So she watched the flights of birds, waved to passing boats, and puzzled over her visitor in the night The seer had not told her what would happen in Kosord. Nothing, probably. She would just be dragged on upriver until she overtook the unwanted Cutrath Horoldson. If the Witnesses had any plan at all, it probably required the flavorful Fabia to return to Celebre, with marriage an unfortunate but necessary formality to get her there.
"Did you pay your respects to the god in the night?" she asked Cnurg. That gangling, freckled redhead was a year or two older than most of the others and showed signs of growing out of the brutalization so obvious in the other Werists. Some of them were easy to look at, if not to listen to, and she could feel sorry for all of them at times. They had been ensnared as children by promises of glory and manhood, and now found themselves being rushed into an insatiable war that took no prisoners. Their youth was an advantage, they assured her—young Werists were the most deadly. She did not ask how many of them were likely to survive their first year in Florengia.
Cnurg smiled toothily. "Not god, my lady! Goddess! Yes, I gave Her an outstanding offering."
"Outstanding?" exclaimed Brarag, who had his back to Perag. "Did you not hear the Nymphs laughing when they saw it?"
"On your feet, warriors!" Perag barked. "Both of you!"
Cnurg and Brarag snapped upright and chorused, "My lord is kind!"
He left them standing there. He was crazy.
Fabia fumed for a moment and then let rip. "Pray inform me, Packleader, just how your men offended?"
"Mind your own business, slut."
"Are you afraid a foolish joke will rot their fighting mettle, or do you think my smile will seduce them from their duty? Is your pettiness so deep that you cannot bear to think of men not being in mortal terror of you every second? Or are you just peevish because you did not sleep well last night?"
Perag glared at her, flushing. She could sense all the other Werists holding their breath. The huntleader clenched his fist and began to rise. Saltaja laid a black-draped hand on his arm.
"Leave her to her future husband to discipline!" she commanded resonantly. "And you, Fabia? You slept well last night?" Assuming she did not know about the seer, the woman's instincts were incredible.
"Indeed I did, my lady." Fabia spoke with a sweetness she was far from feeling. "And yourself?"
"I sleep very little."
That closed the conversation. Perag stayed on his keg, scowling at the prisoner. If he were forbidden to beat her, he would just take out his spite on his men.
Almost nothing was known about the children of Hrag prior to Stralg's baleful rise, but Saltaja was reputed to be the eldest. It needed no master tallyman to calculate that she must be almost sixty, yet there was barely a line to be seen on that elongated, bloodless face; perhaps her agelessness had started the rumors that she was a Chosen. Her only concession to travel was a broad-brimmed black hat and apparently infinite patience. She seemed to have bewitched Perag. His men were convinced that he yearned to be invited into her tent, and they attributed his persistent bad temper to a lack of success. No one wept for him.
♦
Thinking again about her visitor in the night, Fabia realized that the seer had spoken as if she had personal experience of the voyage so far. Indeed, she was almost certainly one of the riverfolk in the convoy, because she had been present in Skjar not long before Fabia left, and no one could have journeyed any faster upriver than Saltaja had. The Witness must be disguised as a sailor!
But which? Fabia ran through the boat crews in her mind without success. There were more than a dozen adult women in the flotilla, but the singsong dialect disguised voices, and they spent most of their days just sitting and talking, sheltered from the sun and wind inside voluminous burnooses. Although they might strip down to very little when there was work to be done, they owned a half-dozen slaves—all Florengian prisoners of war, who scowled at Fabia from shame or resentment and avoided her—who attended to most of the hard labor. Yet even the slaves seemed healthy and well nourished. Better by far the placid river life than the grinding drudgery of a peasant.
♦
The day dragged on. One could count boats, or clouds. At the stern one could trail lines to catch supper. One could wait for the hex to start producing results.
♦
Around noon, the riverfolk would rummage through the cargo and hand out snacks of fruit, cheese, pickled fish, or whatever they had traded recently. In his usual boorish fashion, Perag went first, pushing aside hungry children. Moments later he screamed.
Wild shouts of "Jumper!" roused everyone and for a few minutes Blue Ibis was a scene of chaos. Fabia had never heard of jumpers, which were apparently tiny but greatly feared spiders native to the flat lands. One must have come aboard with one of the tents, or perhaps the basket of roots... When the jumper had been hunted down and hammered into a small black stain, everyone could relax again. Except Perag.
He was thrashing on the deck boards, moaning in agony. Already his left arm was twice the size of the other and turning purple. His face was distorted—eyes bulging, lips everted, grossly swollen tongue protruding. Several of the Werists were shouting "Change!" at him, but he either could not hear or just could not change. He clawed a few times at his brass collar as if it were choking him. He did seem to be conscious, though.
"This is horrible!" Fabia said. She had gone to sit by Saltaja. "I can't pretend to like the man, but no one deserves to suffer so. Surely there must be a sanctuary we could take him to?"
The Queen of Shadows was watching her henchman's convulsions with the disapproval due a display of bad manners. "Sinurists will never treat Werists," she intoned. "If he could change form, he might be able to shake off the poison, but it would seem that he is unable to call on his god to help him."
"Perhaps we should pray for him."
"Perhaps we should," Saltaja agreed.
Fabia prayed: Mother of Death, do not release him yet. Make him suffer enough!
Eventually Cnurg took charge and ordered Perag trussed to restrain his convulsions; it took six men just to do that. The riverfolk shrugged and recommended keeping him doused to cool the fever. When his screams became too oppressive, Cnurg gagged him.
Flankleader Era in Redwing, on being informed of the calamity, assumed command and suspended all punishments.
No one spared Fabia a single suspicious glance.
♦
Late that day, for the third time on the journey, the convoy saw a sun wife, a bloated patch of brilliance some distance below the sun and equally impossible to look upon. Horth had explained to Fabia that sun wives were merely sunlight reflecting on the dome of Ocean, which was so far away now that it was lost in the blue of the sky. A sun wife needed only the right angle and unusually clear weather to form, he said.
But the riverfolk regarded sun wives as blessings from their gods, so they chanted a hymn of thanksgiving; the Werists countered with a paean to Weru, and one song led to another. Blue Ibis finished the day's journey with a rousing general singsong.
twenty-five
INGELD NARSDOR
stepped into the adytum, the holy of holies in the temple of Veslih, leaving Sansya to close the heavy door behind them. It was a cramped five-sided chamber with room for only a dozen or so worshipers around the bronze brazier in the center. The fire that lit it and kept it oppressively hot was even more sacred than the one in the tholos on the summit, for it was never extinguished and had been lit eons ago by holy Veslih Herself in the legendary city of Gal. Many layers of rich rugs padded the floor. The walls were very high and glazed in random patterns of cool green and blue tiles, with small openings under the roof for ventilation.