“Why not both?” Syrah replied with something almost like a giggle.
Raz just rolled his eyes.
They rode on for another ten minutes or so, guiding Gale and Nymara carefully through the streets, doing their best to avoid trampling on anyone’s feet. Syrah stopped a few times to ask for directions from a varied assortment of women, thanking each and giving them a smile before moving on, and it wasn’t long before Raz became sure he recognized their surroundings.
“That way,” he said eventually, reaching out to tap Syrah on the thigh and point down a wide fairway leading west. Syrah blinked, then nodded, pulling Nymara about slowly as she and Raz went around a vendor shouting for all to come view the clay and porcelain wares he had displayed on a covered stall on the corner.
Another few minutes of struggling through the streets, and the temple came into view.
Compared to the likes of Cyurgi ‘Di, the Laorin temple of Ystréd was a pitiful thing. Two stories tall, it was a squat sort of building accented with a modest garden that now bloomed a hundred different colors, its overhanging upper level designed to shelter the front door from the wind and snow during the freeze. When last he’d seen it, the temple had carried the same cold, mournful air about it as most of the North’s buildings in winter, its withered plants hidden beneath white frost, its ledges and lips teethed with icicles. Now, though, the temple was animated, glass windows shining in the brightness of the day, the garden alive and vibrant as a half-dozen men and women in the plain brown tunics of acolytes and the white robes of the ordained moved about it, gathering its bounty and caring for the plants.
When they were near, Syrah raised a hand and hailed the Laorin, a few of whom stood straight and turned at her call. A look of surprise darted across each of their faces—though for once there was no hint of disgust or fear at the sight of Raz—and one older Priestess said something quickly to a younger acolyte at her elbow. A second later the boy hurried off, disappearing into the open doors of the temple, likely fetching the High Priestess.
“Welcome, Syrah Brant,” the woman said with a kind smile once Raz and Syrah led Gale and Nymara off the street. “We’ve been expecting you.” She turned her blue eyes on Raz, and he was relieved to see that her smile didn’t fade. “And welcome, Master Arro. We were pleased to hear you had made it safely to the Citadel after you left last winter.”
Raz ducked his head in thanks.
“You received word from Jofrey, then?” Syrah asked, starting to dismount as another acolyte, a young woman, hurried forward to take Gale and Nymara’s reins.
“We did,” the Priestess said, motioning for the acolyte to lead the horses around the back of the temple before indicating the doors of the building. “But please, come inside. I’m sure the High Priestess will want to fill you in herself.”
Raz too, dismounted, giving Gale a reassuring pat before allowing him to be led away, and followed Syrah as they trailed the Priestess back toward the house. The other faithful in the garden around them watched him as they passed, but there was still no apprehension in their gaze. Instead, they looked more impressed, excited, just as the crowds of Azbar had when he’d wandered through their streets with Arrun and Lueski.
Seems ‘the Dragon’ made a name for himself here, too, Raz thought in exasperated amusement.
They entered the temple one after the other, Raz having to duck under the low overhang of the front door before straightening up again. They were in the building’s small common hall, a large portion of the space occupied by an old wooden table where the faithful took their meals. Past that, a large hearth—which had been bright and roaring when last he’d seen it—was cool and dark, and a doorway at its left led back to what he seemed to recall were the kitchens. Ahead of them and to their right, a set of stairs led upward to the second level, open over their heads. He could see the tops of doors over the lip of the walkway above them, the private chambers of the temple’s residents. There were other rooms on the bottom floor as well, some with their own fireplaces and windows, though Raz couldn’t recall which one he’d been cooped up in for the short duration of his recovery.
“Priestess Brahnt,” a gentle voice called out. “Master Arro. Welcome to Ystréd. I hope your trip wasn’t too troublesome.”
Looking around, Raz watched a woman in the robes of the faith coming quickly down the stairs, the white cloth of her hood crested with a single stripe of black. Tana Atler was a short, plump woman of some thirty years, with wavy blonde hair that hung from beneath the hood. Her eyes were a lively shade of hazel, and they took them in jovially as she reached the bottom of the flight.
Or at least took in Syrah jovially. When they glanced to Raz, he saw a coldness there he realized suddenly he might have expected.
Syrah, apparently, noticed nothing. “High Priestess,” she said with a respectful bow. “You have our thanks for sheltering us. We hope we won’t inconvenience you for more than a few days, perhaps a week or so at most.”
At that, Atler tut-tutted like an old woman, waving Syrah’s bow away like it was embarrassing her. “Please, call me Tana. After having the pleasure of your Priest-Mentor under my roof, I can only imagine you will be much the same.” Her face softened. “Incidentally, you have our condolences for your loss. It’s my understanding you and Talo were very close.”
Syrah smiled sadly and nodded. “We were,” she said quietly. “And thank you. Talo gave his life fighting to save another, as anyone would have expected him to. It also helps—” she gestured at Raz “—to have the man who avenged him as a companion.”
