Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [108]
It was about an hour after dawn of the next day that Lord Tren, walking at the edge of the captain’s camp, saw the raven flying home on slow wings. He stopped and watched her circle once over the army, which greeted her with cheers and upraised arms. She never flew directly over the city itself, he noticed; he supposed that she feared a lucky arrow shot from the defenders. Flapping once, then settling into a long glide, she came to earth not far from him at the open door of her tent, so like a real bird, hopping a little, shaking her wings, but so huge, that he shuddered. When servants rushed out to chase him away from the high priestess’s presence, he was glad to go.
Yet that night, after she’d granted Hir-li an audience, Raena, the name by which the men knew the high priestess, had Tren summoned. He followed a perfumed maidservant’s lantern through the dark camp to the high priestess’s tent, a particularly large one and set well apart from the others. In the night, it glowed softly from light within. At the tent flap stood two human eunuchs with long spears. The servant held the lantern high with one hand and pulled back the flap with the other.
“If the captain would enter?”
Tren ducked his head and stepped in, straightening up in a pale silver glow that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, as if light clung to the very walls and tent poles. Not far from the entrance, in the midst of this moon gleam, Raena sat on a chair made of curved wood and linen slings. Behind her he could see chests, a bed, various weapons and clothes, lying scattered on a carpet of red and gold. At her feet sat a thick leather cushion. She snapped her fingers and pointed.
“You may sit.”
“Her Holiness is very kind.”
Tren sat. She was wearing a long tunic, all embroidered with Horsekin-style designs in red and gold, and her long dark hair plumed back from her brow in Horsekin fashion, too, braided with charms and trinkets. Her short, almost stubby hands lay in her lap, unmoving as she considered him.
“Hir-li did tell me this noon that one of your men committed blasphemy.”
“He did, Your Holiness. He was put to death for it.”
Raena nodded once, as if considering what he’d said, then nodded again, and again, and again, her head bobbing back and forth, her body swaying with the motion, forward, back, forward, back, while Tren stared gape-mouthed. With one last plunge, she bent double, her head face-down in her lap. He half-rose, wondering if he should call for the servants. All at once she sat up, but with a strange sinuous motion, as if a rope were attached between her shoulder blades to pull her torso up. At the last moment, her head snapped up as well. She sat back in her chair, but another soul looked out from her eyes, and an alien smile curved her mouth. When she spoke, her voice rang hollow and booming.
“Lord Tren! I speak to you through the mouth of my priestess.”
Abruptly cold, Tren slid off the cushions and knelt to lift trembling hands to his Goddess, truly made flesh for this little while. She laughed in a long cackling peal and raised her hands to return his salute.
“Do you wish the death of your brother’s killer?” The voice pealed like bronze. “Do you crave his blood?”
“I do, O Beloved One, with all my soul.”
“The priestess will give you what you need to bring him down as he flies. She, too, wishes this man’s death, as do I.”
Tren was stunned—as he flew? Did she mean to say that this Rhodry, this misbegotten silver dagger, was another shape-changer?
“But if you receive this gift, you will have bound yourself to serve me and to slay my enemies, no matter who they may be, no matter how it might ache your heart. You must kill in my name. Do you hear me? Kill.