Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [35]
“It would be a fitting end, so fitting that I doubt the gods would be so kind to us. Well, here, should we go all the way to Cerrmor? If she does end up there, probably shell be arrested. Coryc made those messages pretty urgent.”
“True spoken, but if we don’t find her first, we don’t get the bounty.”
Although it was true, it was also so cold-blooded that Rhodry didn’t even know what to say to it.
“Let’s ride south for a bit longer,” Jill went on. “There’s a town not far from here, Muir it’s called, and there’s a temple of the Goddess there.”
Rhodry swore under his breath.
“I should have thought of that,” he said. “Sanctuary. Do you think she’d have the gall to seek it?”
“Why not? Gall seems to be the one thing she’s never lacked.”
If Mallona had indeed sought refuge with the Holy Ladies, they were going to have a fine time trying to get her out again. Gwerbret Coryc would have to confer with the gwerbret of this rhan, and if that worthy agreed, they would have to set up a judicial council that would meet outside the temple gates and present evidence to the High Priestess and the temple council. Only if the High Priestess agreed that Mallona was guilty would the Holy Ladies surrender her. Since every gwerbret in the kingdom grumbled that the priestess always sided with the woman in the case, no matter what, it was quite possible that Mallona would convince them with her lies and end up spending the rest of her life in the penitential rites of the temple. Penance was not going to be satisfying. Rhodry wanted to see her dead.
The sun was low and golden in the sky when they reached the rich farms of the temple’s lands, worked by free farmers who owed fealty to the High Priestess, not a lord. The temple itself rose on a hill behind high stone walls, an enormous complex for the time, spilling half down the hillside and guarded by iron-bound gates trimmed with silver interlace and the holy symbols of the Moon. Above the walls, among the towers of the various brochs inside, Rhodry could see trees growing, the dark green bushy cedars brought all the way from Bardek and coddled to keep them alive in this colder land. Although the gates stood open, Rhodry stopped his horse and dismounted the ritual hundred feet away. Jill would have to go on alone to this place that no man could enter or approach.
Beside the road was a stand of poplars, a water trough, a rail for tying horses, and a pleasantly carved wooden bench.
“At least you’ll be provided for, my love,” Jill said. “It shouldn’t take me long, truly, to ask a few questions of the priestesses. By law, they have to tell anyone who asks if Mallona’s in there. Oh, wait! That silver chain you found? It’s in my saddlebags, isn’t it, not yours?”
“I saw you put it there. Why?”
“I want to show it to the Holy Ladies, of course. They’ll know what it means.”
Rhodry watched as Jill rode the last hundred feet and dismounted at the gates. A small flock of priestesses ran to greet her. He heard one woman shriek; then everyone began to laugh, their high pure voices drifting down the hill. They’d probably thought Jill was a lad, he figured, and he smiled at the jest himself. Surrounded by the priestesses, Jill led her horse inside, and the gates closed behind her.
Rhodry watered his horse, tied it up, then sat down on the bench with a chunk of bread. It was pleasant in the warm shade, silent except for the buzz of a drowsy fly. Rhodry stretched his legs out in front of him and enjoyed the soldier’s luxury of merely sitting still in a safe place.
Like most Deverry men, Rhodry knew very little about the Old Lore, that worship of an ancient goddess which had come with the people of Bel from the Homeland, where it had seemed as dark and primitive then as it did now to the modern Deverrian mind. Aranrhodda was her name, and she had a magical cauldron which was always full, which would give every man his favorite meat and drink no matter how many kinds were called out of a single batch, and which would also poison those who had displeased the Goddess or one