Gift of the Goddess

by Denise Rossetti

  Early on the second morning, the link flared out of nowhere, boiling with a dark blend of excitement, aggression and rage. Gasping, Anje clutched Trey’s arm. “Something’s happening! An escape! He’s breaking out!”

  Trey pulled the vran to a halt. For heart-pounding minutes, they sat in silence, Trey’s cheek pressed to Anje’s as if he could feel the Bond link through the bones of her skull.

  “Shit!” She reared back, clapping a hand to her upper arm. It burned with the distant echo of a bright, slashing pain. “Brin, it’s not working! Stop, stop!” A dull ache bloomed at her temple and the link winked out. “Mother!” Anje slumped forward over Brownie’s neck.

  “Anje, Anje!” Trey pulled her back into his arms. “What is it? Is he—?”

  She drew a shaky breath. “He, he’s—” Like a cloud-covered moon reflected in deep water, the link shimmered back into being. “All right. Thank the Mother.”

  Trey hugged her tight. “I swear I’ll strangle him with my bare hands! He shouldn’t take such risks.”

  Anje laughed weakly. “Brin accept captivity? Not possible.” She twisted in his arms to drop a kiss on his cheek. “Relax, the Mother gave him a mighty hard head.”

  Thereafter, Anje scouted ahead on foot, though when they heard fellwolves howling in the distance, it made Trey furious with fear for her. Late in the afternoon, they tethered the vranee under the trees and she led him, slithering on their bellies, to the edge of an escarpment.

  Cautiously, they peered over the edge. “There.” She indicated with her chin.

  Far below, the Hssrda caravan wound down a well-marked trail. Two moving pinkish-brown knots of bodies must be the slaves, naked, bound together and driven like beasts. Sunlight glinted on halberds and the air was so still, they could hear the occasional whistled command and once, a thin scream.

  “Lufra’s tits!”

  Anje turned to Trey, but he was squinting at the sky. She followed his gaze. The Shadow had eaten a quarter of the Sun.

  She wriggled back out of sight. “What?”

  “We’re running out of time.”

  “You mean for Brin?”

  He cut her a glance from under his extravagant lashes. “Well, yes, but the Day of the Dark is getting close awfully fast.” She opened her mouth and he said hastily, “I’ll explain later. Come on.”

  He tugged her arm, but she planted her feet. “Don’t mess with me, Trey. The link aches and it makes me cranky. Explain now! And while you’re at it, I want to know about being a prince.”

  “All right, all right!” His lower lip jutted and he glared. “Get on the bloody vran, woman, and I’ll tell you.”

  She waited until Brownie was picking his way down the slope toward the trail. Trey hadn’t spoken. “Well?”

  His knuckles tightened on the rein. “My mother is the Queen of Feolin,” he said baldly and stopped.

  Gods, it was like drawing teeth! “Go on.”

  “It really doesn’t matter,” he said and fell silent.

  How the gods must be laughing! For an instant, she had a vision of the Mother’s wise, gentle face, a finger held to her lips. “Will you be king?” she asked, her heart sinking.

  Trey let out a gusty breath. “Thank Lufra, no. I have a sister. There have been no kings since—” He broke off.

  “Brin told me. Since the king raped Lufra’s priestess.”

  “Yes,” he said heavily. “My great-grandfather, gods rot him.”

  “Is Brin royal too?”

  “Brin?” Trey laughed. “He’d be insulted. Brin’s father was a blacksmith. Everything he’s achieved has been without the benefit of privilege.” There was pride in his tone and fondness. She thought he would speak just so of a gifted, much loved son and her heart turned over.

  Before she could drown in her own honey, she steeled herself to ask, “What has the Day of the Dark got to do with anything?”

  Trey pulled Brownie up. “Better shut up now. I can see the trail through the trees.”

  Anje twisted to stare into his face. He looked so bland as to be positively shifty. “I won’t forget, Trey.”

  He sighed. “I know. Just remember you promised you’d never leave me.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Queendom has no diplomatic contact in this lawless part of the Sitariat-Gillen Tableland. Feolin citizens are strongly advised to avoid The Hollows. Those intending to travel despite this warning should take their own guards and, if possible, an experienced healer.

