The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [30]
“What be it to me? Ye gods, have you gone daft? If the town should find out—you up there, consorting with evil spirits—ye gods! I could be ruined! And you—think, woman! They love you not as it is. If they thought you to bring evil among them—”
With a toss of her head Raena tried to push past him. Verrarc caught her wrist in one hand and pulled her round to face him. He held the lantern high and let the light shine down upon her. In the flickering glow her lips seemed bruised, her entire face swollen.
“And just what might be so cursed important, Rae, that you would risk so much to have it? I’ll have the truth, and I’ll have it now.”
“Let me go!” She tried to pull her hand free, but he held on. “Oh very well! Truly, it were time. Let me go, and I’ll tell you.”
When he released her she walked a few steps away, then took off the damp cloak. Except for the dancing gleam of his lantern, the great room lay dark around them, silent in the dead of night.
“Come into our chamber,” Verrarc said. “I’d not have the servants waking to hear this.”
Raena threw the cloak onto the floor and stomped off into the bedchamber, where a small fire burned in the hearth. She flopped down on the edge of the bed like a sulky child and began to pull off her wet boots. He set the lantern down on the mantel and took a chair opposite her. Once the boots were off she calmed. She set them carefully to dry near the hearthstone, then perched on the bed again.
“Truly, I did promise that you should know,” Raena said. “I were but angry that you did snap at me.”
“I be frightened, Rae. That’s the sad truth of it.”
She stopped on the edge of speaking and considered him.
“Not of you,” Verrarc went on, “nor truly of what witchery you might work, but of the town and for the town. I’d not have any more of my fellow citizens murdered by your treacherous little spirits.”
“Well, that be fair, and my heart does ache for poor Niffa.” Raena sounded surprisingly genuine. “But there were a need on me, a desperate need, Verro, to learn a thing Havoc could tell me.”
“It must have been desperate, all right, to risk so much for it.”
“It is, truly it is.” Raena looked at the fire and frowned, thinking. “It be such a hard tale to start, my love. Here—what would you say if I did tell you that there be a new goddess in the world?”
For a long moment Verrarc could only stare at her.
“A what?” he said at last. “A goddess? This be the last thing I thought you’d—”
“No doubt.” All at once Raena smiled in gathered confidence. “It came as a strike of lightning to me as well, such a strange and marvelous thing it were. But she did reveal herself to me, and she did mark me out to be her priestess, to serve her all my born days and to live with her ever after in her glorious country beyond death.” She paused, and never had he seen her smile this way, as if she looked through the dark snowy night around them to the warm light of a spring day. “Her name, it be Alshandra.”
Verrarc felt like a sudden half-wit, stripped of words.
“What?” he managed to say. “What do you mean? A new goddess? How can there be such a thing? The gods did make the world, and they’ve been in it always.”
“Mayhap I speak wrongly, then.” Raena considered the fire and frowned again. “She were hidden before, you see. Always has she been in the world, off in her own true country, but she never did show herself to the world.”
“Ah.” He felt his mind turn to an ugly thought: had Raena gone utterly mad? “But she did show herself to you. Somehow.”
“It be a simple tale. When I was still the wife of my pig of a husband I did spend long hours weeping. You do remember that, I’m sure. And I would leave Penli and go walk among the trees, and I would sit upon the ground and weep some more. One afternoon she did come to me and ask me why I wept.” Raena’s voice dropped, heavy with awe. “She were huge and tall, floating down from the sky to stand before me, and she were so beautiful, too, and so kind, I did fall to my knees before her. That pleased her. She did tell me how to call to her, and when