Shree turned to me and grinned through his beard. No one else was standing nearby. He said in a low voice, "I'm looking forward to this, Tig."
"To what?" I snorted rudely. "The possibility of seeing your old lady-friend again? I hope not. I've got used to having you around, even with that hair on your face. I wouldn't like to see you fed to the volcano."
He laughed. "What's my name again?"
"Selki. Lady's sake, man, fix it in your head! And stop scratching your beard, they'll know you're not used to it. And tuck the knife further back in your belt, so it doesn't show. What are you trying to do, draw attention to yourself?"
"Calm yourself, Tig. You'll be spitting on a nose-rag next to wash my face with. But if the lady-friend you're worried about is that Vassashin shint in Iklankish, chances are she went down along with the rest of them."
"That's mixed comfort," I said bitterly. I eyed a row of tall wooden posts driven into the ground to one side of the stairway. Another monument to Sher. By Coll's account, a number of Sherkin troopers had died rather slowly tied to those posts, with their eyelids sewn open so they could admire the expanse of empty ocean where the shoreline of Sher used to be. I was about to point this out to Shree—Selki—when the doors of the Sacellum began to swing open.
Two pillars of red silk stood in the open gateway, looking out at us through the veils that swathed their heads. Silently they turned their backs on us and moved out of sight. It seemed a cool kind of welcome to me, but the Vassashin notables, unsurprised, trooped silently through the doors, dipping their heads almost to the ground as they passed between the white-plastered brick jambs. I offered my arm to Rinn—she had at last decanted herself from the litter and was standing beside it with a thunderous face while her women fussed around her—and together we entered the Sacellum, hard on the heels of Shree and Chasco.
The two Daughters of Fire paced slowly ahead of us, leading us along a short dim corridor with plain white walls. At the end, we stepped out midway of a very long, narrow sunken courtyard, deeply shaded by the high walls of the building that enclosed it. The façade opposite was partly native stone, partly unfaced brick, slotted into the mountainside; the peak, with its plume of dark smoke, loomed sheer above us. The courtyard was empty at first except for some Daughters drawing water from a great rain-tun in one corner, but then a door opened directly opposite the portico where we stood and a small procession emerged and came towards us.
In the lead was the Divinatrix, distinctive by her tiny stature and flame-coloured robe. Flanking her were two taller Daughters in scarlet robes with scarlet silk surplices, carrying round-bottomed pottery jugs in their hands. Behind them came an even taller Daughter with a black surplice and an oil-jar and then about a dozen of the rank-and-file in their plain scarlet robes. Valsoria's shrewd little face was the only one not covered by a veil and she wore a look of dignified welcome.
The procession reached the centre of the courtyard. Reverently, one by one, the Vassashin notables approached the Divinatrix. Each received a quick blessing from her and a few drops of liquid on the head from the three women holding jugs, then stood aside with rapt looks on their faces. Some kind of purification, I reckoned—much the same as supplicants to the Priest-King and the Lady in Gil used to undergo, back in Gil's good old days. Coll followed, stumbling in his eagerness, after the Vassashin notables; then it was our turn.
Rinn, however, hung back, holding my arm. "No!" she hissed into my ear. "My hair will be ruined!"
I sighed. "It's just a few drops, Rinn. Come along and get it over with, or the fire-gods will have nothing to say to you. Don't you want to know about the crown of Miishel?"
She pouted, but allowed me to lead her forwards, making only a token gesture of dragging her feet. I looked up just as Shree received the Divinatrix's blessing—and then there was a shocking crash, so explosive that I thought for a moment the volcano had erupted; but I saw that the flagstones around Valsoria's feet were littered with pottery shards and glistening with oil, a pungent oil that I could smell from where I stood.
Behind Valsoria stood the tall Daughter with the black surplice, frozen, her hands poised in front of her as if they still held the fallen oil-jar, her veiled face tilted at Shree's. She took a hesitant step towards him, seemed to glance past him, froze again, then abruptly whirled and pushed her way through the lines of Daughters and vanished the way she had come.
