Bloodwalk - James P. Davis [32]
Baertah had a slight build, thin and wiry. His hands were well manicured, as was the fashion among the nobility in larger cities. His pale, unblemished face, perfumed with oils, contrasted with his deep black eyes, making them appear larger and giving him a feral look. Across his back was slung a bow and a quiver of arrows. The blade he carried was a thin rapier, an impractical weapon for a hunter, but popular in Derlusk and Littlewater.
Dreslya nodded to Elisandrya and walked to meet Baertah at the gates. Eli continued to needlessly check her packs and saddle harness. She felt no desire to watch Baertah ride by. She'd been at odds with the lord hunter on more than one occasion and had no need to rekindle old conflicts. She did not envy her sister's duty. As the acting Sibylite of the temple, Dreslya would accompany the lord hunter in the procession through the streets.
Elisandrya waited for the horns to be sounded again, the signal for the gates to be opened so the hunters could enter the city. She mounted Morningstar, her loyal steed named for the bright patch of white on his otherwise pitch black forehead. Reigning him in line with the other hunters, they approached the gates to make their way slowly to the temple.
Her eyes focused on the looming white walls of the temple, the center of Savras's faith in Shandolphyn's Reach, and she hoped to end this ordeal as quickly as possible. Curiosity, though, made her anxious to hear the high oracle's message. Rumors held that Sameska would be stepping down and naming a new high oracle due to her long absence of true prophecy and vision. Eli, however, had no such illusions about the woman. She knew Sameska too well to expect anything but total piety and barely concealed arrogance.
Eli's patience and nerves were already on edge here, in such close proximity to the people and places of her worst memories. She had more than one reason for dreading this return-the primary one waiting at the end of the hunters' parade to the temple.
Dres must have the resolve and fortitude of a hundred hunters, she thought, to face these things on a daily basis. But then, Dres never really found out what had happened. Shouldn't find out.
Eli lowered her head and rode on. Taking a deep breath, she banished her demons and tried to calm herself amid the confining walls and rigid lanes of the populated city. She felt a mild claustrophobia away from the open grassland of the Reach. The eyes of Brookhollow's citizens seemed to bore into her as they stood alongside the route of the hunters, silently casting fethra petals in front of the horses' hooves.
The scattering of the flowers before the host of hunters was a sign of dark times, as if saying the petals were useless and the faithful sought the blessings of their leaders. Eli noted that the onlookers threw down the petals, but each home kept a bundle of the dried leaves by the door in preparation for the growing sickness and the debilitating fever that was no doubt coming.
* * * * *
The sky was an impenetrable pitch beneath the singular tower of Jhareat. Though small globes of bluish light floated in a wide circle around its base, Khaemil did not need them.
His eyes were well suited to the absolute darkness in the ruins and forest beyond. He flexed his fingers, still numb from Morgynn's interrogation, and approached one of Talmen's wizard-priests from behind.
The mumbling man, lost in the trance of spell and prayer, paid no attention to the canomorph. The priest's face was hidden behind a mask resembling a bone devil. The skeletal image was pressed close to the tower wall as the priest carefully and feverishly inscribed the runes that tied the storms to the tower in knots of magic. The metal stylus he used dripped with an acidic ink that burned the symbols into the aged stonework. The scratching sounds it made, in tandem with others who worked alongside him, caused Khaemil to imagine the knuckles of the long dead