Margaret Weis - Amber and Blood

Nightshade shrugged. “Then I guess I’ll stay with you. Otherwise I’d starve.”

He grinned and winked. “I’m only fooling, Rhys! You know I’d never leave you and Atta. What would you two do without me? You’d get yourselves killed by crazy gods!”

That may yet be the end of our tale, Rhys thought. Chemosh will not be the only god seeking Mina.

He kept the thought to himself however, and, whistling to Atta, he gave his hand to Mina, who came skipping up to him.

Mina set off, but she did not head toward the road. She started walking toward the sea.

“I thought you wanted to go to Godshome,” said Nightshade, who was not in a good mood. “What are you going to do? Swim there?”

“Oh, we’ll go to Godshome,” said Mina. “But first I want you to come with me to the tower.”

“Which tower?” Nightshade asked. “There are lots of towers in the world. There’s a very famous tower in Nightlund. I’ve always wanted to visit Nightlund, because it is filled with the roving spirits of the dead. I can talk to roving spirits, if you ever—”

“That tower.” Mina added proudly, “My tower.”

She pointed to the tower that stood in the middle of the Blood Sea.

“Why do you want to go there?” Rhys asked.

“Because she’s crazy,” Nightshade said in a low voice.

Rhys gave him a look, and the kender lapsed into a gloomy silence.

Mina stood gazing out across the sea.

“My mother will be mad at me for running away,” Mina said. “I want to bring Goldmoon a present so she will forgive me.”

Rhys recalled Revered Son Patrick, cleric of Mishakal, telling the story of Goldmoon and Mina. After Mina ran away, Goldmoon had grieved for the lost girl and hoped someday she would return. Then came Takhisis, the One God, and the War of Souls began with Mina leading the armies of darkness. Hoping to turn Goldmoon, who was now an elderly, frail woman, to the side of Darkness, Takhisis gave Goldmoon youth and beauty. Goldmoon did not want her youth back. She was ready to die, to proceed on the next stage of her life’s journey where her beloved, Riverwind, waited for her. Though Mina tried to persuade Goldmoon to change her mind, Goldmoon defied Takhisis and died in Mina’s arms.

Goldmoon must have died in sorrow, Rhys realized, believing the child she had loved was lost forever, bound to evil. No wonder Mina had obliterated that memory.

He determined he should at least make the attempt to help her understand the truth.

“Mina,” said Rhys, taking hold of the child’s hand, “Goldmoon is dead. She died many, many months ago—”

“You’re wrong,” said Mina serenely, speaking with unwavering certainty. “Goldmoon is waiting for me at Godshome. That’s why I’m going there. To beg her not to be mad at me anymore. I will take her a present so she will love me again.”

“Goldmoon never stopped loving you, Mina,” said Rhys. “Mothers don’t ever stop loving their children.”

Mina looked back at him, her eyes wide. “Not even if they do bad things? Really, really bad things?”

Rhys was caught off guard by her question. If this was truly madness, it held a strange and terrible wisdom.

He rested his hand on her slender shoulder. “Not even then.”

“Maybe so,” said Mina, though she sounded doubtful. “But you can’t be sure, and so I want to take Goldmoon a present. And the present I want to take her is inside that tower.”

“What sort of tower is it?” Nightshade asked, his curiosity getting the best of him. “Where did it come from?”

“It didn’t come from anywhere, stupid,” Mina scoffed. “It’s always been there.”

“No, it hasn’t,” argued Nightshade.

“Yes, it has.”

“No—” Nightshade caught Rhys’ eye and changed the subject. “So who built it, if it’s been there all this time?”

“Wizards built it. It used to be a Tower of High Sorcery. But it’s my tower now.” Mina flashed Nightshade a defiant glance, daring him to disagree. “And Goldmoon’s present is inside.”

“A Tower of High Sorcery!” Nightshade gasped, his jaw sagging. “Are there wizards inside it?”

Mina shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. Wizards are stupid anyway, so it doesn’t matter. What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

“The tower is the middle of the sea, Mina,” Rhys said. “We don’t have a boat—”

“That’s right!” Nightshade struck in happily. “We’d love to visit your tower, Mina, but we can’t. No boat! Say, is anyone else hungry? I hear there’s an inn in Flotsam that makes a really good meat pie—”

“There’s a boat,” Mina interrupted. “Behind you.”

Nightshade looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, a small sailboat rested on its keel on the shore, not fifteen paces from where they were standing.

“Rhys, do something,” said Nightshade out of the corner of his mouth. “You and I both know there wasn’t a boat there a second ago. I don’t want to sail in a boat that didn’t used to be there…”

Mina began tugging Rhys excitedly toward the sail boat. Nightshade, sighing deeply, followed, dragging his feet.

“Do you even know how to sail this thing?” he asked. “I’ll bet you don’t.”

“I bet I do,” she answered smugly. “I learned at the Citadel.”

Nightshade sighed again. Mina climbed inside the boat and began to rummage around, sorting out a tangle of ropes and instructing Rhys on how to raise the sail. Nightshade stood beside the boat, his lower lip thrust out.

Mina regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. “You said you were hungry. Someone might have left food in the boat. I’ll look.” She felt about under one of the wooden plank seats and came up holding a large sack.

“I was right!” she announced, pleased. “See what I found.”

She reached into the sack and took out a meat pie, and handed it to Nightshade.

He did not touch it. It looked like a meat pie and it certainly smelled like a meat pie. Both his mouth and his stomach agreed this was definitely a meat pie, and Atta added her vote, as well. The dog eyed the pie and licked her chops.

“You said you were hungry,” Mina reminded him.

Still, Nightshade hesitated. “I don’t know…”

Atta took matters into her own hands—or rather into her mouth. A leap, a snap, a couple of gulps, and the meat pie was a grease smear on her nose.

“Hey!” cried Nightshade indignantly. “That was mine.”

Atta slurped her tongue over her nose and began to hungrily paw the sack. Rhys rescued the remainder of the pies and handed them out. Mina nibbled on hers and ended up feeding most of it to Atta. Nightshade ate his hungrily and, finding Rhys could not finish his, the kender ate it for him. He helped Rhys hoist the sail and, acting under Mina’s direction, pushed the boat out into the waves.

Mina took the tiller and steered the boat into the wind. The waves had calmed. A light breeze caught the sail, and the boat glided over the waves, heading out to sea. Atta crouched at the bottom, nosing the sack hopefully.

“For a god-baked pie, that wasn’t bad,” Nightshade remarked, falling down onto the seat beside Rhys when the sailboat took an unexpected lurch. “Maybe a little less onion and more garlic. Next I think I’ll ask her to cook up some beefsteak with crispy potatoes—”

“We should be very careful not to ask for anything,” Rhys suggested.

Nightshade mulled this over.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. We might get it.” The kender shifted his gaze to the tower. “What do you know about Towers of High Sorcery?”

Rhys shook his head. “Not much, I am afraid.”

“Me neither. And I have to say I’m not really looking forward to the experience. Wizards don’t like kender for some reason. They might turn me into a frog.”