* * *
26
SO MUCH FOR the scholar Selki.
It now seemed like a good idea to resort to our old back-to-back strategy for absenting ourselves from hostile cult-houses. The timing was good—the Daughters were in disarray, the Vassashin were aghast at seeing a familiar ritual go wrong. If we could get down the mountain before the alarm did, there'd be plenty of fishing boats left unguarded on the beach and I was prepared to have the theft of one of them on my conscience. I hissed to Shree, but it was Valsoria who turned to me first, with an expression of profound satisfaction shining on her face. She did not even glance at Shree. When her eyes met mine, she smiled broadly.
"This is an omen of great power." She spoke in Miisheli, loudly enough to stop the whispering in the Daughters' ranks. She stooped to dabble her fingers in the spilled oil, stepped forward, reached up to trace some sort of rune on Rinn's forehead. Rinn drew herself up as if trying to decide whether to be offended at the presumption. The Divinatrix, however, rose on tiptoe to bring her lips close to Rinn's ear. Whatever she whispered brought a smile to Rinn's face.
Meantime, I was still trying to get that fool Shree's attention. I could feel Chasco hovering at my back, primed to follow my lead. Any moment, I expected a horde of ravening red-robed Daughters to pour through the far door and cut the best friend I ever had into bleeding Sherkin titbits for the fire-gods' delectation. I dared to hiss again at this potential blood sacrifice, and this time he condescended to notice me. He shrugged. His fingers flashed. Too tall for my liking.
I gritted my teeth. What did he mean, too tall for his liking? I signalled back: bugger the aesthetic judgements. Head for the door.
The pocketing idiot only grinned at me and went to stand smugly among the already-shriven. At that moment, I could cheerfully have dismembered him myself.
Later that evening, nearly midnight, we sat in a row on Chasco's pallet, with the moonlight striking through the slatted window of his cell. It was the first chance we'd had to talk freely since arriving in the Sacellum. Rinn and the others had gone to sleep at last, lulled by the Daughters' excellent dinner and large but not lethal doses of masollar. The Sacellum was silent except for the pacing of a Daughter on sentry duty in the courtyard below Chasco's window and a grumble now and then from the mountaintop. Shree heaved the third in a succession of patient sighs.
"It was not the same woman, Tig. I keep telling you, the shint in Iklankish was shorter."
"How can you be so sure? You can't even remember her face. How can you possibly remember how tall she was?"
"I know my own tastes. In those days, I would never have chosen such a tall shint. I always liked them short and fairly rounded, like Lissula. This one was at least your height."
"And thin," Chasco put in judiciously.
I glared at him with no effect, and turned back to Shree. "But she fled at the sight of you—"
"She wouldn't be the first."
"This is serious, Shree!"
He sighed again. "Not as serious as you make out. There are several possible explanations. She fumbled, the pot slipped, she was embarrassed. Maybe she was afraid she'd be punished for disrupting the welcoming ceremony—were you watching her at the time?"
"No," I confessed.
"Neither was I. How can we be certain it was the sight of me that startled her? What does the Lady say?"
"The Lady says nothing, and I wouldn't ask her."
We sat in awkward silence for a few moments, listening to the slow scrape of the sentry's feet in the courtyard.
"What was the Daughter's name a
gain?" asked Chasco.
"Carrinay. Coll said she was also called the woman-from-over-the-sea, all run together, like a title, and another title in a language I couldn't identify. From over the sea, indeed! That's a strong-smelling bit of evidence, Shree. Iklankish was over the sea."
"Everywhere is over the sea from here," Shree replied serenely, "and the name Carrinay doesn't pluck a string in my memory."
I banged my fist on the pallet. "I still say we should get you out of here."
He chose not to hear that. "There's another thing. She may have been looking at me when she dropped the jar, but not when she turned and ran."
"What do you mean?"
"She was looking past me—maybe at you. You and your bride were in that direction."
"She was veiled, how could you possibly tell—" I began, with some heat.
