Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [65]
“No doubt such an act of piety would be bound to please great Bel.”
Obyn considered him, while his young companion looked wistfully at the flagon of ale on the table.
“The question is why Bel is angry with us,” Obyn said finally. “A sacrifice will fail if a curse hangs over the land.”
“And does His Holiness think there is such a curse?” Gweran said.
“His Holiness doesn’t know.” Obyn allowed himself a thin-lipped smile. “A priest may read the omens of the future, but only a bard can read the past.”
Gweran sighed when he realized what Obyn was asking of him: that life-draining ritual of the Opening of the Well, where a bard may dream himself into the past and talk with the spirits of those long dead. He was tempted to refuse, but if there was no crop?
“A bard may try to read the past, Your Holiness, but I can only see what my Agwen shows me. By her grace, I’ll be of some use. Will you witness?”
“I will, and gladly. Tonight?”
“And why not? When the moon is rising, I’ll come to the temple.”
To rest before his ordeal, Gweran went up to his chambers on the third floor of the broch, two rooms opening off the central landing by the spiral staircase, one for his children and servant, one for himself and his wife. The main chamber displayed Lord Maroic’s proper generosity to his bard: a heavy bed hung with embroidered hangings, a carved chest, a table and two chairs, and a small Bardek carpet. On the table stood his two harps, the small plain lap harp, the tall heavily carved standing harp for formal presentations. Gweran idly plucked a few strings and smiled at the soft, resonant echo.
As if the sound were a signal, his wife, Lyssa, came in through the door of the children’s chamber. Although she was a pretty woman, with raven-dark hair and large blue eyes, her greatest beauty was her voice, soft, husky, with a musical lilt to it like wind in the trees. Her voice had snared Gweran’s heart from the first time he’d heard it, those ten long years ago when she was a lass of fifteen and he at twenty-five could finally think of marrying after his, long training.
“There you are, my love,” Lyssa said. “Are the priests still down in the hall? I came up here to get away from them.”
“Oh, they’re gone, I’m going to the temple tonight to work with them.”
Lyssa gasped, her soft lips parting. Laughing, Gweran took her hands in his.
“Oh, now here, they won’t lay me on the altar like in the Dawntime.”
“I know. There’s just somewhat about priests that makes you feel better if they never look your way. Do you want to sleep? I’ll keep the lads outside if you do.”
“My thanks, because I’d better.”
That night, Gweran fasted through the evening meal. Just at twilight, he fetched his gray gelding from the stables and rode out through a twilight as hot as a summer noon. Overhead in the opalescent sky, the full moon hung bloated on the horizon, shedding its silver light over farmland and forest. Four miles to the north of the dun stood the temple, built of wood and roofed with thatch, set among a small stand of oaks. When Gweran led his horse into the trees, a young priest was there to meet him, moving surefooted in the darkness. He took the reins of Gweran’s horse.
“I’ll take it round to the stable. His Holiness is waiting for you in the temple.”
Inside the small circular shrine, candle lanterns cast a pool of golden light before the stone altar. Draped in the long white cloak of ritual working, Obyn stood off to one side, his hands raised to the statue of the god, carved of a single oak trunk whose bark still clung for clothes on the abstract body. The head itself was beautifully modeled, with great staring eyes and a mobile mouth; two wooden heads hung by their wooden hair from its delicate hands. Lying in front of the altar was a thick pile of tanned white sheepskins.
“Is the temple suitable for the working?” Obyn said.
“It is, if the god will allow my goddess to share his abode.”
“I have no doubt that Great Bel will allow