“Yes…” Atler said slowly, her voice hardening ever so slightly, looking again to Raz. “We heard about the ursalus. It’s a pity you weren’t by his side sooner, Master Arro. Talo Brahnt was a great man. His loss will be felt for many years among our faith.”
This time, Syrah heard the coolness in the High Priestess’ words, and her brow knitted in confusion. She looked about to ask as to the meaning of it, but Raz stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“I couldn’t agree more, High Priestess,” he said with an inclination of his head, doing his best to make the woman feel the sincerity of his words. “Of the many things I regret in my life, I doubt Talo’s death will ever be surpassed. I wish for nothing more than to have been able to be there, to have reached him sooner.”
“Raz,” Syrah started in a startled whisper, eye widening. “What are you talking about? It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have—”
But again Raz silenced her gently, squeezing her shoulder, his eyes on Atler. The woman, for her part, looked at him a little more kindly, as though his admittance had managed to redeem him ever so slightly in her eyes.
“Yes,” she said finally, shaking the harshness from her voice, “well… By now Talo Brahnt has been reborn to the world, and we should all pray to be fortunate enough that his soul finds its way back into the arms of the faith. For the moment,” she nodded to the older Priestess who had led them into the temple, now standing quietly to the side, “let’s get you out of those clothes and see to it that you’re fed. Kerren will show you to your rooms. Kerren, if you wouldn’t mind?”
The Priestess—Kerren—bowed and, after Atler told them she would see them both come dinnertime and took her leave, stepped between them and started for the stairs.
“Your packs and personal items will be brought up as soon as the acolytes finish caring for your horses,” the woman said over her shoulder once she was sure they were following her. “If they’ve left anything of importance, please feel free to retrieve them. The stables are around the back of the temple, and can also be reached through the kitchens.”
She paused at the top of the stairs, glancing back at the hilt of Raz’s gladius nervously. “We do ask, however, that any weapons other than staffs be kept either with the horses, or in your quarters, Master Arro. We hope that’s not an unreasonable request.”
Raz shook his head at once. “Not at all. I’ll leave the sword in my room.
The rest of my equipment can stay with Gale, for the time being.”
Kerren looked relieved, then turned and led them along the walkway, stopping before a pair of doors in the wall directly above the great empty hearth of the dining hall below.
“Your arrangements,” she said to Raz, opening the innermost door to reveal a small, comfortable room with a single bed, a simple dresser, and a shuttered window in the back wall, now open to the light of the day. “You are welcome to stay as long as you need, and please let us know if you require assistance in making provisions should you decide to take your leave from us.”
She shut the door, then stepped over and made to open the other, closer to the wall. Before she did, though, she hesitated, and looked around at Syrah. “I hope this isn’t overstepping,” she said quietly, “but I thought you would prefer to take this room, Priestess. It was the one High Priest Brahnt and Priest al’Dor stayed in when last they were here.”
Then, as Syrah looked on in disbelief, she opened the door.
The chamber wasn’t all that different from the first Kerren had shown them. It was a corner space, with an open window set into the wall above a small escritoire that looked out over an alleyway. The bed was a little larger, but not by much, and Raz had a moment of amusement as he tried to imagine how Talo and Carro—both men of some breadth and bulk—ever fit comfortably on it together.
I’ll bet Carro made Talo sleep on the floor, he thought, chuckling to himself.
“It’s…” Syrah started, sounding at a bit of a loss for words as she stepped inside. “It’s wonderful. Thank you, Kerren. And please, call me Syrah.”
Kerren nodded but said nothing more, moving aside and allowing Raz to duck into the room behind Syrah.
“Two rooms, huh?” he said under his breath, coming up behind her. “Will you be all right on your own?”
In response, the Priestess gave him a roguish wink over her shoulder. “Guess you’ll have to sneak out and join me,” she whispered, making sure Kerren couldn’t hear. Her eyes gleamed mischievously. “Reminds me of when I used to sneak out of my room in Cyurgi ‘Di and—”
“I don’t need to know,” Raz said with a snort, putting a hand on her head and shoving her away playfully as he turned back to the door. “I get the feeling you and I had very different upbringings in that respect.”
Syrah snickered, then turned to take in the room once more. An odd look crossed her pale features, like she was simultaneously happy and heartbroken to be standing there, in the center of the place the man who had been everything but her father had once occupied. Raz glanced back at her, and when she didn’t look his way, he stepped through the door and reached back to close it behind him.
“Let’s give her a minute,” he told Kerren quietly. “In the meantime, would you be so kind as to point me in the direction of the nearest plate of hot food?”
CHAPTER 8
“There are many who will frequently make the claim that whores and courtesans practice the oldest trade in the history of man. Such scholars insist that no craft could possibly have started before—or is likely to last beyond—the trade of selling one’s body to the masses. I, however, must disagree. There is one vocation which I believe will outlast any other. Should our civilization ever advance to a point where the act of selling pleasure is a folly of the past, there is a profession which will continue and endure so long as man suffers from the affliction of his own nature. After all—if we agree to accept that all things have a price—should it not be taken into consideration that the only thing of more value to a person than their own flesh is, perhaps, their life itself?”
