Amber and Ashes - Margaret Weis [32]
Krell plunked his armored self down in a chair and stared moodily at the game board and the empty chair opposite. Krell had grown sick and tired of playing khas against himself.
Krell was an avid khas player, as were most of the Knights of Takhisis. Steel Brightblade had once jested that knowledge of the game was a requirement for becoming a member of the knighthood, and in that, he had not been far wrong. Ariakan—an excellent player—believed that the intricate game taught people to consider not only their own stratagems but also those of their opponents, enabling them to anticipate their opponents’ moves far in advance. Good khas players made good commanders—or so Ariakan believed.
Krell and Ariakan had spent many hours in contest over the khas board. Memories of those hours had returned full force to Krell as he had plotted his commander’s assassination. Ariakan had always beaten Krell at khas.
The round khas board with its black, red, and white six-sided tiles stood in its accustomed place on a wrought iron stand before the enormous fire pit. Hand-carved jet and green jade pieces glowered at each other over the black, red, and white checkered field of battle. Krell had been in the midst of a game against himself (contests he usually won), but he had quickly cleared his game away in order to set the pieces back in their starting positions.
Now he would have to begin again. Scowling, he reached out his gauntleted hand, grasped a pawn, and moved it onto an adjacent square. He let go of the pawn and was about to stand up to move to the chair on the other side of the board when he changed his mind. He would use another opening. He reached for the pawn and was about to shift its position, when a voice—a living voice—spoke from over his shoulder.
“You can’t do that,” said Mina. “It’s against the rules. You’ve taken your hand off the piece. It has to remain where you placed it.”
In life or death, Ausric Krell had never been so astonished.
He whipped around to see who had spoken. A slender female, clad in sodden wet clothes, with hair that was red as his rage and eyes of amber gold stood with an iron pry bar in her hands. She was in the act of swinging the iron bar at his head.
Startled by the sight of her alive when he’d assumed she was dead, shocked at her temerity and the fact that she wasn’t prostrate in terror before him, and caught off guard by the swiftness and suddenness of her attack, Krell had time for a furious snarl before the iron bar smashed into his helm.
Red hot flame lit up the perpetual darkness in which Krell lived, and then flickered out.
Krell’s darkness went even darker.
Mina’s blow, swung with all the pent-up force of her fear and her determination, knocked Krell’s helm from his body, sent it bounding and clanking across the room to bump up against some of the corpses that he’d shoved into the corner. The armor in which his undead energy had been encased remained upright, seated in the chair, half-twisted about, one hand still extended to pick up the khas piece, the other hand raised in an ineffectual move to try to halt Mina’s attack.
Mina held the bar poised for another hit, watching warily both the helm on the floor and the armor in the chair, ready to strike if the helm wobbled or the bloody armor so much as twitched.
The helm lay still. The armor did move. It might have been on display in some Palanthian noble’s palace. Mina was about to breathe a shivering sigh and lower the prybar when the door blew open behind her, crashing against the stone wall with a heart-stopping bang. Mina lifted the bar and turned swiftly to face this new foe.
The gust of wind ushered in the goddess.
Zeboim seemed clad in the storm, her flowing garments in constant motion, swirling about her like the shifting winds as she entered the room. Mina dropped the iron bar and fell to her knees.
“Goddess of the Sea and Storm, I have done what I promised. Lord Ausric Krell, the traitor knight who most foully murdered your son, is destroyed.”
Her head bowed, Mina glanced from beneath her lashes to see the goddess