  Travel Advisory for the Sitariat-Gillen Tableland, issued by the Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Office, Feolin, 10351 ATF.

  They waited a few hundred yards off the trail until near dark, but whenever the wind shifted, they could smell the stench of The Hollows, an amalgam of uncured hides, crowded humanity and mud.

  “Look tough and keep moving,” Trey advised, boosting Anje onto the big, turquoise vran. He loosened his sword in the scabbard. “But don’t hold anyone’s eye too long. We don’t want them to get ideas about Twink, or us.”

  Privately, Anje thought Trey would fit right in. The auburn beard shadowing his jaw was complemented by a scowl that curled his lip in a vicious sneer. His clothes were so torn and filthy, it was impossible to tell they’d once been fine. He looked capable of anything, a perfect thug. She wondered that she’d ever thought him merely pretty.

  The first signs of habitation were rough shanties. Some boasted scrubby vegetable plots, a few a skinny herdbeast. The only person they saw was a sullen woman bowed by the weight of the two buckets she carried on a pole across her shoulders. Setting them down, she stared without expression then retreated into a tumbledown shed.

  The Hollows itself straggled along under the shadow of the escarpment, bracketed by the outfall of a stream on one side and the trail on the other. The water flowed merrily enough down from the tableland but it stalled on level ground, smearing into a chain of marshy pools.

  The trail grew muddier and the vranee lifted their hooves, whistling with discomfort as the filth caked their leg feathers.

  Anje wrinkled her nose. “By the Mother, what is that stench?”

  Trey chuckled without humor. “Take your pick. There’s a tannery, a mine, a nice swamp and any number of liquor stills. Or it could be the slave pens.”

  Anje’s guts knotted. She shut her mouth and tried not to breathe.

  The single main street was bordered by a rough wooden boardwalk and unlit save for the feverish wash of light from the windows of the shabby buildings. Most of them seemed to be taverns or brothels or both.

  She’d thought there might at least be music, but the only noise was a low, constant rumble of conversation, punctuated by the occasional shout or the crash of something breaking.

  Anje shivered. Mother, what a hideous place! No wonder the Hssrda liked it.

  Instinctively, she reached for Brin, only to encounter a blank wall, almost as if he’d turned his back. Puzzled, she pushed at it with her mind, only to gasp as he shoved back—hard.

  Holy Mother, he was trying to send them away! The ungrateful, arrogant—

  “Look out!” Trey’s shout jerked her head up.

  A knot of men boiled out of a doorway and tumbled off the boardwalk into the mud, kicking and gouging. She caught a glimpse of a pale, skinny leg, mottled with bruises, but unmistakably feminine.

  The tangle of bodies resolved itself into three men and a girl, all liberally spattered with filth. One of the men straightened, both hands wrapped around the girl’s throat. He was tall and cadaverously thin, but his grip was powerful enough to keep her on tiptoes.

  “Garn, Fettle!” called one of his companions. “Kill the thievin’ slut!”

  The girl raked at the throttling hands, leaving bloody furrows. Her eyes bulged and blood congested her face.

  Metal rasped and Anje glanced at Trey in time to see him free his sword, his face grim and set. The two men watching were skinny, with the stunted build of the undernourished, but their arms were roped with musc
le. She thought they might be tanners or miners. They urged Fettle on, yelling obscenities, faces alight with excitement and self-righteous fury.

  The girl gave a hideous, choking gargle. Anje palmed her forearm blade and flipped it neatly into Fettle’s biceps.

  As he howled with pain and surprise, all hell broke loose.

  Fettle dropped the girl and she fell into the mud, a limp, unmoving bundle. Trey leaped off Brownie and moved to intercept the man’s friends. And from out of nowhere charged a yelling fury, brandishing a heavy skillet.

  It was a woman, the most enormous woman Anje had ever seen, nearly as big as Brin. The pan connected with the skull of one man with a resounding clang. His knees buckled and he collapsed without a sound. As Trey advanced on the remaining man with drawn sword, he broke and ran.

  But Fettle was made of stronger stuff. Jerking the knife from his arm with an oath, he closed the distance to Twink in a couple of loping bounds. He was on Anje before she had time to blink, clawing at her thigh.

