The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [165]
“I can’t tell if she’s alone in there or not,” Salamander said. “But on the altar there’s a lamp, and it’s exactly the same kind as they have in Bardek, little pottery things with a wick floating in oil.”
“Bardek?” Dallandra’s voice rang with urgency. “How very odd!”
“Yes, it is.” Salamander broke the vision and sat back on his heels. “That’s enough for now.”
“Why? Do you think Sidro realized you were watching her?”
“No, but I know these people. They can pray for hours on end. There’s not going to be a lot more to see.”
“All right. Those things from Bardek, do you think they traded for them?”
“Not directly, if that’s what you mean. In all the many many years I spent in Bardek, I never ran across anyone who knew that the Horsekin existed, much less traded with them.”
“And it’s not likely that Bardekian trade goods would get all the way north to Cerr Cawnen either.”
“Even if some had, I doubt if any of the folk there would traffic with the Horsekin.”
“That’s true, yes. Now, the Bardekians, they have their own gods, too. Do men as well as women worship goddesses there?”
“Yes. Do you think that’s important?”
“Yes. Alshandra seems to fill some sort of empty place among the Deverry gods, is why. We have our star goddesses, and of course, the Black Sun, but only Deverry women care about their goddess. Men need some contact with the sacred in female form, too.”
“I have to agree with that. I doubt if Alshandra’s caught on in Bardek at all, thanks to their bevy of goddesses. Although, you know, I wonder.” Salamander paused, running over memories in his mind. “There’s a place for her already there. Some Bardekians have a goddess with no name and no face. Sometimes she’s depicted as a woman with a veil drawn across her face. At other times, her statues just have a sort of cylinder for a head. She’s a death goddess. I think she protects the dead on their last journey, or maybe she punishes some of them. No one much likes to talk about her.”
“That’s usual when it comes to death gods. It would be easy for those Bardekians to see Alshandra as one of their own, then.”
“Just so.” Salamander started to get up, then sat back down abruptly. The world was shimmering around him. “I think I’m more tired than I realized.”
“Here, I’ll help you up. You need to sleep. First thing in the morning, I want you to have a look at Honelg’s dun, provided you’re not still exhausted.”
“I shouldn’t have any trouble with the scrying. It’s the first thing in the morning part that troubles me.”
“Well, we’ll see how the muster goes, then. I’ll wake you as late as I can.”
Dallandra made sure that Salamander went straight to his blankets in the tent he shared with the archers of Dar’s escort, then returned to her little fire to wait for Calonderiel. She’d been assuming, she realized, both that the mazrak she’d spotted earlier was Sidro, and that Sidro was indeed Raena reborn. That she might be the same soul as Raena was still possible, of course, but not even a dweomer raven could have flown all the way back to Zakh Gral in a single evening on the physical plane. In her day Raena had been able to travel the secret roads, but only because Alshandra had lent her the etheric and astral energies to do so. Without Alshandra, she would need long years of training to fly along those paths. Given her cult’s denial of the dweomer, it was highly unlikely that she’d gotten it.
But if not Sidro, who was the mazrak? The thought of a Bardek lamp on a Horsekin altar and a Bardek-style painting behind it kept returning to Dallandra’s mind. The best case would be that priestesses of the Bardekian nameless goddess had somehow linked up with the Alshandra worshipers, but considering the vast distances between the Bardekian islands and the Horsekin lands, it seemed highly improbable.
The other alternative disturbed her. Most Bardekians were highly civilized, cultured people, not the sort to become religious fanatics or to establish ties with the likes of the Horsekin, but as in all times and lands, some few became general riffraff,