The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [12]
“I am the Lord of Havoc, ruler of the powers of strife and tumult.” His voice boomed and echoed so loudly that Verrarc feared someone in the town above would be hearing him. “Why have you summoned me, O my priestess?”
“To beg my lord’s favor,” Raena whispered. “I have brought another who would worship thee.”
“Then you have summoned well, little one. I shall—”
All at once Lord Havoc hesitated, staring at something behind his two worshippers. When Verrarc twisted around to look, he saw nothing, but Havoc yelped. He flung himself backward into the pillar and disappeared, leaving behind him the stink of fox. The light that formed the pillar began to break up. Although Raena chanted to drive it back, the light stubbornly spread out and clung to the walls, as faded and torn as an old curtain. With a gasp for breath she fell silent.
“Rae, forgive me,” Verrarc said. “But a doubt lies upon me that he be any sort of god at all. A fox spirit, more like, such as do live in the woods.”
“Animal spirits are weak little things!” She turned on him with a snarl. “How could he nourish my dweomer if he were some woodland imp? I tell you, I’ve seen him do great things, Verro, truly great, and he does shower favor upon me.”
Verrarc got up, dusting off the heavy cloth wrappings round his legs.
“You saw the light, didn’t you?” Raena snapped.
“I did.” He straightened up, then gave her his hand and helped her clamber to her feet. “Here! You do be as pale as he was!”
She very nearly collapsed into his arms. He struggled with the folds of his cloak and hers, finally got a supporting arm around her, and helped her stand. All around them the silver light was fading.
“It be needful to get you back to the house,” Verrarc said.
He squeezed out of the room first to the dark tunnel beyond, then helped her through. The tunnel twisted and wound, the air grew fresher and colder, and about thirty feet along they came to its entrance, an opening in a stone wall. Beyond they could see snow and tumbled blocks of stone overgrown with leafless shrubs. Verrarc helped her climb out, then scrabbled after to the wan light of a dying day.
They were standing on the peak of Citadel, the sharp hill island that rose in the center of Loc Vaed and the town of Cerr Cawnen. Between the trees that grew among and around the ruins of the old building, brought down in an earthquake centuries ago, Verrarc could see down the steep slope of the island, where public buildings and the houses of the few wealthy families clung to the rocks and the twisting streets. The blue-green lake itself, fed by volcanic springs, lay misted with steam in the icy air. Beyond, at the lake’s edge, the town proper sprawled in the shallows—houses and shops built on pilings and crannogs in a welter of roofs and little boats. Beyond them, marking out the boundary of Cerr Cawnen, stood a circle of stone walls, built around timber supports to make them sway, not shatter, in the earth tremors that struck the town now and again.
They were looking roughly west, and the lazy sun was sinking into a haze of brilliant gold. Thanks to Loc Vaed’s heat, Cerr Cawnen itself lay free of snow, but beyond the town the first fall of the season turned pink and gold in answer to the setting sun. Here and there in the distance stood a copse, dark against the snow, or a farmer’s hut, barely visible in the drifts, with a feather of smoke rising from its chimney.
“It do be lovely up here, the long view,” Verrarc said.
“Someday soon, my love, I’ll be showing you a view so long that all this,” Raena paused to wave a contemptuous hand, “will look like