Amber and Iron - Margaret Weis [117]
“Kneel to me!” Mina commanded.
Krell collapsed in a groveling, flabby heap at her feet.
“From now on, you serve me!” Mina told him.
Krell blubbered something unintelligible.
Mina kicked him and he cried out in pain.
“Yes, yes! I serve you!” he whimpered.
Mina walked past the cringing Krell and strode to the door. She touched it, and it burst into amber flame. She walked through the rain of cinders and into the dark hallway. She looked at a stone wall and it melted; stone stairs appeared. She walked the stairs that spiraled round and round, leading upward to the ramparts.
“Tell my lord Chemosh, when he returns”—Mina’s voice rang in Krell’s ears—“that I have gone to obtain his heart’s desire.”
Krell remained in a sodden mass on the floor. He was terrified to open his eyes for fear he might see Mina. At length, however, the stone floor began to hurt his bony knees. The cold raised goosebumps on the flesh of his naked arms and shriveled his private parts. Krell pinched his arm and gave a yelp, then he groaned and cursed.
There was no doubting it. Middle-aged, gray-haired, balding, with sallow skin and sagging gut, he had his wish.
Krell was, once more, a living man.
hile Ausric Krell was having a very bad time inside Castle Beloved, Nightshade was having a worse time outside it.
He should have recognized Chemosh’s undead disciples at once. If he’d been paying attention, he would have noted that the two men—those he had hoped had been set by the god to save Rhys—coming down the road weren’t men at all. There was no comforting glow about them, no life light burning inside them. They were nothing but lumps in the night. Atta knew. Her bark had been a warning, not a welcome. Now she stood quivering by his side, growling, her teeth barred.
The two Beloved halted. They stared at Nightshade with their empty eyes, and he began to feel uneasy. He didn’t know quite why, though he did sort of remember hearing something from Gerard about someone’s husband being hacked to bits. But he’d been thinking of what was for dinner at the time and hadn’t been paying attention.
The Beloved he’d met previously had all been pretty docile, so long as they weren’t trying to seduce a person, and thus far no human—Beloved or not—had ever tried to seduce Nightshade (not counting that floozy in an alley in Palanthas, and she’d been extremely drunk at the time).
Still, Nightshade didn’t like the way these two were looking at him. Most of the Beloved didn’t bother to stare at him. Most simply ignored him, and he’d come to prefer it that way.
“Sorry, fellows,” said Nightshade, giving them a wave. “My mistake. I thought you were someone else. Someone alive,” he muttered beneath his breath.
He didn’t know what to do. Should he saunter jauntily past them with a merry “heigh-ho,” or should he turn and run? Instinct voted for turning and running. He was about to obey, when he saw one of the men draw a knife.
“What are you doing?” asked his companion. “It’s a kender.”
“Yes,” said Nightshade, backing up. “I’m a kender.”
“I don’t care,” the man said in a nasty voice. “I’m going to send him to Chemosh.”
“He’s a kender,” his companion reiterated in disgust. “Chemosh doesn’t want kender.”
“He’s right, you know,” Nightshade assured the knife-wielder. “Like they say in the inns, ‘We don’t serve kender. No kender in the Abyss.’ I’ve seen the signs. They’re posted all over.”
He looked around uneasily, but no help was in sight, nothing but empty road. He continued to edge backward.
“Chemosh doesn’t care,” the Beloved returned. “Dead’s dead to him, and killing makes the pain go away.”
He advanced on Nightshade, brandishing the knife. Nightshade could see dark stains on the blade.
“I murdered a woman last night,” the Beloved continued in a conversational tone. “Gutted the bitch. She wouldn’t swear to Chemosh, but my pain eased. Try it yourself. Help me kill this runt.”
Shrugging, the other Beloved picked up a piece of driftwood to use as a club, and both of them walked toward Nightshade.
The Beloved weren’t killing to gain converts