Amber and Iron - Margaret Weis [114]
There was no city at the end of either direction.
Flotsam was immense. He’d heard stories about Flotsam all his life. Flotsam was a city that never slept. It was a city of torchlight, tavern lights, bonfires on the beaches, and home fires shining in the windows of the houses. Nightshade had assumed that when he reached the road, he’d be able to see Flotsam’s lights.
The only lights he could see were the cold, pale stars and the maddening winking eyes of the two moons.
“So where is it?” Nightshade turned one way, and then the other. “Which way do I go?”
Truth sank home. Truth sank his heart. Truth sank logic.
“It doesn’t matter which way Flotsam is,” said Nightshade in sudden, awful realization. “Because no matter which way Flotsam is, it’s too far. Rhys knew it! He knew we’d never make it to Flotsam and back in time. He sent us away because he knew he was going to die!”
The kender sat down in the dirt and, wrapping his arms around the dog’s neck, he hugged her close. “What are we going to do, Atta?”
In answer, she pulled away from him and ran back to the boulders. Halting, she looked at him eagerly and wagged her tail.
“It won’t do any good to go back, Atta,” said Nightshade miserably. “Even if I could climb down those stupid rocks again without breaking my neck, which I don’t think I can, it wouldn’t matter.”
He wiped the sweat from his face.
“We can’t save Rhys, not by ourselves. I’m a kender and you’re a dog. We need help.”
He sat in the road, mired in despair, his head in his hands. Atta licked his cheek and nudged him with her nose under his armpit, trying to prod him into action.
Nightshade lifted his head. A thought had occurred to him, a thought that made him burning mad.
“Here we are, Atta, half-killing ourselves to help Rhys, and what is his god doing all this time? Nothing, that’s what! Gods can do anything! Majere could have put Flotsam where we could find it. Majere could have made that squishy sand hard and those sharp boulders soft. Majere could make Rhys’s chains fall off! Majere could send me six monks right now, walking along the road to save Rhys. Do you hear that, Majere?” Nightshade hollered up to heaven.
He waited a few moments, giving the god a chance, but six monks did not appear.
“Now you’ve done it,” said the kender ominously, and he stood up on his two feet, and he gazed up into the heavens, put his hands on his hips and gave the god a talking-to.
“I don’t know if you’re listening to me or not, Majere,” Nightshade said in stern tones. “Probably not, since I’m a kender and no one listens to us, and also I’m a mystic, which means I don’t worship you. Still, you know, that shouldn’t make any difference. You’re a god of good, according to what Rhys says, and that means you should listen to people—all people, including kender and mystics—whether we worship you or not.
“Now I can understand where you might not consider it quite fair of me to be asking you for help, since I’ve never done anything for you, but you’re a lot bigger than me and a lot more powerful, so I think you could afford to be magenta or magnesium, or whatever that word is which means being kind and generous to people even if they don’t deserve it.
“And maybe I don’t deserve your help, but Rhys does. Yes, he did leave off worshipping you to worship Zeboim, but you must know he did that only because you let him down. Oh, I’ve heard all that talk about how we’re not supposed to understand the minds of the gods, but you gods are supposed to understand the hearts of men, so you should understand that Rhys left because he was angry and hurt. Now you’ve taken him back and that’s really good of you, but after all, it’s no more than what you should have done in the first place, because you’re a god of good, so you’re not getting much credit from me for that.”
Nightshade paused to draw a breath and to try to sort out his thoughts, which had gotten rather muddled. This done, he continued his argument, growing more