The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [139]
“No doubt.” He was bending over the scroll, but whether or not he was actually reading, she couldn’t tell. “There are times, turtledove, when my blather even gets on my own nerves. This is one of them.”
The first night out of Indila, Nevyn and his men had stayed, just by traveler’s luck, in a little town beside the road that had a small inn and a bigger caravan yard right in the middle of its public square. For the second night, however, he had a particular destination in mind, a temple of Dalae-oh-contremo up in the hills that was more of a hermitage for elderly priests than a working temple. It was a day’s ride, twenty miles, from Pastedion, far enough to ensure its residents’ privacy, but close enough to the big urban temple so that the younger priests could ride over now and then and see if their elder brethren required anything.
A complex of low, rambling white buildings and big gardens, the temple stood on top of a cliff on the east side of and about three hundred yards above the river and river road, and the only way up was a switchback trail cut out of the living rock. When Nevyn and his men arrived at the bottom of this trail, it was just at sunset, and as he looked up, idly wondering how their tired horses would take the climb, the setting sun washed the buildings with a gentle pinkish light. All at once he went cold, because the light changed to sheets of blood in the sight of Vision.
“What’s wrong, my lord?” Amyr said. “You’re white as snow.”
“I don’t know yet, lad, but I’ll wager somewhat’s very wrong indeed. We’ll leave most of the men here with the horses, but you and I are going to climb up to take a look.”
“Do you think there are enemies waiting up there?”
At that a crowd of burly purple-and-black gnomes appeared at Nevyn’s feet. Although they were obviously agitated, screwing up their faces in fear and leaping up and down, they shook their heads no in a silent answer to Amyr’s question. Just to be on the safe side, Nevyn brought Praedd along, too. Panting and puffing the three of them climbed up on foot with the gnomes rushing ahead until at last they stood before the wooden gates of the compound and could look down, while they caught their breath, at the little figures of the men and horses beside the tiny river far below.
Yet they lingered only the barest moment. When Nevyn knocked on the gate, it creaked open under his fist a few inches to let him see an elderly man, his dark face twisted in agony, lying on the ground, one hand stretched toward the gate in a desperate attempt to reach it. A puddle of blood was drying round him and clotting in his snow-white hair.
“Ah gods!” Nevyn’s cry was more of a moan under his breath. “Brace yourself, lads.”
They shoved the gate open and strode into a central courtyard with flower beds blooming red and yellow round a cobbled court. Although that first dead man had almost reached the gates, two others had fallen back by the entrance to the shrine across the court. All three had been stabbed to death. With the Wildfolk to guide them, Nevyn and his men found two more round back at the washhouse, and the last three in the kitchens, where, apparently, they’d been sharing the humble task of preparing their evening meal of bread and stewed vegetables. As they searched, Nevyn felt curiously numb, a little cold maybe, but perfectly calm.
Since he knew that the priests would have wanted to lie close to their holy altar, he had the men carry them into the narrow, white-washed shrine and lay them down on the tiled floor in front of the enormous block of polished stone. Behind it on the wall was a fresco of the Wave-father soaring serene and free over the sun-gilded ocean, just as, or so he hoped, their souls now soared in the One True Light. By the time they’d covered all the victims with blankets from their individual cells, night had fallen. When Nevyn made a glowing sphere of golden light appear above the altar, neither Amyr nor Praedd seemed to notice. Both young men were white and shaking, but with rage.
“The piss-poor whoreson bastards!” Amyr burst out.