Margaret Weis - Amber and Ashes

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Her eyes bulged in her head. Her mouth gaped, gasping. She writhed in agony, trying desperately to find air. Her blue-tinged lips formed a word.

“Chemosh…”

He was ready with his response and he spoke it calmly enough, though he could not wrench his gaze from her.

“I have so many mortals in my service and all of them dying—for such is the lot of mortals—that I have no idea who she is.” “She prays to you. Do you not hear her?”

“I am a god,” said Chemosh carelessly. “Countless pray to me.”

“Yet her prayers are special to you, I think,” Nuitari said, cocking his head.

Mina’s voice echoed from the darkness.

Chemosh … I come to you. I am not afraid. I embrace death. For now I will no longer be mortal.

“Such devout love and faith,” said Nuitari. “Imagine the surprise of my wizards when, while fishing for tuna, they catch instead a beautiful young woman. And imagine their surprise to find that she breathes water and drowns in air.”

The spell had only to be reversed and Mina would live. Chemosh had to locate her, though. She was somewhere in this Tower, but the Tower was immense and she had only seconds left. She was losing consciousness, her body shuddering.

“She is one mortal, nothing more. I can have a hundred, a thousand if I wanted them,” he told himself, even as he cast forth tendrils of his power, searching for her. “She is a burden to me. I am inside the Tower. I can take what I came for and Nuitari cannot not stop me.”

He could not find her. A shroud of darkness surrounded her, hid her from him.

“She dies,” said Nuitari.

“Let her,” said Chemosh.

“Are you certain, my lord?” Nuitari displayed Mina in his palm, placed his other hand over her, holding her suspended in time. “Look at her, Lord of Death. Your Mina is a magnificent woman. More than one god envies you, to have such a mortal in your service …”

“She will be mine in death as she was in life,” Chemosh returned, off-handedly.

“Not quite the same,” said Nuitari dryly.

Chemosh chose to ignore the salacious innuendo. “In death, her soul will come to me. You cannot stop that.”

“I wouldn’t dream of trying,” said Nuitari.

Mina’s eyes flickered open. Her dying gaze found Chemosh. She held out her hand to him, not in supplication. In farewell.

Chemosh stood with his arms at his side. His fists, hidden by the lace on his cuffs, were clenched.

Nuitari closed his fingers over her.

Blood seeped from between the god’s fingers. The red drops fell to the floor, fell slowly at first, one after the other. Then the drops were a trickle, the trickle a torrent. The god’s hand was suffused with blood. He opened it …

Chemosh turned away.

13

Across the continent of Ansalon, the Beloved of Chemosh walked the land. Young men and young women, healthy, strong, beautiful, dead. Murderers all, they walked about openly, fearing no law, no justice. Followers of Chemosh, they basked in the sunlight and avoided graveyards. Beloved of Chemosh, they brought him new followers nightly, killing with impunity, seducing their victims with sweet kisses and sweeter promises: unending life, unfading looks, forever young. All they asked in exchange was a pledge to Chemosh, a few simple words, spoken carelessly; the lethal kiss, the mark of lips burned on flesh, a new-risen corpse.

As time went by, the Beloved discovered that unending life was not all they had earned. They began to lose the memory of who they were, what they had done, where they had been. Their memories were replaced by a compulsion to kill, a compulsion to find new converts. If they failed in this, if a night passed and they had not delivered that fatal kiss, the god let them know of his disappointment. They saw in their dead minds his face, his eyes watching them. They felt, in their dead bodies, his ire, which burned in their dead flesh, growing more painful day by day. Only when his Beloved came to him with offerings of new converts did he ease their torment.

And so the Beloved of Chemosh roamed Ansalon, drifting from village to city, from farm to forest, always traveling east, the morning sun on their faces, to meet their god.

A god who was not on hand to receive them.

The Lord of Death left Nuitari’s presence with every intention of searching through the whole blasted Tower, from spire to basement, pillar to post, for his holy artifacts. He opened a door and there was Mina.

For now I will no longer be mortal.

He slammed shut that door, opened another. She met him there.

More useful to you dead …

Mina was in every room he entered. She walked with him through the corridors of the Tower. Her amber eyes gazed at him from the darkness. Her voice, her last prayer, whispered over and over. The sound of blood falling, drop by drop, onto the floor at Nuitari’s feet, thudded in his breast like the beating of a mortal heart.

“This is madness,” Chemosh said to himself angrily. “I am a god. She a mortal. She is dead. What of it? Mortals die every day, thousands at a time. She is dead. Her mortal weaknesses die with her. Her spirit will be mine for eternity, if I want it. I can banish it if I don’t. Far more practical …”

He caught himself staring into an empty crate for the heavens knew how long, not seeing that it was empty, seeing only Mina’s face, staring back at him. He realized that he was wasting his time.

“Nuitari took me by surprise. I had not expected to find the Tower rebuilt. I did not expect to find the God of the Dark Moon taking up habitation here. Small wonder that I am distracted. I need time to think how to combat him. Time to plan, come up with a strategy.”

Chemosh grew calmer, thinking this through.

“I will leave now, but I will return,” he promised the moonfaced god.

He walked through the crystal walls, through the shifting ocean depths, through the ethers heading back to the darkness of the Abyss.

Darkness that was empty and silent.

So very silent. So very empty.

“Her spirit will be here,” he said to himself. “Perhaps she will choose to go on to the next stage of her life’s journey. Perhaps she will leave me, abandon me, as I abandoned her.”

He started to go to the place where the souls passed from this world to Beyond, walking through the door that would lead to them to wherever it was they needed to go in order to fulfill the soul’s quest. He went there to receive Mina’s soul.

Or watch it walk away from him.

He stopped. He could not go there, either. He did not know where to go and in the end, he went nowhere.

Chemosh lay in his bed, their bed.

He could still smell her scent. He could see the depression in the pillow where she lay her head. He found a strand of glistening red hair and he picked it up and wound it around and around his finger. He ran his hand over the sheet, smoothing it, and he was running his hand over the soft, smooth skin, delighting in the feel of her warm and yielding flesh.

Delighting in the life. For she brought life to him.

He had once said to her: “When I am with you, that is the time I come closest to mortality. I see you lie back upon the pillow, and your body is covered with a fine sheen of sweat, and you are flushed and languorous. Your heart beats fast, the blood pulses beneath your skin. I feel life in you, Mina.”

All that was gone.

He lay on the empty bed and stared into the darkness. His plans were all thrown into disarray. The “Beloved” were roaming Ansalon, their deadly kisses bringing more and more converts to his worship, converts who would obey his least command. He would have a powerful force at his disposal. He was not now certain what he would do with them.

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