Bones of the Dragon - Margaret Weis [32]
Fear such as Draya had never known squeezed her heart. She couldn’t breathe, and she felt faint and dizzy. She was terrified for a moment that she was going to pass out. Her heart started beating with a lurch, and the horrible sensation passed. She drew in a shivering breath.
Half-hidden between the folds of flesh and his leather tunic, the torque was difficult to see. Draya herself would not have noticed anything was amiss if she had not been warned to look for it. She was willing, even eager, to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he had taken it off when he traveled, put it away somewhere safe.
Horg betrayed himself. He saw Draya’s eyes fixed on his pudgy neck, and he went white, the blood draining from his face all at once, turning as pale as a dead fish’s belly. He sealed his fate by raising his hand to the golden torque and trying clumsily to thrust it beneath his tunic.
Draya did not know what he had done, but she knew it must be awful. She could not confront him there, not before the people. He was their Chief. They must continue to have some confidence in his ability to lead; otherwise, there would be dissension, quarrels, rebellion—a clan at war with itself. She had to remove Horg from the crowd in order to question him alone and find out the truth.
“The Chief and I will go to the Great Hall to pray,” Draya said, trying to remain calm. “We will ask the gods for their verdict.”
Horg blenched, licked his lips, and swallowed a couple of times. He might have lost his faith in the gods, but he still harbored a superstitious dread of them. He managed a sour smile.
“Undoubtedly the gods have better things to do than listen to us, but if you think it right, Priestess, we will go speak to Torval again.” He laid emphasis on the last word.
Draya bowed in silence, afraid to trust herself to answer. She turned and walked back toward the temple, the crowd parting to allow her passage. Horg caught up with her. Under the guise of offering her assistance, he took hold of her arm and gave it a painful squeeze.
“You’ll be sorry,” he breathed in her ear.
“I am certain of that,” Draya returned coldly.
She stared at him, unafraid, until he let loose and, muttering something about needing another drink, stalked off toward the Great Hall on his own.
CHAPTER
6
Back in the village of Luda, the beacon fire blazed, lighting up the night sky. Women who had volunteered to leave the safety of the caves supervised the roasting of the boar on a spit over a much smaller fire. The spit was crude, for it had been hastily constructed; meat for the household was generally boiled, not roasted.
The feast would be held in the Chief’s Hall. Men hauled in trestles and placed them at intervals down the length of the hall, then laid large planks on the trestles to form a single long table, with wooden benches ranging along either side. Other women returned to their homes to bake round, flat loaves of bread and to dish up meat and vegetables from the family stewpots that were always kept bubbling over the kitchen fires. Men carried in casks of foaming ale and lit the torches, both outside the hall and within.
Akaria, Goddess of the Waters, held up her lantern, shedding silver light on the waves that were her province. The warriors gathered in the Chief’s Hall. They were dressed in their finest, wearing the silver and gold torques, armbands, and bracelets that had been given to them or their fathers as reward for courageous actions in battle. The women, who under normal circumstances would have graced the feast, had fled back to the hills, where they fed the beacon fire and tended to Norgaard’s young wife, Sonja, who had gone into early labor.
Though the warriors were decked out for a celebration, their mood was far from festive. Every member of the Torgun Clan was acutely aware of the beacon fire blazing atop the cliffs. Norgaard had cautioned the warriors not to draw attention to it by staring at it, but they could not help themselves. They roamed about outside the Chief