Amber and Blood - Margaret Weis [96]
Nightshade, chin in hand, was sitting cross-legged beside Rhys, peering down at him. The kender’s expression was gloomy.
“About bloody time you woke up!” Nightshade muttered.
Rhys sighed and kept his eyes closed a moment longer. Until his dream, his slumber had been deep and sweet and easeful, and he let go of sleep with regret. All the more so since it appeared by the glimpse he’d had of Nightshade’s grim expression that waking would not be nearly so pleasant.
“Rhys.” Nightshade poked at him with his finger. “Don’t you dare go back to sleep. Here, Atta, slobber on him.”
“I’m awake,” said Rhys, sitting up and ruffling Atta’s fur, for the dog was unhappy and she pressed her head into his neck for comfort. Still soothing Atta, Rhys sat up and looked about.
“Where are we?” he asked, amazed.
“I can tell you where we’re not,” stated Nightshade glumly. “We’re not in the house of the pretty lady who makes the best gingerbread in the world. Which is where we both were yesterday, and the day before that and we were there when I went to sleep last night, and that’s where we should be this morning, only we’re not. We’re here. Wherever ‘here’ is. And I don’t mind telling you,” the kender added in a tense tone, “that I’d rather be somewhere else. Here is not a nice place.”
Rhys gently put Atta aside and rose swiftly to his feet. The forest was gone, as was the small house, where, as Nightshade had said, he and the kender, Atta and Mina had spent two days and two nights—days and nights of blessed tranquility and peace. They had intended to set out upon the final stage of their journey this morning, but it seemed Mishakal had forestalled him.
They looked out upon a desolate, barren valley slung between the charred ridges of several active volcanoes. Tendrils of steam drifted up from the blackened peaks, trailing into a sky that was a stark and empty blue. The air was chill, the sun small and shrunken and impotent, radiating no warmth. Their shadows straggled across the trackless gray stone floor of the valley and dwindled to nothing. The air was thin and sulpherous, difficult to breathe. Rhys could not seem to take in enough to fill his lungs. Most awful was the silence which had a living quality to it, like an inhaled breath. Watchful, waiting.
Strange rock formations littered this valley. Enormous black crystals, jagged-edged and faceted, thrust up out of the stone. Some standing twenty feet high or more, the monoliths were scattered about the valley at random. They were not a natural formation, did not appear to have sprung up out of the ground. Rather, it seemed they had been cast down from heaven by some immense force whose fury had driven them deep into the valley floor.
“The least you could have done is bring the gingerbread with you,” Nightshade said. “Now we don’t have any breakfast. I know I agreed to come with you to find the Walking God, but I didn’t know the trip was going to be quite so sudden.”
“I didn’t either,” Rhys said, then added sharply, “Where’s Mina?”
Nightshade jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Mina had waited with him beside the slumbering Rhys until she’d grown bored and wandered off to investigate. She stood some distance away, gazing at her reflection in one of the crystalline monoliths.
“Why are you looking all tense like this?” Nightshade demanded. “What’s wrong?”
“I know where we are,” said Rhys, hurrying over to fetch Mina. “I know this place. And we must leave at once. Atta, come!”
“I’m all for leaving. Though leaving doesn’t look to be as easy as coming,” Nightshade stated, breaking into a run to keep up with Rhys’s long strides. “Especially since we have no idea how the ‘coming’ happened. I don’t think it was Mina. She was asleep on the ground when I woke up and when she woke up, she was as startled and confused as I was.”
Rhys was certain the White Lady had sent them to this terrible place, though