Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [72]
“Every house has its cats,” Molin admitted cautiously, unsure where the conversation was headed, and all the more uncomfortable.
“Then you know that the mother cats teach their kittens to toy with their prey before they kill it. They know that the livelier the prey, the more nourishing the meal.”
There were easily a thousand philosophical, ethical, and religious reasons to argue with the Dyareelan priest. Molin chose not to utter any of them. He left the palace knowing it would be too long before his friend escaped into eternity and that he couldn’t allow the Bloody Hand of Dyareela to endure.
The next year was a grim one.
The Hands’ quest for ultimate purity forbade the inhibitions of alcohol unless it was mixed with blood and drunk with Dyareela’s blessing. They shuttered the taverns and breweries and turned executions into festivals. Men and women continued to drink and drink too much. Molin mixed more of his morning-after remedies than anything else, but people drank alone behind locked doors, mourning private losses, and increasingly wary of sharing confidences with anyone. It was an open secret that the only way to escape once the Hands’ suspicion had fallen on your shoulders was to point an accusing finger at someone else.
Everyone knew Molin Torchholder and nearly everyone offered him up to save themselves. Each time he talked or bought his way out of suspicion, and each time it was a little more difficult, a little more expensive. Like as not, he’d run out of luck before any of his nemesis schemes could be brought to fruition. A wise man might have swallowed his conscience and slunk out of town, but there was another new emperor in Ranke, a madman by the name of Ferrex, who’d slaughtered the Imperial commanders and replaced them with birds trained to recite his favorite orders. Compared to Ferrex and his birds, Molin chose the pain of his conscience.
One crisp autumn day, after a two-year absence, a handful of Irrune rode into Sanctuary, looking for a barrel or two of beer. The Irrune didn’t know the shifts of power inside Sanctuary, couldn’t have understood, and probably wouldn’t have cared if they had. Arizak’s young wife and his son’s wife had both given birth on the same auspicious day. He’d called for a celebration and, for a young Irrune rider, there were few honors greater than fetching their chief’s beer from the nearest, hapless settlement.
When no one would give them a barrel (the Irrune rejected any notion of payment), they went looking for unguarded barrels to steal. They found the Bloody Hands instead. Three of the Irrune—Arizak’s youngest brother and two companions—wound up upside down, skinless and bleeding on the black platform in front of the palace, but one was held back as a witness and sent home to tell Arizak that the Irrune would be the first to feel Dyareela’s wrath if they defiled Sanctuary again.
It was the wrong message sent to the wrong man.
The Irrune were raiders at heart. They would have raided Sanctuary eventually. The Hands gave them a good reason to come raid with vengeance in the spring of ’91. Sanctuary’s walls were weak and patched with rubble, but they were enough to ward off less than a hundred hell-bent horsemen. Sanctuary’s outlying settlements weren’t so fortunate. Those villagers and farmers who could run, ran to Land’s End for protection. Lord Serripines, who fancied that the gold his grain trade brought to Sanctuary bought him protection from the Bloody Hand of Dyareela as well, descended on the palace demanding protection for his family and the refugees cluttering his courtyard.
No apothecaries were consulted before or invited to Lord Serripines’ meeting with the Fist. Molin knew about it, of course; his ears were still the sharpest in Sanctuary. And he knew that the lord of Land’s End was doomed to dissatisfaction, but he didn’t guess that the Bloody Hands would send the same message to Lord Serripines that they’d sent to Arizak. The very next time Lady Serripines entered the city they were waiting for her. She was dead before Lord Serripines knew