Amber and Blood - Margaret Weis [29]
Basalt thrust his elbow into his companion’s ribs and said something to him in a low voice.
“You’re daft!” Caele scoffed.
“Look at her!” Basalt insisted. “That could be why the Master—” The rest was lost in whispering.
“I agree with Mina for once,” said Nightshade. “I don’t trust these two as far as I can stand the stink of them. Who’s this Master they’re talking about?”
“Nuitari, God of the Black Moon,” Rhys answered.
Nightshade gave a dismal groan. “More gods. Just what we need.”
“I have to find the way downstairs,” Mina told Rhys. “You two stay here, keep an eye on them.”
She pointed at the wizards, then, casting them one last baleful glance, started walking about the great hall, poking and peering into the shadows.
“If it is Nuitari, I wish he’d just shut the door,” Nightshade stated, watching the Beloved, who were watching him back.
“If he did, we might not be able to get back out,” said Rhys.
Caele and Basalt had been conferring all this time.
“Go on,” Caele said, and he gave Basalt a shove. “Ask them.”
“You ask them,” Basalt growled, but in the end he came shambling up to Rhys.
“What are those fiends?” he asked. “We know they’re some sort of undead. Nothing we tried seems to stop them. Not magic, not steel. Caele stabbed one through the heart and it fell down, then it got back up and tried to strangle him!”
“They are known as the Beloved. They’re undead disciples of Chemosh,” Nightshade explained.
“Told you,” Basalt growled at Caele. “That’s her!”
“You’re full of it,” Caele muttered back.
“How did your tower come to be here in the Blood Sea?” Nightshade asked curiously. “It wasn’t here yesterday.”
“You’re telling us!” Basalt grunted. “Yesterday we were in our tower safe at the bottom of the ocean, minding our own business. Then there was an earthquake. The walls started shaking, the floor was the ceiling and the ceiling was the floor. We didn’t know if we were on our heads or our feet. Everything broke, all our vials and containers. Books went flying off the shelves. We thought we were dead.
“When everything stopped shaking, we looked out and found ourselves stuck on this rock. When we started to crawl out through a side door, those fiends tried to murder us.”
Rhys thought of the power that had wrenched this tower from the bottom of the sea and he looked at the little girl, wandering about, searching behind pillars and tapping on the walls.
“What’s she doing? Playing hide-and-seek?” Nightshade cast a nervous glance at the Beloved and another at the two wizards. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t like this talk about stabbing people in the heart—even if it was a Beloved.”
“Mina—” Rhys began.
“Found it!” she announced triumphantly.
She stood beneath an arched entryway, hidden in the shadows, that led to another, smaller spiral staircase.
“Come with me,” ordered Mina. “Tell the bad men they have to stay here.”
“This is our tower!” Caele snarled.
“Is not!” Mina retorted.
“Is so—”
Basalt intervened, clamping his hand over Caele’s arm.
“You’re not going anywhere without us,” Basalt said coldly.
Caele growled in agreement and snatched his arm from his partner’s grasp.
“Atta and I will keep an eye on them,” Rhys promised, thinking it better to have the wizards where he could see them rather than having them skulking along behind.
Mina gave a nod. “They can come, but if they try to hurt us, I’ll tell Atta to bite them.”
“Go ahead. I like dog,” Caele sneered. His lip curled. “Baked.”
Mina entered the archway and started to descend the stairs. Nightshade followed after her, with Atta at his heels. Rhys came last, keeping watch out of the corner of his eye on the two wizards. The half-elf was talking rapidly into his cohort’s ear, making jabbing gestures with his hand, emphasizing a point by stabbing it with a dirty finger. The dwarf didn’t like whatever the half-elf was proposing, apparently, for he drew back, scowling, and shook his head. The half-elf whispered something else and the dwarf appeared to consider this. At length, he nodded