Maybe Alecto didn’t know her father.
The villagers were beginning to shift, not dispersing but rather clumping together in groups which whispered with animation among themselves, all the time watching the strangers. Occasionally someone would leave one gathering and trot over to another a furlong away. The scattered nature of the community meant there was no common meeting place like the square in front of the inn in Barca’s Hamlet.
“Why yes,” Arthlan said. “Would you like to see the building? It’s very comfortable, I’m sure you’ll find.”
“I’ll get bedding,” said the man with the axe. He shouldered it, and said to the bowman, “You too, Gorlan. You’ve got a coverlet extra since Magda moved in with Peese, haven’t you?”
“Sure, show us this place,” Alecto said, eyeing the temple with hesitation. “But it may be I’ll sleep in the woods again tonight. I don’t…”
Her voice trailed off. “I don’t like stone buildings,” might have been the way she’d planned to finish the sentence; though Ilna suspected that in truth the wild girl had never seen a building of dressed stone before she saw Donelle. “Anyway, maybe I’ll sleep in the woods.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” the priest said, gesturing them to follow as he waddled to the temple. The trail was broad enough for two people to walk abreast. Most of the other tracks had room for only one set of feet, and those had to be placed carefully to the side of the still-narrower trench goat hooves had worn in the middle over the decades. “You’ll see.”
“Who do you worship here?” Ilna asked. She didn’t believe in the Great Gods, but there were forces with power over men whether or not they were Gods. She’d known that long before she saw the congregation in Donelle raise the Pack. If these folk had similar rites, then she wasn’t going to stay to watch them.
“Who?” repeated Arthlan. “Well, God, mistress.”
The priest looked back over his shoulder at her with an expression of puzzlement. “God was placed here on Earth to guard the entrance to Hell, preventing the foul spirits of the Underworld from walking among mankind.”
The temple had a heavy wooden door with two outward-opening leaves. Both were swung back; they didn’t appear to have been closed in years or decades. The porch floor and the threshold slab were worn by the use of ages.
Arthlan stepped inside. The doorway was low; the priest didn’t duck, but Ilna—no taller than he but less familiar with the passage—did out of instinct. The only furnishings were the stone benches built into either sidewall. Instead of a back wall, a natural cave plunged into the depths of the hill. It narrowed swiftly, but Ilna couldn’t see the end of it as she bent to look in.
“Where’s your God?” she asked, doubtful and therefore suspicious. “Don’t you have a statue in here?”
Arthlan drew himself up with more dignity than Ilna had thought the plump little man possessed. “Mistress,” he said, “we don’t worship a statue. There’s no place for images here at the Gate of Hell. Our God is real.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ilna, folding her hands behind her. “I misspoke. It won’t happen again.”
She was sorry; furious with herself, in fact. She believed in very little, and most of that was negative, but she had no business discounting other people’s faith simply because she had none of her own.
Alecto entered, scratching her ribs under the wolfskin cape. She ran her left hand over the back wall, smiling at the feel of the natural rock. “Why didn’t you say it was a cave?” she said cheerfully. “I’ve slept in caves before.”
Like Ilna, she squatted to peer down the cave’s throat. Frowning, she pinched up dust from the floor and released it. The dust fell straight; there were no air currents, in or out of the cave.
“Has anybody gone down that?” Alecto asked the priest as she stood. “It’s big enough for a man back as far as I can see.”
“It’s not a place for men, mistress,” Arthlan said with the same stiff dignity. “Only God and demons can go through the Gate.”
“There’s water down there,” Ilna said, nodding toward the opening because she didn’t care to point. “I can smell it in the air.”
“Perhaps there is, mistress,” Arthlan said, “but I wouldn’t know that. We draw our water from the spring beside Taenan’s house. We’ll provide you with a bucket of it; more, if you’d like.”
Ilna stepped back onto the porch. A number of women were coming from both directions, struggling up the slope under loads of bedding and spruce branches.
Ilna frowned at the latter, then realized they must be meant for mattresses. People slept on feather beds in the palace, but what she’d expected here were leather cases stuffed with straw like those of Barca’s Hamlet. Springy boughs should be comfortable so long as the blanket over them was thick enough that the needles didn’t poke through.
Alecto kicked one of the side benches. The front of it was mortared stone, but the back was cut from the living rock. “Suits me,” she said. “Now, how about some of that food you were offering a bit ago?”
Arthlan bowed low. “We’ll eat at my house,” he said. He gestured the wild girl out of the temple ahead of him. “The goat won’t have seethed yet, but we can begin with porridge.”
Ilna paused to examine the temple doors. The panels were thick, made of mortised boards. The hinges were hardwood. They hadn’t been used in some time, but they were sturdy; so was the crossbar leaning against the interior wall.
She and Alecto should be able to sleep safely tonight, even if the villagers were more hostile than there was any reason to believe.
Garric rose from where he’d been sitting on the millipede’s head. The driver had given no signal that it was aware of Garric’s presence; neither did it show that it knew he’d left it to walk back past Metron to the second segment and the others waiting.
Thalemos would have joined him on the head, but Garric had wanted some time alone. He’d faced out over the creature’s course, but he was looking into his own mind.
The driver had no more intruded on Garric’s thoughts than the millipede itself had. The Archa’s middle arms occasionally touched either the spike or the feather of its wand to the thin, flexible chitin connecting the millipede’s head to its first body segment. Garric couldn’t see any change in the creature’s course, but presumably the driver knew its business. It knew better than Garric did, at any rate.
Metron was alert again, sitting cross-legged on the first segment. He looked up from his reading, this time a vellum scroll instead of the codex he’d had out before. His eyes met Garric’s; then, with a deliberate lack of expression, he went back to the scroll.
The snub angered Garric more than he’d have expected. Instead of walking past with a nod as he’d expected to, he stopped, and said, “Master Metron. How long are we going to be on this creature’s back?”
Metron looked up angrily. Fatigue and danger had taken their toll on the wizard’s temper. “That depends on matters I can’t be sure of without expending more effort than I choose to do,” he said. “I’ll inform you when we arrive.”
“That’s as may be,” Garric said, raising his voice slightly. “But since you’re ignorant, then we need to stop now to get water and perhaps food. Will you inform the driver, or shall I find a way to communicate with him myself?”
“Are you—” Metron said. He caught himself when Garric shifted his stance. The slight motion, not quite a threat, drew the wizard’s attention to the man he spoke to. A moment before he’d been taking everyone but himself as mere pawns to be moved at his will.
“That is…” Metron covered smoothly, letting the scroll slip closed in his lap. “Master Gar, I don’t know precisely how far we must proceed, but we should reach it in a few hours at most. I hope you and your colleagues can do without water for that long.”