Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [72]
There were priests in the temple, male and female both, but they wore no special costume to identify themselves, merely a silver neckpiece with Karril’s blatantly phallic symbol engraved upon it. He began to approach one, but suddenly hesitated. What was he supposed to say? Excuse me, I really need to talk to your god in private, could you arrange an interview? How did you make contact with a godling, other than through prayer? He flushed as he considered what manner of worship Karril might require, and for the first time since coming gave serious consideration to turning back. He even glanced back the way he had come, as if to assure himself that his way out was unimpeded—
—and the worshipers were gone. All of them. The walls had been replaced by tapestried hangings, and a cool breeze flowed between them. Even the priests were gone, and the buffet table that had been set up by the back wall banished as if by sorcery. Only the central fountain remained, and the wine that poured from its ornate spigots was no longer red but crystal gold, and smelled like champagne.
“Well, well.” The voice came from behind him. “Look who’s come to be a guest at our festivities.”
He turned around to face the source of the voice, a woman of thirty or so clad in a few meager bits of silk. A lot of woman, and all in the right places. Shaggy blonde hair half-obscured the priest’s necklace she wore, but—like her clothing—obscured little else. He found his eyes wandering of their own accord to vistas that were better left unstudied, and at last managed to focus on an ornate piece of jewelry hanging precariously from her shoulder. “I need to find Karril,” he muttered. Bright jewelry glittered on a bed of tanned flesh at her waist, on her breast, down her arm. “I need to talk to him.” Did he sound as awkward as he felt? Her perfume came to him on the breeze and he felt an involuntary stiffening in his groin; given the gravity of his mission here, the response was doubly embarrassing. What kind of power did this woman have, that so easily overbore his self-control, his fears for Tarrant, his revulsion for the very temple that surrounded them?
And then it all came together. The jewelry. The illusion. His response to this woman ... and the woman herself. He forced himself to look upward, to meet her eyes. It was no easy task, given the alternatives.
“Karril?”
With a soft chuckle the woman bowed; it was a precarious angle for certain parts of her clothing. “At your service, Reverend. Whatever that service might be.”
“I didn’t ... that is ... I thought you were male.”
“Neither male nor female, as humans know gender. And either one, as the need of the moment dictates.” Her eyes sparkled flirtatiously. “Given the Hunter’s attitude toward women, I usually avoid the feminine in his presence. Too distracting. As for you ...” She glanced down at Damien’s crotch, imperfectly curtained by the hem of his shirt, and smiled. “Perhaps as a good host I should make things more comfortable....”
He never saw the change happen, though he watched it from start to finish. There was no surging of the earth-fae, as with Tarrant, and no melding of flesh from one form to another. One instant the woman was standing before him, and the next instant a man stood in her place. That simple. He was shorter than Damien, stouter, and slightly older. The tasteless brooches fastening his full velvet robe at the waist were the same ones the woman had worn, and jeweled rings flashed on his fingers as he gestured broadly to a couch some few yards away. “Will you be seated, Reverend? I can offer you refreshment, at least.”
He breathed in deeply and exhaled, trying to clear his head of the cloying perfume