David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

The higher-ranking priests of the Shepherd lived just as well as those of the Lady. Garric strode into the suite, through the reception room and the bedroom to the small water garden at the rear where Liane and two of her men stood with Lady Panya bos-Parriman.

Garric had only a vague recollection of the priestess who'd brought the cage of mechanical birds; she'd been a face among hundreds, another person whose opinions were more important to her than they were to the kingdom. She'd been good looking in a slim, severe fashion; the sort of woman who strove to be imposing rather than enticing.

Now Panya looked like a browsing ewe with her neck caught in the crotch of a sapling. She twisted furiously in the grip of the men bending her arms back and lashing her wrists with a rawhide strap.

"She was climbing over the wall," Liane said, gesturing toward the parapet. It was only five feet above the terrace floor, but the drop to the ground beyond was a good thirty feet. "I don't know if she was trying to escape or if it wa a suicide attempt."

"Let me go!" Panya shouted. Her eyes twitched in all directions; they didn't seem to focus. "I'm a priestess of the Shepherd! He'll strike you down for blasphemy!"

"I'm sure Prince Garric is acting in accordance with the will of the Shepherd in seeing to the needs of the kingdom, Lady Panya," said Lady Estanel, startling Garric with the unexpectedness of her voice at his elbow. In between phrases she breathed in half-suppressed gasps. "Obey the prince and know that you're obeying the Great Gods who work through him."

The high priestess was red-faced with exertion. She must have run half the length of the plaza and then up two flights of stairs to arrive so quickly, but her expression was a calm as that of that of the statue of the Shepherd in the temple below.

"Who told you to bring the cage of birds to Prince Garric in place of the gift the temple sent you with?" Liane asked. She didn't raise her voice, but she spoke with cold hostility. No one who knew her socially would've imagined the words came from sweet-natured Liane bos-Benliman.

"The temple gave me the cage!" Panya said. "I did what I was told!"

"We sent you an Old Kingdom manuscript of Celondre'sOdes, your highness," the high priestess murmured. She frowned at Panya. "With an inscription in Celondre's own hand."

"Mistress?" the spy who'd entered the council chamber said to Liane. She nodded but turned her head, biting her lip.

The spy gripped Panya by the hair and kicked her feet out from under her. His fellow stepped out of the way.

Panya cried out as she fell forward. The spy thrust her face into the basin of the fountain and held her there in a flurry of froth, then lifted her again. He didn't release her. The priestess gasped and spluttered, crying uncontrollably.

Liane turned. "Mistress," she said, "your head will go under water each time you refuse to answer me. Each time will be longer. Eventually you will answer or you will die with your lungs on fire. Who sent you with the cage of birds?"

"I can't-" the priestess said. The spy thrust her forward.

"I'll tell!" she screamed. "I'll tell you!"

"Talk," said Liane. There was more mercy in a flash of lightning than in her voice. "Quickly."

"Count Lascarg's twins came to me," Panya said. She closed her eyes; her neck muscles were taut so that her head didn't hang painfully from the spy's grip on her hair. "Monine and Tanus. They said I had to help them or they'd, they'd say things about me."

Garric nodded in grim understanding. His enemies had corrupted Moisin, the priest of the Lady, with money, but they'd used blackmail to control the Shepherd's emissary.

"Go on," said Liane. Garric was glad she had enough stomach to conduct the interview. He wasn't sure he could do it himself.

"There wasn't any harm," Panya said desperately. "The birds would sing, that's all, and nobody would tell, would say that I…"

She closed her eyes again, her lips working silently.

"Do the birds report what they hear to Monine and Tanus?" Liane asked. "Is that why you were to give them to Prince Garric?"

"I don't know," Panya said. She or her conscience must have felt the spy's hand twitch. Her eyes opened again and she screamed, "I really don't know!"

"It doesn't matter," said Garric. "We'll learn from the other end. Lord Waldron, I'd like you to take charge here with Lord Tosli's regiment while I return to the palace. It's crucial that no one leave the precinct to get word back to Lascarg's spawn."

"Tosli can take care of that," Waldron said. "He's a good officer, for all that his family's bloody Valles merchants. And if you're worried that this is a lot of running back and forth for an old man like me-"

That wasexactly what Garric was worried about.

"-then don't be. I can march the legs off you and half the Blood Eagles, even if I do prefer riding a horse!"

"Let's go," Garric said, starting for the stairway. Lord Waldron was exaggerating-probablyexaggerating-but if he said he was ready to jog back to the palace, Garric wasn't fool enough to call him a liar.

"Your highness?" Liane called to his back. "What would you like done with Lady Panya?"

"She doesn't matter now!" Garric said. "Let her go, for all I care."

He was out of the suite when he heard Lady Estanel say, "The temple will deal with the traitor, milady. Because I assure you, we care very much about her actions!"

Garric didn't laugh the way the king in his mind did; but neither did he go back to insist on mercy for a woman who'd been a traitor to her God and the kingdom both. Monine and Tanus, the dimly glimpsed puppeteers who'd toyed with him and Carus in dreams, were his present concern.

"Aye, lad, it'll be a pleasure to see them dance on a rope instead of us for a change," growled the king through a savage smile. "Assuming we take them alive, which wouldn't be my choice!"

A crimson flash from the jewel shattering between Cashel's thumbs, turned the walls gripping him transparent. He still couldn't move, but he could see where he was. That didn't make him comfortable, exactly, but at least it was a change.

The demon Kakoral stood in front of him, laughing with a sound like a thatch roof ablaze. His body was a thousand shades of red, but now that Cashel saw the demon close up he got the impression that the skin had no color at all-that instead it reflected the light of a different world.

The room was vast beyond anything Cashel had seen-except the sky from the deck of a ship at sea. Girders of light slanted from unguessible heights to the walls and floor. Cashel instinctively grasped their pattern, though his conscious mind couldn'tunderstand it at all.

"Well, Master Cashel," Kakoral said. "I thought I'd come myself this time, since you've proved to me that Kotia is not only Laterna's offspring but mine as well."

Besides the structural members, a spiderweb of fine lines trailed through the interior space. Where they intersected, objects hung. Some were tiny, no bigger than a pear, but others seemed the size of large buildings. Kotia hung nude in a transparent enclosure like Cashel's own, slightly higher and a half bowshot away.

"I didn't prove anything," Cashel said, frowning as he tried to puzzle out the question. "I just came to get her out."

He paused, frowning harder. "If I could."

"He means that Kotia found you for her champion," said Evne on Cashel's shoulder. "Did you think that was a little thing, master?"

A gray globe was forming in the middle of the room. Cashel was good at judging sizes, but this thing tricked his eyes in a fashion he didn't understand. If he had to guess he'd have said it was large; very large, too large even for this huge space. But he also felt he could've spanned it with his arms if he'd been free to climb the cobwebs of light to where it hung.