Chasco laid a hand on my arm. He rose and glided to the window. "Hush," he whispered, "someone's come in."
We scrambled to join him. The moon was high, and flooded the courtyard with a strong silver light. A small group was crossing towards the processional door on the far side of the court, from the direction of the outer gate: three women in robes that looked black in the moonlight, a youth in a white gown carrying a white bundle in his arms. The processional door opened and two dark figures emerged without hurrying, one of them very short. They waited in the shadows by the door.
"It's the Kalkissann," I whispered, "home from Villim."
"Yes, and the Divinatrix to greet him. What's he carrying?" Chasco leaned past me to see better. "A child, it looks like."
"There was a child with them this afternoon."
"I'd forgotten. That's it, then." Chasco's whisper broke off as the two groups met and their voices rose clearly to us in the stillness.
The Divinatrix said in Vassashin, in a sharpish tone, "You're very late. I was about to send Lorosa down to look for you."
The youth transferred his burden into the arms of Valsoria's tall companion. "He wouldn't be dragged away—you know what he's like when madam his mother isn't there, with respect, madam. But we thought it would do no harm. You know how much these outings mean to him, being with the other sprogs and all."
Laying her hand on Valsoria's shoulder, the woman holding the child murmured something too softly for us to catch. She turned to the door, at the same time gently shifting the child so that he was clasped upright in her arms, with his head cushioned on her shoulder. His hair shone almost white in the moonlight against the dark gown. It caught strangely at my memory. As they disappeared through the door, the mountain underlined the moment with an almighty rumble.
I became aware then that the Lady was prickling insistently at the back of my skull. Even when I bit my hand to shut her up, I could still feel her, keeping her own counsel for the time being, but twanging with expectation. I looked down at the courtyard again, empty now; even the sentry had followed Valsoria through the door. Nothing there to justify the Lady's excitement. I shut my eyes, expecting to glimpse her, as I often did, shadowy indecipherable face, crackling clouds of hair, mist-wrapped, but the only inner vision was of a small head gleaming in the moonlight against a black silk shoulder.
Someone was shaking my arm.
"For the last time, Tig, what do you think?"
"About what?" I blinked at Shree.
"Haven't you been listening? What do you think of Chasco's plan?" When I continued to stare at him blankly, he groaned and pounded his fist on his forehead a couple of times, and said, "Listen carefully. If we try to leave now we'll have to steal a boat and load it with provisions, which we'll also have to steal, and there's a high risk that we'll be caught before we get off, and then we'll never have another chance, right? Because the Frath Major will lock you up from that moment until the very moment we land in Cansh Miishel—not to mention what that she-devil you're married to might do."
I shuddered at the thought. "So? What are we supposed to do instead? Buy a boat?"
"Why not? You've got that bag of palots your uncle gave you—two hundred palots should cover one of these miserable little fishing scows and enough stores to get us past Zaine."
"True. But if the Frath Major caught wind of it—"
"Why should he? Tell him, Chasco."
Chasco sat forward and spoke in a low voice. "My lord Tigrallef, there is a custom among the Zainoi for large ships sailing near the southern current to tow a smaller ship behind them—they call it the lorsk, which means the gift."
"Yes, I've heard of that. Then if the ship gets into trouble with the current, they cut the lorsk adrift as a sacrifice to the sea-gods, in hopes the ship itself will be set free. So?"
"So we buy a boat from the fishermen in Villim, telling them it's for a lorsk. And we get them to provision it, my lord, because a lorsk is always sent to the sea-gods loaded with goods, and sometimes slaves as well, or very junior members of the crew. And we tell them it's a gift for the Frath—"
"Wait. My honourable cousin-by-marriage is not stupid enough to swallow that."
"He won't hear about it. We tell them it's to be a surprise, my lord, and we give them enough palots to encourage them to keep their mouths shut. It should only be for a few days at the most. Say, until the last night we're to spend in the Sacellum."
