Marilyn Todd - Scorpion Rising

'Those whose deeds encompassed wickedness and sin she returns to a life of misery,' Ailm explained, 'that they might make amends and find redemption.'

Her voice made no distinction between those who'd been good and those who'd been bad, but that didn't surprise Claudia in the slightest. Remembering how the Death Priestess had distanced herself from Claudia and the others last night, keeping her hands folded neatly in front of her, she'd sensed a woman who preferred observation to participation, and the repressed rarely voice their opinions. And yet was Ailm repressed? Her black robe had the sharpest pleats she'd ever seen, and did you see the filigree on those bracelets and rings? There were whorls and serpents and figures-of-eight that must have sent the silversmith blind as he squinted, while the embosswork on her belt of linked gold chains smacked of a woman who took immense pride in her appearance. Were women like that repressed? Claudia did not believe so.

'Finally,' Ailm said, 'those souls that are found to contain nothing but evil are thrown to the three-headed dragon that stalks the Underworld.'

'Who feeds off the heads of his enemies and slakes his thirst with the blood of the wicked,' the fair-haired girl added cheerfully.

'Thank you, Elusa.'

Ailm didn't sound like she meant it, but the blonde didn't seem to notice the edge in her voice.

'Don't forget the exception to the paths of incarnation, O Lady of the Yew,' she said, replacing the rocks on Ailm's back with fresh ones.

'I had not forgotten, Elusa. Now massage my head, if you will'

As pale skin plunged into the rich swirl of peat-coloured hair, Claudia noticed that the dye was so artful that not a single silver strand was showing through, not even at the roots, and Ailm was the only woman she'd known who wore cosmetics in the bathhouse. They'd surely cake to a crisp in this steam.

'The exception Elusa is referring to is that every priestess who qualifies for the fifty elite is reborn as a raven.' The Death Priestess smiled contentedly. 'Ravens mate for life, did you know that?'

The stones on Claudia's back suddenly cooled. For binding themselves in servitude to the earth, the Hundred-Handed's sole reward was for their souls to be given freedom to fly? That was it? What they'd been forced to forsake in this world would be theirs in the next? And maybe it wasn't so much that the priestesses didn't care about Clytie. Maybe they'd never been taught how…

'No,' she said, as Elusa helped her back into her robe. 'No, I didn't know that.'

'The penalty for slaying a raven is severe,' Ailm said, turning her head to face the wall. 'The perpetrator is cast into the Pit of Reflection, as are runaway slaves and, of course, any man found inside the walls of our precinct.'

At the door, the blonde girl glanced nervously over her shoulder to check that Ailm wasn't looking, then whispered in Claudia's ear.

'So are any women who try to escape,' she said. 'They're thrown into the Pit of Reflection, too.'

There were tears in Elusa's eyes as she turned away. Not of sorrow, though. Tears of pain.

Late rooks cawed from the treetops and the last vestige of sunlight leached from the sky as Claudia slipped away from dinner pleading a headache. In stark contrast to the dormitories, the kitchens and the rest of the buildings that made up the College, the dining complex consisted of a series of large and small rooms arranged round three sides of a courtyard, and it was here that the priestesses and initiates, novices and workers broke their fast, took their midday meal and celebrated the close of another day with their dinner. Claudia had never seen anything like this complex, indeed had never heard of people eating like this, and yet its very oddness rang a bell. Three sides of a courtyard… Three sides of a courtyard…

Architecture wasn't the only thing that niggled at the edge of her brain, either. Looking at Sallie, the Willow Priestess, dressed in catkin green and seated, appropriately enough, between Fearn and Dora, Claudia was reminded of the ancient proverb.

When tempests blow, the oak might fall but the willow just bends in the wind.

Willow wasn't merely supple and easy to transplant, thus symbolizing a capacity to adapt and adjust. Willow was one of nature's true survivors, and taking in the blonde's slender figure and long slim fingers, she realized that the girl Pod met by the cave, the girl in the pink robe called Sarra, was the spitting image. The Willow priestess was her mother.

But with so many women crammed into a relatively tight space, all of them clucking like hens in a coop, it was impossible to sustain an intelligent conversation for more than two minutes. Perhaps that was the designer's intention? But from casually chatting to Beth about how long she'd been in the job, an interesting detail was thrown up.

'I took office almost to the day that Rome took up official occupation in this province,' she'd told Claudia with a laugh. 'And whilst it's not for me to say whether that was propitious or not, I do feel fate had a strong input in the matter.'

Fate? Claudia wondered. Or a more secular hand at work?

Promotion in their society was accorded by age rather than merit. Now if the previous Birch Priestess had been antiRoman, for instance, while an ambitious initiate held opposing views, how easy would it have been to nudge the ailing (or even not so ailing) incumbent towards divine ravenhood and fill the gap that was left before another priestess died and she was allocated that role instead?

Studying once more Beth's youthful figure and chestnut-brown hair, the Head of the Hundred-Handed didn't look like a murderess.

But then again, few of us do…

At the tip of the arrowhead of rock, the first bats of the evening flittered and an owl swooped low over the treetops. It was too late to investigate this mysterious Pit of Reflection, but she resolved to search out Swarbric at first light, because if anyone could tell her about the punishment that brought anguish to a pretty girl's face, it was the man in charge of College security.

Hedgehogs snorted mating calls in the undergrowth, mice and voles searched for beetles among the crispy leaf litter, but night hadn't cloaked the landscape completely. And in the midsummer twilight, Claudia could just about make out a curvaceous figure hurrying home to the College. In the fading light, haste was understandable, and even in the dusk, she saw that Mavor was flushed and dishevelled. Yet she wasn't scurrying home down the hill from the village where the male slaves were kept, and, judging from her expression, her untidiness did not stem from passion. Alarm, Claudia thought, was too strong a word. But that was certainly concern on the redhead's face, and if she could 'just happen' to meet her at the gate and engineer a conversation 'Oof!'

Something grunted as it collided with her bosom when she turned round.

'Jupiter, Juno and Mars, the last thing I expected in the sacred precinct at dusk was to find myself tripping over something short, green and exceedingly solid.'

'Then next time watch where you're going!' the object retorted, rubbing its nose.

Claudia grabbed him by the arm and dragged him against the wall. 'Gurdo, what the bloody hell do you think you're playing at?' she hissed. 'If Beth finds you up here-'

'Ah, don't get your knicker cloth in such a twizzle. I've got the run of this place, or didn't they tell you?'

'No, they didn't tell me,' she snapped. 'But it explains why you go skulking around in the dark in search of cheap thrills.'

'Can I help it if you're not flat-chested?'

'I hope you broke your bloody nose, you little green pervert.'

From the corner of her eye, she noticed Mavor straighten her robe, push back her hair and saunter into the Dining Hall with her normal composure. Damn.