—Living Shadows: A Study of the Art of Death, by Elot Acker
He’s here.
The thought slipped across Na’zeem Ashur’s mind in an infinite loop, seeing fit to keep his focus from settling. He sat, arms crossed over the dark layers of his shirt, back against the rotting plank wall of the rundown building he and his lessers had claimed for themselves upon their arrival in the city, rousting the slum runners and beggars who’d initially called it home.
They were four days into the week Na’zeem had allotted them to stay in Ystréd, a week in which he’d planned to find new horses for him and his twenty men, gather what information he could on these “Priests of Laor,” and set about making preparations for their assault on the great mountain keep his mistress had simply called “the Citadel.” The city was—he was told by the men he’d sent out in stolen clothes—the last true bastion of civilization before the wilds would swallow them up for nearly a month. It would be their last opportunity to purchase any provisions and equipment they might need and so—considering the good three months of summer still ahead of them—Na’zeem had elected to take the time to make sure everything was right before they returned to their arduous journey north, making for the Vietalis Ranges.
And then Ehmed had returned from the markets, where he’d been seeking out a seller of salted meats and traveling rations, with news that had rendered every one of the group’s carefully plotted plans entirely inconsequential.
He’s here, Na’zeem thought again, eyes on the back of Ehmed’s head as the man knelt before his master. The Monster came right to us.
It had been a consideration he’d made a few times as he and the others journeyed north, across the border, past the great city of Azbar, and finally to Ystréd. He’d wondered briefly—and with a certain level of trepidation—what they would do if the lizard wasn’t where their mistress believed him to be. The bird which had borne the news that Arro was holed up in the place the Northerners called “Cyurgi ‘Di” must have been at least a week reaching Miropa, and even leaving the fringe cities the following day it had taken well over a fortnight for Na’zeem and his comrades to make it to Ystréd. All in all, the information was already nearing a month old, not to mention the weeks more it would take them to reach this fabled keep in the mountains.
As there was nothing to do about these facts, however, Na’zeem had eventually pushed them aside. If the lizard wasn’t in the Citadel, then they would hunt him across the North until they caught him. In Miropa the Monster had always been a figure of renown, a sellsword of legendary prowess and terrifying savagery, but here in the North it appeared Arro was developing a reputation of an entirely different caliber. In Azbar they had called the man “the Scourge,” and even on the road Na’zeem and his men had heard whispers about “the Dragon.” Arro had made a name for himself—or multiple, for that matter—and if his trail had been at all difficult to follow before, now the news of his passings alone would have been enough to stalk him to the ends of the earth.
And, in the end, it was that same reputation which had delivered unto Na’zeem the fact that Arro was there, in Ystréd, waiting like an unsuspecting doe in a clearing, unaware of the wolves that lurked in the shade of the trees.
“Where?”
Na’zeem spoke the word slowly, the first sound he’d made since Ehmed had knelt before him and delivered his news.
“We don’t know yet,” the man answered at once, head still down. “But we will. I sent Eram and Fah’zer out as soon as I returned, telling them to find out what they could. I didn’t see him myself, only heard from the throng that the beast had arrived some time before through the northern gate. I wasn’t sure I believed it, but the news is spreading across the city. I find it hard to believe it’s only a rumor.”
Na’zeem nodded. “Good. What else did you hear?”
Ehmed finally looked up, his face uncertain. “The cityfolk believe he travels with a woman, but her description seemed odd. Albino, they say. White hair and skin, and missing an eye. I wouldn’t have believed it, but many seemed to know her name.”
“Brahnt?” Na’zeem asked.
If Ehmed was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Yes,” he said. “Syrah Brahnt.”
Na’zeem nodded, frowning. It was a name he, too, had heard a few times when he’d been out and about the city. Not as frequently as Arro’s, but often in the s
ame breath, and occasionally on its own. If the mutterings were true, then Syrah Brahnt was a woman to be reckoned with, a skilled user of the strange magics the Northern deity, Laor, was said to grant his most devout followers. Na’zeem had seen that magic at work, had seen the power with which it could be wielded. He wondered briefly, if his mistress was truly as imposing as she seemed, how she would match up against a spellcaster who’d trained for a lifetime to harness the powers of their god.
He shoved this thought quickly aside, fearing the blasphemy of such a consideration.
Even if she is no master of sorcery, she has other ways of making those who challenge her disappear among the sands…
Regardless, this “Brahnt” woman was likely someone to be wary of…
“When Eram and Fah’zer return, gather the men,” Na’zeem said, the fingers of his right hand absently playing with the hilt of the curved saber strapped behind his lower back. “For now, tell everyone you can find that the lizard is not to be touched. He’s formidable on his own. If his companion is even half as dangerous, then there are considerations we need to make.”
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