Amber and Iron - Margaret Weis [31]
When the crowds departed and the doors of the inn closed for the night, Rhys enjoyed the peace and quiet, though there were mountains of crockery to wash, and kettles and pots to scrub, and the floor to sweep, and water to haul, and bread dough to mix so that it could spend the night rising. The simple, homely tasks reminded him of his life at the monastery. His arms elbow-deep in sudsy water, he would wash out ale mugs and reflect on Majere and wonder what the enigmatic god was doing and why he was doing it.
When Rhys ended up breaking a mug, he realized that he was still angry at Majere and that, far from abating, his anger was being fueled by the god’s continued stubborn presence in Rhys’s life. Like some spoiled and ill-behaved child whose parents persist on coddling him no matter how much he misbehaves, Rhys did not deserve the god’s care of him; he felt guilty accepting it when he couldn’t return it.
He came to almost resent the emmide. Yesterday he had tried leaving it behind in his room, only to find he felt awkward and uncomfortable without it, almost as if he were walking through Solace naked, and Atta was so bothered by its absence (she kept halting to stare back at him with a puzzled expression), that he eventually gave up and went back to fetch it.
He had other trials of faith. Sometimes Laura would send Rhys to the market to do the daily shopping, if she was too busy to go herself. On his way, he would pass by the street known among the citizens in jest as “God’s Row.” Here the clerics of the various gods of Krynn were building new temples of worship to welcome back the gods who had long been absent from the world. The temple of Majere was a modest structure located about halfway up the street. Rhys would often see Majere’s clerics working in the gardens or walking about the grounds, and he was sorely tempted to enter the temple and thank Majere humbly for his care of his unworthy servant and to ask the god’s forgiveness.
Whenever he thought about doing this, whenever his feet started to carry him in that direction, Rhys would see again his brethren lying dead on the floor of the monastery, their bodies twisted in the agonies of their death throes. He would think of his brother and all those his brother had duped and murdered. Even Zeboim—cruel, arrogant, willful, and unreliable as she might be—had done more to help Rhys to find answers to his questions than the good and wise Majere. Rhys would turn away from the temple and return to the business of buying onions.
While Rhys was chopping vegetables and wrestling with his god, Nightshade roamed the streets of Solace, keeping an eye on the Beloved. Atta accompanied the kender, keeping an eye on Nightshade. Atta did not have much work to do to keep the kender honest. Nightshade was particularly inept at the time-honored and much celebrated (among kender, at least) art of “borrowing.”
“I’m all thumbs and two left feet,” Nightshade would admit quite cheerfully.
He wasn’t very good at borrowing because he wasn’t all that interested in the things that interested other kender. He wasn’t curious enough, he supposed, or rather, he was curious, just not about other people’s possessions. He was curious about their souls, especially those souls who had not yet advanced onto the next stage of their life’s journey. Nightshade had the ability to communicate with such spirits, be they lost and wandering, angry, unhappy, vengeful, or destructive. He could also, as Rhys had told Gerard, see the Beloved for what they were—walking corpses.
Sometimes, however, the kender’s hands would take on a life of their own and start to think for themselves, and then they would find their way into someone’s pocket or purse or absentmindedly stuff a bag of kumquats down the kender’s pants’ leg or carry off a pie that was reduced to crumbs before Nightshade became conscious of the fact he hadn’t paid for it.
Atta had been taught to keep a