David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

In the plaza fronting the temple were seven altars. The one in the center was ornately carved and surrounded by a waist-high marble screen to separate those sacrificing from the common people. An attendant, one of the priestly thugs, lounged in the enclosure to keep out anybody who might try to use a site meant for his betters.

An old woman waited by the simple altar on the right end, where a priest was lighting a small fireset. Two other priests sat in a kiosk to the side, talking and keeping a desultory eye on the plaza. The courtyard behind the temple got a good deal of traffic both of priests and laymen, but only the woman was sacrificing at the moment.

Sharina turned to the officer of her guard. "You'll wait here," she said. "When I've finished, we'll return to the palace."

"Milady," the man said, "we'll come-"

"You willnot," Sharina said. The anger-at what had happened to Nonnus, at the chaos that was so much a part of life, at herself for the risk she'd taken with the lives of those she loved best when the whale attacked-boiled out in her tone. It shocked her and slapped the soldiers like a gush of fire. "I'm here to worship."

She turned and strode stiff-backed toward the kiosk. One of the priests waited, standing with his hands tented before him. The other walked briskly into the porticoed compound.

The Blood Eagles remained where they were. She heard a man-not the officer-snarl, "Lires, you've disgraced the Regiment!"

"I wish to make an offering," Sharina said to the priest in a clear voice. "I'll need to purchase the incense from you as well. What's the fee for this? Just a basic sacrifice."

An elaborate sacrifice with animal victims and all the pomp of majesty would've offended Nonnus. To the hermit, the offering and even the prayer were merely symbols of the heart; but symbolsare important.

"Of course, Princess Sharina," the priest said, bowing low. "If you'll wait here just a moment, Lord Anda will be right out. Please accept my apologies on his behalf for our not being properly prepared to greet you."

"I don't want Lord Anda," Sharina said, her eyes narrowing and her anger rising again. "I'm here to make a sacrifice for the soul of a friend. You can-"

The high priest came out of the courtyard, his expression supernally placid but his legs moving very quickly indeed under his long robe. With him-actually straggling a pace or two behind-were half a dozen junior priests, men and women both. One had lost her sandal in her hurry, and another appeared to have tugged his robe on back to front.

An alarm clanged within the compound. The burly thugs at the entryway straightened up in the passage, holding their censers like the clubs they really were. Twenty more of the same sort came boiling out of the courtyard and ran toward Anda and his aides.

Anda glanced over his shoulder at them with a look of cold fury and gestured them to a halt. Returning his attention to Sharina, he said blandly, "It's better that we not discuss our business here in public, I think you'll agree, Princess. If you'll come-"

"We have no business!" Sharina said. "I came to burn a pinch of frankincense in memory of a dead friend!"

Lord Anda put his hand on her arm. In a blast of fiery rage, Sharina's mind turned to the Pewle knife. She'd left it at the palace because she was going to worship.

Steel rasped. "Hey!" grunted one of the thugs. The aides clustering with their chief started like deer surprised at a spring; Anda looked up with a blank expression.

Lires stepped between Anda and Sharina. He'd dropped his shield on the way, so he had a hand free to grip the priest's arm and twist it up at an angle.

A pair of thugs started toward them. "I wouldn't!" said the Blood Eagles' officer, his sword bare in his hand.

Lord Anda was struggling; the soldier lifted him a little higher so that his toes just touched the ground. Because of the way the priest's arm bent, if it took all his weight either his shoulder or his elbow would be dislocated.

"Now, let me tell you how it is, master," Lires said. "This is a temple, a place of worship, so I won't shed blood here. But it you'd actuallytouched the princess instead of just looking like you meant to-"

"But-" another soldier protested.

"Shut up!" the lieutenant snarled.

"-then I'd break your arm, and break the other arm; and then I'd break your legs," Lires continued in the tone of a mother chiding her newborn. "After that, well, I'd decide depending on how I was feeling at the time. Do you see?"

"Princess Sharina…," the priest whispered. Sweat covered his brow. "I sincerely apologize if anything I said was-"

The soldier jerked him a little higher. "The right answer is yes, priestling. Can you say yes?"

"Yes, may the Sister take you!" Anda shouted.

Lires flung him back. Anda stumbled and instinctively tried to put his hand down to catch himself. He screamed and collapsed on the ground.

"Aye, She may," Lires said, clashing his spearbutt against the cobblestones. "And if She does, then I guess you and I get to meet again."

"I have no more business here," Sharina said, wondering at how little she felt. She spun on her heel and added, "Lieutenant, we'll return to the palace now."

"Sorry, your highness," Lires muttered from behind her as the other Blood Eagles fell in on both sides.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Trooper Lires," Sharina said. "I was the one who mistook this for a place of worship."

She caught the officer's eye as she went on, "I hope you'll be a regular member of my escort in the future, Lires."

If she let herself feel anything, then she'd fly into a screaming fury that wouldn't, that couldn't, change anything for the better. She'd go back to the palace and in a quiet corner scratch an image of the Lady on a stone wall to receive her prayers. It's what Nonnus would've done in the first place.

Lires bent to pick up his shield. He looked back over his shoulder and said musingly, "The building kinda grows on you, though, don't it? Especially the girls on the roof."

Sharina coughed, then began to laugh aloud. "Yes," she said. "Yes they do. Now, if we could only find some way to install the statues as priests!"

Garric knew he was dreaming, but the scene was as real to him as memories of his life in Barca's Hamlet. The sun beat down on a grassy hillside; there was a grove of oaks on the crest, and the higher slopes in the middle distance were covered in forest.

"Greetings, Chief Garric," called the eldest of the trio waiting for him. His name was Anda and he owned one of the larger flocks in the community. He was priest of the Lady as his father had been before him. Also as his father had done, Anda lent money on the only security poor men could provide: their bodies. All his herdsmen were bond servants, working off the debts they'd incurred. "We bid you welcome in the name of the Gods whom we serve."

"Greetings," echoed Mistress Estanel, the butcher's wife and the priestess of the Shepherd. She looked a jolly woman, but everybody in the borough felt the rough side of her tongue on a regular basis. Her husband's business required him to make a progress of the surrounding communities. Folk believed he spent as little time at home as he could manage, a plan which all applauded. "The Gods have blessed us already with the weather they've sent for the midsummer sacrifice."

The kid sprawling across Garric's shoulders twisted. Its fore and hind legs were tied; Garric held the hooves to keep it from kicking. Though the kid's jaws hadn't been strapped, the only sound it made was to pant through distended nostrils.

"Greetings, Chief Garric," said Short Horan, the priest of the Sister. He had a field of barley and a nut grove, as well as being the community's thatcher. Horan roofed new-built huts and sheds and also beat old roofs firm in Spring so that they continued to shed the rains. "We're prepared for the sacrifice. Do you come with clean hands?"