  She heard a roar of rage. Fettle grunted and his back arched as the tip of Trey’s sword emerged from his chest. For a moment, he stared down, startled. Then his eyes rolled up and he folded up limb by limb, like a marionette.

  “Don’t stand there, ye silly fookers! Git!” The monstrous woman slung the girl over one shoulder as if she was a roll of carpet and disappeared down an alleyway at a lumbering trot. Her hoarse voice floated back to them. “Coom on!”

  With a swelling rumble of noise, the door of the tavern banged open and half a dozen dark figures streamed onto the boardwalk. Trey vaulted onto Brownie in a single, fluid motion and they took off down the alley at a racketing canter, following the pale shape of the woman’s baggy trousers in the gloom.

  For ten minutes, she led them though a maze of narrow, jinking paths, until she turned into a patch of darkness and disappeared. Anje slid off Twink and scanned her surroundings. She faced a scabrous hovel, clinging like a poultice to the side of a larger building.

  The woman’s head popped around the door. “Git in here!” she hissed. “An’ bring yon beasties wit ye!” She disappeared again.

  “I doubt they’ll fit,” said Trey dryly, but the approaching sounds of pursuit prompted him to dismount, sword still naked in his hand, and lead a reluctant Brownie forward. “Let me go first, love. You watch my back.”

  Coaxing and swearing, he got the vran through the door. At the sound of his startled exclamation, Anje tensed, but then he called softly, “Come on. It’s safe.”

  Twink objected to small, dark doorways and he made his displeasure known with piercing, whistling honks. In desperation, Anje applied her shoulder to his feathered rump and shoved as Trey pulled. Like a cork in a bottle, Twink was squeezed through the opening and Anje slid in after him and pulled the door to.

  Her jaw dropped. A sullen fire burned on the hearth, but what it revealed was completely unexpected. The lean-to was no more than an antechamber. Someone had knocked a man-sized hole through the wall of the larger building adjacent to it. Peering, Anje thought she could make out a broad staircase, an echoing hall.

  “Hold this.” The woman thrust a candle at her and lit it with a taper from the fire. As it flared, she crouched over the supine body of the girl, her broad buttocks straining the seam in her trousers.

  Her ham-like hands patted the girl’s limbs. She wasn’t particularly gentle. “Stupid bint.” She prized up an eyelid and grunted. “She’ll live, though.”

  Rising, she stared at them through narrowed eyes. “I owe ye.” Her face was as doughy as the rest of her, with eyes set deep in the flesh, like dark stones in a pudding. A braid of thick iron-gray hair fell over one broad shoulder. Despite the words, there was no gratitude in her expression, only calculation.

  “I’m Nilda. Yon gormless whore’s Braithie.” She jerked her head at the limp figure on the floor. “She ain’t quite reet in the head, thievin’ from such as Fettle.”

  Setting her hands on her hips, she stared at them, taking in every detail. Her lips were surprisingly thin in all that flesh and they curved with satisfaction. “But ye settled his hash fer good an’ all.” She paused. “Yer strangers here. What d’ye want?”

  Trey shot Anje a glance. “For tonight, we need a place to stay.”

  “I pay me debts,” said Nilda. “Tonight. And that’s it.”

  Braithie stirred, coughing. “Ma…”

  Anje’s stomach lurched. Surely, the girl wasn’t Nilda’s daughter?

  “Nah, it’s me, Nilda.” The big woman hunkered down and held a gourd to Braithie’s lips, supporting her head with the other hand. “Slowly,” she said, as the girl gulped.

  “Agreed,” said Trey. “But tomorrow we’re going to buy a slave from the Hssrda. We’ll pay for another night’s lodging and your silence.”

  “Trey!” Anje grabbed his arm. What was he talking about? Buy Brin? With what? And she’d rather wrestle farengs on the nest than trust this woman.

  “Well, Nilda?” he pressed. “This is a good squat. I don’t suppose you want others to know of it, men like Fettle?”

  Nilda stood, towering over them. Anje felt Trey loosen his shoulders, rock on the balls of his feet. “Ye got money then?” said the big woman.

  Trey nodded. “Show me a pawnbroker.”

