate far into the darkness, but what she could see was intriguing—a smooth floor, obviously man-made, about three feet below where she stood. She could not see much beyond the floor, but she had the impression of a vast chamber. She sniffed the air. The smell was familiar, reminding her of something.
A granary. She had just liberated the city of Sanction. Her men, busy securing the city, had come upon a granary. She had gone to inspect it, and this was the smell or close to it. In the Sanction warehouse, the grain had been recently put up and the smell was overwhelming. Here the smell was faint and mingled with mildew, but Mina was certain she had found the granary of the fortress of Storm’s Keep.
The location made sense, for it was close to the dock where the grain would be unloaded from the ship. Somewhere at the top of the cliff there must be an opening, a chute down which they would have poured the grain. The granary would be empty now. It had been forty years since the Keep had been abandoned. Hundreds of generations of rats would have feasted off any stores the knights had left behind.
Not that any of that mattered. What mattered was that she had found a way to slip inside the fortress, a way to take Krell by surprise.
“Chemosh,” said Mina in sudden understanding.
His name had been on her lips when she found the crack in the wall. She had not asked for his help, but he had granted it, and her heart beat fast with the knowledge that he wanted her to succeed. She eyed the crack in the wall. It was narrow, but she was slender. She could just possibly squeeze through it, although not while wearing the cuirass. She would have to take it off and that would leave her without any armor when she came to face the death