Amber and Blood - Margaret Weis [13]
“Is that true?” asked Gilean, frowning.
“It is true,” Solinari admitted. “Yet even if we are forced to take this oath, we deem it only fair that we be allowed to try to reclaim the tower, which is rightly ours and which she has basely stolen.”
“Losers weepers,” said Hiddukel with a chuckle.
“I have as much right to that tower as they do,” stated Zeboim. “After all, it is standing in my ocean.”
“I built it,” cried Nuitari, seething. “I raised it up from charred ruins! And you should all of you know,” he added with a baleful glance at Chemosh, “that inside that tower, in its depths, is the Solio Febalas, the Hall of Sacrilege. Inside that Hall are many holy artifacts and relics thought to have been lost during the Cataclysm. Your holy artifacts and relics.”
The gods were no longer smiling. They stared at Nuitari in amazement.
“You should have told us that the Hall had been found,” said Mishakal, blazing with white flame.
“And you should have told us about Mina,” Nuitari returned. He clasped his hands over his black robes. “I say that makes us even.”
“Are our blessed objects safe?” Kiri-Jolith demanded.
“I cannot say,” Nuitari returned with a shrug. “They were, while the tower under my control. I don’t vouch for them now. Especially as the tower was currently being overrun by the Beloved.”
The gods turned their gazes onto Chemosh.
“That was not my fault!” he cried. “Those ghoulish fiends are her creations!”
“Enough!” said Gilean. “The only thing this proves is that it is more important now than ever that all of us take this oath. Or will each of you risk taking the chance that another might succeed where you fail?”
The gods grumbled, but, in the end, they agreed. They had no choice. Each was forced to take the oath if for no other reason than to make sure the others took it, though each was perhaps privately thinking how he or she might twist it, or at least bend it a little.
“Place your hands on the Book,” said Gilean, calling the sacred volume into being, “and swear by your love for the High God who brought us into being, and your fear of Chaos, who would destroy us, that you will neither threaten, cajole, seduce, plead, or bargain with the goddess known as Mina in order to try to influence her decision.”
The Gods of Light each placed a hand upon the Book, as did the Gods of Neutrality. When it came the turn of the Gods of Darkness, Sargonnas thumped down his hand, as did Morgion. Zeboim hesitated.
“I’m sure my only concern,” she said, dabbing a salt tear from her eye, “is for that poor, unhappy girl. She’s like a daughter to me.”
“Just swear, damn it,” growled Sargonnas.
Zeboim sniffed and put her hand on the Book.
After her, last of all, came Chemosh.
“I so swear,” he said.
eath had been good to Ausric Krell, and he wanted it back.
Krell had once been a powerful death knight. Cursed by the Sea Goddess, Zeboim, he had known immortality. He could kill with a single word. He was so fearsome and horrible to look upon, in his black armor with the ram’s head skull helm, that some poor wretches had dropped down dead of terror at the mere sight of his awful visage.
No longer. When he looked in the mirror, he did not see reflected back the red-glowing eyes of undeath. He saw the squinty pig-eyes of a middle-aged human male with heavy jowls and a sullen brutish face, spindly limbs, flabby flesh, and a paunch. Krell, the death knight, had once reigned supreme on Storm’s Keep, a mighty fortress in the north of Ansalon. (At least, that was how he remembered it. In truth, he’d been a prisoner there, and he’d hated it, but not so much as he hated what he was now.)
Of all the undead who walk Krynn, a death knight is one of the most fearsome. Cursed by the gods, a death knight is forced to exist in a world of the living, hating them, even as he fiercely envies them. A death knight is unable to sleep or find rest. He is a prisoner of his