Margaret Weis - Amber and Iron

People stared at the monk and kender as they walked along the streets of Solace, obviously wondering how the two had managed to get so wet on a day when the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. They hadn’t gone far, however, before Nightshade came to a sudden stop.

“Why are we walking toward the jail?” he asked suspiciously.

“Don’t worry,” Gerard assured him. “My house is located near the prison. I live close by the jail in case there’s trouble. The house comes as part of my pay.”

“Oh, well, that’s all right then,” said Nightshade, relieved.

“We’ll have something to eat and drink, and you can retrieve your staff while you’re there, Brother,” Gerard added as an afterthought. “I’ve been keeping it for you.”

“My staff!” Now it was Rhys who halted. He regarded his friend in astonishment.

“I guess it’s yours,” said Gerard. “I found it in the prison cell after you’d left. You were in such a hurry,” he added wryly, “you forgot it.”

“Are you sure the staff is mine?”

“If I wasn’t sure, Atta was,” said Gerard. “She sleeps beside it every night.”

Nightshade was staring at Rhys with wide eyes.

“Rhys—” said the kender.

Rhys shook his head, hoping to ward off the questions he knew was coming.

Nightshade was persistent. “But, Rhys, your staff-—”

“—has been in safe hands all this time,” said Rhys. “I need not have been worried about it.”

Nightshade subsided, though he continued to cast puzzled glances at Rhys as they walked on. Rhys hadn’t forgotten his staff. The emmide had been with him when they’d made their unexpected journey to the death knight’s castle. The staff had probably saved their lives, undergoing a miraculous transformation, changing from a shabby wooden staff into a gigantic praying mantis that had attacked the death knight. Rhys had thought the staff lost to Storm’s Keep and he’d felt a pang of regret, even as he was fleeing for his life, at having to leave it behind. The emmide was sacred to Majere, the god Rhys had abandoned.

The god who apparently refused to abandon Rhys.

Humbled, grateful and confused, Rhys pondered Majere’s involvement in his life. Rhys had thought the sacred staff a parting gift from his god, a sign from Majere that he understood and forgave his backsliding follower. When the emmide had transformed itself into the praying mantis to attack Krell, Rhys had taken that to be the god’s final blessing. Yet now the emmide was back. It had been given for safekeeping to Gerard, a former Solamnic knight—a sign, perhaps, that this man could be trusted, and also a sign that Majere still took a keen interest in his monk.

“The way to me is through you,” Majere taught. “Know yourself and you come to know me.”

Rhys had thought he’d known himself, and then had come that terrible day when his wretched brother had murdered their parents and the brethren of Rhys’s order. Rhys realized now he’d known only the side of himself that walked in the sunshine along the riverbank. He had not known the side of himself that crawled about in his soul’s dark chasm. He had not known that side until it had burst out to shriek its fury and desire for vengeance.

That dark side of himself had prompted Rhys to renounce Majere as a “do nothing” god in order to join forces with Zeboim. He had left the monastery to go out into the world to find his accursed brother, Lieu, and bring him to justice. He had found his brother, but things hadn’t been that simple.

Perhaps Majere and his teachings weren’t that simple either. Perhaps the god was a great deal more complicated than Rhys had realized. Certainly life was far more complicated than he’d ever imagined.

A sharp tug on Rhys’s sleeve brought him back from his musings. He looked at Nightshade.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Not me,” said the kender, pointing. “Him.”

Rhys realized Gerard must have been talking to him all this time. “I beg your pardon, Sheriff. I started down a path of thought and could not find my way back. Did you ask me something?”

“I asked if you’d seen anything of that lunatic woman who apparently feels free to let herself in and out of my prison whenever she feels like it.”

“Is she there now?” Rhys asked, alarmed.

“I don’t know,” returned Gerard dryly. “I haven’t looked in the last five minutes. What do you know about her?”

Rhys made up his mind. Though much was still murky, the god’s sign seemed clear. Gerard was a man he could trust. And, the gods knew, Rhys had to trust someone! He could no longer carry this burden by himself.

“I will explain everything to you, Sheriff, at least, as much as can be explained.”

“Which isn’t much,” Nightshade muttered.

“I will be grateful for anything at this point,” Gerard stated feelingly.

The explanation was put off for a short while. The salt water crusted on their skin was starting to itch, and so both Rhys and Nightshade decided to bathe in Crystalmir Lake. The Sea Goddess, having recovered her son, had generously deigned to remove the curse that she’d put on it, and the lake had been restored to its state of crystal purity. The dead fish that had choked the lake had been carted off and dumped into the fields for use in nurturing the crops, but the stench still lingered in the air, and the two washed as swiftly as possible. After he had bathed, Rhys cleansed the blood and salt out of his robes and Nightshade scrubbed his own clothes. Gerard provided clothes for them to wear while their own dried in the sun.

While they bathed, Gerard stewed a chicken in broth flavored with onions, carrots, potatoes, and what he named as his own special secret ingredient—cloves.

Gerard’s house was small but comfortable. It was built on ground level, not in the branches of one of Solace’s famous vallenwood trees.

“No offense to tree dwellers,” Gerard said, ladling out the chicken stew and handing it around. “I like living in a place where if I happen to sleepwalk, I don’t break my neck.”

He gave Atta a beef bone and she settled down on top of Rhys’s feet to gnaw contently. Rhys’s staff stood in the corner next to the chimney.

“Is it your—what do you call it?” Gerard asked.

“Emmide.” Rhys ran his hand over the wood. He recalled every imperfection, every bump and gnarl, every nick and cut that the emmide had acquired over five hundred years of protecting the innocent.

“The staff is imperfect, yet the god loves it,” Rhys said softly. “Majere could have a staff of the same magical metal that forged the dragonlances, yet his staff is wood—plain and simple and flawed. Though flawed, it has never broken.”

“If you’re saying something important, Brother,” said Gerard, “then you need to speak up.”

Rhys gave the staff a last, lingering look, then returned to his chair.

“The staff is mine,” he said. “Thank you for keeping it for me.”

“It’s not much to look at,” said Gerard. “Still, you seemed to set store by it.”

He waited until Rhys had helped himself to food and then said quietly, “Very well, Brother. Let’s hear your story.”

Nightshade was holding a hunk of bread in one hand and a chicken leg in the other, alternating bites of each and eating very fast, so fast that at one point he nearly choked himself.

“Slow down, kender,” Gerard said. “What’s the rush?”

“I’m afraid we may not be here very long,” Nightshade mumbled as broth dribbled down his chin.

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re not going to believe us. I give you about three minutes to toss us out the door.”

Gerard frowned and turned back to Rhys. “Well, Brother? Am I going to toss you out?”