Amber and Ashes - Margaret Weis [74]
“More meat like what we just ate would be fine with me. And it will be good to have a friend,” Nightshade said excitedly. “A real live friend.”
He glanced at Atta with trepidation. “I suppose you have to take the dog?”
“Atta makes a good guardian as well as a good companion. Don’t worry.” Rhys rested his hand reassuringly on the kender on the shoulder. “She’s fond of you. That’s why she chased after you. She didn’t want you to leave.”
“Really?” Nightshade looked pleased. “I thought she was herding me like I was a sheep or something. If she likes me, that’s different. I like her, too.”
Rhys let the darkness hide his smile. “I am staying with a farmer whose home is nearby. We’ll spend the night there and get an early start in the morning.”
“Farmers don’t usually let me into their houses,” Nightshade pointed out, falling in beside Rhys, the kender’s short legs taking two strides to his one.
“I think this one will,” Rhys predicted. “Once I explain to him how fond Atta is of you.”
Atta was so fond of the kender that she lay across his legs all night, never letting him out of her sight.
hys had no difficulty picking up his brother’s trail. People remembered quite clearly a cleric of Kiri-Jolith who spent his nights carousing in the tavern and his days flirting with their daughters. Rhys had been grimly expecting to hear that his brother had done murder again and was surprised and relieved to hear no worse of him than he’d left town without paying his bar tab.
When Rhys asked if his brother had spoken of Chemosh, everyone looked amused and shook their heads. He’d said no word to them of any god, especially not such a dark god as Chemosh. Lleu was a pleasant and handsome young man looking for fun, and if he was a little reckless and heedless, there was no harm in that. Most thought him a good fellow and wished him well.
Rhys found this all very strange. He could not equate the picture these people were giving him of a light-hearted bounder with the cold-blooded murderer who had so ruthlessly killed nineteen people. Rhys might have doubted that he was truly on his brother’s track, but everyone recognized Lleu by his physical descripion and the fact that he wore the robes of Kiri-Jolith. Clerics of that god were not plentiful in Abanasinia, where his worship was just starting to spread.
Rhys found only one man who had anything bad to say about Lleu Mason and that was a miller who had given Lleu room and board in return for a few days work at the mill.
“My daughter has not been the same since,” the miller told Rhys. “I curse the day he came and curse myself for having anything to do with him. A dutiful child my Besty was before he started taking notice of her. Hard-working. She was to be married next month to the son of one of the most prosperous shop-keepers in this town. A fine match it was, but that’s off now, thanks to your brother.”
He shook his head dourly.
“Where is your daughter?” Rhys asked, glancing about. “If I could speak to her—”
“Gone,” said the miller shortly. “I caught her sneaking home from a meeting with him in the wee hours. I gave her the whipping she deserved and locked her in her room.” He shrugged. “After a few days, she managed to get out somehow and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her since. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.”
“Did she run off with Lleu?” Rhys asked.
The miller didn’t know. He didn’t think so, for Lleu had departed before the daughter ran away. It was possible, the miller conceded, that she might have run off to be with him, although, in truth, she had not appeared to be that enamored of him. The miller didn’t know and he obviously didn’t care, except that he had lost a hard-worker and a chance for a marriage from which he stood to profit.
Rhys conceded it was possible that his brother