Amber and Ashes - Margaret Weis [28]
Mina hesitated. She looked up at the endless stairs, where, at the top, Krell was waiting. She looked into the granary—smooth, dry floor, a secret way inside the main part of the Keep. She had only to cast off the cuirass, marked with the symbol of Takhisis.
Mina understood. “That is what you ask of me,” she said softly to the listening god. “You want me to cast off my last vestige of faith in the goddess. Put all my faith and trust in you.”
Balancing precariously on the stairs, her chill fingers shaking, Mina tugged and pulled at the wet leather thongs that held the cuirass in place.
Krell cursed himself for an idiot to allow himself to be seen like that. He cursed Mina, too, wondering what crazy notion had flown into the woman’s head to cause her to look up instead of down, cause her to look straight at him.
“Zeboim,” Krell muttered, and he cursed the goddess, a curse he uttered almost every hour of every tortured day.
He could no longer count on taking Mina by surprise. She would be ready for him, and while he didn’t really think that she could cause him any harm, he was mindful of the fact that this was the woman who had brought down Lord Soth, one of the most formidable undead beings in all the history of Krynn.
It is better to overestimate the enemy than underestimate him had been one of Ariakan’s dictums.
“I’ll wait for her at the top of the Black Stair,” Krell determined. “She’ll be worn out, too tired to put up much of a fight.”
He did not want to fight her. He wanted to capture her alive. He always captured his prey alive—when possible. One hapless thief, drawn to Storm’s Keep by the rumor of the Dark Knights’ abandoned treasure, had been so terrified at the sight of Krell that he’d dropped dead at the death knight’s feet, a severe disappointment to Krell.
He had confidence in Mina, however. She was young, strong, and courageous. She would provide him with a good contest. She might survive for days.
Krell was about to leave Mt. Ambition and head back to Storm’s Keep when he heard a sound that would have stopped his heart if he’d had one.
From down below came a woman’s terrified scream and the clanging, clattering of metal armor falling onto sharp rocks.
Krell dashed to the end of the promontory, peered over the edge. He cursed again and smashed his fist into a boulder, cracking it from top to bottom.
The Black Stairs were empty. At the base of the cliff, almost lost to sight in the frothing, bubbling water, Krell could see floating in the sea a black cuirass, adorned with a lightning-struck skull.
er scream echoing back from the cliff face, Mina watched the black cuirass and helm strike the rocks below and go bounding off into the water. Her vision obscured by the gray half-light of the storm, she could not see at this distance that the armor had been empty when it plummeted off the stairs and now it was lost to sight in the lashing waves. She hoped that Krell’s vision was no better.
Mina sucked in her breath and squeezed her body through the crack in the rock wall. Even without the cuirass, she barely made it, and for one frightening moment, she was wedged tight. A desperate wriggle freed her and she dropped lightly to the floor. She paused to catch her breath, wait for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and think how good it was to have her feet on a firm, level plane. How good it was to be out of the chill wind and away from the salt spray.
Mina dried her hands as best she could on the tail of her shirt, rubbing them to restore the circulation. She had no armor and no weapon. She had tossed not only the cuirass and helm into the ocean, but also, after a moment’s hesitation, she’d thrown away the morning star—thrown away the eager, innocent child who had gone searching for the gods and found them.
Mina had believed in Takhisis, obeyed her commands, endured her punishment, done the goddess’s bidding without question. She had kept her faith in Takhisis when everything had started to go wrong, fighting against the doubt that gnawed at her like rats in the grain. By the end, her doubts