  Nilda spat on one palm and held out her hand. “Tonight fer the debt. Tomorrow a gold half-mark.” Without hesitation, Trey shook. “But fer me silence and Braithie’s. Weel.” She scratched her head. “A gold mark.”

  “Nonsense,” said Trey sturdily and they settled down to bargain.

  Shaking her head with amazement, Anje took her candle and stepped through the hole in the wall. Even when she lifted it high, the ceilings of the hall remained shrouded in gloom. It must once have been a grand whorehouse, but now the windows were boarded over and there were dark gaps in the floorboards where things rustled and squelched. Anje shuddered and started up the stairs, testing each step at a time.

  The floor above was a rabbit warren of rooms, those close to the front of the building larger than the others. No wall was unstained, no door hung straight. There was not one stick of furniture.

  The echoes of lust and greed and ancient violence hovered in the dank air. The hair on the back of Anje’s neck stood up. Shielding her candle with a careful hand, she turned to retrace her steps.

  Two small rooms under the staircase were obviously inhabited by Nilda and Braithie, because the doors had rough bolts.

  By the time Anje had carried the saddlebags up to the room she’d selected, Nilda and Trey had come to an agreement. Apparently it included stabling for the vranee in the hovel, bowls of some stewy stuff that was barely edible and a moldy mattress. Trey seemed well pleased.

  Anje could hardly wait to get him alone. “Mother of Mercy, are you mad? Buy Brin?”

  “Think about it, sweetheart. Why else would they let us in?”

  Put that way, it did make sense.

  “We’ll have to sell the vranee,” she said, her heart sinking.

  “Twink’s worth more than Brin is.” Trey’s sharp bark of laughter had shards of pain in it. “But I won’t sell Brin’s most valuable sire. His bloodlines are priceless.” He wrestled with his boots. “There’s another way.”

  “Then it’ll have to be Brownie.” Anje sighed. She’d grown fond of the sturdy old vran.

  Trey pulled out his dagger and dug it into the heel of his boot. “No it won’t. Anyway, how do you think we’re going to get away? Aha!” With a flourish, he pulled off the heel and extracted a roll of gold leaf from the cavity. He waggled his eyebrows. “See? Not just a pretty face.”

  Anje laughed as he started work on the second boot. Then she sobered. “I don’t know anything about the slave trade. Will it be enough?”

  “Gods, no! But I’m thinking if we can muster up a deposit to get the Hssrda’s attention, we might be able to…improvise the rest.”

  “So why did you want a pawnbroker?”

  Trey dr
ew a velvet pouch from his saddlebag and shook the contents into his hand. “For this.”

  She recognized it at once. It was a pair of Bond torques, breathtakingly beautiful, inset with fire opals nestled in whorls of fine gold filigree. The locks of hair in them ranged from auburn to brown, to Trey’s own red-gold. “Trey, no! You can’t sell those!”

  He worked the point of his dagger under the largest stone and pried it loose. “You want Brin back?”

  On the verge of tears, Anje slid an arm around him and rested her head on his shoulder, watching as he desecrated something sacred and precious.

  “We can’t go to the Hssrda dressed like this,” she said slowly. “One of them might recognize us.”

  “I know. I’ll see what I can find.”

  When she would have spoken, he laid a finger across her lips. “Listen, sweetheart, you’re a scout, right? When it’s about tracking or the lay of the land, I listen to you, but I know more about places like The Hollows than you do.”

  Miserably, she nodded. “You stay here,” he went on. “That way, if something happens to me, Brin still has a chance.” Tucking the pouch of stones into the front of his shirt, he dropped a kiss on her hair and ran down the stairs.

  The dusty room seemed very empty without Trey’s cheerful presence. Anje curled a tendril of thought around the Bond link. Mother, she missed Brin! This must be what it was like to lose a limb. Still, it was infinitely better now than it had been. He was close.

  She caught him with his guard down. He was bored and still furious, with a grim dark anger that frightened her with its intensity. But when she reached out for him, he was there instantly, with a warm blast of love and lust so powerful that heat tingled all through her body from scalp to toes. Almost immediately, the warmth was replaced by angry concern. She had no difficulty discerning the emotional flavor of his thoughts. What the hell were they doing?