“Are we going away now, Cashel?” Tilphosa asked.
“Soon,” he said. “Tilphosa, did all the houses burn in the village?”
Tilphosa frowned. “No,” she said, “I don’t think so. The breeze was out of the east, so the eastern half should be still all right.”
“Good,” said Cashel. “I’m going to bring a couple of them down here.”
He made a pass with his quarterstaff, just to be sure everything was working right again. The heavy staff slid through his fingers with greasy ease.
He eyed the tree again. His face was still, but there was a smile of satisfaction in his voice as he added, “I’m going to pile them around the trunk of that thing, mistress. And then you can light them off with your torch.”
“Oh,” said Tilphosa. Her lips spread into a cheery smile. “Oh, what a good idea!”
Her laughter was so infectious that Cashel started chuckling too as they walked the short distance back to the village.
16
Alecto brightened visibly at sight of the straggling village. She stood straight and paused to adjust her wolfskin cape to show her breasts to better advantage.
People—women and children, as best Ilna could tell—were working in small plots of corn and vines scattered as widely as the houses. There hadn’t been any attempt to terrace the slopes, so the plantings were in whatever bits and pieces of soil that nature offered.
Goats browsing the steeper slopes were the first to notice Ilna and her companion. The animals raised their heads and stared, drawing the attention of a herdboy. He made a trumpet of his hands, and called, “Yi-yi-yi-yi-yi!”
His cry carried through the broad valley like a hawk’s piercing shriek. Everybody looked at the approaching strangers. Men appeared from the woods, some of them carrying tools. One ran into a house and came out with arrows and a bow, which he proceeded to string.
“Why don’t they have dogs?” Alecto wondered aloud. “Still, this is the way people are meant to live. Plenty of room between them, but not just wasteland like between here and that cursed city. We’ll be fine here.”
“Yes,” Ilna said, though the only thing she agreed with was the notion that she’d be able to handle whatever chanced to come up. The villagers looked wary of strangers—as who wouldn’t be, off as they were in a place that saw few visitors if any?—but they didn’t seem hostile. The bow was the only weapon she saw, though several of the men appeared with iron-headed axes that could split a skull if put to the purpose.
The stone temple was smaller than those Ilna had seen in cities, but the design was similar enough that she was sure of what it was. Four slender columns held up the low-peaked roof of a porch. The building itself was small and squarish, though only a sliver showed from the outside. The rest was carved back into the hillside.
A man came out of the adjacent house, wearing a red robe with gold embroidery and fringe. On his head was a tiara of mother-of-pearl in silver settings, and he was still trying to buckle a matching belt. It had been made for a slimmer man, and the attempt to lengthen it with cords hadn’t been very successful.
There was a real path here, though it was rocky and as steep as any other part of the trail they’d been following. Alecto took the lead and, when the trail forked, followed the branch toward the temple.
Ilna said nothing. One of them had to be in front on the narrow track. While the particular choice of leader wasn’t the one she’d have made, she didn’t have any real reason to object.
Three men, one of them with the bow and an arrow nocked though not drawn, joined the plump old man on the temple porch. That fellow, the priest, finished tugging at his belt and faced the strangers.
“Do you come from the Mistress?” he called. He was trying to be threatening; his voice was powerful, but his appearance wasn’t up to the job. “If you do, then go away now! We watch the Gate and want nothing to do with your false God!”
Alecto halted on the path and held up two flight feathers she’d saved from the wings of the grouse she’d charmed down for the past night’s dinner. She muttered a spell. There was a gleam of blue wizardlight.
A complete image of the grouse flapped out of her hand and flew toward a giant chestnut growing among the houses. It was an impressive proof of her skill, though Alecto lost control before the image reached a branch. There was another flash, and the two feathers fluttered slowly down.
Alecto staggered. Ilna stepped around her, and said, “We don’t worship any Mistress. Her priests were hunting for us. Our skills tell us we can find safety here.”
She gestured back to her companion. Alecto had recovered from the effort of her spell, but she didn’t try to push Ilna out of the way again.
“Help us, and we can help you!” Ilna said.
The four leaders held a quick conclave, looking down at the strangers and back to their fellows. The priest tried to meet Ilna’s eyes, but only for a moment.
More men had come out of the woods, though the whole population of the village couldn’t have been as great as that of Barca’s Hamlet. The younger children in the fields now stood close to their mothers; older ones had drifted into pairs and trios. All of them stared at Ilna and Alecto.
The priest turned to Ilna again. The bowman tucked the arrow he’d nocked through his sash, where he carried three others. The men beside him rested the heads of their tools, an axe and a maul, on the ground.
“Greetings, wizards!” the priest said. “We of the Gate are always glad to have visitors, so long as they behave as befits strangers in our land. We’ll feast on kid in your honor tonight, and you’ll sleep in the temple for as long as you stay with us.”
The man with the axe, a cadaverous fellow standing a head taller than anyone else in the village, frowned and muttered in the priest’s ear. The priest frowned back and snapped, “This is my decision, Pletnav!”
Bowing apologetically to Ilna, he explained, “Mistress wizard, some of us here at the Gate don’t believe in taking the life of any animal. I’m Arthlan or-Wassti, Gatekeeper and Priest of the God, though, and I decree that it’s perfectly proper to kill and eat a kid for you.”
Arthlan’s expression changed to something between concerned and hopeful. “Ah, that is—unless you wizard mistresses refrain from eating meat yourselves?”
“Refrain?” said Alecto with a delighted chortle. “You try me, Arthlan! And you’d better make it two kids if anybody else plans to get some. I’ve been hiking all day, and I’m not half-hungry!”
“Very well,” said Arthlan. “Oyra—”
He glanced over to the woman who’d come out of the house beside the temple. She was as plump as the priest but scarcely half his age.
“—take a kid from my own herd. One of the kids.”
The woman pursed her lips and spoke in a voice too low for Ilna to follow the words. The people here had a nasal accent quite different from the lilt of people in Barca’s Hamlet and different also from the clipped tones of Donelle.
“Yes, woman!” the priest said. “The whole village will share!”
He glared around at his neighbors. “After our guests and ourselves have eaten, of course,” he added, his tone becoming less agitated with each syllable. By the end of the short sentence, Arthlan sounded as smoothly cheerful as he’d been before the question of expense arose.
“I’m Ilna os-Kenset,” Ilna said, “and I’d prefer you call me Ilna in the future. My companion Alecto—
She wasn’t sure whether Alecto’s folk didn’t use the father’s name in their formal address or if the wild girl simply hadn’t bothered ever to tell her.
“—and I were driven from Donelle, as I said, by the priests of this Mistress. You’re offering to put us up in the temple?”