Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [129]
Hir-li barked an order. Two Horsekin in gold surcoats rose and stepped forward, their faces betraying no feeling at all.
“He’s telling them that keeping the men brave was their charge.” The boy paused, listening. “And they failed.” Another pause. “The Keepers will open their bodies up and take their hearts and send their souls to the Goddess for judging.”
Tren winced. No one else, not even the doomed Horsekin, made the slightest sound or gesture. At Hir-li’s wave, the squad of Keepers grabbed the two officers, pulling off their surcoats, then binding their hands behind them. The assembled captains allowed themselves a slight sigh as the pair were marched off.
“What will happen to the regiment?” Tren whispered.
“Every eighth man will be raised on the long spears. That’s what always happens. It’s all luck who. They line them up and then start the counting out wherever the Keepers decide. No one can move once they start counting.”
“Ah. I see.”
Hir-li spoke again, more calmly this time, pausing often to bow to the high priestess.
“They need leaders to volunteer for a dangerous mission up in the hills,” the boy told Tren. “The men from the First who live through the counting out will go fight, to redeem themselves, like. But they need new captains.”
Two Horsekin officers stood and bowed to the warleader. To judge from the scant amount of gold thread woven into their surcoats, they were of some low rank and eager for a chance to better their position. Hir-li nodded his approval of the volunteers, then bent down to listen as the priestess murmured a few words.
“Lord Tren?” Hir-li called out. “Her Holiness wishes you to accompany her on this raid. She says that you’ll have a chance to kill the man who killed your brother.”
Tren rose, smiling.
“The Goddess’s will is my will, Rakzan Hir-li.”
And in this case, he was speaking the truth.
The silver river that flowed past Evandar’s pavilion broadened as it approached the sea. The army saw no tributaries feed into it; the river merely grew deeper and wider, though the water flowed slower and slower, until at the estuary it oozed like quicksilver through green rushes till it merged with a peacock-blue ocean, lying under lavender light. At the shore, slow waves crept up, foamed silver, and placed themselves, seemingly a drop at a time, upon pale sand.
“Downward!” Evandar cried.
At his signal, the men walked their horses into the lacy surf. The horses snorted, tossing their heads, then suddenly calmed when their hooves found sure footing. A long turquoise road led down an easy slope, down and down into the water, under the water, through the water, so that the army seemed to ride in a world turned to green glass. The sunlight dimmed as the road sank, till at the bottom among the waving fronds and tendrils there shone an emerald twilight. In the gloom, figures darted by, but whether they were fish or dolphin or humanlike was impossible to tell. Ahead, the road stretched level toward a mound of dark at the end of their vision.
“And I’d wager that she hides inside,” Evandar remarked. “Menw, you and the men stay here. My brother and I will go see what we can see.”
Shaetano tossed up his head and looked this way and that, but he said not a word against the plan—he didn’t dare, Evandar assumed. They dismounted, turned their horses over to Menw for safekeeping, and walked together toward the undersea hill. They’d gone not a few yards when Shaetano’s foot kicked something lying on the road. When it drifted up with a flash of light, he stooped and caught a little bell, worked of gold with a handle of amethyst.
“And who would have dropped a trinket like that?” Evandar held out his hand. “Give it over, brother.”
With a snarl, Shaetano did so. Evandar slipped it inside his shirt as they walked on. To either side of the road, the drifting shapes swam closer, hovering above the water weeds and waving kelp. In the murk, they could make out the flash of a golden eye here, the glitter of a silver fin there, but no one called out or said a word to them. They’d gone a fair ways