Amber and Iron - Margaret Weis [11]
Atta raised her head and looked at Rhys and wagged her tail. He stroked her soft fur. “I should have listened to Atta. She realized immediately that my brother was a threat. She even bit him, something she never does.”
Gerard eyed the dog, rubbed his chin. “True enough. Though she’s had provocation.” He was silent, thoughtful, gazing at the dog. “Now, I wonder …”
“Wonder what, Sheriff?”
Gerard waved his hand. “Never mind for now, Brother. Go on.”
“That night,” Rhys continued, “my brother poisoned my brethren and our parents. He murdered twenty people in the name of Chemosh.”
Gerard sat bolt upright. He regarded Rhys in astonishment.
“He tried to murder me, too. Atta saved my life.” Rhys rested his hand gratefully on the dog’s head. “That night, I lost my faith in my god. I was angry with Majere for allowing such evil to happen to those who were his loyal and devoted servants. I sought a new god, one who would help me find my brother and avenge the deaths of those I loved. I cried out to the heavens, and a god answered me.”
Gerard looked grave. “A god answering you. That’s never good.”
“The goddess was Zeboim,” said Rhys.
“But you didn’t take her up on it …” Gerard stared. “By heaven, you did! That’s why you’re not a monk anymore! And that woman … That crazy female in my jail … And the dead fish … Zeboim,” he finished, awed.
“She was distraught,” Rhys said by way of apology. “Chemosh was holding the soul of her son in thrall.”
“She turned me into a khas piece,” interjected Nightshade. “Without asking!” Indignantly, he helped himself to more chicken. “Then she whooshed us off to Storm’s Keep to face a death knight. A death knight! Someone who goes around mangling people! How crazy is that? And then there’s her son, Ariakan. Don’t get me started on him!”
“Lord Ariakan,” Gerard said slowly. “The commander of the dark knights during the Chaos War.”
“That’s the one.”
“The one who’s been dead fifty or so years?”
“As the tombstones say, ‘Dead but not forgotten,’ ” quoted Nightshade. “That was his whole problem. Lord Ariakan couldn’t forget. And do you think he was grateful that Rhys and I were there trying to save him? Not a bit of it. Lord Ariakan flatly refused to go with me. I had to run across the board and knock him to the floor. That part was kind of exciting.”
Nightshade grinned at the memory, then was suddenly remorseful. “Or it would have been, if Rhys hadn’t been bleeding with pieces of bone sticking out of his skin where the death knight broke his fingers.”
Gerard glanced at Rhys’s hands. His fingers seemed perfectly whole.
“I see,” he said. “Broken fingers.”
“What happened to us is not important, Sheriff,” said Rhys. “What is important is that we must find some way to stop these Beloved of Chemosh, as they call themselves. They are monsters who go about killing young people and turning them into Chemosh’s slaves. They appear to be alive but, in fact, they are dead—”
“I can vouch for that,” said Nightshade.
“And, what is more, they cannot be destroyed. I know,” Rhys added simply. “I tried. I killed my brother. I broke Lleu’s neck with the emmide. He shook it off as you would shake off bumping into a door.”
“And I tried casting one of my spells on him. I’m a mystic, you know,” Nightshade added proudly. Then he sighed. “I don’t think Lleu even noticed. I cast one of my more powerful spells on him, too.”
“You must appreciate the dire nature of this situation, Sheriff,” Rhys continued earnestly. “The Beloved are luring unsuspecting youth to their doom and they cannot be stopped—at least not by any means we have tried. What’s more, we cannot warn people about them because no one will believe us. The Beloved look and act in all respects just like anyone else. I could be one of them now, Sheriff, and you