The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [75]
“Splendid, my lady. It’s very kind of you to take me along.”
“It’s in her name. There’s a place for every sort of person in her world.” She paused to consider his dirty traveling shirt with no trace of a smile. “Even for the lowest.”
Apparently those persons would be expected to stay in their places, too, but then, Varigga was noble-born, even if she and her equally noble son did live like foxes in a den, praying that the hounds would never run their way.
“It’s time,” Lord Honelg said. “Nearly dark out.”
The lord stood up, and at his signal everyone in the great hall did the same. In a mannerly throng they strolled out of the dun and followed their lord across the twilit ward.
When he’d first arrived, Salamander had wondered why the lord’s warband lived in a freestanding building instead of the usual barracks. Now he saw that a very different sort of structure took up that particular space. A shabby wooden door looked as if it would lead into a root cellar or suchlike, but in truth it led into a long, narrow chamber. The only fresh air came from chinks in the stonework, but fortunately, the masons had left plenty of those in their deceptively shoddy work.
Once inside, the only light came from a single candle, carried by Lady Adranna down to the opposite end of the room from the door. The lady, her mother-in-law, and the son and daughter sat down on a bench just at the foot of a wooden platform. Behind them sat the chamberlain and the equerry right next to the common-born cook and stablemen, and, on the next set of benches, the warband. The dun’s servants and the farm people crowded together on the floor at the rear. Honelg closed the door, then stood in front of it and beckoned Salamander to do the same.
“We all have our places in the ritual.” Honelg patted the hilt of his sword. “You and I will be the sentinels tonight.”
“Very well, my lord,” Salamander said. “Do you think we’re in danger?”
“Not at the moment, but one day those cursed priests of Bel might find us, and so we need to stay ready for them.”
As Salamander’s eyes grew used to the dim light, he noticed a little door at the farther end of the long room. In a moment it opened, and a woman stepped onto the platform. She threw both arms into the air, tipped her head back, and called out a single word in a language he didn’t recognize. Silver light bloomed between and around her hands like a skein of yarn. Salamander gasped aloud, which drew a smile from the lord. When Lady Adranna blew out the candle, the priestess tossed the bundle of light toward the ceiling, where it stuck, sending its silver glow over the crowd. By its light Salamander could see a wood altar, topped with a long slab of stone that was, oddly enough, cracked in half.
“There’s our Holy One,” Honelg whispered. “The priestess Rocca.”
Despite the silvery glow, she stood far enough away that Salamander got only the most general impression of her—a slender woman, dark-haired and perhaps pretty, perhaps young, certainly vigorous.
“Did she ride in today?” Salamander whispered.
“She didn’t,” Honelg whispered in return. “She walks everywhere, all the way here from the Horsekin lands. She’s got a regular circuit, like, of believers.”
Salamander would have asked more, but Rocca was speaking. Her voice, low and pleasant, carried easily through the stuffy chamber, although she did speak with something of a rough accent. Her words sounded as if she were pronouncing them farther back in her mouth than most Deverry folk would, and her R’s and Rh’s were flat, not rolled. As he listened, Salamander realized from the way she used certain idioms that she hailed from the northwest, beyond Deverry and the Westfolk lands both.
“We be gathered here tonight in the shelter of our lord’s dun,” the priestess began, “to learn the truth. What be the questions we were about asking for our lives long?” She pointed at Honelg’s mother.
Lady Varigga stood up. Considering her age, her voice was remarkably strong. “We wish to know what we were, where