The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [164]
‘That might have happened, yes.’
‘Besides, when Mother Zatcheka made the alliance with your people and with the men of the Rhiddaer, all those years ago, Taenalapan was no more than a town, a small town at that, not a city at all. It wasn’t till some years ago that I realized how big it had grown.’ Grallezar leaned forward, all urgency. ‘It’s the tribes, Dalla. Some thousands of them settled in Taenalapan about twenty years ago. They brought slaves to do the farming, and horses to trade, and bit by bit, they took the town over.’
‘Just like they did to your city.’
‘Yes. Now I wish I had told you.’ Grallezar paused and looked away, stark-eyed. ‘I wish your men had come and burned Taenalapan to the ground. If I had had the omen-gift, if I’d seen what would happen, I would have led my own city’s troops out and helped them.’ Grallezar’s voice quivered and nearly broke. ‘Too late now.’
‘Tell me something else,’ Dallandra said. ‘Why have your folk turned to Alshandra like this? Oh, I know that it’s a comfort, thinking you’ll go to some wonderful country when you die, and the rakzanir want lands to conquer, but surely that can’t be all.’
‘It isn’t, of course. Do you want the truth? It may pain you.’
‘There are a good many things in life that pain me. So far I’ve survived them all.’
‘Very well, then. Do you remember when we first met, all those years ago in Cerr Cawnen? My people then thought you were the children of the gods, and they were terrified of you and yours. Prince Dar made things worse by humiliating that rakzan, whatever his name was—I’ve forgotten.’
‘Krag, Kraal, something like that. I do remember how your mother’s men kept kneeling to us. Your stepbrother Meer used to do that to me, too, no matter what I told him.’
‘Well, after that meeting in Cerr Cawnen, the truth spread fast. Yes, our people had done a horrible thing to yours, but you were mortals such as we, not gods, not favoured by the gods any more than we were. The Great Burning was a terrible burden of guilt, Dalla, a burden we carried for a thousand years. The priestesses had built all our rituals, our prayers, our sacrifices, around that guilt. And suddenly we threw the burden down.’
Dallandra felt the hair on the back of her neck rise in a dweomer chill.
‘Ah,’ Grallezar continued, ‘You’re beginning to understand, aren’t you? I can tell by your shiver.’
‘Let me guess. The priestesses of the old gods looked like liars and fools.’
‘You’re precisely right. What had happened in the past all looked new again, and we began to remember how we had suffered, not at your hands, but from the Lijik Ganda.’
‘And now your people want revenge on them?’
‘Right again. Oh, the rakzanir have worked everyone up so cleverly about those old horrors. A thousand years old and more, those stories, but oh so useful! After the great revelation, we’d begun to call your people the Ancients rather than ‘children of the gods’. We all thought we should respect you, until the rakzanir saw that you stood in the way.’ Grallezar paused for a fanged smile. ‘And of course, they also saw that the way you were standing in happened to cross good grazing land. Suddenly we began hearing about Vandar’s spawn. Those so-called holy women—oh ye gods! Can’t they see how they’re being used? They talk about Alshandra’s love, but they’re nothing but weapons to the rakzanir.’
The dweomer-chill deepened around Dallandra so badly that she shivered. ‘I’m going to have to tell Cal all of this,’ she said. ‘I hope you realize that.’
‘Why do you think I’m telling you? I couldn’t bring myself to tell him or that sly little Lijik prince, but you can.’ Her smile vanished. ‘And that’s another reason why I couldn’t tell you about Braemel. I knew where your loyalties lay. I never dreamt that mine would someday lie with yours.’
Again, grief trembled in Grallezar’s outspread hands. In silence she waited for Dallandra’s judgment. As Dallandra thought back over