Margaret Weis - Amber and Iron

Rhys was silent a moment, wondering where to start.

“Do you remember a few days ago I posed a hypothetical question to you. ‘What would you say if I told you my brother was a murderer?’ You remember that?”

“Do I!” Gerard exclaimed. “I almost locked you up for failure to report a murder. Something about your brother, Lieu, killing a girl— Lucy Wheelwright, wasn’t it? You sounded like you meant that, Brother. I would have believed you if I hadn’t seen Lucy for myself that very morning, alive as you are and a whole lot prettier.”

Rhys regarded Gerard intently. “Have you seen Lucy Wheelwright since?”

“No, I haven’t. I saw her husband, though.” Gerard was grim. “What was left of him. Hacked to pieces with an axe and the remnants tied up in a sack and dumped in the woods.”

“Gods save us!” Rhys exclaimed, horrified.

“Maybe he said he didn’t want to worship Chemosh,” Nightshade said somberly. “Like your monks.”

“What monks?” Gerard demanded.

Rhys didn’t answer immediately. “You said Lucy has disappeared?”

“Yeah. She told people she and her husband were leaving town to visit a neighboring village, but I checked. Lucy never came back and, of course, we know now what happened to her husband.”

“You checked on them?” Rhys asked, startled. “I thought you didn’t take me seriously.”

“I didn’t, at first,” Gerard admitted, settling back comfortably in his chair. “But then after we found the body of her husband, I got to thinking. Like I said to you during that same conversation, you’re not much of a talker, Brother. There had to be some reason for you to say what you said, and so, the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. I fought in the War of Souls. I battled an army of ghosts. I wouldn’t have believed that if someone had told me about it. I sent one of my men to the village to see if he could find Lucy.”

“I take it he couldn’t.”

“No one in that village had ever heard of her. As it turned out, she never went near the place, and she’s not the only one to disappear. We’ve had a rash of young people up and vanishing. Leaving their homes, their families, quitting good paying jobs without a word. One young couple, Timothy and Gerta Tanner, abandoned their three-month-old baby—a son they both loved dearly.” He cocked an eye at Nightshade. “So you don’t have to gobble your food, kender. I’m not going to throw you out.”

“That’s a relief,” said Nightshade, brushing crumbs off his borrowed shirt. He helped himself to an apple.

“Not to mention your own mysterious disappearance from the jail cell,” Gerard added. “But let’s start with Lucy and your brother, Lieu. You claim he murdered her—”

“He did,” said Rhys calmly. He felt suddenly relieved, as though a heavy burden had been lifted from his heart. “He murdered her in the name of Chemosh, Lord of Death.”

Gerard sat forward, looking Rhys in the eyes. “She was alive when I saw her, Brother.”

“No, she wasn’t,” Rhys returned, “and neither was my brother. Both of them were ... are ... dead.”

“Dead as a dormouse,” said Nightshade complacently, biting into the apple. He wiped away the juice with the back of his hand. “It’s in the eyes.”

Gerard shook his head. “You best start from the start, Brother.”

“I wish I could,” said Rhys softly.

“You see, Sheriff, I don’t know where the story starts,” Rhys explained. “The story seems to have found me somewhere in the middle. It began when my brother, Lieu, came to visit me in the monastery. Our parents brought him. He had been running wild, carousing, keeping bad company. I saw nothing more in this than the high spirits of youth. As it turned out, I was blind. The Master of our order and Atta both saw clearly what I could not—that there was something terribly wrong with Lieu.”

Atta raised her head and looked at Rhys and wagged her tail. He stroked her soft fur. “I should have listened to Atta. She realized immediately that my brother was a threat. She even bit him, something she never does.”

Gerard eyed the dog, rubbed his chin. “True enough. Though she’s had provocation.” He was silent, thoughtful, gazing at the dog. “Now, I wonder . . .”

“Wonder what, Sheriff?”

Gerard waved his hand. “Never mind for now, Brother. Go on.”

“That night,” Rhys continued, “my brother poisoned my brethren and our parents. He murdered twenty people in the name of Chemosh.”

Gerard sat bolt upright. He regarded Rhys in astonishment.

“He tried to murder me, too. Atta saved my life.” Rhys rested his hand gratefully on the dog’s head. “That night, I lost my faith in my god. I was angry with Majere for allowing such evil to happen to those who were his loyal and devoted servants. I sought a new god, one who would help me find my brother and avenge the deaths of those I loved. I cried out to the heavens, and a god answered me.”

Gerard looked grave. “A god answering you. That’s never good.”

“The goddess was Zeboim,” said Rhys.

“But you didn’t take her up on it. . .” Gerard stared. “By heaven, you did! That’s why you’re not a monk anymore! And that woman . . . That crazy female in my jail . . . And the dead fish . . . Zeboim,” he finished, awed.

“She was distraught,” Rhys said by way of apology. “Chemosh was holding the soul of her son in thrall.”

“She turned me into a khas piece,” interjected Nightshade. “Without asking!” Indignantly, he helped himself to more chicken. “Then she whooshed us off to Storm’s Keep to face a death knight. A death knight! Someone who goes around mangling people! How crazy is that? And then there’s her son, Ariakan. Don’t get me started on him!”

“ Lord Ariakan,” Gerard said slowly. “The commander of the dark knights during the Chaos War.”

“That’s the one.”

“The one who’s been dead fifty or so years?”

“As the tombstones say, ‘Dead but not forgotten,’ ” quoted Nightshade. “That was his whole problem. Lord Ariakan couldn’t forget. And do you think he was grateful that Rhys and I were there trying to save him? Not a bit of it. Lord Ariakan flatly refused to go with me. I had to run across the board and knock him to the floor. That part was kind of exciting.”

Nightshade grinned at the memory, then was suddenly remorseful. “Or it would have been, if Rhys hadn’t been bleeding with pieces of bone sticking out of his skin where the death knight broke his fingers.”

Gerard glanced at Rhys’s hands. His fingers seemed perfectly whole.

“I see,” he said. “Broken fingers.”

.

“What happened to us is not important, Sheriff,” said Rhys. “What is important is that we must find some way to stop these Beloved of Che -mosh, as they call themselves. They are monsters who go about killing young people and turning them into Chemosh’s slaves. They appear to be alive but, in fact, they are dead—”

“I can vouch for that,” said Nightshade.

“And, what is more, they cannot be destroyed. I know,” Rhys added simply. “I tried. I killed my brother. I broke Lleu’s neck with the emmide. He shook it off as you would shake off bumping into a door.”

“And I tried casting one of my spells on him. I’m a mystic, you know,” Nightshade added proudly. Then he sighed. “I don’t think Lieu even noticed. I cast one of my more powerful spells on him, too.”

“You must appreciate the dire nature of this situation, Sheriff,” Rhys continued earnestly. “The Beloved are luring unsuspecting youth to their doom and they cannot be stopped—at least not by any means we have tried. What’s more, we cannot warn people about them because no one will believe us. The Beloved look and act in all respects just like anyone else. I could be one of them now, Sheriff, and you would never know.”