Amber and Blood - Margaret Weis [45]
“Mina, you do know them,” Rhys told her in stern tones. “You can’t run away. You kissed them and they died.”
Mina was at first bewildered, then understanding lit the amber eyes.
“That was Chemosh!” she cried. “Not me! It wasn’t my fault.”
She glared at the Beloved and clenched her fist and screamed at them, “I gave you what you wanted! You cannot be hurt. You can never feel pain or sickness or fear! You will always be young and beautiful—”
“—and dead!” Nightshade cried. He thumped himself on the chest. “Look at me, Mina. This is life! Pain is life! Fear is life! You took all that from them! And worse than that. You locked them up inside death and threw away the key. They have nowhere to go. They’re stuck, trapped.”
Mina stared at the kender in perplexity, and Rhys could picture what she was seeing—he and Nightshade, disheveled, bloody, sweating, gasping for breath, shoving at the Beloved with the staff, keeping a grip on the shivering dog. She could hear the kender’s voice shake with terror and exasperation, and his voice filled with desperation, and she could hear, by the contrast, the empty, hollow voices of the Beloved.
The little girl dissolved before Rhys’s startled eyes and the woman, Mina, stood before him as he had seen her in the grotto. She was tall and slender. Her auburn hair was shoulder length and framed her face in soft waves. Her amber eyes were large and shining with anger, peopled with souls. She wore a diaphonous black gown that coiled around her lithe body like the shades of night. She turned to face the Beloved, gazed out at the restless, dreadful sea of her victims.
“Mina …” they chanted. “Mina!”
“Stop it!” she cried.
The sea of dead moaned and wailed and whispered.
“Mina …”
The Beloved closed in around Rhys. He struck at them with the staff, but there were too many, and he was slammed back against the wall. Nightshade was on his hands and knees, trying to avoid the tramping feet, but his hands were bloody and his nose was bleeding. Rhys could not see Atta, though he could hear her whimper in pain. The heaving mass gave another surge, and he was smashed between the wall and the bodies and could not move; he could not breathe.
“Mina! Mina!” Rhys heard her name dimly, as everything started to fade.
Mina clenched her fists and raised her head and shouted into the echoing of her own name.
“I made you gods!” she screamed. “Why aren’t you happy?”
The Beloved went silent. Her name ceased.
Mina opened her hands and amber flames flared from her palms. She opened her eyes and amber flames shot from the pupils. She opened her mouth and gouts of flame poured out. She grew in size, taller and taller, screaming her frustration and pain to the heavens as the fire of her wrath blazed out of control.
One moment Rhys was being crushed beneath bodies and the next moment searing heat washed over him and the bodies were incinerated, leaving him covered in greasy ash.
Blinded by the blazing light, Rhys coughed as smoke and ash flew down his windpipe. He groped about for his friends and grabbed hold of Nightshade at the same time the kender grabbed hold of him.
“I can’t see!” Nightshade choked, clutching at Rhys in a panic. “I can’t see!”
Rhys found Atta and dragged her and Nightshade back through the archway and into the stairwell, away from the heat and flames and the greasy black ash that swirled about the tower in a horrid blizzard.
The kender rubbed his eyes, as the tears streamed down his cheeks, making tracks in the ash that smeared his face.
Rhys watched the wrath of an unhappy god destroy her failure.
The burning went on a long time.
Finally, the amber light grew dim and went out, Mina’s rage exhausted. Ashes continued to drift down in a gray cloud. Rhys helped Nightshade to his feet. They left the stairwell and plowed their way through horrible black drifts that nearly buried the dog. Nightshade gagged and covered his mouth with his hand. Rhys held his sleeve over his nose and mouth. He looked for Mina, but there was no sign of her and Rhys was too shaken to wonder what had