The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [70]
“It’s much more complicated than that, but that’s enough to get on with. She tried to make herself into a real woman to please him, and she nearly killed both of them before Jill and Aderyn caught her.”
“Do you think she wants revenge on Jill?”
“I don’t know. By rights, the little minx should be grateful. She was in a great deal of danger, wandering aimlessly in the physical world and afraid to go back to her own. But you never know with spirits. You might want to set wards around your camp tonight.”
“Have no fear of that, O princess of powers perilous! Pentagrams shall abound.”
Even with the wards glowing all around him, Salamander had a restless night’s sleep. He woke at every rustle of wind among the trees, but the white spirit never returned. Finally, with the first light, he gave up on sleeping as a bad job and left his blankets. Once he’d tended his horses, he got on his way north.
About midmorning Salamander rode up to a stone marker announcing that he was passing into the demesne of Mawrvelin, under the lordship of most holy Bel. Great Bel’s priests apparently took their privileges as lords seriously. Toward noon Salamander rode past the temple, looming behind thick stone walls at the top of the big hill that had given the place its name. He could just make out the gates, shut tight, glinting with iron bands in the sunlight. Although the priestly lands looked just as well-watered and the soil just as rich as Cengarn’s, he could see the difference between overlords at the first farm he came to. The farmer and his family wore ragged clothes, their roof needed fresh thatch, their plow horse displayed a good many ribs. The priests were appaently exacting their full measure of taxes if not more.
By asking around in a sad little village Salamander found Canna, the woman who’d been rescued from the Horsekin some years past. The fellow in Cengarn had described her as a “pretty little thing,” but while she still had the long red hair he’d admired, she’d grown gaunt and stoop-shouldered. Deep wrinkles lined her face, but it was her hands that caught Salamander’s attention. They were callused, scarred, and stained a yellowish brown, but he could tell that the bones beneath were thin and frail. Her wrists, too, were all bone and not much of that. As she stood in the farmyard to talk with Salamander, she held a baby on one hip. A toddler clung to her skirts, a little lass of perhaps six years leaned against her, and out in the fields beyond the house Salamander could see two older children, working with a man who, he could assume, was their father. When Salamander offered Canna a copper for her story, she snatched it, then hid it in a little pouch hanging round her neck.
“Well, now,” she said, “all that about the Horsekin, it happened years ago now, and truly, I can’t say I remember much. The terror—well, I do remember that. I was sure as sure, we all were, that we’d never see home again.”
“A frightening thing, indeed,” Salamander said. “I hope that none of you were harmed.”
“We weren’t, none of us women, I mean. They’d already killed our men.” Her voice went flat with stale grief. “My da died that night, when they raided. But once they’d got us away, they treated us better than we’d feared. Gave us food, and no one touched us wrong, if you take my meaning.” Canna narrowed her eyes in thought. “Well, there was two kinds of men there, the Horsekin men, and they gave us no trouble. Then there were some fellows who were human like you and me, good sir, fighting for the Horsekin if you can believe that. They wanted a bit of fun with us, but that old priest stopped them.”
“Old priest? Zaklof?”
“Don’t remember his name. I heard they let him starve to death later.”
“Zaklof, then. So he kept you all from being raped?”
“He did, swearing at them and threatening them with somewhat or other. Couldn’t understand a word of it, we couldn’t, but the men did, and that’s what mattered, wasn’t it? He was saving us for the