They both looked at me eagerly while I thought it over. I did like this plan, except for one thing. Staying meant taking a chance on the woman Carrinay's continued silence; for however Shree judged her height, there was still a chance she was the shint from Iklankish, and that she had recognized his face. Why should we wait until the knives were at his vitals? But still . . . Chasco's was the better plan.
"All right," I said at last, "we'll buy ourselves a lorsk."
I felt dead in every bone when I got back to my own cell—separate from Rinn for a blessed change, since celibacy was enforced until the divinatory process was complete, and I must say that the thought of even a narrow pallet all to myself was delicious—but I couldn't sleep. This was the Lady's fault. She was still excited about something; she felt like a flock of moths whispering their wings in the back of my head and the damnedest part was that there were words in the whispers, just on the edge of being comprehensible, and it was impossible not to strain to understand. I lay grimly on my back, in britches I was too tired to shed, with my eyes open and my arms stiffly at my sides, while the moon-stripes spent an immensely long time in crossing the wall at the end of the pallet. At last I sat up and propped my chin on the windowsill and gazed sourly through the slats at the empty courtyard.
A quiet rasping across the way; the processional door opened and a tall figure stood silhouetted in the glowing yellow rectangle. I sat up straight, nerves coming alive. The figure moved as it drew the door shut behind it and was momentarily caught crosswise in the light—long enough for me to see the black silk overlying the scarlet, before the light thinned and vanished and the figure moved out on to the silver-washed pavement. Now she looked all black again, a pillar of darkness, but it was Carrinay, all right, unless there was more than one tallish Daughter who wore a black surplice. She walked almost soundlessly across the courtyard towards the outer gate.
I grabbed my boots and tunic, but didn't pause to pull them on. Barefoot, shirtless, I was out of the door of my cell in under two seconds, flying along the dim corridor, missing the stairway, casting back to find it, leaping down three risers at a time, stopping at the bottom with my back pressed against the wall. The hallway leading to the outer gate was just to my right; I poked my head around the corner, heard the gateway easing open, felt a draught on my face, heard the gate snick shut. The woman I presumed to be Carrinay had left the Sacellum.
I followed, with only the vaguest idea of what I'd do when I caught up with her. My knife was back in the cell, and even if I'd had it with me, the poor woman's blood was too high a price to pay for our safety. All I could think of was to hail her in some isolated place, to talk with her, to discover if she had indeed been Shree's shint in the warco
urt; and, if so, to make her see that Shree was Selki now, a Gilman, a reformed character, an exemplar of virtue, anxious to apologize in person for the clouting he'd given her in Iklankish.
When I crept through the gate, Carrinay was just disappearing around the corner of the Sacellum, to my left. I stopped long enough to pull my boots and tunic on, then sidled along the wall and peered cautiously around the corner. Although she was not in sight, the only path she could have taken was a narrow alley between the Sacellum and the high wall of an adjacent warehouse; when I held my breath, I could even hear her footsteps.
I followed her by sound through the rising tangle of outbuildings that lay beside the Sacellum, and caught sight of her again when I paused in the ruins of a byre on the outskirts. She was already free of the settlement by then, climbing a steep slope into a field of pale boulders and scrubby dead bushes. I lost sight of her again almost at once, though I could hear her feet echoing hollowly on the naked rock.
I hurried to catch her up, depending on the clatter of my boots to announce me, intending to wave in a reassuring manner as soon as she was in sight again; but just as I reached the shadows among the boulders, the footsteps above me stopped. I looked up. She was not more than thirty feet diagonally above me, peering down from the brink, and I was deep in the shade where she couldn't see me. She called out in a low voice, in Vassashin, "Who is it? Who's there? Are you following me?"
I froze. The voice was familiar, but impossible.
"I know someone's there. Come out and show yourself."
Still I could not move—disbelief, mostly, also an atavistic chill that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. The dead are supposed to be beyond speaking.
"Who's there? Show yourself at once." Her voice was louder; a note of impatience had crept in.
Gil Trilogy 2: Scion's Lady Page 20
